Evolution

by F. B. Jevons

Those who find it easy to believe that a society is an animal, like those who proclaim that the real is unknowable, but that our knowledge of it is just as good as if it were not unknowable, will have little difficulty in believing that men's actions are not influenced by their purposes; and both will probably subscribe to the doctrine that, first, approximation to the ideal is an unintended result of the brute struggle for mere animal existence; and, next, the purpose which appears to mark the evolution process and to be the cause of progress is semblance only, a mere illusion. Against the first article of this doctrine the final and decisive appeal is and always must be to experience. It makes a general statement with regard to particular facts of experience: like every other statement made in the form of a scientific law, it affirms that a certain proposition will be found, when tested by experience, to be true of every one of a certain class of facts in our experience. It is therefore competent for every man, who chooses to consult his experience, to decide for himself whether the statement is true. In the present case, it is for every man, who has struggled with temptation and has achieved any progress, to say whether he gained the victory without an effort of will, without any desire for better things, without any purpose or resolution to try once more, without any intention not to yield the next time. Are "secret commissions" in trade refused, when refused, unintentionally? or is their refusal due solely to the blind instinct of self-preservation in the struggle for commercial existence? If reform is effected, will it be effected by those who declare that the severity of the struggle for existence makes reform impossible? or by those in whom the ideal of honesty has some operative force and who purpose approximation to that ideal? When the conviction is expressed that public opinion alone will be able to check this form of dishonesty, what is that but an appeal to the common sense and common faith that there are other things which man can will and purpose besides success in the struggle for existence?

The doctrine that the universe presents the mere semblance of purpose, that Nature mimics purpose, having none, is shared by materialistic systems in common with all those which consider that the only explanation that can be rendered of any given state of things is the assumption that it is the issue of some antecedent necessity which produced it. As we have already argued, the assumption of necessity as the ultimate explanation of things breaks down when we come to consider the beginning of the universe. If we assume an absolute beginning, then there can have been no necessity antecedent to that, and the beginning of things is left without explanation. On the other hand, to say that there never was any beginning is to admit that there never was any original necessity why things should follow the course of evolution which they have pursued—the initial collocation of causes was due to chance, was a purely fortuitous concurrence of atoms. When it is remarked that this is a strange assumption, that really, if the whole evolution process had been designed to reach the stage in which we know it and to attain the ideal which we surmise it to be capable of, the primeval atoms could not have been arranged better for the purpose, the reply is that the appearance of purpose is a delusion: true, as a matter of chance, the chances are millions to one against a fortuitous concurrence of atoms producing the evolution process that has taken place, but then the chances were just as great, neither more nor less, against any other of the millions of evolution processes that might have been evolved. We know the one that has taken place, and it is marvellous in our eyes that precisely this and no other should have occurred; but the wonder vanishes when we reflect that, had any other occurred, we should have been equally convinced, and equally erroneously convinced, that it could not have been produced by chance. The initial arrangement of things was, as it happened, such as to produce our evolution process: things might have chanced differently at the beginning; if they had, a different evolution process would have taken place, that is all. But it would still have looked like purpose, and would still have been due to chance.

But would it? The whole question is whether the initial collocation was due to chance or to purpose. To say that there might have been many other collocations proves nothing: an Almighty Power could collocate things in any of an infinite number of ways. To argue that every possible collocation, and therefore the one that produced our evolution process, must be due to chance, is simply to beg the question: the very thing we want to know is whether this or any other process could be due to chance. The argument that any and every other process would equally testify to purpose and equally imply design, seems rather to indicate that no conceivable evolution process could conceivably be due to chance.

Next, the necessitarian argument lays it down that the marvel of evolution vanishes when we reflect that if things had been different at the beginning, the results would have been different. But they were not. And the fact that they were not is just the marvel which the necessitarian does not even explain away: in order to diminish the probability of purpose, he postulates countless possible alternatives to the original arrangement of atoms, and then he is embarrassed with the difficulty of getting rid of them. Why was this particular collocation determined on rather than one of the countless alternatives? To say it was chance may be true; but we want to know what reason there is for believing it to be true. If there is none, then neither is there any reason for believing the purpose that makes the evolution process to be an illusion.

But let us grant it was chance: chance, as everyone knows, is merely a name for our ignorance as to the real cause; so that to say it was due to chance is to say that, for anything we know to the contrary, the original concurrence of atoms may have been due to purpose. In a word, there is, on the theory of chance, no reason to believe that purpose either is or is not an illusion.

It may, however, be said that not only do we not know, but that we cannot know, whether it is an illusion or not. In reply we may either admit that all our knowledge—scientific, moral, and religious—is based not on knowledge, but on faith; or we may ask on what grounds this alleged impossibility is based. If we put that question, we shall find that the grounds are not altogether cogent. It is alleged to be equally impossible for the human mind to conceive either the existence or the non-existence of a necessity antecedent to the absolute beginning of things: therefore, in face of this inherent incapacity of the human mind, the truth about the beginning of things is unknowable and inconceivable. But, we venture to suggest, this alleged incapacity of the human mind rests on a false antithesis: it rests on the assumption that whatever phase of the evolution process we regard as the initial arrangement must either have been determined by some prior phase (in which case it was not initial) or not determined at all. But as a mere matter of logic, there remains the possibility that it may have been self-determined; and, as regards the evidence of experience, we are familiar with a cause which operates every day and which is self-determined, viz. the free will. There is, therefore, no such inherent incapacity in the human mind as is alleged; and the only inconceivability is that which is inherent in the theory of antecedent necessity, and not in the facts themselves. It is simply incorrect to say that if things cannot be explained by the theory of antecedent necessity, they are not capable of being explained at all. If the evolution process had been designed to follow the course it has followed, the initial arrangement of things could not have been better adapted to produce the result; and, as adaptation of means to end is the mark of intelligence, it is neither inconceivable nor irrational to suppose that purpose was immanent in things from the beginning.

But as it is scientific to argue from the known to the unknown, or from the better known to the less known; and as to know fully what a thing is we must know what it is capable of becoming or producing, let us pass from the pre-animal to the animal stage of evolution. It is the more necessary to do this because it was Darwin's theory of the origin of species which impressed upon the modern mind the idea that Nature mimics purpose, having none. Man, with the purpose of breeding a certain type of animal, selects those animals to breed from which possess, in the most marked degree, the characteristics which he wishes to develop in the offspring. But, as Darwin demonstrated, Nature, or the environment, by killing off those creatures which did not possess (or least possessed) the qualities necessary to ensure survival, "selects" animals of a certain type to breed from. Thus "natural selection" produces its results in the same way as human selection does; and presents every appearance of purpose, though the environment which produced the results could have had no intentions or purpose at all. But just as man does not create the animals which he first selects to breed from, so the environment does not create those sports or varieties which it selects to breed from: if they did not exist, neither man nor Nature could breed from them—no results, purposed or unpurposed, could be got from them.

If now we inquire about these sports, we are told science is content with the fact that they undeniably occur: wherever there are animals there are varieties in their offspring. That those which are adapted to survive will survive, and those which are not will not, is a self-evident, indeed an identical, proposition. It is; and it gives away the whole case against purpose, for it admits that some varieties are originally adapted to survive, that without them neither man nor the environment would have anything to begin on or work on, and that though man and Nature may develop, they do not create the original adaptation. They do but promote, by conscious or unconscious action, the purpose immanent in the sport. Of all the numerous, successive, imperceptible increments by which what was originally a sport is raised to a distinct species, not one is created by man or by the environment: all are the "gratuitous offerings" of the organism, manifestations of the organism's spontaneity, revelations of its latent capacities, fulfilments of the purpose immanent in it from the beginning.

If it be said that the survival of any or every given species was a matter of chance, because other sports would have developed into other species, if the environment had been different, the reply again is, But it was not; and, on the theory of necessity, could not be. The fact that both conditions—the organism's spontaneity and the environment's selective agency—were requisite to the production of the new species, and that both conditions were forthcoming, tells rather in favour of purpose than against it. The fact that this particular combination of conditions was effected, rather than any other, is on exactly the same footing as the initial concurrence of atoms: if the latter cannot be ascribed to any necessity antecedent to it, neither can the former; the reason of the combination is to be sought in the self-determining cause immanent in the conditions. The fact, if it be a fact, that countless other combinations were possible, and this alone was chosen, shows that the will immanent in the evolution process is free will.

In fine, Darwin has shown that the action of the environment is exactly what it would have been had it been designed for the purpose of selecting certain sports for development. All that is further necessary in order to show that this apparent purpose is an illusion, is to prove that the environment was not designed to act as it does. Pending the production of that proof, the argument remains incomplete.