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THE UNIVERSE AND LIFE

VOLUMES PUBLISHED BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY

PRESS ON THE DWIGHT HARRINGTON

TERRY FOUNDATION

Concerning Evolution.

By J. Arthur Thomson.

* Evolution in Science and Religion.
By Robert Andrews MiUikan.

The Self: Its Body and Freedom.
By William Ernest Hocking.

Fate and Freedom.

By Henry Norris Russell.

Science and Personality.
By William Brown.

Nature: Cosmic, Human and Divine.
By James Young Simpson.

Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion
for the Modern World.
By Wm. Pepperell Montague.

The Open World: Three Lectures on the
Metaphysical Implications of Science.
By Hermann Weyl.

/ /

THE UNIVERSE
AND LIFE

H. S. JENNINGS

HENRY WALTERS PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY AND

DIRECTOR OF THE ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN • YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright 1933 by Yale University Press.
Printed in the United States of America.

First published, September, 1933.
Second printing, January, 1934.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in
whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers for the
public press), without written permission from the publishers.

CONTENTS

I. The Nature and Potentialities of the Uni-
verse as Revealed by the Study of Bi-
ology. The Production of New and Un-
predictable Phenomena as Time Passes,
including Life and Mind .... 1

II. The Nature of the Universe as Revealed by
the Study of Biology, continued. Produc-
tion of New Methods of Action as Well as
of New Mental Phenomena. Nature of
Evolutionary Progress 33

III. The Management of Life 67

43209

THE NATURE AND POTENTIALITIES OF
THE UNIVERSE AS REVEALED BY THE
STUDY OF BIOLOGY. THE PRODUCTION
OF NEW AND UNPREDICTABLE PHE-
NOMENA AS TIME PASSES, INCLUDING
LIFE AND MIND.

IN undertaking, at the invitation of Yale University,
to give the Terry Lectures having the general sub-
ject, "Religion in the Light of Science and Philoso-
phy," I must let you know at the beginning what I
understand to be the purpose of the lectures, and what,
therefore, I shall try to do.

I shall assume that by religion we mean, for the pur-
pose of these lectures, an attempt to get a unified view
of the universe, including man ; a unified view that will
include the bearings of this unified outlook on the
problems of human conduct. I assume that there is no
presupposition as to the nature of the views that will
be presented ; that there is no presumption that they
must agree with any views now held under the name of
rehgion or under other names. In past years these
lectures have been given successively by a physicist, by
an astronomer, by men in other branches of science.
This year a biologist is chosen to present them. The
intention of thus selecting men from the different sci-
ences is, as I understand it, to bring before you the
outlook on the world and man that arises through de-

2 The Universe and Life

votion to a particular science, through examination
of a particular aspect of the universe. Each lecturer is
to serve as a sample, a specimen, of the results which
follow from devoting one's life mainly to a certain field
of study. This I take to be one of the main purposes of
the lectures : they are to give specimens of the main
types of outlook on life and the universe that arise in
individuals working in different fields. In the present
case, therefore, I am to serve as a specimen of the
biologists. I am to present a sample of the results that
follow — or that may follow — from devoting one's life
to the study of living things.

Of course a specimen is of no use at all unless it is
genuine. One must present the views to which he has
come just as they are, without holding back anything
that may offend his hearers ; without any omissions or
concessions that are based on conventionalities or that
are designed to disarm criticism or opposition ; other-
wise, the sample is worthless. I shall try to follow these
maxims.

And further there must be no striving for novelty or
originality at the expense of soundness or sincerity.
If the truth is what one is seeking, one cannot reject it
because someone else has recognized it or spoken it.
It is one's own in the sense that it is the product of
one's own experience and thought. But one cannot
hope nor wish to be the only person that recognizes
the truth. All that one can attempt is to express what
seems to him true, irrespective of whether it has or has
not seemed true to anyone else. After a lifetime spent
in a science, working on the questions that are set by

Nature of the Universe 3

the period in which one's life falls, working in ac-
cordance with the modes and presuppositions and
limitations of that period, at last one wishes to look
over the whole, quite irrespective of these modes and
presuppositions and Hmitations ; one wishes to come to
some preliminary conclusions. Whether these are novel
or entertaining or satisfactory to others, whether they
agree with the tone of the period in science or else-
where— all this is quite irrelevant ; one merely wishes
to discover what seems vahd. It is such preliminary
conclusions that I shall bring before you. I shall state
these conclusions as definitely and clearly as I can,
not asserting them dogmatically to be correct, but in
order, if possible, to avoid misunderstanding as to
their meaning.

Possibly it will turn out that, in the opinion of some
of you, what this particular specimen shows is merely
how unsatisfactory and objectionable is the outlook to
which one comes — at least to which one person has
come — ^through the study of biology. But I must re-
mind you that, even so, the specimen will have served
its purpose ; and this is a great comfort to the lecturer.
He will at least have shown to what sort of errors the
study of biology may lead. I must beg of you to keep
in mind at all times my function as a specimen ; it cov-
ers a multitude of sins.

The purpose of these lectures then will be to try to
show what positive outlook on life and the world is
given by the study of biological science ; and how this
differs, if at all, from the outlook based on physics, or
from the outlook presented in some of the religions of

4 The Universe and Life

the world. We shall have to sketch some of the main
features of those aspects of the universe that the bi-
ologist studies ; the main features of the world of Hf e.
We shall try to see the relations of the world of Hfe
to the rest of the universe, and what light this casts
on the nature of things in general. In connection with
this we shall be forced into certain critical remarks on
some of the practices and conclusions of science ; and
also on some of the ideas and practices that are con-
spicuous in some of the religions of the world. And"
finally we shall try to see the bearings of all these
things on the problems of human conduct and on our
attitude toward life and the world.

At the beginning I feel driven to confess that the
task of presenting a satisfying unified account of the
world and of what goes on in it seems to me very much
the sort of task that Alice would have had, if, after
her adventures in Wonderland, she were required to
present a satisfactory unified account of that realm.
The farther one goes into life and the universe, the
more of a wonderland one finds them ; the more arbi-
trary and unexpected and improbable become the
things that take place in them. And the more hopeless
becomes the prospect of giving any thoroughgoing
satisfactory or intelligible account of them, of dis-
covering what men think they want when they call for
an explanation of them. One cannot be surprised that
the wise men of a previous generation — a Huxley, a
Leslie Stephen — merely formulated this conviction of
the general arbitrariness and ultimate inexplicability

Nature of the Universe
of things into a doctrine and gave it a Greek name-

a Greek name that sounds learned and profound, but
that means merely ignorance. I am sure that if Alice
had been compelled to formulate her philosophy of
Wonderland, she would have called it Agnosticism,
which means "I don't understand it at all."

Nevertheless, there are certain things that we can
do with this confusing world, which help us in dealing
with it. We can observe carefully the things that hap-
pen in it ; we can record them and compare them. We
can intervene in them ourselves, we can change the
situation of things and discover what happens then;
this we call experimenting. We thus discover under
what conditions certain things occur ; and what differ-
ences in the results follow from changing the condi-
tions in certain ways. We thus discover that there are
certain uniformities, certain constancies in the chang-
ing world. We find that we can, to some extent, classify
things and events and their dependence on conditions.
In consequence, we can generalize, we can state what
we call rules or laws ; that is, we can make statements
which include several or many things or events in a
single proposition. We can say not merely that this
object gravitates toward the earth, but that all objects
(or at least many of them) gravitate together. We
can say, not only that the hereditary characteristics
of the fruit fly depend on the nature of its chromo-
somes, but also that the hereditary characteristics of
man and most other animals and plants depend on
their chromosomes. We can further make inferences
from what we observe, draw conclusions from them;

6 The Universe and Life

and some of these inferences we can test, and discover
either that they are true or that they are not true.^

As a result of all this, the original chaotic wonder-
land becomes to our minds in some degree ordered and
simplified. All this is what we call science. Science is
man's attempt, in the way I have sketched, to order
and formulate his experiences. He is compelled to ac-
cept the experiences that come to him, and he must
order and formulate them only in ways that accord
with critical observation and experimentation ; and in
such a manner that the formulations can be tested and
verified. It is in the light of the results of this process
that we are to try here to sketch a general outlook on
the universe.

To observe, to generalize, to make inferences and
to test these inferences — all these, if soundly per-
formed, are included in what we may call positive sci-
ence, the assured results of scientific inquiry. But in
our present enterprise we are venturing beyond these
limits. In trying to get a general view of things, we
are forced to make some inferences that cannot be
tested. So far as we do this, we cannot present the con-
clusions we thus reach as positive science, we can

1 There is a great difficulty with our generalizations in that we do
not know how broad to make them ; we do not know how much they
cover. The man of science studies a particular phenomenon as rep-
resentative of a class ; he hopes that what is true of this will be true
of all the class. But what the limits of the class are is not known.
Everything differs in some respect from everything else, and we
are not certain what consequences may result from the actual di-
versities till we have tried them. And to try the consequences of all
diversities is not possible. This results in making doubtful or errone-
ous many of the general conclusions of science.

Nature of the Universe 7

present them only as inferences that are based upon
positive science and are consistent with it.

One further prehminary point is of great impor-
tance for understanding what I shall try to present.
If we are to keep in the spirit of science, we must
make only inferences of the same kind that we make in
positive science, though these inferences may reach
out into regions in which it is not possible to test them.
This means, in the main, that we must try to limit our-
selves to drawing conclusions as to the extension, in
space and time, of the same types of things that are
observed and dealt with in positive science. For ex-
ample, we shall have to talk of the probable future of
life on the earth and of life elsewhere, and of the
changes that life may undergo. To limit our conclu-
sions in this way will be our ideal ; it limits our under-
taking in very definite ways.

But keeping within these limits, I am myself con-
vinced that the study of biology, the study of living
things in their relation to the world, does lead to a
definite positive outlook on the matters which we have
suggested as included in religion. It does help, it seems
to me, in getting a unified view of the universe and of
man in his relations with it. It adds some things of
great importance to the view of things which physics
presents to us. And it helps particularly in the prob-
lems of managing life, the problems of conduct, and
in determining our attitude toward the world. In or-
der to bring out this outlook and its suggestions, we
shall devote ourselves, in this lecture and the next, to
outlining a picture of what biology shows us ; to the

8 The Universe and Life

important and distinctive features of the world that
are discovered through the study of living things.

What outlook on the world, then, does one get by
the study of biology ?

The materials of biological science — those constitu-
ents and aspects of the universe to which the biologist
devotes himself — differ so conspicuously from the ma-
terials of physical science that men have found it diffi-
cult to conceive the two as parts of the same universe.
Often the physicist's materials are alone taken as con-
stituting the "real" universe. On the other hand, some
have ascribed reality only to the distinctive matters
with which the biologist deals. What sort of an outlook
do we get if we include both in our view.^^

The special peculiarities of the material studied by
the biologist are seen in the fact that it is this material
that asks the questions : What outlook on the universe
does the study of biology yield .^^ And what is the rela-
tion of this to the outlook presented by the great reU-
gions ? And it is the biologist's material that attempts
to answer these questions. And again, it is from an
examination of this biological material, which asks and
answers these questions, that the biologist is to get his
answer to these questions. The biologist is his own
material — not all of it, but a sample of it. I am bio-
logical material; you are biological material. This
lecture, with myself expounding and yourselves lis-
tening and questioning and criticizing, is a typical
biological phenomenon. It is things of this sort, among
many others, that the biologist examines.

Nature of the Universe 9

When you consider this, you see that the biologist
has access to his material in two ways. On the one hand,
he examines it as does the physicist his material ; he
observes it, experiments with it, analyzes it, deter-
mines its physical texture and properties, its chemical
nature. He captures a frog, dissects it, makes muscle
preparations, times their contractions, measures the
elasticity of the material, studies the proteins of which
the muscle is composed. He collects beetles and butter-
flies, pins them in a box and shows them to his friends.
He gets a group of Homo sapiens into a room and
watches their behavior while he lectures to them.

On the other hand, the biologist has a more intimate
access to a certain sample of his material, for he is
himself that sample. Through this fact he discovers
certain things about the materials of biological science
that he cannot discover by the other method alone. He
may, for example, discover that while the sample is
lecturing to the group of Homo sapiens, it is worried
and doubtful as to the reception of what it says. At
other times, he finds that the sample is relieved and
comfortable and happy. In short, he finds that the
things to be studied by the biologist include emotions,
sensations, impulses, desires. And they include ideas,
thoughts, purposes, interest in the rest of the world.
The biological specimen plays the part, not only of an
actor in the world, but also of an interested spectator
of the rest of the world. The specimen observes the
world, analyzes it, asks questions about it and tries to
answer them. It generalizes, forms theories, devises
systems of philosophy and religion.

10 The Universe and Life

Thus the biologist has two sets of data, discovered
in somewhat different ways, one set being discoverable
only through the fact that the biologist is himself a
biological specimen. We shall require some brief
method of distinguishing the two ways of discovering
facts about biological material. For this purpose I
shall use the common words outer and inner. We shall
call the method of observing other things and other in-
dividuals, as the physicist does, the outer view ; while
discovering things through the fact that the biologist
is himself a biological specimen, we shall call the inner
view. And we shall call the things discovered by the
outer view, the physical phenomena or aspects, while
for the things that are discoverable only by the inner
view — by being one's self a biological specimen — we
shall use the word mental. There are objections to all
these terms, but they may serve. Under the mental,
therefore, we shall include sensations, feelings, de-
sires, purposes, thoughts, and kindred phenomena.
Whether the two sets of data — the physical and the
mental — differ in some other fundamental way, so
that they can be said to be different in kind, is a matter
with which we need not concern ourselves. The verifi-
able fact is that the two sets of data exist, and that
they are discovered in somewhat different ways.

These two sets of data then are the materials with
which the biologist has to deal. But with relation to
them, an extraordinary situation has arisen in biologi-
cal science; a situation that must excite surprise in
anyone who is not a technical biologist ; but a situation
which one must have in mind if he is to understand the

Nature of the Universe 11

world picture that is often presented in the name of
biological science. This remarkable situation lies in the
fact that many biologists — perhaps most biologists —
completely ignore the set of data acquired through the
fact that the man of science is himself a biological
specimen ; completely ignore the sensations, emotions,
desires, thoughts, and the like, which each of us dis-
covers in himself. There is a class of biologists, called
psychologists, who, in the past, have had the job of
dealing precisely with these inner or mental phe-
nomena. But even the psychologists have of late shown
a tendency to shirk this job; a tendency to devote
themselves exclusively to the outer view of living
things. And in the minds of many biologists, their sci-
ence is, as it were, defined as deahng only with things
that can be discovered without consulting one's own
private experiences as a biological specimen. Data
that are discovered in this latter way, things found by
the inner view, are simply omitted from consideration,
as if they formed no part of the universe.

The reasons for this situation He partly in certain
theories, but mainly in practical considerations and in
certain technical difficulties. The data gathered from
self-examination by the biological specimen turn out
to be extremely difficult to deal with in a scientific way ;
extremely difficult to formulate and generalize about
and draw conclusions from. Men have despaired of
discovering the conditions and course and conse-
quences of these inner phenomena, have despaired of
treating them with exactitude and reducing them to a
system. And so they have decided to ignore them ; to

12 The Universe and Life

act as if the universe did not contain them. They think
of science as organized knowledge; as knowledge re-
duced to a system, and since they are not able to reduce
these things to a system, it is concluded that they are
not material for science. In consequence, the sensa-
tions, desires, emotions, and thoughts that are so vivid
in what the biological specimen observes in himself are
considered matters with which science has notliing
to do.

Now this is all very well for certain practical pur-
poses ; it is all very well if the purpose is to pick up as
much useful detailed knowledge as quickly as one can.
But it will never do if the purpose is to present an ade-
quate picture of living things and of the phenomena
that belong to life. Men have of course a right to limit
their efforts as they will, and biologists may properly
limit their study of life to things of a certain kind.
They may, if they choose, exclude from consideration
this great field of the inner experiences. But it is clear
that when they have done this, they are no longer in a
position to give an adequate picture of the nature of
life. Biological science, defined as limited to the things
discovered in the outer view, does not even attempt to
give a complete picture of what occurs in living things.
It deals with only a part of the subject. Biological
science conceived in this limited way, dealing only
with certain selected aspects and phenomena of living
things, is in no position to speak for biology at large.
It is in no position to paint for us such a picture of life
and of the universe containing life as a consideration
of all the phenomena of biology must yield.

Nature of the Universe 13

Many biologists forget this, they forget the fact
that they have deliberately restricted their observa-
tion and reasoning to a certain group of phenomena.
Ignoring this restriction, they speak positively for
biological material in the unrestricted sense. They
thus present an imperfect and essentially unsound and
incorrect picture of the world of living things. The
picture that is thus given is fundamentally different
from the picture that is obtained when we include all
the phenomena ; when we include sensations, emotions,
ideas, and other mental characteristics.

For the understanding of the present lectures, it is
important to grasp clearly the fact that such a course
of action, such an ignoring of the inner phenomena of
life, appears to the lecturer to vitiate many of the
conclusions drawn by biological investigators and
indeed to lead to fundamental errors. When the pur-
pose is, as in the present lectures, to give a general
picture of biological things in their relation to the
rest of the world, we must include what we discover
through both methods of approach. The things we
discover through the fact that you and I are biologi-
cal specimens must be considered on the same basis as
the data obtained in other ways.

This is not the only example in science of exclud-
ing from consideration certain kinds of data. It is
sometimes urged that only what is quantitative is
science; all qualitative differences and changes fall
outside its scope. Or again we are told that only
matter in motion, only mechanism, or only energy,
constitutes the field of science ; that all experiences or

14 The Universe and Liee

phenomena that go beyond these are excluded from
science.

It is important to reahze, what is often forgotten,
that such limitations of the field of science must make
the picture of reality that science attempts to give in-
complete and therefore misleading. Whoever excludes
from science any class of the data of experience
thereby proclaims that science cannot present an ade-
quate picture of reality. This is something that one
must keep in mind in judging the attempts of men of
science to portray the nature of reality or of the uni-
verse, for such attempts are often made after entire
fields of experience have been excluded from con-
sideration. It is the Nemesis of the struggle for ex-
actitude by the man of science, that it leads him to
present a mutilated, merely fractional account of the
world as a true and complete picture. Only if the field
of science is taken to include all experience can science
aspire to present an adequate picture of the world.

We shall therefore include as biology not only the
data obtained by observing other individuals and
things, but also those that we reach through the fact
that we are ourselves biological specimens. We shall
include the mental as well as the physical.

And when we do this, the great fact, the striking
and characteristic feature of the biologist's picture
of the world, is that biological materials include sen-
sations, emotions, desires, hopes and fears, purposes,
ideas, interest, thought, imagination, knowledge.
Whatever else the universe may be, it is something
that brings forth these things. The universe is a sys-

Nature of the Universe 15

tern that produces the kind of thing of which the
physicist and biologist are samples, of which you and
I are samples, including all that we are, all that we
experience.

Anyone who tries to make for himself a picture of
the world must reckon with this fact. This universe is
one that brings forth life, and life includes the inner
experiences that we have just mentioned.

When, therefore, we think of electrons, protons,
neutrons, atoms, or other elementary constituents of
things, our idea of them is incomplete and inadequate
in most fundamental ways if we do not include in
their properties the production of life when they be-
come combined in certain ways. Among their proper-
ties is the production of sensations, emotions, thought,
of all the diversified mental experiences which belong
to living things, to men. When a group of the ele-
mentary particles become joined in certain ways,
under certain conditions, they begin to feel, to have
knowledge, and to think. This property of the ele-
mentary particles could indeed not be known until it
was manifested, until they did become combined in
such ways as to produce life ; but when that occurs, it
shows one of the fundamental facts about them, one
of the fundamental things about the universe. Life
and sensation and thought are not things apart, prop-
erties of some extra-mundane spectator of a universe
that does not include them; things to be left out of
account in the picture of reality, as we sometimes find
to be the practice.

On the contrary, life, with its sensations, emotions,

16 The Universe and Life

and the rest, is a constituent feature of the universe
on the same basis of reahty and "naturalness" as its
other features; something that reveals its nature as
do its other constituents. Any discussion of the nature
of the universe, any picture of its activities that
leaves this out of account, is preposterously incom-
plete, inadequate, and misleading. The universe is
a system that brings forth life, sensation, emotion,
thought. This will be the keynote of our presentation.

In another respect the material studied by the bi-
ologist reveals features that are of the highest inter-
est for our understanding of the nature of things.
Viewed either from without or from within, biologi-
cal material is not "running down" but "running
up." It is developing instead of degenerating. The ac-
tivities of the material which the physicist observes,
we are told (in some quarters at least), are running
down; are becoming continually more diffused, less
contrasted. Its structure and behavior are becoming,
on the whole, less complex, less definite. The end that
is in sight is a universe of diffused particles, in which
nothing occurs but a faint quivering. The physicist's
material is dominated by the generalized second law
of thermodynamics ; in it energy passes, on the whole,
from regions of higher intensity to regions of lower
intensity. Consequently, energy becomes continually
more diffused and equalized, material structures be-
come less sharply defined, until ultimately there must
occur a uniform distribution of matter and energy in
which nothing happens.

Nature or the Universe 17

The biologist's material, on the other hand, is that
part of the universe that is not dominated by the
second law of thermodynamics. In it energy passes
from regions of low intensity to regions of high in-
tensity. Simpler and less differentiated materials
build themselves up into complex highly diversified
structures with strongly marked and varied activities.
Biological material is developing ; producing the more
complex, the more diversified, the more definite, from
that which is simple, uniform, and undefined. Such
changes are seen daily in the development of an egg
into an adult. They occur in a great historical se-
quence, extending through ages, in the process of
organic evolution.

There is then a part of the natural world, a part
of the universe, that develops and builds itself into
more complex structures. And this development shows
other special features that are of the highest interest
for our outlook on the world.

But before we pass to these, certain relations be-
tween development in biology and degradation in
physics require consideration. The building up of
biological material is done at the expense of a deg-
radation of physical material. The building up of
plants on the earth is made possible by the dissipation
— the loss — of radiative energy from the sun. The
building up of animals is made possible by the dis-
integration of the materials of plants and thus, sec-
ondarily, by the dissipation of the sun's energy. In
all this building up of biological material, the quan-
tity of physical material degraded, the quantity of

18 The Universe and Life

energy dissipated, is greater than the quantity of
biological material built up.

Thus if these are the only processes that occur, and
if the universe is finite in the quantity of material
and energy it contains, the general result of the two
processes together is a lowering of the level of the
whole. The universe, taken as containing both bio-
logical and physical material, would then, on the
whole, be running down. The process of building up
biological material at the expense of physical ma-
terial could not, therefore, go on forever. So, on these
assumptions, the building up of biological material
must in time come to an end. The universe as a whole
would eventually become inactive, dead; life would
cease.

But it is not certain that these assumptions are
correct. Of late we hear again of the infinity of the
universe as a popular doctrine in physics. If the
universe is quantitatively infinite, there is the possi-
bility of unending development of living things. And
we have seen, in the reports of the recent meetings of
the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, that there are physicists who hold it prob-
able that, even in physical material, processes of up-
building occur which are not overbalanced by com-
pensating breakdown. If this turns out to be the
case, biological development may continue without
end. In the present state of physics, no one can say
that the development of life may not continue indefi-
nitely.

Nature of the Universe 19

Only a minute fraction of the universe, it appears,
has as yet brought forth life. The elementary con-
stituents of the universe, it is certain, are of such a
nature that they can and do bring forth life when
combined in certain ways. But in only a very small
proportion of them have these combinations thus far
been formed. Even on our earth, it is but a thin rind
that has brought forth life. And, according to the
views of some modern astronomers, the conditions for
life seem to be present in but few of the heavenly
bodies. Yet since the constituents of the universe are
of a nature to produce life when rightly combined,
the remainder, or some part of the remainder, need
but enter into such combinations in order to bring
forth life on a vaster scale than has yet occurred.

But it is not the present quantity of life, nor even
its unending continuance, that is the chief interest
for our outlook on the world. Rather is the interest
in the nature of the processes that occur in the living
material. What is development.? What sort of things
are taking place in the development of living beings ?
Is development a bringing forth of things that are
new, or is it the mere operation of a machine .^^ Is the
living world embarking on a new adventure, or is it
merely treading a mill, following a pattern that exists
beforehand .f^ Are the heights to which life rises in
evolution new heights not before reached, or does
there already exist something higher, an ultimate
goal toward which it is all tending.? These are ques-

20 The Universe and Life

tions which we wish to examine. To judge of them, we
must look now at some features in the rising tide of
life.

Development occurs both in the outwardly ob-
servable physical features of living things, and in
those inner characteristics which we discover through
the fact that we are ourselves biological specimens. In
the outwardly observable features, we find that the
structures and the physiological activities become, as
time passes, more and more complex and diversified.
At first the living material is relatively simple,
amoeba-like. Later it becomes complicated ; it trans-
forms into the higher plants and animals. And as it
transforms, both its structure and its activities be-
come in a high degree regulatory or adaptive. The
activities of the organism are carried on under the
stress and pressure of the surrounding physical con-
ditions. The organism indeed lives and acts through
and by means of the physical elements and condi-
tions ; it is itself an integrated group of such elements
and conditions ; it is, as it were, a whirlpool through
which they flow. Under the accidents and changes of
the physical conditions, the organism does not dis-
integrate ; it maintains its unity, its individuality. It
turns aside or opposes the currents of physical action
in such a way as to maintain its structures and its
essential internal processes. It exercises a selective
action, admitting those elements and conditions that
are favorable to its life processes, rejecting or fleeing
from those that are unfavorable. In doing this the
organism produces, as time passes, complex machine-

Nature of the UNm:RSE 21

like structures that operate to bring about such
regulatory results : tubes for carrying nutrient fluids,
cords for conveying impulses from one part of the
body to another, and a thousand other such arrange-
ments.

Many of these structures are such as to bring
about a correspondence between things that occur
inside the body of the organism, and those that take
place outside in the surrounding world. The living
thing develops the power to move away from condi-
tions that affect unfavorably its inner life processes
and to seek and hold conditions that are favorable. It
develops external and internal structures that regis-
ter the events that occur : the external events that act
on it, and the reactions that these induce in the or-
ganism itself. It develops sense organs, eyes, and ears
that register the outer events ; nerves, brain, and
other parts that mediate between the external and
the internal events and that register the organism's
responses to the outer events. Its internal constitu-
tion thus comes to depend on the environmental con-
ditions to which the organism has been subjected and
on the responses that it has given to those conditions.
In consequence, its present activity comes to be domi-
nated in large measure by past conditions and past
reactions. There is a tendency in the universe toward
uniformity in the sequence of conditions and results ;
given conditions now tend to produce the same results
that they produced at an earlier occurrence. Through
this tendency toward uniformity in the outer world,
it becomes possible for the organism to become pre-

22 The Universe and Life

pared to meet situations that have not yet arrived ; it
takes measures that avoid a later danger or that seize
a later benefit. The moUusk that reacts to a shadow as
it does to an attack, the rat that avoids a trap, the
author that prepares a paper for publication, the
statesman that guides a nation to a higher state of
culture — ^these illustrate those features of biological
material just described.

Thus in the externally observable structures and
activities of organisms there are progressive changes
which lead to greater complexity, adequacy, adap-
tiveness.

And along with these, closely correlated with them,
occur other changes that are discovered through the
fact that the biologist is himself a biological speci-
men ; through the fact that the biologist that studies
is a piece of the same material of which are composed
the living things that he studies. When in develop-
ment the organism reaches some degree of elabora-
tion, it has sensations, it feels. As development goes
farther and the living things become more complex
and diversified in structure, the sensations, feelings,
and other inner experiences also become more elabo-
rate and diversified. New mental experiences are
added; the mental experiences become in a high de-
gree complex and differentiated. These inner phe-
nomena are highly correlated, not only with the
physical make-up of the organism, but also with the
physical conditions and changes that act on the
organism from outside. A correspondence is induced
between these inner processes — that we can discover

Nature of the Universe 23

only by being an organism — and the processes in the
outer physical world. A sort of reflection of the outer
world is generated in what we call knowledge. In con-
nection particularly with long-range regulatory ac-
tion— that is, in preparing for events that have not
yet arrived — the process we call thinking occurs. The
correspondence between the direct inner experiences
of the organism in thought and the changes occur-
ring in the outer physical material may become so
adequate that thinking may yield truth about the
outer world. That is, the biological specimen asks
questions about the outer world and sometimes may
answer them correctly, through taking thought,
without subjecting itself to the conditions to which
the questions refer. At this stage in development, the
biological specimen has purposes, plans their ac-
comphshment, meditates on the world ; discusses such
questions as religion from the point of view of science.
This process of development, double in aspect,
must stir interest and astonishment. It seems to pro-
duce the living from the lifeless; the feeling and
knowing from the unconscious and inert. It seems to
bring forth totally new things, not foreshadowed in
what went before. Does it actually do these things.'^
And in particular, what is the role of the inner
things; sensations, feelings, ideas? Do these affect or
change the outer things, the movements that occur,
the behavior of things ? Are these inner things active
agents in the developmental process.^ To these ques-
tions as to the essential nature of development, we
now turn.

24 The Universe and Life

It is clear that the characteristic phenomena of liv-
ing things, both "inner" and "outer" come forth pro-
gressively. Calling, for brevity's sake, these char-
acteristic phenomena life, we may say that life is not
some single definite thing, existing once and for all.
On the contrary, it is at first a relatively simple
thing; which indeed at an earlier period apparently
did not exist at all but came into being at a particu-
lar time — a point to which we return. But, in any
case, the relatively simple life of early periods does
not remain what it was but changes, becomes some-
thing else. It alters quantitatively, passing from con-
ditions of simphcity and diffusiveness to complexity
and definiteness.

And more important, it alters qualitatively, in the
sensations, feelings, and other phenomena that are
directly experienced — the phenomena that we call
mental. New sensations, new emotions appear as de-
velopment proceeds to higher grades. Ideas arise. The
inner life becomes highly diversified. In its later
grades it contains much that was not present at
earlier periods. Does development then produce what
is really new.^ Is life indeed upon a new adventure .f^

Into this particular question we must now inquire
with care. And first we must ask : What of the begin-
ning of Hie?

Did life always exist? Or was there a time when
there was no life ; so that life must have begun at a
certain time ? Did life come into the universe as some-
thing new.?

Our usual practice imphes that it did. We are ac-

Nature of the Universe 25

customed in biology to distinguish between living
things and material that is not Hving. A man, a dog,
a plant, a bacterium — these are living. But a stone,
a gas, a mass of molten iron, a burning vapor — these,
according to our usual judgment, are not living. It is
true that there exist also certain things about which
we may be in doubt as to whether they should be
considered living or not living. Such are enzymes,
such are filtrable viruses. But as between marked
cases, as between a man and a stone, as between a bird
and a mass of molten iron, there is, in our usual way
of viewing these matters, no doubt ; one is living, the
other is not. We are accustomed, too, to see the living
transformed by certain conditions into the non-living.
On this basis, we are accustomed, as a result of ob-
servation and experiment, to distinguish conditions in
which life may occur from conditions that are incom-
patible with life. We find and report in our scientific
papers that there are many conditions under which
life cannot exist. Indeed, we find and report that life
does occur only under a narrow range of conditions.
You may find the conditions which limit the occur-
rence of life enumerated in any textbook of physi-
ology. Among the conditions which are experimentally
incompatible with life are high and low temperatures,
certain chemical conditions, and a large class of
physical conditions. If we subject living things to
these conditions, all the characteristic phenomena of
life, including the mental phenomena, disappear, and
we say that our material is no longer living.

Are these statements correct .'^ Does our distinction

26 The Uniyerse and Life

between what is living and what is not living mean
anything? Has our enumeration of conditions under
which life can occur any significance? If so, if these
statements and distinctions are valid, this fact is of
vast import for our understanding of the nature of
the world and the world process.

For we discover that there was a time in the history
of our solar system when the physical conditions were
such that life could not exist. This has indeed been
the history not only of the solar system, but of all
parts of the universe. There was an early period in
which the physical and chemical conditions were of
the kind in which life does not occur. If we now ex-
periment with such conditions, we find that they de-
stroy hfe. Both the outer phenomena and the inner
experiences of life disappear under the conditions
that prevailed at earlier epochs.

If the distinctions that we make in our books of
physiology between the living and the non-living are
valid, then life did not exist in those early periods.
Later, life appeared. Therefore it came into existence
at a particular time, when the conditions and com-
binations occurred that permit and give origin to life.

I believe that we shall do best to hold that our usual
distinctions between the living and the non-living are
indeed sound and valid. We find them a necessity in
practice; without them, biological science becomes
nonsense. Assuming this distinction to be sound, we
must hold that, at an early period, life did not exist.
At first without life, the universe later produced it,
including both its outer aspects and its inner experi-

Nature of the Universe 27

ences. At a certain time, life came into a lifeless
world. At a certain time sensation, emotion, came into
a world that was without them.

The only alternative to this is to hold that there is
no distinction of living and non-living; to hold that
the statements in our scientific writings on this and
on the conditions necessary for life are meaningless
and incorrect; to hold that stones and molten or
gaseous metals are living; to hold that atoms and
electrons and protons and neutrons are in some sense
living. But even if we take this alternative, we do not
escape from the production of what is new as time
passes. The elemental life of electrons and atoms, if
there is such life, is clearly of a different type from
the organic life of plants, animals, men. No one can
hold that an electron or an atom has sensations of red
or blue, feelings of nausea, emotions of hope or fear,
ideas or purposes. Such hypothetical elemental life
does not include the phenomena that are character-
istic of life in its higher reaches. These phenomena
that are typical of higher life did not at a certain
time exist or occur. They came into existence only as
certain combinations of the materials of the universe
were made. The situation remains therefore in prin-
ciple the same, whether we do or do not attribute life
to molten metals and to atoms and electrons. In either
case phenomena characteristic of the higher reaches
of life at first did not exist and have later come into
existence.

Thus new things appear in the universe as time
passes and conditions change, new things of the very

28 The Universe and Life

greatest interest: a fact of capital importance. But
for its full significance, we must make certain other
inquiries concerning the appearance of life. Is the
later appearance of life, including its inner and outer
phenomena, a mere logical or computational outcome
of the conditions that preceded it, as the operation of
a machine is a consequence of the way the machine is
formed.^ Science, says Conan Doyle, has made the
universe "a mere clockwork mechanical wonder swing-
ing in a vast vacuum." Is this true of biological
science.^ The operation of the machine can be com-
puted and predicted beforehand from a knowledge of
its structure. Is this true of the appearance of life.^ Is
the development of life the mere operation of a ma-
chine, computable and predictable, from knowledge
of the machine before life appeared.^

Put more precisely, the question is as follows : The
materials of the solar or stellar systems at certain early
periods included none of the phenomena of life ; cer-
tainly none of the phenomena characteristic of the
higher forms of life. But what has happened since
shows that these materials were indeed such as could
and did give rise to the outer and inner phenomena of
life, after certain changes and recombinations had
occurred. Our question is: From the existence and
properties of the fiery mist of those early periods,
could the later appearance of life be predicted by
means of reasoning and computation .f^ Or, in the ap-
pearance and development of life, has something
fundamentally new appeared; something that could

Nature or the Universe 29

be known only by experiencing it ? The answer to this
question will be decisive for much of our attitude
toward the world.

Considering science as the formulating of experi-
ence, this question must be put as follows: Would
experience that was limited to the fiery mist as it
occurred in the early epochs make possible the pre-
diction of the outer and inner phenomena of life, its
activities and its sensations, emotions, mental experi-
ences ? Confronted with samples of that material, per-
ceiving the particles of which it was composed, their
velocities, directions of motion, and distribution in
space, could the investigator hope, by logic and the
aid of an unlimited computing machine, to compute
from its properties and distribution the later emer-
gence of life, including varied sensations, feelings,
ideas, and thoughts as they have later come forth?

This question can be answered only No ! From com-
putations that begin with particles, velocities, direc-
tions, distributions, there can emerge by computa-
tional and logical treatment only particles, velocities,
directions, distributions — never a sensation. A sensa-
tion of red does not logically or computationally follow
from an arrangement of particles in combination with
vibrations of a certain wave length. Not the hardiest
mechanist has attempted so to derive it. The approved
procedure is to "abstract from" sensations and other
inner experiences, to ignore them, to say that science
does not deal with them. The utmost that can be done
is to discover by experience that the sensation of red

30 The Universe and Life

does, in fact, occur when there are certain combina-
tions of particles and vibrations ; and to use that ex-
perienced fact, so discovered, in later predictions.

And what is true for red is true for other sensations
and feelings ; for mental experiences in general. Each
type is discovered by direct experience. None is
originally discoverable by computation or reasoning
from antecedently existing arrangements, velocities
and directions of particles, and wave lengths of vibra-
tions. All come into existence as certain combinations
of the physical constituents of the universe are
formed.

We have here one of the great fundamentals that
is discovered by the examination of biological ma-
terial. The universe is not given complete, once for
all. As time passes and conditions change, new, logi-
cally ultimate things come into existence ; things that
are discovered only by experiencing them, and that
could not be predicted from what has gone before.^
Development, as it occurs, includes the production of
what is in a real sense new. Sensations, emotions,

1 Well-known works dealing with the view that new and ultimate
phenomena arise in the process of evolution are: H. Bergson, Crea-
tive Evolution (New York, 1911) ; C. Lloyd Morgan, Emergent
Evolution (New York, 1926) and Life, Mind and Spirit (London,
1926); A. O. Lovejoy, The Discontinuities of Evolution, in the
"University of California Publications in Philosophy," V, 173-220;
W. E. Ritter, The Unity of the Organism, or the Organismal Con-
ception of Life (Boston, 1919). A worth-while critical discussion of
such doctrines is found in William McDougall's Modern Material-
ism and Emergent Evolution (New York, 1929). The subject was
discussed by the present author in the last chapter of his book The
Biological Basis of Human Nature (New York, 1930).

Nature of the Universe 31

knowledge, purposes, ideas, ideals, were earlier not
existent; later they exist. At first without life, the
universe produces it, including its outer aspects and
its inner experiences. In other words, the lifeless uni-
verse comes to life ; at first dead and inert, it begins
to become conscious of itself, it begins to feel, to
think, to have ideas and purposes and ideals. This
constitutes one of the main features of the biological
picture of the universe.

Next we must inquire into the consequences of this
coming to life and consciousness. Is the production of
what is new hmited to the things of the inner experi-
ence.^ Or do these things, when they appear, alter the
movements, the chemical and physical processes that
occur ? If they do, then physical and chemical changes
occur in a different way after the appearance of
sensations, feelings, purposes; there is development
in the laws of movement as there is in things mental.
If they do, then mental things are important factors
in the progress of the universe. Are these things true.^
To these questions we turn in our next lecture.

II

THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE AS RE-
VEALED BY THE STUDY OF BIOLOGY
[Continued] . PRODUCTION OF NEW^ METH-
ODS OF ACTION AS V\^ELL AS OF NEV^
MENTAL PHENOMENA. NATURE OF EVO-
LUTIONARY PROGRESS.

IN our first lecture we concluded that, in view of the
facts of biology, the universe is not "a mere clock-
work mechanical wonder swinging in a vast vacuum,"
but is a system that, in the course of time, comes to
life. It begins to feel, to suffer, to enjoy, to be aware
of itself, to have ideas and plans. It develops. Its
course in development is not stereotyped, not me-
chanically and mathematically predictable. In giving
rise to mental phenomena, the universe produces
things that are new and ultimate, only known as they
occur and are experienced.

And now another question that is of fundamental
significance for our picture of the universe, for our
understanding of the nature of reality : Do these new
things make any difference to the course of events, to
the physical and chemical changes that occur, to the
movements that take place? Or are the feelings, ideas,
plans, purposes, when they come into existence, com-
pletely idle so far as the rest of the universe is con-
cerned? Is the production of what is new limited to
mental phenomena, everything else continuing as be-

34 The Universe and Life

fore? Or do sensations, feelings, purposes, and the
like, affect motions, behavior, arrangements of ma-
terials, structure? If they do, then physical and
chemical changes, motions, occur in a different way
after the appearance of mental phenomena. If they
do, then as time passes there is development in the
laws of motion; new laws of motion appear in later
periods of time; laws of motion that could not be
known or predicted from what happens in earher
periods. If this is the case, then the course of events
in later periods could not be computed from a knowl-
edge of the conditions in earlier periods. The behavior
of men, of yourself and myself, then could not be com-
puted and predicted from conditions occurring before
man existed — as some have suggested doing — because
the data for such a computation did not exist at that
early period. Is this really the case? Do new laws of
motion indeed occur as mental phenomena come into
existence? Do sensations, feelings, and purposes make
a difference to the events that occur ?

There is a doctrine that is widely held, under the
name of mechanism — a doctrine that is inclined to
present itself as the only legitimate offspring of
science — which assumes that new laws of motion do
not appear as time passes and new combinations
occur. Mechanism assumes that the laws of motion
exemplified in the movements of the elementary par-
ticles in the earliest periods of time are the only laws
of motion, and are the same laws that result in and
express all movements that occur in later periods, in-
cluding the movements of animals and men. Thus

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 35

from data existing at the earliest periods it would be
in principle possible to compute your behavior, my
behavior, the behavior of all men, the entire course of
human history. Sensations, emotions, desires, pur-
poses, and knowledge would not come into this com-
putation, so that when these things come into exist-
ence, from this point of view, they do not influence
the movements that occur ; for these movements could
be computed without taking them into consideration.
The same physical conditions, without the mental
states, this theory holds, would produce the same
behavior. The fact that I am hungry (that is, that I
have sensations of hunger) has nothing to do with
the fact that I eat; in general, the fact that hunger
occurs in the universe has nothing to do with the fact
that eating occurs in the universe. The fact that I
have some knowledge of biology has nothing to do
with the fact that I give lectures on that subject; I
would give exactly the same lectures if I had no such
knowledge. The opinions that I hold, the thinking I
have done, have nothing to do with what I am saying
to you. Such is the thoroughgoing doctrine of
mechanism.

Is this doctrine sound .^ Must we hold that feelings
and ideas and knowledge and purposes have no func-
tion in the world; that they make no difference to
what happens.? No question can be more important
for our outlook on the world. We shall therefore
examine in some detail this question, of the validity of
this widely accepted doctrine of mechanism.

Argumentation in support of this doctrine has

36 The Universe and Life

taken various forms. One line of argument is of a
strictly a priori character, not based upon experi-
ence or experimentation. There can be no functional
relations, no relations of cause and effect, it urges,
between things that are so totally different in kind as
are motions and emotions, as are particles and sensa-
tions, as are actions and thought. A wish, an idea,
cannot produce or change a motion, it is held, because
a wish or an idea is in its very essence a different kind
of a thing from a motion. And for the same reason, a
motion, a rise in temperature, any physical change,
cannot alter sensations, ideas, wishes.

But such an argument mistakes the nature of scien-
tific knowledge. Science is man's attempt to organize
his experiences, to formulate observed relations. It is
compelled to deal with many things that are ulti-
mate; things that are to be learned only by experi-
encing them. Its final foundation is critical observa-
tion and experimentation. To these it must be loyal
to the end, if it is indeed to present itself as a formu-
lation of experience. If it abandons them, it is lost ; it
then becomes merely one more system of metaphysics.

And critical observation and experimentation show
that mental states and physical conditions are not
independent. Heat and cold yield different sensa-
tions. Cutting the flesh with a knife yields very dif-
ferent sensations, emotions, and purposes from those
that occur when this physical change does not take
place. The physical objects that are present in a
room determine what we see, determine what sensa-
tions our eyes receive. No matter how refined the

Nature or Evolutionary Progress 37

technique and how critical the experimentation,
physical changes are found to give rise to changes in
sensations, emotions, desires, purposes, thoughts. A
formulation of experience that ignored or denied
these observational and experimental relations would
be a mere caricature, worthless as a guide to action
and ridiculous as a pretender to enlightenment. Our
inner experiences are not independent of outer occur-
rences.

This disposes, for science, of the a priori argument
that there can be no functional interrelations between
these two classes of things. Experimentally, observa-
tionally, there are functional relations ; and science is
but a formulation of relations discovered by observa-
tion and experiment. As investigation progresses, it
becomes more and more clear that to each type of
sensation or emotion or other inner experience there
corresponds functionally some type of physical con-
dition. When the typical physical condition is altered,
the mental experience is likewise altered.

But how then about the converse relation ? Do sen-
sations, emotions, purposes, thoughts, knowledge, and
the like, affect motion, physical conditions, behavior.?
Is it true that knowledge is power .^^ Is intelligence
indeed a guide to action .? Or have these things nothing
to do with our actions.?

The a priori argument that one of these sets of
things cannot affect the other, we have already seen
to be overthrown by the formulation of experience.
The experimentally demonstrated fact that physical

38 The Universe and Life

changes bring about mental changes shows that the
physical and mental are not independent. The physi-
cal does affect the mental. But is it also true that the
mental affects the physical ; that thoughts and pur-
poses and knowledge affect behavior.? Or is there
reason to suppose that the relation is all in one direc-
tion ; that physical things affect mental experiences,
but mental experiences do not affect physical things ?

This is for science exclusively a question for ex-
perience and experimentation. Every day experience
and laboratory experimentation agree in showing
that different actions do occur, following upon differ-
ent sensations, emotions, and opinions. If I purpose
to eat my dinner, my action is different from that
which follows upon a purpose to write a letter. If, in
my opinion. Hoover was a better man for President
than Roosevelt, my vote was different from what it
would have been if I had held the reverse opinion. If
spinach has a disagreeable taste to me, I decline to
eat it. No one doubts that action is in fact different,
following upon diverse mental states, different sensa-
tions, feelings, purposes, opinions.

The direct natural conclusion from this is the one
that is drawn in everyday life, namely, that these
things do affect action. The natural man supposes
that different sensations, different purposes, differ-
ent opinions, result in different actions ; that a change
of purpose or of opinion brings about a change of
action. He supposes that a man of knowledge has,
through his knowledge, an advantage in action over
an ignorant man. He supposes that a sensation of

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 39

pain causes one to withdraw from and avoid that
which produces the pain, while a sensation of pleasure
or comfort has the reverse effect.

But somewhat to the astonishment of the natural
man, the devotee of mechanism as a philosophy re-
jects these conclusions. He holds that sensations,
emotions, thoughts, purposes, and opinions have
nothing to do with action. He holds, as we have be-
fore remarked, that sensations of hunger and thirst
have nothing to do with eating and drinking. Sensa-
tions of cold do not influence our approach to the fire.
Our political sympathies and beliefs have nothing to
do with the way we vote. My thoughts and opinions
have nothing to do with what I say to you in these
lectures.

How does the mechanist escape from the natural
conclusion that sensations, purposes, and opinions
influence our actions .^^ He believes that he finds an
escape in certain relations between the physical and
the mental that we have already mentioned. When
different sensations, emotions, thoughts, and pur-
poses are present, there are characteristic different
physico-chemical conditions as well. When a sensa-
tion arises or changes, the physical condition of the
organism changes also; when any mental condition
alters, there is likewise an alteration in the physical
condition. I am physiologically different when I am
hungry, as compared with my condition when I am
filled. I am physically different when I think, as com-
pared with my condition when I do not think. When
an idea occurs to me, my body changes within.

40 The Universe and Life

Now, it is to this changed physical condition, not
to the changed sensation or other mental experience,
that the mechanist attributes the change in action.
When the hand is withdrawn from a flame, the with-
drawal is held to be due to the physical change in-
duced in the hand by the flame, to the cooking of the
skin, as it were, not to the sensation of heat or of pain.
The same type of explanation is to be employed, it is
held, in all cases of apparent influence of mental con-
dition on action. When one weeps on receiving news
of the death of a friend, this is not the result of emo-
tion but of some physical change in one's body, re-
sulting from the impact of the vibrations of which
the words embodying the news consist. When one
changes his vote after reading an economic discus-
sion, this is not due to increased knowledge or to
change of opinion but only to some physical conse-
quence of reading the discussion.

Such a view is so contrary to all the experience and
prejudices and practices of the natural man that he
is inclined to believe that it must be correct; other-
wise, no one would maintain such an apparent ab-
surdity. A preposterous opinion carries a certain
weight just because it is preposterous, for why should
anyone hold such a notion except because it is cor-
rect? But we must not allow ourselves to be imposed
upon by the mere apparent absurdity of a doctrine.
How shall we find out whether this opinion of the
mechanist is correct, as opposed to that of the natural
man? How shall we find out whether to attribute the
child's withdrawing his hand from the flame to the

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 41

pain or to the physical alteration in his finger in-
duced by the heat? How shall we find out whether my
change of vote is due to my change of opinion or only
to some physical change in my body?

The case for the mechanist would be proved if it
could actually be shown that from a knowledge of the
movements and distribution of particles at some
period before life appeared, my behavior, the be-
havior of all animals and men, the course of history,
could be correctly computed and predicted without
taking into account sensations, emotions, opinions,
knowledge. But no one claims that this has been done,
or ever will be done, or indeed that, in fact, it can be
done. The idea merely is that it would be possible if
there were a sufficient knowledge of the distribution
and movement of the particles at some early period,
provided one were a sufficiently competent computer.
But this is a mere supposition, totally unfulfilled; a
mere speculation. It forms no foundation for the
acceptance of a positive doctrine or for the dogmatic
teaching of that doctrine. As Bergson has well said,
the doctrine of mechanism involves the sacrifice of
experience to the requirements of a system. The
motivation of the doctrine is indeed a practical one —
the desire to simplify the task of science. The uni-
verse would be so much easier to deal with if the laws
of its action were simple and uniform. Let us assume
therefore that they are simple and uniform ! The doc-
trine is a marked case of wishful thinking.

The notion that actions are not influenced by sen-
sations and other mental experiences ; in other words,

42 The Universe and Life

the doctrine that the laws of action are unchanged in
the complex arrangements of matter which give men-
tal phenomena, is not supported by experimental
evidence, as I shall try to show ; on the contrary, it is
directly opposed to experimental evidence. Pearson
long ago in his Grammar of Science^ emphasized that
ground does not exist for teaching dogmatically that
the laws of motion are the same in all combinations.
The situation has been analyzed from a similar point
of view by Lovejoy^ and doubtless by others. There
is nothing in these speculations of mechanism that
must drive us to reject the efficiency of mental states
and events as determiners of action.

Such being the case, we must turn to other ways of
answering such questions. The scientific way of de-
termining to what condition an event is due is to
separate the conditions under which the event occurs
and to try each condition separately, so far as pos-
sible, until we find the one or ones that are essential
for the event to occur. This is what is called analyti-
cal experimentation. It is the method of science, so
far as the discovery of causes, of determining factors,
is concerned.

Now, the actions of men and other organisms occur
under certain conditions, and we wish to discover
which of these conditions bring about the actions. A
child burns his finger and withdraws it from the
flames, or I change my vote after changing my

1 See Pearson, Orammar of Science (1895), chap, viii, "Laws of
Motion."

2 See A. O. Lovejoy, "The Meaning of Vitalism," Science,
XXXIII (April 21, 1911), 612.

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 43

opinion. The preceding conditions include a certain
mental state and a certain physical condition; that
is, a condition perceived by the "inner" view, and one
perceived by the "outer" view. We wish to determine
to which of these conditions the action is due. We
wish to know whether withdrawing the hand from the
flame is due to the high temperature and accompany-
ing physical changes in the hand or to the pain that
occurs.

To answer this question, we must separate the two
things. We must separate the physical condition from
the sensation that occurs with it, and so find out
whether it is really true, as the mechanist holds, that
the same physical condition without the sensation
would produce the same result, would, in this case,
produce the withdrawal of the hand. And to discover,
on the other side, whether the sensation is the exclu-
sive agent, one must isolate it from its physical ac-
companiment and try it alone.

But these experiments have but to be proposed in
order to reveal that they are impossibilities. When a
certain sensation, emotion, or other mental state oc-
curs, there is also a certain characteristic physical
condition of the organism which is different from the
physical condition existing when this sensation or
emotion does not occur. To every difference in mental
state corresponds a difference in physical state. One
cannot remove the sensation or emotion and leave the
physical condition as it was. And one cannot change
the characteristic physical situation without altering
the sensation or emotion. The particular sensation or

44 The Universe and Life

emotion and its characteristic physical condition are
always together; they are in effect one. And this is
true for all mental states and their corresponding
physical conditions.

This experimental inseparability, this oneness, of
the given mental state and its characteristic accom-
panying physical condition, is the decisive point for
the answer to our question as to whether it is the men-
tal state or the physical state that causes the action ;
whether the way I vote is due to my opinion of the
candidates or to my physical condition while I hold
this opinion. Since the particular mental state — the
opinion or purpose or sensation — cannot be separated
from the particular physical state,^ but is, so far as
experimentation goes, one with it, there is no possible
experimental ground for asserting that one of these
two things brings about the action to the exclusion of
the other. And this means that there is no scientific
ground for such an assertion. It cannot be asserted

1 It is sometimes pointed out, as if it were inconsistent with the
principle stated in the text, that the same gross final result that is
produced by an action which is preceded by a purpose or other
mental state may in other cases be produced without a purpose. I
may of purpose remove a picture from the wall; or a gust of wind
may likewise remove the picture from the wall. It is, of course, a
well-known principle that a given final result may be produced in
many different ways. But to conclude from this that the purpose
plays no part in the cases where it is present is as futile and un-
justified as to conclude that the gust of wind plays no part in the
cases where it is present. The only test in either case is to remove
the suspected factor, leaving all other conditions the same, and thus
to discover whether that factor plays a role.

Again, one may of set purpose strike a particular note on the
piano, and later, after long practice, one may, in the course of play-
ing a composition that one has learned by heart, strike the same note
without the set purpose directed upon that particular note. From

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 45

that the same physical condition without the sensa-
tion or opinion or other mental state would produce
the same result, for the same physical condition never
occurs without the mental state. And it cannot be as-
serted that the mental state alone is the cause of the
action, for the mental state does not occur alone. The
two stand on exactly the same footing experimentally
and in science; if one is a cause of action, so is the
other. The mental state and its characteristic physi-
cal condition are inseparable; experimentally and
practically they are identified. We may, without prac-
tical or experimental error follow the example of those
that call them two aspects of the same situation,^ the
same situation viewed in two different ways. It is this
situation that is the cause of the action. In speaking
of this cause, we may call it by either of its two as-
pects, and one is as correct as the other. For experi-
mental science, the mental state is the cause of action
on the same basis as is the correlative physical con-
dition, for the two are one. My opinion is the cause

this it is sometimes ar^ed that the purpose when it did occur
played no role. But this conclusion is experimentally fallacious as
was the one before mentioned. For in all such comparisons, as in all
cases where the same final result is produced in different ways, we
have the following conditions :

(1) The antecedent physical condition differs in the two cases,
that is, when a purpose is present and when it is not.

(2) The action itself differs in details in the two cases. There-
fore this gives no evidence that the same physical state that was
in the first instance accompanied by a purpose would produce
the same result when not accompanied by a purpose, for that same
physical state does not occur without the purpose. These con-
siderations apply to all arguments of this nature.

1 See, for example, H. C. Warren, "The Mental and the Physi-
cal," The Psychological Review, XXI (1914).

46 The Universe and Life

of my voting in a certain way; and so is also the
physical condition that goes with that opinion, for
the two are experimentally the same thing.

Thus in describing the causes of the actions of men
or other organisms, we may use either the mental
state or the physical condition, as is most convenient.
In dealing with lower organisms or with simple re-
actions, it will be most convenient and most helpful to
employ the physical condition. The student of physi-
ology may properly attribute the withdrawal of the
finger from the flame to the rise in temperature of
the nerve endings in the skin, although he cannot
properly deny that the accompanying pain has a role
in the matter. For explanation of the behavior of
man, particularly of his more complex actions, it will
commonly carry more insight if one refers to the
mental states. For explanation of why I voted for
Hoover in place of Roosevelt or vice versa, or for ex-
plaining why I say what I do in these lectures, the
statement in terms of physical conditions is extremely
involved, uncertain, and unintelligible. So it is better
in such cases to refer to thoughts and opinions and
purposes as accounting for the actions. Both have the
same degree of scientific justification, both are fully
justified.

We conclude then that, for experimentation and
therefore for science, mental states have effect on ac-
tion. The ground for this assertion is of the same
character as for the assertion that any other agency
has effect on action. Sensations, emotions, ideas, pur-

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 47

poses, opinions, and knowledge decide our conduct.
Ideas and ideals are efficient agents in determining
what happens. The laws of action, the laws of motion,
we conclude, are different when specified mental
states are present, as compared with the methods of
action when those mental states are not present or
when other mental states are present. This is one of
the fundamental principles for our biological outlook
on the world. It affects all our further conclusions.

One conclusion follows at once, a conclusion that is
of the greatest import for our outlook on the world.
Since sensations, emotions, ideas, and other mental
states have come into existence in the passage of time,
thereupon altering the movements that occur, it fol-
lows that the laws of movement are not given complete
in the early epochs, but that new laws are exemplified
as time passes and new conditions arise. As new com-
binations of the elementary constituents are formed,
new methods of action come into operation.

What occurs now was therefore not predictable
before life came into the world. My behavior, your
behavior, the course of human history — these things
were not in principle to be computed from the move-
ments and distribution of the elementary particles in
the early ages. What is to come in the future is not
predictable from what is now present, for we do not
know what will be the rules of action, the laws of
motion, when other mental states shall have come into
being, when there are other sensations, purposes,
ideas. The universe produces new things; produces
sensations, emotions, ideas, where none existed; pro-

*

48 The Universe and Life

duces new mental states as time passes. And with
these it produces new methods of action. It is not true
that the thing that has been is the thing which shall
be, that the thing that has been done is the thing that
shall be done, and there is no new thing under the
sun. On the contrary, new things and new methods of
action come forth in the process that we call evolu-
tion.^

It will be observed that this situation makes no dif-
ficulties for the practice and formulation of science,
if science be considered an observational and experi-
mental matter. It is as things come into new relations
that new phenomena and new methods of action ap-
pear. There is thus always an experimental cause for
every diversity of result. There is no obstacle to the
complete carrying through of the methods of ex-
perimental science, even of objective or purely physi-
cal experimental science, since distinctive physical
conditions always coexist with different mental states.
Experimental determinism holds throughout; and
this is what is required for building a science that is a
formulation of experience. It is a widespread error to
suppose that the possibility of science rests upon the
validity of the theory of mechanism. What the up-
building of science depends on is merely the principle
that what happens depends on the conditions, and
that when different things happen, there are different
preceding conditions. It does not demand that all the

1 For related discussions and conclusions, see references given in
the note on p. 30.

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 49

laws of action shall be exemplified at any particular
moment. When new conditions arise, new laws of ac-
tion are exemplified ; but they are to be formulated in
terms of the conditions just as were the old laws. And
all the old laws remain in effect so far as the condi-
tions they specify continue to prevail; the new laws
are merely added to them as they are discovered.

Biological science lends no support to the doctrines
of indeterminism that have become rife in certain
branches of physical science. The organization of
science is made possible by the prevalence of experi-
mental determinism. Experimental determinism con-
sists in the observed fact that later perceptual diver-
sities between two sets of phenomena are preceded by
earlier perceptual diversities, so that if the earlier
diversities are removed by experiment the later ones
likewise disappear. The farther investigation is
pushed in things biological, the more complete be-
comes the prevalence of such determinism. The his-
tory of biological science is one of steady progress in
the discovery of experimental determiners for bio-
logical happenings. It leads by induction to the con-
clusion that there is no bar to the extension of this
kind of knowledge to any case whatever; in other
words, to the conclusion that experimental deter-
minism holds throughout all things, and that any
diversity of results is preceded by a diversity of con-
ditions. But this does not mean that all action is
stereotyped and predictable. It does not imply that
a given individual's actions are predestined, fixed
by conditions that existed before he came into being ;

50 The Universe and Life

it does not mean that his individuality counts for
nothing in the course of events. On the contrary, as
new combinations of the constituents of the universe
are made, new phenomena and new methods of action
occur. Among these new phenomena is the particular
individual, with his special combination of desires,
hopes, fears, purposes, ideas. These help to determine
what occurs.

This is the just basis for the conception of freedom
of action. The individual is not controlled exclusively
by forces lying outside of himself, forces extraneous
to his own individuality. His conduct is not governed
by rules of action that were discoverable before his
existence. He is a new combination with methods of
action that are not determined by what occurs in
other combinations. His freedom is thoroughly com-
patible with that experimental determinism on which
depends the practice of life and of science ; but he is
determined by conditions that did not before occur,
by conditions that lie in his own individuality.

This biological outlook is thus thoroughly com-
patible with the practice and formulation of science.
But since the universe changes with the passage of
time, yielding new phenomena and new methods of
action, science can never be finished. It must con-
tinue to develop, to change, to progress, as long as
evolution continues. In this, it partakes of the nature
of history; its later content is bound to be different
from its earlier content, since the universe itself is
different. As new things appear, science must be so
modified or supplemented as to give an account of

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 51

them. Yet nothing in the later science is in contra-
diction to what was in the earlier science, provided
science sticks throughout to observation and experi-
ment. For the phenomena and laws of action dis-
covered in later periods have arisen from conditions
that did not occur in the earlier periods. In describing
and explaining them, it is these new conditions that
must be taken into consideration. The methods of ac-
tion of the living creatures do not oppose or contra-
dict those of inorganic bodies ; they are merely other
methods, additional methods, that are to be incor-
porated into science on the same basis as the laws of
inorganic things.

Return now to what occurs in the development of
life. It is clear that the production of phenomena that
are new is not limited to the first appearance of life.
The simplest organisms — the filtrable viruses or bac-
teria or amoeba-like creatures — obviously did not
and do not experience the sensations, emotions, ideas,
and mental states in general, with their correlated
methods of action, that occur in the higher animals
and man. And the later mental experiences, such as
are found in man, are not predictable from such as
occur in the simplest forms of life. Organic evolution
thus involves repeated or rather continual production
of phenomena and ways of action that did not before
occur and were not predictable from what did before
occur. The universe did not become sterile with the
first production of life. It is continuously creative
now as in the past.

52 The Universe and Life

Most momentous is another characteristic of Hfe
and development. As the universe comes to hfe, as it
begins to feel and to think and to know, this does not
occur uniformly throughout all its parts as one great
unity. It occurs only in definite localized centers. And
life does not occur and develop as a single unified
phenomenon, as one continuous organism. On the con-
trary, we find life now occurring and developing in a
great number of diverse centers separated in space.
These separated centers we call individuals; myself,
yourself, our friends, my dog, the sparrow I saw in
the tree as I walked in the park. Each one of these in-
dividuals is an integrated group of structures, activi-
ties, and inner experiences. Each has sensations, emo-
tions, and mental experiences that are separate from
those of the other individuals. And in each individual
all these things develop from a simple condition to a
complex, highly diversified condition, so that to each
taken separately there applies what we have already
said as to the nature of development. Each, too, is a
center of experience, a spectator of the world as well
as an actor in it ; a center which retains its separate
identity, its "personality" among the changes that
occur. This is a matter to which we shall return ; now
we look particularly at certain other peculiarities of
these individuals.

The separate centers of life and development — the
different individuals — are not duplicates. On the con-
trary they differ greatly among themselves. There
now exist diverse types among them — bacilli, amoe-
bae, snails, dogs, men. But many of these diverse types

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 53

were originally one; they had a common origin.
Whether all existing organisms had thus a common
origin is doubtful. But from the uniformities seen in
the fine structure of their cells and chromosomes, it
seems clear that the animals, along with perhaps the
higher plants, all came from a single center. They
were once a single mass, simple in character, perhaps
somewhat like the protoplasm of an amoeba. This
original gi'eat organism has become separated into
many pieces, of which each of us is one. The dog that
follows me on the street, the bird to whose song I
listen, the mosquito that I try to drive from my face,
the inf usorian that I see under the microscope — these,
like myself and yourself, are pieces of that original
organic mass. We are all in that real sense brothers ;
we are in literal truth children of the same original
parent ; we are all one flesh ; we are pieces of the same
original organic material. A constant realization of
that fact is the clue that must guide us in our inter-
pretation of the world of Hfe. With St. Francis, we
must realize always that the birds and beasts are our
brothers.

These pieces, these brothers, which were originally
one, and thus were all creatures of the same kind,
have since developed in many different directions
until there have been produced the great number of
diverse types that exist now : insects, Crustacea, birds,
men, and thousands of others.

Thus the progressive changes that are one of the
great characteristics of life do not occur in a single
direction but in many directions. There is a copious

54 The Uniyerse and Life

and multifarious diversity in the tendencies to change,
in the production of new forms, new types. Evolution
is indeed, as Boas^ suggested, "creative and fanciful,
exulting in diversity." Like the famous warrior of the
enthusiastic chronicler, life "leaps upon its steed and
rides furiously in all directions." The paths of di-
vergent evolution branch like a growing tree, with
changes of different kinds occurring at the end of
every twig.

And now an unwelcome fact about these lines of de-
velopment but one that is verifiable — a fact that is
important for our picture of life. The directions in
which changes move include many blind alleys, many
paths in which continued progression is not possible.
After a move in such an impracticable direction, the
branch dies and disappears. A new lasting type is not
produced. To make mistakes is one of the character-
istic phenomena of biology. If we personify life, we
must say that it delights in experimentation; it is a
pertinacious and undiscouraged experimenter. And
many of the things that it tries are of the sort that
Darwin called in his own work "fool experiments"
with scarcely a chance of success. It will "try any-
thing once." In fact, it will repeat the same unsuc-
cessful experiment, the same tragic mistake, a hun-
dred times. Having produced an efficient creature
with wings and legs and muscles and nervous system
that work in beautiful coordination and with many
excellent sense organs to guide it — a creature that

1 George Boas, The Adventures of Human Thought (New York,
1929), p. 391.

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 55

steers successfully its course through this difficult
world — life tries dropping out or damaging or alter-
ing at hazard one part after another. This is a proc-
ess that has been studied on a vast scale in certain
organisms ; notably in the famous fruit fly on which,
in such large degree, our knowledge of heredity and
variation is based. Life produces types that have no
eyes, and that therefore have no chance for continued
existence. It produces types that have no wings or
have wings that are useless for flying ; types with too
many legs that get in each other's way; types with
imperfect sense organs; types that are monstrous,
types that are weak, types whose parts are unco-
ordinated in their action ; types that carry within
themselves the seeds of their own destruction. In
hundreds of ways, life produces imperfect types,
many that cannot continue to exist even under the
best of conditions; many others that, under most
favorable conditions, weakly carry on for a few
generations but die under the first change of fortune.
These are not matters of theory; hundreds of such
imperfect and inefficient types, even in single species,
have been studied in detail, described in full, their
origin and fortune and fate followed with thorough-
ness.^ Indeed, when one studies minutely and in detail
for generation after generation the reproduction of
any organism, including in his view large numbers of

1 For descriptions of great numbers of these imperfect types in
a particular organism, see Morgan, Bridges and Sturtevant, The
Genetics of Drosophila, particularly the list of mutant types at the
end. See also, for full details, the papers referred to in the bibliog-
raphy of the above work.

56 The Universe and Life

individuals, nothing is more striking than the great
numbers of imperfect, unadapted individuals that are
produced. Whether we study thus the infusorian, the
fruit fly, or man, we find produced misshapen crea-
tures, weak creatures, individuals that lack essential
organs, individuals whose senses are imperfect or who
lack certain sense organs ; individuals whose internal
organs work but ill, whose intimate chemical processes
are imperfect ; individuals whose nervous systems fail
to provide guidance. And the imperfections, it is
found, are in the essential constitution of the crea-
tures, for in so far as they reproduce, they bring forth
anew imperfect offspring like themselves. Types that
are weak, imperfect, incapable of continued life are
started with the same profusion as are the efficient,
adapted types; in fact, in a hundred times greater
profusion. Students of genetics find that most of the
new races begun by mutations in the hereditary con-
stitution are of these imperfect types. Such defective,
unadaptive types soon die out, some without repro-
ducing at all and leaving no record; others after a
few generations. Some persist for a time, to found a
weak type or species that eventually disappears. The
pathway of developing life is profusely marked with
these imperfect starts, with the attempts of life to
move in directions that lead but to conditions in which
life is impossible. This is something that is not to be
forgotten in any interpretation of life; we shall re-
turn to it.

But in other directions, in many branches of the
life tree, growth and progress can continue and

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 57

do continue. The changes in many of these branches
are of a sort that can be called progressive. They
lead to a fuller, more varied, more differentiated
life. The original organic mass was amoeba-like,
without organs of sense; without differentiated
organs of any kind, to bring about a correspond-
ence between its activities and those of the sur-
rounding world. In many of the groups of organ-
isms that have branched forth from this original con-
dition, organs of various sorts arise. Sense organs of
different types come into being, giving fuller correla-
tion of the inner life with the outer processes. Many
other structures arise which have similar effects. The
inner processes — the mental experiences and their
correlated behavior — become more and more com-
plex, more diverse in kind, more responsive to the
different aspects of outside nature. It is very clear
that the life of man is fuller, more copiously and
adequately correlated with the rest of the processes of
nature, richer in its diverse mental experiences, than
is the life of a bacterium or an amoeba. There are in
the organic world many great series of such degrees
of fulness of life and adequacy of correlation with
the rest of nature — series leading in many different
directions. The existing groups of organisms — in-
fusoria, snails, flies, sparrows, mice, cats, men, and
hundreds of others — illustrate and exemplify the
multifarious results of progression in many different
directions. They are the stations which advancing life
has reached up to the present time. Some, it is clear,
have reached degrees of fulness of life and adequacy

58 The Universe and Life

of correlation with the outer world that are far be-
yond the degrees reached by others. For brevity, we
will call such fuller, more diversified, more adequate
life higher.

These developmental changes in many different
directions are still in progress. Life is transforming
now as it has transformed in the past. This is no
longer a theory ; the processes of transformation are
now under observation in hundreds of laboratories of
genetics. And life is bound to continue this trans-
formation in the future. The universe is not finished,
it is still in the making; and what it will produce in
the future, we cannot predict. As it was not possible
from what existed in the past to foretell the present
situation of life, so from the present situation it is
not possible to know what will come in the future. It
is not possible to set limits to the further progress of
life. If stock had been taken in some past geological
age, much that is most characteristic of life would
have been omitted ; particularly, all that is now high-
est would have been left out of the reckoning. Stock-
taking at the present time is bound in the same way
to omit much that will be realized in the future. The
potentialities of the universe for the production of
diverse and higher types of life have not been
exhausted.

There is possibility of progress toward fuller, more
diversified life in any of the different branches of the
tree, and in any of the multifarious directions in
which life has successfully moved. In a book published
some years ago entitled This Simian World, Clarence

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 59

Day humorously proposed the question ; What would
be the situation of life and of civilization if other
groups of animals had seized the advance guard of
development instead of the higher apes and man?
What would be the state of affairs if the cats or the
elephants had been the first to develop a large, com-
plex brain and had taken the lead and produced a
civihzation? Such questions touch real possibilities;
they touch what might indeed have occurred in the
past or might yet occur in the future. They are most
suggestive; they are worthy of meditation. Super-
cats, super-elephants, equal to or beyond present
mankind in mind and social organization are possi-
bilities of evolution. From any of the groups of
animals such superior creatures may or might arise.

It is true that on earth man has the very great ad-
vantage of now being in possession of the advance.
He can head off and destroy any other type that
tends to overtake or obstruct him, and everything
indicates that he will do this in effective fashion. Evo-
lution toward higher types, so far as the earth is con-
cerned, is probably to be looked for, if at all, in man
rather than in any other animal.

Yet if mankind fails, if through dissensions and
wars, if through his own too great multiplication and
through his inability to control the complex organi-
zation that he has produced, man at last destroys
himself, as some now anticipate, it is to be remem-
bered that the resources of the universe in the ad-
vancement of life are not thereby exhausted. Vast
areas of the universe have not yet realized their po-

60 The Universe and Life

tentialities for the production of life. If man dis-
appears, if he turns out to be one of the numerous
branches that is not capable of continued existence,
and if none of the other existing types can seize the
advance, still other innumerable types may well arise
and start new cycles of evolution. Man is not indis-
pensable to the advancement of life.

But if man succeeds in overcoming his present
difficulties and continues to exist, we cannot suppose
that he is at the end of his developmental career. As
the development of life has progressed from amoeba-
like creatures to man, so it may advance from man to
conditions of fulness and adequacy that are far be-
yond what man now represents. The idea of a super-
man, of many grades of superman, is not a mere
mythical fancy but a possibility, or, rather, a proba-
bihty. The time which lies before us is as great as that
which lies behind us. It may do as much for the ad-
vancement of life. Whether the further development
of man, if such occurs, will come chiefly in his in-
tellectual faculties or in both these and his physical
features, we cannot know. But the path of intellectual
improvement lies open. Even to raise the average of
mankind to the level of the highest that have already
existed — to the level of a Goethe or a Leonardo —
would mean a tremendous advance. How far life may
go in such an advance, we do not know.

And now we come to a question that underlies many
religions : a question that is analogous to one we dis-
cussed in relation to mechanism. The question is
essentially this : Is life upon a new adventure, climb-

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 61

ing to heights not before reached ; or is it the stereo-
typed unfolding of something before in existence?
With relation to mechanism, we asked : Is the course
that life follows the mere mechanical working out of
a preexisting machine, something predictable from
knowledge of the structure of the machine? Here we
ask a similar question from another point of view. Is
life guided in its course by something that exists
anterior to and outside of itself? Is there a goal of
development that is already marked out? Is the path
already laid out along which life is to advance? Or is
life exploring a new way? Are the successive higher
stages that life reaches in evolution indeed higher
than what has before existed? Or are they mere ap-
proaches to an ultimate highest that already exists?
Is what comes forth in evolution actually new, or is
it the mere fulfilment of a pattern that exists before-
hand, the mere approach to a condition that is al-
ready realized?

To these questions many reasoners have been dis-
posed to answer that life is not upon a new adventure ;
that it is under guidance ; that it tends toward a goal
which is already existent; that the successive higher
stages of life are but approaches to an ultimate con-
dition which now exists and has existed since before
evolution began. This ultimate that is held to guide
the course of life, this highest state that existed before
biological life began its progression and toward
which life is again climbing, is given the name God.
Does the study of biology, does the scientific study of
life, lead to such a conception? A recently published

62 The Universe and Life

book bears the title: Has Science Discovered GodP
What of biological science? Has biological science
discovered God?

So far as I can see, it has not, if we give to the word
God any such meaning as I have set forth. There ap-
pears to me nothing in biological science, nothing in
general reasoning based upon the data of biology,
that indicates that life is not upon a new adventure.
So far as biological science can see, the highest stages
that biological life has reached in its progress at any
given time are indeed the highest stages that have yet
been reached. So far as biological science can see,
there is no indication of the previous existence of a
prototype, a final goal, toward which life is tending ;
there is no evidence that life already exists perfect
and complete before it begins its biological progress
upward.

The progress of life is not of the kind that would
be anticipated if life were following a certain existing
pattern, seeking a goal already set or being guided
by an all-knowing and all-powerful being. As we have
before set forth, life moves into a million blind alleys.
It attempts to exist and to operate with imperfect,
inadequate organs, by imperfect, inadequate means.
Most of its efforts fail. The progress that it makes is
through the survival of a few successful remnants
out of millions of failures that perish through their
imperfection and inadequacy. The progress that life
does make is not toward one goal but toward thou-

1 Has Science Discovered God? A Symposium of Modern Scien-
tific Opinion, ed. E. H. Cotton.

Nature of Evolutionary Progress 63

sands of diverse and incompatible goals. The progress
of life in one direction destroys progress made in
other directions. In a word, every indication that
might be sought of a guidance of life toward a pre-
existing goal is lacking. All the indications are that
life is indeed upon a new adventure, and that the
highest conditions which biological life reaches in its
progress upward are indeed the highest that have
been reached. Whether that highest stage has been
reached in the evolution that has occurred upon this
particular planet or in that which has occurred upon
some other planet, of course we cannot know. But
there is no evidence that the stages of life reached in
some other star influence the direction of progress
here.

The conviction of the existence of God, in any such
meaning as I have just indicated, has not arisen
through the study of the detailed facts of science. In
part, it is a reflection of wishes, the outgrowth of a
desire for an all-wise, all-powerful protector and
father. In the practice of science, the tendency to
base convictions upon Welshes is one of the chief errors
to be avoided : it does not lead to verifiable truth ; on
the contrary, it leads to demonstrable errors. The
reaching of conclusions through the influence of
wishes is most strongly opposed to the spirit of
science; and the conclusions so reached can lay no
claim to support by science.

Aside from the influence of wishes, the favored
argument for the existence of God, in the sense I have
suggested, is the argument from contrivance. The

64 The Universe and Life

existence of such complex, efficiently working ar-
rangements as are found in the world, and particu-
larly in living organisms, demands, we are told, the
previous existence of a maker, a contriver. This con-
triver, since he plans and produces the contrivances,
includes beforehand in some sense all that later ap-
pears in the contrivance ; includes these and more. He
includes them perhaps in concept, in thought ; but the
essence of the argument is that he does include them.

Thus the argument is that in order to account for
the existence of the visible working contrivance, we
must assume the previous existence of a still more
perfect contrivance; one of the second degree, as it
were. If the argument is vahd, we must again assume
a further contriver, one of the third degree, in order
to account for the existence of this one of the second
degree, which was assumed in order to account for
the visible one of the first degree. But this leaves us
just where we were: we must then assume a contriver
of the fourth degree for the one of the third degree
and so on ad infinitum. In other words, the argument
from contrivance to contriver gets one nowhere; it
leaves the origin of things just where it was. It is
better to take the phenomena that are presented to
us, dealing with these, formulating them as they are
presented to us, rather than to embark upon a never-
ending recession of concepts of successive degrees of
perfection one behind the other, which is the consist-
ent outgrowth of the argument from contrivance.

What the course of evolution presents to us is es-
sentially a picture of the method by which complex,

Nature of Eyolutionary Progress 65

efficiently operating beings, such as are found in
living things, do indeed arise without a contriver,
without a pattern or guide. The method, as we saw
before, is to move in all directions, until some direc-
tion is found in which progress is possible. The
method is to produce structures of every possible
type, most of them so imperfect and inefficient that
they disappear; but, among the rest, some that con-
tinue to exist, some that are efficient. These then
serve as foundation from which another great set of
experiments may be launched, most of them unsuc-
cessful, as before, but a few successful. And so the
process continues.

In the study of the progress of life, therefore, we
find no reason to doubt that life is travehng a new
course, the final goal of which does not now exist, the
end of which is not now predictable. Life that is upon
a new adventure, life that is moving in directions not
laid out beforehand, Hfe that is transforming into
what did not before exist, life that is rising to heights
not before reached — this is the vision that biology
presents to our eyes. And this is a vision that is at
least as interesting, as inspiring, as would be life
without originality, treading dully a course marked
out for it beforehand.

Ill

THE MANAGEMENT OF LIFE.

IN the lectures preceding this one we have seen that
the universe comes to life as time passes; life ap-
pears in a lifeless world. Life changes, develops;
breaks into streams that diverge in all directions;
some moving to destruction while others progress
toward higher conditions. Look now at certain prob-
lems in the management of life ; problems common to
our own life and to that of other organisms. Here we
come upon the immediate bearing of biological knowl-
edge upon conduct.

The success of organisms — their survival and effi-
ciency, the fulness of their lives — depends not alone
on their structure and inner physiological processes ;
it depends in large measure on the way they behave.
It depends on their maintaining proper relations with
the rest of the world. Life is a complex set of orderly
processes, enveloped in a world of conflicting, clash-
ing conditions and agents. Many conditions, many
processes, in this outer world of the non-living, work
against life, are destructive to it. Others are neces-
sary to life ; they favor and promote the activities and
the survival of the living creature. In consequence, to
keep life in progress involves complex reactions. The
organism must avoid, retreat from, certain condi-
tions; it must seize and hold other conditions. Life
thus involves selectivity in a high degree ; selectivity

68 The Universe and Life

in a complex and deceptive world. This is true for all
organisms ; for amoeba as for man.

Thus from the beginning life is a task, a problem
to be solved, a course of action to be determined; it
requires management. Successful living, in amoeba
and in man, involves long trains of behavior, directed
toward assuring conditions that are favorable and
warding off those that are unfavorable. The penalty
for making wrong choices, the penalty for inaccuracy
and inadequacy in the reactions to the outer condi-
tions, is destruction, with the cutting off of the line
of advance represented by the individuals that fail.
Such destruction through incorrect behavior occurs
on a vast scale ; perhaps a majority of the individuals
that begin life are thus destroyed.

In those that succeed and thus continue to exist
and to perpetuate their line of advance, the inner
processes and structures come to be more complex
and more and more completely and accurately corre-
lated with what occurs outside; selectivity becomes
more and more precise and efficient. As the organisms
rise higher in the scale, the kinds of things to which
they react become more numerous and the relations
sought for more refined. At first they search in the
main for food and flee in the main from immediately
destructive agents. But almost at the very beginning
there exist also special relations to their fellows, even
in the infusorian there is mating and parenthood and
still other relations with individuals of their own kind.
In the higher animals, in man, the situation has be-
come extremely complex, with almost an infinity of

The Management or Life 69

relations to which the individuals react in the way of
selection or rejection.

All this is reflected in the inner experiences of the
organisms; in sensations, emotions; at higher levels,
in knowledge and thought. In connection with the
reactions that tend to avoid destruction, that tend to
preserve life, there arise special sensations and emo-
tions : pain, fear of that which harms ; pleasure, de-
sire for that which benefits. There comes to be a love
of life, a fear of death. These are universal and char-
acteristic features in such living things as have
reached a certain height of development. Animals
cling strongly to the experiences of life. They resist
strongly such influences as tend toward Hf e's disinte-
gration. There is a joy of living ; a regret, a terror, at
ceasing to live. These are among the ultimate facts ;
they are among the things that are known merely
because they are discovered by experience. And they
are fundamental things for our understanding of
life and for our own attitudes toward the universe,
because we are ourselves typical representatives of
life. The inner or mental life of the organism comes
to consist largely in determining what to do that
will promote life, what to do that will add to its ful-
ness, its variety, its adequacy, and its continuance;
and conversely, in determining what to avoid, what
to oppose, that will injure or destroy life.

These are the experiences that lie at the founda-
tion of our concepts of values, our ideas of right and
wrong, and other related notions that imply prefer-
ence. That which promotes the fulness and adequacy

70 The Universe and Life

of life is that which is valuable ; and there is no other
basis for the concept of value aside from its reference
to life, no other basis for the notions of right and
wrong. That which is to be done is the right; that
which is not to be done is the wrong ; and the decision
as to how any act is to be classified lies in its relation
to the promotion of life. Value, right and wrong, and
related ideas, have validity and meaning only with
relation to life. For physics taken independently of
life these things have no meaning; in the universe
before life developed they had no existence. Their
final foundation lies in the experience of living beings.

To determine what is to be done, what not to be
done ; in other words, to determine right and wrong,
is an insistent problem for all organisms; it is not
something that begins in man. The daily, the hourly,
occupation of most organisms — high or low — is the
seeking of conditions that are favorable for life and
the avoiding of conditions that are unfavorable. In
doing this, decisions are continually required as to
whether certain things are or are not to be done ; that
is, whether they are right or wrong. With all organ-
isms, life is a continuous process of selecting one line
of action and rejecting another, of determining
whether certain actions are right or wrong. The life
of the single-celled organism is such a continual
process of trial, with pursuit or rejection; it has its
dramatic crises as has the life of higher creatures.

Attempts have been made, in some artificial sys-
tems of thought, to divorce the ideas of what is right

The Management of Life 71

from the practical question of what is to be done ; but
such divorce leads to confusion in thought and action.
To say that a thing is right but is not to be done, or is
wrong but is to be done, is contradiction in essence;
it means a loss of contact with the foundation on
which such judgments rest.

The process of determining what is to be done (or
the right) is accompanied in ourselves by poignant
emotions and by painful thought and difficult deci-
sions. Other animals are pieces of the same material
with ourselves. There is then no reason to suppose
that these inner experiences are lacking in them,
although they must occur in diverse degrees of dif-
ferentiation and intensity in different organisms.

To determine what is right and what wrong — to
decide what is to be done, what not — is not a simple
matter even for the single individual taken alone. It
would not be a simple matter if the great living
organism had never divided into parts, so that all life
lay in a single individual. But relatively simple it
would be. The task would be only to do those things
which promote the life of that individual; and to
avoid those things which injure or decrease his life.
Even so, for a higher organism with its numerous
differentiated parts and functions and its innumer-
able relations with the outer world, the task becomes
complex and difficult. That which is beneficial and
right for one of his functions may be harmful with
respect to another. Hence arise difficulties, conflicts,

72 The Universe and Life

uncertainties of judgment; cases in which the Tight-
ness of an action can be judged only from later ex-
perience of its ultimate consequences.

But the task of determining right and wrong is
rendered ten thousand times more difficult by the
fact that all life does not lie in a single individual,
by the fact that the living material is divided into
many individuals, and that these represent many dif-
ferent grades of development of life. One set of diffi-
cult problems arises from the existence of many
individuals of similar grade of development, all with
like claims upon life; the individuals who belong to
the same species or race or tribe or family. Another
set of problems arises from the fact of diversity of
grades of development; from the fact that there are
organisms of many different kinds, some representing
higher grades of life than others.

Look first at the difficulties that arise through the
fact that there exist many individuals of the same
type; through such facts as that we ourselves, for
example, have fellow men. Each individual has his
own problems, his own insistent needs for keeping in
progress his own life processes, for promoting his own
life. These requirements may come into conflict in
many ways with the similar efforts of other indi-
viduals. This greatly complicates the task of the
individual. For individuals with little insight, appre-
ciating only their immediate needs and blind to more
distant consequences of their actions, it leads to direct
conflict with others ; to violence, to crime, to war. But

The Management of Life 73

conflict is by no means the only type of relation be-
tween individuals. Each individual finds himself tied
in many ways to others. There is the need for mates ;
a need that exists even in the lowest grades of life ; a
need whose fulfillment adds, in higher organisms,
more than any other, to the fulness and adequacy and
variety of Hfe. There are the relationships of parent
and offspring, tying the generations together by
powerful bonds. There are requirements of mutual
aid and division of labor ; requirements that largely
determine the course of life in many organisms, such
as the ants and the bees as well as in man. There are
manifold social relationships. These relations to other
individuals — relations not of conflict but of coopera-
tion— take up a large share of the activities of life.
Such relationships are found in all organisms, as we
have seen, even in those that are low in the scale, even
animals made up of but a single cell. Social relation-
ships, playing a great role in life, are by no means
peculiar to man.

All these relationships develop their correlative
inner" or mental experiences. There is love for the life
of the fellow creature ; for the mate, for the child, for
the parent, for companions. There is a satisfaction
in seeing their Hves flourish ; there is a desire to pro-
mote the life of one's fellows as well as of one's self.
These are among the most intense and the most
powerful of the motives to action.

And these things are natural developments, as
natural as the impulse and desire to preserve and
promote one's own life. They are ultimate experi-

r,

74 The Universe and Life

ences ; realities that we know because we experience
them, as we experience the satisfaction of food when
we are hungry. They are constituent parts of life,
whose reality and validity rest on nothing else than
the experience of living things.

Through these relations, taken in connection with
the gradual advance in mental grasp, the single in-
dividual comes to recognize that there exist other
individuals to whom Kfe is as desirable, as valuable
as to himself. The mental experiences of these other
individuals he does not directly share, but indirectly
he can share them. All these individuals are pieces of
the same living material with himself, of similar
grade of development, with similar capabilities of ex-
perience. The individual who has reached an advanced
grade of mental development comes to recognize that
there is no discoverable reason why the promotion of
life for one of these pieces of the hving material
should be given preference over that of the others. It
is as desirable, as right, for the others to flourish as
it is for him. He comes to recognize himself as but a
member of a greater organism, of which there are
many equal members with equal rights.

This intellectual recognition of equality in claims
of many individuals, including one's self, comes to
reinforce that instinctive love for the fellow creature
and sympathy with him that have developed earlier.
The whole is the birth of unselfishness and of the
conception of justice to others as part of the province
of right or of what is to be done. Throughout, it is the
promotion of life, of its fulness and adequacy, that is

The Management of Life 75

the right ; it is the degradation or destruction of life
that is the wrong. But Hfe includes not the individual
alone ; it includes his associates ; it includes the other
pieces of the same living material of which he is one
piece; it includes the other units of the great organ-
ism of which he is one unit.

This development of a regard for the interest of
others, of unselfishness and of a feeling for justice
among different individuals is, we must repeat, a
natural growth ; it is as much a natural growth as the
urge to eat or to protect one's self. It doubtless comes
into being later than these. But the later products of
evolution are as distinctly realities — are as "natu-
ral"— as are the earlier ones ; are natural in the same
sense as are the earlier ones; they have the same
claims to recognition as have the earlier ones.

But the development of consideration and solici-
tude for the welfare of others does not prevail with-
out obstacles and conflicts. There are powerful in-
fluences working against these things; influences
working toward narrow selfishness. The center and
source of all such influences lies in one of the strange
and ultimate facts of biology. This is the fact of
selfhood, of individual identity and continuity; the
fact that each of us is himself and no other. Each of
us, as a feehng, thinking person, is tied completely
to one and to only one of the millions of pieces into
which the great living organism is divided. Each of
us can say that my whole possibility of experiencing
the universe is bound up with that one unit, that one
individual body and its fate, out of the millions that

76 The Unhorse and Life

exist. The experiences of that one individual come to
me directly without mediation ; they are mine and no
one else's. With the destruction of that one body, my
experiences end; the universe, so far as I am con-
cerned, goes out of existence. The experiences of
other individuals come to me only indirectly and
through the mediation of many processes. And these
other individuals may disintegrate and disappear
without putting an end to my experiences, to my
universe.

This one individual, this one body and the experi-
ences that go with it, is therefore m^/self in a sense
that no other one is. This unique relation of one par-
ticular individual to my experiences, to me, tends to
give that individual a more vivid reality, to me, to the
self, than any other has. I may be even led to hold,
as some philosophers have done, that I am the only
individual that exists ; that there are no others, and
that there is nothing outside of myself ; that / am the
universe. Most of us do not go so far as this. But we
cannot help but realize more fully our own reality,
our own pleasures and pains, needs and desires, pur-
poses and thoughts, than those of anyone else.

In consequence, each tends to insist more strongly
that his own needs and desires and purposes shall be
fulfilled than those of anyone else. And this indeed
has within limits its justification. Each of us knows
his own needs and purposes better than does anyone
else ; and many of these can be fulfilled only by him-
self. I must satisfy my own detailed needs, for no one
else can. If every individual became so unselfish as to

The Management of Life 77

attend to none of his own wants, mankind would
quickly disappear.

But attention to one's own needs is not incon-
sistent with recognition of the needs and desires and
purposes of others nor with helping to fulfil these. In
man we find that most individuals do thus recognize
the rights of others. Exceptional individuals indeed
occur that totally disregard the needs of other indi-
viduals when these conflict with their own. But such
totally selfish individuals are merely blind to many
of the realities of the universe, to some of the most
important realities. Their vision is limited to a small
area and to a few of the elements of life. They are
imperfect individuals without foresight. They lack
perception and understanding of the relation of dif-
ferent individuals to each other; they neglect these
relations, usually to their own undoing and to the
undoing of others. The seeming opposition between
self-interest and the interest of others is merely the
opposition between certain very immediate needs and
certain equally insistent but less immediate needs. It
is like the opposition between satisfaction of present
appetite for good food, and a later satisfaction of
intellectual or artistic needs. Satisfactory relations
between the self and the other units which make up
the great living organism of humanity are as neces-
sary for full and adequate life as are food and drink.
And such relations can be attained only by realizing
that fulness and adequacy of life are as desirable for
others as for one's self.

What things are included in the "fulness and ade-

78 The Universe and Life

quacy of life" that we wish to promote? What are the
things that are of worth; the things that make life
full and adequate?

To this no simple answer can be given. It is only
experience, it is only living itself, that discovers what
things in life are of value. What life, in direct ex-
perience, finds satisfactory, that is satisfactory ; what
life finds valuable, that is valuable. The worth while
includes all those satisfactions and experiences of life
that are discovered to be good, as food is discovered
to be good by a hungry creature; and that do not
yield later consequences of evil that overbalance the
good. We are dealing here with things ultimate that
cannot be defined except in terms of experience. On
the main outlines of what is of worth there will be
general agreement. Health, strength, the satisfaction
of the natural appetites and instincts; varied and
pleasurable activity, as in business and arts; knowl-
edge and understanding of the world of nature and
the world of man, as in science, history, literature
and philosophy; companionship with our fellows,
concordant and pleasurable interchange and inter-
communication with them; mental power, initiative,
originality, creative ability — all these things are "
included in what is found to be of worth. Whatever
the living creature finds satisfactory in the long run
is included in the realm of values. Sometimes it is true
a very "long run" is required ; sometimes the experi-
ence of generations is necessary before it can be dis-
covered whether certain things are finally worth while.
But there is no other test than experience.

The Management of Life 79

This field of the interaction and adjustment of the
needs and claims of the single self in relation to those
of other individuals constitutes what is commonly
called the domain of morality. Men have attempted
to set up standards, to enunciate principles that shall
rule in these complex adjustments; they have formu-
lated such rules in codes. Men of the blinder sort,
seeing nothing but what is nearest, have found it diffi-
cult to appreciate the need for those rules which de-
mand the adjustment of one's own claims to those of
other individuals. To avoid the results of this blind-
ness, men of the more farseeing sort have attempted
to give artificial support to such codes by attribut-
ing them to the will of some powerful being who will
punish their infraction ; by setting them forth as the
command of God, and to be obeyed for that reason.
Such a procedure has its immediate uses in dealing
with ignorant and thoughtless men. But, like all
courses that leave the grounds of reality, it has great
disadvantages. It places the whole matter on an arti-
ficial basis. It displaces the grounds of conduct from
a consideration of what is needed for life to a con-
sideration of what has been commanded. Says old Sir
Thomas Browne, "I give no alms only to satisfie the
hunger of my Brother, but to fulfil and accomplish
the Will and Command of God ; I draw not my purse
for his sake that demands it, but His That enjoins
it" ; and this is a notion that still widely prevails.
Such a reliance upon commands rather than upon the
content of what is done leads to perversities. All
things incorporated in the code of commands become

80 The Universe and Life

of equal importance. The body of such commands be-
comes unalterable. Codes thus based upon supposed
commands make permanent the judgments of early
generations, not allowing for modifications by experi-
ence. They perpetuate ideals that time has dis-
credited. They make the trivial and the ephemeral of
equal weight with fundamentals. They perpetuate
the judgments and prejudices of the class or group
that formulated the code. They permit the introduc-
tion of ritualism and other artificialities into the code
of morality. They open the door to the inclusion
under morality of many things that do not tend
toward promoting the fulness and adequacy of life
or to the inclusion even of things that work against
these.

And since the vaHdity of all that is included in the
code rests, not upon the welfare that its maxims bring
to men, but upon arbitrary command, upon au-
thority, the results when that authority is discovered
to be unreal are disastrous. The whole code fails, the
valid with the worthless. Knowing no basis for con-
duct but authority, the individual, when that au-
thority fails, is left completely rudderless.

Again, in consequence of the inclusion of artificiali-
ties and perversities, the conventional morality at
times becomes hateful to thinking men. I could name
at the present time living men, of standing and char-
acter, of irreproachable conduct, whose antagonism
is at once aroused against anything that is urged in
the name of morahty. This attitude is indeed not un-

The Management of Life 81

characteristic of modern times; the word moral is
now to many a term of condemnation.

So extreme a position is doubtless an excess of re-
action. But it is reaction to much that is unbiological
in conventional codes. To recognize the biological
basis for the distinctions of right and wrong as
grounded in the love of life and in the promotion of
its fulness and variety and adequacy will not solve all
problems, but it avoids the perversities of conven-
tionalized codes and makes unnecessary the extreme
reactions against them. So far as the formulation of
conduct into codes is necessary, these codes must at
intervals be examined and corrected in relation to
their effect on life ; otherwise, their harm may exceed
their benefit.

But the adjustment of one's own immediate needs
and purposes to the equally justifiable needs and pur-
poses of others presents situations that cannot be met
in any simple or stereotyped way. No inner monitor,
no conscience, can tell us in a flash the distinction of
right and wrong; it is a matter for experience and
knowledge. No maxim or body of maxims can guide
in detail under all the complexities of life. From this
interaction of our own requirements with those of
others arises much of the difficulty involved in living,
arises a large part of the drama of Kf e. It makes of life
a progression in which no simple rules can guide; a
voyage in which the individual must continually feel
his way, must recognize conflicting claims, must use
his knowledge and his judgment at every point; and

82 The Universe and Life

before final decision is made, must often wait for ex-
perience of the distant consequences of a course of
action. The individual must not fail in the needs of
his own self, for that is to defeat hfe. But also he
must not fail to recognize the needs and purposes of
others, for that too is to defeat life. Through the
existence of many individuals having equal claims on
life, the problem of what to do, the problem of what is
right, becomes immensely comphcated.

Further degrees of complication arise through the
fact that the world is so constituted that some indi-
viduals, some living things, must give way to others.
The fulfillment of the needs of some individuals neces-
sarily involves thwarting the needs of some others.
Promotion of fulness of life in some living things
means the destruction of life for others. The animal
lives on the plant. Many higher animals hve by prey-
ing on lower ones.

For the decision as to what is to be done, as to what
is right, this situation presents a desperate problem.
Life is what is valuable; life is what is to be pro-
moted. If it were possible for every division of the
living material, every species, every individual, to
flourish without limit, as has been desired in some
religions, this would give a satisfactory solution of
the problem. But this is not possible. Unlimited
flourishing of the cholera bacillus involves the de-
struction of mankind. Freedom from destruction for
small animals means the destruction of the great
carnivores. Unlimited flourishing of all types of

The Management of Life 83

living things would soon so choke the world that none
could live.

The problem of conduct, of what is to be done,
must then find solution in some other direction than
in promoting life for all types. There must be found
some principle of selection among the existing types
and individuals. This principle of selection must be
consistent with the general principle that life is to be
promoted, that its fulness and adequacy are the
object of effort.

Such a principle of selection is found in the fact
that great differences in the grade of development
that life has reached are found among the many types
that are striving to live. In some, life is fuller, more
complex, more diversified, more adequately corre-
lated with the rest of the universe — in a word, higher
— than in others. In deciding what is to be done, the
principle that life is to be promoted is to be followed
for another step. The fuller, more adequate life — the
higher life — is to be given preference over the lower
and simpler. Since some representatives of life must
give away to others, it is the lower that must
give way to the higher.

This principle leads to many difficult questions,
each of which has to be settled for itself on the basis
of the precise given situation. It does not imply that
the welfare of lower forms is to be disregarded. It
does not logically lead to callousness and cruelty. It
is life that is to be promoted ; the lower life if it does
not stand in the way of the higher ; the higher life if
one must give way to the other. As between man and

84 The Universe and Life

a destructive bacterium, the choice is obvious. In
many other cases, it is equally obvious. But situations
occur in which the choice is not obvious, in which the
only recourse is for the individual to use his best
judgment as applied to that particular situation. So
far as it is clear which is indeed the higher, which the
lower, representative of hfe, the matter is settled. So
far as there is necessary a choice between man and
another organism of our earth, this principle justifies
giving the preference to man. But in applying this
principle, it is not to be forgotten that its essence is
the promotion of life, and that one kind of life is to
be sacrificed to another only when this is inevitable.

Where the difi5culties become acute is in the appli-
cation of this principle to diversities that are but
shght or doubtful. In man there are differences of
type, of race. Are some of these higher, others lower ?
And if this question is to be answered Yes, are the
interests of the lower types of man to be sacrificed to
those of the higher? Are the lower to be cut off and
replaced by the higher?

Again, in any given group of men, in any na-
tion or community, there are individuals that differ
greatly; differ in their very constitutions, their in-
heritance. It cannot be denied that in some life is
fuller and more adequate — ^higher — than in others.
Is the higher individual to promote his life at the ex-
pense of his humbler neighbor? Is the lower indi-
vidual or family to be sacrificed to the higher one?
Does the study of biology lead to the divine right of
the aristocrat?

The Management of Life 85

It is clear that nothing in the biological principle
that life is to be promoted calls for any unnecessary
sacrifice of the slightly lower to the slightly higher.
There is nothing in that principle to justify the de-
struction of millions of men to satisfy the ambitions
of a Napoleon. Nothing in it calls for a ruthless
neglect and contempt for the lives and interests of the
slightly lower to gratify the desires of the slightly
higher. Respect and sympathy for the lives and in-
terests of all mankind is what the principle of pro-
moting life demands; with an issue drawn between
higher and lower only when such an issue cannot be
escaped.

Other things that must weigh in deciding the indi-
vidual's course of action come into view when one
considers the fact of progressive evolution in connec-
tion with the way in which the continuance of life is
brought about. In most forms of life, after a certain
period of living the existing individuals disappear;
they die and are replaced by others.

This ceasing to live is an event that stands in sharp
opposition to that striving for the promotion and
fulness of his own life and that of his associates
which is the mainspring of effort in each individual.
Attempts have been made to convince the individuals
that, in man at least, this change is only apparent;
that, in fact, the same individuals continue to live
after the event that we call death. Such a doctrine
forms one of the main foundations of certain types
of religion.

86 The Universe and Life

We are forced, I believe, to say that biological
science finds no support for such a doctrine. Life does
indeed continue but in other individuals. It is toward
fulness and adequacy and variety that life strives.
But this is attained, perhaps quite as fully, or more
fully, through the life of successive individuals as it
would be through the continued life of the individuals
now in existence. Continued life of the present indi-
viduals would indeed avoid the process of aging and
death, which casts a shadow on the life of those exist-
ing, and in so far works aganist the fulness and ade-
quacy of life. But we are forced to take life as we find
it, and what we find is that life consists not of indefi-
nitely continuing individuals but of successive ones.
No single individual of a later generation represents
any single individual of a foregoing generation. For
in the processes of reproduction, the materials of life,
the genes, from many earlier generations, are thrown
together, and from the mixture a new combination is
extracted; so that each new individual represents or
continues not one but many different individuals of
foregoing generations. And no individual of a later
generation is found to continue the conscious per-
sonality of any individual of a previous generation,
as the later hours of a single individual continue his
earlier hours, through continuity of memory. The
succeeding individuals are different combinations of
materials, of genes, from any now existing. They
have diverse characteristics, diverse characters, dif-
ferent personalities, from any that have before ex-
isted. And there is no evidence of the sort required for

The Management of Life 87

establishing the verifiable relations accepted in science
that the individuals who have died still live as such in
some other condition.

If then we are to found our outlook on the world on
what we discover in the scientific study of life, we are
compelled to break with the notion that personality,
individual identity, continues after death. We are
compelled to conclude that the individuals who have
disappeared exist no more than they did before they
began life, no more than they did before the species
to which they belong had been produced in evolution.
This I believe to be one of the fundamentals for a
world outlook based on the study of biology.

This is indeed a serious verdict. If accepted, it is
bound to color much of life ; it is bound to affect our
attitude toward the world and toward living. Many
have held that this verdict must destroy all satisfac-
tion in life ; that it shows life to be futile. "Oh, life as
futile then as frail," said the poet, in view of this
verdict. Many have held that it cuts the ground from
under all distinctions of right and wrong, all systems
of ethics ; that it leaves no standards by which to live,
no object in living.

But such conclusions are not logical inferences;
they do not necessarily follow; they are but reflec-
tions of personal disappointment. When the sharp-
ness of that disappointment has passed away, one
finds standards of living, distinctions of right and
wrong, an object in living — all these things — in
much the same situation as before. If immediate ex-
perience finds life to be good while it lasts — as for

88 The Universe and Life

many people it does — then it is good while it lasts. If
the promotion of life is worth while ; if the promotion
of life for others is worth while — as immediate ex-
perience of many finds it to be — this verdict does not
take away such values and satisfactions. Life in a
series of successive individuals may be as full, as ade-
quate, as life in single continuing individuals.

The striving for life and for its promotion that is
characteristic of living things must therefore — how-
ever reluctantly — ^transfer its interest, so far as the
distant future is concerned, to the later individuals
that are to succeed those that disappear. The situa-
tion is somewhat Kke that portrayed in some of the
religions of the East : the present individual is but the
transitory representative of continuing life. In that
continuing Hfe, in the promotion of its fulness and
adequacy, he may find an object for his interest.
Opportunity for this is given through the fact of
continued evolutionary development. The individuals
of later generations differ from the individuals before
existing, not only, as we have before remarked, in
their personal identity, but in their characteristics
and in their characters. They may be higher, or they
may be lower, in the scale of life.

These relations result from the way in which the
replacement of one generation by the next occurs.
Before disappearing, the individual cooperates with
another individual to produce new combinations of
the materials of life. From these new combinations
arise the new individuals that are to replace those
that disappear. The new individuals, being indeed

The Management of Life 89

new combinations, are diverse from all former ones,
having new sets of characteristics — structural, func-
tional, mental. This has been fully demonstrated
through the modern study of genetics. "Reproduc-
tion" is not reproduction alone; it is reproduction
with a difference. The new individual produced by a
given pair of parents may be superior or inferior to
one or both of his parents. What the characteristics
of the new individuals shall be, the fulness and ade-
quacy of the life that they present, depends on what
individuals of the previous generation have united
to produce them ; as well as on what particular ones
of the infinite variety of germ cells that each pro-
duces have come together. If one or both of the two
individuals that mate represent a full and adequate
life, and particularly if the two parents supplement
one another in their characteristics and powers, they
may give rise to a new individual that shows marked
superiority. A genius may thus arise, a man that
carries life to new heights. The importance of mat-
ing, of the decision as to what mate shall be taken, has
come to be instinctively recognized ; it is the concern
which most deeply affects the wishes and emotions of
man. It alters for better or worse both his own life
and that of his successors. In his Metaphysics of the
Love between the Sexes, Schopenhauer long ago pre-
sented admirably many of the relations of this matter
to the advancement of life. As a result of mating
there may be produced lower from higher or higher
from lower, depending on what matings are made.
Through it, if rightly carried out, progress may be

90 The Universe and Life

made ; life may rise to higher levels. Connected with
it, in ways not fully understood, progressive evolu-
tion takes place: such evolution as has brought man
from amoeba-like ancestors.

As such evolutionary progress continues in the
future, life may go far beyond its present level. It
may become fuller, more differentiated, more ade-
quate to the world — in continuation of the progress
made in the past. But this progress depends upon
what is done by the organisms now in existence; for
man it depends upon what we do, upon the course of
action of the present generation.

This gives a further criterion, the last, for what is
or is not to be done ; for values ; for right and wrong.
All value is based upon making life full and adequate.
To make life fuller and more adequate in the future,
to bring to actuality the potentialities of progressive
evolution, to help that it shall not take the course that
leads to destruction, to assist in so steering it that
life in later generations shall be better — ^this gives an
ideal for the future, an object toward which effort
may be consciously directed. Such effort is a con-
tinuation, in the same direction, of the efforts to make
full and adequate the life of the individual and the
life of his associates ; it is an effort to make still fuller
and more adequate the life of his successors.

How is this to be accomplished? To answer this
question is a matter for detailed study into which it
is not the province of these lectures to enter. The pro-
motion of the future fulness and adequacy of life will
include the improvement of the conditions of life, in

The Management of Life 91

knowledge and invention, in hygiene, in social organi-
zation. It will include, too, such measures as have
been discovered or as shall be discovered for improv-
ing the living material itself, for improving the race.
This, so far as it is practicable, is the most direct
method open to us for raising the level of hf e. It is to
be done, so far as we can see now, through making
better the combinations of living materials that are
to develop into the new generations. This requires
some control of the matings that are made, requires
the prevention of the propagation of individuals that
are imperfect in constitution. All this is a difficult
task in our present state of knowledge and of social
organization.

But in all this promotion of the fulness and ade-
quacy of life for later generations, by whatever
means, there is an unlimited field for interest, for
ideals, for effort.

Thus, to sum up, the ideals of conduct, morality,
ethics, grow directly out of the urge to live that is
common to all organisms. Their essence lies in effort
toward the advancement of life, toward the promo-
tion of its fulness, variety, and adequacy; they are
the management of life toward these ends. As life
does indeed advance, more and more things are found
to require consideration in this management ; its aims
broaden in successive steps. First, most direct, there
are the needs of the single individual in the face of
the difficulties presented by the world and by the
existence of other individuals. Soon the urge is

92 The Universe and Life

broadened to include the life of other individuals;
mates, children, companions, fellow countrymen;
humanity as a whole ; all living things ; their life, too,
is of value and is to be promoted. Still further, living
things come to realize that the present is but a part
of Hf e ; that life may be advanced in the future ; that
living may go far beyond present conditions; and
that to help bring this about is worthy of effort.
There is no break anywhere in the development of
the management of life; it is all "natural" in the
same sense that the original urge to live is natural.
Throughout it is life, it is living creatures — such
living creatures as we see around us — ^that are the
objects of affection and devotion and effort.

Other objects of devotion and effort are such either
for the sake of their relation to life, as in the devotion
to material wealth and to the arts and sciences; or
they are Active reflections of life, unreal substitutes
for the actual living; aberrations of devotion from
the real to the imaginary or from the concrete to the
abstract. Fairies and imps, spirits and demons, di-
vinities and gods, all are reflections of the reality that
is in living things ; they are beings imagined through
the freedom of fancy, by distorting, exaggerating
and recombining what we find actual in the repre-
sentatives of life. Serpents, scorpions, bats, foxes,
carnivorous beasts, maleficent men — these supply the
characteristics that are recombined by fancy into
demons and devils. Butterflies, beetles, elves, and
birds supply the models for imps and fairies. God-
desses are constructed from the qualities that we find

The Management of Life 93

in women. The characteristics of gods are put to-
gether from the highest that we find in men and from
what we see that men may become as evolutionary
development continues. All these things are the shad-
ows of which living things are the reality. It is the
living creatures themselves that have the attributes
that inspire wonder and devotion and effort in these
reflections. The wonder and devotion and effort given
to the reflections are unconscious or distorted tributes
to the living reality; they become not less by con-
sciously turning them toward the living reality.

To sum up the whole matter the study of biology
leaves us with an impression of the universe that is
perhaps less pessimistic than that which is sometimes
presented in the name of physics. The universe is a
system that in time comes to life; a system that be-
comes conscious of itself ; a system that has feelings,
ideas, interest, thoughts, knowledge, purposes. It
brings forth living things, with their sensations, emo-
tions, satisfactions, their knowledge and thought and
ideals; with their powers of action, of controlling
what further occurs. This production of life and its
attributes is one of the revelations of the essential
nature of things ; something never to be forgotten in
considering the properties of the elements of which
the world is put together.

In bringing forth life, the universe shows itself a
system that is not given complete, once for all; a
system that is not stereotyped in its action, not pre-
dictable from its beginning to its end. With the pas-

94 The Universe and Life

sage of time it brings forth new things ; things that
are ultimate in their nature, things that can be known
only by experiencing them. Life itself does not ap-
pear in final form, once for all. It transforms, it
develops ; repeatedly and continuously it brings forth
things that are new. As its sensations, emotions, ideas,
knowledge, purposes, and other mental things arise,
they alter the happenings in the universe; they
change its methods of action, the laws of its motions.
Life moves in multifarious directions, yielding va-
riety unlimited. It progresses in certain directions
toward diversification and fulness and adequacy. It is
progressing in the present as it has in the past. In
the future, it may be expected to advance as it has
done in the past — to heights that no one can predict,
to which no one can set limits.

It

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