Do we find a different state of things in the history of peoples, which man, in his anthropocentric presumption, loves to call “the history of the world”? Do we find in every phase of it a lofty moral principle or a wise ruler guiding the destinies of nations? There can be but one answer in the present advanced stage of natural and human history: No. The fate of those branches of the human family, those nations and races which have struggled for existence and progress for thousands of years, is determined by the same “eternal laws of iron” as the history of the whole organic world which has peopled the earth for millions of years.
Geologists distinguish three great epochs in the organic history of the earth, as far as we can read it in the monuments of the science of fossils—the primary, secondary, and tertiary epochs. According to a recent calculation, the first occupied at least 34,000,000, the second 11,000,000, and the third 3,000,000 years. The history of the family of vertebrates, from which our own race has sprung, unfolds clearly before our eyes during this long period. Three different stages in the evolution of the vertebrate correspond to the three epochs: the fishes characterised the primary (palæozoic) age, the reptiles the secondary (mesozoic), and the mammals the tertiary (cænozoic). Of the three groups the fishes rank lowest in organisation, the reptiles come next, and the mammals take the highest place. We find, on nearer examination of the history of the three classes, that their various orders and families also advanced progressively during the three epochs toward a higher stage of perfection. May we consider this progressive development as the outcome of a conscious design or a moral order of the universe? Certainly not. (Certainly yes. Progression toward the benign is the core of all morality.—H. de V. S.) The theory of selection teaches us that this organic progress, like the earlier organic differentiation, is an inevitable consequence of the struggle for existence. (Struggle for improved conditions.—H. de V. S.) Thousands of beautiful and remarkable species of animals and plants have perished during those 48,000,000 years, to give place to stronger competitors, and the victors in this struggle for life were not always the noblest or most perfect forms in a moral sense. (No, but they were the best condition-builders.—H. de V. S.)
It has been just the same with the history of humanity. The splendid civilisation of classical antiquity perished because Christianity, with its faith in a loving God and its hope of a better life beyond the grave, gave a fresh, strong impetus to the soaring human mind. The Papal Church quickly degenerated into a pitiful caricature of real Christianity, and ruthlessly scattered the treasures of knowledge which the Hellenic philosophy had gathered; it gained the dominion of the world through the ignorance of the credulous masses. In time the Reformation broke the chains of this mental slavery, and assisted reason to secure its right once more. But in the new, as in the older period, the great struggle for existence went on in its eternal fluctuation, with no trace of a moral order.
And it is just as impossible for the impartial and critical observer to detect a “wise providence” in the fate of individual human beings as a moral order in the history of peoples. Both are determined with iron necessity by a mechanical causality which connects every single phenomenon with one or more antecedent causes. Even the ancient Greeks recognised ananke, the blind heimarmene, the fate “that rules gods and men,” as the supreme principle of the universe. Christianity replaced it by a conscious Providence, which is not blind, but sees, and which governs the world in patriarchal fashion. The anthropomorphic character of this notion, generally closely connected with belief in a personal God, is quite obvious. Belief in a “loving Father,” who unceasingly guides the destinies of 1,500,000,000 men on our planet, and is attentive at all times to their millions of contradictory prayers and pious wishes, is absolutely impossible; that is at once perceived on laying aside the coloured spectacles of “faith” and reflecting rationally on the subject.
As a rule, this belief in Providence and the tutelage of a “loving Father” is more intense in the modern civilised man—just as in the uncultured savage—when some good fortune has befallen him: an escape from peril of life, recovery from a severe illness, the winning of the first prize in a lottery, the birth of a long-delayed child, and so forth. When, on the other hand, a misfortune is met with, or an ardent wish is not fulfilled, “Providence” is forgotten. The wise ruler of the world slumbered—or refused his blessing.
In the extraordinary development of commerce in the nineteenth century the number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased beyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness. Thousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine accidents, etc. Thousands slay one another every year in war, and the preparation for this wholesale massacre absorbs much the greater part of the revenue in the highest civilised nations, the chief professors of “Christian charity.” And among these hundreds of thousands of annual victims of modern civilisation strong, industrious, courageous workers predominate. Yet the talk of a “moral order” goes on.
Since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that there are no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to “blind chance.” This reproach has been made to the transformism of Lamarck and Darwin, as it has been to the previous systems of Kant and Laplace; there are a number of dualist philosophers who lay great stress on it. It is, therefore, worth while to make a brief remark upon it.
One group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance. The other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus: The development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose whatever (except that it is ever growing toward the good.—H. de V. S.): what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose (O blindness! before the wonder of development.—H. de V. S.)—all is the result of chance. Each party is right—according to its definition of chance. The general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause; in this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause, independent of that of the other. Everybody knows that chance, in this monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the universe at large. That, however, does not prevent us from recognising in each “chance” event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature’s supreme law, the law of substance.