Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

Among the beasts no mate for thee was found."

In the human being alone, even when there is not much else to distinguish the savage from the beasts around him, the passion of love is often something more nearly akin to what might be looked for in an elevated nature, than it can be among the brutes. What do the poetry and romance of the ruder nations show, but that this passion of sexual love in the human being is one in which physical appetite and sentimental feeling are so "well commingled" that their union marks the compound nature of an animal and a spiritual being? How human society has resulted from this passion, how in the great aggregate of its forces it moves the world, how in its highest development it gives rise to the social virtues, and in its baser manifestations leads to vice, misery, and degradation, I do not need to remind you. How, then, is it possible to avoid the conclusion that in man the sexual passion was implanted by special design and for a special purpose, which extends far beyond the immediate end of a continuation of the race?

Kosmicos. Why do you resort to a special purpose in the constitution of one animal, and to the absence of a similar purpose from the constitution of another animal? In both, the consequences make a case of the post hoc just as plainly as they make a case of the propter hoc. It is just as rational to conclude that they only show the former as it is to conclude that they establish the latter. In man, we have the physical fact of the sexual division, and all you can say is that it is followed by certain great and varied moral phenomena. In the other animals, we have the same physical fact, followed by moral phenomena less complex and varied, and not so lasting. In neither case can you say that there was a special and separate design, according to which the same physical fact was intended to produce the special consequences which we observe in each. Why, as the species called man became developed into beings of a higher order than the primates of the race or than their remote progenitors, should not this passion of sexual love have become elevated into a sentiment and been followed by the effects of that elevation, just as the gratification of another appetite, that for food, par exemple, has been refined by the intellectual pleasures of the social banquet and the interchange of social courtesies? Is there anything to be proved by the institution or the practice of marriage, beyond this—that it has been found by experience to be of great social utility, and is therefore regulated by human laws and customs, which vary in the different races of mankind? Monogamy is the rule among some nations, polygamy is at least allowed in others. You can predicate nothing of either excepting that each society deems its own practice to be upon the whole the most advantageous. You can not say that there is any fixed law of nature which renders it unnatural for one man to have more than one wife. In many ages of the world there have been states of society in which the family has had as good a foundation in polygamous as it has had in monogamous unions. Looking, then, at these undeniable facts, and also at the fact that marriage, whether monogamous or polygamous, is an institution regulated by human law and custom, we have to inquire for the reason why human law and custom take any cognizance of the relation. We find that, among some of the other animals, the sexes do not pair excepting for a single birth. The connection lasts no longer than for a certain period during which the protection of both parents is needed by the offspring, and not always so long even as that. It has become the experience of mankind that the connection of the parents ought to be formed for more than one birth; shall be of indefinite duration; and this because of the physical and social benefits which flow from such a permanency of the union. This has given rise to certain moral feelings concerning the relation of husband and wife. But we have no more warrant, from anything that we can discover in nature, for regarding the permanency of marriage among the human race as a divine institution than we have for regarding its temporary continuance among the other animals as a divinely appointed temporary arrangement. In the one case, the permanency of the union has resulted from experience of its utility. In the other case, the animal perceives no such utility, and therefore does not follow the practice. Upon the hypothesis that all the animals, man included, had a common origin, it is very easy to account for the difference which prevails between man and the other animals in this matter of marriage, or the pairing of the sexes. As man became by insensible gradations evolved out of some pre-existing organism, and as moral sentiments became evolved out of his superior and more complex relations with his fellows, from his experience of the practical utility of certain kinds of conduct and practice, the sentiments became insensibly interwoven with his feelings about the most important of his social relations, the union of the sexes in marriage. This is quite sufficient to account for the difference between man and the other animals in regard to the duration of such unions, without resorting to any intentional or divine or superhuman origin of that difference.

Sophereus. For the purpose of the argument, I concede that this is a case of either the post hoc or the propter hoc. I have been pretty careful, however, in all my investigations, not to lose sight of this distinction in reasoning on the phenomena of nature or those of society. I think I can perceive when there is a connection between cause and effect, when that connection evinces an intelligent design, and when the phenomena bear no relation to a certain fact beyond that of sequence in time. What, then, have we to begin with? We have the fact that the human race is divided into the two forms of male and female, and that the passion or appetite of sexual love exists in both sexes, and that its gratification is the immediate cause of a production of other individuals of the same species. We next have the fact that this union of the sexes is followed by an extraordinary amount of moral and social phenomena that are peculiar to the human race. This sequence proves to me an intentional design that the moral and social phenomena shall flow from the occurrence of the sexual union, for it establishes not only a possibility, but an immensely strong probability, that the phenomena were designed to flow from this one occurrence among this particular species of animal. If this connection between the original physiological fact and the moral and social phenomena be established to our reasonable satisfaction, it is the highest kind of moral evidence of a special design in the existence of the sexual division and the sexual passion among the human race. You remember old Sir Thomas Browne's suggestion, that men might have been propagated as trees are. But they are not so propagated. If they were, no such consequences would have followed as those which do follow from the mode in which they are in fact propagated. These consequences are most numerous and complex, and they are capable of being assigned to nothing but the sexual division and the sexual union as the means of continuing the race. Turn now to some of the other animals among whom there prevail the same bisexual division and the same method of procreation and multiplication. You find they result in sexual unions of very short duration, and that, if it is followed by phenomena that in some feeble degree resemble those which are found in human society, they bear no comparison in point of complexity and character to those which in the human race mark the family, the tribe, and the nation. And here there occurs something which is closely analogous to what I pointed out to you in considering the supposed development of the first animal organism. I said that although you may theoretically suppose that the first animal organism was formed by the spontaneous union of molecular aggregates, and that the higher organisms were evolved out of the lower solely by the operation of causes which you call "natural," yet that when you come to account for the existence of true and distinct species, each with its sexual division and its law of procreation and gestation, you must infer a special design and a formative will, because there has never been suggested any method by which the so-called natural causes could have produced this division of the sexes and this invariable law of the sexual procreation among individuals of the same species. Here, then, we arrive at a distinct moral purpose; for, when we compare the different social phenomena which follow the operation of the sexual division and procreation in man with the social phenomena which follow in the case of the other animals, we find a difference that is not simply one of degree, but is one of kind. We find the origin of the family, the tribe, and the nation: the source of the complex phenomena of human society. We may therefore rationally conclude that in man the sexual division and the sexual passion were designed to have effects that they were not designed to have in the other animals. To suppose that these vastly superior consequences in the case of man are the mere results of his perception of their utility will not account for the fact that when he does not recognize the utility—when he departs from the law of his human existence—human society can not be formed and continued. Although it is possible for human society to exist with polygamous marriages, and even to have some strength and duration, yet human society without the family, with promiscuous sexual intercourse, with no marriages and no ties between parents and children, never has existed or can exist. Compare Plato's curious constitution of the body of "guardians," in his "Republic," and the strange method of unions, the offspring of which were not allowed to know their parents or the parents to know their own children. This was not imagined as a form of human society, but was entirely like a breeding-stud. Among the brutes, permanent marriages, families, do not exist, not because the animals do not perceive their social utility, but because the purposes of their lives, their manifest destinies, show that there was no reason for endowing them with any higher capacity for the sexual enjoyment than that which leads to the very limited consequences for which the division of the sexes was in their cases ordained. But in the case of man there is a further and higher capacity for the sexual enjoyment, which becomes the root of his social happiness, and which distinguishes him from the brute creation quite as palpably as the superiority of his intellectual faculties. In all this we must recognize a moral purpose.

Kosmicos. Pray tell me why it is not just as rational to conclude that these moral phenomena, as results of the human passion of love, have become, in all their complex and diversified aspects, the consequences of a progressive elevation of the human animal to a higher plane of existence than that occupied by the inferior species, or than that occupied by the primeval man. When man had become developed into an animal in whom the intellect could become what it is, he could begin to perceive the social utility of certain modes of life, and from this idea of their utility would result certain maxims of conduct which would be acted on as moral obligations. Thus, commencing with a consciousness that the race exists with the sexual division into male and female, there would begin to be formed some ideas of the superior social utility of a regulated sexual union of individuals and of permanent marriages. These ideas would become refined as the progressive elevation of the race went on, and that which we recognize as the sentimental element in the passion of love would become developed out of the perceptions of a superior utility in the permanent devotion and consecration of two individuals to each other. If, then, by a moral purpose in the establishment of the bisexual division you mean that all these social phenomena of the family, the tribe, and the nation were designed in the human race to follow from that division, I see no necessity for resorting to any such moral purpose on the part of a creator, because they might just as well have followed from the progressive elevation and development of the human animal, supposing him to be descended from some pre-existing type of animal of another and inferior organization. The philosophy which you seem to be cultivating closely resembles that which ascribes everything to the action of mind as its cause. This, you must be aware, it is the tendency of modern science to antagonize by a different view of causation. What have you been reading, that you adhere so pertinaciously to the idea of a moral purpose adopted by some being, overlooking those physical causes which may have produced all the results without that hypothesis?

Sophereus. I have been reading a good deal, but I have reflected more. I may not be able to reconcile the metaphysical speculations of the different schools of philosophy by explanations that will satisfy others, but I can satisfy myself on one point. This is, that power, force, energy, causation, are all attributes of mind, and can exist in a mind only. Let us pass for a moment from abstract reasoning to an illustration drawn from familiar objects. A ton of coal contains a certain amount of what is scientifically called energy. This energy becomes developed by combustion, which liberates heat. The heat, when applied to water, converts the water into a vapor called steam—a highly elastic substance. The expansion of the steam against a mechanical instrument called a piston produces motion, and an engine is driven. The force thus obtained represents the energy that was latent in the coal. If we inquire whence the coal obtained this latent energy, there is a hypothesis which assigns its origin to the sun, which laid up a certain quantity of it in the vegetable substances that became converted into coal in one of the geological periods of the earth's formation. But in order to find the ultimate and original cause—the causa causans of the whole process—we must go behind the steam and its expansive quality, behind the heat which converts the water into steam, behind the coal and its combustible quality, and behind the sun and its indwelling heat, a portion of which was imparted to and left latent in the vegetable substances that became coal. We must inquire whence they all originated. If they did not create themselves—an inconceivable and inadmissible hypothesis—they must have originated in some creating power, which commanded them to exist and established their connections. Without a mental energy and its exertions, matter and all its properties, substance and all its qualities, the sun's indwelling heat and its capacity to be stored up in vegetable fiber in a latent condition, could not have existed, and the forces of nature of which we avail ourselves would never have emerged from the non-existent state that we conceive of as "chaos." I know very well that we are accustomed to associate with inanimate matter the ideas of power, force, energy, and causation. But if we rest in the conception of these as acting of themselves, and without being under the control of an originating mind or a determining will, we may think that we have arrived at ultimate causes, but we have not. We have arrived at subsidiary causes—the instruments, so to speak, in the control of an intellect which has ordained and uses them. Whether we look at the physical causes by which the early Greek philosophers endeavored to explain the phenomena of the universe, or at one of Plato's conceptions of a designing and volitional agency in the formation of the Kosmos, or to another of his conceptions, the sovereignty of universal ideas or metaphysical abstractions, we are everywhere confronted with the necessity for assigning an origin to the physical causes, or to the universal ideas; and the result is that the idea of a supreme, designing, and volitional agency is forced upon us—it is upon me—by an irresistible process of reasoning, an invincible necessity of my mental constitution. I can not agree with Auguste Comte, who regards it as the natural progress of the human mind to explain phenomena at first by reference to some personal agency, and to pass from this mode of explanation to that by metaphysical abstractions. Nor can I agree with you scientists, who not only rest satisfied yourselves with the explanation of the ultimate cause of phenomena by mere physical agencies, but who insist that others shall not deduce a personal and volitional agency from the existence of those physical agencies. To me it seems indispensable, in the study of phenomena, to recognize moral purposes for which they have been made to be what they are: and of course a moral purpose is not assignable to the physical agencies of matter, or to metaphysical abstractions. Hence it is that in reasoning on the phenomena of human society, I am obliged to recognize a moral purpose in the sexual division, of far greater scope and far more varied consequences than can be found in the case of the same division among the other animals.

Kosmicos. I put to you this question: What do you mean by a moral purpose? In teleology, or the science of the final causes of things, you must find out the producing agencies. Let me give you a theory of causation, which will show you that your notion of a moral purpose is altogether out of place. The only true causes are phenomenal ones, or what is certified by experience. There are uniform and unconditional antecedents, and uniform and unconditional sequences. Something goes before, uniformly and invariably; something uniformly and invariably follows. The first are causes; the last are effects. We can not go farther back than the antecedent cause; we can not go farther forward than the effect. We can not connect the effect with anything but the antecedent cause. When, therefore, you speak of a moral purpose, what do you mean? Where do you get the evidence of the moral purpose? What is the purpose, and what is the evidence of it?

Sophereus. I answer you as I have before—that the agencies which you call phenomenal causes could not have established themselves; could not have originated their own uniformity; could not have made the invariable connection between themselves and the effects. If we discard the idea of a moral and sentient being, a mind originating and ordaining the physical agencies, we have nothing left but those agencies; and in this the human mind can not rest. It is not enough to say that it ought to rest there. It does not, will not, and can not. Science—what you call science—may rest there, but philosophy can not. It is unphilosophical to speak of the Unknown Cause, or the Unknown Power, underlying all manifestations, as something of which we can not conceive and must not personify. The ultimate power which underlies all phenomena necessarily implies a will, an intellectual origin, and a mental energy. That it is something whose mental operations we can not trace, is no argument against its personality, and no reason why we should not conceive of it as a mental energy.

Kosmicos. You have more than once referred to the constitution of the human mind as if it had been constructed with an irresistible necessity to attribute everything to the action of a being, an intelligence, and a will. You should rather say that some minds have trained themselves to this mode of reasoning, because they have first received the idea of such a being as the final cause, as a matter of dogmatic teaching, and they have tried to reason it out so as to attain a conviction that what they have been taught is true. It is in this way that they have found what they consider as evidence of a moral purpose. But you have no warrant for the assumption that the human intellect has been put together in such a way that it can not avoid reaching the conclusion that all phenomena are to be imputed to the volition of a mind as their producing cause.