Part 17

If now we inquire about these sports, we are told science is content with the fact that they undeniably occur: wherever there are animals there are varieties in their offspring. That those which are adapted to survive will survive, and those which are not will not, is a self-evident, indeed an identical, proposition. It is; and it gives away the whole case against purpose, for it admits that some varieties are originally adapted to survive, that without them neither man nor the environment would have anything to begin on or work on, and that though man and Nature may develop, they do not create the original adaptation. They do but promote, by conscious or unconscious action, the purpose immanent in the sport. Of all the numerous, successive, imperceptible increments by which what was originally a sport is raised to a distinct species, not one is created by man or by the environment: all are the "gratuitous offerings" of the organism, manifestations of the organism's spontaneity, revelations of its latent capacities, fulfilments of the purpose immanent in it from the beginning.

If it be said that the survival of any or every given species was a matter of chance, because other sports would have developed into other species, if the environment had been different, the reply again is, But it was not; and, on the theory of necessity, could not be. The fact that both conditions--the organism's spontaneity and the environment's selective agency--were requisite to the production of the new species, and that both conditions were forthcoming, tells rather in favour of purpose than against it. The fact that this particular combination of conditions was effected, rather than any other, is on exactly the same footing as the initial concurrence of atoms: if the latter cannot be ascribed to any necessity antecedent to it, neither can the former; the reason of the combination is to be sought in the self-determining cause immanent in the conditions. The fact, if it be a fact, that countless other combinations were possible, and this alone was chosen, shows that the will immanent in the evolution process is free will.

In fine, Darwin has shown that the action of the environment is exactly what it would have been had it been designed for the purpose of selecting certain sports for development. All that is further necessary in order to show that this apparent purpose is an illusion, is to prove that the environment was not designed to act as it does. Pending the production of that proof, the argument remains incomplete.

The larger part of the process of evolution is known to us only from the outside: we observe its effects in the animal world and in inorganic nature, but its inner workings we have to reach by inference. One part of the evolution process, however, we know from the inside--that part which is carried on through us. We are some of the innumerable channels through which the motive force of the process is transmitted; and the knowledge which its transmission through us gives us is more intimate and direct than that which we get from observing the external effects it produces elsewhere. The evolution of society, for instance, is a part of the general process of evolution, and is a process which is carried on through us and expresses the resultant of the totality of our sentiments and actions towards one another. What light, then, if any, is thrown by sociology on the general question of purpose?

Mr. Herbert Spencer has familiarised us with the lesson that in politics and social experiments it is the unforeseen and unintended results of legislation which are far the most important, and that the industrial organisation of the country, or we may now say of the world, is not the fulfilment of any design preconceived by any governmental agency, but the unintended result of innumerable actions on the part of men who never dreamed that their action would have any such outcome. The reason of this is to be sought in the fact that society is an organism and that its growth follows the same laws as those which regulate the structural development of an amœba or a rhizopod. Thus, both society and the animal organism must be fed. To be fed, both must appropriate nutriment from the environment. That nutriment must be taken up and must be distributed to all parts of the organism, social or animal, if all parts are to be fed--and all must be fed, because all are mutually dependent, and to neglect one would disorganise the whole. Channels of communication must be established between all parts, in order that food may be conveyed from the organ which took it from the environment to the organs which require it for support. What marks the process of evolution in both cases is the increasing division of labour and the increasing interdependence of the parts on one another. The animal organism, like the social organism, is made up of a multitude of living units, each one of which is continually adjusting itself to the requirements of all the rest. The increasing complexity in the structure of an animal organism is possible only because the living units of one part take upon themselves new functions, or devote themselves exclusively to one function, in order to benefit the units of a distant part. If they purposed or were purposed to produce that result, they could not behave differently or better. But this appearance of purpose is mere semblance: the minute cells of an animal organism have no intention of producing even a rhizopod or an amœba. The explanation of this mimicry of purpose lies in the fact of the mutual interdependence of the parts: no change can take place in one organ of society or of the animal without being transmitted through the whole, just as you cannot remove one of the undermost of a cartload of bricks without more or less disturbing all the rest. But what is true of the bricks or of the units of the animal organism is true of the units of the social organism: what we discover in their action and reaction on one another is the operation, not of voluntary purpose, but of invariable laws of cause and effect.

According to this argument, then, the living units of the animal organism resemble in their action those of the social organism sufficiently to warrant us in arguing from the one to the other, and in concluding that there is purpose in the action of neither. But it is obvious that, if the resemblance is great enough to justify us in arguing from the animal to the social organism, it also opens the way for the argument to travel the return journey, from the social organism to the animal, and to reach the conclusion that there is purpose in both. Let us therefore consider what each of these two opposite conclusions requires us to believe.

On the one hand, before accepting the argument that there is no purpose in the action of the social organism because there is none in that of the animal, we must prove that there is none in that of the animal. But that, as we have already urged, is exactly what has not been proved: the utmost that science claims to prove is that the units of the animal organism do behave in a certain way. That way is exactly the way in which they would behave if they were designed to do so; and science leaves it, so far, a perfectly open question whether they were or were not so designed. The argument, therefore, that there is no purpose in the action of the social organism, because none in the animal, breaks down at the threshold. Yet it is on the unproved and unprovable assertion that the appearance of purpose in the animal organism cannot possibly be due to design, and must therefore be a delusion, that we are expected to deny the evidence of our own experience and consciousness and to believe that we, the units of the social organism, have no purpose in the daily acts by which we extend trade or discharge our social functions.

Thus the surmise that Nature mimics purpose, having none, is a conjecture which, so far as it is applied to the pre-human stages of the evolution process, simply plays upon our ignorance; and which, when applied to that part of the evolution process which is carried on through us, we know to be absurd. On the other hand, if there is such similarity between the laws of the one part of the process and the laws of the other part, it must be as allowable to argue from the part and the laws which we do know to the part and the laws that we do not know, as it is to explain the known by what is confessedly unknown. In other words, if the evolution of the social organism is known to be due to purpose, then it is a reasonable inference that animal evolution, which, we are told, follows the same line and laws, is due also to purpose--and if not to any purpose entertained by the cells of the animal organism, then to that of a Will of which their action is the expression.

It is, however, maintained that the continuous social changes which constitute the evolution of society, so far from being the result of the purpose of any individual or of any government, are frequently the very opposite of what was intended by the authors of the changes, and always are notoriously beyond our power to forecast. But the fact that my plans are modified or diverted by my successors or by my coadjutors does not prove that there was no purpose in my plans, or that there was none in the modifications introduced by my successors. And the total result of our united action and purposes may be something different from what any of us individually intended and yet express a common purpose, which is shown by the result to have been more or less present to all of us. A cathedral begun in the Norman style may have taken generations to build and may end in Gothic; and it will express the ideas common to the several builders, in much the same way that a composite photograph reproduces most distinctly the features in which all the persons photographed coincide, and other features more or less distinctly according to the extent to which they are shared in common by the different subjects. Or, to express the effect of the successive actions of succeeding generations, we may borrow an illustration from the game of chess. It is possible for five players to play, taking it in turns to move, so that every player makes one move out of five, and plays alternately for White and Black. The result, with good players, is a brilliant and well-developed game, which is not the game as purposed or intended by any one of the five players, but as continually modified and improved by each every time that he took it up. When, then, we reflect how many players in the game of life there are even in a small society, we can well understand that, though each has his own way of serving the common purpose, none can forecast the result.

Perhaps it will be said that the chess-players have a common purpose, and the players in life's game have none. The reply is that science assumes they have; science assumes that they play to win in the struggle for existence; and only on the assumption that men have common purposes is it possible to frame any scientific account of their actions. The science of Political Economy assumes that it is a common purpose of men to acquire wealth, and that their actions are determined by that purpose. It then goes on to show that if that is their purpose, then the conditions under which it can be and is effected are of a certain kind, _e.g._ men must buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. It is not necessary to assume, nor does Political Economy assume, that man can only purpose to acquire wealth, or that he must under all circumstances do so. In the same way it is wholly unscientific in sociology to assume that success in the struggle for existence is either a thing that man must aim at, or the only thing that he can aim at: the soldier dies for his country, the martyr for his faith. The institutions of a nation--legal, political, social, and religious--express the predominant purposes for which successive generations of the community have laboured; and the evolution of mankind is the history of the various degrees of success with which men have realised the ideals which they have purposed to attain. The successive reforms by which progress has been effected have all been purposed, and have all been purposed by men who believed, rightly or wrongly, that in so doing they were serving God and their fellow-men, and that the ideals of truth, justice, equality, fraternity, love, compassion, and mercy express God's will and the Divine purpose.

If, then, the outcome of the pre-human period of evolution has been, as a matter of fact, and amongst other things, such as to prepare the earth for man's habitation and to provide him with a mechanism, physiological and psychological, such that he can use it, if he will, to promote what he considers to be progress and advance, it is not unreasonable for him to regard past phases of evolution as so many steps leading to the realisation of the ideals which he cherishes, in his best moments, as his highest purposes. The continuity of evolution and the unity of its process authorise or even compel him to use that part of the process which is carried on through him as a means to interpret the rest. As, in the game of chess played by five players, each player inherits from his predecessor the game as it stands, and carries on, with improvements or modifications, the scheme which he inherits, so in life each player in turn becomes conscious of the ideals which he too may, or may not, as he wills, carry one step nearer to their goal. It is in the continuity with which these ideals are transmitted through one consciousness after another that the continuity of human evolution consists. We are, or may be if we choose, particles in the medium by which a purpose not our own (save inasmuch as we choose to make it so) is carried onwards to its destination. The medium through which progress has travelled in the past is Nature; the medium through which it is now travelling is human nature. By us the ideal, as it is transmitted through our consciousness, is recognised as implying the presence in us of a purpose higher than our own. Whether in the medium of Nature there is any dim consciousness of the progress towards which the changes in Nature conspire, we know not. But the uniformity of Nature and human nature requires us to see in those natural changes the operation of the same power travelling in the same direction as it does through us. In its passage through us it is made known to us as the object of our highest aspirations; the ideal of purity, of holiness, and love; the God for whom the human heart, mistakenly or not, has always sought, and never sought in vain.

XIV.

CONCLUSION

The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution has taught us the lesson that, if we start without belief in the Divine government of the world, study of the process of evolution will not lead us to discern any Divine purpose in the process. Belief in religion cannot begin without faith in God to start with, just as belief in science or in morality is based not on evidence, but on faith. The question remains whether with faith we can believe that the process of evolution is a revelation of Divine love, and whether man's environment has been evolved in such a way as to promote in him that love of his fellow-man and God which is the religious ideal.

If we look at the structure of society, we see it is based on the fact that man has certain needs--of food, shelter, and clothing, etc.--which can be satisfied more effectually by co-operation and division of labour than by isolated, individual action. The man who earns his own living does so by rendering services for which he is paid: he cannot benefit himself without benefiting others to some extent. That is the law under which he lives, a law not of his own making, nor always to his own liking, but a law inherent in the nature of things, and part of the purpose, if purpose there be, in the scheme of things. As a free agent, man may co-operate with his fellows and take his share of the divided labour, or not, as he wills; but those peoples which have carried the principles of co-operation and organisation furthest have fared best. They have availed themselves of the opportunity offered them, and have survived. The failure of the rest to do likewise has not impeded the fulfilment of the Divine purpose that men should help one another. On the contrary, those who decline to help one another voluntarily place themselves at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, and are slowly, but surely, crowded out by those who fulfil the Divine purpose less unsatisfactorily, and in consequence tend to inherit the earth.

We have already seen that when a man reaches years of discretion he finds that the physiological and psychological mechanism of which he is now in possession, and for the management of which he is henceforth responsible, has a tendency to run in certain grooves: he has, as a child, been taught and has inherited an aptitude to think and act in certain ways. The same remark applies to the social organism. Before or when the individual awakes to the fact that he is a member of a society, he has already been or is the child of parents to whom he renders obedience, and between whom and himself there exist relations of affection. The evolution of man as a purely animal organism has been such that he begins life with a prolonged period of helpless infancy. Unlike the lower animals, which very soon after birth are capable of providing for themselves, he is for years dependent on others. His prolonged infancy is a prolonged period of plasticity, during which he is moulded into a member, first of a family and then and thereby into a member of society. All the higher animals give their offspring some education, an education as good as they received themselves: in the human race alone do parents give their children a better education than they got themselves. It is, however, not the rising generation alone who benefit by the long period of dependence and plasticity which characterises childhood. It is, of course, true that labour expended on the perfecting of tools and machinery is peculiarly productive, inasmuch as the increased efficiency of the instrument more than repays the greater outlay. But as the workman who produces the tool becomes in consequence of his labour a more skilled mechanic, so the education given by the parent to the child is an education not only of the child, but of the parent, and makes both better fitted to be members of society. It not only secures that subordination of the younger men to the elder, which is necessary for the stability of society and the permanence of the tribe, but it also tempers power with responsibility, responsibility not to some external authority, but to the higher principle within the man.

Thus even in the earliest stage of society the anti-social forces of selfishness and the passions do not operate _in vacuo_ and with nothing to impede them. Society at the very beginning is no _tabula rasa_: the field is already largely occupied, and the direction of social evolution already largely determined, by that affection between parents and children without which neither society as a whole nor the individual as a unit could come into being or continue to exist. It is an unwarrantable libel, even on savage society, to say that in it the ape and tiger predominate in man: the lowest forms of society survive only so far as there exists more humanity than brutality in the dealings of their members with one another. It is a false philosophy of evolution, not a true acquaintance with the facts of anthropology, which rashly assumes that the morally lowest must have been the only primitive elements in the evolution of humanity. The evil and the good in man have existed side by side from the beginning; unselfish affection, as well as selfish desires, has always been part of the equipment of human nature, though the evolution of the former may be a longer and more difficult process, both in the individual and the race, than the evolution of the latter.

In the race moral progress may be expected with much more confidence than it can in the case of the individual. The mere existence of a society, however simple in structure, is of itself proof that the anti-social forces of selfishness and passion are in it less strong than the instincts of neighbourliness and mutual help. Of competing societies those eventually triumph which are least weakened by internal dissension--that is to say, those societies tend to thrive and extend most of which the members are most ready to subordinate their private ends to the public good. Ultimately it is only by the development of this type of individual character that a society can achieve success; and it is this type of character that the competition between nations develops. But essential as it is to the survival of a society, it is by no means so essential to the survival of the individual in his struggle for existence against other individuals. If, then, society were simply a collection of warring atoms, or if the individual's whole activity were expended in struggling with his neighbour and trying to elbow him out, the type of character essential to the survival of society could never be developed, and society itself could neither come into being nor continue to be. The fact is that men not only compete, but co-operate: society is, and from the beginning has been, an organisation requiring from each of its parts some subordination to the interests of the whole.

As the organisation of society grows more complex, the individual becomes less and less capable of existing independently of society, society becomes more and more independent of the services of any individual member, and both these facts tend to foster the social and weaken the anti-social forces in man. Increasing division and subdivision of labour specialises the function of each member of the community more and more, and so deprives him of the general aptitude for doing all kinds of work which is essential to every man who is, as for instance in a new colony, thrown largely on his own resources. Thus the solitary existence which might be just possible for the outcast from a savage tribe becomes a practical impossibility for the average member of any community that has risen above that stage of social evolution. At the same time the point is reached when no one man is indispensable to the community. Society is made up of units so similar to one another that any one can be replaced by some other, and, as a matter of fact, the place of everyone is at death filled by some successor.