Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

If we turn from the human to the pre-human period of evolution, the first immediate fact which strikes us is that there has been throughout the animal kingdom an evolution of mind, which has resulted in providing man with the psychological apparatus necessary for conceiving, and, to some extent, realising the ideal. When we reached the age of reflection, we woke up to find that our psychological mechanism had been running for some years in certain grooves. We now find that its direction can be traced back by evolution to the beginnings of animal consciousness. If, however, we believe that the evolution of mind, animal and human, has been a process of progress, we do so not on the ground that mind has been evolved, but that its evolution has been in the direction of those ideals, approximation to which is believed by us to be progress. Similarly, if the pre-animal period of the earth's evolution is shown by science to have resulted in fitting the earth to be the home of animal life, we judge that evolution to have been progress, not because it prepared the world eventually for man, but because it is seen to have been part of the process by which the ideal is in course of realisation, by which the Divine purpose is in the course of being fulfilled.

The only value that we can assign to the pre-human period of evolution is that which attaches to it as a means to an end; but though we believe that by striving after the ideals revealed to us we are labouring towards that end, and though everything that makes for the ideal contributes to the end, yet we do not know the Divine purpose, and we cannot say in what manifold other ways the pre-human period may have subserved that purpose. It is sufficient if we can trace the steps by which this one portion, the only portion known to us, of the whole design has been carried forward. This reflection is one which it is necessary to bear in mind when considering the alleged wastefulness of the process of evolution and the price at which progress has been purchased.

The theory of evolution, as a purely scientific theory, i.e. as an objective statement of what actually has taken place on the earth in the past, shows that the various species of animals which have survived were—so long as they did survive—the only species which could survive under the conditions which then prevailed; given the conditions, their survival was necessary and inevitable. There the scientific explanation of the matter ends: having shown the causes which produced the effect in question, science has explained everything that it undertook to explain. Had the conditions been different, the present state of the world, doubtless, would have been different; but being what they were they produced that which is, and there is an end of the matter—as far as it is a matter for scientific investigation.

What we are to think of the survivors—whether we are to admire them; whether we are to consider their survival an advance and an improvement; whether anything has been gained by their survival, and, if so, from what point of view the gain is a gain—are questions which science excludes, because, however answered, they do not affect the scientific fact that these species did survive, and, under the conditions, alone could survive.

But we all take it for granted and as self-evident that man is not only better adapted, under existing conditions, to survive and flourish at the cost and to the extinction of other species, but that he is better than the brute, that his survival is an advance, that his is a higher type, and that his existence realises a higher ideal than that of the brutes. We believe this not merely because we are men, and as such rate our own comforts, our own interests, our own skins as the most important things known to us, for there are things for which men sacrifice their own interests and for which they have laid down their lives. It is precisely because there are things more important than our own material and animal existence, and because they are or may be realised by man and not by the animals, by the ideal man and not by the brute man, that we consider him to be worth more than many sparrows—though they too have their value in His eyes—and man's existence to be of a higher type than theirs.

Thus, then, when science—which, if it is truly scientific, makes no distinction of value, moral or spiritual, between man and the sparrow—has explained that a given species which did survive was the only species that could have survived under the conditions, there still remains the problem, for those to whom it is a problem, Why should the species which was bound to survive also happen to be a species of a higher type? Why have the survivors always happened to be both better adapted to survive and better adapted to further the ideal which the course of evolution reveals with increasing clearness?

In fine, science explains only a part, not the whole of the effect of evolution. It concentrates its attention on one part or aspect of the effect, on the survival of the fittest, and explains very simply and satisfactorily that the environment kills off the creatures which are not fit to cope with it, while the fittest to contend with it survive. The fact that the survivors not only are best adapted to the environment, but are also best adapted to bring the whole creation one step nearer to those distant ideals in expectation of which it groaneth and travaileth, is that part of the effect which science, for scientific purposes, rightly ignores. Science does not undertake to estimate the value of the effect produced, or even to consider whether when produced it has any value.

But when the question is raised as to the cost at which the process of evolution is carried on, it becomes necessary to bring into the account the value of the result attained or to be attained. Possibly, creation that groaned in her travail may rejoice that a man-child has been born. But so much depends on what her child grows into. And he has free will. We have the power now and here to dash her expectations to the ground.

The value of a thing to me is exactly what I am prepared to give or do for it. I have no other way of estimating the value of the ideals for which creation has laboured in the past, than by asking myself how far I am prepared to go for the love of truth, of fellow-beings, and of God. If I am prepared to give everything, and then count myself the gainer, then indeed I may know that the cost of evolution has not been greater than the value of the ideal: I know the highest price, and I know the feelings of those who pay it. And they are the only persons who can judge the value of the article, for they are the only people who get it. The fact, however, that they do get it, that they get it in full, and every man according to the measure with which he metes it, contains the answer to our question. What is true now was true of earlier generations and earlier men: the value of the ideal to every man was exactly what he gave for it. It is the realisation of the ideal by me that is my reward, though my object may be its realisation by others. But it is absurd to say that their gain is my loss, or that their progress has been made at my expense.

These considerations apply only of course to those men who have sacrificed themselves for the sake of progress and the love of their fellow-man. Most men, however, do not sacrifice themselves much; and therefore they can hardly be brought out as martyrs to the cause of progress, as the millions who have perished by the wayside in the march of evolution.