Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

The latter seems to be preferred by science as the final result of scientific knowledge: the object of science is to demonstrate, not why, but that things happen in a certain way; and it is admitted, or rather insisted upon, e.g. by J. S. Mill, that if scientific knowledge were carried to its utmost conceivable or inconceivable perfection, the question why anything should happen or does happen would remain as great a mystery as ever, and must remain so, for the simple reason that it is a question which science does not even put, much less attempt to answer. Nevertheless, it is said, science does prove what she undertakes to show, viz. that things do happen in certain ways, which ways when formulated appear as laws of science. That, however, is not strictly the case if science, in order to prove her conclusions, has to postulate that each and every state of things is the outcome of some antecedent necessity. Ultimately the postulate proves untrue; for there can have been no necessity antecedent to the initial arrangement of things. And if the postulate be untrue, the conclusions based on it cannot be accepted as certain. If we cannot tell whether it be true or not, neither can we tell whether science be true or not. If it is unintelligible, no wonder that things, as explained by it, are mysterious.

But let us waive these theoretical objections. Does Science, as a matter of fact, prove that things do happen in the ways she describes? In justice to her, let us remember that she does not undertake to do even that. Her laws only state the way in which things tend to happen, not the way in which they actually do happen; only what would happen if there were no counteracting causes and if certain conditions, which do not prevail, did prevail—not what does really happen in the world as we know it. Herein the scientific reason behaves in exactly the same way as the moral or religious reason. Science no more alleges that all bodies in motion do move for ever in the same straight line, at the same rate, than the moral reason alleges that all men always do what is right or that they always do God's will. The allegation is that the tendency exists and can be discerned by those qualified to form an opinion on the matter. That there is friction retarding the movement, and that there are obstacles diverting it, is admitted; and, though the admission does not affect the truth (in one way) of the laws of science, it does allow that they convey no exact or faithful picture of what actually happens in the world as it is.

But if the laws of science do not explain what happens—even in the limited sense of scientific explanation—they are the indispensable preliminary to that explanation. If they do not represent the world as it is, they supply the means by which we may hereafter produce the picture. They are ideals not in the sense that science hopes to show eventually that feathers only appear to float leisurely to the ground, and are really all the time falling sixteen feet in a second, but in the sense that starting from the gravitation formula we could show that every feather's fall is as rationally comprehensible as the gravitation formula itself. They are not the ultimate truth, the final reality, or Science's supreme ideal. They are shadows cast by the scientific ideal before its coming; they are the principles by which science must proceed, if she is to make the world of things intelligible. So, too, the reality of the moral ideal does not imply that, in refusing to make sacrifices for others, I only appear to be selfish, and shall be found in the end really to have been actuated all the time by some high moral principle. What is implied is that only by the acceptance of the moral ideal can the world of men be moralised. From the same point of view it seems hopeless to try to make out that atheism, though not in appearance, will be found in reality to have been a manifestation of religion. It is by accepting, not by denying the religious ideal or doubting its existence, that the ideal of religion is achieved.

Now, in the theory of evolution we have the attempt made to effect this transition from the abstractions of science to the concrete facts, to show that the world as presented to sense is as intelligible and rationally comprehensible as the laws of science themselves, and that the hypothetical statements of science were but preliminary, though necessary preliminaries, to a categorical statement of actual facts. In evolution, as indeed in all the historical sciences, we abandon the elasticity and the uncertainty of conditional conceptions for the rigidity and certainty of accomplished fact. We no longer deal with what may happen if given conditions are realised, but with what has been, and therefore is subject to no "ifs." We start from the certainty of what is, and thus we argue back positively to what must have been.

There is, however, one precaution which must be observed, and without which the whole of the system just described is as uncertain and conditional as the rest of science. Before we can argue from what is to what has been, we must first know for certain what is. Before we can conclude that a patient has been healed by faith or cured miraculously of an incurable complaint, we must first have medical evidence to show that he had the disease. Or, to take a better and closer illustration from medicine, it is premature to assign a cause for a patient's condition before his condition has been diagnosed; and physicians who differ in their diagnosis will naturally differ as to the causes in the patient's past history which are responsible for his state.

If, then, the evolutionist is to attain accuracy in his description of the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it is, he must first know what it is. Before we can trace the evolution of morality, for instance, we must make up our minds as to what it is. If we regard it as an illusion, we shall hold that it is subject to the same laws as other illusions, and we shall have no difficulty in showing that its evolution was a necessary consequence of those laws. Or, again, if we hold that religion is mere foolery or hysteria, we shall naturally infer a very different process for its evolution than if we feel it to be a permanent manifestation of the common consciousness in the same sense that morality is. A distinguished German mythologist, starting from the former diagnosis, has no difficulty in evolving primitive religion out of primitive drunkenness.

In fine, if we regard "what is" as giving the data by which we are to determine what has been, it is clear that to understand what has been we must properly appreciate what is. This is in accordance with the conclusion which we have reached previously that it is only by studying its effects that we can properly understand a cause. To judge a thing properly we must know the effects it is capable of producing: to know what a thing is we must observe what it becomes or what it is capable of becoming at its best. We cannot judge the value of the moral character or the moral ideal fairly if we take a low specimen to go by; nor if we knew nothing more of morality than what we could observe of its rudiments in the higher animals, should we know much about it. It is by its highest manifestations that we most correctly judge either morality or art, and it is only through them that we can be properly said even to understand what either art or morality is. So, too, taking the religious ideal as love of God and man, we must judge religion not by its imperfect manifestations in imperfect beings, but by its perfect revelation and realisation in Christ.

The case is not otherwise with science or evolution itself. From primitive times man has always used his knowledge (however imperfect) of what is as the basis of speculations as to what has been. It would, however, be absurd to take the puerile and barbarous cosmogonies of the savage as adequate expressions of the scientific ideal, or to imagine that it is from them that we can judge what science is. It is no less unreasonable to judge the theory of evolution by its present, passing phase. In the first place, there are facts in its history which show that it naturally started with a partial and one-sided view of the facts. In the next place, we must judge it not by what it may be at its worst, but by what it is capable of becoming at its best; and it is by the latter that we must decide what evolution truly is, not by the former.

At its worst the theory of evolution may require us to believe that the whole process of evolution is essentially irrational—being the outcome of unintelligent forces operating on reasonless matter—and that the theory of evolution, accordingly, if faithful to the facts, is as irrational as they; or, if rational, is a misleading account of the real universe in which we live and move and have our being.

On the other hand, the theory at its best may require us to believe that it reveals a universe run on rational principles, a real world perfectly intelligible to perfect reason, and partially intelligible even to beings who share but partially in the Divine reason that animates the whole.