"To thine own self be true!"
CHAPTER VIII. — EVOLUTION
Work of Darwin and Spencer—Bergson's L'Evolution creatrice—Life—L'elan vital—Evolution not progress in a straight line—Adaptation an insufficient explanation—Falsity of mechanistic view—Finalist conception of reality as fulfilling a plan false—Success along certain lines only—Torpor, Instinct, and Intelligence—Genesis of matter—Humanity the crown of evolution—Contingency and Freedom—The Future is being created.
Since the publication of Darwin's famous work on The Origin of Species in 1859, the conception of Evolution has become familiar and has won general acceptance in all thinking minds. Evolution is now a household word, but the actual study of evolutionary process has been the work of comparatively few. Science nowadays has become such a highly specialized affair, that few men cover a large enough field of study to enable them to deal effectively with this tremendous subject. What is more, those who shouted so loudly about Evolution as explaining all things have come to see that, in a sense, Evolution explains nothing by itself. Mere description of facts undoubtedly does serve a very useful purpose and may help to demolish some of the stanchly conservative theories still held in some quarters by those who prefer to take Hebrew conceptions as a basis of their cosmology however irreconcilable with fact these may prove to be. Mere description, however, is not ultimate, some philosophy of Evolution must be forthcoming. "Nowadays," remarks Hoffding, "every philosopher has to take up a position with respect to the concept of Evolution. It has now achieved its place among the categories or essential forms of thought by the fact of its providing indications whence new problems proceed. We must ask regarding every event, and every phenomenon, by what stages it has passed into its actual state. It is a special form of the general concept of cause. A philosophy is essentially characterized by the position which it accords to this concept and by the way in which it applies it." [Footnote: The Philosophy of Evolution—lecture IV, of Lectures on Bergson, in Modern Philosophers, Translated by Mason (MacMillan), p. 270.]
No one has done more to make familiar to English minds the notion of Evolution than Herbert Spencer. His Synthetic Philosophy had a grand aim, but it was manifestly unsatisfactory. The high hopes it had raised were followed by mingled disappointment and distrust. The secret of the unsatisfactoriness of Spencer is to be found in his method, which is an elaborate and plausible attempt to explain the evolution of the universe by referring the complex to the simple, the more highly organized to the less organized. His principle of Evolution never freed itself from bondage to mechanical conceptions.
Bergson's Creative Evolution, his largest and best known work, appeared in 1907. It has been regarded not only as a magnificent book, but as a date in the history of thought. Two of the leading students of evolutionary process in England, Professors Geddes and Thomson, refer to the book as "one of the most profound and original contributions to the philosophical consideration of the theory of Evolution." [Footnote: In the Bibliography in their volume Evolution.]
For some time there had been growing a need for an expression of evolutionary theory in terms other than those of Spencer, or of Haeckel—the German monistic philosopher. The advance in the study of biology and the rise of Neo-Vitalism, occasioned by an appreciation of the inadequacy of any explanation of life in terms purely physical and chemical, made the demand for a new statement, in greater harmony with these views, imperative. To satisfy this demand is the task to which Bergson has applied himself. He sounds the note of departure from the older conceptions right at the commencement by his very title, 'Creative' Evolution. For this, his views on Change, on Time, and on Freedom, have in some degree prepared us. We have seen set forth the fact of Freedom, the recognition of human beings as centres of indetermination, not mere units in a machine, "a block universe" where all is "given," but creatures capable of creative activity. Then by a consideration of Time, as la duree, we found that the history of an individual can never repeat itself; "For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Should the same be said," Bergson asks, "of existence in general?" [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 8 (Fr. p. 8).]
So he proceeds to portray with a wealth of analogy and brilliance of style, more akin to the language of a poet than a philosopher, the stupendous drama of Evolution, the mystery of being, the wonders of life. He makes the great fact of life his starting point. Is life susceptible to definition? We feel that, by the very nature of the case, it is not. A definition is an intellectual operation, while life is wider, richer, more fundamental than intellect. Indeed Bergson shows us that intellect is only one of the manifestations or adaptations of life in its progress. To define life, being strictly impossible, Bergson attempts to describe it. He would have us picture it as a great current emerging from some central point, radiating in all directions, but diverted into eddies and backwaters. Life is an original impetus, une poussee formidable, not the mere heading affixed to a class of objects which live. We must not speak any longer of life in general as an abstraction or a category in which we may place all living beings. Life, or the vital impulse, consists in a demand for creation, we might almost say "a will to create." It appears to be a current passing from one germ to another through the medium of a developed organism, "an internal push that has carried life by more and more complex forms, to higher and higher destinies." It is a dynamic continuity, a continuity of qualitative progress, a duration which leaves its bite on things. [Footnote: For these descriptions of life, see Creative Evolution, pp. 27-29 and 93-94 (Fr. pp. 28-30 and 95-96).] We shall be absolutely wrong, however, if we attempt to view the evolutionary process as progressive in a straight line. The facts contradict such a facile and shallow view. Some of the stock phrases of the earlier writers on Evolution were: "adaptation to environment," "selection" and "variation," and a grave problem was presented by this last. How are we to account for the variations of living beings, together with the persistence of their type? Herein lies the problem of the origin of species. Three different solutions have been put forward. There is the "Neo-Darwinian" view which attributes variation to the differences inherent in the germ borne by the individual, and not to the experience or behaviour of the individual in the course of his existence. Then there is the theory known as "Orthogenesis" which maintains that there is a continual changing in a definite direction from generation to generation. Thirdly, there is the "Neo-Lamarckian" theory which attributes the cause of variation to the conscious effort of the individual, an effort passed on to descendants. [Footnote: Concerning Lamarck (1744-1829) Bergson remarks in La Philosophie (1915) that without diminishing Darwin's merit Lamarck is to be regarded as the founder of evolutionary biology.] Now each one of these theories explains a certain group of facts, of a limited kind, but two difficulties confront them. We find that on quite distinct and widely separated lines of Evolution, exactly similar organs have been developed. Bergson points out to us, in this connexion, the Pecten genus of molluscs, which have an eye identical in structure with that of the eye of vertebrates. [Footnote: The common edible scallop (Pecten maximus) has several eyes of brilliant blue and of very complex structure.] It is obvious, however, that the eye of this mollusc and the eye of the vertebrate must have developed quite independently, ages after each had been separated from the parent stock. Again, we find that in all organic evolution, infinite complexity of structure accompanies the utmost simplicity of function. The variation of an organ so highly complex as the eye must involve the simultaneous occurrence of an infinite number of variations all co-ordinated to the simple end of vision. Such facts as these are incapable of explanation by reference to any or all of the three theories of adaptation and variation mentioned. Indeed they seem capable of explanation only by reference to a single original impetus retaining its direction in courses far removed from the common origin. "That adaptation to environment is the necessary condition of Evolution we do not question for a moment. It is quite evident that a species would disappear, should it fail to bend to the conditions of existence which are imposed on it. But it is one thing to recognize that outer circumstances are forces Evolution must reckon with, another to claim that they are the directing causes of Evolution." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 107 (Fr. p. 111).]