Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

I will pursue this parallel somewhat further by again adverting to Plato's idea of the origin of the human soul. He supposes it to have been an immortal being, formed out of the eternal essence of Ideas by the Demiurgus. He manifestly makes it an existence distinct from matter, because he places its first abode in a heavenly mansion, where it is in unison with the celestial harmonies and perfections of the outer circle. This heavenly sphere is again to be its abode, after it shall have been released from its temporary abode on earth, which has been appointed to it for purposes of discipline and trial. At a fixed time of birth it is brought down from its celestial abode and united with a mortal body, that it may assert and prove its power to preside over and govern that body according to the eternal laws of reason and rectitude. If it fulfills this high duty, when the fastenings, which have bound it to the mortal frame, are dissolved with the dissolution of those which hold together the material structure, the soul flies away with delight to its own peculiar star. If it fails in this high duty, it is on the death of the first body transferred by a second birth into a more degraded body, resembling that to which it has allowed the first one to be debased. At length, somewhere in the series of transmigrations, the lower and bestial tendencies cease to have power over the immortal soul; the animal with which it was last united remains an animal bereft of reason, and the soul, released from further captivity, escapes to its original abode in the heavens, more or less contaminated by what it has undergone, but still immortal, indestructible, spiritual, and capable of purification.

Here, then, we have a conception of the origin and nature of the human soul as a spiritual existence, quite as distinctly presented as it can be by human reason. Stripped of the machinery by which Plato supposes the soul to have come into existence, his conception of its origin and nature is the most remarkable contribution which philosophy, apart from the aid of what is called inspiration, has made to our means of speculating upon this great theme. Of course, it affords, with all the machinery of which Plato makes use, no explanation of the point or the time of junction between the soul and the body. But, as a conception of what in the poverty of language must be called the substance of the soul, of its spiritual and immortal nature, of its distinctive existence separate from what we know as matter, whether Plato borrowed more or less from other philosophers who preceded him, it is a very distinct presentation of the nature of the human mind.

Turn now to what can be extracted from the Darwinian theory of the origin and nature of the human mind, and observe where it holds with and where it breaks from the parallelism between it and the Platonic theory. The doctrine of evolution, so called, presents to us no distinct suggestion that the mind of man is a separate and special creation. Rejecting, and very properly rejecting, the Platonic idea of an existence of the human soul anterior to the birth of the individual, the Darwinian theory supposes that in the long course of time, during which natural and sexual selection were operating to produce higher and still higher animals, there came about, in the earlier and primitive organizations, a habit of the animal to act in a certain way; that this habit descended to offspring; that it became developed into what is now called instinct; and that instinct became developed into what we now call mind. I know not how otherwise to interpret Mr. Darwin's repeated affirmations that, in comparing the mental powers of man and those of the lower animals, there can be detected no difference in kind, but that the difference is one of degree only; that there is no fundamental difference, or difference in nature, between the mental powers of an ape and a man, or between the mental power of one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and that of one of the higher apes; that both of these intervals, that between the ape and man, and that between the lancelet and the ape, which are much wider in the latter case than in the former, are filled up by numberless gradations.[33] If this be true, it must be because the lancelet, supposing that animal to be the progenitor, formed a habit of acting by an implanted impulse, which became, under the operation of natural and sexual selection, confirmed, developed, and increased in its descendants, until it not only amounted to what is called instinct, but took on more complex habits until something akin to reason was developed. As the higher animals continued to be evolved out of the lower, this approach to a reasoning power became in the ape a true mental faculty; and, at length, in the numberless gradations of structure intermediate between the ape and the man, we reach those intellectual faculties which distinguish the latter by an enormous interval from all the other animals. "If," says Mr. Darwin, "no organic being, excepting man, had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we never should have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be shown that there is no fundamental difference of this kind."[34]

I will not here ask how far this is theoretical assumption. I shall endeavor to examine in another place the evidence which is supposed to show that the mental powers of man are in no respect fundamentally different, or different in kind, from the powers in the other animals to which the distinguished naturalist gives the name of "mental" powers. At present I am still concerned with the parallelism between the Platonic and the Darwinian theory; and I again ask whether the latter is not the former reversed, in respect to the process by which reason in the one case becomes lost, and that by which in the other case it becomes developed out of something to which it bears no resemblance? Plato supposes the creation of pure reason, or mental power, in the shape—to use the counterpart of a physical term—of a non-physical, spiritual intelligence, or mind. It remains always of this nature, but the successive animals which it is required to inhabit on earth undergo such degradations that the immortal reason loses in them the power to control their actions; nothing is left to govern in them but mere instinct, and this at last sinks into its lowest manifestations. Darwin, on the other hand, supposes the first creation to have been a very low animal of a fish-like structure, with the lowest capacity for voluntary action of any kind, but impelled to act in a certain way by superimposed laws of self-preservation; that in the infinitude of successive generations these laws have operated to produce numberless gradations of structure, in the growth of which fixed habits have become complex instincts; that further gradations have developed these instincts into something of mental power, as the successive higher animals have become evolved out of the lower ones, until at length the intellect of man has been "gradually developed" by a purely physical process of the action of organized matter.

This materialistic way of accounting for the origin of the human mind necessarily excludes the idea of its separate creation or its distinctive character. The theory is perfectly consistent with itself, in supposing that the mind of man does not differ in kind, or differ fundamentally, from those exhibitions which in the lower animals lead us to attribute to them some mental power. But whether the theory is consistent with what we know of our own minds, as compared with what we can observe in the other animals, is the real question. In the first place, it is to be remembered that we can read our own minds, by the power of consciousness and reflection. In the next place, it is conceded that we can know nothing of the minds of the other animals, excepting by their outward actions. They can not speak, to tell us of their emotions, their memories, their fears, their hopes, their desires, what they think, or whether they think at all. They do acts which wonderfully resemble the acts of man, in outward appearance, as if they were acts which proceeded from the same power of reason but in a less perfect degree; yet they can tell us nothing of their mental processes, if they have such processes, and the utmost that we can do is to argue from their acts that they have mental faculties akin to those of men. It is in the ordained nature of things that we know and can know, by introspection, what our own minds are. We can know the mind of no other animal excepting from his outward acts. How far these will justify us in assuming that his mind is of the same nature as ours, or that ours is an advanced development of his, is the fundamental question.

Plato was evidently led, by that study of the human mind which is open to all cultivated intellects through the process of consciousness and reflection, to conceive of the soul as a created intelligence of a spiritual nature. The fanciful materials out of which he supposes it to have been composed were the mere machinery employed to express his conception of its spiritual nature and its indestructible existence. He was led to employ such machinery by his highly speculative and constructive tendencies, and because it was the habit of Greek philosophy to account for everything. Some machinery he was irresistibly impelled to employ, in order to give due consistency to his theory. But his machinery in no way obscures his conception of the nature of the soul, and we may disregard it altogether and still have left the conception of a spiritual and immortal being, formed for separate existence from matter, but united to matter for a temporary purpose of discipline and trial.

The modern naturalist, on the other hand, although assuming the existence of the Omnipotent God, supposes the human mind to have become what it is by the action of organized matter beginning at the lowest point of animal life, and going on through successive gradations of animal structure, until habits are formed which become instincts, and instincts are gradually developed into mind. Take away the machinery that is employed, and you have left no conception of the immortal and indestructible nature of the human soul. The material out of which it is constructed is all of the earth earthy, and the twofold question arises: first, whether this was the probable method employed by the Omnipotent Creator; and, secondly, whether it will account for such an existence as we have reason to believe the mind of man to be.

There is another point in the parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian systems which is worthy of note. We have seen that, according to Plato, when the Demiurgus had completed the construction of the Kosmos and that of the human soul, he retired and left to the gods the construction of a mortal body for man and of bodies of the inferior animals into which man would become degraded. According to Darwin, the Omnipotent God constructs some very low form of animal, and then, retiring from the work of direct creation, he leaves the laws of natural and sexual selection to operate in the production of higher animals through the process that is called evolution. Perhaps it may be unscientific to ask why the Omnipotent God should cease to exercise, or refrain from exercising, his power of special creation, after he has once exerted it. Perhaps there is some view of the nature and purposes of that infinite being which would render such an abstention from his powers a probable occurrence. But it is difficult to conceive what this view can be. If we take a comprehensive survey of all the facts concerning the animal kingdom that are within the reach of our observation; and if, then, in cases where we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we assume that they must have existed; if we array the whole in support of a certain theory which undertakes to account both for what we see and for what we do not see, we very easily reach the conclusion that the Omnipotent God performed but one act of special creation, or at most performed but a very few of such acts, and those of the rudest and simplest types, and then left all the subsequent and splendid exhibitions of animal structure to be worked out by natural selection. This is the scientific method adopted by the evolution school to account for the existence of all the higher animals of which we have knowledge, man included. It may be very startling, but we must acknowledge it as the method of action of the Omnipotent God, because it is said there is no logical impossibility in it.

There is a passage in Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" which I must now quote, because it shows how strongly the supposed action and abstention of the infinite Creator, according to the Darwinian theory, resembles the action and abstention of Plato's Demiurgus: "Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor; then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should be extremely cautious in concluding that none can have existed, for the metamorphoses of many organs show what wonderful changes in function are at least possible. For instance, a swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an air-breathing lung. The same organ having performed simultaneously very different functions, and then having been in part or in whole specialized for one function; and two distinct organs having performed at the same time the same function, the one having been perfected while aided by the other, must often have largely facilitated transitions."

Here, then, we have it propounded that after the creation of the rudest and simplest form of a visual organ, the infinite God abstains from direct and special creation of such a perfect and elaborate organ as the human eye, and leaves it to be worked out by natural selection; there being no logical impossibility, it is said, in this hypothesis. We are cautioned not to conclude, because we can not find the intermediate and transitional states of the visual organs, that they never existed; we are told that they are at least possible, and that analogies show they must have existed; and from the possibility of their existence and from the assumption that they happened, we are to believe that the Omnipotent God, refraining from the exercise of his power to create the human eye, with its wondrously perfect structure, left it to be evolved by natural selection out of the rudest and simplest visual organ which he directly fashioned.