At the same time, Darwin was perfectly aware that his theories tended to shatter the orthodox view of man and his supremacy and even the orthodox God. The sheer, simple statement of the matter appears in one vivid phrase: ‘What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!’[158] Especially Darwin knew well what fierce hostility he should evoke from those who had grown up in the orthodox belief, were wedded to it by all the force of habit and tradition, and were intellectually unqualified to adapt themselves to any other. Therefore, from the beginning, he proceeded with the greatest caution and moderation of statement. This arose partly from his sweetness of temper. He had no desire to wound or destroy, except as the truth might compel him to do so. One early critic speaks admirably of ‘the magnanimous simplicity of character which in rising above all petty and personal feeling delivered a thought-reversing doctrine to mankind with as little disturbance as possible of the deeply rooted sentiments of the age.’[159]
It was this caution and considerateness that induced him to write such passages as the conclusion of the ‘Origin’ with its interesting introduction for later editions of the phrase ‘by the Creator’ in the last sentence.[160] And the caution did not result wholly from timidity or unwillingness to shock, but was also brought about by Darwin’s natural reluctance to commit himself in regions where he did not feel at home, or to take one step beyond the properly scientific province which he had really made his own. As to ultimate questions he confessed himself to be in ‘a muddle,’[161] and why should he interfere with the more definite creed of others?
On the other hand, where his conclusions were clear and well established, he meant to speak out, and let the truth prevail, without regard to the feelings of anybody. He wanted to sustain no cause, to push no argument for itself, he wanted facts and nothing else. And when he feels that he has yielded too much to popular prejudice and to the desire to conciliate it, his regret is decided and he determines to do so no more: ‘I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.’[162]
As regards this world, in questions of morals, of conduct, and generally of the bearing of evolution on sociology, Darwin’s own sturdy moral habit and self-poised temperament made him perhaps unduly optimistic. Temptation had little hold upon him. Why should it have more upon others, even unsustained by celestial guidance and control? In ‘The Descent of Man’ he endeavors to show the social instinct as a sufficient and satisfactory basis for upright living: ‘We have seen that even at an early period in the history of man, the expressed wishes of the community will have naturally influenced to a large extent the conduct of each member.... Thus the reproach is removed of laying the foundation of the noblest part of our nature in the base principle of selfishness.’[163] And elsewhere he adds, ‘It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited.’[164] Yet the deadly, grinding, destroying implications of the struggle for existence do crop out everywhere, and the best intentioned efforts do not altogether disguise them: ‘It may be difficult, but we ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which urges her to destroy the young queens, her daughters, as soon as they are born, or to perish herself in the combat; for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and maternal love or maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of natural selection.’[165] While Darwin’s optimism as to possible consequences appears, it seems to me, in a note to the ‘Descent.’ He is commenting on an article of Miss Cobb, in which she says, referring to his ethical explanations, ‘I cannot but believe that in the hour of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind.’ On which Darwin remarks comfortably, ‘It is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.’[166]
When it comes to the bearing of evolution on another world, Darwin’s attitude is equally interesting, and equally inconclusive. To me one of the most characteristic and suggestive sentences he ever wrote occurs in a letter to Wallace, of August, 1872 (italics mine): ‘Perhaps the mere reiteration of the statements given by Dr. Bastian and by other men, whose judgment I respect, and who have worked long on the lower organisms, would suffice to convince me. Here is a fine confession of intellectual weakness; but what an inexplicable frame of mind is that of belief.’[167] The implications here are almost fathomless, but it is clear enough that to Darwin belief in general was not a spiritual necessity of his being, but merely came with the overwhelming obtrusion of fact.
In regard to a future life, Darwin recognized, in a passage I have quoted earlier, that a belief in it was needed to complete the process established here, and the dire necessity of the belief comes out clearly in the passage suggesting the tragic physical future of this earth: ‘I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and this slow progress ... sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or rather I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years with every continent swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas.’[168]
Yet when the question of the future has been debated over and over, the result, as with other questions, is complete muddle and puzzle, and all that can be said of them is: ‘The conclusion that I always come to after thinking of such questions is that they are beyond the human intellect; and the less one thinks on them, the better.’[169] What at least stands out, is that Darwin does not greatly concern himself with the enormous dislocation of life in this world which is likely to follow the loss of belief in another.
And again, there is evolution and God. Darwin frequently insists that he is no atheist, and that his system must not be charged with any atheistical conclusion: ‘Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical.’[170] The belief in God is eminently useful: ‘With the more civilized races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality.’[171] At every convenient opportunity God is given fair play and a fighting chance: it rests with Him to make the most of it. At the same time, the obstacles and difficulties are mountainous and it would appear insuperable. Thus, there is the conclusion of ‘Plants and Animals Under Domestication’: ‘If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.’[172]
But the result in any case, if God is left in His universe at all, is to remove Him very, very far away, and completely to demolish all sense of His intervention in the little daily actions and experiences of common life and all intimate communion and conference with Him in regard to those actions. When ‘The Descent of Man’ is published, Mrs. Darwin writes to her daughter, quite simply: ‘I think it will be very interesting, but that I shall dislike it very much as again putting God further off.’[173] For others besides Mrs. Darwin it reduced Him quite to the vanishing point.
But if Darwin himself was contented to let God alone, so far as possible, the more ardent and zealous of Darwin’s followers were inclined to hustle the Creator out of the universe altogether. This was especially true of the aggressive Darwinians in Germany. They extended the deductions of evolution to all the practical workings of human life in a fashion which Darwin distinctly disapproved: ‘What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany,’ he writes, ‘on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection.’[174] To Darwin’s energetic disciple, Weisman, the evolutionary theory seemed as solidly established as that of gravitation: ‘We know just as surely as that the earth goes round the sun, that the living world upon our earth was not created all at once and in the state in which we know it, but that it has gradually evolved through what, to our human estimate, seem enormously long periods of time.’[175] And in Weisman’s opinion, evolution would go on creating adequate moral ideals, as it has done in the past: ‘The number of those who act in accordance with the ideals of purer, higher humanity, in whom the care for others and for the whole will limit care for self, will, it is my belief, increase with time and lead to higher ethical conceptions, as it has already done within the period of human existence known to us.’[176] Häckel substituted an exuberant, triumphant materialistic atheism for the crawling superstitions of an earlier day.