Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

Here, then, is the place to advert to Mr. Spencer's assertion that the doctrine that intelligence in the human being is wholly produced by experience is utterly inadmissible; that it makes the presence of a brain meaningless, and idiocy unaccountable. A doctrine which imputes the development of intelligence wholly to the experience of the individual is of course untenable. There must be a brain and a nervous system; but we are not warranted, in the case of the idiot, in assuming that he has a differently organized brain and nervous system from those of his parents or others of the human race, as Mr. Spencer appears to me to assume. What we are warranted in believing is that while the brain and nervous system of the idiot child may be just as complete in his structure as in those of the parents, there has somehow occurred, from some cause, antecedent in some cases to birth, but operating after birth in other cases, a failure of the adequate connection between the brain and the mind, so that intelligence can not be developed at all, or can be developed but partially. The individual may have inherited just as good an "organized register" of the experience of his ancestors—just as good a natural brain as his brothers and sisters who are perhaps highly intelligent from their birth, or capable of becoming intelligent. Yet he lacks the ability to co-ordinate impressions and to perform the actions appropriate to those impressions, because there has failed to be established in him the necessary connection between the impressions and the sensory intellectual system which constitutes one organic part of the mind. The experiences, however often repeated, of the impressions produced by his physical senses on his brain, remain there as corporeal feelings. They reach no further. They do not become transmuted into ideas, and so intelligence can not be developed, or is developed but to a very feeble extent. Instead of saying that "the gradually increasing intelligence displayed throughout childhood is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral organization than to the individual experiences," I should say that it is most attributable to the presence of an established connection between the function of the cerebral organization and the mental receptivity of impressions, which is not merely passive, but is incessantly active because incessantly receiving, and that, where this connection is wanting, the receptivity, although it may exist, can not become active, and so intelligence can not be developed in this life. But there may be another state of existence, in which the mind of the idiot, no longer dependent on a physical organization of brain and nervous system for the reception of ideas and for intellectual growth, but retaining its capacity for mental development, may begin and carry on such development by other means; whereas, if the brain and the nervous system constitute all there is of any human being, whether born an idiot or born capable of intellectual growth through his individual experiences, he can have no future after that brain and nervous system are destroyed, unless we suppose that mind is something that has been developed out of matter into a spiritual existence—a supposition which is to me inconceivable.

The second of the intellectual faculties is the associative, or that intuitive power by which ideas are combined and associated or held in disjunction and separation. I regard this as an intuitive faculty, because, as our observation teaches us, its presence and power, manifested at the first dawning of infantile intelligence, are attested by every exercise of the organs through which the external world reaches our minds, to the last moment of our mortal existence. Experience is, of course, necessary to the first action of this intuitive faculty. This is only another way of saying that there must occur a sensory impression upon the brain which becomes transmuted into the idea of the external object, and then a repetition of that impression produces a repetition of the idea, and the associative faculty combines or disjoins them. But unless there exists an intuitive power, inherent in the intellective system, whereby the first idea and the second can be associated and compared, there can be no knowledge, no acquisition of truth, because the sensory impressions will stop in the brain as so many feelings excited through the nervous system, instead of being transmuted into thought.

The introspective faculty, on the other hand, does not deal solely with sensory impressions, or with the ideas which they have suggested. It is that power of the mind by which it can look inward upon itself. This is seemingly a paradox; but nevertheless, the existence of such a faculty is a necessary hypothesis, not only because we are conscious of it, but because without it we could have no means of analyzing our own mental structure, although we could make some very partial analysis of the mind of another individual by studying his actions. As regards ourselves, it is as if our visual organs possessed the power of looking at the process by which an image of an external object is impressed upon the retina and is thence transmitted to the brain, where the sensory impression is produced. This, of course, is a physical impossibility. All we can do is to examine the physical structure of the eye, with its wonderful provision of lenses and other means for the reception and the effect of light, and to reason upon what we can discover that the process of what is called seeing must be thus or thus. But that process itself we can not see by the same organs by which it is carried on. In the case of the mind, however—and herein is one of the remarkable proofs of its unlikeness as an organism to the bodily organism—there is a power to witness, to observe, to be sensible of its own operations. This power, like all the other mental powers, may be very feeble in some individuals, for want of exercise, but in others, from long and frequent exercise, it may become exceedingly vigorous, and be the means of advancing mental philosophy if its observations are preserved and recorded. It is one of the systems which, as a whole, constitute the spiritual organism to which we give the name of mind. Such a capacity can not be predicated of a physical organism. It is impossible for us to conceive of a machine standing and looking upon its own operations, speculating upon their improvement, or thinking of the relation of its mechanism to the human author of its being. It is equally impossible for us to think of the body of man contemplating its own existence, or being sensible of it; but it is perfectly easy to conceive of its being known to the mind that inhabits it, which takes cognizance both of its own operations and of the operations of the physical organism, reflects upon them separately or in their action upon one another, and spontaneously refers both to an author.

Third. I have placed third in the category of mental systems the system of emotions or susceptibilities to mental pleasure or pain, as distinguished from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nervous system. No one can doubt that, however powerful may be the influence upon our mental states of physical pain or physical sensations that are pleasurable, there is such a thing as mental pain and mental pleasure, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, wholly unconnected with and in no way dependent upon our corporeal feelings, present or past. It is from this susceptibility to mental pain or pleasure that we come to have the idea of goodness or badness, which is originally a classification of the qualities of external things as good or bad; the good being those which affect us pleasurably, and the bad those which affect us painfully. By our mental organization we are placed in such correspondence with the material universe, that things apart from ourselves affect us agreeably or disagreeably; sights, sounds, odors, and tastes give us pleasure or pain. We are also placed in correspondence with the spiritual universe, and thereby certain acts, relations, and traits of character give us pleasure, or the reverse. In process of time, the youth whose mental systems are in the course of expansion comes to perceive that his own acts give him pleasure or pain, and hence he derives the perception of good or bad qualities in himself. Moral goodness in ourselves—goodness of disposition, of intention, of volition, of habit—is found to be distinct from physical and intellectual goodness; and thus the consciousness of moral goodness becomes the intellectual faculty to which moral commands can be addressed, with a prospect that the connection between obedience and happiness will be perceived. This susceptibility to mental pain or pleasure, from the qualities of external things, from the acts and dispositions of other persons, and from our own, is one that can inhere in a mental organization, but it can not possibly inhere in a physical organism. The physical organism is undoubtedly the means by which the mental susceptibility to pleasure or pain is reached from the external universe; but, unless there is a mental organism to feel the pleasure or the pain, the action of the physical organization is nothing but the excitation of the nervous system. I, therefore, make a distinct class among the mental systems, and assign to it the faculty of experiencing mental pleasure or mental pain as a capacity distinct from the pleasurable or painful excitation of our nerves.

Fourth. In the category of mental systems may be placed those desires which lead us to wish for and strive to obtain some good or to avoid some evil. This, surely, is not to be regarded as anything but an intellectual perception of what is to us a good or an evil. It is a structural capacity of the soul which, after an experience of that which we learn to be good for us, or the reverse of good, is always prompting us to take the steps or to perform the acts which will insure a repetition of that experience, in the acquisition of further good or the avoidance of further evil. Its operations may be perverted. We may, from bad habits or erroneous ideas of good and evil, pursue objects that are pernicious. But whether we strive for that which is truly good, or is deceptively regarded as a good, we are perpetually acting under the impulse of a desire that is implanted in us, and that operates as a desire whether its objects are worthy or unworthy, beneficial or injurious, noxious or innoxious to our moral health.

Fifth, and lastly, we may classify the affections as one of the structural systems of our spiritual existence. It is that part of our natures that makes us like or dislike both persons and things; and, in regard to the former, it is the capacity for love in its high distinction from the physical appetite of sexual passion. The range of its operation is most various and multiform, but throughout all of its operations it is a spiritual capacity, implanted in us for our happiness as spiritual beings.

If it is objected that this is an arbitrary classification—that as an analysis of structural systems in our mental organization it bears no analogy to the anatomical exploration and classification of the structural systems of our physical organism—the answer is, that in regard to the latter we make the examination by the exercise of our corporeal senses, chiefly by the visual organs, as we do in the case of all other organized matter. In analyzing the structural organization of our minds, we are examining a subject that is not laid bare to the inspection of any of our corporeal organs; the scalpel in the hand of the dissector can afford us no aid in this investigation, but the inspection must be carried on by turning the eye of the mind inward upon itself. This we are mentally constituted to do. While, therefore, it may be true that the classification which I have made, or which may have been made by others, of the structural mental systems, is in one sense arbitrary, and while in any method of describing them they may run into or overlap one another in a complex organism, it will always remain true that the mind is capable of such examinations, and that the analysis, however given, is useful to the comprehension of the mind as an organized and extended entity. No one can carry on this mental examination without perceiving that he is examining a something which has an independent existence and a life of its own, whether he supposes it to have been evolved out of organized matter, or embraces the idea of its distinct and special creation by an exercise of the Divine Will.

The two main hypotheses concerning the origin of mind may now be contrasted. In the long process of development of animal organisms out of one another there come to be, it is said, higher and higher degrees of intelligence, as the nervous system becomes more and more capable of complex impressions, until we arrive at the consummate physical organization and the supreme intelligence of the human race. The physical organization is open to our examination, and we find the human brain divided into cerebral masses, with ganglia of sensory nerves extending to the external sensory organs. Intelligence is the faculty of comprehending by previous preparation the combinations of impressions made on the brain through the sensory nerves. The brain being an organized register in which the experiences of progenitors have accumulated a high degree of this faculty, each human infant born into the world comes into it with a prepared capacity to acquire the combinations of impressions produced in his individual experience. Transmitted from generation to generation, this inherited capacity becomes the means by which each individual manifests and enjoys what we call intelligence; and the resulting aggregate of all the faculties thus called into exercise is what we denominate mind. It must be observed, however, that this theory or explanation of the origin of mind, rejecting the hypothesis of its special creation as a being of a spiritual nature, assumes it to be a something which has been developed out of the growth and improvement of a physical organism. When you inquire whether the nature of this something is supposed to be a product of a different substance from matter, although developed out of matter, you are left without an answer; and when you press the inquiry whether a spiritual existence can be conceived as having grown out of the action of a physical organism, you are told that there are no means of determining what a spiritual existence is, because there is nothing with which you can compare it so as to ascertain what it resembles or what it does not resemble. Or if there are some who accept the evolution theory of the origin of mind, and who think it possible that a spiritual existence can owe its origin to the action of matter without any intervention of a creating power purposely giving existence to a spiritual essence, you have to ask a question to which you can only get this answer: that it has pleased the Almighty Being to establish a system by which a spiritual in contradistinction to a physical existence has been developed in countless ages out of the action of material substances organized into definite systems and endowed with the principle of life. Those who assume this hypothesis must necessarily assume also that the spiritual existence is, after it has come into being, an existence distinct from the physical organism, although generated out of it, and then they must encounter the further inquiry as to the probability of the supposed method of production resorted to by the Supreme Being.

More than once in the course of our colloquies I have had occasion to say that, in all our inquiries of this nature, whether in regard to the origin of our physical organism or that of our mental existence, we must constantly bear in mind the unbounded capacity of the Creator to adopt any method of production whatever; that it is just as much within his power to call things of the most opposite natures into existence by a single word as it is to establish methods by which they shall be developed through innumerable ages of what we call time. That the Being who is supposed to preside over the universe and to hold this unlimited power is an hypothesis I readily admit; but I affirm that his existence and attributes are necessary postulates, without which there can be no reasoning concerning the origin of anything. Whether that Being exists and possesses the attributes which we impute to him I have all along said is a matter of which we must be satisfied by independent proofs before we undertake to investigate his probable methods.

The hypothesis of the origin of mind which I now mean to contrast with that of the evolutionists may be stated as follows: It is a rational deduction, from all that we know of our physical organism, that procreation of new individuals of that organism by the sexual union of male and female was established as the means of continuing the species of animal known as man. When or how established is not a material part of the inquiry that I now make. It may have been that the division of the sexes came about by a very slow process, or it may have been by the aboriginal creation of a completed pair, male and female. However or whenever it came to exist, there came to be one uniform method of bringing into existence new individuals of a peculiar and perfectly distinguishable animal type. If we confine our attention to the physical organism of man, it is perfectly apparent that when procreation and gestation take place they happen because of the established law that a new individual of this species of animal shall be produced by the sexual union of two other individuals, male and female, and that the new individual shall have the same physical organism as the parents. A new physical life thus springs out of two other physical lives by a process the secret of which we can not detect, although we can trace it through some of its stages so far as to see that there is a secret process by which two physical organisms give existence to another physical organism of the same type and having the same principle of life.