Parallel Paths: A Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art

by T. W. Rolleston

It has been objected from the evolutionist standpoint that, as no one attributes Free Will to the lower forms of animal life, it is impossible to conceive it as having arisen in man except by a miracle. At what point, it is asked, did it first appear? And if one cannot fix the point, the presumption is supposed to be that it has never appeared at all. It will be remembered that some scientific thinkers such as Mr. A. R. Wallace, and one may add Prof. Reinke, have been so much impressed by the mental difference between man and the beasts that they have assumed the gulf to have been bridged by a catastrophic or miraculous act and not by any evolutionary process.

Now I quite admit that one cannot conceive mind being evolved from not-mind. But neither can I conceive life being evolved from not-life, nor, in fact, when one looks into the process minutely, can I believe in anything whatever, physical or spiritual, turning into something else. I conceive the evolutionary process strictly as the ‘unfolding’ of latent capacities, faculties, organs, by means of psychic agencies acting within the framework of the fixed relations which we call natural law. The fact that one cannot lay one’s finger on the exact point in the history of nature where mind and will began to be is not relevant to the question whether they are now present or not. As well might one be challenged to fix the moment when the embryo becomes a man. There are no such exact points in nature. If there were, nature would be discontinuous, and the smallest real discontinuity in nature would be enough to shatter the frame of the universe.

From another side it has been urged that the conception of the continuity or oneness of the universe is fatal to Free Will. The Monist, according to that brilliant champion of chaos, Mr. William James,[130] must believe in a universe fixed like cast-iron in all its parts, for, being all interrelated, not one of them can be different without altering the whole structure of things.

But does not Mr. James here overlook the fact that essential oneness is not incompatible with temporal incompleteness? The universe is one, true—but this one universe comprises not only all that has been and that is, but all that will be. It is to be conceived at present as a growing organism; it will not be a fixed and completed whole till time is at an end. On this basis I see no difficulty in fitting into a Monistic scheme of thought Mr. James’s admirable statement of the Free Will position:—

“Our acts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow, are the parts of the world to which we are closest, the parts of which our knowledge is most intimate and complete. Why should we not take them at their face-value? Why may they not be the actual turning-places and growing-places of the world—why not the workshop of being where we catch fact in the making?”[131]

The next and last objection I propose to deal with cuts closer to the heart of the question and will have to occupy us, I hope not unfruitfully, for some time.

I instanced some time ago the case of martyrdom as one in which every one would recognize the action of the Will, if it can be recognized anywhere. Let me recall that extremest form of martyrdom which John Stuart Mill once declared himself ready to face rather than outrage his moral sense. Speaking in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy of what passed in his day for the ‘orthodox’ conception of the Supreme Being he wrote:—

“Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.”[132]

Mill, as we see, relied on his personal freedom of Will to stiffen his neck against any homage to a Power whom his moral sense declared unworthy of reverence. But a modern physiologist would tell him—and even if the fact be not fully demonstrated at present, it would, I think, be very rash for any psychologist to deny it—that by a slight change in the molecular configuration of the brain cells the heroic recusant could have been turned into a devout worshipper of any being who was able to exhibit the credentials of superior force. Such a change would certainly not be beyond the powers of a being who had heaven and hell at his disposal; even a skilful surgeon might accomplish it. What, then, is the freedom of the Will worth (it may be asked) if the direction it takes is at the mercy of the physical configuration of our brain-matter? And the ‘I’ which, we say, wills—if material changes can thus profoundly alter its character, how can we attribute to it any kind of real and independent existence? Must not the complete dispersal of the molecules of the brain at death cause the ‘I’ to vanish altogether like a blown-out flame? Must it not be at their mercy during the brief illusion of existence?