For if we look closely at such an invention as the steam engine in its latest and most complicated developments, about which there can be no dispute but that they are achievements of reason, purpose, and design, we shall find them present us with examples of all those features the presence of which in the handiwork of animals is too often held to bar reason and purpose from having had any share therein.
Assuredly such men as the Marquis of Worcester and Captain Savery had very imperfect ideas as to the upshot of their own action. The simplest steam engine now in use in England is probably a marvel of ingenuity as compared with the highest development which appeared possible to these two great men, while our newest and most highly complicated engines would seem to them more like living beings than machines. Many, again, of the steps leading to the present development have been due to action which had but little heed of the steam engine, being the inventions of attendants whose desire was to save themselves the trouble of turning this or that cock, and who were indifferent to any other end than their own immediate convenience. No step in fact along the whole route was ever taken with much perception of what would be the next step after the one being taken at any given moment.
Nor do we find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screws and nuts, which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented the wheel. It is only when circumstances require any modification in the article to be manufactured that thought and design will come into play again; but I take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a bird either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, or to make some trifling deviation from its ordinary practice, it will in nine cases out of ten make such deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and such a course, that is to say, that it had reasoned and had acted with such purpose as its reason had dictated.
And I imagine that this is the utmost that anyone can claim even for man's own boasted powers. Set the man who has been accustomed to make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering the whole performance abortive, is any argument against that action having been an achievement of design and reason in respect of each one of the steps that have led to it; and if in respect of each one of the steps then as regards the entire action; for we see our own most reasoned actions become no less easy, unerring, automatic, and unconscious, than the actions which we call instinctive when they have been repeated a sufficient number of times.
This has been often pointed out, but I insisted upon it and developed it in 'Life and Habit,' more I believe than has been done hitherto, at the same time making it the key to many phenomena of growth and heredity which without such key seem explained by words rather than by any corresponding peace of mind in our ideas concerning them. Seeing that I dwelt much on the importance of bearing in mind the vanishing tendency of consciousness, volition, and memory upon their becoming intense, a tendency which no one after five minutes' reflection will venture to deny, some reviewers have imagined that I am advocating the same views as have been put forward by Von Hartmann under the title of 'the Philosophy of the Unconscious.' Unless, however, I am much mistaken, their opinion is without foundation. For so far as I can gather, Von Hartmann personifies the unconscious and makes it act and think—in fact deifies it—whereas I only infer a certain history for certain of our growths and actions in consequence of observing that often repeated actions come in time to be performed unconsciously. I cannot think I have done more than note a fact which all must acknowledge, and drawn from it an inference which may or may not be true, but which is at any rate perfectly intelligible, whereas if Von Hartmann's meaning is anything like what Mr. Sully says it is,[26] I can only say that it has not been given to me to form any definite conception whatever as to what that meaning may be. I am encouraged moreover to hope that I am not in the same condemnation with Von Hartmann—if, indeed, Von Hartmann is to be condemned, about which I know nothing—by the following extract from a German Review of 'Life and Habit.'
"Der erste dieser beiden Erklärungsversuche, ist eine wahre 'Philosophie des Unbewussten' nicht des Hartmann'schen Unbewussten welches hellsehend und wunderthätig von aussen in die natürliche Entwickelung der Organismen eingreift, sondern eines Unbewussten welches wie der Verfasser zeigt, in allen organischen Wesen anzunehmen unsere eigene Erfahrung und die Stufenfolge der Organismen von den Moneren und Amœben bis zu den höchsten Pflanzen und Thieren und uns selbst aufwärts—uns gestattet, wenn nicht uns nöthigt. Der Gedankengang dieser neuen oder wenigstens in diesem Sinne wohl zum ersten Male consequent im Einzelnen durchgeführten Philosophie des Unbewussten ist, seinen Hauptzügen nach kurz angedeutet, folgender."[27]
Even here I am made to personify more than I like; I do not wish to say that the unconscious does this or that, but that when we have done this or that sufficiently often we do it unconsciously.
If the foregoing be granted, and it be admitted that the unconsciousness and seeming automatism with which any action may be performed is no bar to its having a foundation in memory, reason, and at one time consciously recognized effort—and this I believe to be the chief addition which I have ventured to make to the theory of Buffon and Dr. Erasmus Darwin—then the wideness of the difference between the Darwinism of eighty years ago and the Darwinism of to-day becomes immediately apparent, and it also becomes apparent, how important and interesting is the issue which is raised between them.
According to the older Darwinism the lungs are just as purposive as the corkscrew. They, no less than the corkscrew, are a piece of mechanism designed and gradually improved upon and perfected by an intelligent creature for the gratification of its own needs. True there are many important differences between mechanism which is part of the body, and mechanism which is no such part, but the differences are such as do not affect the fact that in each case the result, whether, for example, lungs or corkscrew, is due to desire, invention, and design.