Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

It is, however, necessary, in the interests of clearness of thought as well as of the moral and religious consciousness, that the conception of progress thus thoughtlessly emptied of meaning by the optimist should have its context restored. This service—a service essential as a preliminary to every theory of evolution—was rendered by one in whom the moral consciousness spoke with force—Professor Huxley. To him is due the demonstration that adaptation to environment, so far from being the cause of progress, counteracts it; so far from being man's ideal, it is that which resists the realisation of his ideals. Progress is effected, according to Professor Huxley, not by adaptation to but adaptation of the environment, and consists in approximating to the ideals of art and morality—which ideals are not accounted for, as ideals, by the fact that they are the outcome of evolution, because evil has been evolved as well as good. Why approximation to the ideal of religion—love of God as well as of one's neighbour—should not contribute to progress does not appear. If, however, we add it, and also add the ideal of science, viz. truth, then progress will be the continuous approximation to the ideals of truth, beauty, goodness, and holiness; and human evolution, so far as evolution is progress, will be the progressive revelation of the ideal in and to man.

Two things are implied in this conception of evolution: the first is that evolution may or may not in any given case be progress; the next that we have a means of judging, a canon whereby to determine, whether evolution is progress. Both points are illustrated by the argument of Professor Huxley, who uses the moral ideals as a test whereby to judge the process of evolution, and decides that evolution has been progressive in the past and will be regressive in the future. Strange to say, the reason why Professor Huxley maintains that evolution will be regressive is exactly the same reason that leads Mr. Herbert Spencer to maintain that it will be progressive. It is that the law of evolution is Necessity, that evolution is the outcome of mechanical causes. But in effect both arguments lead logically to the same conclusion, for the progress which is the outcome of Mr. Spencer's argument is not progress in the moral or any other sense of the word. In fine, progress is eventually impossible if evolution is due to mechanical causes; progress is conceivable only if we interpret the process of evolution teleologically and as expressing the operation of a final cause. Science, as such, declines to inquire whether there is any purpose in evolution, and leaves it an open question. The moral consciousness affirms only that the process of evolution ought to make for good. The religious consciousness alone is in a position to say that its spiritual experience requires us to affirm that evolution, in accordance with the uniformity of the Divine nature, will be, in years to come as in ages past, a continuous movement towards the realisation of all that in its best moments the human heart holds most dear.

The argument that evolution must be progress commits logical suicide, for in the very act of proving its conclusion it proves that progress is not progress. We are therefore left to face the fact that progress is only a possibility; and that amounts to saying that regress also is possible. What is implied therein will become clear if we return to the question of the nature of progress.

Progress is not the survival of the fittest to survive, but of the æsthetically or ethically fittest; not adaptation to the environment, but approximation to the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Those ideals are manifested in man, but not equally in all men; and the words and works of those men on whom they are most clearly impressed and by whom they are most faithfully expressed become the canon whereby we judge whether any tendency in art or morality is progressive or retrogressive. We cannot all make beautiful things or do heroic deeds, but we can all appreciate them when made or done. To appreciate them, however, is to judge that they do come nearer to the ideal than anything else of the kind which we have yet known. Thus the ultimate court of appeal for each one of us is not the ideal as manifested by man, but the ideal as revealed to each of us. True it is that, until we saw that particular work of art or that particular instance of love, we had no idea what beauty or love could be. But that makes no difference to the fact that we feel for ourselves how much nearer it comes to the ideal than anything we had any idea of before. It may henceforth be the standard by which we shall measure other things, but in adopting it we measure it ourselves, and measure it not by itself, but in relation to the ideal. And what shall we say of the artist himself? By what does he measure the work of his predecessors and judge that it is not the best that can yet be done, if he does not measure it by the ideal which is revealed more perfectly to him than to them?

But the perfect work of art or love, when done, becomes not merely the canon by which to test progress; it becomes itself the cause of progress, both because of its more perfect revelation of the ideal and because of the emulation which it arouses in others to go and do likewise. They likewise strive after the ideal and labour for its sake: it is the final cause of their endeavours, the purpose of their attempts; and were there no such final cause there would be no progress. The ideal is a principle both of thought and action, the test of knowledge and the source of progress. Truth is the ideal of science: approximation to truth is that for which the man of science labours and that in which he conceives that scientific progress lies. The gravitation formula not only expresses a wide-reaching truth, but has acted as an incentive to many attempts to extend it to the domain of chemistry, and serves as an ideal yet to be rivalled in other branches of science. But science and progress in science are alike impossible, if consciousness and experience be discredited, or if the ideal of science be not real, i.e. if the laws of science have not the permanence, the independence, and the self-identity which are the attributes of the real, but are as transient as the minds that discovered them, exist only when thought of by man, and are not really the same at different times. But if these ideals, whether of truth, beauty, or goodness, are thus real, then they are "our" ideals only in the sense that we are aware of them and adopt them, not in the sense that we make them; they are ours because they are present in the common consciousness of mankind, but not in the sense that they are created by that consciousness. They are revealed to man before they are manifested by man.

Professor Huxley's definition of progress cuts at the root of two misconceptions as to its nature, which, though mutually inconsistent, are both widely spread. One is that the latest products of time, simply because they are the latest, are superior to all that has preceded. The other is that to know the origins of a thing will best enable us to assign its value. The tendency of the one is to result in the idea that because a thing has been evolved it must be superior; of the other to lead to the conclusion that because a thing has been evolved out of certain elements it cannot be superior to them. The truth is that the mere fact that a thing has been evolved—be it an institution, a mode of life, or a disease—does not in itself prove either that the thing is or is not an advance on that out of which it was evolved. Regressive metamorphosis, degeneration, pathological developments—physiological, mental, moral, and religious—are all processes of evolution, but are not progress. A society in its decay, or an art in its decline, is evolved out of a previous healthier state or more flourishing period, but is not because later therefore better. Nor, on the other hand, does it follow, because the earliest manifestations of a tendency are the lowest, and can be shown by the theory of evolution to be so, that no progress has been made in the process of evolution. The artistic impulse in its earliest manifestations, in children and in savages, is rude enough; but it would be absurd to say, therefore, that art in its perfection has no more value than in its origins, that the Hermes of Praxiteles is on a level with a misshapen idol from the South Sea islands.

If the continuity of evolution does not warrant us in assigning the same value, æsthetic or moral, to all the links, highest and lowest, in the chain, still less does it authorise or require us to deny all value to the lowest. On the contrary, we should rather see in the lowest what it has of the highest, than look in the highest for the lowest we can find. We should beware lest in reducing everything to its lowest terms we prove to have been seeking simply to bring it to our own level, when at the cost of a little more generosity we might have raised ourselves somewhat nearer to the ideal prefigured even in the lowest stage of the evolution of love, of beauty, of piety or of goodness. Indeed, as a mere matter of logic, it is impossible to state the nature of a cause accurately, quite apart from any question of estimating its value, until or unless we know the effect which it produces. It is not only that we may underrate or entirely overlook the importance of a thing, so long as we are ignorant that it is a factor largely influencing some result in which we are interested; but, until we know what effects it is capable of producing, we do not know what the thing is. We could not be said to have knowledge of a drug if we did not know what its effects were. Nor is that knowledge to be acquired by analysing the causes which produce the drug. It is not from the mechanical causes which give rise to a thing that we can learn what a thing is: no amount of knowledge of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen would enable us to predict a priori the nature of the compound which is formed when electricity is passed through two molecules of the former and one of the latter; nor is the least light thrown upon the properties of water by our knowledge of its constituent elements: on the other hand, our knowledge of them is materially and serviceably increased when we learn what they are capable of producing in combination. We learn most truly what a thing is from observing what it becomes, what use it subserves, what end it answers, what purpose it fulfils—in a word, when we know not its mechanical but its final cause. In biology, knowledge of an organ means knowledge of its function—that is, of its purpose; and evolutional biology also teaches that function is the cause of the organ.

It is by observing what a thing becomes that we learn the part it may hereafter play in the general scheme of things, and come to know its real nature, and estimate it at its real value. Thus our estimate of the value of such an institution as "taboo" goes up, and our knowledge of it is increased, when we recognise in it one of the early manifestations of the sense of moral obligation on its negative side. Again, in tracing the evolution of religion it is impossible to know which of the various rites and ceremonies, practised by a savage tribe in its dealings with the supernatural, are religious and which non-religious, without taking into consideration the question, What do such customs tend to develop into? Until we know that, and until we can say whether what is evolved out of them is religious or non-religious—a question which we cannot answer unless we know what religion is—we cannot be said to understand the nature of the savage rites that we are studying. But it is not from the origins of art, religion, or morality that we shall gain the answer to the question what art, morality, or religion is; for the question must be answered before we can recognise the origins when we see them, and can only be answered by reference to the ideal, which is the test and final cause not only of progress, but of the real.

The ideal is a principle both of thought and of action. As a principle of thought it is the test by which we determine whether any given movement is progressive or regressive, and whether any given thing is what it appears or is alleged to be. As a principle of action it is that for which we strive, the purpose with which we act, the cause of any progress that we make. If we are not prepared to maintain that everything which takes place is an advance upon what preceded, we require some test whereby to distinguish what is progress from what is not, and we admit that progress is a possibility which may or may not be realised, and it becomes of interest to inquire on what conditions its realisation depends.

If, as Professor Huxley maintains, the test of progress is approximation to the ideal, then one condition of progress is that man shall be conscious, to whatever extent is necessary for the purpose, of the ideal, shall feel that the ideal of love, tenderness, compassion, justice, truth, beauty, etc., is a thing for him to strive for, an end for him to attain. To the chosen few—the great artists, the moral or religious reformer—a sense of the ideal is dealt in a larger measure than to the rest of men. By the chosen few it is manifested to the many. But it does not become the cause of progress, unless it leavens the mass, unless they too are inspired by it to do better and be better. In a word, when, or if, ever the ideal has been manifested in its fulness, it is not a fresh revelation which is necessary for progress, but fresh conviction in us and renewed determination. Indeed, so long as we do not act up to the light that we have, even an imperfect revelation of the ideal may serve for imperfect beings.