Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth

by Sir John William Dawson

When we ascend to the somewhat higher plane of physiology we find in a general way the same relationship to animals. Of the four grand leading functions of the animal, nutrition, reproduction, voluntary motion, and sensation, all are performed by man as by other animals. Here, however, there are some marked divergences connected with special anatomical structures, on the one hand, and with his higher endowments on the other. With regard to food, for example, man might be supposed to be limited by his masticatory and digestive apparatus to succulent vegetable substances. But by virtue of his inventive faculties he is practically unlimited, being able by artificial processes to adapt the whole range of vegetable and animal food substances to his use. He is very poorly furnished with natural tools to aid in procuring food, as claws, tusks, etc., but by invented implements he can practically surpass all other creatures. The long time of helplessness in infancy, while it is necessary for the development of his powers, is a practical disadvantage which leads to many social arrangements and contrivances specially characteristic of man. Man's sensory powers, while inferior in range to those of many other animals, are remarkable for balance and completeness, leading to perceptions of differences in colours, sounds, etc., which lie at the foundation of art. The specialization of the hand again connects itself with contrivances which render an animal naturally defenceless the most formidable of all, and an animal naturally gifted with indifferent locomotive powers able to outstrip all others in speed and range of locomotion. Thus the physiological endowments of man, while common to him with other animals, and in some respects inferior to theirs, present in combination with his higher powers points of difference which lead to the most special and unexpected results.

In his psychical relations, using this term in its narrower sense, we may see still greater divergencies from the line of the lower animals. These may no doubt be connected with his greater volume of brain; but recent researches seem to show that brain has more to do with motory and sensory powers than with those that are intellectual, and thus, that a larger brain is only indirectly connected with higher mental manifestations. Even in the lower animals it is clear that the ferocity of the tiger, the constructive instinct of the beaver, and the sagacity of the elephant depend on psychical powers which are beyond the reach of the anatomist's knife, and this is still more markedly the case in man. Following in part the ingenious analysis of Mivart, we may regard the psychical powers of man as reflex, instinctive, emotional, and intellectual; and in each of these aspects we shall find points of resemblance to other animals, and of divergence from them. In regard to reflex actions, or those which are merely automatic, inasmuch as they are intended to provide for certain important functions without thought or volition, their development is naturally in the inverse ratio of psychical elevation, and man is consequently, in this respect, in no way superior to lower animals. The same may be said with reference to instinctive powers, which provide often for complex actions in a spontaneous and unreasoning manner. In these also man is rather deficient than otherwise; and since, from their nature, they limit their possessors to narrow ranges of activity, and fix them within a definite scope of experience and efficiency, they would be incompatible with those higher and more versatile inventive powers which man possesses. The comb-building instinct of the bee, the nest-weaving instinct of the bird, are fixed and invariable things, obviously incompatible with the varied contrivance of man; and while instinct is perfect within its narrow range, it cannot rise beyond this into the sphere of unlimited thought and contrivance. Higher than mere instinct are the powers of imagination, memory, and association, and here man at once steps beyond his animal associates, and develops these in such a variety of ways, that even the rudest tribes of men, who often appear to trust more to these endowments than to higher powers, rise into a plane immeasurably above that of the highest and most intelligent brutes, and toward which they are unable, except to a very limited degree, to raise those of the more domesticable animals which they endeavour to train into companionship with themselves. It is, however, in these domesticated animals that we find the highest degree of approximation to ourselves in emotional development, and this is perhaps one of the points that fits them for such human association. In approaching the higher psychical endowments, the affinity of man and the brute appears to diminish and at length to cease, and it is left to him alone to rise into the domain of the rational and ethical.

Those supreme endowments of man we may, following the nomenclature of ancient philosophy and of our Sacred Scriptures, call "pneumatical" or spiritual. They consist of consciousness, reason, and moral volition. That man possesses these powers every one knows; that they exist or can be developed in lower animals no one has succeeded in proving. Here, at length, we have a severance between man and material nature. Yet it does not divorce him from the unity of nature, except on the principles of atheism. For if it separates him from animals, it allies him with the Power who made and planned the animals. To the naturalist the fact that such capacities exist in a being who in his anatomical structure so closely resembles the lower animals, constitutes an evidence of the independent existence of those powers and of their spiritual character and relation to a higher power which, I think, no metaphysical reasoning or materialistic scepticism will suffice to invalidate. It would be presumption, however, from the standpoint of the naturalist to discuss at length the powers of man's spiritual being. I may refer merely to a few points which illustrate at once his connection with other creatures, and his superiority to them as a higher member of nature.

And, first, we may notice those axiomatic beliefs which lie at the foundation of human reasoning, and which, while apparently in harmony with nature, do not admit of verification except by an experience impossible to finite beings. Whether these are ultimate truths, or merely results of the constitution bestowed on us, or effects of the direct action of the creative mind on ours, they are to us like the instincts of animals infallible and unchanging. Yet, just as the instincts of animals unfailingly connect them with their surroundings, our intuitive beliefs fit us for understanding nature and for existing in it as our environment. These beliefs also serve to connect man with his fellow man, and in this aspect we may associate with them those universal ideas of right and wrong, of immortality, and of powers above ourselves, which pervade humanity.

Another phase of this spiritual constitution is illustrated by the ways in which man, starting from powers and contrivances common to him and animals, develops them into new and higher uses and results. This is markedly seen in the gift of speech. Man, like other animals, has certain natural utterances expressive of emotions or feelings. He can also, like some of them, imitate the sounds produced by animate or inanimate objects; while the constitution of his brain and vocal organs gives him special advantages for articulate utterance. But when he develops these gifts into a system of speech expressing not mere sounds occurring in nature, but by association and analogy with these, properties and relations of objects and general and abstract ideas, he rises into the higher sphere of the spiritual. He thus elevates a power of utterance common to him with animals to a higher plane, and connecting it with his capacity for understanding nature and arriving at general truths, asserts his kinship to the great creative mind, and furnishes a link of connection between the material universe and the spiritual Creator.

The manner of existence of man in nature is as well illustrated by his arts and inventions as by anything else; and these serve also to enlighten us as to the distinction between the natural and the artificial. Naturalists often represent man as dependent on nature for the first hints of his useful arts. There are in animal nature tailors, weavers, masons, potters, carpenters, miners, and sailors, independently of man, and many of the tools, implements, and machines which he is said to have invented were perfected in the structures of lower animals long before he came into existence. In all these things man has been an assiduous learner from nature, though in some of them, as for example in the art of aërial navigation, he has striven in vain to imitate the powers possessed by other animals. But it may well be doubted whether man is in this respect so much an imitator as has been supposed, and whether the resemblance of his plans to those previously realized in nature does not depend on that general fitness of things which suggests to rational minds similar means to secure similar ends. But in saying this we in effect say that man is not only a part of nature, but that his mind is in harmony with the plans of nature, or, in other words, with the methods of the creative mind. Man is also curiously in harmony with external nature in the combination in his works of the ideas of plan and adaptation, of ornament and use. In architecture, for example, devising certain styles or orders, and these for the most part based on imitations of natural things; he adapts these to his ends, just as in nature types of structure are adapted to a great variety of uses, and he strives to combine, as in nature, perfect adaptation to use with conformity to type or style. So, in his attempts at ornament he copies natural forms, and uses these forms to decorate or conceal parts intended to serve essential purposes in the structure. This is at least the case in the purer styles of construction. It is in the more debased styles that arches, columns, triglyphs, or buttresses are placed where they can serve no useful purpose, and become mere excrescences. But in this case the abnormality resulting breeds in the beholder an unpleasing mental confusion, and causes him, even when he is unable to trace his feelings to their source, to be dissatisfied with the result. Thus man is in harmony with that arrangement of nature which causes every ornamental part to serve some use, and which unites adaptation with plan.

The following of nature must also form the basis of those fine arts which are not necessarily connected with any utility, and in man's pursuit of art of this kind we see one of the most recondite and at first sight inexplicable of his correspondences with the other parts of nature; for there is no other creature that pursues art for its own sake. Modern archæological discovery has shown that the art of sculpture began with the oldest known races of man, and that they succeeded in producing very accurate imitations of natural objects. But from this primitive starting-point two ways diverge. One leads to the conventional and the grotesque, and this course has been followed by many semi-civilized nations. Another leads to accurate imitation of nature, along with new combinations arising from the play of intellect and imagination. Let us look for a moment at the actual result of the development of these diverse styles of art, and at their effect on the culture of humanity as existing in nature. We may imagine a people who have wholly discarded nature in their art, and have devoted themselves to the monstrous and the grotesque. Such a people, so far as art is concerned, separates itself widely from nature and from the mind of the Creator, and its taste and possibly its morals sink to the level of the monsters it produces. Again, we may imagine a people in all respects following nature in a literal and servile manner. Such a people would probably attain to but a very moderate amount of culture, but having a good foundation, it might ultimately build up higher things. Lastly, we may fancy a people who, like the old Greeks, strove to add to the copying of nature a higher and ideal beauty by combining in one the best features of many natural objects, or devising new combinations not found in nature itself. In the first of these conditions of art we have a falling away from or caricaturing of the beauty of nature. In the second we have merely a pupilage to nature. In the third we find man aiming to be himself a creator, but basing his creations on what nature has given him. Thus all art worthy of the name is really a development of nature. It is true the eccentricities of art and fashion are so erratic that they may often seem to have no law. Yet they are all under the rule of nature; and hence even uninstructed common sense, unless dulled by long familiarity, detects in some degree their incongruity, and though it may be amused for a time, at length becomes wearied with the mental irritation and nervous disquiet which they produce.

I may be permitted to add that all this applies with still greater force to systems of science and philosophy. Ultimately these must be all tested by the verities of nature to which man necessarily submits his intellect, and he who builds for aye must build on the solid ground of nature. The natural environment presents itself in this connection as an educator of man. From the moment when infancy begins to exercise its senses on the objects around, this education begins training the powers of observation and comparison, cultivating the conception of the grand and beautiful, leading to analysis and abstract and general ideas. Left to itself, it is true this natural education extends but a little way, and ordinarily it becomes obscured or crushed by the demands of a hard utility, or by an artificial literary culture, or by the habitude of monstrosity and unfitness in art. Yet, when rightly directed, it is capable of becoming an instrument of the highest culture, intellectual, æsthetic, and even moral. A rational system of education would follow nature in the education of the young, and drop much that is arbitrary and artificial. Here I would merely remark, that when we find that the accurate and systematic study of nature trains most effectually some of the more practical powers of mind, and leads to the highest development of taste for beauty in art, we see in this relation the unity of man and nature, and the unity of both with something higher than either.