Chapter 2

To the creature thus produced through a change in the direction in which natural selection has worked, the earth and most of its living things have become gradually subordinated. In all the classes of the animal and vegetal worlds many ancient species have become extinct, and many modern species have come into being, through the unchecked working of natural selection, since Man became distinctively human. But in this respect a change has long been coming over the face of nature. The destinies of all other living things are more and more dependent upon the will of Man. It rests with him to determine, to a great degree, what plants and animals shall remain upon the earth and what shall be swept from its surface. By unconsciously imitating the selective processes of Nature, he long ago wrought many wild species into forms subservient to his needs. He has created new varieties of fruit and flower and cereal grass, and has reared new breeds of animals to aid him in the work of civilization; until at length he is beginning to acquire a mastery over mechanical and molecular and chemical forces which is doubtless destined in the future to achieve marvellous results whereof today we little dream. Natural selection itself will by and by occupy a subordinate place in comparison with selection by Man, whose appearance on the earth is thus seen more clearly than ever to have opened an entirely new chapter in the mysterious history of creation.

IV.

The Origin of Infancy.

But before we can fully understand the exalted position which the Darwinian theory assigns to man, another point demands consideration. The natural selection of psychical peculiarities does not alone account for the origin of Man, or explain his most signal difference from all other animals. That difference is unquestionably a difference in kind, but in saying this one must guard against misunderstanding. Not only in the world of organic life, but throughout the known universe, the doctrine of evolution regards differences in kind as due to the gradual accumulation of differences in degree. To cite a very simple case, what differences of kind can be more striking than the differences between a nebula, a sun, a planet like the earth, and a planet like our moon? Yet these things are simply examples of cosmical matter at four different stages of cooling. The physical differences between steam, water, and ice afford a more familiar example. In the organic world the perpetual modification of structures that has been effected through natural selection exhibits countless instances of differences in kind which have risen from the accumulation of differences in degree. No one would hesitate to call a horse's hoof different in kind from a cat's paw; and yet the horse's lower leg and hoof are undoubtedly developed from a five-toed paw. The most signal differences in kind are wont to arise when organs originally developed for a certain purpose come to be applied to a very different purpose, as that change of the fish's air-bladder into a lung which accompanied the first development of land vertebrates. But still greater becomes the revolution when a certain process goes on Until it sets going a number of other processes, unlocking series after series of causal agencies until a vast and complicated result is reached, such as could by no possibility have been foreseen. The creation of Man was one of these vast and complicated results due to the unlocking of various series of causal agencies; and it was the beginning of a deeper and mightier difference in kind than any that slowly evolving Nature had yet witnessed.

I have indicated, as the moment at which the creation of mankind began, the moment when psychical variations became of so much more use to our ancestors than physical variations that they were seized and enhanced by natural selection, to the comparative neglect of the latter. Increase of intellectual capacity, in connection with the developing brain of a single race of creatures, now became the chief work of natural selection in originating Man; and this, I say, was the opening of a new chapter, the last and most wonderful chapter, in the history of creation. But the increasing intelligence and enlarged experience of half-human man now set in motion a new series of changes which greatly complicated the matter. In order to understand these changes, we must consider for a moment one very important characteristic of developing intelligence.

The simplest actions in which the nervous system is concerned are what we call reflex actions. All the visceral actions which keep us alive from moment to moment, the movements of the heart and lungs, the contractions of arteries, the secretions of glands, the digestive operations of the stomach and liver, belong to the class of reflex actions. Throughout the animal world these acts are repeated, with little or no variation, from birth until death, and the tendency to perform them is completely organized in the nervous system before birth. Every animal breathes and digests as well at the beginning of his life as he ever does. Contact with air and food is all that is needed, and there is nothing to be learned. These actions, though they are performed by the nervous system, we do not class as psychical, because they are nearly or quite unattended by consciousness. The psychical life of the lowest animals consists of a few simple acts directed toward the securing of food and the avoidance of danger, and these acts we are in the habit of classing as instinctive. They are so simple, so few, and so often repeated, that the tendency to perform them is completely organized in the nervous system before birth. The animal takes care of himself as soon as he begins to live. He has nothing to learn, and his career is a simple repetition of the careers of countless ancestors. With him heredity is everything, and his individual experience is next to nothing.

As we ascend the animal scale till we come to the higher birds and mammals, we find a very interesting and remarkable change beginning. The general increase of intelligence involves an increasing variety and complication of experiences. The acts which the animal performs in the course of its life become far more numerous, far more various, and far more complex. They are therefore severally repeated with less frequency in the lifetime of each individual. Consequently the tendency to perform them is not completely organized in the nervous system of the offspring before birth. The short period of ante-natal existence does not afford time enough for the organization of so many and such complex habitudes and capacities. The process which in the lower animals is completed before birth is in the higher animals left to be completed after birth. When the creature begins its life it is not completely organized. Instead of the power of doing all the things which its parents did, it starts with the power of doing only some few of them; for the rest it has only latent capacities which need to be brought out by its individual experience after birth. In other words, it begins its separate life not as a matured creature, but as an infant which needs for a time to be watched and helped.

V.

The Dawning of Consciousness.

Here we arrive at one of the most wonderful moments in the history of creation,--the moment of the first faint dawning of consciousness, the foreshadowing of the true life of the soul. Whence came the soul we no more know than we know whence came the universe. The primal origin of consciousness is hidden in the depths of the bygone eternity. That it cannot possibly be the product of any cunning arrangement of material particles is demonstrated beyond peradventure by what we now know of the correlation of physical forces.[4] The Platonic view of the soul, as a spiritual substance, an effluence from Godhood, which under certain conditions becomes incarnated in perishable forms of matter, is doubtless the view most consonant with the present state of our knowledge. Yet while we know not the primal origin of the soul, we have learned something with regard to the conditions under which it has become incarnated in material forms. Modern psychology has something to say about the dawning of conscious life in the animal world. Reflex action is unaccompanied by consciousness. The nervous actions which regulate the movements of the viscera go on without our knowledge; we learn of their existence only by study, as we learn of facts in outward nature. If you tickle the foot of a person asleep, and the foot is withdrawn by simple reflex action, the sleeper is unconscious alike of the irritation and of the movement, even as the decapitated frog is unconscious when a drop of nitric acid falls on his back and he lifts up a leg and rubs the place. In like manner the reflex movements which make up the life of the lowest animals are doubtless quite unconscious, even when in their general character they simulate conscious actions, as they often do. In the case of such creatures, the famous hypothesis of Descartes, that animals are automata, is doubtless mainly correct. In the case of instincts also, where the instinctive actions are completely organized before birth, and are repeated without variation during the whole lifetime of the individual, there is probably little if any consciousness. It is an essential prerequisite of consciousness that there should be a period of delay or tension between the receipt of an impression and the determination of the consequent movement. Diminish this period of delay and you diminish the vividness of consciousness. A familiar example will make this clear. When you are learning to play a new piece of music on the piano, especially if you do not read music rapidly, you are intensely conscious of each group of notes on the page, and of each group of keys that you strike, and of the relations of the one to the other. But when you have learned the piece by heart, you think nothing of either notes or keys, but play automatically while your attention is concentrated upon the artistic character of the music. If somebody thoughtlessly interrupts you with a question about Egyptian politics, you go on playing while you answer him politely. That is, where you had at first to make a conscious act of volition for each movement, the whole group of movements has now become automatic, and volition is only concerned in setting the process going. As the delay involved in the perception and the movement disappears, so does the consciousness of the perception and the movement tend to disappear. Consciousness implies perpetual discrimination, or the recognition of likenesses and differences, and this is impossible unless impressions persist long enough to be compared with one another. The physical organs in connection with whose activity consciousness is manifested are the upper and outer parts of the brain,--the cerebrum and cerebellum. These organs never receive impressions directly from the outside world, but only from lower nerve-centres, such as the spinal cord, the medulla, the optic lobes, and other special centres of sensation. The impressions received by the cerebrum and cerebellum are waves of molecular disturbance sent up along centripetal nerves from the lower centres, and presently drafted off along centrifugal nerves back to the lower centres, thus causing the myriad movements which make up our active life. Now there is no consciousness except when molecular disturbance is generated in the cerebrum and cerebellum faster than it can be drafted off to the lower centres.[5] It is the surplus of molecular disturbance remaining in the cerebrum and cerebellum, and reflected back and forth among the cells and fibres of which these highest centres are composed, that affords the physical condition for the manifestation of consciousness. Memory, emotion, reason, and volition begin with this retention of a surplus of molecular motion in the highest centres. As we survey the vertebrate sub-kingdom of animals, we find that as this surplus increases, the surface of the highest centres increases in area. In the lowest vertebrate animal, the amphioxus, the cerebrum and cerebellum do not exist at all. In fishes we begin to find them, but they are much smaller than the optic lobes. In such a highly organized fish as the halibut, which weighs about as much as an average-sized man, the cerebrum is smaller than a melon-seed. Continuing to grow by adding concentric layers at the surface, the cerebrum and cerebellum become much larger in birds and lower mammals, gradually covering up the optic lobes. As we pass to higher mammalian forms, the growth of the cerebrum becomes most conspicuous, until it extends backwards so far as to cover up the cerebellum, whose functions are limited to the conscious adjustment of muscular movements. In the higher apes the cerebrum begins to extend itself forwards, and this goes on in the human race. The cranial capacity of the European exceeds that of the Australian by forty cubic inches, or nearly four times as much as that by which the Australian exceeds the gorilla; and the expansion is almost entirely in the upper and anterior portions. But the increase of the cerebral surface is shown not only in the general size of the organ, but to a still greater extent in the irregular creasing and furrowing of the surface. This creasing and furrowing begins to occur in the higher mammals, and in civilized man it is carried to an astonishing extent. The amount of intelligence is correlated with the number, the depth, and the irregularity of the furrows. A cat's brain has a few symmetrical creases. In an ape the creases are deepened into slight furrows, and they run irregularly, somewhat like the lines in the palm of your hand. With age and experience the furrows grow deeper and more sinuous, and new ones appear; and in man these phenomena come to have great significance. The cerebral surface of a human infant is like that of an ape. In an adult savage, or in a European peasant, the furrowing is somewhat marked and complicated. In the brain of a great scholar, the furrows are very deep and crooked, and hundreds of creases appear which are not found at all in the brains of ordinary men. In other words, the cerebral surface of such a man, the seat of conscious mental life, has become enormously enlarged in area; and we must further observe that it goes on enlarging in some cases into extreme old age.[6]

Putting all these facts together, it becomes plain that in the lowest animals, whose lives consist of sundry reflex actions monotonously repeated from generation to generation, there can be nothing, or next to nothing, of what we know as consciousness. It is only when the life becomes more complicated and various, so that reflex action can no longer determine all its movements and the higher nerve-centres begin to be evolved, that the dawning of consciousness is reached. But with the growth of the higher centres the capacities of action become so various and indeterminate that definite direction is not given to them until after birth. The creature begins life as an infant, with its partially developed cerebrum representing capabilities which it is left for its individual experience to bring forth and modify.

VI.

Lengthening of Infancy, and Concomitant Increase of Brain-Surface.

The first appearance of infancy in the animal world thus heralded the new era which was to be crowned by the development of Man. With the beginnings of infancy there came the first dawning of a conscious life similar in nature to the conscious life of human beings, and there came, moreover, on the part of parents, the beginning of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. But still more, the period of infancy was a period of plasticity. The career of each individual being no longer wholly predetermined by the careers of its ancestors, it began to become teachable. Individuality of character also became possible at the same time, and for the same reason. All birds and mammals which take care of their young are teachable, though in very various degrees, and all in like manner show individual peculiarities of disposition, though in most cases these are slight and inconspicuous. In dogs, horses, and apes there is marked teachableness, and there are also marked differences in individual character.

But in the non-human animal world all these phenomena are but slightly developed. They are but the dim adumbrations of what was by and by to bloom forth in the human race. They can scarcely be said to have served as a prophecy of the revolution that was to come. One generation of dumb beasts is after all very like another, and from studying the careers of the mastodon, the hipparion, the sabre-toothed lion, or even the dryopithecus, an observer in the Miocene age could never have foreseen the possibility of a creature endowed with such a boundless capacity of progress as the modern Man. Nevertheless, however dimly suggestive was this group of phenomena, it contained the germ of all that is preëminent in humanity. In the direct line of our ancestry it only needed that the period of infancy should be sufficiently prolonged, in order that a creature should at length appear, endowed with the teachableness, the individuality, and the capacity for progress which are the peculiar prerogatives of fully-developed Man.[7] In this direct line the manlike apes of Africa and the Indian Archipelago have advanced far beyond the mammalian world in general. Along with a cerebral surface, and an accompanying intelligence, far greater than that of other mammals, these tailless apes begin life as helpless babies, and are unable to walk, to feed themselves, or to grasp objects with precision until they are two or three months old. These apes have thus advanced a little way upon the peculiar road which our half-human forefathers began to travel as soon as psychical variations came to be of more use to the species than variations in bodily structure. The gulf by which the lowest known man is separated from the highest known ape consists in the great increase of his cerebral surface, with the accompanying intelligence, and in the very long duration of his infancy. These two things have gone hand in hand. The increase of cerebral surface, due to the working of natural selection in this direction alone, has entailed a vast increase in the amount of cerebral organization that must be left to be completed after birth, and thus has prolonged the period of infancy. And conversely the prolonging of the plastic period of infancy, entailing a vast increase in teachableness and versatility, has contributed to the further enlargement of the cerebral surface. The mutual reaction of these two groups of facts must have gone on for an enormous length of time since man began thus diverging from his simian brethren. It is not likely that less than a million years have elapsed since the first page of this new chapter in the history of creation was opened: it is probable that the time has been much longer. In comparison with such a period, the whole recorded duration of human history shrinks into nothingness. The pyramids of Egypt seem like things of yesterday when we think of the Cave-Men of western Europe in the glacial period, who scratched pictures of mammoths on pieces of reindeer-antler with a bit of pointed flint. Yet during an entire geologic æon before these Cave-Men appeared on the scene, "a being erect upon two legs," if we may quote from Serjeant Buzfuz, "and wearing the outward semblance of a man and not of a monster," wandered hither and thither over the face of the earth, setting his mark upon it as no other creature yet had done, leaving behind him innumerable tell-tale remnants of his fierce and squalid existence, yet too scantily endowed with wit to make any written disclosure of his thoughts and deeds. If the physiological annals of that long and weary time could now be unrolled before us, the principal fact which we should discern, dominating all other facts in interest and significance, would be that mutual reaction between increase of cerebral surface and lengthening of babyhood which I have here described.

Thus through the simple continuance and interaction of processes that began far back in the world of warm-blooded animals, we get at last a creature essentially different from all others. Through the complication of effects the heaping up of minute differences in degree has ended in bringing forth a difference in kind. In the human organism physical variation has well-nigh stopped, or is confined to insignificant features, save in the grey surface of the cerebrum. The work of cerebral organization is chiefly completed after birth, as we see by contrasting the smooth ape-like brain-surface of the new-born child with the deeply-furrowed and myriad-seamed surface of the adult civilized brain. The plastic period of adolescence, lengthened in civilized man until it has come to cover more than one third of his lifetime, is thus the guaranty of his boundless progressiveness. Inherited tendencies and aptitudes still form the foundations of character; but individual experience has come to count as an enormous factor in modifying the career of mankind from generation to generation. It is not too much to say that the difference between man and all other living creatures, in respect of teachableness, progressiveness, and individuality of character, surpasses all other differences of kind that are known to exist in the universe.

VII.

Change in the Direction of the Working of Natural Selection.