Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and Essays

by Thomas Henry Huxley; George F. Barker; E. D. Cope; James Hutchison Stirling; John Tyndall

The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might be called the Conflict theory. The second view recognizes the workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the Harmonic theory. In other words, the first principle deduces perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the harmonious development of the whole.

All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

α. Development of Intelligence.

If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity differ in number and importance from those achieved by human intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of progress.

What point of progress in such a history would account for this accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled, that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.

The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.

The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some races continued to the present day.

β. Evidence from Archæology.

As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts only will be noticed.

Improvement in the use of Materials. As is well known, the remains of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite, silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in most of the regions of the earth.