Necessity of investigating independent evolutionist end.
We must therefore forsake the method of eclecticism, and inquire whether the theory of evolution can make any independent contribution towards determining an end for conduct. We are frequently told that it prescribes as the end "preservation," or "development," or "the health of the society." But to obtain a clear meaning for such notions, we must see what definite content the theory of evolution can give them,—without considering, at present, the grounds for transforming them into ethical precepts. Now, it may be thought—and the suggestion deserves careful examination—that we may find in the characteristics of evolution itself[191] an indication of the end which organisms produced by and subject to evolution are naturally fitted to attain. These characteristics must therefore be passed under review, that their ethical bearings may be seen.
1. Adaptation to environment: necessary for life;
1. The first condition of development, and even of life, is correspondence between an organism and its environment. The waste implied in the processes which constitute the life of an organised body has to be supplied by nutriment got from surrounding objects. It requires food, air, light, and heat in due proportions in order that its various organs may do their work. When these circumstances change, either it adapts itself to the new conditions or death ensues. Thus "we find that every animal is limited to a certain range of climate; every plant to certain zones of latitude and elevation,"[192]—though nothing differs more among different species than the extent of an organism's adaptability to varying conditions. A definite organism and a medium suitable to it are called by Comte the two "fundamental correlative conditions of life"; according to Mr Spencer they constitute life. "Conformity" is absolutely necessary between "the vital functions of any organism and the conditions in which it is placed." In this conformity there are varying degrees, and "the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence."[193] Even when life is not altogether extinguished, it is impeded by imperfect adaptation. Where external circumstances make the attainment of nourishment difficult and precarious, life is shortened in extent, and, within its limits, more occupied with simply maintaining its necessary functions—less full, varied, and active. The same holds good whether the external circumstances are natural or social,—applies equally to those whose energies are exhausted in the production of a bare livelihood from a niggard soil and unpropitious climate, and to those who, under changed conditions, feel the hardship of adapting themselves to a new social medium.
spoken of as the ethical end;
Shall we say, then, that the end of human conduct is adaptation to environment? This seems to be the position taken up by some evolutionists. In the language of von Baer,[194] "the end of ends is always that the organic body be adapted to the conditions of the earth, its elements and means of nutriment;" and Mr Spencer holds "that all evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to condition."[195] The hedonism which Mr Spencer definitely accepts as his ethical principle prevents him, indeed, from fully adopting the theory of human action which von Baer seems to regard as the result of the doctrine of evolution. Yet complete adaptation of constitution to condition is held by him to be characteristic of that perfect form of life to which evolution tends, and the laws of which are to be our guides in our present imperfect social condition. In working out his theory of ethics, he describes acts as "good or bad according as they are well or ill adjusted to ends," identifying the good with "the conduct furthering self-preservation," and the bad with "the conduct tending to self-destruction."[196] The notion of self-preservation thus introduced is naturally suggested as the end subserved by the activity of an organism being adjusted to surrounding conditions. |defines the notion of self-preservation.| Self-preservation, therefore, rather than adaptation to environment, will be regarded as the end, with which adaptation will be connected as the essential means.
This notion of self-preservation has played a remarkable part in ethical and psychological discussion since the time of the Stoics. It withdraws attention from the relative and transient feeling of pleasure to the permanence of the living being. Thus, with the Stoics, the notion of self-preservation was accompanied by an ethics hostile to indulgence in pleasure; while, on the other hand, in Spinoza and in Hobbes, pleasure was recognised as the natural consequence of self-preserving acts—the former defining it as a transition from less to greater perfection, the latter as the sense of what helps the vital functions. The theory of evolution has, of course, not only its distinctive contribution to make to the connection between self-preservation and pleasure—a subject already referred to,—but also shows how an increasing harmony has been produced between acts which tend to self-preservation and those which tend to social-preservation. With Mr Spencer these two points are united. His doctrine that the "conduct which furthers race-maintenance evolves hand-in-hand with the conduct which furthers self-maintenance"[197] is preliminary to the establishment of the proposition that the highest life is one in which egoistic and "altruistic" acts harmonise with one another and with external conditions: "the life called moral is one in which this moving equilibrium reaches completeness or approaches most nearly to completeness."[198]
Self-preservation and social-preservation.
As has been already pointed out,[199] it is not the case, in the present state of human life, that egoistic and altruistic tendencies, even when properly understood, always lead to the same course of conduct; and even the theory of evolution does not do away with the necessity for a "compromise" between them. But, even had the theory of evolution overcome the opposition between the individual and social standpoints, much would still remain to be done for the purpose of constructing a system of ethics, or determining the ethical end. It seems better, therefore, to pass over at present the conflict of competing interests. According to Pascal, "the entire succession of men, the whole course of ages, is to be regarded as one man always living and always learning." And this is a suggestion which the theory of evolution only states more definitely, though it cannot completely vindicate it. On this supposition, self-preservation is social-preservation, and the possibly divergent interests of the individual and the whole are left out of account. The end for the race then is, according to the theory most explicitly stated by von Baer, a state of "moving equilibrium": and to this state of affairs we are at least, Mr Spencer holds, indubitably tending. In the final stage of human development, man will be perfectly adapted to the conditions of his environment, so that, to each change without, there will be an answering organic change. The ideal which seems to be held up to us is that of a time in which there will be no more irksome fretting in the machinery of life, and circumstances will never be unpropitious, because the organism will never be wanting in correspondence with them.