Essays of a Biologist

by Julian Huxley

The direction of life may therefore be roughly summed up in the two words “more life”—more both in quantity (have not both land and air been colonized during evolution?) and also in quality. More matter has been stolen from the lifeless and embodied in the living; and the living begins to be less helpless in face of the lifeless.

The direction of living matter is thus in many ways opposed to the direction to be seen in inorganic matter; yet not only has the organic arisen from the inorganic, but its direction continues one direction already traceable before the appearance of life.[46]

Finally, we come to the psychological aspect of the universe. We have already touched on it in connection with biology, and found that in many ways at least the development of mind follows the same lines as that of living matter, and helps forward the general trend of life.

But finally a kink occurs, a critical point similar to that seen at the origin of living from non-living matter. There the attributes of living matter which mark it off from inorganic matter become dominant—its capacity for self-reproduction, its tendency to organization. The colloid carbon compound had been the highest known independent unit; from now on this place was taken by the organism.

In exactly the same way, in the final stages of evolution (as witnessed abundantly by fossil mammals) complexity of purely bodily organization had reached a limit, and survival, as is evidenced by increasing size of brain, came to be determined more and more by mental qualities. Finally the curve of mental development caught up with that of body, and intersected it: mind became the dominant factor in the new type of organism, and in the subsequent history of the evolutionary process. The organism ceased to be the highest unit, and gave place to the person, or self-conscious individual with organized mind.

This new critical point was reached when man arose; many authors recognize it for what it is, the beginning of a new era, by christening the subsequent geological period the Psychozoic. That period, geologically speaking, has not yet run but a tiny span; and we are no more entitled to think that we have reached or even imagined the possibilities of its future evolution than we should have been entitled to regard the possibilities of purely biological evolution as having been exhausted after the far longer period needed to give rise to a coral polyp or a jelly-fish as highest existing types of organism. Even man as a biological species is in his infancy, not to speak of other psychozoic types that may be waiting in the womb of time.

But what are the characteristics of this new phase? In the first place, mind has become self-conscious; thus the evolutionary methods of psychozoic organisms may become conscious, and they come to direct their own evolution instead of having their destinies shaped by the blind forces of natural selection.

In most respects the same direction as before is pursued, but new methods are introduced. The rate of change, of movement in that direction, is accelerated; and the possibility is given of eliminating a vast deal of waste. A watchmaker sends out very few defective watches: why? because he makes his watches on a preconceived plan. Even when an improvement in watch construction is introduced, he can draw up his plan beforehand, and at the worst, waste only time and paper, instead of metal and far more time. Ideas do not need to be embodied before selection can act upon them; thus an increasing amount of evolutionary change will take place through the natural selection of ideas than through the older and far more wasteful process, natural selection of individuals and species.

Finally, values appear upon the scene. If we could ask a wild animal such as a fox what gave value to its life, and it could answer us, it would doubtless say food, sleep, comfort, hunting, sexual pleasure, and family companionship. But it cannot answer; nor can it know the value of what it pursues, but only appreciate the result. Strictly speaking, values do not exist for it. However, even if we allow ourselves to speak of values in the life of pre-human organisms, we see immediately that wholly new values are introduced after the critical point.