Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

So far, then, as the genius in art or science, or the reformer in religion or morals, is the cause of the progress that is made by his school, his disciples, and them that follow after, it is clear that he is the cause and not the product of evolution. It is his works or words which inspire his followers with a fresh sense of the reality of the ideal and a fresh resolve to devote their lives to the pursuit of art or the service of science. But it is only because his perfect work is felt by them, judging for themselves, to realise the ideal that it has this effect on them; and they could not judge it to approach the ideal more closely than anything known to them before, unless they had some surmise, however vague, of the ideal, with which to compare this work, perfect as it seems to them. It is not necessary to suppose that this vague surmise existed, or if it existed that it was attended to, previously: it may have been first called into existence or into notice by the contemplation of the master's work, but its presence, however evoked, is attested by the judgment that his work does come nearest to the ideal. The manifestation of the masterpiece may be the occasion of this fresh revelation of the ideal, but the revelation must be made if the work is to be judged highest and is to inspire the disciple.

It is, however, one thing to have an ideal, and another to live up to it. "To scorn delights and live laborious days" in the search for truth or in single-minded devotion to the cause of art requires some will. Granted that the ideal has been revealed, either to the disciple on the occasion of another's teaching or directly as to the master, for progress there is further required will. It requires an act of will to prefer the ideal, with its laborious days, and to scorn delights; and it requires many acts of will to make any progress. Yet the will to believe and the will to act are the same will. We may, if we choose, define belief as the readiness to act, and take action as the test of belief: if a man in a hurry makes a short cut, i.e. goes straight from one point to another rather than round a corner, his action is proof that he believes that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. From this point of view we may regard the many acts of will which are necessary to progress, i.e. movement in the direction of the ideal, as so many reaffirmations of the original act of will by which we affirmed our belief that the ideal was the goal of progress; and if our object is to show that the behaviour of man, so far as he pursues the ideal, can be exhibited as a logical and rational behaviour, we are justified in thus demonstrating that our renewed resolutions to realise the ideal are but the logical consequences of our original will to believe in the ideal as the proper goal of action. Our belief in the ideal is thus shown to be the principle from which our subsequent acts of will can be logically deduced, just as Nature's uniformity can be shown to be the principle from which the conclusions of science logically flow.

But it may be doubted whether this logical order of ideas is the chronological order of events. As a matter of fact, we go through a number of struggles and temptations long before we reflect, if ever we do reflect, upon them in such a way as to see what is the general principle logically implied by our repeated if intermittent resistance to temptation, just as a child acts in a way that for its logical justification would require a formal recognition of the uniformity of Nature, though the infant of two years, or less, does not formulate that principle as a condition precedent of crying for its food or its nurse. Chronologically, then, the will to act seems to precede the will to believe in the uniformity of Nature, and in the case of most human beings is never followed by any fully conscious formulation of the principle on which we act as an abstract principle in which to believe. That fact, however, does not in the least detract from the value which the formulation of the abstract principle has: when formulated it becomes in the hands of science as Ithuriel's spear for the detection of lingering superstitions and confusions of thought—

"for no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper, but returns
Of force to its own likeness."

At touch of the question, "Does it contradict the uniformity of Nature?" error is seen for what it is, and is exploded sooner thus than in any other way.

The ideal of truth, then, with its "celestial temper," is logically implicit in the earliest acts of will, but chronologically is developed in consciousness later, if indeed and when it reaches that later stage of its evolution from the potential to the actual. The ideals of morality and religion, again, though equally implicit in the acts of will which form their earliest manifestation, are, as a rule, both in the individual and the race, more slowly evolved from the particulars in which they are immersed. The period of their gestation is longer, and results in the birth of a higher organism.

Thus, when we reach the age of reflection, whenever it may come, we wake up to find that we have been acting as though we had beliefs, when, as in our infancy, we could have had no beliefs, and as though we willed our actions, at a time when we can scarcely be said to have had any will in the matter. For years we have been acting as we should have done supposing that we had believed certain things and had willed our action accordingly. When we wake up to this state of things the question is, Are we bound to go on in this way? are we bound now to believe as well as to act as though we believed in God, morality, and Nature's uniformity? Does the fact that our physiological and psychological mechanism has been started—perhaps by Nature's cosmic forces, perhaps by the social environment, certainly not by us—to run in certain grooves, prove either that we ought or that we must continue to run the particular organism we are in charge of on the same lines? The agnostic and the atheist exercise their freedom of will to say No. They claim the right and exercise the power of free choice. The agnostic, further, is fully aware that in choosing to believe the uniformity of Nature his choice is not determined by evidence—it is "a great act of faith," no amount of evidence could justify it, the only evidence anyone can bring to justify his belief in the general abstract principle is the fact that he does believe it in every concrete, particular instance. In a word, he believes it because he chooses to believe it—and that is exactly what is meant by the dictum, which he finds it so hard to understand, that his will is self-determining.

When it comes to the question of morality and religion, the agnostic again exercises his freedom of choice: he wills to believe in the former and not in the latter—the evidence for and against either being equally nil. It is not, therefore, the evidence which determines his choice; and he shows that it is not his previous history, not the momentum which his psychological mechanism gained during the period when he had no conscious or no self-conscious control over it, which determines his choice, for in the first place he denies that it ought or must influence him, and next he shows that it does not, by willing differently in the case of the two principles. In both cases his will is equally self-determining, though his will is to believe in the moral principle or ideal and not to believe in the religious.

If we wish either to define progress or to make it, we must choose, arbitrarily or otherwise, some particular goal and say, definitely and decidedly, any movement which being continued in the same straight line leads to that goal is progress, every other movement is regress, being necessarily away from the goal. If we choose, by a great act of faith or otherwise, to say the ideal is the goal, then we have therein a principle both of belief and action: we have a standard by which to test everything offered for judgment, a general principle to apply to every particular case; and we have an object to aim at, a principle to carry out in every act of our lives, an ideal to strive for. But whether we choose the ideal as the goal or something else, our choice is the free act of a self-determining will. Progress, on the human side, is—as indeed is regress—the expression of the free will of human beings, whose choice, though free, is limited to the alternatives offered to them. Those alternatives reduce themselves ultimately to aiming at the ideal or at something else.

What, then, of the environment, of the cosmos, in which man finds himself, in which he has to act and may act so as to advance or not to advance towards the ideal? To begin with, we may distinguish between those forces in the cosmos which man can to some extent control, and those over which he has no control. The former, from this point of view, the point of view of action, are means whereby man secures his ends: his regulation of them effects that adaptation of the environment which, according to Professor Huxley, is essential to ethical progress. Now, as a matter of observed fact, no one doubts that the advance which civilised man has made in controlling the forces of Nature is due to science and to civilised man's devotion to the scientific ideal of truth. Even the savage made what little progress he did make in this direction by acting fitfully and unconsciously, or at the most semi-consciously, on the principle of the uniformity of Nature: the savage was faithful in little things to the scientific ideal—which was revealed to him but dimly—the savant is fully conscious of the principle on which he acts, walks in its light, and strives by example and precept to save his fellow-men from relapsing into the darkness of error and superstition. It is not merely because of the material advantages, the comforts and luxuries, which science indirectly secures to mankind, that the man of science devotes himself to the scientific ideal and seeks to make it universal: it is for the sacred cause of truth. In a word, what at first sight presents itself merely as a principle of the scientific reason, proves, in the conception of those who have spent their lives in endeavouring to seek the scientific ideal and to ensue it, to be a manifestation of the moral reason, to be not merely in harmony with the moral ideal, but to have been its harbinger, making the way straight for it. Belief which implies a violation of the uniformity of Nature is denounced not because it violates a scientific principle, but because it is immoral, a pretence, and a lie. The final cause of science is thus made out to be to subserve the moral ideal, to secure that adaptation of the environment without which ethical progress is impossible. The labour of adapting his environment would have for man as a rational being no sufficient reason if it did not tend to realise his moral ideal. Man may use his science and the power of adapting his environment for other than moral ends; but such use is not, according to this view, progress. In other words, it is not science or the scientific ideal alone which enables us to lay down the line of progress, but science and morality together: one point cannot give us our direction, but the line which connects two points may.