[CHAPTER XVIII.]
MAN IN NATURE.
F
Few words are used among us more loosely than "nature." Sometimes it stands for the material universe as a whole. Sometimes it is personified as a sort of goddess, working her own sweet will with material things. Sometimes it expresses the forces which act on matter, and again it stands for material things themselves. It is spoken of as subject to law, but just as often natural law is referred to in terms which imply that nature itself is the lawgiver. It is supposed to be opposed to the equally vague term "supernatural"; but this term is used not merely to denote things above and beyond nature, if there are such, but certain opinions held respecting natural things. On the other hand, the natural is contrasted with the artificial, though this is always the outcome of natural powers, and is certainly not supernatural. Again, it is applied to the inherent properties of beings for which we are unable to account, and which we are content to say constitute their nature. We cannot look into the works of any of the more speculative writers of the day without meeting with all these uses of the word, and have to be constantly on our guard lest by a change of its meaning we shall be led to assent to some proposition altogether unfounded.
For illustrations of this convenient though dangerous ambiguity, I may turn at random to almost any page in Darwin's celebrated work on the "Origin of Species." In the beginning of [Chapter III]. he speaks of animals "in a state of nature" that is, not in a domesticated or artificial condition, so that here nature is opposed to the devices of man. Then he speaks of species as "arising in nature," that is, spontaneously produced in the midst of certain external conditions or environment outside of the organic world. A little farther on he speaks of useful varieties as given to man by "the hand of Nature," which here becomes an imaginary person; and it is worthy of notice that in this place the printer or proof-reader has given the word an initial capital, as if a proper name. In the next section he speaks of the "works of Nature" as superior to those of art. Here the word is not only opposed to the artificial, but seems to imply some power above material things and comparable with or excelling the contriving intelligence of man. I do not mean by these examples to imply that Darwin is in this respect more inaccurate than other writers. On the contrary, he is greatly surpassed by many of his contemporaries in the varied and fantastic uses of this versatile word. An illustration which occurs to me here, as at once amusing and instructive, is an expression used by Romanes, one of the cleverest of the followers of the great evolutionist, and which appears to him to give a satisfactory explanation of the mystery of elevation in nature. He says, "Nature selects the best individuals out of each generation to live." Here nature must be an intelligent agent, or the statement is simply nonsensical. The same alternative applies to much of the use of the favourite term "natural selection." In short, those who use such modes of expression would be more consistent if they were at once to come back to the definition of Seneca, that nature is "a certain divine purpose manifested in the world."
The derivation of the word gives us the idea of something produced or becoming, and it is curious that the Greek physis, though etymologically distinct, conveys the same meaning—a coincidence which may perhaps lead us to a safe and serviceable definition. Nature, rightly understood, is, in short, an orderly system of things in time and space, and this not invariable, but in a state of constant movement and progress, whereby it is always becoming something different from what it was. Now man is placed in the midst of this orderly, law-regulated yet ever progressive system, and is himself a part of it; and if we can understand his real relations to its other parts, we shall have made some approximation to a true philosophy. The subject has been often discussed, but is perhaps not yet quite exhausted.[212]
[212] "Man's Place in Nature," Princeton Review, November, 1878. "The Unity of Nature," by the Duke of Argyll, 1884, may be considered as suggestive of the thoughts of this chapter.
Regarding man as a part of nature, we must hold to his entering into the grand unity of the natural system, and must not set up imaginary antagonisms between man and nature as if he were outside of it. An instance of this appears in Tyndall's celebrated Belfast address, where he says, in explanation of the errors of certain of the older philosophers, that "the experiences which formed the weft and woof of their theories were chosen not from the study of nature, but from that which lay much nearer to them—the observation of Man": a statement this which would make man a supernatural, or at least a preternatural being. Again, it does not follow, because man is a part of nature, that he must be precisely on a level with its other parts. There are in nature many planes of existence, and man is no doubt on one of its higher planes, and possesses distinguishing powers and properties of his own. Nature, like a perfect organism, is not all eye or all hand, but includes various organs, and so far as we see it in our planet, man is its head, though we can easily conceive that there may be higher beings in other parts of the universe beyond our ken.
The view which we may take of man's position relatively to the beings which are nearest to him, namely, the lower animals, will depend on our point of sight—whether that of mere anatomy and physiology, or that of psychology and pneumatology as well. This distinction is the more important, since, under the somewhat delusive term "biology," it has been customary to mix up all these considerations, while, on the other hand, those anatomists who regard all the functions of organic beings as merely mechanical and physical, do not scruple to employ this term biology for their science, though on their hypothesis there can be no such thing as life, and consequently the use of the word by them must be either superstitious or hypocritical.
Anatomically considered, man is an animal of the class Mammalia. In that class, notwithstanding the heroic efforts of some modern detractors from his dignity to place him with the monkeys in the order Primates, he undoubtedly belongs to a distinct order. I have elsewhere argued that, if he were an extinct animal, the study of the bones of his hand, or of his head, would suffice to convince any competent palæontologist that he represents a distinct order, as far apart from the highest apes as they are from the carnivora. That he belongs to a distinct family no anatomist denies, and the same unanimity of course obtains as to his generic and specific distinctness. On the other hand, no zoological systematist now doubts that all the races of men are specifically identical. Thus we have the anatomical position of man firmly fixed in the system of nature, and he must be content to acknowledge his kinship not only with the higher animals nearest to him, but with the humblest animalcule. With all he shares a common material and many common features of structure.