The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope

by Henry Edward Crampton

The second fundamental belief, namely, in immortality, owes its origin in greatest measure to the psychological processes described above. Another potent factor, however, has been the natural desire to continue existence hereafter, usually in order to reap rewards not bestowed here. This desire is implanted by nature through the operation of purely biological factors, and it has the value of an organic instinct. To specify more particularly, nature has placed every organic individual under the necessity of doing its utmost to prolong its own life in the interests of itself, of others of its tribe, and of its species. Extinction is not faced willingly by a human being endowed with full consciousness any more than it is passively tolerated by a lower animal which instinctively struggles with its foes until death. So the desire to continue alive—the "will to live"—is a natural instinct, which combines with the belief in persistent disembodied spirits and, no doubt, with many other elements, to develop the basic conception of some kind of an immortal existence.

The third element, human responsibility to the infinite personality, is variously recorded in lower and higher religions. Its conception grows partly out of the feelings of awe and terror inspired by great works of nature such as the thunder-storm, the cyclone, and the volcano, while the orderly and regular workings of even everyday nature seem to demonstrate the direct control of the powers who rule man as well. The savage sees his crops destroyed by a tempest or drought; he attributes the disaster to the particular powers concerned with such things whom he must have angered unwittingly, and whom he must propitiate by sacrifice or penitence. His individual and tribal acts do not always accomplish the desired ends, and again the laws of infinite and ultimate powers must have been contravened, as he interprets the situation. Therefore his whole religious consciousness was exerted in the direction of finding out what was the ultimate constitution of nature, with which human activities must harmonize if they are to be successful. Bound by custom and convention and biological law, he looks about wonderingly to find the external authority for his bonds. To his mind this authority must be the host of spirits and gods who had made him and the things of his world. It is in this way that so many ethical elements have found places in religious doctrines, to be viewed as absolute rules of conduct coming from outside of nature, and not from nature itself, in the way the earlier sections of this chapter have shown.

Let us now summarize the results of the foregoing brief survey, conducted by the identical methods employed for the analysis of other bodies of fact. We have sought for those characteristics which are common to all religions of whatever time and place and race. Combined with many secondary and adventitious elements of other fields of thought and action, such as social, political, ethical, and psychological factors, they have proved to be the three essential beliefs in God or gods, human responsibility, and immortality. As a veritable backbone, they underlie and support the whole body of religious doctrine and organs of thought formed about them. We have seen, furthermore, that a natural explanation of the way these elements have originated can be discovered by the comparative student of religion, who describes also how they have variously evolved among different peoples. In all of this we have not questioned at any time the validity or reality of any one of these concepts; to ask whether or not they correspond actually to the truth is beyond our purpose, which is simply and solely to inquire whether even these mental conceptions furnish evidence of their evolution in the course of time. I believe that such evidence is found, and I believe also that this discovery must be of the greatest importance to everyone in formulating a system of religious belief, but the construction of this is not the task of science as such. Every individual must work out his own relation to the world on the basis of knowledge as complete as he can make it, but every individual must accomplish this end for himself. Because no two men can be exactly alike in temperament, intellect, and social situation, it is impossible for entire agreement in religious faith to exist. One's outlook upon the whole universe is and must be an individual matter; science and evolution are of overwhelming value, not by directing the mind to adopt this or that attitude toward the unseen, but by providing the seeker after the truth with definite knowledge about the things of the world, so that his position may be taken on the sound basis of reasonable and common-sensible principles.

* * * * *

When we take up science and philosophy, or knowledge as a whole, after religion, it may seem that we have reversed the proper sequence. There are many reasons for following this course, inasmuch as "knowledge" is the all-inclusive category of thought; our world is after all a world of individual consciousness and ideas. In dealing with religion, ethics, social organization, and human culture, we have been concerned with the evolution of so many departments of thought and action; and now we are to develop a final conception of evolution as a universal process in the progress of all knowledge.

Let us look back over the history of mathematics. The primitive human individual did not need to count. He dealt with things as he met them, and he disposed of them singly and individually. A squirrel does not count the nuts it gathers; it simply accumulates a store, and it perishes or survives according to its instinctive ability to do this. Just so was primitive man. The savage, when he organized the first formed tribes, learned to count the days of a journey and the numbers engaged on opposite sides in battle. He employed the "score" of his fingers and toes, and our use of this very word is a survival of such a primitive method of counting. The abacus of the Roman and Chinese extended the scope of simple mathematical operations as it employed more symbolic elements. With the development of Arabic notation capable of indefinite expansion, the science progressed rapidly, and in the course of long time it has become the higher calculus of to-day. The conceptions of geometry have likewise evolved until to-day mathematicians speak of configurated bodies in fourth and higher dimensions of space, which are beyond the powers of perception, even though in a sense they exist conceptually. The behavior of geometrical examples in one dimension leads to the characteristics of bodies in two dimensions. Upon these facts are constructed the laws of three-dimensional space which serve to carry mathematical thought to the remoter conceptual spaces of which we have spoken. It may seem that we are recording only one phase of mental evolution, but in fact we are dealing with a larger matter, namely, with the progressive evolution of knowledge in the Kantian category of number.

Natural science began with the savage's rough classification of the things with which he dealt in everyday life. As facts accumulated, lifeless objects were grouped apart from living organisms, and in time two great divisions of natural science took form. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and the like describe the concrete world of matter and energy, while the biological sciences deal with the structure, development, interrelationships, and vital activities of animals and plants. Surely knowledge has evolved with the advance in all of these subjects from decade to decade and from year to year. And just as surely must evolution continue, for the world has not stopped developing, and therefore the great principles of science must undergo further changes, even though they are the best summaries that can be formulated at the present time.

Philosophy deals with general conceptions of the universe. When we look back through the ages we find men picturing the world as an aggregate of diverse and uncorrelated elements—earth, air, fire, and water. The synthesis of facts and the construction of general principles down through Bacon, Newton, and Schopenhauer to modern world conceptions results in the unification of all—"the choir of heaven and furniture of earth." The lineal descendant of the long line of ancestral philosophies is the monism which sees no difference between the living and lifeless worlds save that of varying combinations of ultimate elements which are conceived as uniform "mind-stuff" everywhere. Whether or not this universal conception of totality is true, remains for the future to show. For us the important truth is that here, as in all other departments of knowledge, evolution proves to be real.

* * * * *

In closing the present description of the basis, nature, and scope of the doctrine of evolution, I find great difficulty in choosing the right words for a concise statement of the larger values and results of this department of science. So much might be said, and yet it is not fitting for the investigator to preach unduly. The lessons of the doctrine must be brought home to each individual through personal conviction. But because I firmly believe in the truth of the statement made in the opening pages, namely, that science and its results are of practical human value, it is in a sense my duty as an advocate of evolution to make this plain.