EVOLUTION

THE MASTER-KEY

A DISCUSSION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION AS

ILLUSTRATED IN ATOMS, STARS, ORGANIC

SPECIES, MIND, SOCIETY

AND MORALS

BY

C. W. SALEEBY, M.D. (£DIN.)

AUTHOR OF
" THE CYCLE OF LIFE "

LONDON AND NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1906

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//

( >j*

A v " ..>x /

Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All ri£hts reserved.
Published February, 1906.

Printed in U. S. of An-. eric*.

TO
MY MOTHER

PREFACE

THE first proofs of the following pages reached
me from across the Atlantic on the same day as a
report of Professor George Darwin's Presidential
Address to the British Association reached us from
South Africa. In that fine address, entitled " Evo
lutionary Speculation," the illustrious son of an
immortal father discussed the evolution of worlds
and atoms, and suggested that the principle is of
universal application. The leader-writer in the
Times, commenting on the address, stated that
only within the last few years has any one ventured
to maintain the principle of universal evolution
first held by Heraclitus. Neither the journalist
nor the professor mentioned the name of Herbert
Spencer. Thus I take it that an attempt to show
how the Synthetic Philosophy stands in relation to
the most advanced knowledge will not be entirely
superfluous, even for Anglo-Saxon readers.

I know, of course, that hero-worship and rever
ence for our predecessors are nowadays accounted
somewhat bourgeois and superfluous virtues, and I
shall be sorry if any exhibition of them in the

v

PREFACE

following pages grates upon the reader. Never
theless, I shall continue, whenever possible, to
express my recognition of a debt which I never
can repay. C. W. S.

LONDON: 13 GREVILLE PLACE,
ST. JOHN'S WOOD

CONTENTS

PART I
GENERAL

CHAP. PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY — THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION . 3^

II. THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER .... ... 16

III. WHAT is MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY? 2^/

IV. THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION 38

V. THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA 55

PART II
INORGANIC EVOLUTION

VI. COSMIC EVOLUTION 69

VII. ATOMIC EVOLUTION 83

PART III
ORGANIC EVOLUTION

VIII. GENERAL 95

IX. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE i°r

X. HEREDITY AND VARIATION ll(>

XI. THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION . . . . 121

XII. THE ORIGIN OF MAN i35

XIII. EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN .... 140

XIV. SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BIOLOGY . . . 154

vii

CONTENTS

PART IV
SUPERORGANIC EVOLUTION

CHAP. PAOE

XV. THE EVOLUTION OF MIND 163

XVI. THE TEST OF TRUTH 179

XVII. THE HUMAN WILL 185

XVIII. THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS 211

XIX. GENERAL 223

XX. THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 233

XXI. EVOLUTION AND MARRIAGE 238

XXII. EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 242

XXIII. THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY 249

XXIV. THE PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT 263

PART V
EVOLUTION AND OPTIMISM

XXV. THE VARIETIES OF OPTIMISM . 271

XXVI. SOME POPULAR FALLACIES 279

XXVII. THE GROUNDS OF RATIONAL OPTIMISM 291

PART VI
DISSOLUTION

XXVIII. THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION . 301

XXIX. THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL RHYTHM . 3r3

PART VII

EVOLUTION AND THE RELIGION OF
THE FUTURE

XXX. THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS .... 321

XXXI. THE UNKNOWABLE ... 33 l

XXXII. ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE . 339

XXXIII. OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE . 348

SUBJECT INDEX 36:

INDEX TO NAMES 3^3

viii

PART I
GENERAL

EVOLUTION
THE MASTER-KEY

I

INTRODUCTORY— THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION

THAT "nothing is constant but change" is no
new saying; but it may be taken as expressing, in
a somewhat uncritical fashion, the essential state
ment of the philosophy which will ever be dis
tinctively associated with the nineteenth century
and the name of Herbert Spencer — the philosophy
of evolution. Apparent exceptions will occur to
every one. Here is a man who believes that the
British empire or the solar system or the suprem
acy of Shakespeare or Beethoven will last forever.
Of a higher order is he who believes that, at any
rate, certain intellectual propositions— something
said by Hegel or Plato or Newton— are forever
perdurable. One such declared that the synthetic
philosophy would assuredly endure throughout all
coming time, but its author rebuked him with the

3

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

query: "Shall my words be the only things in all
the universe that do not evolve?"

The reality which is the quest of all philosophy,
and the truth which expresses it — these alone are
immutable: which is my reason for pronouncing
uncritical the aphorism with which this chapter
begins. But all else changes — even our purest
and oldest forms of truth. Wordsworth has ex
pressed this thought in noble lines:

"Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time."

We are to learn, then, that all things change,
that species of animals are not immutable, nor
species of atoms, nor aught else. This is a belief
as old as human thinking, and some epochs in its
history must be traced. Thereafter we shall be
concerned with its latest and most complete ex
pression in the evolutionary philosophy.
, Evolution, the word which Spencer introduced1
j to express this truth, is more than a synonym for
\ordered change. It expresses the truth taught by
Wordsworth, in the earlier part of the sonnet from

1 Until his time, evolution and epigenesis were the names of
two rival theories in embryology, both of which have now
been rendered meaningless, largely by his work.

4

INTRODUCTORY

which I have quoted, that change is not a matter
of chance. Typical of the many terms which we
habitually employ without troubling to examine
them, is this word chance; but science knows that
seeming chance is but the expression of laws un-
discerned by us, and that the laws of chance are as
definite and rigid as those of gravitation or electric
inertia. The philosophy of evolution teaches that 7
all phenomena change in accordance with certain
laws, and attempts to give these laws expression.
It explicitly denies that there are any exceptions.
The law applies to stars and souls, to atoms and
oak-trees, to states and religions alike. With the
exception of the law of the conservation of energy,
upon which its author built it, this statement of
absolutely universal evolution is surely the greatest
of all generalizations.

When First Principles was written its author
was faced with many apparent instances whereto
evolution did not apply. Of these probably the
most striking, in the light of twentieth -century
knowledge, was the existence of the chemical
"elements." In 1860 Spencer could do no more
than notice the current belief in unalterable ele
mentary atoms, and append a question-mark there
to. We shall see in a subsequent chapter that evo
lution has triumphed even in this stronghold of the
creationists.

Let us, then, accept the meaning of the word
evolution which was given it by its sponsor; and
when we wish to refer to the operation of change

5

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

in the world of life let us use the term organic
evolution; when to change in solar and stellar
systems, let us speak of cosmic evolution; and
when to atomic change, let us speak of atomic
evolution. No one is entitled to use this invaluable
word in any sense less than Spencer's, unless it be
qualified with an adjective. Professor Weismann,
for instance, has lately published in English a
work entitled The Evolution Theory, by which he
means his theory of organic evolution. Such a
limitation of the term is entirely illegitimate.
This I say not so much because I think it due to
an author, in such a case as this, to respect his
terminology, but because we cannot expect the
idea of universal and orderly impermanence to
become common property so long as the word
that expresses this idea is persistently used in an
arbitrarily restricted sense. Evolution does not
mean that man is descended from a monkey.
Such descent is no doubt interesting and not with
out grave implications ; but it is of relatively small
importance compared with the fact expressed in
the true connotation of evolution1 — that all things
change, dust, dynasties, and dogmas alike.

In this present volume, then, I shall attempt to

1 Examples of the limited and quite unwarranted fashion
in which the term evolution is used may be found in the article
of that name in the tenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britanni-
ca; and, in the same work, in the biography of Mr. Francis
Galton, who is said to be the cousin of the "propounder of the
doctrine of evolution." This is simply untrue nonsense, even
if the word "organic" be taken as understood.

6

INTRODUCTORY

illustrate and discuss this process of change not
only as described in the synthetic philosophy, but
more especially as known in the light of the enor
mous mass of knowledge gained in the forty-four
years since Spencer wrote the formula of evolution.
Further and finally, we must attempt to discuss
the highest implications of the philosophy of evo
lution, especially in its relation to such great ideas
as are expressed in the words pantheism and pan-
entheism.

My object is not to reduce the many and ponder
ous volumes of the synthetic philosophy to brief
and popular form, for that task has already been
admirably performed by Professor Hudson.1 Rather
do I write in the attempt to justify my conviction
that the philosophy of universal and ordered
change is far more easily demonstrable to-day
than ever before; and I believe that these words
would be true were they read a century hence.
Since First Principles was written, new sciences-
such as the comparative study of religions, com
parative mythology, comparative ethics, com
parative psychology, astro-physics, and physical
chemistry — have come into being, each of which
deals, in effect, with evolution in one or another
sphere. My purpose, then, is to demonstrate the
truth of the philosophy of evolution or change
in the light of human knowledge in the first lus
trum of the twentieth century.

1 In his Philosophy of Herbert Spencer.

7

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

I have used the word change where many might
have expected to meet the word development.
Reasons for this preference will, I hope, abundantly
appear hereafter. Development almost implies a
goal, as does — more definitely — the term progress.
This latter term, bequeathed to him by the older
liberalism, was first employed by Spencer, as in
the essay "Progress: Its Law and Cause." But
he abandoned it and adopted the term evolution,1
since the moral connotation of the former word
rendered it inapplicable in the wide sense which
he needed. The case is similar with the word
development, which also suggests a goal. Now
evolution, as we know it, though it may appear
in our own time to be working towards "some far-
off divine event," yet appears to have such only
as a proximate and temporary goal. The great
rhythm of the universe may show such a crest, but,
as far as we can see, the wave must travel on, and
the upward movement be followed by a down
ward in this endless cycle which the synthetic
philosophy, like so many of its ancient Oriental
predecessors, reveals to us. In a future section2
we must discuss the prophecies of this philosophy.

Meanwhile we may observe that a doctrine of
sempiternal change must be wholly unattractive
to many minds. The fact of likeness to the past,
which we call heredity in biology and the conserva
tive principle in politics, makes appeal to nearly

1 In 1857; see Autobiography, I., 503.
1 See section VII., "Dissolution."
8

INTRODUCTORY

all of us, however "liberal" or progressive we may
fancy ourselves to be. We cannot face, without
some measure of horror, the idea that, for instance,
the church to which we belong is, in the last resort,
only somewhat less ephemeral than the insect of
a day. There is something appalling in the belief
that "from low to high doth dissolution climb,"
sparing nothing whatever. But if the evolutionary
or any other philosophy be true, it must be ac
cepted, whether \ve happen to like it or not; and
when finally our minds are subdued to the follow
ing of Truth "wherever she leads" —as Huxley
said — we may be able to say of her as did Words
worth of duty:

" Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face."

But ere we close an initial chapter which may
serve to instil an approximately adequate concep
tion of the breadth and scope of the term evolu
tion, it is necessary to make some reference to
the antiquity l of the idea that all things change.

1 The history of any subject is a permanent part of it and
should always be discussed in treating it. But there is good
reason why I should make only brief and casual allusions in
the present volume to the history of evolutionary ideas. My
purpose is to show the validity of evolution in the light of the
most recent knowledge. To insert a history of these ideas
would therefore not be strictly relevant to the object of this
volume. But the subject is interesting and important. Fort
unately it has already been dealt with by distinguished stu
dents in works readily accessible. I need only to refer to Dr.

9

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

A very scant acquaintance with philosophic works,
and especially with critical works on philosophy,
will convince the reader that the duty of endeavor
ing to recognize the elements of truth in the teach
ings of past writers is often too enthusiastically
performed. This I say not from any lack of
homage to the immortal dead ; but simply because,
in our respect for them, and given the natural
flexibilities of language, we too often attribute
to past writers views which would probably have
caused them the greatest astonishment or even
discomfort. This is assuredly better than the fool
ish and impudent practice of assuming that these
ancient thinkers are of no use to us to-day, and
were incapable, in their circumstances, of dis
covering anything that we can regard as true.
But it is necessary to exercise caution when we
attempt to detect anticipations of modern ideas
in old writers, lest we find ourselves attributing
to them views which could not possibly have
survived in the mental environment of their time.
The first evolutionists, we may nevertheless say,
were probably two illustrious men of genius whom
students consider to have been contemporaries,
though there is no reason to suppose that either
was aware of the other's existence. These were

J. T. Merz's History of European Thought in tlie Nineteenth
Century (especially to the chapter entitled "On the Genetic
View of Nature"), and to the articles "Evolution," by Hux
ley and Professor James Sully, in the ninth edition of the
'Encyclopedia Britannica.

10

INTRODUCTORY

Heraclitus, of Ephesus, and Gautama the Buddha,
As I have devoted an essay in a previous volume
to their claims in this connection, I will only briefly
deal with them here.

Neither of these thinkers, it need hardly be said,
has left us a systematic philosophy of evolution.
The founder of Buddhism, indeed, like the founder
of Christianity, and Socrates, the founder of moral
philosophy, has left us no writings whatever, and
we have but scattered fragments of the works of
Heraclitus. Yet it seems plain that each of these
thinkers had a more or less complete grasp of the
doctrine of ordered change as exemplified in such,
relatively few, facts as were known in that day.
I name them here because their distance from us
lends something like enchantment to our view
of them ; but in calling them the first evolutionists
I do not mean to suggest that the whole of the
synthetic philosophy is implicit in any doctrines
which are attributed to them.

In summing up this chapter, then, let us have it
clearly set down that the popular use of the term
evolution, to signify the notion that man is de
scended from a monkey, is little less than an abuse
of the term. Similarly indefensible is the use of
this term to signify organic evolution — the theory
that animals and plants, as seen in existing species,
are evolved from other forms. Still more inde
fensible is the ridiculous identification of evolution
with natural selection — the unfortunate term by
which Darwin sought to express a certain means

ii

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

of organic evolution. The lasting merit of Dar
win's masterpiece is this: that he demonstrated
the operation of a law so simple and intelligible
that it brought into lasting prominence the topic
of organic evolution. We may well doubt whether
natural selection has the importance which Dar
win attached to it ; but even though biologists were
not agreed that this process has, at any rate, some
measure of operation, the theory of organic and,
still more, the theory of cosmic evolution would
be quite unaffected. Recent apologists of ortho
doxy are making much of certain omissions lately
discovered — by them — in Darwin's work. We are
told, in triumph, that Darwin has, so to speak,
been found out. He took for granted the fact of
variation, without explaining it. He took for
granted the presence of life upon the earth, without
attempting to explain that. All of which is quite
true. Darwin, indeed, merely did that which he
set out to do.

It is here claimed for evolution — all such ridicu
lous limitations of its meaning being repudiated—
that it is the key to the problems of all phenomena :
necessary alike to the chemist, the politician, and
the theologian. Nowadays we "think in evolu
tion." The word is often turned to mean uses,
as when we hear of the "evolution of the picture-
postcard" ; but even in such a connection the prin
ciples of adaptation and integration are applicable.
For the old static view of things, which regarded
them as at rest, evolution substitutes the dynamic

12

INTRODUCTORY

view, which regards them as in motion. During
the past generation this principle has been im
measurably fruitful. The reader who remembers
Spencer's definition of science as "organized
knowledge," and who sees in politics and theology
—in so far as they are true politics and theology-
sciences as worthy of the name as are astronomy
and biology, will read their full significance into
these recent words 1 of Sir William Huggins, the
illustrious student who has taught us that the
stars are made of the same stuff as this paper or
the tissue of the reader's eye :

"On one central eminence, dominating alike the past,
the present, and the future, Science has for some years
firmly intrenched herself — the position that through all
the ages the Cosmos has advanced, and is still advancing,
by a process of orderly evolution."

In establishing the term evolution as an inde
feasible part of the intellectual heritage of all com
ing time, Herbert Spencer accomplished a lesser
and a greater thing. The lesser thing was the
statement, in terms which we have yet to consider,
bf the laws which are observed in all change. In
material and mental phenomena alike change is
not a "law of higgledy-piggledy," as the once
famous geologist Sedgwick pained Darwin by
describing the law of natural selection, but pro
ceeds on lines determined by the very nature of

1 Spoken at a dinner of the Royal Society.
13

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

things. These lines Spencer discovered and named.
Furthermore, he showed why these lines and none
other are followed. Of course, he had to build
upon something, and most fortunate it was that,
before he began his work, there had already been
rendered probable the great generalization, one of
whose founders — Lord Kelvin — is still alive. The
laws by which phenomena change Spencer founded
upon a rock, indeed — the doctrine of the conserva
tion of energy — and it is of not a little interest that
the element radium, which was for a little while
supposed to invalidate this law, has turned out to
be a perfect demonstration of evolution in a realm
where none but the thorough-going Spencerian had
thought to find it.

But this demonstration of the laws and causes
of change was a much less important matter than
the demonstration implicit in it — of the fact that
change is universal. For the old static conception
of the Cosmos, with its hopeless and baseless dog
mas, such as the assertion that human nature is
the same in all ages, Spencer, more than all his
contemporaries and predecessors put together, has
given us the dynamic view, which has revealed a
new heaven and a new earth. Everywhere the
static view, whether of suns, societies, or any
other existence whatever, has had to yield to the
dynamic view, by which "change, though not
decay, in all around we see" — to modify the fine
old hymn. Whether or not Spencer knew more of
Heraclitus than he would read in his friend Lewes 's

14

INTRODUCTORY

Biographical History of Philosophy, I cannot say,
but we may recognize in his work the great vindi
cation, in a blaze of light, of that ancient Greek
whom his contemporaries, for his obscurity, sur-
named "the dark."

Were this assertion of ceaseless and universal
change the last word of the evolutionary philos
ophy, we might well subscribe to that saying in
which is crystallized the objection of all ages to the
advance of knowledge: "Where ignorance is bliss,
'tis folly to be wise." But it is not so. We have
yet to examine the profound significance of that
term phenomena. The panentheism - - the doc
trine of all -in -God — which Spencer based upon
the verities of assured knowledge, thus following
Athanasius and Spinoza, if not, indeed, the found
er of the former's church and the greatest of the
latter's race, declares to us, with a voice in which
the centuries unite, that there is a changeless unity
immanent in this our impermanence.

II

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

WE must define our terms; and when we speak
of the evolutionary system as a philosophy, we
must be sure that our use of the word is not open
to repudiation by the academic or the stoic. But
ere we define the meaning which the word bears
in the present volume, we may, perhaps illogically,
consider what I shall call the philosophic temper;
and thereafter that form or corollary of it which is
called toleration.

It is, of course, a commonplace that the ob
ject of philosophy and science is truth; but it
needs a moment's consideration fully to weigh
this assertion, not, indeed, because it expresses the
cardinal distinction between the professional phi
losopher and scientist and other people, but be
cause we have here a criterion which makes quite
another division among men, cutting almost in
differently through the professional student and
non-student alike. And the significance of a real
understanding of the philosophic temper is such
as infinitely to transcend that of the vulgar es
timate. So that on this criterion the unlettered

16

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

peasant may take rank immeasurably above some
scientists so-called whose names have once filled
all men's ears.

It was my good-fortune to hear the memorable
speech delivered by Mr. John Morley after a recent
graduation ceremonial of the University of Edin
burgh. It consisted of a pregnant warning against
the fetters of formalism, academic or other. The
danger of such fetters, in Mr. Morley's opinion, lies
in their power of turning men from the love of
truth, a love so rare that a friend of his, acquainted
with wellnigh all the great of his time, could count
only four of these among the chosen. Not merely
scientific truth, in the narrow sense, is here spoken
of— need I say? The speaker went on to explain
and justify this amazing citation, but I believe that
his meaning had already been expressed in lan
guage better than his. There is in the true man
of science, said Tyndall, a wish stronger than the
wish to have his beliefs upheld — the wish to have
them true. For "man of science" substitute
"lover of truth," and you have the philosophic
temper defined. It is for all to gain, but how few
there be that find it. Yet this alone, as Mr. Mor
ley says, can confer "liberty of mind." In the
service of truth alone is perfect freedom.

Surely there can be no misunderstanding here.
It is, indeed, natural and well that, having what
you believe to be a true belief, you should wish
it — should wish the truth — upheld. Fortunately
we are all proselytizers at heart, as Carlyle said.

17

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

But the desire to convince other people — though
only too often a mere expression of egoism — is
perfectly compatible with the philosophic temper
— the desire to have your beliefs true, even at the
cost of every belief you hold.

This is no lightly won possession. The road
thereto is a hard one, nor is there any inviolable
lock under which to guard it when gained. Con
stant searching of heart is necessary lest he who
thinks this temper his may find it fled.

For all of us, without exception, are men pledged
and forsworn. We stand committed to beliefs of
many kinds — a belief in gravitation or transub-
stantiation or free trade or natural selection or the
existence of a personal Deity. And our interest in
the upholding of such beliefs may be of many kinds.
Our peace of mind, all that makes life worth living,
may be at stake. Thus the late Professor W. K.
Clifford, whom to know even through his writings
alone is to revere and love, has told us of his agony
when, losing his theistic faith, he realized that the
"Great Companion was dead." Or, on a lower
plane, we may recognize the common failure of
the man who has changed sides, whether in re
ligion or anything else, to display the philosophic
temper. We are all familiar with the bitterness
of the "turncoat" against those who think as he
once thought; and we deplore it, even though we
may be of the turncoat's new party. It is almost
asking more of humanity than it can give to ex
pect the man who has changed sides — perhaps at

18

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

great cost, perhaps because he would rather have
his beliefs true than upheld --to maintain the
philosophic temper which may have caused his
change, and to be prepared, if necessary, to change
again. For inconsistency is the bugbear of all but
the greatest minds, as Emerson has taught us.

And if the philosophic temper is rare enough
in the priest or clergyman who has lost his faith,
it is equally rare in the scientist who, like these,
is pledged to serve truth. You are committed to
an hypothesis. Perhaps you are its author, and
it goes by your name, or you have written and
worked in its defence. Do you welcome the
young epoch -maker, who was neither born nor
thought of when you were making your name?
But rarely, under such familiar circumstances,
do we see the philosophic temper. The facts that
do not fit your hypothesis must be discredited or
trimmed thereto. You would rather have your be
liefs upheld than have them true.

When a Darwin or a Huxley or a Spencer dies,
it is commonly and properly asserted of him that
his leading characteristic was a love of truth.
But if you listen to those who, for one reason or
another, are in opposition to such men, you will
hear that to claim a love of truth as a man's lead
ing characteristic is to insist on the obvious, all
healthy-minded people being endowed, as a matter
of course, with some measure of this high passion.
These critics are prepared to maintain that in all
decent persons, themselves included, there is the

19

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

love of truth; by which is meant a dominating
affection, so that to have learned the real facts in
the course of an argument affords far more satis
faction than to have proved your opponent wrong,
and so that it causes a grief of soul to see the thing
that is not, offered in the guise of the thing that is,
even to a school-boy at the antipodes or a savage
in Fiji.

It can be shown, I think, that this belief in the
wide-spread prevalence of a love of truth is by no
means confined to the protagonists on one side in
the conflict between science and dogmatic theology.
Let me quote, for instance, from a French educa
tionist, M. Laisant, who is referring to the teaching
of religion and ethics in schools:

" L'educateur habile, en stimulant dans 1'esprit de son
eleve le culte de la verite, en tirant parti tous les exemples,
de toutes les observations, de 1'experience quotidienne,
arrivera sans peine a fajonner graduellement cette con
science d'enfant pour en faire une conscience humaine."

Now it appears to me that this sentence implicit
ly contains a very questionable assumption. The
author appears to regard the philosophic temper
as a natural appanage of a school - master. His
pupils are constantly to see this passion exalted
above all others, and are thereby to obtain a firm
foundation in ethics. I believe, on the other hand,
that it would be a terrible disaster if the formal
and explicit teaching of morality were to cease
from within our schools. I do not for a moment

20

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

believe that the love of truth, displayed either
overtly or covertly by the teacher, could ever be
a substitute for this, and I gravely question the
assumption that such a love of truth may be taken
for granted as a necessary ingredient of the teach
er's temper.

On the contrary, I humbly subscribe to the opin
ion of Spencer that the love of truth, or the philo
sophic temper, is one of the rarest of virtues.
Who does not know the struggle within himself
when, as in controversy, the love of truth is in
conflict with self-esteem, with the love of appear
ing to be on the side of truth? Is not the diffi
culty with which men acknowledge themselves to
be wrong notorious, yet is not such acknowledg
ment just exactly a homage to truth ? Yet, if we
loved truth as we think we do, the mere demon
stration of our error would be unable to cause any
emotion of chagrin, for the emotion of joy on hav
ing found truth, our heart's desire, would utterly
possess us.

And, finally, I think it may easily be shown
from our present educational system that the great
majority of us prefer convenience and ease to
truth. Many recent writers have urged that the
time has now come for the facts of organic evolu
tion to be taught in schools. It seems a reason
able proposition, does it not? Organic evolution
is infinitely more certain — since it depends upon
evidence of a totally different order — than is the
truth of any alleged historical fact. It has been

21

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

part of known truth any time these forty years ; it
had been proved when most of the parents of the
present generation of school-children were them
selves at school. Yet so far are men from loving
truth, so far are they from even mere expediency
in this matter, that there is no general desire
among parents that their children should be taught
this great and significant truth.

One other proof of my contention that the love
of truth is not common property : It is the almost
incomprehensible fact that there exist to-day a
whole host of parents who do not believe in the
historical accuracy of Adam and Eve, and who
repudiate the doctrine of eternal torment, the
most immeasurably horrible and inhuman of all
human conceptions, and yet consciously permit
their children to be taught and to believe in the
literal truth of that Babylonian legend and of a
dogma which conceives of Deity as the devil him
self.

It is thus only too easily proved that the love
of truth, the hatred of falsehood, and the philo
sophic temper which ignores all personal interests
are among the rarest of rare possessions.

In sooth, the philosophic temper is hardly more
than an ideal. It is entirely alien to the natural
man to love unpalatable truths; and every true
belief which runs counter to our beliefs must be
unpalatable unless the appetite for truth over
whelm all other desires. Only too few, in the
history of thought, are the instances of those who

22

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

were veritably possessed by the philosophic tem
per, which is, indeed, the mark of a supreme moral
excellence. For even if a man be purged of all
selfish desires, yet his very burning for the welfare
of others may utterly consume the philosophic
temper. To love truth as it should be loved
you must be possessed of a faith almost infinitely
rare — the faith that, in the long run, ignorance
can never be bliss, the faith of Socrates in knowl
edge as virtue. Whether any man ever acted con
sistently on the belief that truth is always best,
one may, indeed, take leave to doubt.

The writer is not so blind as to fancy that he
is possessed of the philosophic temper - - that he
would always rather have his beliefs true than
have them upheld. But it is something to have an
ideal. " A man's reach should exceed his grasp "-
whether there be a heaven or not.

I have called toleration a corollary of the philo
sophic temper; and some attention may properly
be paid it here, partly because the evolutionary
application of biology to sociology has afforded
great support to the idea of toleration, and also
because the question is of primal importance in
relation to Spencer's work, since a thinker so orig
inal and heterodox could not have worked with
out that toleration which he received— grudging
ly and perforce from the academic philosophers,
generously from many representative theologians,
and as a matter of course from unpledged students
everywhere.

23

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

One is no less than astounded to discover the
rude and thoughtless idea of toleration generally
current. Keenly attempting to defend, the other
day, Buckle's dictum that religious persecution
is the greatest evil known to mankind, transcend
ing war itself, one was met by the assertion that
the age of religious persecution was at least the
age of sincerity and enthusiasm, while toleration
implies lack of real faith in anything at all. " So,
then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." For
"lukewarm" some would substitute "tolerant" as
a synonym. Only recently, when I waxed wroth
over a false and spiteful assertion about a great
man, and rebutted it with some force, I was accused,
to my utter astonishment, of intolerance — as if to
let a lie go unbranded were toleration. Now if this
were so — if to be tolerant is to be a Laodicean—
who will deny that toleration is an evil?

The saying about a God who " hates the sin but
loves the sinner" precisely expresses the essence
of toleration. There is nothing Laodicean about
the divine attitude thus conceived. The hate is
implacable, the love unquenchable. So with tol
eration, as it is understood by those who have
thought about it. The tolerant man may be as
keen about what he conceives to be truth as the
Grand Inquisitor, and as hateful of error; but he
distinguishes between the sin and the sinner. He
may believe it to be his duty to speak in terse and
scornfu1 language of the thought he holds to be

24

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

false, but he will gladly spend a night beside the
bed of the thinker. This is toleration, and whoso
knows the power of association of ideas will rec
ognize that it is much easier to define than to
display. "The lying mouth shall be stopped,"
and we are very ready to stop it — with right good
will. But, easy or difficult to realize, this is the
true meaning of tolerance; which may coexist—
at least in theory — with a burning faith and a
consuming zeal.

Now if we accept the argument that intolerance
proceeds not from cruelty but from intellectual
incapacity to distinguish between closely associ
ated ideas — the sin and the sinner— we may con
clude that toleration is an intellectual rather than
a moral product. Calvin, the Inquisitors, the
burners of Bruno, were doubtless kind to their
relations. They were not emotionally deficient,
but intellectually. They were fools rather than
knaves. Now in Herbert Spencer the intellect
was supreme, though the emotional nature was
highly developed under the cold and ungenial
surface. As the Reverend Professor Iverach ob
serves, in his generous and scholarly study, Spencer
certainly believed that the unknowable revealed
certain truths through him. To use the noble old
phrase, he knew himself to be a "Prophet of the
Most High." And he had the prophet's persistence
and courage and directness and conviction. But
fortunately he had a somewhat rare possession of
the prophet — a disciplined intellect. And hence

25

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

his toleration. A sworn servant of truth, he did
more than wish well to those he believed to be
wrong — he sought and found the kernel of truth in
the husk of error.

In a future chapter we shall see instances of his
toleration of religious systems all but the forgotten
core of which he believed to be false. But let us
take an instance from politics, in which he was at
bottom a Liberal of the old school. We cannot
understand the intellectual cause of his toleration
here without recalling his now famous phrase " the
social organism." His analogy between society
and an organism made him a tolerator though a
zealot in politics. In the realm of biology we see
two opposing factors — heredity and variation.
Now no biologist would write himself down an
hereditarian or a variationist, as we write our
selves down Conservatives or Liberals. Spencer has
taught us that, while without variation there can
be no advance, without heredity there can be no
retaining the positions won. Rigid heredity means
stagnation; but too rapid variation means insta
bility. Safety and progress are attained only by
"the interplay of opposed forces." Of course you
see the rest at once. Heredity in the organism
is the exact analogue of the conservative forces
in society; variation, the exact analogue of the
liberal forces. Acceptance of authority, as typi
cally seen in woman, is heredity; and heresy, as
typically seen in the more variable creature man,
is intellectual variation. And as no biologist

26

THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER

swears by heredity or variation as alone beneficent,
so no philosophic student, now that Spencer has
taught us, can declare that the "Conservatives
are wrong" or the "Liberals are wrong." Both
are necessary; each alone would be maleficent.
The force of heredity or conservatism gets us no
further; the force of variation or liberalism is al
most as likely to lose as to win — In media tutissi-
mus ibis. " Theological conservatism, like political
conservatism, has thus an all-important function.
It prevents the constant advance from being too
rapid" for stability.

In another work Spencer has dealt exhaustively
and finally with the various forms of bias — educa
tional, class, theological, anti- theological, political,
patriotic, and anti - patriotic. To be freed from
all these is to have completed the preliminary
stages for becoming a philosopher; the freedom
is to be purchased only by intellectual effort; and
thus may be attained that rare combination of
irresistible zeal with true toleration which Spencer
has described as the union of " philanthropic energy
with philosophic calm."

Ill

WHAT IS MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY?

PHILOSOPHY, or the love of wisdom, is surely
one of the loftiest words in all language. But,
like so many more, it has lost its original meaning,
which was an expression of the humility of a school
of thinkers who proposed to repudiate the arrogant
claims of those who impudently called themselves
sophists. The term scientist or savant is preten
tious enough, but to call oneself wise embodied a
greater claim than to call oneself knowing ; though
wisdom and knowjedge are ultimately identical, as
the etymology of the word wise teaches us.

Now it might reasonably be maintained that
the term philosophy should be reserved for thejA
highest conceivable kind of knowledge — knowl
edge of the greatest conceivable object. And
none will dispute that there is an object knowl
edge of which would be the highest attainable,
would transcend and include all other knowledge
whatever; and that object is Reality. Some may
object that in its highest sense philosophic should
be identical with religious knowledge; but, indeed,
it will appear that, on the evolutionary conception

28

WHAT IS MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY?

V^^r-]

of religion, acknowledge- .eiJLea-lity would be the
highest kind of religious knowledge, and would, of
course, include a knowledge of morality, which
many confound with religion.

Yet here we shall not use the word philosophy
to signify knowledge of Reality. The first reason
to be advanced is, indeed, not final. It is that the
greatest thinkers in all ages have sought to attain
this knowledge and have failed, as we may infer
from their failure to attain any measure of agree
ment, and from the fact that no one of them has
ever had any difficulty in exposing the fallacies
and unwarrantable assumptions of all his prede
cessors. But, as I have said, this reason is not
final; for it might be maintained that though the
proper quest of philosophy has hitherto failed,
yet in time to come it may succeed, and therefore
the word philosophy must not be debased to any
lower use. Reality may be unknown, but is not
unknowable.

^~*V

Now it is part of the evolutionary philosophy to "'
demonstrate that Reality, or being, the thing that /
really is, can never be known by us; or, in other !
words, to assert that the quest of philosophy, in
its highest sense, is necessarily foredoomed to fail
ure. It is not merely that the quest has hitherto
been fruitless, but that, the conditions of human
knowledge being what they are, it must always
fail. In a later chapter we must discuss the evi
dence for this belief. Meanwhile let us take it
that Reality is unknowable.

29

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

If this be admitted, let us coin other and more
definite terms to express the quest for Reality, and
let free the ancient and beautiful word philosophy
for some study that is possible. Now there are
already two words which express the study of
Reality. One of them, metaphysics, has this
connotation only by accident. It was coined by
the followers of Aristotle to indicate the subject
which their master treated "after physics" — in
the treatises composed after that on physics.
Those who regard it as of importance to use words
in legitimate fashion will protest against the vulgar
misapplications of this word, as in Haeckel's use
of it to indicate anything he does not want to un
derstand. But, indeed, it has no merits in itself,
and its historical interest is not sufficient to justify
its continued use, for Aristotle was not the first
or the greatest of "metaphysicians."

The proper term to indicate the study of Reality
is surely ontology — or the science of being or reality.
It is of much more recent origin, but, unlike so
many terms, it was coined because it was want
ed. Ontology, then, may be left to the academ
ic philosophers or metaphysicians. Students of
science are well aware how it has injured their
cause in the past; they believe its prosecution to
be impossible and more than futile, and they are
wise to leave it alone. It is of some interest, how
ever, to observe that the materialists, of whom
Professor Haeckel, of Jena, is the chief living rep
resentative, believe themselves to be literally on-

30

WHAT IS MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY?

tologists, since they regard matter and energy as
the ultimate realities, and fancy that they know
them. Materialism, however, is a childish absurd
ity which has been refuted by the most eminent
men of science as well as by all the leading think
ers of all schools in all ages. It has not revealed
Reality, and is therefore not to be regarded as a
true ontology.

If, then, we may use philosophy to indicate
something less than the highest conceivable order
of knowledge, can it still be maintained that the
term indicates anything essentially different from
other orders of knowledge? Obviously it cannot;
for knowledge must be either of reality or of ap
pearance. Yet there is no need, therefore, to sup
pose that all knowledge is philosophical, though
philosophy cannot possibly ignore or do despite
to any fact, however humble. But though all
will admit this, many will suggest, and reasonably,
that philosophy, if we deny the possibility of
ontology, can no longer be distinguished from
science. Each is of the same order, employs the
same methods, and must arrive at results essen
tially the same. And certainly the old distinction
between science and philosophy can no longer be
maintained. It belongs to the day when science
meant what is absurdly called natural science, and
when the human mind and morality were not re
garded as subject-matter for science.

Nevertheless, a high use can still be found for
this fine word. There are many branches of

31

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

science still conveniently recognized, though the
barriers between them are merely expressions of
our ignorance, are purely artificial, and are rapid
ly being broken down. Each branch of science
attempts to co-ordinate the facts that fall within
its purview, and thus to unify its knowledge.
But when all the barriers are broken down, when
each science is shown to depend on all the rest,
when the unification of knowledge is complete,
then we have a philosophy — which has no depart
ments, since it includes all the facts in one com-,
prehensive view. It is in this sense that we
speak of the synthetic philosophy, since philosophy,!
to be such, is essentially a synthesis, a placing^
together of all knowledge — alike of atoms, of soci
eties, of mind, and of the products of mind. It
remains to be shown, in ensuing chapters, that the
conception of evolution has, indeed, accomplished
this unification of all knowledge, absorbing facts;
discussed after its formulation, as readily as those
from which it was originally inferred, and that i
is therefore rightly to be called a philosophy.

The reader will observe that there is implicit in
this definition a magnificent assumption. When
we speak of the unification of knowledge as possi
ble, we assume that that to which all knowledge
refers is a unity ; otherwise no unification would be
possible. The modern conception of philosophy,
therefore, contains within it what is surely the
greatest of all conceptions — that, all phenomena
being interdependent, the reality of which they

32

WHAT IS MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY?

are the phenomena or appearances, is not many
but one.

It is not expedient to postpone to the final
chapters of this book the necessary consideration
of the term phenomena, since it must frequently
be used in the following pages, and since its true
meaning directly bears on the question, What is
meant by philosophy? And in order to under
stand it, we must inquire into the nature of the
knowing process, for the term depends for its
utility and application upon a certain conclusion
as to the nature of knowledge.

It would seem self-evident that, before drawing
any conclusions from observation and reflection,
it is necessary for the philosopher, if not for the
man of science, to make most stringent inquiry
into the nature and conditions and validity of
what he desires to regard as knowledge. Yet it
was not until the coming of a great thinker who
died scarcely more than a century ago that the
fundamental importance of this inquiry was fully
recognized. This is by no means to say that
Kant was not preceded by many writers, such as
Locke, who devoted much thought to the nature
of the knowing process; but even to-day there is
probably only a very insignificant minority of
people prepared to make positive assertions about
something — be it only the weather or the fiscal
question — that have ever spent a moment in
asking in what senses and in what measure any

33

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

one can be said to know anything. And the term
epistemology, which connotes the study of the
nature of knowledge, is not, as in logic it should
be, the most familiar and the first to be learned of
all the many words with the same termination.

In here attempting, not to recount in brief the
doctrines taught by the immortal author of the
critical philosophy, but rather to indicate the be
liefs of psychology a century after the close of his
long and meritorious life, we must begin by ad
mitting that our initial problem is not merely un
solved, but insoluble. In front of me, as I believe,
is a table. Few readers outside of Oxford will
quarrel with me if I assume, as I do, that this table
has — or, at any rate, indicates — a real existence
which does not depend for its being upon my
perception of it. If, then, I may assume that the!
external world, as represented by this table, exists I
by virtue of itself and independently of my mind I
or any other, we have first to admit that no one \
has yet begun to offer us the scantiest explanation/
of the manner in which we can have any knowl
edge at all of the existence of the table. Such
explanations as have been offered are no more
than admirably contrived verbal exercises. The
prime fact that the ego can, in some fashion, be
come aware of the non-ego must simply be ac
cepted. But it is of the first importance to in
quire in precisely what fashion and with precisely
what limitations, if any, this knowledge is at
tained.

34

WHAT IS MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY?

Now all men have at one time in their mental
development tacitly accepted the theory which
we may call unqualified realism; and, in point of
fact, it is only the very few who do not accept it
without .any question from first to last. According
to this theory, which any plebiscite in any age or
place would approve, things are what they seem—
a table is simply a table. There can be no doubt
about it. Behold it — a hard, flat, wooden object,
supported upon four legs. Room for refinement
or argument there is none: no sane man — say
realism and its countless adherents — can possibly
dispute the unequivocal evidence of his senses.
There can be no use in discussing the nature and
conditions of human knowledge in such a con
nection as this. The man who would dispute that
a table is precisely what it appears to be can never
have seen a table — or must be moon-struck and
outside serious consideration, save as a pathological
product.

If this is so, then science, which deals with tables
and stars and plants and rocks and other material
pbjects, is not subject to any necessary limitations.
The eye may be short-sighted, but the telescope
will remedy that. The sense of touch may be
coarse, but the scales will do its weighing for it.
We have merely to invent suitable instruments for
reinforcing and supplementing our senses — and all
may be known if we persevere. As for Reality-
well, the capital letter is misplaced : what could more
palpably be a solid chunk of Reality than— a table ?

35

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Crude realism, however, though it is, always has
been, and doubtless will long continue to be, the
most widely accepted of • all beliefs whatever —
answering more closely than any other belief ever
did to the famous test of being accepted semper, et
ubique, et ab omnibus — always, everywhere, and by
all — has nevertheless been found out. It is more
certainly untenable, the universal plebiscite not
withstanding, than the crassest superstition of the
most ignorant age.

The argument is not that no two people see a
table in exactly the same way; for that does not
exclude the possibility that at least one person
may see it — or, at any rate, might be conceived
to see it — in the right way: steadily and whole, as
Matthew Arnold would say. The argument against
what Spencer calls crude realism is infinitely more
cogent than that. For when, begging the insoluble
question as to how it is possible to know at all, we
come to ask ourselves what, in point of fact, we
actually do know, there can be no doubt about
the answer. In feeling and seeing this table, I
know merely the occurrence of changes in myself.
It is not merely that a different nervous constitu
tion might give me a very different idea of the
table, though it is obvious that the eye sees only
what it brings with it the power of seeing, and
that eyes vary. The point is that, no matter
what my sensory arrangement be, no matter
whether I have a hundred senses for every one I
possess now, yet all I know is change in my con-

36

WHAT IS MEANT BY PHILOSOPHY?

sciousness. As I cannot escape beyond the limits
of my consciousness, I can never hope to know
more. In order to know the table as it really is, I—
or my consciousness — would have to become iden
tified with it, which can never be.

Now, though this doctrine is not exactly of
universal acceptation, yet we all employ*1 a couple
of terms in which it is implicit. The words phe
nomenon and phenomenal are perhaps the most
consistently abused in language, as they are cer
tainly among the most valuable and significant
when rightly understood. Of course these words
no more mean marvel and marvellous than they
mean green cheese or hypochondriacal. A phe
nomenon is an appearance, such as this table or
the Pleiades; and science deals with phenomenaj
and their relations. When John Locke proved
that we have no innate ideas, he proved that our
knowledge can only be of phenomena. But we
crave to know Reality: phenomenal knowledge
does not satisfy us — we should be poor creatures
if it did. And so we have metaphysics, or, as it is,
now more properly called, ontology — the science
of being, the study not of appearances, but of the
Reality of which they are the appearances. Bui
this high emprise ordinary folk may leave until
such time as, haply, two ontologists understand
and agree with each other.

IV

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

THE object of the philosopher is to survey "all
time and all existence"; and, having done so, to
enunciate such propositions as shall unify and
clarify what was formerly multifarious and obscure.
To this end he must first provide himself with
certain data or assumptions such as the familiar
axioms which served for the foundation of the
mathematical system of Euclid. In time past
every philosopher has taken more or less cognizance
of the definite or scientific knowledge of his time.
Similarly each new kind of religion — which is a
specialized form of philosophy — has largely de
pended upon the state of scientific knowledge at
the time of its inception. The peculiar difficulty
of the theologian — whether Christian, Mohamme
dan, or whatever he be — is thus to reconcile the
dogmas based upon the scientific knowledge or the
Cosmology of any given century with the exten
sions and modifications to which time inevitably
subjects it.

If the facts of science are to be accepted as
facts, the philosopher is fortunate who has them,

38

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

numerous and incontrovertible, at his disposal. In
this respect Spencer was greatly indebted to the
labors of the first half of the nineteenth century.
The chief intellectual achievement of that period
was the establishment of the doctrine of the con
servation of energy ; and upon this doctrine Spencer
founded his philosophy.

His predecessors were not always so wise.
Philosophies have ere now been founded on the
shifting sand of a priori ideas, reached in a "flash"
of misbegotten inspiration ; they have been reared
in defence of religious dogma, in support of moral
laws supposed to be in danger of neglect or denial,
and even upon the sheer egoism of the philosopher.
Many bold prophets have arisen who professed
unmitigated contempt for the science of their
time, as did the undoubtedly great Hegel, who not
merely ignored the law of gravitation in his specu
lations, but spent much satire and time in an at
tempt to overthrow, or at least to scarify, the ada
mantine work of Newton. Spencer, however, had
a unique opportunity, and took it at the flood.

The use of the word energy we owe to Dr. Thomas
1 Young, the decipherer of hieroglyphics and founder
of the undulatory theory of light. The doctrine of
the conservation of energy was preceded by that
which declares that matter is eternal. Spencer
accepted this dogma of the conservation of matter,
though, as we shall see, he objected to the use of
the term conservation as implying a conserver.
The one chapter in First Principles that has not

39

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

withstood the test of the forty most vigorous
years in the intellectual life of mankind is that
entitled "The Indestructibility of Matter." But
it is impossible merely to assert that the conserva
tion of matter is no longer accredited by mod
ern physicists, without further discussion of this
"law," which has held sway in men's minds for a
century — a reign coextensive, more or less, with
that of the indivisible atoms of Dalton. The as
sertion of the conservation of matter — which we
really owe to the great Lavoisier, aristocrat and
chemist, not spared by the unrighteous excesses
of a most righteous revolution — and the assertion
of the integrity of the atom are obviously com
plementary or identical. It is radium the revealer
that has caused the supersession of both.

Of course, the law of the conservation of matter
still holds for the ordinary purposes of the chemist.
If you weigh and then burn a candle in suitable
conditions, you can show that nothing was lost in
the process — the resultant gases contain all that
was in the candle. But the chief discovery of the
twentieth century hitherto is a confirmation of
the central dogma of First Principles as applying
even to the "foundation-stones of the material
universe." And if, as is already abundantly
proved, matter itself is but a transition stage in
the evolution of something else, we can plainly no
longer speak of its conservation.

Premising, then, that physicists are now coming
to believe that radio-activity is a property of all

40

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

matter, let us look at it as shown in radium. Let
us also premise that the disintegration or evolution
theory of the radium atom has lately been accept
ed by its one outstanding opponent, Lord Kelvin,
who may probably be regarded as the greatest
physicist of any age. With his conversion to it
the theory now to be presented in outline may be
said to be established.

An atom of radium— and the atoms of all the
other so-called elements differ only in detail-
consists of a large number (probably hundreds of
thousands) of incredibly minute bodies known as
electrons. These are in rapid motion, describing
orbits, as is believed, around some central point.
So small are the electrons that the distances be
tween them are relatively as great as those between
the planets of the solar system. In size they are
to the atom "as a full stop to a cathedral." But
even when we substitute for the simple conception
of an atom entertained by Democritus or Newton
or Dalton — that of a minute, hard speck — such a
conception as modern physics entertains, we do
not necessarily impugn its stability. Such a com
plex atom, microcosm though it be, might con
ceivably be conserved, permanent, indestructible.
But far more remarkable than our recent discovery
of the complexity of the atom is the discovery
that it is only a stage in all-embracing evolution.
All the phenomena of radio-activity — the pro
duction of heat and light and electrical disturb
ances — are due to the fact that these atoms of

41

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

matter are not conserved, but are impermanent
not merely from second to second, but from one-
millionth of a second to another. By the action
of causes yet dimly guessed these electrons are
constantly flying out from the atomic system,
and pass, at speeds comparable with that of light,
outward to an unknown fate.

Here, as the acute reader will observe, I have
an excellent opportunity of begging the question.
Having known that the atom is not conserved, I
might rest content and try to persuade him that I
have disposed of the conservation of matter. But
he will say: "Not so fast, my friend. I grant that
your so-called atoms are falsely so called, but what
if I propose to transfer this term to the electrons
of which the atoms (literally, the uncut) are now
known to be composed? Plain it is that if the
electrons be permanent, then the law of conser
vation of matter stands. Recent discoveries have
only given it more accurate expression. It will
not do to juggle with the term 'atom,' as if it were
not your own fault that it has hitherto been mis
applied."

In attempting to meet this most legitimate
criticism I must first ask, What is an electron?
Is it a hard, impenetrable, indestructible speck of
stuff or matter? At first sight it might appear
to be such, for it is certainly possessed of mass
and inertia, and our minds will not permit us to
imagine that it does not occupy space. But recent
study has shown that mass (which may con-

42

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

veniently be here regarded as equivalent to weight)
and inertia are properties of electricity. All matter,
in short, is an electrical phenomenon.

Now we are in deep waters, and I am not sure
that contemporary physics, utterly remaking as it
is, can quite keep its head above them. But if
we admit that the electron is the unit of matter, and
that it is electrical, and then find evidence to show
that it is a "particle" of "negative electricity,"
we can at any rate convince ourselves, even while
admitting our sore need of a brand-new vocabulary,
that the electron is really no more than a transient
expression of a relation. When a negative and a
positive charge of electricity — I quite admit that
we hardly know what we are talking about — have
met and "satisfied their affinity" for each other,
they each cease to be. There is no annihilation
of the something of which they are transient ex
pressions, but there is annihilation of the tem
porary relation which formerly was, and in virtue
of which they existed. Matter, then, is no more
than the transient expression of a transient electrical
relation.

I have every sympathy with the reader who has
now come to the conclusion that modem physics,
if this be a sample of it, is hardly distinguishable
from metaphysics ; but at least he will accept my
word that I am not aiming at a general befuddle-
ment, nor trying to refine matter into an abstrac
tion, when I call it, in the most accurate language
at my command, an expression of a relation.

43

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

have attempted briefly to indicate the problems
upon which all physicists are now engaged, since
they realize that the last few years have given
us a modicum of truth and a first step onward,
beside which all previous inquiry into the nature of
matter may be regarded as nugatory and stationary.
The late Professor Tait, joint-author with Lord
Kelvin of the leading work on physics in any
language, was fond, as one who had the honor of
sitting at his feet remembers, of styling the law
of the conservation of energy "this grand prin
ciple." He never showed the same enthusiasm
for the law of the conservation of matter, though
there was no reason, at that time, why he should
not regard the two as peers. But Tait had the
insight which many a most distinguished and
useful servant of science does not possess. I
fancy this partiality of his, which has often been
remarked upon, was due to what we may perhaps
call an intuitive perception that the two laws are
not peers; in short, that the law of the conserva
tion of energy would ultimately be found to in
clude the other. And so it has turned out. While
no one can now regard matter as other than a
phase of the cosmic activity, yet no physicist is one
whit disturbed in his belief that the power of
which matter is an expression is eternal and un-
creatable. Atoms may come and atoms may go,
"and leave not a wrack behind," but assuredly
this power goes on forever. The last problem of
all philosophy is the relation of this power or energy

44

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

to the mind by which it is known. In the last
analysis, is this relation an identity? Spinoza said
yes, and Goethe declared his framing of and answer
to this question to be the greatest, truest, and pro-
foundest thought of all the ages.

And here, before we can estimate the breadth
of the foundation upon which the evolutionary
philosophy stands, we may inquire into the various
entities, or apparent entities, with which philoso
phy has to deal; for if it be true that "all facts
belong to science, and are her portion forever,"
so assuredly is it true of philosophy. The philo
sophic system with which one fact, of any order,
is incompatible, must be mended or ended, how
ever vast its fabric and sublime its mien.

Let us, then, take the Cosmos, or the sum of all
that is, and reduce it, if we may, to its ultimate
components, so that we may know with what
orders of facts science must deal. But before
making such a category as is compatible with the
knowledge of to-day, let us contemplate a very
simple one which appeared valid to many some
thirty years ago.

The dogma of theoretical materialism (which
we must not confound with practical materialism
or mammon-worship) was not the least clear of
creeds outworn. According to it, the spectator
of all time and all existence had to deal with an
aggregation of moving atoms. These atoms were
very small, indivisible, hard or impenetrable bod
ies, of some seventy-five elemental varieties, each

45

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

atom being a unit of matter. Now the atoms
were in constant movement, and the movement
was so important that we might conveniently
sum all things as consisting of matter and motion.
Certain facts, however, indicated the existence
of a subtler stuff, believed to be omnipresent,
which was called the ether. Some said that this
was atomic, some that it was continuous and
homogeneous ; some thought it imponderable, oth
ers ponderable; but at any rate it could only be
thought of as a subtler form of matter. There
was also, by-the-way, a certain curious manifes
tation, hardly to be called an entity, but per
haps worth mentioning, which was known as mind.
When certain atoms arranged in an exceptionally
complex fashion, and moving in a peculiar way,
were observed, it was noticed that their clashing
produced a sort of disturbance, somewhat different
from those of sound and heat, which we could call
consciousness, or mind. This was only a by-product
or epi-phenomenon — to use the term applied to
it by Professor Huxley ; and as a by - product it
could hardly enter into an ultimate category of
the all.

That creed was good enough for some in the
seventies, and doubtless contents a few to-day,
though I have never met one. We need waste no
space in criticising it here, save to remark upon
the amazing ingratitude — shall we say? — which
degraded mind, the percipient of all else, matter,
ether, and motion, to the level of a by-product.

46

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

For if mind, the only thing of which we have im
mediate knowledge, be a by-product, then surely
that which we know thereby — atoms, ether, and
motion — is merely a by-product of a by-product
— and what becomes of Reality?

Now radium and radio-activity have proved
what the wise knew without their aid, that the
hard atoms, "the foundation-stones of the material
universe, which have existed since the creation, un
broken and unworn "—are as much a figment of the
imagination as Coleridge's palace of Kubla Khan,
or any other product of an opium dream. We
may regard as proven the modern electrical theory
of matter, which has shown that even the root-
characters of mass and inertia, which we attrib
ute to matter, are properties of electrical energy.
Nor will any trained intelligence now dispute the
proposition of Spencer (him the unscrupulous call
materialist) that, if it were necessary to describe
the all in terms of matter alone, or of mind alone,
one's only chance of success would lie in the latter
alternative.

Let us, then, make a category of the Cosmos as
we now understand it — not, however, using the
word "now" as if to suggest that at last we have
reached finality. Our category must include four
entities which, at the first glance, we can observe.
These are matter, the ether, the many obvious
forms of energy, such as light, electricity, heat,
and mind. Modern theory, as I have shown,
entirely disposes of the first, that matter which

47

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

was once thought to be the only reality worth
mentioning. There is more to be said of this
view, which upsets all our notions of every-day
things, and which describes the attributes of a
chair or a mountain in terms of electricity; but
here we will simply accept it. This reduces us to
a category of three — energy, the ether, and mind;
but obviously we cannot rest here. The human
intellect has an irresistible tendency to unify.
All thinking people are convinced of the truth of
some form of monism. Monotheism is evidently
an ancient expression of this tendency — a tenden
cy which every day's new light further justifies.
At present physical theory seems to suggest that
this ether, originally "invented" to account for the
phenomena of light, and called the " luminif erous
ether," is really the prima materia of the ancients,
the Ur staff of the Germans, the protyle of Sir William
Crookes; and all forms of energy may be referred
to vibratory and other movements of the ether.
Let us, then, provisionally reduce our category of
the Cosmos to a dualism — the ether and its energy
on the one hand, and mind on the other.

Such a dualism, as a final statement, will satisfy
nobody ; indeed, has satisfied nobody, for the prob
lem is old though the terms and the details are
new. The reader is familiar with the two extremes
which thought has taken in time past; and they
are the same to-day. The idealists maintain that
mind is the only reality, and that the ether and its
energy exist only in mind: as Berkeley would say,

48

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

their esse is percipi— their being is the being per
ceived. The opposite school say that mind must
be a product of the ethereal energies, though they
do not tell us how the law of the conservation of
energy can be proved to hold in regard to the
production of the Eroica symphony or the " Divina
Commedia." The third school finds it impossible
to explain mind in terms of not-mind, or not-mind
in terms of mind, and regards both as manifesta
tions of one Reality. This is the Spencer-Spinoza
school. Time is not yet when men shall cease to
discuss that Reality's ineffable name. For myself,
I hold it literally ineffable, unspeakable because
unknowable.

Having thus attempted to survey the field of
philosophy, we may consider more in detail that
magnificent generalization which had been pro
vided for Spencer by the labors of such men,
working both before and after the inception of
the evolutionary philosophy, as Helmholtz, Joule,
Mayer, Mohr, and Kelvin. Energy, as then un
derstood, was distinct from and almost antithet
ical to matter. Each was regarded as ultimate
and irresolvable. To-day, as we have seen, mat
ter is not regarded as an ultimate, and the state
ment of its conservation is merged in the newer
and greater dogma. But Spencer anticipated this
view nearly half a century ago, when radio-activity
and the new theory of matter were undreamed of.
Seeing that matter, as known to us, is none other

49

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

than a manifestation of force, or power, or ener
gy, he framed a new dogma, which should express
this, the first synthesis, or "placing together," of
the synthetic philosophy. He chose the word
force to express both the energy of motion and
the power manifested in matter, and he objected
to the word conservation as implying a conserver,
an act of conserving, and the necessity of this act,
lest force should disappear. Professor Huxley sug
gested to him the use of the word persistence ; and
thus the synthetic philosophy is founded upon the
dogma of the Persistence of Force.

In this relation one may make reference to the
crudely materialist philosophy of Professor Haeckel,
of Jena, who is in the habit of using many Spen-
cerian ideas and terms in his popular perversions
of the philosophy which two great Englishmen,
Spencer and Darwin, have taught him, but whose
latest book, The Wonders of Life, does not contain
the name of his foremost master. Haeckel has
built what he apparently imagines to be an original
philosophy upon what he calls the law of substance.
This he has formed by the simple device of con-
bining the laws of the conservation of energy and
the conservation of matter, and calling that which
energy and matter express by the term substance,
used in the sense of Spinoza. The use of this word
I think most desirable and valuable, and I regret
that Spencer did not call his law the persistence
of substance (literally, of that which stands under
or sustains) ; but it is only just to observe that

5°

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

Haeckel's much-boasted law of substance is merely
the law of persistence of force under another name.
There is this difference: that Haeckel, pledged as
he is to the old-fashioned materialism — the de
struction of which has left him, as Sir Oliver
Lodge remarks in the Hibbert Journal, stranded
high and dry — still persists in asserting the per
manence of matter, despite the recent discoveries
with which all are familiar. His dilemma is obvi
ous : he has so framed the law of substance that if
the doctrine of the conservation of matter be dis
credited, the law of substance falls also, and with
it the whole of " Haeckclismus " as a coherent sys
tem. If Haeckel had been more than a brilliant
biologist he might have avoided this disaster, as
did his tutor and predecessor.

I do not propose again to use Spencer's phrase,
the persistence of force, but shall simply speak
of the conservation of energy: firstly, because the
term is so familiar, and, secondly, because evo
lution has been illustrated in the meaning of the
word energy, so that it now connotes exactly what
Spencer desired to express when he substituted for
it the term force.

Now what is this doctrine of the conservation
of energy ? In its fullest meaning, as it is accepted
by practically every competent student to-day, it
asserts that, everything in the world— save mind-
is from eternity to eternity ("eternal and un
created"), that nothing is lost, and nothing is
made from nothing, or "created." It is the

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

modern amplification and development of the
ancient saying of the Ionian Thales, the father
of philosophy, "Ex nihilo nihil fit." But it says
more than he said; for, while it agrees that from
nothing nothing can be made, it also declares that
though all the forces in the universe, save one
infinitesimal iota, were ranged to destroy that
puny exception, they would fail. It is indeed a
very great testimony to the powers of the human
mind that, while the familiar "law" of the eternal
permanence of matter is perishing before our eyes,
we can yet assert that the sum of things is constant
and incapable of the smallest diminution through
out unending time.

I cannot conclude this chapter on the basis of
evolution without reference to that which gives
the law of the conservation of energy its supreme
importance. The crude popular theism of this and
preceding ages conceives of the Deity as having
called his creation into existence at a given point
er week — in past time. Before that event, nothing
was, save the Deity alone. This belief is incom
patible with the law of the conservation of energy,
which yields the inference that there never was
an act of creation ; for energy is from eternity to
eternity. But the serious student is well aware
that time is not an entity at all, but merely, as
Kant partly showed, one of the forms of our per
ception. When once we have realized that time is
merely the way in which we express our conscious
ness of change, the vulgar idea of creation is seen

52

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION

to be what it really is — childish and for children,
and naturally leading to the very proper question,
put by all wise children and not yet answered by
the wisest parent of the old school, "Who made
God?" Once, however, the doctrine of the conser
vation of energy is of universal acceptance, and
as widely understood as accepted, the theistic
conception will change, and the Deity will be re
garded as the All-Sustainer and All-Upholder, as
Goethe has it. In short, while the conception of a
personal Deity is retained, the theist will endeavor
to think of Him as the eternal upholder of what
science has shown to be eternal energy; and for
the old notion of creation will be substituted that
of a perpetual creation - "new every morning."
This idea of creation, in its turn, will soon become
indistinguishable — save that there will always be
quibblers — from the philosophic idea which is ex
pressed as the evolution of the "Infinite and Eter
nal Energy from which all things proceed."

But if we recall our category of the Cosmos, it
will be seen that the law of the conservation of
energy is without entire applicability; for it is
simply irrelevant and meaningless when applied to
mind, of which no quantitative, but only qualita
tive, estimates are possible. But to make this
admission is not to say that the basis of evolution
is built upon only half the facts of the all; upon
not-mind but not upon mind. For modern psy
chology has clearly shown, in a hundred works
besides the Synthetic Philosophy, that the law of

53

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the conservation of energy is strictly applicable
to those nervous phenomena which, so far as we
know, always accompany the phenomena of mind.
The writing of Hamlet was associated — and neces
sarily so — with certain nervous changes and move
ments, which necessitated the combustion and de
composition of a certain amount of food. Though
we cannot estimate the weight of Hamlet, as com
pared with that of, say, "Charley's Aunt," we can
positively say that it could not have been produced
without the manipulation by the nervous system
of a certain amount of what the physicist calls
energy; and it is quite certain that no iota of this
entity — the use of which is necessary in the pro
duction of even the most ideal and intangible
mental products, such as an ode of Shelley's or a
myth of Plato's — was either lost or created in the
process. Thus, without denying the existence of
mind, we may assert that the physical doctrine
of the conservation of energy, though apparently
confined to the phenomena of not-mind, is yet
to be reckoned with even in the realm of mind.
We therefore need not be concerned that quanti
tative estimations of consciousness have not yet
been made — as, indeed, in the nature of the case
they cannot be made; but we may rest content
that the doctrine of the conservation of energy is
not only the most exact and the surest upon which
any philosophy has ever been built, but is also
adequate to bear the weight of the magnificent
structure which has been reared upon it.

54

V

THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

THE precocity of genius, and in especial of mu
sical genius, is a commonplace, but it is worthy
of note that certain orders of mental product are
not commonly formed in youth or even early
manhood. Conspicuous instances of epoch-mak
ing works written in their authors' sixth decade
are Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Adam
Smith's Wealth of Nations. Similarly it was not
until his fortieth year that Spencer began the
actual construction of the evolutionary philosophy.
The inference, I take it, is not that any one, by
taking pains and time, can become a thinker ; for the
thinker, like the poet, and the man of genius of
any order, is born and not made; but in the case
of musical composition the product is less depend
ent for its development upon education than in
the case of the production of philosophic systems,
which can firmly be grounded only upon a great
accumulation of knowledge — to which, neither for
the genius nor any other, is there a royal road.

The actual genesis of the philosophy of evolu
tion was unconscious. Its author was interested
s 55

EVOLUTION THE? MASTER-KEY

in many and diverse matters, scientific, artistic,
and political. Upon these he wrote numerous
essays, which were published in the chief reviews
during the fifth decade of the nineteenth century.
In 1852, for instance, he wrote an essay on the "De
velopment Hypothesis," and, five years later, one
on ' ' Progress, Its Law and Cause. " He had not yet
seen reason to abandon the committed word prog
ress for the neutral one now so familiar. Mean
while, Spencer's more serious energies were devoted
to his book on psychology, which appeared in 1855,
an ever - memorable date in the history of the
science of mind. But hitherto there was no sign
of the emergence of a philosophic system. It was
not until Spencer had occasion to revise these very
miscellaneous essays for republication, and thus to
re-read them within a short period, that he dis
covered, implicit within them, an inchoate philoso
phy. And we may note that it was no more than
inchoate. The idea was not full - fledged, as in
the case of that celebrated piece of nonsense upon
which Hegel founded his philosophy — " Being and
not-being are the same." It is true that the
evolutionary philosophy issued in a formula, but
it is not built upon it, as is Hegelianism upon the
aforesaid "synthesis." Evolution was not an a
priori truth, but a generalization from an infinitely
numerous and infinitely complex series of phenom
ena. Though Truth is a whole, yet her architect
ure is of immeasurable complexity, and thus the
formula of evolution, as we now have it, underwent

56

THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

a process of evolution, during no less than seven
teen years, ere it reached a form insusceptible,
during its author's lifetime, of further modification.
But to regard the present form as final would be,
as we have already seen, to deny its truth. For
evolution teaches us that there is no such thing
as finality; and we may console ourselves, if this
seems to make hopeless the intellectual destiny
of mankind, by attempting to imagine the barren
ness of the mental life in a time — conceivable but
happily impossible — when nothing is in dispute,
nothing unexplained, all art and thought at a
stand-still. The prospect is as drear as that of the
conventional heaven, which would be a very hell
to any but the veriest fool.

Ere we look further at the slow growth of the
idea of evolution, as embodied in the famous
formula, it may be profitable to raise the previous
question, Are there any other than lying formu
las? Or, if not directly untrue, are not formulas
in general almost as bad in their incompleteness,
or ridiculous pretentiousness, or both? Formulas
there have been since men began to think; and
so, also, doubtless, what Carlyle calls formulism.
No one will question that formulas, theoretical,
philosophic, political, have repeatedly exercised a
most baneful influence over the lives and thoughts
of men. If not without utility at some time, yet
no formula was ever yet that did not outlive its
usefulness. Furthermore, does any form of words
really serve men's minds? or may it more reasona-

57

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

bly be said that a formula may be a good servant
but is invariably a bad master? These questions
must be answered before we expend too much
admiration upon the complex proposition which
Spencer applied to all phenomena. I am not here
concerned to demonstrate the precision and all-
completeness of this proposition, nor to spend
much time in an attempt to illustrate its various
sections. In the light of its own teaching, it is to
be regarded as but an approximation to the truth.
It is enough for the student of science in general,
who believes that causation is universal and that
the universe is an organic whole, to know that
Spencer conceived, in somewhat complex form,
the transitoriness and yet the eternal influence of
all things whatsoever; and that, in seeking to
illustrate this truth in all regions of inquiry, he
traversed none without making the way plainer
for his successors.

In discussing the genesis of the idea of evolution,
it is well to begin at the beginning, and we must
first observe that Spencer's advance towards it be
gan with his acceptance of the proposition above
named, that causation is universal. This is the
first article in the explicit creed of the man of
science; though it is logically preceded, we must
grant, by an assumption that the universe is in
telligible. The evolutionary explanation of this
truth we shall presently discuss.1 Now the uni-

'It is that the intellect was evolved " by and for converse
with phenomena."

58

THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

versality of causation, the doctrine of eternal and
immitigable and all - embracing consequence, has
lately become a platitude; and a platitude may
perhaps be defined as an unrealized truth. When
men throw this term at a proposition, the chances
are high that their irritation is due to a conscious
ness that their subservience to the truth stated is
not what it might be. The veritable philosopher,
I believe, will never show irritation or scorn for a
platitude; for to him an assertion of any truth
can never be flat, stale, and unprofitable. Though
it were older than any of the hills, yet truth is new
every morning. Furthermore, it might be reason
ably expected that the most salient and significant
truths would be the first to be discovered, so that
Robert Louis Stevenson was right when he said
that the commonplaces are the great poetic truths.
To confess to irritation at a platitude is to admit
that one's palate for truth is sated.

I therefore commend to the reader's considera
tion this well-worn but never threadbare proposi
tion that causation is universal. It is essentially
a product of the age of science, which declares
that there is neither chance (as the vulgar under
stand chance) nor contradiction nor caprice in the
Cosmos, which believes in the omnipotence of law,
and which has no word of a vacillating and short
sighted Providence.

"in his Study of Sociology Spencer himseli
discussed the means and training whereby the idea
of causation may be adequately realized by the

59

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

student; this in relation to sociology or the study
of society, which it was the great achievement of
Spencer's predecessor, Auguste Comte, to include
within the realm of cause and law.

In the volume named it is clearly shown that
only by a training in science can the idea of uni
versal causation be fully realized, so that it becomes
an unconscious but constant factor in the forma
tion of all opinions whatsoever.

The first point, then, on which I would insist is
that, as the evolutionary philosophy is grounded
upon this great scientific generalization, so it was
from a wide and earnest study of science that its
author started towards his goal. And in these
days of gross utilitarianism in education, when
Science herself is being prostituted in the market
place, and her claims to recognition stated to con
sist in her financial possibilities, it must be as
serted with such force as an author can command
that the major function of science, beside which
even such achievements as the control or extinction
of disease are nugatory, is to provide the sure
foundation upon which alone the highest truths
knowable by man can be built. The matter of
supreme importance for any man or age is what, in
the inmost heart, that man or age believes. The
age of faith is every age, and never yet was sceptic
without a creed, for a denial is an assertion of a
belief. Boito and Verdi may even be excused for
"improving upon" Shakespeare, by reason of the
appalling credo which they have put into the

60

THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

mouth of lago in the opera "Otello"; for they
teach truly that what a man believes as to human
destiny and the supreme questions, so is he.

It follows that each man's philosophy, whether
premeditated or implicit, conscious or uncon
scious, is the prime fact about him; and what is
true of an individual is true of a race or a civiliza
tion or an era. If, then, the contention be valid
that only upon the bed-rock of scientific fact can
philosophy be built, then we must conclude that
the main function of science is none other than,
in the long run, the formation of man's creed-
and, therefore, the control of his actions and their
incalculable outcome.

The first fact, then, to note concerning the gen
esis of the evolutionary philosophy is that it is
built, whether well or ill, at any rate upon science.
And 'it may be asserted, with expectation but not
with fear of contradiction, that the contemporary
and future thinkers who are now modifying and
will ever continue to modify the details of this
so well-grounded philosophy must themselves pro
ceed from a firm footing upon scientific truth.

In other words, the genesis of the idea of evo
lution is not to be found in any intuition. Though
subsequently worked out deductively, the law of
evolution is essentially and typically an induction
—a generalization based upon the sum of fac
known to its author. In very many instances,
the views held fifty years ago were irreconcilab]
with the doctrine of universal evolution. Many,

6r

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

for instance, thought the solar system to be stable
and permanent, calculated to last forever.1 Men
spoke of the "fixed stars," as many of us still do,
and regarded them as eternal. The author of
the doctrine of universal evolution could not concur
in these views, and time has proved him right.
Similarly the belief in the ultimate "elements" of
matter was universally held. It was thought that
an atom of carbon or iron had been an atom of
carbon or iron since the creation, and would be
until the sound of the last trumpet. Spencer
could not accept this view; and again the verdict
of time is on his side. When we turn from physics
to biology, we find again that the authority of the
time was totally opposed to the idea of evolution in
the realm of living matter. The first independent
thinker to declare that the facts pointed to evo
lution and not to special creation was Herbert
Spencer. The essay of 1852 attests to that fact.
In psychology, again, mind has always been treated
as a permanent and special creation, as witness the
familiar and hope - confounding lie, still current,
that "human nature is the same in all ages." It
remained for Spencer to inaugurate a new era by
regarding mind as an evolution; by refusing to
confine himself, as all his predecessors without a
single noteworthy exception had done, to the study
of the adult Caucasian consciousness; and by
correlating with this familiar study that of the

1 Cf . the second paragraph of Sartor Resartus.
62

THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

mind of the child, the savage, and the lower ani
mals. The same is true of sociology and ethics;
so that it would be to lack any adequate apprecia
tion of the facts to suppose that Spencer merely
took the scientific knowledge of his time and built
upon that. He did, indeed, build upon the knowl
edge of his time ; but he had first to remake much
of it. No mere study of the recognized text
books of the various sciences could have yielded
the generalization which is now the master-key
to all our thinking.

Probably the germ of the idea lay in the word
progress, inherited by Spencer from his liberal tu
tors. It wras when he came to analyze the idea and
nature of progress that he caught a first glimpse of
principles which, as he came to see, applied, not
merely to human societies, but to aggregates of
all kinds. Only after many years (though he had
long ceased to use the old word) did he acid to the
formula of evolution a further formula to express
the correlative process of dissolution. But this
will be discussed later.

This chapter on the genesis of the idea of evolu
tion may fitly be concluded by consideration of the
power of a phrase. Tennyson somewhere has a
saying about the coming of a great thought which
flashes through the brain and brings the blood to
the cheeks. We need not doubt that this was an
authentic reminiscence; but perhaps one may be
permitted to question whether the experience is a
common one among the authors of the world's

63

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

great thoughts ; at any rate, I received a negative
answer when I addressed this question to the one
person of my acquaintance of whom such an in
quiry might be made. Whatever the conditions
of poetic thought, I fancy that the great ideas of
philosophy have seldom flashed across the brain,
but are rather the final products of long excogita
tion and contemplation.

A priori thinking has enslaved the human mind
for so many centuries that some people in our time
are inclined altogether to deny its claims, forget
ful, apparently, of the triumphs of mathematics —
the one purely deductive science. In other fields
induction is, of course, supreme; all progress in
biology, to take an instance, has resulted from
the inductive method, which begins by observing
facts, and then proceeds to reason from them.
Hence we find the explanation of a certain objec
tion which has been taken to the synthetic philoso
phy by that lower order of workers whom one
may call the hodmen of science. Their argument
is perfectly intelligible. They say that the formu
la of evolution was an arbitrary invention of its
author, across whose brain this idea presumably
"flashed," and who then proceeded to explain all
orders 6f facts by this a priori assertion. Now, if
it were true that the formula had been arrived at
by a purely introspective and mystic process,
that fact would not of itself invalidate the applica
tion of the formula, though it would certainly
leave us hopelessly in the dark as to the process

64

THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA

by which the formula was framed. We should
have to fall back upon some such expression of ig
norance as the word "intuition" — and leave the
matter there.

But, as a matter of fact, the formula of evolution
was arrived at by a strictly inductive process, pre
cisely comparable to that which enabled Newton
to educe the law of gravitation — save that Spencer
was his own Kepler, so to say. The formula, as
we now have it, is the product of years of thought,
during which it was greatly modified and amplified.
Only some years after it was published — as we
have seen — did Spencer discover that there is a
correlative process which he called dissolution, but
which he would probably have done better to term
involution. But what, finally, was it that set
Spencer on the right line? The answer to this
question seems to me to be of such interest to
everybody, and especially to every one with any
love of "words, phrases, and literary form, that we
may fitly dwell upon it here.

In his first book, Social Statics, Spencer had
reached a generalization which contained the
germ of the idea of evolution. All the material
was in his mind, the conclusion had been reached—
but there the process stopped. The idea Bore no
fruit. Then Spencer came across his own conclu
sion, independently reached by a German scientist,
but stated in a new form. Von Baer, the great
founder of embryology, enunciated the truth that
all progress in the organic world consists essentially

65

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
The simplest organisms have many parts all alike
and practically independent. Progress consists in
the development of forms which consist of many
parts that are unlike, and interdependent. Of this
the human body is, of course, the supreme illus
tration; and the Latin fable about the revolt of
the other organs against the pampered stomach is
the ancient expression of the same idea. Though
Spencer had shown that the same holds true of so
cieties — the lowest consisting of individuals very
independent and very similar, the highest of in
dividuals with very various functions and there
fore entirely dependent on one another, the soldier
on the agriculturist, and the agriculturist on the
soldier — yet he had gone no further. It was only
when he met his own idea, crystallized in a terse and
lucid form, that, given this "convenient instru
ment for thinking," he was enabled to take the
first step towards the formula under which all the
knowable phenomena of the unknowable can now
be included. We shall yet see many instances in
which this same gift for phrase-making enabled
Spencer to serve human thought; but it was this
gift, in the hands of another, that first guided him
towards the greatest generalization in all philoso
phy. Thus we may perceive a serious and valu
able truth in Stevenson's delightful piece of irony:
" Man lives not by bread alone, but chiefly by catch
words."

66

PART II

INORGANIC EVOLUTION

VI

COSMIC EVOLUTION1

WE are now prepared for the consideration of
the principle of eternal change as illustrated in all
phenomena — those of the inorganic world, of the
world of life, of mind, and of the products of
mind. Now, though Spencer was compelled, by
the magnitude of his task and by the consequent
need for subordination of aspects of evolution less
significant to human life, to omit from his system
the discussion of evolution as it applies to inani
mate nature, he formally stated, in brief, the out
lines of the process. And we may illustrate it by
reference to the almost infinitely large and the
almost infinitely little.

Less, perhaps, than any other science, has as
tronomy gained from Spencer's work. One timely
service, however, he did it. The reader will re
member the history of the nebular theory of the
origin of the solar system. Originally suggested
to Kant by a brilliant guess of Lucretius, and
later given mathematical form by Laplace,2 the

1 Partly reprinted from an article in Harper s Magazine, May
1904, entitled "Whence and Whither?"

2 Laplace knew nothing of Kant's work in this field. His

69

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

theory received, as it appeared, a crushing blow
when Lord Rosse's great telescope resolved into
stars certain supposed nebulae. The natural in
ference was drawn that remoteness alone prevented
a similar resolution of all nebulae, and this conclu
sion was accepted by astronomers. The spectro
scope, in the hands of Sir William Huggins, the
present president of the Royal Society, had not
yet demonstrated by its incontrovertible evidence
that true nebulae do veritably exist. Now, if
some form of the nebular theory be not true, the
evolution theory, as a cosmic generalization, is
forthwith disposed of. Spencer was therefore led
to consider the matter, which he did in an essay
written for the Westminster Review. First-hand
astronomical knowledge he had none, and he is
certainly entitled to consider this essay, as he does,
an instance of his constitutional "disregard for
authority." But while the actual observations of
the expert must always be provisionally accepted,
it is open to any one who can to criticise the con
clusions deduced by the expert therefrom. This
Spencer did, advancing sundry reasons to show that
the evidence of Lord Rosse's telescope could not
be accepted as a refutation of the nebular theory.
Later came the spectroscope and Spencer's vindi
cation, both as to the existence of true nebulae and

theory appeared about forty years after that of Kant, which
was published in a local Konigsberg paper in 1755. (See
Merz's History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century,
II., 283.)

70

COSMIC EVOLUTION

the nature of the sun's atmosphere. At the pres
ent time — in large part owing, it is of interest to
note, to the work of Professor George Darwin,
the son of the immortal Charles — the nebular theory
is accepted by all astronomers save perhaps one.
In it you will find, on the largest scale, an illustra
tion of inorganic evolution. Let us consider this
great theory as it is understood to-day, forty-seven
years after Herbert Spencer's bold defence of it,
contra mundum.1

Let us conceive, then, of an immense cloud or
nebula, situated at some point in infinite space
certainly far distant from the present position of
the solar system — a position which, owing to the
"proper motion" of the sun, is changing at the
rate of nearly twelve miles a second as you read.
But before you are willing to follow the argument,
you will stop and ask where this nebula came
from; for you have already become convinced
of the laws of conservation; you know that the
nebula did not spring into existence out of nothing,
and you very properly decline to continue until
this most legitimate question is answered. ^ You
quote that most ancient maxim of Ionian science,
"Ex nihilo nihil fit " — an axiom which, nearly
twenty-five centuries after Thales, is now a proven
truth— and demand to know where I get this
nebula of which I talk so glibly. But we must

1 Some measure of justice was paid to his work in a lecture
on the nebula: delivered last year before the British Associa
tion.

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

wait until the sequel of this cosmic story, for the
last chapter in the history of the solar system — in
the history of that nebula — will be the same as the
first; wherein will be seen exemplified Spencer's
law of universal rhythm and the truth that there
is no new thing under the sun.

The thesis, then, which science now believes it
self to have established is that by the working of
the forces inherent in this nebula — forces which
act according to laws immutable, then as now—
it has been resolved by a process of contraction
into a central or parent mass which we call the
sun, and into a number of subordinate bodies called
planets and satellites. To these must probably
be added those comets which have not been capt
ured and imprisoned within the solar system by
the force of gravitation, but which have originated
within it, and also the meteoric particles, such as
the Leonids, which occur in myriads in the inter
planetary spaces, and are themselves probably of
cometary origin. Astronomy having brought the
evolution of the nebula thus far, other branches
of science take up the tale and declare that the con
tinued action of these same forces, and of others
like them, has resulted — to take the most instant
case — in the formation of the earth's crust and
in that "vital putrefaction of the dust" — to use
Stevenson's phrase — which we call living matter,
and which has now continued the evolutionary
advance so far as to result in the existence of man.
Hence we believe that Newton, Shakespeare, and

72

COSMIC EVOLUTION

Beethoven were potential in that nebula, as were
Kant and Laplace, whose destiny it was to advance
and establish the nebular theory of their own and
our origin.

This is no less than a stupendous theory, but its
basis is mathematical, and therefore essentially ir
refragable. I must attempt to outline it in intelli
gible language.

Given a nebula or gaseous cloud of any shape
whatever; given, indeed, a nebula whose particles
are moving in a condition of absolute chaos, obvi
ously without "order" and apparently without
law; given, indeed, what is probably the initial
stage of all nebula? — it is demonstrable by the
infallible processes of mathematics, acting upon
the basis provided by the law of gravitation, that
such a nebula must assume a spiral form. The
law of the "conservation of momentum," which
enables the physicist to forecast the history of
any two or more particles moving in any direc
tion, but constituting a system not subjected to
any external influence, is the foundation of this
assertion that any nebula, if left to itself, must
become spiral. This spiral form is essential in
the production of a stellar system such as the
Pleiades or a solar system such as ours. It there
fore behooves us to look more closely at the spiral
nebulae, as constituting the most important link
in the chain of events.

The astronomers of this particular planet are
acquainted with some hundred and twenty thou-

73

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

sand nebulae, of which about one-half are spiral in
form. This large proportion of the whole is suffi
cient to exclude chance in their formation, and to
suggest that there must be a necessity in their
development. We are entitled to say that the
spiral nebulas constitute, next to the fixed stars,
the most important and characteristic objects in
the heavens. The first to be discovered was the
great nebula in Andromeda, which is still the
largest that is known. It was first seen by Lord
Rosse, and was one of the earliest of his rewards
for constructing his great telescope. The French
criticism passed at the time was that the astron
omer had mistaken a spiral scratch, such as might
easily be produced in cleaning the lenses of a tele
scope, for a celestial object. This, however, was
no more than ingenious. We now know that the
spiral nebulae constitute the second stage in the
evolution of a system, those which one may for
convenience style the "chaotic nebulae" constitut
ing the first stage.

The transition is not difficult of comprehen
sion. The countless gaseous particles of which
the chaotic nebula is composed are subject to their
mutual gravitational influence. The nebula, there
fore, shrinks. (Our sun — the central mass of the
original solar nebula — is shrinking at this hour at
the rate of about sixteen inches each year, and
has thereby produced the heat and light which
enabled me to write, you to read, and the plant
from which this paper is made to grow.) As the

74

COSMIC EVOLUTION

solar nebula, which once extended as far as the
orbit of Neptune, began to shrink, the atoms
which composed it tended, in accordance with the
law of conservation of momentum, to arrange
themselves in a number of planes, of which one
was the most frequented, and was called the prin
cipal plane.

When we learn the origin of the nebula we shall
know what conditions determine the presence and
position of the principal plane. But "the great
ages onward roll," and the influence of gravita
tion causes the atoms in these various planes to
attract one another, so that ultimately the whole
substance of the nebula is disposed in one plane,
which is, approximately, of course, the principal
plane already described.

The chaos has now been resolved into a flat
object, nearly all the atoms of which are now
revolving in the same direction — as do planets
and nearly all the satellites of the solar system—
around their common centre of gravity, which in
our case is now represented by the sun. But there
is another most important difference between the
chaotic or primitive nebula and the flattened spiral
nebula to which it has yielded.

Time was when we thought it probable that a
nebula was merely a star-cluster, too distant for
terrestrial telescopes to resolve into its constituent
stars. No advance in the construction of tele
scopes could ever have answered this objection;
but a new astronomy arose, which left the telescope

75

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

with its limitations and wielded a new instrument,
the spectroscope. In its simplest form this is sim
ply a prism, which spreads out a beam of white
light into its components, the colors of the spec
trum. This was the famous experiment by which
Newton proved the composite nature of white
light.

Now the spectroscope gives different results
according as it is placed in the path of light from
a glowing gas or light from a solid body. The
spectrum of sunlight is continuous, consisting of
bands of colors which shade off into one another.
The spectrum of a true gas, on the other hand,
consists of a series of bright lines separated by
dark intervals, and is known as a discontinuous
spectrum. It was shown by Sir William Huggins
that the spectrum of a young or chaotic nebula is
discontinuous, which is a proof that these nebulae
are not distant star-clusters, but are what they
appear to be, clouds of gas, often many times
greater in extent than the diameter of the solar
system. But Huggins applied his spectroscope
to the light from a spiral nebula, with the most
significant result that its spectrum was found
to be continuous. The denser patches in the
spiral nebulae, therefore, indicate places where the
nebula is beginning to solidify, where planets are
beginning to be formed. I say planets, taking the
solar system as a type, but we must remember
that the nebula from which our system is formed
was a comparatively small one.

76

COSMIC EVOLUTION

The most magnificent nebula in the heavens is
that in Orion, its place being indicated by the
"star" — as it appears to the naked eye — which is
the middle one of the three that form the sword-
handle of the mighty huntsman. This superb ob
ject really consists of six stars enmeshed in and
surrounded by a great nebula, which has thus al
ready given birth to six suns.

The Pleiades, which photographic astronomy
has resolved into a group of some fifty thousand
stars, were probably formed in a similar manner
from some nebula of ultra-titanic proportions.

We learn, therefore, that a spiral nebula is formed
of more or less solid bodies — destined to become
suns or planets — surrounded by a rarer gas, which
ultimately attaches itself to them, so that there is
produced a system of revolving bodies separated
by empty space — empty but for the presence of
the omnipresent ether. This is the present state
of our own system. But the evolutionist does not
imagine that it is final. In an ironical passage
Carlyle assures us that "to many a Royal Society
the creation of a world is little more mysterious
than the cooking of a dumpling," and that "La-
grange, it is well known, has proved that the
planetary system, on this scheme, will last forever."
The "scheme" is the theory of gravitation, by
which, and by which alone, as Carlyle goes on to
say, Laplace guesses that the planetary system
was made. But Lagrange had not taken all the
factors into consideration. It is a deduction from

77

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the law of gravitation that the planetary system
will not endure forever.

Charles Darwin was a foremost champion of
the theory of evolution in the realm of biology,
and George Darwin, his son, has greatly added
to our knowledge of evolution in the realm of
astronomy. By a study of the tides he has fore
cast the future of the solar system. Even at this
hour the tides are acting as a brake upon our
earth as she rotates, and are lengthening the day
by about twenty-two seconds in each century.
The terrestrial tides are at present mainly pro
duced, as we know, by the gravitational action of
the moon. The moon herself was almost certainly
formed by the breaking loose of the matter rolling
upon the earth some fifty million years ago, when
her surface was molten. The Atlantic and Pacific
oceans probably mark the scars left by the two
masses, detached from opposite points, which
later joined to form the moon. Now the present
effect of the tides is so to alter the relative lengths
of the month and the day that the moon and the
earth will eventually rotate together as if a solid
bar ran between them. There will then be no
moon-raised tides upon the earth.

But — to ignore the influence of the other planets
—the earth will raise tides upon the sun, just as
Jupiter certainly does now. These solar tides act
as a brake upon his rotation just as the terrestrial
tides act upon the rotation of the earth.

From these alterations in rate of rotation serious

78

COSMIC EVOLUTION

consequences may be inferred. The law of the
conservation of momentum states that a certain
amount of what the mathematicians, in an un
fortunate phrase, call "moment of momentum"
is present in our system. Not one particle of that
finite quantity can be lost by the solar system as a
whole. The alterations now occurring in the dis
tribution of this total have led Professor Darwin
to predict that the moon will ultimately return
to the earth which gave her sudden birth so many
ages before; and from these and other considera
tions, such as the repulsive power of light, which
checks the passage of the planets in their orbits, it
may further be prophesied that the planets and
their satellites must ultimately yield to the gravi
tational influence of our dying sun and must re
turn to the bosom of their parent. We must im
agine the solar system of to-day as then gathered
into one central mass, closely aggregated around
that point which, from the first, has constituted
its centre of gravity. And what will be the state
of this shrunken object? It will be a dark star,
a dead sun. There are myriads of such in the
heavens. Sir Robert Ball has said that to count
all the bright stars that we can see and say, " These
are all there are," would be like counting the red-
hot horseshoes in England and saying, "This is the
total number." This dark tomb of ours^ will,
therefore, be just such another as many millions
more. There will be no life upon it. We cannot
conceive the depths of its cold, for the nebula has

79

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

been dissipating energy, in the form of light and
heat, into the chilly depths of inter-sidereal space
ever since the first hour of its longaeval shrinkage.

What is the destiny of this dead sun, among
whose constituent electrons, remember, will be those
in the printer's ink before your eyes and those in
the eyes themselves? Are they forever — "stable
in desolation," as Stevenson has it — to be borne
onward through infinite space? No; this shriv
elled globe, the common tomb of sun and earth and
moon and of the bodies of the great that once
breathed thereon, may live again. Give it but the
consuming embrace of such another voyager, and
in a moment a new nebula will be born. The
force of their impact will suffice to evaporate their
substance into another cloud which will repeat
the history of the old. The path of the two dead
suns will determine the position of the "principal
plane" which will form the ground -plan of the
new system. A new system, I say, new in time,
alien in place, yet in part composed of the same
imperishable substance as the old.

You asked me whence I derived the nebula
which I proposed to consider? And I replied that
its last stage would indicate its first. We be
lieve that the nebula from which the solar sys
tem is formed was itself derived from the impact
of two or more bodies, each of which may well have
been the dark epitome and consummation of a sys
tem such as ours.

We hear much of waves and vibrations nowa~

80

COSMIC EVOLUTION

days. From the formation of one nebula to its
phoenix-like end in the formation of another, is
surely the wave - length of the great vibration.
Do we want a great measure of time — an annus
magnus ? Surely this, the epoch between two
nebulas, might be taken as the unit wherewith
faintly and with unutterable unsuccess to measure
eternity. The rhythm of universal history, the
strides of the eternal, are from nebula to nebula.

And we ? — ephemeral dwellers on the doomed
satellite of a dying sun; we, to whom a scroll so
sempiternal has been unfolded — how does it all
strike us, as from our stand-point between two
nebulae we survey the Cosmos of which we are, if
an ephemeral, yet an inalienable part? For our
bodily substance has a past how long and glorious,
a future how fraught with possibility! The atoms
in the tear wherewith your winking eyelid has just
now — for its benefit — moistened your eyeball,
where were they when the solar nebula reached out
as far as Neptune ? Or can you figure them borne
on some precedent world and scattered in affright
when it collided with another? Or can you trace
them further back still, in an illimitable past, or
forward to an illimitable future? They may have
moistened the eyes of a greater than Shakespeare
in the course of the history of the last nebula but
one, or, gathered into overflowing tears, they may
express the agony of sorrow or the ecstasy of joy
in some heart like yours that may beat in the course
of cosmic evolution some ten or a billion nebula?

8r

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

hence, after so many more unconsidered paces in
the path of the universe.

It seems to me that the fact of the conservation
of energy, teaching us that there shall never be one
lost iota of power, nor ever has been — considered
with the nebular theory, which teaches us afresh
and in the authoritative tones of mathematics the
lesson of Heraclitus and Herbert Spencer, that the
Cosmos pursues an eternal succession of cyclical
changes — reveals to the imagination a vista of
sheer sublimity. This pen can but adumbrate it,
yet surely the reader, accepting the vision of matter
and energy, eternally indestructible, eternally pur
suing this cyclic course, and ever and again giving
rise to sentient and reasoning creatures such as
himself, may agree with me that here is an epic
indeed.

VII

ATOMIC EVOLUTION1

OUR survey of evolution as witnessed in the
inanimate world, and operating for infinite periods
before and infinite periods after the development
of life in any particular part of the Cosmos, such as
our earth, must now be turned from the realm
of the telescope to one so minute that the micro
scope is not only impotent to reveal its secrets, but
can never be able to do so, whatever improve
ments be effected in its mechanism; for the nature
of light precludes the possibility that we shall ever
be able to see an atom.

The discovery of evolution among atoms is al
most a revolutionary one, defiant of the^most cher
ished and admired dogmas of the chemist.

Evolution as a universal doctrine must, of course,
be rejected if we are to accept the conventional
teaching of the chemist that matter consists of
some seventy-five or eighty varieties of unalterable
elementary atoms. If these have existed as sucl

i In this chapter is reproduced part of an article, "Radium
the Revealer," which appeared in Harper's Magazine, J

83

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

from all eternity or since a supposed creation,
"unbroken and unworn," as Clerk-Maxwell said,
then evolution is a myth or a half-truth. Spencer,
of course, could not accept this view, and reject
ed it in First Principles, but, unfortunately, he has
given us no prophetic discussion of this matter.
The reader is aware that radium and radio-activity
have demonstrated the action of evolution in this
sphere also, "atomic evolution" having become,
within the past year or two, a familiar phrase.

But for the first assertion of this now demon
strated truth we must go back a great deal further
than Herbert Spencer — back almost to the in
ception of the atomic theory. It was Empedocles,
the most brilliant pupil of Democritus, the first
atomist, who first asserted a belief in atomic evolu
tion and who correctly described its chief mode of
action. Much nonsense is talked about the ex
traordinary coincidence that Darwin and Wallace
should each have expressed, almost simultaneously
—though Darwin was really first — the idea which
Spencer called the "survival of the fittest." But
not only had Spencer already enunciated the same
truth of societies, and Hay and Wells of organisms,
the latter as far back as 1813, but Empedocles had
actually asserted it of atoms themselves more than
two thousand years before. Those atomic forms
would survive, he declared, that were most accu
rately fitted for the conditions, or "adapted to the
environment," as Spencer would say. Now, if we
turn from this almost -forgotten Greek to the latest

84

ATOMIC EVOLUTION

work of Mr. Frederick Soddy, who collaborated
with Sir William Ramsay in discovering the evolu
tion of helium from radium, we find the survival
of the fittest definitely stated as the primary law
of atomic evolution — which would have interest
ed Empedocles and Spencer, too. In the light of
these facts one reads with amusement that "the
synthetic philosophy has seen its best days."
With amusement rather than disgust, for per
chance the survival of the fittest applies not only
to atoms and organisms and stars, but to philoso
phies as well — which is another way of saying that
magna est veritas, et praevalebit.

But let us now look more closely at the positive
evidence for atomic evolution.

I must not waste space in here describing the
spinthariscope, the clever little instrument in
vented by Sir William Crookes in order to demon
strate the activity of radium. Go into a dark
room with the spinthariscope and hold it as close
as possible to one eye. At once you see a shower
of points of light that never ceases, night or day,
year in, year out. You are witnessing atomic
evolution.

Now the sight which the spinthariscope affords
is really the vindication of the much-abused al
chemists who sought to turn the baser metals into
gold. They were evolutionists, had they known
it. Later generations laughed at them, and said:
"Oh no; you cannot transmute one element into
another, for each has its own kind of atom; and

85

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the atoms are the unalterable foundation-stones of
the universe. They cannot be changed one into
another, and so you cannot change lead into gold.
Your philosopher's stone is a myth." But this
supposed impossible thing is precisely what is
happening in the spinthariscope. Let us consider
the facts.

Radium is certainly an "element" — as much so
as is gold or lead or any other. Now the atoms
of an element have a characteristic weight of their
own. If we represent the weight of a hydrogen
atom — the lightest of all — by the figure i, then the
radium atom, according to Madame Curie, is 225.
It is very heavy indeed. Only two heavier sub
stances are known, thorium (232) and uranium
(240) ; and these two share the remarkable proper
ties of radium. Now if you confine some of this
" element " in a glass tube, there will appear therein,
after a short time, a minute quantity of a gas which
was not there before. It is not gaseous radium,
for when it is examined with the spectroscope it
shows a spectrum other than that of radium; in
fact, its spectrum is quite different from that of
any other substance. But it was discovered by
Sir William Ramsay that if the spectrum of this
mysterious gas — often known as the radium
"emanation"-— be examined again after an inter
val of about four weeks, it has changed into a
familiar spectrum easily recognizable as that of
the gaseous "element" known as helium. So here
is the astonishing fact: that the "element" radium

86

ATOMIC EVOLUTION

is decomposed and produces another ''element,"
helium. Now the atomic weight of helium is
about 2.2, just about one-hundredth part of that
of radium, so that each atom, giving the lie to its
name, breaks up into about a hundred particles,
and when these have had a few weeks in which to
settle down, they are recognizable as atoms of
helium. Now it is these particles, flung out at a
speed nearly comparable to the speed of light,
from the specks of radium in the spinthariscope,
that strike the little screen of zinc-sulphide paper,
and thereby produce the never-ceasing shower of
sparks that are seen in the instrument.

It is of no small interest that, after the comple
tion of the synthetic philosophy, but just before
the death of its author, there should have been
discovered in radium a substance which proves
that the formula of evolution is as applicable to
atoms as it is to societies or solar systems. As I
have previously taken occasion to point out, the
definition of evolution, framed more than forty
years before the facts of radium were known, fits
those facts as well as if it had been framed to
describe them. This applicability to all circum
stances, new and old, is the hall-mark of a universal
truth and of that alone. The most important
revelation of radium the revealer is this of atomic
evolution. Not even an atom is immune from the
universal law of unceasing change; and the reason
why every one should possess a spinthariscope is
that this simple little instrument demonstrates
7 87

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

evolution in process even in the atom, which the
distinguished physicist of a generation ago felt
himself justified in describing as bearing upon it
the stamp of the "manufactured article." Not
manufactured, but evolved.

We must reject, then, the idea of elements.
"What is an element?" Sir William Ramsay has
lately been asking ; and, indeed, it is not now possible
to frame any definition worth having. We must
not imagine that radioactivity or atomic evolution
is confined to radium and its allies. It is probably
an attribute of all atoms, though their rate of
change varies within incalculable limits. If, in
deed, we were compelled to offer some definition
of an element — say, radium — as compared with
a compound — say, chloride of radium — we might
say that a compound is a substance which the
chemist can decompose, whereas an element is a
substance the decomposition of which he cannot
effect, but can observe. But it would be dangerous
to say that man cannot hope ever to control atomic
evolution. He may learn to do so, and to trans
mute one "element" into another to suit his own
convenience; much as he can breed new varieties
of dog or pigeon. The practical aspects of the
matter are, however, relatively unimportant; its
cardinal significance is that atomic evolution has
taken by assault what might reasonably have
been supposed to be the most redoubtable strong
hold of the creationists. Whether any other re
mains to them to-day I venture to doubt.

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ATOMIC EVOLUTION

We may be assured, then, that the first lustrum
of the twentieth century finds the doctrine of evo
lution firmly established as applicable to the in
organic world — alike whether we contemplate the
Pleiades or the inconceivably minute atoms of
what every one but the convinced evolutionist
was willing, until the other day, to call " elements."
The task which Spencer was compelled to pass
over has been thoroughly well done for him by
scientific discoveries which were undreamed of
when he enounced the truth of inorganic evolu
tion.

On March 9, 1905, the first Herbert Spencer
lecture1 was delivered before the University of
Oxford by the distinguished Comtist, Mr. Frederic
Harrison. In the course of that lecture Mr. Har
rison said:

"It was a disaster that Spencer was unable to complete
his scheme for the inorganic sciences. His system leaped
from first principles and laws of evolution to biology,
psychology, and sociology. He did not explain how
evolution could be applied to astronomy, physics, and

1 When the company were about to disperse from the hall
of the crematorium on the occasion of Spencer's funeral, a
Parsee student, himself an Oxonian, arrested us for a moment
in order to announce that he proposed to offer a thousand
pounds to this university for the founding of a Spencer lecture
ship. If the offer was refused, the University of London was
to be approached. Oxford, however, doubtless under the press
ure of universal opinion, has decided to celebrate in perpetuity
the name of him whom it flouted during his lifetime.

89

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

chemistry. To have treated of these sciences systemat
ically would have compelled him, it is probable, to sup
plement his theory of evolution by other laws."

Now we have already seen that Spencer did
indicate the application of the theory of evolution
to the inorganic sciences. That he did not do so
at length was due to the fact that his object in
writing the synthetic philosophy was to reach the
principles upon which morality is grounded. With
a task estimated at twenty years — really to occupy
nearly double that time — before him, he could
not spare the time to deal with the relatively
unimportant aspects of evolution.

But, curiously enough, Mr. Harrison's objection
was more than met the following evening in a re
markable lecture on the "Structure of the Atom,"
delivered by Professor J. J. Thomson, of Cambridge,
before the most distinguished audience I have ever
seen at the Royal Institution. In that brilliant
and memorable lecture Professor Thomson, who
is the chief author of the new theory of matter, and
whose views were so amusingly misunderstood in
Mr. Balfour's Presidential Address to the British
Association at its Cambridge meeting in 1904, gave
us a most satisfying account of atomic evolution,
so final and complete that I must outline it in con
cluding the present chapter.

The actual unit of matter, as we have already
seen, is not the so-called atom but the electron,
which is really a literal atom of negative electricity.
Now "like electricities" tend to repel one another,

90

ATOMIC EVOLUTION

and we must therefore suppose, with Lord Kelvin,
that the atom is held together by a core of positive
electricity, which is now known as an ion. The
problem of atomic architecture is so to reconcile
the common attraction of the ion for all the elec
trons, with the mutual repulsion of the electrons
themselves, as to produce a stable structure. By
the aid of mathematical theory, checked by actu
al experiment with magnetized needles — to repre
sent electrons — floating freely in water, under the
influence of a centrally placed electro - magnet,
Professor Thomson has been able to unravel the
architecture of the atom. The atoms of the differ
ent "elements" vary only in the number and ar
rangements of their electrons, every electron,
wherever observed, being absolutely identical with
every other. The electrons are found to be ar
ranged in concentric rings within the atom, and
the presence of a certain number of them in each
ring is necessary for holding any given number in
place outside them. The stability of the atom,
therefore, depends on the number and arrange
ment of the electrons it contains. No contempo
rary physicist believes that such a thing as an
absolutely stable atom exists, though some may
undergo no apparent change in millions of years.
Thomson's theory clearly explains how atoms of one
element, by losing their outer ring or ring of elec
trons, may be transformed into those of another,
and it also demonstrates the operation, among
atomic species, of the law of natural selection at

91

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

which Empedocles guessed so many centuries ago.
The atoms with which we are now acquainted-
some eighty or so in number — are those that have
survived of many more which have attempted to
gain a place for themselves during countless past
aeons. Professor Thomson's theory is consistent
not only with itself, but also with the facts. It il
lumines the known electrical characters of the
elements, it furnishes a rational explanation of the
facts of chemical combination, and it accords with,
and places on a rational basis, the famous periodic
law of Mendeleef, the great chemist of St. Peters
burg. It brings with it, therefore, abundant evi
dence of its truth, evidence which is accumulating
every day, and it may be confidently asserted to
demonstrate the truth of the doctrine of evolution
in regard to the elementary constituents of the ma
terial universe.

PART III
ORGANIC EVOLUTION

VIII

GENERAL1

THE action of ordered change in the inanimate
world is relatively easy to discover It can be
studied in large measure by exact mathematical
methods. But whilst it is of immense interest, its
practical import is relatively small. To us it
really matters little whether the solar system be
permanent or the elements really elemental; but
when we enter into the realm of life and study or
ganic evolution — which is what many people un
derstand by evolution — the case is altered. The
conclusions at which we shall arrive must inevita
bly affect our notions of human conduct and destiny
and of our relations to the living world around us.

Let us begin by contemplating the problems
which confront us.

If we are to do so in logical order we must begin
with the question of the origin of life, which obvi
ously precedes that of the origin of species. As
tronomy and geology compel us to believe that there
was a time when life did not exist upon the earth.

1 The classification of our subject matter into inorganic,
organic, and superorganic is borrowed from Comic.

95

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Perhaps one hundred millions of years ago — to
take an estimate of Lord Kelvin's — the surface
temperature of the cooling earth became low
enough to permit of the existence of water in the
fluid state. Hitherto it had existed in gaseous
form in the atmosphere, but when the temperature
had fallen below that of the boiling-point of water,
life became possible. And here evolutionary theory!
joins issue with the belief in creation. Of course
it is not meant that it has to argue the case against '
the early chapters of Genesis. Time was when
certain aspects of the theory of organic evolution,
and especially that which concerns itself with the
origin of species, had to oppose themselves to
Genesis; but that time is forever past, and the
ancient Babylonian and Hebrew legends of the
creation may be studied beside other examples of
early mythology. But until living matter can be
produced in the laboratory, or, at any rate, until a
feasible theory of the natural origin of life can be
framed, the creationists will continue to maintain
that which the evolutionists must deny: that the
beginnings of life on our planet marked a unique
interruption in the action of the law of continuity,
that natural causes were insufficient for this new
birth, and that a creative fiat went forth, saying,
"Let there be life"." We must therefore devote
special consideration to this question, which was
never discussed by Darwin, but which Spencer
considered at length, as, indeed, his universal theory
compelled him to do.

96

GENERAL

When we have considered this preliminary ques
tion, which is the most difficult — yet, curiously
enough, perhaps the least debated — of all questions
in evolutionary theory at the present time, we
must proceed to look at "organic evolution" as it
is commonly understood — that is to say, at the
means by which the primal form or forms of life
have given rise — as evolution asserts — to the
millions of varieties of vegetable and animal life ,
with which the earth is peopled to - day. Here ;
we shall find that, while no competent critic can i
now be found, less than half a century after the
publication of the Origin of Species, to dispute the
fact of evolution in the organic world, yet there is
scant agreement as to the nature and relative im
portance of the factors by which this has been!
brought about. We shall have to consider the-
doctrine systematically propounded by Lamarck!
in 1809 — the year of Darwin's birth — that the
modification of species has been due to the in-'1
heritance of characters acquired by individuals
as a result of converse with their environment.1
It must be decided, if it be possible, whether this
inheritance of acquired characters takes place at
all, and, if so, what is its importance as a factor in
organic evolution.

Then we must inquire into the evidence for the
principle which will forever be associated with the
illustrious name of Charles Darwin, and which he

1 The original term used by Lamarck is "milieu ciwiron-
uant."

97

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

called natural selection. This principle Spencer
more happily styled the "survival of the fittest."
We must inquire whether it really exists, and, if so,
whether it is all-important, as Weismann and the
neo-Darwinians assert, but as Darwin himself did
not assert; or whether it is merely one of the
most important of the factors of organic evolu
tion.

Similarly we must discuss sexual selection,
which Darwin described at such length and with
such characteristic completeness in his Descent of
Man, published in 1871, twelve years after the
epoch-making work of 1859. Here we shall find,
as in every other instance, that recent work has
supplemented that of the great pioneers. In
regard to sexual selection, for instance, we shall
be able to adduce the conclusions reached by
that new method of biological study which was
founded by Francis Galton, the illustrious cousin
of Charles Darwin, and which his foremost follow
er, Professor Karl Pearson, of University College,
London, has called biometrics or biometry. The
essence of biometry is the application of exact
mathematical methods, and the most carefully
controlled statistical inquiry, to the problems of
life. We shall find that the principle of sexual
selection has been greatly supported and extended
through the discovery by the biometricians, of the
principle of homo gamy, which asserts that, through
out the entire realm of living matter, like tends
to mate with like. This principle has doubtless

98

GENERAL

been of great importance in the isolation of species
— at any rate in the animal world.

The views of Auguste Weismann, Darwin's most
distinguished follower among biologists, must also
fall under consideration, not only in relation to his
controversy with the Lamarckians.

Thereafter we must ask whether there are still j
any "unknown factors" in organic evolution, or

whether those named suffice to explain the facts. )

* , /

But prior to our study of the factors of organic
evolution we must devote a chapter to the princi
ples, everywhere unquestioned, which render it
possible. These are the correlative and contrasted
principles of heredity and variation. Here, again,
we shall discover that recent work has been of
great significance, and, in relation to heredity, we
shall have to note the rediscovery of the brilliant
but obscure work quietly done by an Austrian
abbot, Gregor Mendel, some forty years ago, thrown
into the background by the Origin of Species and
the controversy that followed its publication, but
recently revived and amplified by the work of
Hugo de Vries, of Amsterdam, and William Bate-
son, of Cambridge.

After attempting duly to discuss heredity and
variation, and the factors of organic evolution,
we must devote ourselves for a few pages to the
recent study of the inference from organic evolu
tion which so immediately concerns us— viz., the
origin of man. Here we shall discover at least
three new lines of evidence for which Spencer

99

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

would have given much in 1852, or Darwin in 1859.
We shall find comparative pathology — the study
of disease in man and the lower animals; in com
parative haematology — the study of the blood of
man and the lower animals; and comparative
embryology — the study of the developing forms
of man and the lower animals — most cogent and
novel evidence for the theory of organic evolution.
Further, we must devote a chapter to the prac
tical deduction from the theory which we owe
to Mr. Francis Galton, and which he has termed
eugenics — or good breeding. This chapter should
justify my assertion that the discovery of organic
evolution profoundly affects human destiny; or,
rather, is capable of doing so to the lasting benefit
of men, so soon as they come not merely to hold
it as an article of intellectual faith, but as a fact
which is of practical significance — capable of being
utilized in the highest interests of the race.

IX

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE1

As we look round us, in street or country or
where you please, we see objects which may be
divided into two great classes. To the first belong
houses, rocks, and stones, whose is, as Wordsworth
has it,

"The silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things."

To the second belong such objects as men and
sparrows, which have an apparent spontaneity
and power of self - movement that sharply dis
tinguish them from their inanimate surroundings.
On much further consideration we find that it is
necessary to include in the same class as men and
birds a number of objects, mute and to all appear
ance insensate, which have no obvious power of
self - movement, but are almost as stationary as
the houses or the stones. These are trees, grass,
shrubs, every form of vegetable life. They are
not to be regarded as half-alive, or less endowed

1 Reprinted by permission from the Pall Mall Magazine for
June, 1905.

101

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

with vitality than the mobile bird or beast — which,
indeed, owe their life entirely and directly to that
of the green plant.

We have, then, an inanimate or inorganic and
a living or organic world around us. Now, if we
take a crystal or a brick, we can trace its history
with ease. It is simply an aggregation of smaller
particles arranged in a more or less symmetrical
way. No question of parentage arises. But if we
consider an oak or a horse, we are assured that
it has had very small beginnings; that no human
hands have formed it; that the beginnings were
invariably and necessarily derived from some for
mer oak or horse — no oak, no acorn. Nor do
we doubt that every human being on the earth
has had parents — was not formed directly from
mother-earth. Now, this belief of ours may not
have been consciously extended by us to lower
forms of life; we may never have considered
whether every mushroom implies a preceding
mushroom, every bacillus a preceding bacillus.
We may even be inclined to think that if a cheese
be left in a damp cupboard, mould will appear
upon it by a spontaneous generation from the sub
stance of the cheese ; that though every man must
have had parents, the same is hardly true of a
mere mould.

Now, as a matter of fact, men of science have
entered exhaustively into this question; and they
most positively assert, without any qualification of
the smallest, that what is true of the man is true

102

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

of the mould. It also has had its parents like
unto itself, and did not spontaneously develop
from the cheese. We have framed various Latin
dogmas on this matter — dogmas of great historical
and immediate interest. The illustrious Harvey,
greatest physiologist of any age, made a great con
tribution to this question — a contribution which
would keep green his name had he not been the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Harvey
spent many an hour in preparation for his great trea
tise "Concerning Generation," and concluded that
omne vivum ex ovo: he found what corresponded to
an egg-stage in the history of all the living things
he examined. With the microscope, and especial
ly its employment in the nineteenth century, the
dogma of Harvey has been modified — it being the
custom to modify scientific dogmas in accordance
with new truth, a custom which is found more con
venient than that of retaining the old form and
giving it a new meaning.

Rudolf Virchow, the founder of the cellular
pathology — that is, of modern pathology — modified
Harvey's phrase in accordance with his own re
searches, and propounded it in this form — omnis
cellula e cellula. It was thought that every living
thing consists of cells; but it is at least probable
that the very lowest and simplest form of living
matter is not even so far evolved as to possess
cellular form, so it is best to read our dogma in this
form — omne vivum ex vivo. Under no conditions
can all the (dead) cheese in the world produce one
s 103

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

single unit of living matter. Such is the assertion
to which very few dissentients are known among men
of science at the present day. Of course I must
assign the reasons which have led to the formula
tion and acceptance of this dogma; but before
doing so I must just enumerate, as if no dogma
had yet been framed, the possibilities as to the
origin of life on this planet. The possible theories,
are three, with a semi-jocular one thrown in. In
the first place, it is possible that the minutest and
simplest forms of living matter are being constant
ly produced, wherever the conditions are suitable,
to-day as yesterday, and ever since the temperature
of the earth's surface was cool enough to permit
of the presence of water in its liquid form. This
doctrine is in harmony with the laws of continuity
and of evolution, which are the most universal and
invaluable of all modern conceptions. It is sup
ported by the fact that the earth is everywhere
flooded with the lowest forms of life. But, as we
have seen, the prevailing scientific belief is a denial
of this possibility.

On the contrary, this belief asserts that, at the
present day, every living thing must have living
progenitors — omne vivum ex vivo. This assertion
is, of course, immediately faced with the necessity
of stating how the first living thing — the veritable
mother of all living — came to inhabit this planet.
The overwhelming majority of biologists believe
that omne vivum ex vivo was not always true.
They find themselves compelled to aver that,

104

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

though living cannot now be produced from inani
mate matter, yet in the distant past the conditions
must have been so different that life was natural
ly evolved upon the earth by the continued play
of continuous, unexceptionable, unintermitted, un
aided law. " Supposing a planet carved from the
sun, and revolving round the sun at a distance
equal to that of our earth, would one of the con
sequences of its refrigeration be the development
of organic forms? I lean to the affirmative." So
said Tyndall, and so say we all — or nearly all-
to-day. What were the past conditions of the evo
lution of life cannot be guessed. It cannot have
been that a high temperature was needed, for the
temperature must have been below that of the
boiling-point of water. The (supposed) difference
between that distant period — say a hundred mill
ion years ago — and the present cannot have been
due to any present deficiency of suitable complex
chemical stuffs to-day. On the contrary, the earth
is filled with complex compounds, proteids, carbo
hydrates, and so forth, apparently ready to develop
into living matter; yet (it is said) they do not;
while living matter, containing all these bodies,
was evolved in the past, when none of them was
already there to aid in the process! It is a hard
belief.

Thirdly, there is the belief of Lord Kelvin, who
is not a biologist, but is assuredly the greatest
living man of science, that no explanation of the
origin of life is conceivable save that which refers

105

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

it to the special act of a personal God. To use the
great physicist's own words, "Science absolutely
demands Creative Power." Lord Kelvin's recent
expression of opinion on this thought raised a
storm of protest from the biologists, not one of
whom came to his support.

The semi-jocular theory to which I have re
ferred we owe to Lord Kelvin himself, who sug
gested, many years ago, that the first germs of
life might have been brought to the earth, long
aeons ago, "on some moss-grown fragments from
the ruins of another world." It is a brilliant effort
of the scientific imagination; but I do not fancy
that Lord Kelvin could now be regarded as taking
it seriously. Even were we assured that meteorites
are derived from the ruins of other worlds, and not
from the ruins of comets, as the astronomers have
excellent reason to believe; and even if we knew
that, during their passage through our atmosphere,
such meteorites were not necessarily raised to such
temperatures as would effectually sterilize them —
yet the problem of the origin of life would face us
from some planet of the past if not from our own
" lukewarm bullet " of to-day.

No; the present controversy is between the first
two hypotheses: either life is arising ubiquitously
now, by what Stevenson called a "vital putrefac
tion of the dust," or it arose, by a natural evolu
tion, in the distant past, once and for all.

The controversy, I say; but it is almost univer
sally believed that there is no controversy. Omne

106

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

vivum ex vivo is taken as finally proved, as a result
of the great controversy of thirty years ago, in
which Tyndall, Huxley, Pasteur, and Dr. Bastian
engaged. It is thought that the "myth of spon
taneous generation" has been forever refuted,
and omne vivum ex vivo forever established. This
is what I was taught, not so many years ago, in
class-rooms both of zoology and botany; and it
is so taught everywhere. But lately the matter
has come up again : Sir Oliver Lodge and Professor
Ray Lankester have fought a drawn battle in the
Times; and Dr. Bastian has published a remarkable
book1 and made most important contributions to
Nature; and we may appropriately ask ourselves
what was really proved thirty years ago. It was
shown, beyond dispute, that when infusions of hay,
or other substances which customarily came to
swarm with life in a few days, were efficiently
boiled, and then protected from contamination,
no life ever developed in them. The boiling had
killed every germ of life in the infusion; and for-
evermore it must remain dead, unless living germs
were brought to it from outside — vivum could
only be ex vivo; spontaneous generation was a
myth.

Now let us see how this view, the scientific or
thodoxy of to-day, agrees with the opinions of the
past. We shall find that, however difficult it may
be to hold when we ask the origin of the -first living

1 Studies in Hetero gene sis, 1904.
107

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

things, yet it is perfectly compatible with the wis
dom of past biology.

We have already considered the nebular theo
ry, which asserts that the solar system has been
evolved from a nebula — a cloud of gas such,
though much smaller, as you may see any winter
evening in the sword of Orion. When, in its turn,
the embryo earth was cast off from this nebula and
began to cool, there came a time when the water,
till then rilling the atmosphere in the form of va
por, was precipitated and formed the oceans. The
famous Comte de Buffon thought that life probably
began in the ocean — probably in the polar oceans,
which would be the first to cool; and, only the
other day, an ingenious Frenchman traced a re
semblance between our body-fluids — as to saline
composition, etc. — and sea - water, thus lending
some color to his great countryman's hypothesis.
Indeed, it appears from this Frenchman's paper
that we may look upon the human form divine
as none other than a peripatetic aquarium. True
to their ancestor's original environment — as
suming Buffon's guess to be correct — the polar
sea- water of many millions of years ago, our body-
cells are now bathed in fluids which have little
varied in that long period. When, at some inter
vening date, certain enterprising creatures ventured
to make a bid for life upon terra firma, the cells
of which they were composed naturally continued
to prefer the old medium, and the preference has
been maintained and is gratified in us to-day.

108

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

So that, dry though you feel, you are none other
than a walking aquarium. You must try to think
of your white blood - corpuscles, scurrying along
in your saline blood, as minute marine creatures
whose ancestors were formed from "the deep's un-
trampled floor."

Just as the older theory was framed on the
assumption that life is not formed de novo to-day,
so we find, again, that when Spencer came to con
sider this question he accepted the current bio- <
logical teaching — not then as firmly held as at
present — that life is not now evolved from inani
mate matter. But his contributions to the prob
lem of the gradual development of inorganic into
organic molecules are of equal importance whether
we believe that the process occurred once for all
in the past, or that it is occurring everywhere on
the/surface of the globe to-day.

/Charles Darwin, when he proved the possibility
of the origin of species of plants and animals by
natural selection, began by assuming the existence
of a "few simple forms" of living matter; and
ver discussed the question of their origin, which

H

outside his province.

professor Haeckel, of Jena, has a carbon-theory
of the origin of life which, as far as I know, is sup
ported by no one. He also is content to accept the
doctrine that life cannot now originate from inani
mate matter.1 The supposed occurrence, in the

1 See The Wonders of Life, 1904.
109

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

far past, of this evolution was termed by Dr. Charl-
tpn Bastian archebiosis ; but Huxley's less-satisfac
tory term abio genesis has been preferred, doubtless
owing to the great and greatly deserved fame of its
inventor.

Now it is true that boiled fluids, uncontaminated,
will remain sterile indefinitely. It is also true that,
under the conditions which they set themselves,
our experimenters have completely failed to man
ufacture life in the laboratory. At best, the
most successful followers of M. Berthelot, the great
founder of synthetic chemistry, can only manu
facture the very simplest forms of proteid or al
buminous matter, and this by use of temperatures
and effort of which no need is manifested by living
nature.

Furthermore, it is true that if a hay infusion,
for instance, be passed through a Pasteur-Cham-
berland or Berkefeld filter, which excludes even the
minutest of known living organisms, the filtered
fluid will remain sterile as long as it is uncontam
inated. In so far, this experiment goes to confirm
the results obtained by boiling, and the whole ques
tion seems closed.

( Thirty years ago Dr. Charlton Bastian, F.R.S.,
was among what appeared and still appears to be
the defeated party. He believed in spontaneous
generation. But other duties claimed him, and his
ultimate silence was taken for conviction. He
had published important books, with many draw
ings made by himself, illustrating what he asserted

no

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

that the microscope had revealed to him. People
shrugged their shoulders, and hinted at the value
of imagination in guiding the pencil. Dr. Bastian
bided his time. Finally he resigned his professor
ship at University College Hospital, London, five
years before he need, learned the difficult art of
photographing under the microscope, and has
since taken more than five thousand photo-micro
graphs with his own hands, which bear, directly
or indirectly, upon the origin of life. The most
striking of all his observations — one which he has
again and again repeated— was embodied by him
in a paper which he sent to the Royal Society, of
which he is a distinguished fellow. Not only was
the paper refused, but a well-known member of
the committee, responsible for its refusal, actually
refused point-blank to move three yards in the
library of the Royal Society to see Dr. Bastian's
specimens.1

Now let us consider first Dr. Bastian's criticism
of the experiments in which fluids are boiled or
filtered. He reasonably regards it as necessary
for the production of life that certain chemical
compounds be present. If it can be shown that
boiling destroys these compounds, then the boiling
experiment cannot be held to prove that life can
not originate in non-living fluids. It is known
that boiling does alter or "degrade" the chemical
compounds in the boiled fluid . It might be thought

1 Lately the Royal Society has repented itself and accepted
the paper.

in

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

that, if boiling be not performed, but merely filter
ing through a germ-proof filter, the result (the non-
development of life) would be conclusive; but it
has been shown that such filtration alone suffices
to alter the chemical nature of the filtered fluid.
" Spontaneous generation" is not, therefore, proved
to be a myth even by this experiment. So much
for destructive criticism.

But Dr. Bastian has also positive results to of
fer. He has seen, he tells me, the development,
in a previously clear fluid, of minute black spots,
which gradually enlarge, and at last become motile
bacteria. This change cannot successfully be re
corded ; but it seems to me to be not inconceivable
that a cinematographic apparatus might be ad
justed to the microscope, and thus demonstrate,
beyond all cavil, the evolution which Dr. Bastian
declares that he has seen.

The most remarkable photograph that Dr. Bas
tian has taken shows the spines, magnified seven
hundred times, of a minute water-animal known as
the Cyclops. In these spines, which are absolutely
impervious to the smallest known organisms, there
develop a number of spots, which finally are rec
ognizable as bacteria. This his photographs clear
ly show. Either these bacteria have arisen de novo
in the tissue of the spine, or they are the en
larged forms of some bacteria, hitherto unknown,
which are too small for the microscope to detect —
are ultra-microscopic — and which have somehow
made their way through the tough covering of the

112

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

spine. But this is pure hypothesis, without a
shadow of proof; and to assert it, simply because
you decline to believe that the bacteria can have
arisen de novo in the spine, is not science, but
prejudice. It remains for those who deny that the
bacteria can have arisen de novo — since this would
clash with their dogma — to prove that such ultra-
microscopic bacteria do exist, and can force their
way into the spine of the Cyclops— or else to admit
that their dogma is unproved.

Other remarkable photographs show a similar ev
olution of bacteria — parentless bacteria— in the cells
of a potato. Of course, in both of these cases, the
bacteria arise in tissue that is already organic;
but, if they can so arise, we must cease to hold the
accepted belief that the bacteria of to-day have
all descended from bacterial ancestors which were
present on the earth scores of millions of years
ago.

The easiest and most natural belief, according
with the law of continuity and with all known
analogies, is that life still arises on the earth by
natural processes. Harmonizing with this belief
of Dr. Bastian's — or at any rate conflicting with
Lord Kelvin's — is a recent paper by Professor
Pickering, who finds excellent reason to believe
that there are upon the moon traces of the action of
vegetation. Now, the moon was certainly born
from the earth when she was far too hot to sustain
life; so that, if Professor Pickering be right, living
matter has spontaneously developed on the moon.

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Surely no one will suggest any exercise of a deliber
ate creative act so apparently purposeless as the
formation of living vegetation on the surface of
the moon.

^ Of course all this conflicts with the popular no
tion of the Eternal power. But, on the other hand,
it perfectly consorts with the philosophic conception
of the Eternal who sustains and informs all things,
the "All-Upholder," as Goethe calls Him. Sup
pose that all the phenomena of stars and suns, of
life and of mind, be reduced beyond dispute, to the
law of continuity. Suppose that we know in de
tail the steps by which the Book of Job or the pre
lude to "Parsifal" evolved from the nebula which
developed into the solar system; suppose that we
can explain not only life itself, but even the genesis
of such as these, its noblest products — can we
escape from the overwhelming consciousness of the
Eternal and eternally creative power " from which
all things proceed?" Assuredly not; he who has
some conception of the Eternal as nearly adequate
as the poor human mind can form, will be no whit
disturbed to learn that Dr. Bastian is right, or—
some day — that life can be manufactured at will
in the laboratory; for pray how would such manu
facture exclude or deny or derogate from the in-
effableness of the power that "rolls through all
things?"

While "these pages were passing through the
press, Mr. Butler Burke, of the Cavendish Labora-

114

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

tory, Cambridge, made a first announcement of
some experiments which he has been conducting
for some years back. He has demonstrated the
development, in sterilized bouillon subjected to the
action of sterilized radium chloride or bromide, of
minute bodies which exhibit growth and sub
division. The American reader will find an ac
count of this work in an article contributed by me
to Harper's Weekly for July 22, 1905. I make no
detailed reference to it here, though I have had
the opportunity of studying Mr. Burke 's results for
myself, since he is about to publish a volume on
the subject, and since the nature, origin, destiny,
and distribution of life must engage me for a sub
sequent volume.

HEREDITY AND VARIATION1

HEREDITY and variation are the two facts withal
out which organic evolution would be impossible. I
Since Darwin's work, which somewhat obscured 1
the initial questions that they raise, but demon
strated their stupendous consequences, biologists^
have spent much labor in discussing the causes and
conditions of the two facts, that like tends to be
get like, but that like does not beget exactly like.
The subject is worthy of study, for it is evident
that without variation there could be no differentia
tion of species ; while without inheritance of varia
tions no differentiation could survive for more
than one generation. Natural selection presup-1
poses variation, and now we have ceased to doubt
that natural selection is a fact, biologists are
going back to the beginning and studying that
factor from which attention was long diverted by
the influence of Darwin's masterpiece.

Some forty years ago the Abb6 Mendel took

1 The best popular text-book on heredity with which I am
acquainted is Mr. Archdall Reid's recently published Priiiciples
of Heredity (Chapman and Hall).

116

HEREDITY AND VARIATION

to experimenting with peas. For some thirty-five
years his work was left unnoticed, but within the
last lustrum it has come into its own, his essential
discovery being now regarded by many, in Pro
fessor Bateson's words,1 as " one of the lasting tri
umphs of the human mind."

Until the rediscoveries which have brought Men
del's work into recognition, the popular view was
simply this: like produces not exactly like; this
fortuitous difference between parent and child we
call variation; by the operation of natural selec
tion favorable variations are perpetuated, and
unfavorable ones die out; hence, the origin of
species — subsidiary factors being ignored as non
existent by the school of Weismann, and as rel
atively unimportant by the majority of biol- j
ogists.

But natural selection selects; it does not originate
or create. And all these decades past, while fully
discussing the consequences of variation, we have
ignored the fundamental question, simply accept
ing it as a mysterious fact hardly likely to repay
investigation. Now, let me attempt to show what
Mendel and his successors of this generation have
accomplished, premising that the facts --if not,
indeed, the interpretation of them — are no longer
in dispute, and that they will be familiar to every
amateur student in a decade. How satisfactory
to the students of Herbert Spencer are these latest

1 Presidential address to the section of zoology of the
British Association, Cambridge, 1904.

117

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

advances in biology, along lines which he discerned
long ago, I can hardly say.

Make the Abb6 Mendel's discovery simple I
cannot, the facts being complex; but I must do
my best. Each of the higher animals and plants
is formed by the union of two cells of different
sex, which are called gametes; and in these the
problem of heredity obviously centres. The child
"has his father's smile," we say; and we know that
this character must have been transmitted in the
paternal gamete. Now the first question we must
ask is plainly this: How are the gametes formed?
And we know that each gamete — of either sex — is
formed by a series of cell-divisions, beginning in
what we may call a germ mother-cell. Now the
essence of Mendel's discovery is this: The germ
mother-cell which is about to divide and form the
gametes that are to reproduce any individual in
his or her descendants, itself contains characters
derived from both the parents of that individual.
These characters exist in the germ mother-cell in
opposed pairs — e.g., a character corresponding to
the white pigmentation of the individual's father,
and another corresponding to the black pigmen
tation of the mother — and when the germ mother-
cells divides so as to form gametes, these pairs are
split up or segregated, the black character going
to one gamete and the white to another. Thus
the gametes or sex-cells of a gray individual will
not be potentially gray, but either black or white.
Observe the result. The individuals of the new

118

HEREDITY AND VARIATION

generation may be of three kinds in respect of
any given character. Some of them will be white,
since they were formed by the union of a white-
bearing gamete from each parent, some black
since formed by the union of two black-bearing
gametes, and some gray like their gray parents,
since formed by the union of a black with a white
gamete. But the gametes of this new gray individ
ual will not be gray, but black or white, as before.
If this is unintelligible, I can only express my regret.
/This discovery that variation — e.g., the produc
t/on of a black individual from gray parents —
isi really a form of heredity, proceeding according
to definite laws, instead of being a sort of "bad
shot" at heredity, clearly marks a new epoch in
our conceptions of the subject. The above asser
tion of the working of the process constitutes
Mendel's "law of segregation."

Let us observe some of the consequences. We
now know that new species can and do arise by
the operation of the laws of heredity quite apart
from any slow accumulation of variations under
the influence of natural selection. As Professor
Bateson says: "The dread test of natural selection
must be passed by every aspirant to existence,
however brief"; but that expresses the totality
of its power. Observe further that the scholastic
dictum, natura non facit saltum, which has so long
been believed, cannot hold. Nature does sometimes
make leaps ; and the modern belief in discontinuous
variation is a denial of the old dogma.

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

There are many facts which the mutation theory
explains. What, for instance, could be more
puzzling than the unquestioned fact that haemo
philia, or the "bleeding - disease," is constantly
transmitted by men to their sons, not to their
daughters, but through their daughters to their
grandsons; but not their granddaughters? In
other words, the males inherit, suffer and trans
mit; the females inherit and transmit, but do not
suffer! And now it seems that the abbe" with his
peas gave us the key to this forty years ago. It
becomes intelligible if we conceive that certain
characters are linked in the gametes. For instance,
the bleeding character may be linked with the
"maleness" character; the two are segregated to
gether; when one appears both appear; when one
is latent, as in the case of the female, so is the other.

Mendelism is in its infancy; but it is already
potent for good. We could "exterminate the
simpler vices" if we pleased; and Mr. Galton's
Eugenics1 is not a dream. Some day the race will
undoubtedly realize that education in all its forms
is but the "giving or withholding of opportunity,"
and then will face the root problem in earnest.
Meanwhile, to quote Professor Bateson, "So long
as, in our actual laws of breeding, superstition re
mains the guide of nations, rising ever fresh and
unhurt from the assaults of knowledge, there is
nothing to hope or to fear from these sciences."

1 See chapter xiii.

XI

THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

THE word Darwinismus is widely used on the
Continent, especially in Germany, and its English
equivalent is familiar to us, but there are serious
objections to its use. It cannot be taken as a
synonym for organic evolution, since the origin of
species by natural processes had frequently been
suggested before Darwin's birth. The only other
meaning the word can bear is the doctrine of the
origin of species by natural selection, which Darwin
brought into so much and so necessary prominence.
This use of the term is not only illegitimate but
quite unfair to Darwin, who was one of the broadest
minded of men and had not a trace of the dogmatist
in his composition. Darwin expressly asserted
that he attributed to the inheritance of acquired
characters an important share in the origin of
man. He dealt with this at no length, for the
excellent reasons that the principle had already
been enunciated by Lamarck, and that he himself
had his hands full in elucidating his own contribu
tion to the discussion.

In considering the factors of organic evolution,

121

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

then, let us first concentrate our attention on one
point, the controversy — incorrectly and unjustly
named, as I have shown— between Darwinism ancp
Lamarckism. The only possible excuse for thes

terms is their focussing the attention on two grea

1

names ; but, as I say, they do an injustice to th
younger thinker, if not the older too. Every one
knows that Professor Auguste Weismann, now
happily enjoying his eighth decade, has taken up
the cudgels f or a " Darwinism" which is more than
ultra-Darwinian; and his school is a great and
nourishing one. Weismann denies in toto the
possibility that any character acquired by the
parent can be transmitted to the child. To Dar
win's "natural selection" he attributes far more
than did Darwin himself; and the pupil's pupils
have even outrun him. Here again time has vin
dicated Spencer — so that one begins to understand
Grant Allen's remark, "the twenty-fifth century
will appreciate him." The echoes of his contro
versy with Weismann have died down and the
inner ring of the non-scientific public is becoming
familiar with the dogma of non-transmissibility
of acquired characters, but Weismann himself has
made the most significant concessions, and biolo
gists are now well aware that the dogma can be no
longer maintained. Choose your own instances
and you may make anything ridiculous— to those
who have not discrimination enough to appraise
your method. If the belief of Lamarck, amplified
and upheld by Spencer for decades against an

122

FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

overwhelming majority, be construed into an
assertion that cutting off a rat's tail will make
its progeny tailless, or the similarly indefensible
assertion that the giraffe has its long neck as a
result of the incessant stretching to which that
structure has been subjected by its hungry an
cestors, or the inane joke about man's loss of his
tail by virtue of his ancestors sitting upon theirs—
then certainly Larmarckism is sheer nonsense.
But Weismannism has been reduced to just such
blatant absurdity by some of its adherents, who
deny that germ-cells, for instance, can be affected
by the presence of alcohol in the body-fluids which
circulate in the individual containing them and by
which they are themselves nourished — or injured.
Pledged to deny that any circumstance connected
with the individual can in any way affect his off
spring, these enthusiasts are compelled simultane
ously to flout fact, logic, and probability.

The first thinker to propose the theory now
known as Lamarckism was Erasmus Darwin,
physician, zoologist, and poet, who was Charles
Darwin's grandfather. Thus Darwinism would be
perhaps the best and most accurate name for
Lamarckism. Erasmus Darwin's enunciation, how
ever, of the principle that individuals alter by re
action with their environment, and transmit the
altered or acquired character to their descendants,
was extremely vague. But in his Philosophie Zo-
ologique, which appeared in 1809, Jean Baptiste
de Lamarck, already a man of sixty-five, gave de-

123

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

tailed expression to this theory. Undoubtedly he
exaggerated its importance, and it is significant
that the general doctrine of organic evolution did
not through it gain acceptance, but had to wait
fifty years until Darwin's assertion of another
factor came to its aid. At the present time, the
Lamarckian principle is in low repute, despite the
acceptance of it by Darwin and Spencer's long
championship of it.

Nevertheless, it would be unwise to omit thisj
principle — the inheritance of acquired characters \
— as a factor in organic evolution. It is assuredly,)
of more than historic interest. In his latest book,
the Wunderleben, Professor Haeckel declares his
continued adherence to a belief in what the school
of Weismann so strenuously deny; and Haeckel's
discussion of the subject is heartily to be recom
mended to the student, for, though the veteran
evolutionist of Jena is not above resort to inde
cency in theological controversy, and is merely
ridiculous as a philosopher, he certainly disputes
with Weismann the honor of being the greatest
living biologist, and he has been fighting the battle
for organic evolution ever since 1866.

Professor Haeckel adduces, in the book named,
an unquestionable instance of the transmission
of acquired characters. Every one knows that
when pathogenic or disease-producing bacteria are
passed through the body of a highly susceptible
animal, they become possessed of a much greater
degree of virulence than formerly. More accurate-

124

FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

ly stated, this resolves itself into the assertion that '
the progeny of such bacteria, often after tens or
hundreds of generations, are possessed of a char
acter which was acquired by their ancestors during
their passage through the body of the susceptible
animal. This is as clear a case of the transmission
of acquired characters as any one can ask for.
It does not follow from this that all acquired
character, in one of the higher animals or plants,
can be transmitted; but it is something to have
an instance, familiar and indisputable, which
cannot be reconciled with the dogma of Weis-
mann.

Certain acquired characters cannot be con
ceived to affect the germ-cells of an individual of
one of the higher types. These cells are certainly
not, as Darwin supposed, formed by pangenesis—
that is to say, by contribution of representative
units from all the cells of the body. On the con
trary, we are now compelled to believe, with Weis-
mann, in the doctrine of the "continuity of the
germ-plasm," which asserts that the original cell
from which any individual is formed divides into
two portions, one of which becomes the individual
and the other his own germ-cells. If this be true,
acquired characters can be transmitted only when
they can influence the germ-cells through the blood
stream. Certain characters, such as immunity to
disease, may conceivably be thus transmitted, but
there is no room for belief in the transmission
of such an acquired character as baldness, any

125

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

more than of such characters as dust-laden finger
nails or acquired ideas.

Turn we now to the factor of organic evolution
which is known as natural selection or the survival
of the fittest. The history of this idea has already
been alluded to, in relation to atoms, societies, and
living species. For a further discussion of it the
reader may be referred to the historical sketch
prefixed to the later editions of the Origin of Spe
cies. But though Darwin was preceded by other
thinkers, in biology and other realms, in the enun
ciation of this idea, and though the famous paper
read before the Linnaean Society in 1858 was the
joint product of Darwin and Mr. Alfred Russel
Wallace, yet it is beyond all question the name
of Charles Robert Darwin, the greatest biologist
of any age, that will ever and rightly be associated
with this idea. Others had enunciated it, but he
alone demonstrated its truth. We learn from an
early letter 1 that he began to collect facts bearing on
the question of the origin of species nearly twenty
years before his masterpiece saw the light ; and his
great labors did not cease for more than twenty
years thereafter. The idea of organic evolutioq
had been hinted at, or definitely supported, by hi
grandfather, by Lamarck and Goethe and Spencei
and Robert Chambers,2 but it was not until th<

1 Published in More Letters of Charles Darwin (John Murray) .

2 Now known to be the author of the once famous Vestiges of
Creation.

126

FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

factor of natural selection was demonstrated by
Darwin that the doctrine of special creation re
ceived its death - blow. The average man, and
even the professed biologist, had not the mental
fervor of Spencer, who renounced the old doctrine
in 1840, when he was still an infant in the eyes of
the law, and who was destined to spend many
hours in trying to convince Huxley of the truth of
organic evolution. Spencer accepted it at this
early date not because he was unaware of the diffi
culties in the way, but because he saw that there
was no choice save between special creation and
evolution, and because he recognized the old dogma
as really a "pseud-idea," in the last resort "un
thinkable."

But our business here is to inquire into the
status of the idea of natural selection to-day,
nearly half a century after Darwin's enunciation
of it.' It is but eleven years since the late Mar
quis of Salisbury,1 in his notorious Presidential
Address delivered before the British Association
at its Oxford meeting in 1894, declared that "no
one had seen natural selection at work." ^ Since
then, however, we have seen natural selection at
work in more than one instance. There is abun
dance of experimental evidence to support the
retort of Herbert Spencer that the opposite of

1 Among the distinguished men of the nineteenth century
who rejected its main contribution to thought were Salisbury,
Disraeli, Gladstone, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Newman. With
these the name of Emerson may be contrasted.

127

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the survival of the fittest — viz., the survival of
the unfittest, is inconceivable.

It is impossible in a work of this scope to treat
all details in such complete fashion as one might
desire; and it is necessary, therefore, to refer the
reader to a volume by an expert which will suffice
to convince him that, in such instances as the
shore-crabs near Plymouth Sound and the English
sparrow introduced into North America, the ac
tion of natural selection has been demonstrated.
For this purpose the reader should consult Varied
tion in Animals and Plants, by Dr. H. M. Vernon,
of Oxford.1

We may take it, then, distinguished amateurs
notwithstanding, that natural selection, or the sur
vival of the fittest, is a fact. We shall necessarily
recur to it when we come to consider the ethics
and the ethical forecast of the evolution theory.
Meanwhile we must briefly note the conditions
upon which its action depends; the primal condi
tions of heredity and variation being, of course,
taken for granted.

Natural selection is not an inevitable and con
stant factor in the course of animal and vegetable
life. The popular fallacy that progress is an in
variable law of nature appears to depend upon the
idea that natural selection is always and necessa
rily in operation. But its existence was suggested,

1 This is volume LXXXVIII. of the International Scientific
Series (Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co.). See especially
chapter xi., "The Action of Natural Selection on Variations."

128

FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

both to Darwin and Wallace, by consideration of a
special case. This is the case discussed by Malthus
in his famous essay on population, published in
1798. Malthus discussed the consequences of an
increase of population in geometrical progression
while the necessaries of life increased only in
arithmetical progression. In other words, he dis
cussed the case of what Wallace calls the "strug
gle for existence." If the means of subsistence
be superabundant, natural selection can scarcely
operate. It depends for any considerable sphere
of action upon the occurrence of a struggle for
existence. Given such a struggle, it stands to
reason that the fittest must survive. That there
be no struggle may perhaps be conceived as the
happiest, the ideal, state of affairs; but given a
struggle, it follows that the law of natural selec
tion is a beneficent one, as Darwin clearly showed.
Unfortunately, these considerations, very imper
fectly thought out and uncorrected by any others,
have led such writers as Nietzsche and his follow
ers to assume that might is right, and that science
has demonstrated the uprightness and expedien
cy of the doctrine " Each man for himself, and the
devil take the hindmost." In a subsequent chapter
it will be shown how imperfectly and rudely the
Nietzschean doctrine is in correspondence with the
facts.

On that factor of organic evolution which Dar
win discerned and named sexual selection we need

129

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

not dwell here; or, at any rate, we need not re
count the main theses of the Descent of Man, for
that work, like its predecessor, may now be pur
chased for a sum so small that no one who affects
an interest in the science of life can confess that he
does not possess a copy of it.1

My purpose, in this as in other instances, is to
show that recent study has confirmed the beliefs
of the evolutionists. Darwin himself, after much
consideration, said, " I still strongly think . . . that
sexual selection has been the main agent in forming
the races of man." The Darwinian idea is based
partly on the conception of struggle, partly on the
conception of taste. Males with certain advan
tages, such as fleet ness and strength, would tend to
leave more offspring than their rivals; while the
taste of the females would choose certain males
rather than others, and so would tend to perpetu
ate and accentuate certain characters. The male
beard, for instance, is a "secondary sexual char
acter" so produced.

This idea of sexual selection has lately undergone
a most interesting development at the hands of
Professor Karl Pearson and his followers. Pro
fessor Pearson distinguishes two kinds of sexual
selection. The first, which Darwin discussed, is
based on the conception of taste and may be called

1 In England the Origin of Species (the somewhat imperfect
edition issued by the Rationalist Press Association) may be
had for fourpence halfpenny, and the Descent of Man for half
a crown.

130

FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

preferential mating. It probably exists in human
society at the present day, but great difficul
ties are encountered in the attempt to measure
it. The second kind of sexual selection may be
called assortative mating. It depends on the fact
that like tends to mate with like. This principle
of homo gamy may indeed turn out to be that " un
known factor" in organic evolution which many
have declared to be the operation of design on the
part of a Creator. Homogamy may indeed have
been a necessary factor in the isolation of species
as we know them to-day.

In its widest sense, homogamy is, of course,
an obvious fact. The bird does not mate with
the mammal, nor the reptile with the insect.
Furthermore, the dog does not mate save with
the dog, nor the sparrow with any bird not of its
own kind. These are obvious illustrations of that
kind of sexual selection which Professor Pearson
calls assortative mating. But what he has dis
covered is the extension of this principle to mating
within the limits of the species ; or, at any rate, he
has shown it in the case of man.

Professor Pearson and his coworker, Professor
Weldon, have made a most exhaustive research
upon human marriage from this point of view,
by studying, for instance, the tombstones of rural
Oxfordshire, the dales of Yorkshire, and the Lon
don cemeteries; and by inquiries into pedigrees,
such as those furnished by the Society of Friends.
These studies have given them material for esti-

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

mating the extent to which people of strong con
stitutions marry their like and conversely, since
longevity, as recorded on tombstones, may be
taken as a criterion of general bodily vigor. In
addition, thousands of married persons have been
examined with regard to height, eye - color, and
many other characters.

The biometricians have thus been able to show,
by statistics analyzed and checked in a manner
quite impossible for any but the trained mathe
matician and logician, that, for instance, a blue-
eyed man is more likely than a brown-eyed one to
marry a blue-eyed woman. People with a " strong
constitution" (estimated as we have seen) tend
to marry their like; short men tend to marry
shorter women than do tall men — and so forth,
over as many characters as have hitherto been
examined. Various possible fallacies have had
to be excluded, such as the effect of resemblance
among local races, and the effect of exposing hus
band and wife to the same environment; but the
essence of biometry is that it seeks all possible
explanations and then proceeds systematically to
test them. After so doing, the conclusion in this
instance is that " there is a real selection in marriage
between husband and wife on the basis of general
constitutional resemblance."

Now if this be true of man, may we not reasonably
expect homogamy to occur in lower forms of life ?
This may surely be expected, unless we agree with
Darwin that sexual selection depends upon the

132

FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION

existence of some considerable measure of aesthetic
perception. There is reason to believe, however,
that homogamy is not conscious and deliberate, de
pending upon an exercise of "taste," but is uncon
scious and "instinctive." Professor Pearson has
been able to find record of only one research into
this subject besides his own; but this is directed
to an order of living creatures so remote from man
that it perhaps justifies us in drawing an inference
as to the existence of homogamy in intermediate
orders of life. The research is that of Professor
Raymond Pearl, of the University of Michigan, on
the conjugation or mating of the param&cium,
a unicellular animal about one-hundredth of an
inch in length, which no one would accuse of pos
sessing high perceptive or aesthetic powers. By
making many thousands of careful measurements,
Professor Pearl has been able to show that a
paramcecium of a given size tends to mate with
another of the same size.

The general significance of these recent biomet-
ric studies is very wide indeed. It is plain that ho
mogamy, if indeed, as is probable, it acts through
out the realm of animal life,1 must tend to split
up races into endogamous groups, the individuals
of which marry only \vithin the group-limit, and

1 It will be important and necessary, I fancy, to ascertain
whether what we call homogamic unions tend to be more fertile
than those between widely different individuals. If so, it is
quite evident that the same principle may act in the vegetable
world. Professor Pearson tells me that this question has
scarcely been investigated.

133

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

which therefore tend to diverge more and more from
each other in physical characters. Here I cannot
doubt that we have a most important factor in
organic evolution.

The factors of organic evolution hitherto named
are adaptation with inheritance, natural selection,
sexual selection, homogamy, and what De Vries
calls mutation. Are any others yet to be dis
covered? The answer to this question depends
on our estimate of the adequacy of these factors.
Probably most biologists would say that they are
completely adequate. There will long remain,
however, critics who will attempt to show that
these cannot be regarded as adequate for the pro
duction of the multitudinous species that exist
to-day and have existed in time past, without aid
from a principle of telesis, or design. One author
succeeds another1 in the attempt to show that
Darwinism is a half-truth, and that without a
principle of "directivity" the facts cannot be ex
plained. But as this belief depends upon an as
sumption of an anthropoid Deity, we may leave it
to stand or fall therewith.

1 Such as the Rev. Professor George Henslow, in his Popular
Rationalism Critically Examined.

XII

THE ORIGIN OF MAN1

MUCH important work has been done in the
elucidation of the most interesting inference from
the theory of organic evolution since the publica
tion of Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, in 1863,
and Darwin's Descent of Man, in 1871. The most
important of the recent works on this subject have
issued from the Anthropological Laboratory of the
University of Cambridge, which can claim some
share in Darwin, and still more in Darwin's sons.

The nearest animals to man are the chimpanzee,
gorilla, orang-outang, and gibbon — the four kinds
of anthropoid ape. No amount of correction will
apparently destroy the popular error that man is
descended from one or other of these apes. This,
however, no biologist has suggested. What all
biologists believe, nevertheless, is that man and
certain of these apes have a common ancestor.
Both Darwin and Huxley thought the chimpanzee
and the gorilla to be the apes most nearly related

1 Professor Haeckel's Anthropogenic, translated into English
as The Evolution of Man (Watts & Co., 1905) , is, despite the au
thor's well-known peculiarities, the best work on this subject.

10 I35

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

to man, and the present opinion appears to give
the preference, on the whole, to the chimpanzee;
while agreeing with the general conclusion of Dar
win that man, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee
are derived from a common ancestor now extinct.
This ancestor may perhaps have more nearly re
sembled the gibbon than any other existing form.

The older evidence for man's relation to the
anthropoid apes is familiar to all. He resembles
them in physical structure to an almost incredi
ble degree. He shares with the chimpanzee and
the gorilla some three hundred structural features
which are not even possessed by any of the lowest
order of monkeys.1 His earlier stages of develop
ment are quite indistinguishable from those of the
anthropoid apes, about the embryology of which
very little was known in the early days of evolu
tion. But recently there have been discovered
two noteworthy facts which are of theoretical in
terest and may prove to be of great practical
importance.

In the first place, it has recently been found that
there is a whole series of diseases which are common
to man and the anthropoid apes, but which attack
no lower animal. For long these were thought to
be peculiar to man alone, but Metchnikoff and
his fellow-workers at the Pasteur Institute have
shown that certain of them can be communicated
to the anthropoid ape, and that protective or cura-

1 See Nature, March 9, 1905, p. 434.
136

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

tive sera can be produced in this fashion.1 This
fact clearly points to a profound resemblance in
the bodily chemistry — a physiological similarity
no less striking than the anatomical resemblances
so familiar — of man and these creatures.

The second recent discovery points in the same
direction. It has lately been shown that the blood
of each species of animal differs radically from
that of every other. Hitherto it has hardly been
possible for the expert, summoned to give evidence
in a trial for murder, let us say, to decide whether
or not specimens of blood submitted to him are
human or not. Mammalian blood could be dis
tinguished from, say, the blood of birds, by means
of the characteristic shape of the blood-corpuscles
which is common to all mammals save the camel;
but to distinguish between the blood of a man and
a dog was often impossible. Now, however, it has
been shown that when the blood of a given animal,
say a dog, is injected into the blood-vessels of an
animal of another kind, such as a cat, the red
corpuscles of the cat are destroyed and disinte
grated; whereas if the dog's blood be injected into
another dog no such disintegration occurs. Hence,
in distinguishing between the blood of a man and
a dog it is only necessary to make a sterile solution

1 The close relation of man to the anthropoid apes has lately
raised in remarkable degree the market-price of these creat
ures. Every living specimen that reaches Europe is bid for,
by letter and cable and telegram , by workers at medical prob
lems in Paris, London, and Berlin.

137

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

of the blood stain and inject it into a dog. ^ If
"haemolysis" occurs, the blood cannot be canine;
if it does not, the blood must certainly be canine.
Now the astonishing and even bizarre fact is that
the blood of the anthropoid ape gives the charac
teristic human reaction, while the blood of the
lower monkeys does not. In other words, the blood
of man and of the anthropoid ape are identical
when judged by this, the most subtle and delicate
of all known tests.

To the evidence of anatomy in favor of mai
intimate relationship with the anthropoid ape there
has therefore, been added that of comparative pa
thology, of embryology, and of physiological chem
istry Many more facts might be adduced, sucl
as the recent discovery that a function hitherto
thought to be characteristic of the human f
is also displayed by the anthropoid ape.
forth he who doubts that man and the chimpanze
have a common ancestor must be congratulated
on his inviolate mind. Facts have no terrors

11 But here we may note a great reservation which,
in utter defiance of logic or the evidence, 1
accordance with their prepossessions, i
some who are prepared to admit the simian origin
of man's body. Chief of these is Mr. Alfred Russel
Wallace, who long ago distressed Darwin by «
dining to accept the conclusion that man s mental
or psychical characters have ascended by the same
"base degrees" as his body. For their view there

138

THE ORIGIN OF MAN

is not an iota of evidence. It is not only inher
ently untenable, as palpably depending not on
facts but on what Professor William James calls
the "will to believe," but it is compelled to ig
nore the inseparable relation between man's mental
characters and his physical structure, while it can
only be held by those who are totally ignorant of
the most elementary facts of comparative psy
chology. Nevertheless, it is plain that this doc
trine of the independent and mystic origin of the
human mind will continue to be supported when
none but such as believe in the flatness of the
earth and the like will be found to support the
theory of the special creation of man's body. Thus
we find the position of Wallace to be the furthest
that is taken by the most enlightened theologians
of to-day, and, indeed, it is evident that no theo
logian can possibly afford to go further. But
whoso cares to consider the now undisputed origin
of the human body, and the fact that the mind of
each individual human being is developed in asso
ciation with the development of a speck of proto
plasm barely visible to the naked eye, will scarcely
be found ranged among the few who keep the flag
of special creation still flying in this last stronghold
—a castle in the air, if ever there was one.

Given, then, that man's past is simian, what of
his future? In the next chapter we must con
sider the possibility that "the best is yet to be."

XIII

EUGENICS— THE FUTURE OF MAN

IF this present generation suddenly became
self-conscious as a whole, and asked itself how it
came to be, the answer would refer its genesis to
the marriage of certain members of the last gen
eration. Now, among our predecessors were num
bered men of character and men of none, saints and
criminals, athletes and weaklings, lovers of beau
ty and Philistines, Cornelias and Messalinas. Of
these our amour propre would lead us to choose
some rather than others, could we decide, and this
inclination may surely be regarded as evidence of a
popular, if not an explicit, belief in heredity. We
feel that we are not to be regarded as entirely
independent of our ancestry. Similarly, if heredity
be a fact, it is evident that all future history, that
human destiny on this not yet moribund earth, is
bound up with the selection, conscious or other, of
present individuals whose blood shall visit men's
sad or happy hearts in all time coming.

Now this chapter is written with the object of
introducing, to the grave consideration of such
persons as can induce that mental state, the study

140

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

which concerns itself with all the influences that
can improve the inborn qualities, physical, in
tellectual, and moral, of our own or any race.
But before outlining the recent history of this
study, which its author, Mr. Francis Galton, has
called eugenics — surely a happy term — let us in
quire whether any influences are already extant
which tend to such improvement. For it is now
accepted by thinkers of all schools that the great
thesis implicit in the masterpiece of Mr. Galton 's
illustrious cousin, Charles Darwin, is a proven
truth. The human race, as we know it, is the
contemporary product of aeons of improvement.
To this our brains, our backbones, our thumbs, our
religions, our symphonies, our manners bear wit
ness. Now, while biologists still discuss among
themselves the relative importance of the factors
in organic evolution, they have ceased to question
the enormous influence of that factor which Dar
win discovered and named natural selection. In
deed, the current question is whether natural se
lection is the only factor, as Weismann asserts, or
merely the principal factor, as Darwin himself
maintained. In brief, we may take it that, of any
generation, whether of mosses or mice or men, the
fittest tend to be more largely represented than the
less fit in the succeeding generation. The fittest,
however — as no amount of didactics will make the
many understand — are not necessarily the best, but
are merely those best adapted to the conditions
of the environment. These conditions, however,

141

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

owing to the appearance of man's moral sense and
higher intellectual faculties, have made the sur
vival of the fittest to coincide with, the survival
of what we are pleased to consider the best. In
other words, there is already at work a most po
tent force that has long made and is still making
for the improvement of the human breed — which,
indeed, owes to that force its very origin. Now
by means of eugenics, as I understand it, Mr.
Gait on merely proposes to enlist man's conscious
co-operation with and encouragement of the factor
which Darwin and Wallace discovered. It is not
unfitting that this great biologist should be the
prophet to the twentieth century of the applica
tion of that principle which his cousin, the great
est biologist of any age, constituted the chief rev
elation of the nineteenth century.

We may observe the operation of the eugenic
principle at this hour by studying the " expectation
of life" among married and unmarried persons.
As every one knows, the married live longer than
the unmarried, a fact which was accepted as prov
ing that marriage is conducive to long life, until
Spencer analyzed it in his Study of Sociology and
showed that the married are already the selected
of their generation. On the average, "the married
man was fated to marry because of certain char
acters — such as physical beauty, efficiency, "at
tractiveness," love of domesticity, fondness for
children — which make him more valuable to the
race than his less fortunate fellows. Certain it is

142

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

that, whether or not Mr. Galton has his way, and
despite the witty and worthless criticism of the
popular critics, the eugenic principle cannot be
excluded from its benevolent role in human
affairs.

But it is evident that I have hitherto begged the
fundamental question, a fault of which Mr. Galton
himself has been accused by certain distinguished
medical critics, such as Dr. Henry Maudsley and
Dr. Charles Mercier. What is the use, they say
in effect, of proposing to improve the human breed
by invoking the principle of heredity when our
Shakespeare, for instance, was the son of undis
tinguished parents, and had five utterly common
place brothers ? Now, of all the men to face with
such a question, surely Mr. Galton was the last.
If the critics would inquire, they would discover
that his proposals are the logical outcome, in this
his ninth decade, of all his previous life-work.
Is not he the author of Hereditary Genius, who
has proved up to the hilt that intellect is trans
missible and is transmitted? Is not Mr. Galton
himself a member of a family which would prove
his case if it stood alone, as it does not ? His rela
tives number Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin,
the forerunner of evolution, Charles Darwin, and
Professor George Darwin, the president of the
British Association for 1905, one of three broth
ers, sons of the great Charles, all of whom
are fellows of the Royal Society on their own
merits. After this there is little need to refer to

i43

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Thomas and Matthew Arnold, the Bach family,
or the hundreds of instances which might be
quoted.

But let us, in this connection, glance at the
recent history of the subject. It had its beginning
in Mr. Galton's mind decades ago — doubtless under
the influence of Plato's discussion of the subject
in the Republic. Mr. Galton first invented the
term stirpiculture, now popular in America. But
latterly the inchoate idea has developed in Mr.
Galton's mind, and was the subject of his Huxley
Memorial Lecture, delivered before the Anthro
pological Institute, London, three years ago.
Now, Mr. Galton is not only the student of finger
prints whose work is now invaluable to the police,
not only the author of Hereditary Genius, but
he is the first to apply mathematics to biology,
the first exact student of heredity. This new
study his disciple, Professor Karl Pearson, has
called biometrics, and it was fitting that Mr. Gal
ton's Huxley Lecture should be followed by Pro
fessor Pearson's, which proved, by the use of the
Galtonian method, that mental and moral char
acters are as surely transmitted by heredity as are
the physical. But this is not all my answer to
those who declare that heredity is incalculable
and that we had better let well alone. Since
Mr. Galton was drawn from his retirement by the
Sociological Society in the summer of 1904, and
read his initial paper on eugenics, he has instituted
an inquiry of the utmost interest among the fel-

144

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

lows of the Royal Society.1 Mr. Galton addressed
to every fellow of the society a form containing
queries concerning his relatives, which the fellow
addressed was to fill in with the details requested.
The inquiry has produced a mass of results which
have been subjected to strict mathematical analysis,
and which conclusively prove, that there exist, in
this country at the present day, certain families
the individuals of which are of priceless value to
the community and to the race at large. Even
this limited inquiry has revealed the existence of
at least nine families of the very first distinction,
besides a large number of almost equal value,
among fellows of the Royal Society alone.

Having done this piece of work, Mr. Galton saw
that the time for further action had come. He
therefore presented to the University of Lon
don an initial sum of ^1500, to be spent within
three years, for the establishment of the "Francis
Galton Research Fellowship in National Eugen
ics." The first election to this fellowship has now
taken place, and the honor has been awarded
to Mr. Edgar Schuster, M.A., F.Z.S., late holder
of a science scholarship at New College, Oxford.
Mr. Schuster has already contributed important
papers to Biometrika, and has studied such sub-

1 Mr. Galton's paper on eugenics, together with a discussion
to which the leading biologists and psychologists of the day
contributed, and his paper on the results of this inquiry are
to be found in Sociological Papers, a volume recently published
by Messrs. Macmillan for the Sociological Society.

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

jects as heredity in mice and the characters of
the ancient British skulls in the Oxford collec
tion. He is now well established in University
College, with the engaging legend " Eugenic Rec
ord Office" inscribed over his door. Mr. Gal-
ton, the University of London, and the eugenic
cause are to be congratulated on obtaining the
services of a student so enthusiastic and skilled.
Perhaps Mr. Schuster, to whom I am personally
unknown, will forgive me for instancing him, as I
have already instanced Mr. Galton, in illustration
of the contention that heredity is a fact not only
in matters of cranial form, let us say, but also in
matters of intra-cranial product. He is a nephew
of Professor Arthur Schuster, of Manchester, and
Mr. Felix Schuster ; son of a distinguished specialist
in international law, Dr. Ernest Schuster; and
grandson of Sir Hermann Weber, M.D. Like Mr.
Galton himself, he has every reason to believe in
eugenics.

It is stated by the university, in preliminary
terms, that " Mr. Schuster will, in particular, carry
out investigations into the history of classes and
families, and deliver lectures and publish memoirs
on the subjects of his investigations." Let me
here briefly indicate what Mr. Galton conceives to
be the most immediate demands which eugenics
makes of this, its first authorized student. We
want a biographical index of gifted families, mod
ern and recent — an Occidental and scientific adap
tation of the Golden Book of the Chinese. This

146

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

index, together with the biographies of capable,
though hardly gifted, families, may be published.
Not for publication will be a collection of biog
raphies of families distinctly below the average in
health, mind, or physique. To this end the records
of asylums, hospitals, and prisons must be con
sulted. Then we must utilize all the invaluable
aid to be afforded by the data of insurance offices.
Most important, also, is it to study what I may
call the social circulation. We must know the
birth-rates of every class in the community, and
must determine how far each class is derived
from and contributes to its own and the other
classes. It is known, in general, that society is
an organism which perpetually renews itself from
below, but the particular strata which are foremost
in reproduction are not known. The highest and
lowest strata are constantly replenished from some
intermediate levels. Further, Mr. Schuster will
endeavor to collect and catalogue the enormous
amount of literature already extant which bears
on the subject of eugenics, not forgetting to avail
himself of the experience of horticulturists and
breeders of stock.

Then, again, there is almost endless work yet
to be done in the field of heredity. Notably do
we want to know the effect on the offspring of
differences in the parental qualities. Mr. Galton
also considers desirable a study of Eurasians
(the descendants of English and Hindoo parents),
both as a topic of national importance to Britons

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

and in relation to the theory of heredity which
we owe to the long-neglected work of the Austrian
abbot Gregor Mendel.

The eugenic proposal is that it will be well if
the best of each generation contribute more —
much more — than their share to the making of the
next. It is obvious that there are positive and
negative aspects to this intention. Let us for a
moment look at the latter.

Objectors declare that love, which notoriously
"makes the world go round," will laugh at eu
genics as at locksmiths; we need not fancy that
people will tolerate any interference with their
matrimonial intentions. Mr. Galton has made an
extended answer to this objection in a recent
paper which must be summarized here. Already
we know that, in our own day, public opinion is a
potent restriction upon marriages between, for
instance, first cousins, and persons very disparate
in social status. If it can control these, why not
also the marriage of the epileptic, the "border
land" insane, the consumptive, and the criminal?
But Mr. Galton has invoked history and anthro
pology in this paper, most inappropriately read
before the Sociological Society on St. Valentine's
day. Already man, who is not a monogamous
animal by nature, has submitted to the monogam-
ic restriction. The Greeks, the Romans, and the
modern Hindu have submitted to the custom of
endogamy, which forbids marriage outside the
caste or tribe or the patrician or Hellenic group.

148

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

Endogamy has been sanctioned by religion and
enforced by law in all ages and in all parts of the
world. Similarly exogamy — the duty enforced by
custom, religion, and law of marrying outside one's
own tribe — is, or has been, as widely spread
as the opposite rule of endogamy. The primitive
Australian, again, submits to marriage restrictions
still more grievous. The tyranny of taboo need
only be mentioned. Then, again, every one, in
all times, has submitted to the restriction of pro
hibited degrees in matrimony. The Roman Cath
olic may not even marry a third cousin, and
marriages of first cousins are discouraged, though
the evidence that they tend to racial deteriora
tion is practically nil. Custom, also, is the main
factor in producing our objection to incest. In
truth, this supposed irresistible, incoercible, all-
devouring passion of love can scarcely arise when
religion or custom or law, or all three combined,
tend to render its consummation by marriage
impracticable. Lastly, we have the dictates of
religion as to celibacy. When eugenics is incor
porated into the national conscience and has
become, as well it may, an integral part of our
religion, the duty of celibacy may well be enforced
upon those whose progeny are palpably likely to
be a burden to themselves and the community.

At any rate, if ever an objection was widely
and finally disposed of, it is so with the objection
that eugenics is impracticable because no one will
tolerate any interference with his or her matri-

149

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

monial intentions. Mr. Galton has conclusively
disintegrated that criticism by his brief discussion
of the facts of monogamy, endogamy, exogamy,
Australian marriages, taboo, prohibited degrees,
and celibacy. Persons, as he says, who are born
under these various rules live under them without
any objection; they are unconscious of their re
strictions as we are unaware of the atmospheric
pressure.

We may observe, then, that the negative part of
Mr. Galton's proposals is one which has long been
bruited, is unquestionably practicable, and, in the
case of the insane, is applauded by all. In this,
its struggling infancy, eugenics does not propose
to tamper with marriage, nor to outrage public
sentiment, both of which its protagonists respect.
Nor do I for one moment believe that when eu
genics is everywhere recognized, and its name is as
familiar as, let us say, politics, it will propose any
injury to or detraction from the dignity of the
central and fundamental institution of society ; on
the contrary.

Surely even less objection than to the negative
part of the eugenic proposals can be taken to the
positive. These will readily suggest themselves
to all who appreciate the eugenic idea ; and when,
haply, the object of ennobling our race is enthroned
among men's ambitions, the positive proposals of
eugenics will need no enumeration or academic
support. It used to be stated that each man's
duty to the state included the begetting and up-

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

bringing of as many children as possible. If this
were so, the current fall in the birth-rate, common
to us with all other civilized countries save Russia,
would attest to a grave and wide-spread dereliction
of civic duty. But the somewhat uncritical ad
vice of President Roosevelt is sublimated and
exalted when the eugenic idea is applied to it.
As Sir Francis Younghusband said at Mr. Mac-
kinder's lecture in London on "Man-power as a
Source of National Strength": "For the mainte
nance of empire we want not merely large num
bers of men, but men of character and ability —
we want not only quantity but quality. . . . What
we have to do, as a people, is to try and maintain
the high qualities of our race." Had Sir Francis
said "maintain and enhance," he would have pre
cisely expressed the eugenic ideal. When this is
common property, and when we have a national
roll of distinguished families, men will be as proud
of being inscribed and of having their children
inscribed on that roll as of having had an an
cestor, probably worthless, who came over with
the Conqueror. The man who is conscious of
worth of any kind will make many personal sacri
fices in order that he may leave as many children as
possible to perpetuate it. In seeking a partner,
he will learn to attach a greater value than here
tofore to fine qualities, moral or intellectual, in
the woman of his choice ; for he desires to be written
in the Golden Book, and he knows that his children
will be the more likely to earn enrolment there if

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

their mother be " a perfect woman, nobly planned."
Similarly your true altruist, conscious of some
grave physical flaw likely to be perpetuated, will
renounce any possibility of satisfying even the
noble desire of parenthood.

Certain objectors seem to imagine, despite the
unequivocal language of Mr. Galton, that he wishes
to turn out all men on one pattern ; in short, that
this foremost student of heredity does not know
the value of variation! Further, they say that
no one is agreed as to what is best; some would
wish all men to be scientists, others long for an
elevation of aesthetic culture alone. Mr. Wells
objects that the average criminal is probably
superior in racially valuable qualities to the aver
age judge; and since no one is agreed as to what
we want, we need waste no time in trying to ob
tain it.

But hear Mr. Galton: "Postulating existing so
cial groups [artist, financier, biologist, journalist,
and what not], and existing moral criteria, eugenics
aims at the reproduction of the best specimens of
individuals — in each of those groups in which the
characteristic activity is not demonstrably anti
social, as in criminals." We want as much variety
as ever, but we want the best possible of each
variety. The practice of eugenics would thus
raise the average quality of a nation to that of its
better moiety of the present day: men of an order
of ability (in a thousand spheres) which is now
rare would become more frequent, because the

152

EUGENICS — THE FUTURE OF MAN

level out of which they rose would itself have
risen. We should still have demagogues, no doubt,
and a gallery for them to play to; but the gallery
would be a whit more discerning than the many-
headed of to-day.

The first great need is that the thinker and the
student shall accept eugenics as a study worthy of
prosecution. Thereafter we must work at it with
diligence and patience ; and then, but not till then,
it must be " introduced into the national conscience,
like a new religion."

To oppose eugenics with success, it must first
be demonstrated that the alleged facts of heredity
are not facts. If, however, they be admitted, it
inevitably follows that an improvement of the
human race, in accordance with certain ideals
which we all accept, is theoretically possible.
Here other objectors may add, "but, as a matter
of fact, impracticable." But no one will say,
however high he rate the potency of love and its
refusal to brook interference, that the marriage
of the insane and the criminal cannot be prevented ;
yet this would palpably be a eugenic measure.
Nor do I, for one, think so poorly of my fellows as
to disbelieve that no small number of them, when
the eugenic ideal has been fairly presented, will
be willing even to "strive and agonize" for an
object the superior or the peer of which has yet
to be named — the intellectual and moral ennoble
ment of our kind.

XIV

SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BIOLOGY

SEVEN years before the publication of the Origin
of Species, Spencer published two biological essays,
in one of which, The Development Hypothesis, he
supported the theory of organic evolution, and in
the other, The Law of Population, expressed his dis
covery of the missing half of the truth announced
by Malthus in 1798. The Principles of Biology,
the second instalment of the synthetic philosophy,
appeared in the years 1864-1867. In this chapter
I desire to note those particular views of Spencer,
the philosophic biologist, which are accepted as
part of biological theory to-day. His Law of
Population, however, is so important from a higher
than the purely biological point of view that it
will not be discussed here.1

The Principles of Biology is a very long, very
solid, and very expensive work, and we may guess
that the publishers, who have now begun to issue
the volumes of the synthetic philosophy in cheaper
form, will defer these volumes to the last. Never-

1 See chapter, "The Grounds of Rational Optimism."
154

SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTIONS

theless, they must always constitute a classic in
the history of our knowledge of life, not merely
because of the special points on which they illu
minate the study of biology, but also as the first
and most complete exposition of the theory of
organic evolution, including the evolution of life.
Spencer was wise to know that he could not afford
to do without the assurance of experts, and so his
pages were read and criticised in proof by Huxley
and Sir Joseph Hooker, whose expert knowledge of
zoology and botany were thus marshalled in aid
of Spencer's general and philosophical treatment
of the problems involved. A further advantage of
the Principles of Biology is conspicuous to-day.
It is that the work is an exposition of organic evo
lution which is independent of the truth of any
particular explanation or series of explanations
of its factors. In support of this contention we
may read the words of Huxley when seconding
the vote of thanks to Lord Salisbury after his ad
dress to the British Association in 1894: "If all
the conceptions promulgated in the Origin of Spe
cies which are peculiarly Darwinian were swept
away, the theory of the evolution of animals
and plants would not be in the slightest degree
shaken." In this connection one may also quote
the words of Dr. Merz:1 "In fact, the general
principles of mechanical evolution, as first sys
tematized by Mr. Spencer, received recognition

1 History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century,
11,347-

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

only through a special formula [that of natural
selection], but may, after all, survive that special
doctrine." What is daily becoming more evident,
but was unrecognized by Lord Salisbury, is that
if the Origin of Species were consigned to oblivion
the creationists would not have begun to touch
the foundations or the superstructure of the
Principles of Biology, which was planned and
partly written before the great work of Darwin
appeared. As a matter of fact, the years bring
naught but added strength to each of these corner
stones of biological science.

In the Principles of Biology we find, in the first
place, what is nowhere to be found in the writings
of either Darwin or Huxley — a systematic attempt
to grapple with the central question of biology,
the nature of life. Spencer's definition of life,
which, in its shortest form, is, "The adjustment of
inner to outer relations," is certainly the only
definition which has stood the test of time, and
notably the discovery of radium and radio-activity,
which form so interesting a comment on Thomas
Aquinas 's definition of life as "self -movement."
But Spencer was not the man to cheat himself
with words, and he fully realized that, in the last
resort, the nature of life is incomprehensible: "It
needs but to observe how simple forms of existence
are in their ultimate nature incomprehensible, to
see that this most complex form of existence is,
in a sense, doubly incomprehensible ; . . . only the
manifestations of life come within the range of

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SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTIONS

our intelligence, while that which is manifested lies
beyond it." Subsequent study affords no indica
tion that the mystery will ever be solved. The
production of life in the laboratory, which is yet a
very long way off, would not in the smallest degree
serve to reveal to us the essential nature of life,
whose "phenomena are accessible to thought, but
the implied noumenon is inaccessible." * Neverthe
less, for the fullest philosophic consideration of the
problem of life, philosophic in the sense of being
broad, not of being verbal and in the last resort
no more, the student must consult these pages.

Let us next note another little-known but im
portant contribution to general evolutionary theory
which we owe to Spencer the biologist. Every
living organism begins as a single cell; but there
invariably comes a time when, if the cell reaches
a certain size, it begins to divide. It is this divi
sion that conditions the development of the hetero
geneous multicellular individual from the homo
geneous unicellular creature which, whatever the
size to which it grew, could never be other than a
lowly and primitive object. Now, Spencer's law
of limit of growth teaches that, as a cell enlarges,
its volume increases at a greater rate than its sur
face, as is evident. Now it is by its surface that
the cell maintains its relations with its environ
ment and absorbs nutriment. The limit of cell-
size is therefore a mechanical problem. When the

1 Latest edition of the Biology, I., 120.
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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

cell-size is such that its surface ceases to bear a high
enough ratio to its volume, it must starve or divide.
Hence the facts of cell -division and the observed
limits of cell-size.

But this is very much less important than an
other result of Spencer's study of the cell in its
relation to heredity. We commonly call the cell
the unit of life ; but this is to ignore the fact that
in such cells as those by which individuals of the
higher species are reproduced there must be an
enormous number of smaller living units. On no
other hypothesis can we begin to form any mental
picture of the familiar facts of heredity. Spencer's
study of the facts led to what Grant Allen, in his
monograph on Darwin, calls the "magnificent
all-sided conception of physiological units." The
vast importance and the amazing adequacy of this
conception, reached by the sheer intellectual pow
er of one who was, in the literal sense, merely an
amateur of biology, are attested in many ways.
An indefinite number of leading biologists have
followed in Spencer's track, each reproducing the
"physiological unit"1 in different language but
with some lack of its completeness. Imperfect
subsequent expressions of it are the micellas of
Nageli, the idioplasm of Weismann, the compound
organic molecule of Pfluger, the plastidule of
Haeckel, and half a score more. For an estimate

1 The essence of the idea is that of a living unit intermediate
between the morphological unit, which is the cell, and the
chemical unit, which is the molecule, e.g., of albumin

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SPENCER'S CONTRIBUTIONS

of the importance of this idea the reader may con
sult such a standard work as that of M. Yves
Delage on L'Heredite. But since that work was
written there has come into prominence the long-
forgotten research of Mendel, to which reference
has been made in a previous chapter. Compari
son of the views of Mendel's contemporary follow
ers, such as De Vries and Bateson, will show that
the "physiological unit" of Spencer is the logical
foundation of the modern theory of heredity, which
has come into its own within the last decade. In
this relation especial interest appears to me to
attach to the recent development of the micro
scope by Gordon and others. It is now possible
to study the cell under a power of ten thousand
diameters; and calculation of molecular size by
Lord Rayleigh, Lord Kelvin, and others appears
to show that the real unit of life may prove to be
actually visible, if not now, at any rate in the not
very remote future.

On the border - line between biology and psy
chology, but legitimately to be treated here, is the
question of the evolution of the nervous system
and the differentiation of the senses of man. This
I have already discussed in a previous volume,1
and here I would rather refer to the inference which
may be drawn from the fact, broadly stated, that
the human brain and central nervous system

1 See the essay entitled "The Evolution of Sense," in The
Cycle of Life, or, much better, Tyndall's memorable "Bel
fast Address," delivered before the British Association in 1874.

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

generally are developed, both in the individual
and in the race, from the outermost or cutaneous
layer of the body. The inference is that our
nervous systems are essentially means for appre
ciation of and response to our environments.
Hence the human intellect, as Spencer says, has
been developed "by and for converse with phe
nomena." The evolutionary or genetic manner
of looking at man's brain suggests to us the bio
logical or anatomical explanation of the conclu
sion reached by many other avenues of inquiry,
that human knowledge can never be more than
phenomenal (i. e., of phenomena or appearances);
that self-consciousness and the whole realm of the
inner world are distinct super - additions to the
primitive and primary functions of the nervous
system ; and that " innate ideas," as Locke proved in
1689, are non-existent. In other words, the facts
of nervous development consort with the agnostic
dogma of modern scientific philosophy, if I may
use this term to distinguish between the most gen
eral conclusions of scientific thought and those
of the academic philosophers or metaphysicians.

With this conclusion we may pass to the con
sideration of superorganic evolution, and, in the
first place, the evolution of mind.

PART IV
SUPERORGANIC EVOLUTION

SECTION I

IN MIND

XV

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

WHEN we come to look at the matter philo
sophically it is evident that, if indeed any finality
be possible to human knowledge, it cannot be at
tained without a study of mind. If we examine
the philosophic failures of the past, and inquire
whether there be any common factor in their in
stability, it is found that each was built upon an
erroneous theory of mind. From this it must not
be inferred that we can regard any theory of mind
as adequate; could we do so, philosophy in the
highest sense — a knowledge of reality — would
assuredly be possible. These philosophies failed
exactly because their makers took for granted
some root assumption or other which was without
any warrant in actuality. Indeed, it was not
until the time of Hume and his successor, Kant,
that any systematic inquiry was made into the
nature of knowledge — a fact which furnishes a
most radical criticism upon the methods of their
many predecessors.

In a very real sense, therefore, the study of mind
must occupy a primal place in the thoughts of any

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one who proposes to write a natural history of all
things. Mind, indeed — his own mind — is all that
any man immediately and indisputably, though
not completely,1 knows, which is another excel
lent reason for regarding psychology as logically
the first of the sciences.

This was, indeed, dimly recognized by the many
metaphysicians, from Plato onward, who have
left mankind a heritage of concatenated words.2
It was recognized that psychology, which we
now regard as one of the natural sciences, was
merged in — had not yet emerged from — meta
physics, or theories as to reality. The metaphy
sicians realized that psychology was the initial
science— in order of logic — and concluded that if
they looked within their own minds the secret of
being might be found therein ; but their failure was
due to the fact that, though the study of mind is
first in logical order, nothing but unsuccess can
follow its practical treatment as initial. Only by
study of the external world by and for converse
with which the mind has been evolved can we
successfully approach the study of mind itself.
The first thinker to see and utilize this truth was
Herbert Spencer.

Until his time every psychologist and philosopher,
without exception, had treated mind as he knew
it — his own mind — as a thing without antecedents,

1 See chapter, "On Mind as Unknowable."
1 This is not to say that when Plato and Hegel discussed
other matters they did not leave us more than mere words.

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THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

called into being and indelibly minted by the
hand of the Creator. We may perhaps think that
this was only natural, since the theory of special
creation was generally accepted. Yet it remains
almost incredible that it should never have oc
curred to any thinker that it might be worth
while to compare one mind with another. Even
if we appreciate the influence of the belief that no
animal possessed what could be regarded as a
mind; even if we try to appreciate the point of
view of the philosophers who regarded savages as
degenerate beings, and the savage mind as mere
ly a disfigured specimen of the human mind as it
was originally created, it remains inexplicable that
practically no one before Herbert Spencer should
have thought it worth his while to study the mind
of the child. But the fact is recorded — inexplica
ble or not — that the sole object of study of every
psychological treatise — with one insignificant ex
ception — until the year 1855 was the adult Cau
casian mind, as illustrated in its own students.
The first man to conceive — or, at any rate, to leave
any record of the conception — that mind has a
history was Herbert Spencer. It is, therefore, not
surprising that the circumstances in which his
pioneer treatise was produced are themselves
unique. We must remember that Spencer was
without a university education, and never under
went any formal teaching in metaphysics or psy
chology. The scientific interests of his father lay
mostly in physics, and his own chosen profession

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

was that of a railway engineer. These facts are
worth remembrance in their bearing on Spencer's
status as a psychologist. He made contributions
to every branch of science, and laid all under
contribution for his philosophic system ; but he cer
tainly followed the advice to know a little of every
thing and everything of something, for in psy
chology he was not only a pioneer by reason of one
great idea, but was also a specialist — a master
alike of principles and details, to quote the au
thoritative obituary notice in Nature.

Yet though Locke's immortal essay lay upon his
father's shelves, Spencer did not acquire enough
interest in the science of mind even to impel him
to the opening of any work that dealt with it until
his meeting with Lewes, in his thirty-first year,
led him to read that Biographical History of Philos
ophy which has opened a door into a new world
for so many of us before even emerging from our
teens.

But when at length Spencer did awake to the
fascinations of psychology, he forthright proceeded,
with the audacity of genius, to plan a book of at
least two volumes which was to deal with the
whole subject. We need not wonder that the
project languished until there came to him a
simple but important idea which was capable of
comparatively brief treatment, and gave him the
needed start. He began to write the Principles
of Psychology when he was thirty-four, three years
after his introduction to the subject through a

1 66

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

work written for the unskilled reader. The book
was mainly written in the open air, near Dieppe
and in Wales, without works of reference. If the
adjective original can fairly be applied to any
philosophical work, it is to this invaluable book
in which was founded the study of psychogenesis,
or the origin of mind. When one reads of Spencer's
plan for two volumes, and his intention to deal
with the whole subject, ere he had devoted any
systematic study whatever to any of his predeces
sors, and at a time when he must have been ignorant
of even the accepted terminology, one is inclined
to ask, "What on earth did he think he had to
say?" But to that question there is an abiding
answer. He had accepted the theory of organic
evolution in 1840 — very shortly after Darwin had
opened his first note-book for facts bearing on the
origin of species — and it was his destiny to apply
the leading idea of universal and ordered change
to the highest entity of which we have any knowl
edge.

I do not here propose to discuss in detail, or,
indeed, with any measure of completeness, the
general or special doctrines of the evolutionary
psychology; but, in accordance with the design
of the present volume, I must consider three topics
which may serve to justify the contention that
evolution is the master-key, and which may serve
to show that its revelations are as vital and real
in this present year as they were half a century
ago, when the first instalment of the synthetic

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

philosophy saw — and brought — the light. But it
is necessary, ere treating of the three topics
chosen, which are the test of truth, the controversy
regarding the origin of our ideas, and the human
will, that we should attempt clearly to review the
main contention of the evolutionary psychology.

Whatever its limitations and its capacity for
error, however far it be from what it may yet
become, and whatsoever criticisms we may pass
upon the doctrine of Protagoras that "man is the
measure of all things, ' ' the human mind is, neverthe
less, the only veritable wonder of the world ; a fact
which neither the idealist nor the realist, nei
ther the sceptic nor the dogmatist, will question.
Practically, it is the measure of all things; and
even while we recognize that it is perhaps not the
best judge of itself, its highest achievements may
well excuse us for regarding it as unique, sui gene
ris, unexampled, incomparable. To seek its origin
in anything less than itself, in anything but
a Divine Mind, would seem futile impertinence.
Yet, as it is an indisputable fact that the body of
man, with its amazing mechanisms and capacities,
is directly developed from a morsel of living matter
—about one-hundred-and-twentieth of an inch in
diameter — which can easily be hidden by the
point of a pencil, so it must now be believed that
the mind of man has an origin as humble and in
significant. The inference, however, may be not
that it is itself, for all its pretensions, humble and
insignificant, but that that which we think so is,

1 68

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

such being its potentialities, as glorious as its
product.

And, indeed, we may prepare ourselves for the
main assertion of the evolutionary psychology by
considering the history of the individual mind.
Undue importance was formerly attached to that
particular stage in the history of an individual
which we call his birth. Even now many legal
pronouncements assume that the life of a human
being begins with his birth, and it is a doctrine
of the Jesuits, we are commonly told, that at the
moment of birth a newly created soul is implanted
in each human being. Presumably, if a child dies
five minutes before the accident of birth, there is
an end of it; but if five minutes after, there re
mains an entity which passes all eternity in Para
dise or in limbo, according as whether or not it was
baptized during those fateful moments. This doc
trine, however, has only to be stated to be recog
nized as arrant nonsense, and does not need the ex
perience of the obstetrician, who has seen children
die during birth, and has performed the operation
of Csesarean section on mothers of children who
would otherwise have attained separate existence
several weeks later, to be appreciated as a mere
expression of the worst kind of ignorance — that
which is ignorant even of its own nature. The
cynic who remarked that man alone has the power
to make himself ridiculous must have had this case
in his mind.

In considering, therefore, merely the history of
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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the individual mind, we are forced back, by logic
which none can now dispute, to the moment at
which the sex-elements of the two parents fuse
within the body of the mother. If it be said that
no one can pretend to discern any characteristics
of mind in the aboriginal cell even of a future
Shakespeare or Aristotle, the objector may be
asked to indicate the stage at which he conceives
the mental history to begin ; and when he has been
warned, by fact and evidence, against indicating
the (purely accidental and often arbitrary) mo
ment of birth, he will probably be left wondering.
Furthermore, it may be observed that the new cell
which is to give rise to a new individual and in
which are contained the potentialities of that
individual's mind, is itself the product of two
other cells, each of which was as certainly alive as
it is, and was, beyond dispute, the bearer of the
mental characters which every one knows and
admits to be transmitted from parent to child.
In any adequate measure to reflect upon the history
of the individual mind is to encounter indisputable
facts at least as amazing as — indeed, by the rapid
ity of the development, much more amazing than
—the disputed facts of the evolution of the racial
mind. In other words, the evolutionary assertion
as to the history of the mind of man is no whit more
incredible than the known facts as to the history
of the individual minds of individual men.

Thus prepared by contemplation of the daily
marvel which is familiar to every parent, the evolu-

170

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

tion of the individual mind, we need not fear to
let go the doctrine that the human mind is a special
creation, lest we should be asked to believe the
incredible. And we soon find that the new doc
trine consorts with a whole host of apparently
unrelated facts: the phenomena of insanity be
come intelligible ; the cruelty of the boy ; the baby's
fear of a gruff voice or a forbidding face; even
the astonishing facts of multiple personality are
seen to be capable of rational explanation on the
evolutionary hypothesis. But to this subject, and
that of unconscious mind — each of which is as
unfamiliar to many as it is full of significance — I
must devote a few paragraphs.

It is now known, by observation of very many
quite unquestionable cases in all parts of the
world, that one human body may appear to be
tenanted, at different times, by two, three, four —
even eleven — different personalities. The believer
in spirits has an easy explanation of these cases,
and Mr. W. T. Stead has triumphantly hailed a
recent American treatise on the subject as affording
conclusive proof of the theory of spirit possession.
One personality may be a linguist, another illiter
ate; one, savage, sulky, homicidal; another, gentle,
cheerful, timid. Instances could be multiplied
without limit. With the current theory of human
personality the facts are entirely unintelligible.
But if we regard the human mind as a complex
structure, containing elements derived from mill
ions of ancestral minds, they are susceptible of

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

explanation. Indeed, scientific psychology — as
distinguished from the academic verbiage some
times indicated by that term — is less concerned
to explain the facts of multiple personality than to
explain the opposite fact of the unity of conscious
ness, which those who have never thought about
it would regard as needless of explanation. For
if the human mind be a composite structure,
built out of innumerable units of various deriva
tion, how are we to explain the fact that the
thousands of millions of nerve-cells in the cortex,
or gray matter, of the brain do commonly act and
speak with one voice ? For myself, I believe that
the key to this — the really remarkable — fact is
to be found in Professor Sherrington's researches
on reflex action, which fall to be discussed when
we consider the human will.

Then, as regards subconsciousness — the "buried
temple," as M. Maeterlinck calls it. We have
lately learned that mind and consciousness are by
no means synonymous terms. Consciousness, in
deed, is to be regarded as the efflorescence of mind,
which is a far more extensive and fundamental
fact. During sleep consciousness is non-existent;
but mind is by no means so. The existence of
the mind is as continuous as is that of its organ,
the brain. The musician or poet has often com
posed musical phrases or verses during the period
of unconsciousness or sleep, and has risen in the
night to record them — to his utter surprise in the
morning. You are at your wits' ends to remember

172

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

a name. A wise friend advises you not to worry
about it; "it will come to you in a little while."
And so it does. You have set the unconscious
mind a little task, and, on its conclusion, your
consciousness is presented with the product. If
your friend were a psychologist, he would say,
"Don't worry about it; leave it to your subcon-
sciousness."

Now it seems to me that evolution, the master-
key, furnishes an explanation of these facts as of
those of multiple personality. I have often been
asked whether a baby is ever conscious before
birth, or whether it is asleep all the time. (A
curious feat, that of "sleeping" on one's head for
months together, yet we have all done it in our
time !) I am not prepared to answer the question ;
but I am quite certain that I cannot conceive of the
earliest stages of the baby — the pencil-point stage,
for instance — as conscious. Yet I am compelled to
believe that mind is present there — mind in em
bryo associated with body in embryo.

Now it has already been argued that life is po
tential in matter; that life-energy is not a thing
unique and created at a particular time in the past.
If evolution be true, living matter has been evolved
by natural processes from matter which is, ap
parently, not alive. As long as the argument is
confined to the production of a bacillus or an
amoeba, no concern will be felt by the alarmed
supernaturalist — -as if nature were not the garb
of supernature!— but if life is potential in matter,

i73

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

it is a thousand times more evident that mind is
potential in life.1 To dispute this is to deny the
existence of consciousness in a dog. The evolu
tionist is therefore impelled to believe — shall I
say ? that mind is potential in matter. I adopt that
form of words for the moment, but not without
future criticism. The student knows that the mi
croscopic cell, a minute speck of matter, that is to
become a man, has in it the promise and the germ
of mind. If this be questioned for man, it will not
be questioned for a dog; and the substitution
does not affect the argument. Must we then draw
the inference that the elements of mind are pres
ent in those chemical elements — carbon, oxygen,
hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, sodium,
potassium, chlorine — that are found in the brain
of a dog? Not only must we do so, but we must
go further, since we know that each of these "ele
ments," and every other, is built out of one in
variable unit, the electron ; and we must therefore
assert, in still more definite terms than those al
ready employed, that mind is potential in the
unit of matter, the electron itself.

Here the critic who attaches importance to
names will certainly say that this is to assert the
doctrine of materialism, previously repudiated in
these pages. "Why do you not," he may say,

1 "Life is a continuous adjustment of inner relations to outer
relations, and mind emerges from it as fast as the adjustment
becomes more extended, more involved, and more complete."
— Autobiography, I., 471.

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THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

"frankly acknowledge that you believe mind to
be a function of matter, and therefore that materi
alism is the truth and the whole truth? Or, since
you have resolved matter into a manifestation of
energy or power, that mind is a function of energy,
and therefore that energism is the truth and the
whole truth?"

If we withhold all analysis and content ourselves
with words, it would indeed appear that to asso
ciate the elements of mind with the elements of
matter is to commit one's self to materialism.
But it is assuredly not so. To assert that mind
and matter are correlative and complementary
is to assert that they are the two sides of Reality,
as seen by us. It is to assert the sublime truth,
first perceived by Spinoza, that mind and matter
are the warp and the woof of what the earth-
spirit in "Faust" calls the "living garment of
God."

Indeed, if language were not essentially and
incoercibly materialistic, and if human thought
were not essentially materialistic, so that no one
can conceive of spirit save in materialistic terms
-no, not though he be an idealist of the most
uncompromising — we should see that it would be
exactly as accurate to describe matter as a function
of mind — which is indeed the idealist assertion —
as to describe mind as a function of matter, which
is regarded as a materialist assertion. Neither is
true, because no statement that attempts to ex
plain the one in terms of the other can be aught

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

but a denial of the truth that they are strictly
peers, that neither is knowable, and that they are
the complementary expressions of the unknowable
Reality which underlies both.1

In the present volume space does not avail for
more than the briefest mention of the new studies
to which the principle of evolution has given mean
ing and worth. Now that we know the relation
of the savage to the civilized 2 mind, anthropology
has become a science instead of a fad. This, too,
only just in time. The Tasmanian was obliterated
ere we learned from him the lessons which he had
to teach us; but the psychology of the Australian
aboriginal has remained just long enough for us to
study and record. And though the lowest savage
mind we know is far higher than, from the point
of view of scientific inquiry, might be desirable,
yet it is invaluable as representing or correspond
ing to one of the base degrees by which we did
ascend. Similarly the evolutionary idea has given
meaning and value to comparative psychology,
which studies the mental characters of animals.
Not only has this thrown light on the study of the
human mind, but it has taught us that there are
mental characters, of which we should be proud

1 See an essay by the author, " The Problems of Conscious
ness," in Harper's Magazine, June, 1905.

2 We have lately learned that civilized, in its usual accepta
tion, is simply an impudent word. But literally, of course,
it merely means city-fied; and considering what the modern
city means and is, civilization may fairly be regarded as a
term of humiliation and decent self-depreciation.

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THE E V O L U T ION OF MI N D

did we possess them, that belong to " lowly" creat
ures which have not even a backbone — such as the
ant and the bee. It has apparently been shown,
for instance, that the "homing" power of the bee
is independent both of sight and sound. Such
discoveries of unnameable and indescribable senses
bear not only upon the problems of psychology,
but upon the highest quest of philosophy, and also
raise interesting questions as to future human
possibilities.

The attention which the evolutionary psychology
has directed to the child has not only added a
new interest to the possession of a baby, and
thrown much light on psychology in general, but
it has utterly destroyed ancient conceptions of the
methods of education, has taught the teacher that
the child is not a "little man," but a child, and
that his first duty is to consider the manner in
which the child's mind acquires knowledge. Fur
ther, it has inaugurated a reign of humanity and
sanity in the moral education of children and in
the moral judgments which we pass upon them.
Instead of seeing "that old serpent the devil"
in the greed and selfishness of a child, or cowardice
in its fear of darkness, we can adduce, for these
and similar facts, explanations as satisfying as they
are instructive.

Further, the evolutionary psychology has served
to elucidate and explain the mental differences
between man and woman in a fashion which pre
vious theories have never been able to emulate.

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

But the most signal achievement of the evo
lutionary psychology is its total dismemberment
and annihilation of the accursed lie that human
nature is tainted with a burden of "original sin,"
and its corollary that "human nature is the same
in all ages." The relation of the evolutionary
philosophy to the problems of evil and of "sin"
must subsequently be discussed; but the dogma
of the immutability of human nature, which is
based on a contemplation of that brief moment
which, in our conceit, we call the "history of the
world," may here be considered. If we realize,
as none are too foolish to realize when it is pointed
out to them, that it is human nature which pro
duces the weary weight of all this unintelligible
world, and that no real improvement is conceivable
in the lot of mankind save such as there is in an
amelioration of human nature, we shall see that
the dogma of its immutability is the central pillar
of pessimism and a denial of the possibility of any
thing worthy to be called progress. If, on the
other hand, we contemplate the evolution of hu
manity and draw the magnificent inference there
from — not acting like one who starts to tell a good
story but misses the point, as some one has well said
—then we shall find in evolution the central pillar
of a sane and rational optimism, as superior to that
which is notoriously bred of a good digestion as is
Christianity to fetichism. But of all this more anon.

XVI

THE TEST OF TRUTH

THE first of the three subjects dealt with in the
Principles of Psychology that I propose to discuss
at some length is an idea to which expression was
first given in The Westminster Review, in an essay
called "The Universal Postulate." I choose this
particular idea for discussion here, not only because
of its influence in the production of Spencer's
second book, but also because of its profound im
portance. Not that this idea has in any way in
fluenced subsequent psychology, as have such con
ceptions as that which refers the origin of will
to reflex action; but the philosophic importance
of the question greatly transcends that of any de
partment in psychology proper, and notably it
bears upon the proposition of the conservation of
energy, upon which the evolutionary philosophy
is based.

Spencer asked himself this question: By what
criterion, in the last resort, can we judge of the
truth of any proposition? Since his answer no
other has been given, though destructive criticism
has of course been essayed. Yet few will dispute
the following:

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

" One might have supposed that as a needful preliminary
to a systematic discussion — especially a discussion con
cerning the nature of things — the disputants would
agree on some method of distinguishing propositions
which must be accepted from propositions which it is
possible to deny. May not one fairly say that those who
decline to accept a test proposed, and also decline to
furnish a test of their own, do so because they are half
conscious that their opinions will not bear testing?"

What, then, is Spencer's ultimate criterion of
belief? It is simply that "in the last resort we
must accept as true a proposition of which the nega
tion is inconceivable." The inconceivability of its
negation is our ultimate criterion1 of a certainty.
Now we must consider what Spencer means by
the word inconceivable. One academic critic, whose
helplessness almost excites sympathy, feeling him
self bound to offer what opposition he may to any
Spencerian dictum, can find nothing more to say
than that Spencer fails to distinguish between
inconceivable and unimaginable. But Spencer
does distinguish ; and the distinction is to be found
enforced not once but often in his writings. It is
true that he does not use the confusing and ques
tion-begging term unimaginable; but no one was
ever clearer than he is in condemning what he calls
a pseud-idea. And the unimaginable is distinct
from the inconceivable only when a pseud-idea,
as that of a moral fluid, is involved. Let us take
an instance.

'" Our ultimate criterion" — not, alas, an absolute or infallible
criterion.

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THE TEST OF TRUTH

The primary axiom that a thing cannot both be
and not be at the same time — known as the prin
ciple of contradiction or, as Sir William Hamil
ton preferred, of non-contradiction — is a truth of
the highest certainty, because one cannot conceive
its negation. Thus the philosophy of Hegel is
founded upon a proposition — that being and
not-being are the same — which it is impossible to
conceive. But if one cannot conceive it, can one
imagine it? I trow not. That two and two are
four is similarly — despite the dictum of Mill— a
truth of the highest certainty, because one cannot
conceive its negation. The objector might an
swer with a case within my own experience, of a
man who believed that two and two are four and
a quarter, and whom no arguments could convince
of his error. But would I be entitled to say that
my friend could conceive the negation of the propo
sition that two and two are four? Surely I was
right in thinking that he was obsessed by a pseud-
idea — an idea of which the elements, as Spen
cer says, "cannot be combined in consciousness."
And I maintain the truth of my judgment by ob
serving that my friend never did really combine
the ideas of two and two so as to make them four
and a quarter. His idea was thus imaginable — if
we are to use that word — but not conceivable: any
more than the idea of a moral fluid or a square
idea is a conception. And, as a matter of fact, I
made my friend's acquaintance in a lunatic asylum.
This, curiously enough, was his one delusion.

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Let me recommend to the reader, as an interest
ing exercise, the application of this criterion to his
own beliefs. So one may discover the very grave
significance of that phrase, " The highest certainty."
Thus judged, your belief in, let us say, the law of
gravitation, is at once seen not to be possessed of
the highest validity. You can conceive the nega
tion of the Newtonian law. Our belief in universal
gravitation is no more than a matter of faith. De
spite the common antithesis, there is such a thing
as rational faith — as distinguished from the ir
rational, or extrarational, or, as some will main
tain, suprarational, kind. But Spencer has shown
that our belief in the law of the conservation of
energy is of quite another order. You cannot
conceive of the creation of a new iota of energy,
out of nothing, nor of the annihilation of an iota
of energy, any more than you can conceive of the
creation of the universe out of nothing. You can,
indeed, imagine both, but that merely by cozening
yourself with a pseudo-conception the elements of
which you cannot combine. This any one may ob
serve for himself by attempting to conceive of
creation — not remaining content to accept words
without translating them into the ideas for which
they stand. The special - creation theory is, in
deed, a mere formulation of ignorance into the
semblance of knowledge.

Now, if a proposition the negation of which
cannot be rationally conceived is possessed of
the highest certainty, what measure of certainty

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THE TEST OF TRUTH

shall we attribute to such propositions as cannot
themselves be conceived? Let us illustrate the
matter by a quotation from Cardinal Newman's
Grammar of Assent, where he says, "A mystery is
a proposition conveying incompatible notions, or
is a statement of the inconceivable." No one
can call to mind any of the familiar dogmas of
theology without appreciating the adequacy and
accuracy of Newman's definition. The belief in
an omnipotent Deity whom a man may defy (the
quibble about the delegation of power from the
Creator to the creature is not worth noticing) ; the
belief in an omnipotent and benevolent Deity ; the
dogma of the Trinity— such are some theological
mysteries, or "statements of the inconceivable."
Now an inconceivable statement is one the nega
tion of which is conceivable ; but it is more, it is a
statement the negation of which is a truth of the
highest certainty, since ITS negation is inconceivable.
Let us take an instance. The dogma that there is
one personal God, but that He is three persons,
is a "mystery"— "a statement of the inconceiv
able." Its negation — i.e., the denial of it, is a
truth of the highest certainty, since its negation — •
i.e., the assertion of the dogma, is inconceivable.
A theological mystery is, therefore, a statement the
denial or untruth of which is a truth of the highest
certainty.

There is no rational escape from this ; but there
is the familiar argument that these mysteries are
not for the reason, but must be accepted by faith.
13 183

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

It is the faith of Tertullian: "Credo quia impossi-
bile " — I believe it because it is impossible. If
there be such a thing as truth, what relation does
such faith bear to it ?

XVII

THE HUMAN WILL
a. Introductory

THE human will is a subject which, by reason
of its overwhelming theoretical and practical im
portance, must be treated at length in such a vol
ume as this. It is only within the last half -century
that we have had any scientific treatment of the
will. Philosophers have discussed it in all ages,
but always from a point of view of their^own,
involving either the results of introspection, an
inquiry into their own experience, or else a mere
logomachy, full of sound but signifying nothing—
vox et prcetcrea nihil.

The human will is now recognized by impartial
thinkers as a fit and proper subject for scientific
study. The theologians may continue to speak
as if psychology had stood still since the publica
tion of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, more
than a century ago ; but, as Mr. Thomas Hardy has
lately observed, the determinist conception — which,
we may note, is really as old as Buddhism — is
steadily percolating into the popular mind, while

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the moral anarchy which is supposed to be a neces
sary consequence of its acceptance, has yet

observed.

Furthermore, it is emphatically the evolutionary
treatment of the will, and the searching light :
has thrown on the springs of conduct, that has
rescued the whole subject from the verbal morass
of so many generations and has placed it upon
the rock of positive facts.

Let us now look at some of the questions in
volved.

In the first place, the post - Spencenan writer
cannot treat of man's will as if it had sprung,
like Minerva, fully armed from the head of Jove^
For now exactly half a century such a method
of treatment has been obsolete. Neither will nor
any other aspect of mind can be treated as if tt
adult Caucasian consciousness were an immediate
creation, of whose genesis the first and last wor.
has been said in a reference to a Creator or a First
Cause. Your will and mine are evolved in us as
individuals from the will of the child, from 1
springs of action in infancy and before it. Further
more, your will is a product of racial as well as
of individual evolution. It does not now suffice
to declare, with Descartes, that the lower animals
are automata: else the qualifying word "human
in the title of this chapter were superfluous.
" ape and tiger," not yet dead in us, had conscious
ness and volition; nor can ours be explained with
out reference to theirs. Thus, whereas prior to the

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THE HUMAN WILL

publication of the Principles of Psychology in 1855,
wherein attention was for the first time directed
to the will of children, savages, and the lower
animals, will was treated as a prime fact, one can
not now plunge in medias res, but must devote
the most serious initial consideration to the gen
esis of will — all our conclusions being thereby
affected.

Nor can we go far, it may be found, without
impinging upon one of the great outstanding con
troversies of biology — the inheritance or non-
inheritance of acquired characters. If I become a
drunkard and thereafter a father, is my child more
likely than he would have been to follow my ill-
guided steps? And if he is thus doomed, is it
because I have acquired a character which enslaves
him, or is it rather that he inherits a tendency
which, apparently acquired, was in reality innate
in me? And if innate in me, can it be traced to
the indulgence of one of my ancestors — have /
inherited an acquired character — or would I have
fallen in any case, whether my ancestor had yielded
to temptation or not?

Then, again, what of the distinction between
instinctive and rational action? Is it true that
the lower animals act only by instinct, whereas
man is a rational animal ? And was Spencer right
in declaring instinct to be "compound reflex ac
tion"? Must I, in discuSvSing the human will,
define reflex action; and what answer can I then
make to the critic who may assert that, under a

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

psychological title, I am discussing mere physi
ology ?

Nor can one consider the human will without in
vasion of or alliance with the theological camp.
Are we free? Is our consciousness of freedom an
illusion or not? And when we talk of free-will
do we all mean exactly the same thing? If not,
we are unlikely to make much headway with this
question or with others much less abstruse. You
may mean by the assertion of free-will that human
volition is uncaused or self -caused, or is, indeed, a
little First Cause, which may defy, an it please, the
great First Cause which some regard as omnipotent.
You mean that the will can give place to the less
cogent of two warring motives. What did Tenny
son mean when he spoke of "power on thine own
act and on the world "? Many mean by free-will
not to assert that each human will is a little First
Cause, but simply that man can, if he will, fol
low the dictates of his higher as against those of
his lower nature, when there is that war in one's
members which St. Paul described. Others mean
merely to assert that man is a rational animal ; yet
it is beyond question that no rational process or
concept can be in itself a motive — language is
right: motive is always emotion.

Nor is this by any means all. The human will is
not a merely academic topic; but, like those dis
cussed in the first academy, bears vitally upon
practice. I shall shortly avow myself, for instance,
a determinist, along with perhaps the greatest of

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THE HUMAN WILL

the fathers and, I suppose, every physiologist and
scientific psychologist of the present day. But if
I am a determinist, can I in consistency, and in
point of fact do I, ever praise or blame any one?
Do I, to begin at home, regard myself as a respon
sible person? Do I, as it might appear I should,
regard praise and blame as absurdities, the sense
of moral responsibility as an illusion ? If so, do I
defend the laws which hang one murderer and
detain another " at his Majesty's pleasure " ? Surely
(it may be said), on the scientific theory of deter
minism, which declares that each of us is what
heredity and environment have made him, I have
no business to punish or acquiesce in the punish
ment of anybody — my dog or my servant. Nor
can I consistently praise or reward. There cannot
be degrees of irresponsibility. If no one can help
doing anything, must I not regard with impartial
eye and equal lack of favor or disfavor the sage
and the fool, the saint and the criminal, the sane
and the insane? And if science and determinism
deny the validity of universal instincts, declare
that praise and blame are absurd, resolve con
science into superstition or indigestion, and make
no distinction between deliberate crime, impulsive
crime, and maniacal crime, is not determinism
stultified by the reductio ad absurdum? Must there
not be but a foundation of shifting sand for the
premises that lead to such conclusions?

Such are some of the questions which we must
attempt to answer.

189

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY
b. Reflex Action

The amoeba, like the human germ, is a single cell,
complete in itself. When it withdraws from a
dangerous object it performs the functions of the
sensory nerve, the nerve-centres, the motor nerve,
and the muscles which enable you to perceive
and avoid an imminent vehicle. In each case the
action is essentially reflex; but in order to under
stand what is meant by this term we must know
what is meant by a reflex arc. This typically
consists of a sensory nerve-fibre, such as, let us say,
the optic nerve ; a sensory cell, such as those from
which the fibres of the optic nerve are derived;
and a motor cell and fibre, such as those which
control the muscular tissues of the iris. When a
beam of light enters the eye, the reflex arc is called
into action, the iris is stimulated and the pupil con
tracts. This is one of the hundreds of reflex
actions which are constantly taking place in us.
It is entirely independent of consciousness, the
centre for visual consciousness, at the back of the
brain, not being concerned in the process. Now
from a pure reflex action such as this we may go a
stage further. Consciousness of an approaching
fist may be aroused by the beam of light, and in
this case the reflex arc will be slightly different.
The sensory half of the arc will be similar, but the
motor half will consist of the nerve that runs to
the eyelid, and you will blink or wink. Yet
though your consciousness is involved, the action

190

THE HUMAN WILL

is so far from being voluntary that a considerable
effort of will is necessary to prevent it from taking
place.

It is to the illustrious Descartes, renowned alike
as mathematician and metaphysician, that we owe
the discovery of reflex action, which is now known
to play such a part in physiology and psychology.

When we come to examine the nervous system
of one of the higher animals or of man we find
that it may be regarded as an infinitely complex
congeries of reflex arcs, to be numbered by at least
thousands of millions. But each sensory nerve-
fibre that constitutes the ingoing half of each of
these reflex arcs may convey a stimulus that will
issue in action in any one or any group of the
voluntary or involuntary muscles of the body.
Under varying conditions, a blow on a given area
of your leg may cause you to advance it by way of
offence, to withdraw it by way of defence, to start
running in one of many directions, to use your arms
pugnaciously or to grasp some supporting object
with them, to scream or to laugh, to curse or to
pray — the outgoing or motor half of the reflex
arc may thus vary. Yet, in health, the "will" is
not divided; you will definitely do one of these
things and not another ; you will not simultaneously
attempt half a dozen incompatible acts. Let us
take a simple but most significant instance. Two
objects are simultaneously presented to your vision.
Each of them sends an impulse from the part of
the retina struck by the rays of light that make it

191

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

visible, each demanding that the eyeball be so
moved that the most sensitive part of the retina
be directed towards the object, so that it may be
the more clearly defined. Now if these two stimuli
were added together, so to speak, the eyeball
would be swung too far round, and neither object
would be clearly seen. On the other hand, if an
average or mean were struck between the two
stimuli the eyeball would swing round not far
enough for clear vision of the one object, but too
far for clear vision of the other. Neither of these
results is observed. On the contrary, one of the
stimuli definitely inhibits or arrests the action of
the other, and the eyeball is swung just so far as
will make the image of one of the two objects fall
exactly on the most sensitive spot of the retina.

This discovery, typical of all action, we owe to
Professor Sherrington, who discussed his years of
work upon this subject in his Presidential Address
to the section of Physiology at the meeting of the
British Association at Cambridge in 1904. By
discovering that reflexes inhibit one another he has
not only explained how it is that this amazingly
complex nervous system of ours acts as a unity,
but he has gone very far to explain that phenome
non which most strikingly illustrates this unity—
namely, the phenomenon of attention. When we
attend, one series of sensory fibres — such as those
of the auditory nerve when we listen with individ
ual attention to a sermon or a song — has taken
possession of what Professor Sherrington calls the

192

THE HUMAN WILL

common path, and has inhibited the action of all
other sensory impulses. We do not want to
cough, because that reflex is inhibited; but if the
sermon be dull, the whole congregation will soon
be a-coughing. The common path is like the
trunk- line of the telephone: when one subscriber
has gained possession of it, all the others must wait.
Professor Sherrington's work is the most important
advance in our knowledge of volition since Spencer
discovered its genesis in reflex action half a century
ago.

Ere I conclude I must note what has doubtless
occurred to the reader. While will emerges from
reflex action, to reflex action will can return. You
remember your early strivings, with intent will,
at the piano or the cricket-nets or in learning good
manners? Yet now you can play or bat or be
courteous with an ease which is hardly distinguish
able from automatism. Practice makes perfect-
that is to say, practice cultivates the power of one
set of reflex arcs until they can always be relied
upon, without effort, to inhibit their antagonists.
You positively cannot help playing a straight bat
or "doing the correct thing."

Will, indeed, is the expression of imperfection.
The perfect batsman "times the ball" so well, the
perfect saint does the saintly thing, without any
consciousness of effort — that is, of will. It " comes
natural" to him.

This fact, that will may give place to reflex action,
has been urged as one of the arguments against

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Spencer's theory that will is derived, in the indi
vidual and the race, from reflex action. But it
need hardly be said that Spencer recognized and
considered the facts of the change from volitional
to unconscious and reflex action. These facts do
not in the slightest degree invalidate his contention.
The only alternative to the view of the founder of
psychogenesis is that all action is primarily voli
tional and that all reflex action is a development
from volitional action. This view, which, indeed,
is favored by Wilhelm Wandt, of Leipsic, the greatest
of living psychologists, is beset with the most insu
perable difficulties, and leads to the most difficult of
conclusions, as any one can see on a moment's con
sideration.

c. The Will-not-to

To our consideration of reflex action must now
be added that of inhibition, the remarkable func
tion of the nervous system which is superadded to
reflex action, as this leads, in racial and individual
development, to volition itself.

The nervous system, as I have said, may be re
garded as an infinitely complex congeries of reflex
arcs. But it may also be regarded as comparable
to the military or legislative system, wherein are
officers and officials of numerous grades, each with
authority over his inferiors, and each, save the
supreme head, in his turn under the control of his
superiors. It is to Dr. Hughlings Jackson, one of
the makers of neurology, that we owe this illumi-

194

THE HUMAN WILL

nating conception of the different "levels" in the
nervous system. Thus at the level of the lower
end of the spinal cord are certain centres which
can (and, in the infant, do) act reflexly, setting
certain muscles in motion in response to certain
stimuli. At a higher level in the nervous system
are other centres which can control these and pre
vent or inhibit the customary reflexes. Just above
the upper end of the spinal cord, again, is the punc-
tum vitale, or respiratory centre, the cells of which,
in response to certain stimuli from the lungs and
elsewhere, never fail, day and night, from the
cradle to the grave, to stimulate certain muscles
which cause air to enter the lungs. This centre,
however, is also under the command of centres at
higher levels, the activity of which can automati
cally hurry or make irregular or retard the act of
breathing; while the highest centres of all permit
us consciously to affect the respiratory act in any
way we please.

Now this power of inhibition is the ultimate ex
pression of nearly all that is most admirable in
man. In it is the germ of self-control, of restraint,
of the power to say "no," of the power to "look
after," preferring distant but enduring gain to
immediate but transitory, scorning the apples by
the way for what may never be more than an ideal
goal. Inhibition, then, when developed into the
will-not-to, is at once the antithesis of volition, as
commonly understood, and its highest expression.
We must study it with care.

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

If you cross one leg over the other and sharply
tap, with the edge of your hand, the super jacent
knee, just below the knee-cap, the leg will be
jerked forward. Much more markedly will it jerk
if the stimulus be applied by a friend when you
are thinking of something else, and especially if
you have interlocked your fingers and are striving
to pull your hands apart. Now this "knee-jerk"
may be regarded as a typical reflex action ; but we
have already observed that it varies (inversely)
with the amount of attention which the subject
gives to it. The centre for this reflex is in the
spinal cord, and to the centre there run the voli
tional motor fibres from the leg-centre on the sur
face of the brain. Now, if anything has hap
pened to break or press upon these motor fibres
in their course from the brain to the cord, or if the
cells from which they start have been destroyed,
it is found that the involuntary knee-jerk is greatly
exaggerated; while, of course, any voluntary jerk
ing of the leg is impossible. If, on the other hand,
the motor cells in the brain, or their fibres, are
irritated — that is, stimulated — by anything, the
knee-jerk is greatly diminished. It is obvious,
then, that the brain-cells, in health, are constantly
exerting an inhibitory or restraining action upon
the cells in the spinal cord. What is true of this re
flex is true of dozens more; and in many cases the
inhibitory action of the upper centre is so power
ful that no reflex action occurs save when the upper
centre or its conducting fibres are weakened and

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THE HUMAN WILL

unable to prevent the lower centre from discharg
ing the reflex action which it is there to perform,
the higher authorities permitting.

But now that we understand what is meant by
inhibition, let us contemplate this remarkable fact,
the significance of which, if I am correct in my
interpretation of it, has escaped previous students
of this subject. The path of volition is identical
with that of inhibition. The same nerve cells
and fibres discharge the function both of restraining
the knee-jerk and, when you please, of making
the knee-jerk. Yet we have always believed that
all nerve impulses are identical, varying only in in
tensity; and to the student of the nervous system
it is almost incredible that the same nerve-fibres
can convey messages so different that one issues in
action and the other in repression. I incline strong
ly to the belief that the original and primary func
tion of the brain-centre is to control or inhibit the
lower centre in the spinal cord; and that, at any
rate at first, when the brain-centre came to com
mand the spinal centre to act, all it reaily did was to
refrain from the customary restraint — it did not
command so much as permit.

In other words, I believe that the human will,
volition as we are conscious of it, is essentially
not a positive but a negative thing, in the sense
that a command is positive, but permission nega
tive. Action, on this view, is the result of per
mission given for a certain complex of what are
really reflexes ; in other words, action is the result of

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

a cessation or inaction of inhibition on the part of
the highest centres. They cease to restrain, and
the result is action. On the other hand, inaction
(I do not mean inertia, but the power to sit still,
to hold tight when the horse runs away, to "bide
your time," to be a still man in a blatant land)
is the really active and truly volitional process,
since it depends on the active and positive power
of inhibition or control exerted by the higher
centres upon the lower. And this I know, that
inhibition is far older and far more essential to
successful nervous action than is conscious voli
tion or realization of the self, as an academic
psychologist would say; for inhibition is known
as a nervous fact in the history of life many aeons
before the development of self - consciousness in
man.

I am aware that this subject is by no means
easy, and it is not every reader who will have
sufficient power of inhibition to enable him to
arrest the natural reflex of going on to the next
chapter without bothering to see whether there
may not be something intelligible in this. But I
find much satisfaction in a theory which lays
emphasis on self-control in an age when the older
virtues are being decried as "bourgeois" and "un
distinguished"; besides which I believe the theory
of the genesis of what we call will in the will-not-to,
at first subconscious, to be true and significant;
not that any father is a good judge of his own
baby.

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THE HUMAN WILL
d. The Function of Reason

When we speak of man as a "rational animal,"
or of the "dictates of reason," we must beware of
confused thought. Perhaps we may most clearly
observe the influence of the reason on the will
when we clearly see its limitations.

There is significance and leading in the titles of
those great works by which Alexander Bain helped
to distinguish the sixth decade of last century—
the decade that saw his great application of physi
ology to psychology, the publication of The Ori
gin of Species and of the Principles of Psychology.
Those works were called The Senses and the In
tellect and The Emotions and the Will. It is the
emotional part of our nature, and that alone,
which furnishes the force of all volition whatso
ever. Every act of will is determined by the
prepotent motive; and it is self-evident that no
intellectual percept or concept is a motive as such.
This, as I see it, is the objection — a very grave
objection — to Professor William James's term
ideomotor, which unequivocally suggests that ideas
have motor powers. It is not so. In aiming the
arrow you undoubtedly influence its course, but
though you aimed for an aeon it would go not
whither until the bow was released. The main
spring of willing is wishing, is desire. We act
because we want, and our reason is not the driving-
shaft, but the rudder. Reason, to vary the image,
is not the breeze, but the pilot.

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Admitting this, it is possible to explain what
appears to be a difficulty of determinism. In
argument the other day a friend insisted upon
the fact that, though men of science deny the
freedom of the will, yet they admit the existence
of a something which they see to vary in different
individuals. A lunatic has volition; in a lucid
interval he has volition, but when he is insane we
recognize that his actions are "impulsive," while
during sanity they are rational. Insane, he is
enslaved; sane, is he not free? If, then, there is a
power of choice which varies in different persons
or in the same person at different times, how can
we defend determinism ?

The difficulty vanishes when we appreciate the
conception of reason as the pilot. Sane and in
sane alike are subject to the gusts of passion-
gusts which no pilot reason can abate ; they do not
own his jurisdiction. The reason does not furnish
motives. But the rational man has a remote
objective for which he steers; and, though his
reason cannot drive him thither, it can direct the
forces that do drive him. The image is not per
fect, but it may serve to illustrate the point that
the function of reason is directive and not motor.
The dictates of reason are not dictates in the sense
that a gale is dictator; they are dictates as to the
way in which to ride the gale. In any case I want
happiness — whether by self-seeking or serving
others matters not — and my reason, which docs
not furnish my desire for happiness, fulfils the

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THE HUMAN WILL

function of telling me how best to achieve my end;
the pilot is neither the breeze nor the chooser of
the port, but he suggests how best to use the one
in order to gain the other. This is the function of
reason.

The common delusion, however, is that men are
determined by their reason. It is thought that
you have only to instil rational considerations
into people and they will act rationally. When
they do not, we say indignantly that man is not
a rational animal — not understanding what to ex
pect of the reason. We conduct education on this
principle. We take no heed for the emotional nat
ure, the main-spring of action, but spend all our
energies on the development of the intellect, as if to
know the right were to follow it. Nor do we learn
by our mistakes. We teach a boy that it is wrong
to steal. He fully appreciates this concept, but
nevertheless he steals ; whereat we are disappointed,
and descant upon the anomalous fashion in which
our instruction has miscarried. When the ele
ments of psychology are common knowledge, cur
rent even in our legislature, we may direct our
primary educational efforts to the emotions and
not to the reason, it being better to steer an un
skilful course to a worthy goal than to take the
shortest and quickest road to perdition. The rea
son is absolutely neutral, absolutely non-moral.
Supposing that education of the reason could
endow every one with the intellectual capacity of
a Napoleon, who would be the happier or better

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

if there were none other than emotional natures
such as his for the reason to direct? When a
man is a knave at heart it is well for his neighbors
if he be a fool to boot. What this age, like every
other, requires is not men of brilliant intellect,
but "men of good will," as the correct version of
the herald angel's message 'has it. Is it not plain
that here "good will" means good motives? It
seems to me that it would be well if society, recog
nizing that reason is only the guide of the will to
its own ends, could easily discriminate between
those whose faces are • set towards the light and
those who are in league with the Prince of the
Power of Darkness; and could insure that knowl
edge, or the trained reason, should be bestowed
only upon those whom it would guide to a goal
worth gaining. But as society cannot do this, it
must rather — and this is even better than the other
would be— set itself to the training of the emotional
nature — of what we call character — as the prime
end of education and legislation. The importance
of character-making is that character and not in
tellect determines conduct.

e. Freedom and Determinism1

The word free-will is used in at least three differ
ent senses — whereby confusion is worse confounded.

1 The term determinism is quite immeasurably preferable to
the term necessity, which I have nowhere used. For a dis
cussion of this point the reader should consult the short but

202

THE HUMAN WILL

In its completest sense the term is used to signify
the doctrine that the human will acts independent
ly of prior causes, and is undetermined by any
exterior or interior facts whatsoever, so that, if he
will, a man can act against the stronger of two
warring motives. Contradicted alike by universal
experience, common speech, and every relevant
fact and generalization of philosophy, this theory
will not here be discussed.

Then, again, the term is sometimes misapplied
— as I see it — to indicate that man can act by the
light of reason, preferring immediate to remoter
ends; that he is a rational animal, whereas the
lower animals are instinctive. Against this doc
trine, with the reservation that reason can be
discerned in the lower animals, scientific psychology
enters no demurrer.

Closely allied to this last is the connotation that
man can obey the dictates of his higher nature
when the lo\ver wrould assert itself. This I assured
ly do not dispute.

To-day, however, we find many theologians pre
pared to assert that by free-will they mean to in-
indicatc only that man is conscious of a power of

masterly chapter in Mill's System of Logic. Mill shows that
the term necessity is so misleading "as almost to amount to a
play upon words"; and he declares that little if any progress
can be looked for in the understanding of this subject until a
term so misleading, if not positively incorrect, is dropped.
He also shows how complete is the distinction between the
philosophic doctrine of determinism and the Oriental doctrine
of fatalism, with which it is constantly confused.

203

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

choice. To some of us it may appear that the use
of the term free-will to indicate this consciousness
of choice is an abuse of language ; but this opinion
does not relieve us from the necessity of examining
and attempting to analyze this fact of choice — anti-
dogmatic dogmas, like all others, being always at
the mercy of facts.

When we deny the freedom of the will, be it
observed, we do not deny the existence of will
itself. Without choice there could surely be no
volition. To assert that we can choose, then, is
no more than to assert that we can will, which de
terminism is not so insane as to dispute. Liberta-
rianism, however, takes this indisputable fact as
the fundamental proof of its position; and there
certainly is no argument for freedom like that
which is given in the immediate testimony of
consciousness. At this moment I know, as a fact
which laughs at all theories, that I can finish this
chapter to-night or leave it till to-morrow morning
—which would be quite soon enough — and spend
the next hour with W^ordsworth, which I please.
I am free to do either, surely. This is immediately
given in consciousness. What is not immediately
given, however, but can be readily discerned by
reflection, is that my decision, when made, will
have been determined by circumstances within or
without me. I may be interrupted to-morrow.
On the other hand, interruption is improbable, and
at worst there remains the afternoon. If I say that
I continue "just because I want to," thereby

204

THE HUMAN WILL

demonstrating that my will is free, I am simply
returning the (alleged) woman's reason for doing
a thing, "Just because," which is no answer in her
case or mine.

But without admitting that this case, as it stands,
involves no moral considerations, let us take an
obviously moral issue, since that is the sphere in
which the free-will question is supposed to be of
importance. Let us suppose that I have promised
my wife to finish this chapter to-night, and so I
feel that I ought to do so. If I keep my word, de
spite the temptation to be lazy, and despite the
perfect feasibility of deceiving my wife, why do I?
Here it looks as if I were free, because the de
termining cause is not external, but within myself.
The case is a subtler one. But I think Schopen
hauer has fairly explained it. If I keep my word,
it might well be hazarded by a looker-on that I
have frequently kept my word before. I have a
self-observed norm, at which I endeavor to main
tain myself. My experience of myself is that I
usually keep my promises, and I do not mean to
fall below my own level now. In such a case a
man is indeed self-determined, to use the liber
tarian term ; but it is obvious that we must now
inquire what has gone to the making of the self or
norm which I take as my standard. Nor does it
need much consideration to show that my habit of
promise-keeping, in such a case, could certainly be
referred either to heredity or environment or both.

Perhaps this instance may serve to show that
205

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

when the determinist refers the issue of all volition
to the influence of heredity and environment, this
latter term has a far wider meaning than is often
given it. Environment includes more than ma
terial circumstances, such as the satisfactoriness
or otherwise with which my fountain-pen happens
to be working to-night, though that might well de
termine my action. Every content of my con
sciousness, every memory of my past behavior in
such circumstances, every subconscious memory
somewhere recorded — ingrained — in my brain-cells
(in other words, every ingrained habit) is part of
the environment which helps to determine my
action to-night. Thus properly interpreted, to he
redity and environment may be referred all the
motives, all the pros and cons, which compete
within me until one or other, or the sum of several,
finally determines me to work or refreshment.

The libertarian will not dispute that my char
acter will decide my action in regard to promise-
keeping. If he knows a man's character, he "can
not imagine him doing such and such a thing in
given circumstances." There are men — I suppose
—whose character is such that they cannot steal,
even from a railway company or the state. They
are not free to steal, though doubtless many such
utterly honest persons would be the first to at
tack determinism. They cannot steal because their
whole nature — their character — forbids them. They
do not see that if it is possible to form character —
that is, to cause character — it is proportionately

206

THE HUMAN WILL

possible to cause the volitional acts which char
acter determines. And to assert determinism is
merely to assert that the human will is caused.

/. Education and Determinism

To the consistent advocate of free-will — if such
there were — the word education would perhaps
simply convey the every - day, vulgar, purblind
meaning. Or he might include physical as well
as intellectual education; and to these might add
that form of intellectual — not moral — education
which consists in teaching what is right and wrong
in given circumstances, it being assumed, with
Tennyson, that we "needs must love the highest
when we see it." But the libertarian, who denies
that the will is caused, cannot consistently see any
reason to hope that education may influence char
acter and, therefore, action.

The determinist, however — and, of course, we
are all determinists in practice — will have a larger
hope of education. From biology, to begin with,
he will borrow a term which gives him what I
venture to regard as the best definition of educa
tion — the provision of an environment. The boy's
heredity is unalterable; but his environment can
be modified — he can be educated. And the least
important part of his education is the intellectual,
of course the word education, in accordance with
the law of verbal degradation, being commonly
used and understood in its lowest meaning. But

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the determinist, who knows that the will is caused,
and that man's character is his destiny, will attach
supreme importance to moral education, and not
least to the development of the sense of responsi
bility.

Here, you will say, is a glaring absurdity,
not the advocate of free-will who swears by the
sense of responsibility? Is it not the determinist
who, by denying the freedom of the will, denies
that we are responsible ? Yet, in the face of the
arguments which I advanced at the beginning of
this chapter, I dare maintain that the determinist
will devote his most earnest educational efforts to
the development of that sense of responsibility
which he is told that his creed repudiates.

And assuredly one of the forces which he will
bring to bear— at the risk of being called incon
sistent—is punishment. Perhaps, if we call pun
ishment by a slightly different name, consequence,
the charge of inconsistency will be withdrawn. If
I sin against a law of nature, I suffer; and that is
natural consequence. If I sin against a law of so
ciety, I suffer; and that— society, like its com
ponents, being a natural product— is also natural
consequence. My action is thus restrained, modi
fied, determined, by public opinion, or, to use Scho
penhauer's phrase in his famous analysis of con
science, by fear of men. The Church, which had
to invent the doctrine of free-will to square with
its naive theory of things, has yielded to none in
recognition of the fact that the will is not free, but

208

THE HUMAN WILL

determined ; and its invention of hell is a palpable
instance of the use of the fear of consequence as
a means of affecting human volition; nor am I
prepared to say that this device "to haud the
wretch in order" has been without use in time
past. The law that threatens penal servitude for
this mortal life and the Church that threatens
penal misery for eternal life, both recognize and
utilize the fact of determinism.

The doctrine that ''the voice of conscience is the
voice of God" involves the blasphemy that the
voice of God may command matricide on one side
of a mountain-range and forbid it on the other.
It was possible for Kant to admire "the starry
heavens above and the moral law within" because
the moral law within himself was admirable ; but the
dictates of one man's conscience may be an abom
ination to another. We have, therefore, to regard
conscience, or the moral character which deter
mines volition, as a product of the action of environ
ment upon a given inheritance; whether the con
science be displayed in a man or a dog matters not.
On first hearing Schopenhauer's analysis of con
science as consisting, in equal parts, of superstition,
fear of man, vanity, custom, and prejudice, one
may bewail or deride it; but it withstands some
criticism. You are probably not much moved by
sheer selfishness directed by orthodox teaching as
to the hereafter, even if you accept such teaching,
for men are usually much better than their creeds.
This possible motive aside, for vanity read self-

209

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

respect, make fear of man include love of appro
bation, and ask yourself whether respect for public
opinion (which may include the opinion of those
you love), self-respect, and custom are not the
main factors of your volition in matters of morals.
They certainly are of mine.

If we accept this, we are on the way to formu
lating the principles of moral education on deter-
minist lines. We shall seek to bring a healthy pub
lic opinion to bear on the subject of our efforts—
the public opinion of the home circle, of the school,
of the market-place. When public opinion ranks
collective theft, "all uncharitableness," and ma
licious gossip beside incest and burglary, the young
generation will be receiving a better education than
hitherto. Vanity, "proper pride," if Schopen
hauer be right, will be recognized as closely allied
to self-respect; and we shall regard it as a great
part of education to teach a child to have a " guid
conceit of himself," not of his head, but of his
heart. And as to custom, what free-will theolo
gian but corroborates Schopenhauer by insistence
on the importance of forming good habits and
avoiding the formation of bad ones ?

And when we have spoken of self-respect, public
respect, and custom, have we not analyzed the
"sense of responsibility," and shown that the de-
terminist believes in and prizes it, even though
he regards it as no halting and contradictory Vox
Dei, but as a natural product of life as we live it ?

XVIII

THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

THE ideas of gravitation, of "art for art's sake,"
of the rights of a minority — to choose the first
examples that suggest themselves — are obviously
acquired. Most of us can remember when first
these and a myriad other complex ideas were first
learned or presented to us. We may not similarly
be able to remember our acquirement of the idea
of God, which was early instilled; but some of us
may remember instilling this idea into a child, and
\vould not question that the child acquired the
idea, and was not born with it, or with any innate
necessity to form it. Yet it has been maintained
that this is a necessary and, essentially, an innate
idea.

If we take, however, the acquired idea of grav
itation, and proceed to analyze it, we immediate
ly discover therein certain elements the origin of
which is by no means so evident. Such ideas,
implicit in that of gravitation, and necessary ante
cedents *of it, are those of number, space, motion,
and time. None of us remembers an occasion on
which these ideas were acquired, or on which we

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

instilled them into others. Further consideration
shows that all our ideas, save very few, can be
shown to involve some one or more members of
that scanty category. These ideas, of which that
of space may be taken as the most characteristic,
cannot be traced to experience, but seem to un
derlie all experiences — to be, in fact, as Kant de
clared them, form's of the mind, necessary methods
or means or apparatus by which and in terms of
which we think. It would appear, then, that cer
tain fundamental ideas, which are themselves in
capable of analysis, and which all our acquired
ideas presuppose, must be innate, or inborn -
part of the original structure with which the
young mind is furnished before it has undergone
any experience whatever.

But it was proved by John Locke, of Oxford,1
in his Essay concerning the Human Understanding,
that we are possessed of no innate ideas whatso
ever, but that even the idea of space is derived by
experience. According to the father of scientific
psychology, the mind of the new-born infant is a
tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, without struct
ure or prepossessions, merely capable of receiving,
with complete indifference, and without any con
tribution or prejudices of its own, whatever ideas
experience may impress upon it.

But it is evident that, though the doctrine of
innate ideas is untenable, yet it is impossible to

1 It need hardly be said that the university of which he is
now the chief glory forbade his works to be printed or read.

212

THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

regard the mind of the new-born child as a sheet
of blank, smooth, unruled paper, destitute of even
grain or watermark. I do not propose here to
rehearse Locke's demonstration that there are no
innate ideas, for his book may be had for a shilling
or two anywhere, and its dignified and lucid style,
such as no mere artist in words has ever surpassed,
makes it a permanent delight even to those who
might fancy that its matter includes nothing
with which they are unacquainted. But we may
contemplate the doctrine of innate ideas in the
light of modern embryology, of which Locke, of
course, knew nothing. Every human being be
gins as a single microscopic cell, and whoso can
conceive that such a cell is possessed of even one
simple idea need fear no intellectual problem— the
inconceivable docs not exist for him.

Yet we have said that it is impossible to refer
to individual experience the origin of our funda
mental ideas. This has been shown beyond dis
pute by many lines of argument which this is not
the place to rehearse; but, for myself, I am even
content to justify this contention by what I con
ceive to be a reductio ad absiirduni of the tabula
rasa theory. If the mind be nothing but a struct
ureless sheet of white paper, pray what difference
is there between the mind of a Shakespeare, an
idiot, a baby, and a cat? "One thing happeneth
to them all" —each experiences the phenomena
which we express in terms of space and time and
motion and number ; why are not the results iden-

213

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

tical in each case? On the tabula rasa theory, all
minds, adult or infantine, human or subhuman,
should yield the same mental products when ex
posed each to the same environment. The only
conceivable difference between one mind and an
other, if each be a tabula rasa, is that one is bigger
than another, and the products should differ only
in as far as more can be written on a large sheet of
paper than on a small one.

Thus we can neither accept the theory of innate
ideas, which is not only disproved by argument,
but which an elementary knowledge of embryology
makes more than incredible; nor the theory that
all minds start alike, having inherited nothing
and being without any innate predispositions.

This dilemma has been abolished by Herbert
Spencer ; but ere we consider how, one may perhaps
be forgiven for a small digression on the subject
of such dilemmas in general. There are many
instances of them, such as the "unanswerable'
evidence against the freedom of the will, and the
"unanswerable" testimony of self-consciousness
that the will is free. Similarly "science" and
"religion" are supposed to have reached various
conclusions, mutually exclusive, yet not to be
overthrown by the efforts of the other party.
In philosophical language, these are called antin
omies, or laws against laws. We owe the doc
trine of antinomies to Kant. The "pure reason"
comes to one conclusion, the "practical reason" to
the opposite conclusion. We must, therefore, it

214

THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

is said, accept both without making the futile
attempt to reconcile them. In theology we have
an example of antinomy in the doctrines of free
will and God's foreknowledge of our actions. Mr.
Mallock has popularized the notion of antinomies,
and expresses the conclusion to which — as is said
—we are forced, in the phrase "a practical syn
thesis of contradictories." Similarly we are told
that the best way of treating the contradictory as
sertions of "science" and "religion" is to do as
Faraday said he did — keep them in separate pock
ets; for "science and religion proceed from dif
ferent centres and cannot and need not be recon
ciled."

In other and plain words, then, we are asked
simultaneously to believe that black is black and
also that black is white. To which the plain man
—more power to his elbow — will reply that there
must be "something wrong somewhere"; or, in
the familiar phrase, "You must have it one way
or the other." But these "reconcilers of science
and religion" and exponents of the pure and
practical reason keep on asserting that which
logic and experience assure us to be impossible —
that one can both eat one's cake and have it.
The honest thinker, who cares to be true to the
laws of his own mind, and who knows the differ
ence between paying his debts and not paying his
debts, will angrily silence these sophists who
propose to cheat Truth with vacuous words, and
will reply that, until he has proof to the contrary,
is 215

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

he would rather believe nothing than that any
fact or law of this cosmos is inconsistent or in
compatible with any other fact or law. Else why
not call a spade a spade, and this house divided
against itself not a cosmos or universe, but a
chaos or higgledy-piggledy? When we are faced
with such apparent contradictions it is our duty
to suspend judgment— that foremost sign of the
trained mind— until there shall be discovered some
higher truth, in the light of which contradiction is
seen to be not contradiction, but confirmation and
complement.

If we examine the history of knowledge we shall
discover an additional reason for hating facile
formulas — such as the "practical synthesis of
contradictories"1— in that empty words are un
surpassed as building material for barriers to close
the avenues to truth. To accept these antinomies
is to darken the mind's eye and to manacle its

feet.

Convinced, then, that the higgledy-piggledy the
ory of all things is a lie, and discontented with
half-truths, let us see how Spencer abolished the
"antinomy" that ideas cannot be innate and yet
that there are ideas before experience. It is evo-

1 Mill would be distressed, and would be entitled to aston
ishment, at the persistence of the ridiculous fallacy which he
exposed, that practice and theory are antithetic or opposed-
as if any practice were other than the expression of a theory.
If the inventor's theory is wrong, his machine will not work.
If the machine works, in spite of the handsomest theory, the
theory is a lie — practically and theoretically.

216

THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

lution, the master-key, that has revealed the solu
tion. Spencer examined the history of the in
dividual mind in the light of the history of the
racial mind. It is, indeed, true that we have no
innate ideas, but it is untrue that the mind is a
tabula rasa ; for it is a general biological truth that
"function makes structure," and the experience
of our countless ancestors has registered itself in
the anatomical configuration of the human brain,
each new specimen of which is thus neither . a
storehouse of innate ideas nor a blank sheet of
sensitive paper, but a structure which is preformed
for the reception of certain ideas and can express
them so soon as its converse with phenomena be
gins.1

The best instance of what I conceive to be the
true reading of the Spencerian explanation is af
forded by the idea of space as having three di
mensions. I have elsewhere advanced the theory
that the structure of the semicircular canals of
the internal ear, which are arranged, on each side
of the head, in a set of three that correspond to
the three dimensions of space, as we conceive it,
is an argument in favor of the objective truth
of our conception. Evolution has unquestion-

1 I have to confess that, in a previous volume, I have vent
ured to describe this conception of Spencer's as only a half-
truth. What I now believe to be an unjustifiable criticism
was due, as are so many criticisms on Spencer, to my having
paid undue attention to his critics and soi-disant exponents and
too little to his own words. This is offered as an explanation,
not as an excuse.

217

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

ably produced these canals and their arrangement,
and this is a result of our ancestors' converse with
phenomena. Function has produced structure, and
though we are not born with any innate idea of
space, yet we are endowed with these canals,
the products of ancestral experience, and in this
regard our percipient apparatus is thus very far
from being a tabula rasa — a blank sheet of paper-
but has within it, potentially or implicitly, so to
speak, not the idea of space, but the materials with
which that idea may be attained so soon as ex
perience begins.

This theory that each of us is indebted for his
mental configuration and aptitudes to the manifold
experiences of millions of ancestors has a direct
bearing on what I have called, in a previous chap
ter, "the test of truth." As we have seen, a truth
of 'the highest certainty is one the negation of
which is inconceivable. But the validity of this
criterion is incalculably enhanced by the considera
tion that the inconceivableness depends not merely
on individual experience, but is a product of in
dividual experience plus the total result, "up to
date," of the experience of the race. It must
certainly be admitted, as Mill argued, that propo
sitions which appeared inconceivable to one age
may cease to be so regarded by a later generation ;
but, nevertheless, there is no surer criterion at our
disposal, and, though it is by no means absolutely
sure, yet it may be accorded a much higher measure
of confidence, when we regard the structure of the

218

THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

mind and its consequent estimate of the conceiv-
ableness of a proposition, as not merely the result
of individual experience, but as the product of the
experiences of countless individuals in time past.

SECTION II

EVOLUTION IN SOCIETY

XIX

GENERAL

HERE we make a signal departure in our discus
sion of the evolutionary idea. Hitherto, in con
sidering the evolution of matter, or living organ
isms, or even the human will, we have treated topics
which every one admits to be fit objects of scien
tific inquiry — that is to say, matters which are
governed by "laws" capable of discovery and
formulation. But when we attempt to consider
evolution as displayed in societies, we must boldly
assert the claim of Science to a sphere wherein
some will still be found to deny her right of rule.
These diminishing few deny that there can be a
science of society, because societies illustrate "the
ways of God to men," and notably because they
are governed not by laws inherent in the constitu
tion of things, but by the decrees of Providence.1

1 Providence is usually spelled with a capital, and one sus
pects that it is sometimes thought of as a person; but the only
possible conception of it that is not ridiculous must regard it
simply as a mode of divine activity. The use of the term
would therefore appear to be small; and it would avert con
fusion to speak of human affairs as governed by God, rather
than by Divine Providence. Certainly, if there be a Personal

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Most of us will agree that the two theories are not
compatible: either human destinies are governed
by natural law — and we who worship the power
of which nature is the manifestation know that
the natural is but the supernatural as known to
us — or they are governed by a person whose chief
attribute, if we care to use our reason in judging
of him, would appear to be an immeasurable in
competence and an utter incapacity for sustained
volitional effort of any kind. It may be remem
bered, however, that Mr. Gladstone was prepared
to accept both theories, the belief in Providence
and the belief that there may be a science of society.
This expression of opinion is one of the few inter
esting products of the many controversies in which
Herbert Spencer engaged.1

The majority of thinking people to-day, however,
have long ago accepted the belief that universal
causation knows no exception in the case of human
societies and their ways. It is to Auguste Comte,
the maker of the word sociology,2 that we owe
the first clear and complete assertion of the belief
that societies are subject to law. Comte, however,
treated of societies as fixed or stable things. In
so doing he was really in line with the general trend

God, He may be able to "look before," which is all that the
word providence implies.

1 See the last pages of the Study of Sociology.

7 Comte derived this hybrid term from Latin and Greek to
express the double origin of modern civilization. John Stuart
Mill first adopted the word into English, and it was given uni
versal currency by Spencer.

224

GENERAL

of all philosophic and scientific thought before
Spencer's time; for it is the essence of the evolu
tionary philosophy that it discusses the dynamics
of all entities whatsoever, and their statics in the
light of their dynamics, whereas pre-evolutionary
thought has been superseded exactly because it
dealt with statics alone — and therefore imperfectly
even with that.

As in the last section, it is not my purpose to
discuss, either in general outline or in full detail,
the Spencerian sociology. I am concerned rather
to ask what current problems of the twentieth-
century evolution the master - key can solve, or
help to solve, in our service. Once we have ad
mitted the possibility of sociology, it is evident
that politics is no more than a particular branch
of applied sociology; and infinite profit is to be
obtained by the study of political questions in
the light of evolution. For such a study I am
certainly quite incompetent, and I therefore do
not propose to undertake it.

Rather would I briefly refer, in this chapter, to
the now familiar phrase "the social organism";
and thereafter I must attempt to outline, as a
typical case, the Spencerian theory of the origin
of my own profession. I have chosen this because
it bears on the origin of religion, which, with edu
cation and marriage — three subjects of high import
—I propose to consider in the subsequent chapters
of this section.

225

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

First, then, as to the Spencerian comparison of
society to a living organism. Of course, the image
had been used before, as in the phrase " the body-
politic." By no previous thinker, however, had
its importance and real validity been recognized.
In the light of evolution we see its completeness.
We recall the history of individual and racial life,
the development of one cell into several like cells
united to form a lowly organism, and the subse
quent differentiation of these similar cells with
the production of a single organism composed of
many dissimilar cells widely varying in anatomi
cal structure and physiological function. Similar
ly we see how a dozen men or families may band
themselves together for mutual protection — each
like all the rest in its relation to the whole. Later
there occurs a similar differentiation, you and I
being variously-functioning cells in the social or
ganism. It is quite obvious that if we follow the
analogy still further, and, instead of regarding cells
as the units (as in the first stage), or individual
men as units (as in the second stage), look upon
societies as units, each of which is at first like all
the rest in its functions, but ultimately becomes
differentiated, and, at the same time, more de
pendent on all the rest, we end with the concep
tion expressed by Tennyson in "Locksley Hall" —
"The Parliament of Man, the federation of the
world." Nor need we stop here, for the imagina
tion may pass beyond the stage of interplanetary
warfare, as described by Mr. H. G. Wells, and

226

GENERAL

may conceive a cosmic society, of which the world
states of various planets are the component units.
The formula of evolution completely and exactly
covers all these facts and possibilities. And we
may further note that the evolutionary conception
is entirely and inexorably opposed to the vulgar
idea that whatever injures one state will benefit
another. Just as the stomach, in the old Roman
fable, was found to minister to the wants of the
whole body — which is an organic whole, in accord
ance with the evolutionary formula of differentia
tion and integration — so the wisdom of the future
will recognize the truth that the plague in India in
jures even Manchester, and a war in the Far East
even the denizens of the farthest West. Altruism,
in a word, is a necessary product of cosmic laws.

Now let us briefly consider the type-case of the
evolution of a class in modern society.

The other day, at dinner, a Roman Catholic
friend of mine, who had reached that stage pre
liminary to the priesthood in which the aspirant
is known as an "exorcist," laughingly challenged
me on the score of the relative antiquity of our
professions, claiming priority for the priest as
against the physician. Now, the history of medi
cine is not yet a recognized subject in any of our
curricula, and even those who have studied it in
the available treatises will perhaps find few data
wherewith to decide a question which is of no
small interest to the student of the past. Further-

227

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

more, the published figures of sale of the volume
wherein the question is treated are so small that a
brief discussion of the matter may prove novel to
those readers who are already familiar with the
outlines of the evolutionary sociology, and may
serve to heighten their interest in the cheap edi
tion of the Principles of Sociology which Messrs.
Williams & Norgate are rumored to have in prep
aration.

Anthropologists are beginning to realize not only
that the earliest pages in human history will never
be written, but also that no existing race, neither
Bushmen nor Fuegians nor Australians nor any
other, can be regarded as primitive, or even ap
proximately primitive. In the customs of no ex
tant tribe can we find an illustration of veritable
beginnings. It follows that any speculations as to
the actual origin of any professional institution
must necessarily have somewhat less certainty
than belongs to a generalization formed by strict
induction from positive data. Without dogma
tism, then, but yet with the warrant which its
source and the internal evidence provide, we may
adduce the theory of the origin of the medical
profession which Herbert Spencer has propounded.
If I succeed in interesting any reader to whom the
theory is new, he will find it in the section called
"Data of Sociology," under the heading "Exor
cism," and in the section "Professional Institu
tions." The argument, in a word, is that priest
and physician have a common origin, neither be-

228

GENERAL

ing able to claim priority; and the survival of
the title of exorcist as a stage towards the priest
hood of the Roman Church admirably illustrates
the Spencerian contention.

The primitive belief in the causation of disease
by supernatural beings was impressed upon all of
us when, as children, we made acquaintance with
the New Testament, wherein the etiology of many
neuroses is thus assumed. Now one of the first
divisions of labor — to use a phrase and an idea
which Spencer applied to sociology, borrowing it
from Henri Milne-Edwards, the French physiologist
—in primitive society consists in the setting apart
of men, whom we may guess to have been chosen
on account of superior intelligence and subtlety,
to deal writh those supernatural beings which ex
ercised so potent an influence upon the health,
and therefore the happiness, of the community.
There are obviously two ways of dealing with a
spirit. On the one hand, you may attempt to
pacify and placate it. Show it sufficient respect
and appreciation, try to see its point of view, and
it may leave you alone, if indeed it does not go out
of its way to do you a good turn instead of an ill
one. This may be called the sympathetic or con
ciliatory method. Or, per contra, taking your
courage in both hands, you may stand up to the
infernal creature and endeavor to compass its
destruction, or, at any rate, to make its host or
hostel too hot to hold it — or too unpleasant, as
by the exhibition of asafcetida, which must doubt-
sag

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

less be unpleasant, even to a ghostly pair of ol
factory nerves. This may be called the antago
nistic, as it is certainly the pluckier and more
honest, method.

Doubtless the primitive experts told off to deal
with such matters employed both the conciliatory
and the antagonistic methods. But it will readily
be seen that different types of mind would tend
rather to the one than to the other. From the
primitive class there would thus be formed two:
one which had established friendly relations with
the demons, and had found their soft side ; another
which preferred to essay an overt opposition. In
a word, the primitive expert is the ancestor of the
two great professions, ecclesiastical and medical.
The priest cultivates the conciliatory, the medicine
man the avowedly hostile method of treatment.
On this theory, the office of my friend the "ex
orcist" is seen to be of great interest and antiquity.
The differentiation of the original priest-physician
is not yet complete, the "exorcist" still claiming
the exercise of the medicine - man's antagonistic
powers, while preparing for a high office in the
exercise of the conciliatory or priestly method.

Such is the theory of Herbert Spencer; of its
validity it is for the reader to judge. Meanwhile
we may note that it settles the question of priority
by declaring the honors easy; but if, as one is in
clined to guess, the primitive expert would natu
rally tend to hostility in the first place, the idea of
conciliation occurring only when the more obvious

230

GENERAL

method had failed, then we may claim for the
profession of medicine such a seniority as belongs
to the first-born of twins.

How completely this theory accords with the
facts of to-day I would perhaps do better only to
adumbrate. The priestly method, in cases of in
dividual illness or epidemic, is still admittedly con
ciliatory, even in the highest types of the high
est religion: supplication, penance, sacrifice being
offered to appease an anthropomorphic Deity
who is credited with anger, that extremely char
acteristic symptom of human weakness. And the
physician, true to his history, is still antagonistic.
It is true that the supernatural beings who were
supposed to trouble his predecessor's patients have
been hypostatized, usually taking bacillary or coc-
cal form; but antiseptic surgery and antitoxic
medicine are in strict accord with the primeval
principle which dictated the exhibition of foul-
smelling and obscene drugs in the "good old days"
of demonology.

The section "Professional Institutions" occurs
in the third volume of the Principles of Sociology,
which costs the greater part of a sovereign, and of
which only one or two thousand copies have been
sold.1 But it is well worth the while of every
medical man to look up this volume, not merely
because of the theoretical interest attached to this
description of the origin of his profession, nor be-

1 In Great Britain.
16 231

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

cause of the high place which primitive medicine is
shown to hold as the parent of science and philos
ophy, but also because of the significant manner in
which the evolution of this great professional insti
tution throws light upon certain of the problems
which are presented to it to-day.

XX

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION

BROADLY speaking, there are two theories as to
the origin of religion, apart from such effete notions
as that the revelation of one God has been granted
to all men and that polytheism and fetichism, as
seen among the savages of to-day, are developed
from a primitive monotheism by a process of de
generation.

These two theories arc, first, that primitive man
began by taking an interest in natural phenomena
—the thunder, the river, the avalanche — and then
attributed life to such phenomena, thus deify
ing them. This theory, of academic popularity, is
known as animism. It assumes an interest in nat
ure which is not observed in the savage or the
dull-witted peasant; it does noi: account for the
known facts of ancestor- worship ; and it assumes
that men attributed life and volition to natural
objects before they conceived the belief that the
life of those who have lived persists after bodily
death.

The other outstanding theory maintains that
religion, in the beginning, consists in the worship

233

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

of a dead man — an ancestor or a great chief ; and,
after the belief in the continued life of the dead
had come to be accepted, men came to people the
thunder and the river with the spirits of the de
parted. This is the view held by the founder of
the doctrine of universal evolution; but, whether
it be right or wrong, the teaching of evolution is
that religion is a natural product of the experience
and characters of the human mind — a doctrine
which strongly suggests that religion will be a
factor in human life to the last.

Herbert Spencer's distinctive contribution to
the theory of religious evolution is his suggestion
that the belief in the continued life of the dead
arose in the experience of dreams.1 Primitive
man accepts as true the experiences of his dreams.
(In this connection it is amusing to note the recent
suggestion of Mr. Schiller, of Oxford, in the Hibbcrt
Journal, that we need accept waking rather than
dreaming experience as true merely because "it is
more convenient for our purposes." But why is
it more convenient ?) Now primitive man met his
dead chief in dreams. He therefore concluded
that the departed hero still lived and still retained
his ancient power. Thus it became desirable to
please and honor him. This, very briefly, is the
dream- theory of the origin of religions. And, in

1 An excellent example of the misrepresentation which Spen
cer's opponents permit themselves is to be found in the saying
that, according to him, religion is no more than the "product
of a nightmare."

234

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION

point of fact, it is to be observed that the relig
ions we know consist in the worship of dead men
—dead men whom, in a very real though derived
sense, we may nevertheless admit to be the im
mortal dead.

Now it is a cardinal part of Spencer's teaching
that, despite their lowly origin, there is an essen
tial element of truth in all religions. This, of
course, is no new idea. On the one hand, there
was the cynical Gibbon, who declared all religions
to be equally false and equally useful; but many
far profounder thinkers have declared that there
is an element of truth in all religions, a statement
which is surely much preferable to the mere as
sertion that religion corresponds to a permament
need of the human mind. According to Spencer,
it is in their recognition, on analysis, of the Un
knowable Power that all religions find their true
and common term. Much as I sympathize with
this effort to find a basic truth in all religious be
liefs, I confess that I find it difficult to convince
myself of the recognition of anything I can call a
truth in the savage who endeavors to please the
ghost of his dead chief. But perhaps this is a
recognition of the truth that there is a something
beyond appearance — such as the appearance of a
dead body. And, at any rate, we cannot believe
either that all religions are equally false or that
all are equally true.

However this be, let us make sure of a truth
taught by evolution, than which none other is

235

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

more important. As we shall see in a later chap
ter, the synthetic philosophy teaches that ethics
or morality is older — older by millions of years
— than any religion. The confusion between re
ligion and morality is almost inextricable in the
modern mind. Yet, in point of fact, not only are
the beginnings of a true morality to be found long
before even the evolution of the vertebrates — as
in the ant and the bee, both of whom do their
duty — but ages elapsed before any moral or ethi
cal element entered into religion. Between re
ligion and ethics there is, therefore, no inherent
relation.

It is easy to show, even on cursory analysis, that
the truly moral element is not really so important,
even in present-day religion, as is often supposed.
The whole essence of morality, its beginning and
end, is the subordination of self to others. The
performance of any act in self-interest is not
moral.1 To save up money in a stocking or in
vest it in a commercial undertaking is to perform
an act of no moral value. A large part of re
ligion is concerned with acts that are precisely
on the same plane; such, for instance, as the per
formance of certain rites in order to secure a hap
py old age. Whether it is expected to spend the
happy old age in heaven or on earth in no way af
fects the moral value of the act. Similarly, when
the true moral element does enter into the act,

1 Not moral does not mean immoraL
236

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION

its value is unaffected by any religious belief.
An atheist or a Christian may visit the sick; the
one believes that the act has no hidden significance,
the other that " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the
least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me";
but if the motive is love, the act is of equal value in
each case. The present relation between religion
and morality is therefore as "fortuitous" as any
thing can be in a law-governed universe. A pro
found writer might well spend much thought in
discussing the causes which have led to this rela
tion, but they are demonstrably not inherent in
the nature of the related terms.

These things have long been recognized by men
who have thought for themselves; but evolution
has rendered great service in demonstrating the
independent origin of religion and morality, and
notably in proving that love is older than all the
creeds. "Our little systems have their day," but
love preceded and will outlast them all.

Thus the evolutionist is little concerned when
he hears it said, as it has always been said in times
past, that the future of morality depends upon
the sustenance of this, that, or the other dogma.
He knows that love can say, of any dogma what
soever, "Before this was, / am."

XXI

EVOLUTION AND MARRIAGE

IF, as some of us believe, evolution is the guide
of life, it should not fail us in regard to problems
so grave as those suggested by the word marriage.
It should furnish us with some indication, for
instance, as to whether monogamy is a fetich, or
merely an ecclesiastical invention, destined to be
involved in that G otter ddmmerung — to use Wagner's
term — which is the distinctive mark of the age.
It is the purpose of this brief chapter to show
that evolution does not fail us here.

For it is the grand lesson of evolution, in rela
tion to all that is worthy, to show that it is a
product of nature and natural conditions. Thus
when the sanctions of the so-called supernatural
are found to be wanting in their title, evolution
steps in with its insistence upon the sanction of
the natural. It is so with marriage.

Evolution teaches that the history of animal
life is continuous, and that man is neither more nor
less than what Shakespeare called him, the "par
agon of animals." Ignoring the "supernatural,"
then, and unready to deny that the good and the

238

EVOLUTION AND MARRIAGE

beautiful may be products of the "merely" nat
ural, evolution surveys the whole history of animal
reproduction, and its verdict is that monogamy is
not merely the ideal state, as all admit, but is
demonstrably the state towards which animal life
has long directed itself as towards a goal. In this
connection the services of the synthetic philosophy
are inestimable. There was granted to Spencer a
most distinguished disciple in the person of Ed
ward Westermarck, late of Helsingfors, and now
of London, whose magnificent study of human
marriage has completed the pioneer work of the
Principles of Sociology. Professor Westermarck's
wider researches have but led him to confirm his
master's conclusion that monogamy is indicated
as the ideal and final form of the sex relationship.
This being the conclusion reached by students so
distinguished and profound — to whose names may
be added that of Dr. George Elliot Howard, of the
University of Chicago, whose History of Matri
monial Institutions is an honor to American learn
ing — the fearful need not be perturbed at the
vaticinations of that brilliant band of professional
jesters who decry the restrictions of monogamy,
or at the inept suggestion of Mr. George Meredith,
who, in an utterance which can scarcely be paral
leled for its irresponsible mischievousness, coming
from so distinguished a source, has advocated the
return to the degrading custom of " leasehold mar
riage" as practised by certain tribes of disappear
ing savages.

239

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

The evolutionary study of society lends to mar
riage additional support besides that afforded by
the evolutionary biology. For, when we come to
admit the evolutionary assertion that society is
a natural product, we are led to inquire into its
architecture — which we must regard as no arbi
trary product of a "social contract," but as de
termined by the nature of things. And we find
that as the cell is the unit of the individual organ
ism, so the family is the unit of the social organism.
To tamper with the integrity of this unit, in ac
cordance with some petty "generalization" really
based on personal unfitness for marriage, or on the
hasty observation of temporary conditions in some
one locality, is to sap the foundations of society.

The present campaign against marriage, like
Nietzsche's campaign against morality, is an in
stance of the disastrous consequences which ensue
upon the attempt to bolster up the true by the
false. When the false is exposed, the true is dis
credited. If the commandment not to commit
adultery had no higher sanction than that stated
in the Pentateuch, it would have ceased to possess
any validity when the origin of the Ten Command
ments was traced to the code of King Kham-
murabi, and when Jehovah or Yahveh was shown
to be the mountain-god of Sinai. Temporary dis
aster must always follow the exposure of the false
dogmas— such as the dogma of the inspiration of
the Pentateuch— upon which the true has falsely
been said to be based; but the disaster is only

240

EVOLUTION AND M A R R I A G E

temporary. We may or may not believe in the
survival of the fittest, but he is a man of little
faith indeed who does not believe in the survival
of the true. It is only for a brief season that the
downfall of the false can involve the true in its
ruin. And in the case of such a truth as the value
of marriage it will yet be found that the false
dogmas supposed to support it did but cumber
and hide and dim it.

XXII

EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION

THE vast question of education is touched at
many points by the theory of evolution. In the
present chapter it is attempted merely to note a
few of the most important of these.

It is evident, in the first place, that our estimate
of the value of education will vary according to
whether we accept or repudiate the Lamarckian
theory of evolution. For if acquirements are
transmissible, education must have an infinite
potency. Sir James Simpson, for instance, be
lieved that education of the mother would in
crease the size of the child's brain. But this view
must be repudiated as an expression of the crudest
and most untenable form of Lamarckism. There
is no evidence whatever, nor any train of argu
ment, in favor of the view that the results of edu
cation are transmitted. Education may, indeed,
fit a mother to care for her child ; but only in such
a manner are the results of education to be seen
extending beyond the individual. But this is
very far from justifying the assertion, sometimes
made by opponents of Weismann, that on his
theory education is a waste of time.

242

EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION

Another point. That great pioneer of organic
evolution, Lamarck, has provided us with the
means for framing a really adequate definition
and conception of education. Probably few read
ers will assent to the miserably inadequate view
that education is concerned only with the intelli
gence, still less that it consists of acquaintance
with a certain number of facts. In rebutment of
such views many have sought to frame an ade
quate definition of education. The definition I
would submit, as that which is fairly indicated by
the theory of evolution, is that education is the pro
vision of an environment; the result of education
is adaptation to the environment; and all such
adaptation is properly to be defined as education.
If the validity of this simple but comprehensive
definition be admitted, we are prepared to look at
educational questions in a broader manner than
most of us display, and at least we cannot fail to
recognize that the education of the emotions and
the volitions thereby determined is at least as
important as any other aspect of education. In
deed, we may go further, and assert that the true
education is the formation of character. Thus pre
pared, the conscientious parent will find his duty
more complex than ever. He will realize that
every factor in the environment is educative and
must produce its corresponding adaptation. The
company of a vulgar nurse, for instance, is a fact
of a child's environment, and therefore a factor in
his education.

243

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Then, again, the evolutionary idea finally dis
poses of one of the most pernicious theories that
have ever held sway in education — the notion
that the child is "a little man." This belief has
caused incalculable sorrow to childhood, has vi
tiated the education of thousands, has caused
endless misunderstandings between parents and
children. Examined in the light of evolution, its
absurdity is manifest. When we recall the re
capitulation theory, which teaches that, in gen
eral, each individual, in the course of its develop
ment, "climbs the ancestral tree," we see that
the child is not a little man, but something lower
than man, human only potentially. We cease
to blame the child for greed, we do not look for
the exhibition of characters only lately evolved in
the race, and we are prepared to inquire into the
manner in which ideas and experiences strike a
child, since we know that the child's mind is not
a man's mind in petto, but has a character of
its own — a character which is really subhuman.
These considerations make for charity, sympathy,
and success in teaching the emotional and in
tellectual components of a child's mind. Only as
an aspect of the study of evolution and in the
light of that idea is "child-study" intelligible and
worthy of all the thought that can be bestowed
upon it.

The preceding considerations might as well
have taken their place in the section devoted to

244

EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION

psychology, save that it seemed well to place them
near the sociological aspects of education, as re
garded from the stand-point of evolution. These
aspects are prominent enough to-day. In how
far Spencer's views on education as a civic ques
tion were determined by the individualism which
he consistently advocated, or were logically de
rived from the theory of evolution, I cannot here
attempt to say. But for present purposes we
may accept the able arguments of Professor Hud
son in favor of the view that Spencer's political
thinking is based upon sound deduction from the
evolutionary formula.

It is a chief tenet of the Spencerian sociology
that the functions of the state should be far more
limited than we find them in most modern com
munities. In accordance with this idea, Spencer,
almost alone, persistently opposed state education
as vicious in principle. Recent events in Great
Britain seem to be justifying him. We have pro
ceeded from compulsory state education to free
education, and now the cry is for state feeding of
the children. Assuredly, no humane person will
allow any theory to interfere with the feeding of a
starving child. But the question arises whether
the supersession of the parent by the state is not
an inevitable outcome of modern tendencies, and
whether the state can survive the moral deterio
ration of its component units. If it be true that
the family is the cell of the body politic, what
consequences must follow upon cell-deterioration?

245

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Can the whole survive the deterioration of its
parts ?

This, of course, is too large a question to be
more than merely adumbrated here; but I may
be permitted to note a recent instance which
would have roused Spencer's ire. It being thought
that the urchins who attend the state schools of
London are too prone to indulgence in cigarette-
smoking, the metropolitan authorities determined
that the evil must be checked. To this end med
ical aid was invoked, and pamphlets were pre
pared, stating the evil effects of tobacco upon the
growing child. Thousands of copies were printed1
and distributed. But to whom? Can it be be
lieved that the distribution was not to the parents,
but to the naughty little boys themselves ? Never
yet have I heard of any instance that demon
strates so clearly as this the utter imbecility into
which the principles of collectivism are leading
us. One tries to picture the father sitting at home,
to whom enters Tommy, aged ten, bearing a pam
phlet. Presumably, Tommy, being at bottom a
good boy, and wiser in his generation than we are,
hands the pamphlet to his father, who returns it
with the remark, "Well, of course, it's none of
my business; you must decide for yourself."
Plainly no father can be expected to pay his edu
cation rate and attend to his child's habits himself;
that would not be getting his money's worth.

1 I am not quite certain how far these proposals have actu
ally been carried into effect.

246

SECTION III

EVOLUTION IN MORALS

XXIII

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

IF any one is inclined to question the assertion
that the application of his idea of evolution to
ethical inquiry would alone have given Spencer a
place among the greatest thinkers of all time, let
him compare and contrast the literature of ethics
before and after say the year 1890. To quote a
convenient illustration of the all-embracing revo
lution which this master-idea has wrought in ethi
cal inquiry, one may refer to the famous mono
graph written for the Encyclopedia Britannica by
Sidgwick in 1878, and Professor Stewart's article
written a year or two ago for the tenth edition of
that work. In the former the name of Spencer
does not occur, and the new ethics is briefly al
luded to in the last few lines of Sidgwick's search
ing and scholarly discussion of the history of
ethical inquiry. Turn to Professor Stewart's ar
ticle, and it is seen that, in less than a quarter of a
century, a revolution has taken place the magni
tude and rapidity of which can surely never have
been surpassed in the history of any branch of
thought. Now it affords a sympathetic glow of
pleasure to recall the fact that Spencer's aim,

249

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

throughout his life, was to ground morality in nat
ural law. In the preface to the Data of Ethics—
the masterpiece of a master-mind — Spencer says :

"Written as far back as 1842, my first essay, consisting
of letters on The Proper Sphere of Government, vaguely
indicated what I conceived to be certain general prin
ciples of right and wrong in political conduct; and from
that time onward my ultimate purpose, lying behind all
proximate purposes, has been that of finding for the prin
ciples of right and wrong, in conduct at large, a scientific
basis."

Hence it was that Spencer, thinking that his pow
ers were nearing exhaustion, hastened to the for
mulation of the evolutionary ethics, and left the
sociological section of his philosophy untouched
until this was completed. Readers of the anony
mous and puerile essay on Spencer, informed
throughout with every species of bias and igno
rance, which disfigures the last edition of the En
cyclopedia Britannica, may remember that even
this writer is prepared to concede that Spencer's
study of ethics is "not unlikely to be the most
permanently valuable part of his philosophy."
For forty years this man set himself, heedless of
the ideals and "successes" which suffice lesser
folks, to his supremely important task. Some few,
in times past, have pursued some such ideal, and
of these many, such as Spinoza, have fallen by
the way, crushed by the brute forces of a heedless
generation ; but to Spencer it was granted not only
to deserve but to achieve success.

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THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

And let us mark why the task may be called
supremely important. That, if it be possible, it
is of high importance, as a contribution both to
philosophy and to practice, to demonstrate the
worth, the sanctions, and the principles of morality
as dependent upon and correlated with all the
facts of the cosmos, no one will deny; but I have
said that the task was of supreme importance.
This it would not be if, in point of fact, moral
principles could otherwise be reached and the
sanctions of morality otherwise derived. The
task would still be of extreme philosophic interest ;
but it wrould be almost negligible in relation to
practice. But the new ethics, by what it wrould
be most un philosophic to regard as a "fortunate
chance," arose exactly when it was most needed.
The discovery of the natural sanctions coincided
with the accumulation of the evidence — derived
alike from geology and archaeology, biblical criti
cism, and biology -- wrhich discredited the old
sanctions. Spencer well recognized the danger
- not by any means yet overpast — of a moral
interregnum or vacuum which "must be filled,"
and he hastened to act because he saw that those
who believed that it could be filled were "called
on to do something in pursuance of their belief."

The Christian1 ethics is essentially a modifica
tion of the legalism of the Jewish ethics, just as

1 The word is used to indicate the system of thought invented
b)' the church, not as in any way referring to that sublime
system of thought which constituted the creed of the church's
Founder.

25 1

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Christianity, so-called, is a modification of Judaism.
Right was right because it pleased the Almighty;
wrong was wrong because it was forbidden by the
decalogue. The foundation of the system was the
arbitrary will of a person ; and the answer to the
unsatisfied inquirer was the answer given to the
child who asks "Why?" -"Because I say so."
Bolstered up by a penal system framed on the
model of human legislation, this sufficed; or, if
it hardly sufficed, in the complete sense of that
word, it was better than nothing. But when the
advance of humanitarian feeling compelled the
ology, for very shame, to become less brutal—
when the dogma of eternal punishment came to
stink in all decent nostrils, and when the deca
logue was found to be the adoption, by the be
lievers in a mountain-god, of the code of a heathen
monarch, it was, indeed, high time that some true
foundation for morality should be discovered. And
the key to the truth was furnished by evolution.

Another theory, indeed, made attempt to "fill
the vacuum." This was the "intuitional" theory
of ethics, according to which a "knowledge of
good and evil" is inherent in every human con
sciousness. In every man's breast God has a wit
ness called conscience, whose voice is His voice,
and whose intimations are His.

"Whatever clime be sought or land be trod,
The voice of conscience is the voice of God."1

1 I have failed to trace the exact words of Byron, but these
are very near them.

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THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

That was said, however, before evolution had given
meaning and interest to the comparative method
in the human sciences. It was found that the
"voice of God" was worse than ambiguous: incit
ing the Jesuits to murder Bruno, Calvin to murder
Servetus, the Mohammedan to murder the Chris
tian ; encouraging infanticide here, matricide there,
incest somewhere else. The intuitional ethics does
not explain these things, while modern psychology
has no difficulty in explaining the genesis of con
science in a dog or a child.

The Spencerian ethics "filled the vacuum" by
its demonstration that morality is a natural evo
lution of nature, as valid a product of the cosmic
process as a man or a star. In so doing it opposed
not only those who derived their ethical sanctions
from Sinai or St. Paul or Aquinas — "critics of a
certain class [who], far from rejoicing that ethi
cal principles otherwise derived by them, coincide
with ethical principles scientifically derived, are
offended by the coincidence" — but also their oppo
nents, who maintained that morality is simply
the fruit of superstition, and must rot with its
rotting. Notably does the Spencerian ethics re
fute the pestilent doctrine of Nietzsche, which that
brilliant writer and shallow thinker conceived to
be derived from the Darwinian theory of natural
selection, but which ignores just one - half of the
facts — facts which show that, as Spencer says,
"self-sacrifice is no less primordial than self-pres
ervation." Here, as so often, evolution is the rec-

253

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

onciler, the via media, the truth which combines
the half-truths seen and distorted by extremists of
all parties.

In proceeding to the subject which gives its
title to this chapter, let us first note the existence
of a school of thought to which the phrase evolu
tion of morality appears meaningless. This, of
course, is the idealist school, which regards con
sciousness as the prime, primitive, and only essen
tial fact of existence. All other things existing
only in consciousness — divine or human, the latter
being a semi-insulated portion of the latter — it is
plain that the laws and principles of morality must
be given in consciousness — consciousness, which is
distinguished from all other entities by having no
antecedents. If this be granted, it is obviously ab
surd to speak of the evolution of morality ; for, as
Spencer somewhere says, " If the idealist be right,
evolution is a dream."

The evolutionary ethics, on the contrary, natural
ly follows from the evolutionary psychology which
teaches that the human consciousness, like all
other known phenomena, has antecedents, is not
exempt from the law of universal causation. Ac
cordingly, it teaches that the laws of morality are
no more arbitrary or accidental than the laws of
motion or gravitation, and that there is, therefore,
a profoundly real sense in which Emerson was right
when he said that the "universe is moral." If this
be true, can any other fact so welcome be conceived ?

254

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

Accepting, then, the view that life, mind, and
morals are natural products of nature, it behooves
us, in the study of the last as of the others, to seek
origins.

In this search we are encouraged to go far back
by a general consideration of the facts of organic
life and especially of general physiology. For we
find, for instance, that all animal life depends upon
vegetable life ; without the green matter of the leaf
there could be neither mollusc nor mammal. We
find, also, that without the agency of the ubiquitous
bacteria of putrefaction, scorned though they be,
all life upon the earth would shortly cease, for
their activities prevent the earth from rapidly
becoming little better than a charnel - house or
dung-heap. Again we observe that sequence of
vital events which has been called the cycle of life :
that the body of the dead animal is used by the
plant for the formation of those nutritive com
pounds without which the living animal must die.
We find, in a word, that the dependence of each
upon all is the cardinal fact of the organic world;
or, as I have elsewhere said, that altruism is a law
of nature. If the word altruism, as indicating a
conscious attitude or inclination, be objected to,
and if "mutual aid" be similarly criticised, we
may at any rate employ such a phrase as organic
interdependence. The Italians have a proverb
that not even a queen can do without her neigh
bors. It is, then, a fact — which preceded not only
the evolution of self-conscious man, but that of the

255

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

mammalia, and even of consciousness in its low
est recognizable forms — that the world of living
things is closely and necessarily interrelated; so
that conscious morality, or the modification of
conduct by the consideration that others may be
affected by it, found in the facts of the organic
world the necessary condition for its development
— the fact that no individual organism is inde
pendent of its fellows. Thus, to consider morality
from the lowest stand-point of mere physical utility,
without any reference to its spiritual value, to the
nobility it evokes, to the supreme achievements of
love or heroism, we may see that the evolution
and persistence of morality is explicable by some
such theory as the survival of the fittest. All the
conditions of the environment — despite the more
obvious and plausible advantages of pure selfish
ness, have favored the survival of this most fit and
noble thing. To put it on the lowest ground, mo
rality pays — " honesty is the best policy " —because
union is strength, and without morality there can
be no union. This principle may be illustrated
even in a somewhat paradoxical way ; for the bur
glar is more likely to succeed, and will prefer to
work, with a fellow whom he can trust, showing
the value of a moral element even in the conduct
of an immoral enterprise. When rogues fall out,
honest men come by their own.

Leaving, then, those who say that morality is
the child of faith, and that "Christianity is the
only hope for the world," as if Christianity — or

256

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

rather the teaching and life of Christ— were not
merely the most sublime expression and exempli
fication of moral truths which long preceded its
advent, let us inquire into the beginnings of mo
rality.

If we seek the very beginning, there is perhaps
some temptation — certainly I feel it — to find
somewhat more than metaphor in Shelley's familiar
poem "Love's Philosophy." One is inclined to
find morality expressed— there is no reason why
one should not say prefigured— even in the inor
ganic world, even in the state of things that pre
ceded the advent of life upon the earth. So pro
foundly true, and so perfectly expressive of the
idea which I have attempted to embody in the
preceding paragraphs, are these lines of Shelley's,
that I must quote them ; and, as it seems Philistine
to dismember verses so delightful, I must quote
them entire:

"The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever

With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single:

All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle;

Why not I with thine?

" See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?"

But, of course, it will not do, except in poetry, to
attribute to oxygen and nitrogen — let alone argon,
the supine — a "sweet emotion." Merely recog
nizing the truth, which, as far as I know, still re
quires expression, that the necessity of morality—
of the just interrelation of individual with indi
vidual — is a necessary inference from the fact
that the universe is not many, but one, that " all
things by a law divine, in one another's being
mingle," let us consider the lowest and most
primitive forms of living matter and see whether
the germs of morality are to be found in the germs
of life.

According to Spencer, as we have already seen,
they are to be so found; from the dawn of life
altruism has been no less essential than egoism.
The simplest living cell that divides, and loses its
individuality in two new individuals, is already
shadowing forth the sublimest acts of human self-
sacrifice. At every succeeding stage we find the
scope and the mere utilitarian importance of self-
sacrifice increasing — in the worker -bee, in the
vertebrate kingdom with ever-increasing emphasis,
until we arrive at man, not one solitary example
of whom has ever lived for seven days without the
indispensable aid of morality. Thus I not merely
deny that morality is a product of man, but assert

258

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

that man is the highest product of morality. In
consideration of the facts of infancy, who will dis
pute this proposition, No morals, no man?

In the course of this glorious ascent certain
great stages are to be noted. Of vast importance
was the evolution of sex, as those distinguished
Spencerians, Professors Thompson and Geddes,
have shown in their book with that title. The de
velopment of sex was an instance of the physiolog
ical division of labor, and in all division of labor
is implied that interdependence which, as I have
tried to show, is at once the basis and the demand
for morality. I will not enlarge on this subject,
for it is to be hoped that no one will have time to
read this book who has not time to read The
Evolution of Sex.1 Later we find more definitely
emerging that which Drummond called the "strug
gle for the life of others." Even the lowliest
mother has such a struggle. The production of
her progeny costs her something. But it was an
advance when the bird began to incubate her eggs
by the warmth of her own body, and to encourage
altruism in her mate by demanding that he should
seek and bring her food. This was obviously a
stage higher than leaving the eggs to the warm sun
and sand, as does the reptile. Still more signal was
that great step something of which is still taught
us by the monotremes, or lowest mammals, of the

1 The idea here referred to is expressed by Coventry Pat-
more, in the wild language of his muse, when he says that
"God is sex."

259

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Australian continent. It was a fresh triumph for
love when the mother learned to form, from her
own life- blood, the fluid that should feed her
young. The duck-mole, or ornithorhynchus, the
Australian egg-laying mammal, still extant, teaches
us that this step was taken ere yet the ethical
worth of reproduction had risen even higher.
The next stage, while still retaining the ground
gained by the evolution of the mammalia — ground
which one would say was permanently gained did
not one remember the "society" mother of to-day,
who is apparently ceasing to be mammalian — was
to retain the egg within the maternal body for
some time and then to bring forth an immature
creature which could survive only in the warmth
of a maternal pouch. This is the lesson of the
kangaroo. Lastly, the mammalian mother learned
to perfect a marvellous organ called the placenta
-the " after - birth " of which every mother has
heard — and was thus enabled to retain her child
within her own body for a much longer period
than any mother had hitherto been able to en
compass.

And, throughout, the evolution of love, of self-
sacrifice, has justified itself on every score. The
latest product of love, as we have seen, is man-
more helpless and dependent at birth than any of
his predecessors, yet their master beyond question
ing. Love has produced not only this " paragon of
animals," but has established herself in his breast
as the source of all that is best in him. Having

260

THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY

thus produced him, and established herself in him,
she has achieved the crowning stage in her evolu
tion by compelling him to deify her ; so that, in the
highest forms of his faith, and in proportion to
their height, we find Love in apotheosis, alike in
the Christ who is worshipped as Father of Love,
or in his followers, who deify him as love incar
nate, or in the Pantheist, who at times can be
lieve, with the Christian, that " underneath are the
everlasting Arms."

In the foregoing it has been taken for granted
that all the forms of morality can be referred to
love, and that in describing the coming of love one
is describing the coming of morality in general.
At first sight it would certainly appear that this
assumption is gratuitous. Justice, for instance, is
an aspect of morality, but it is commonly con
sidered that mercy and justice are antithetical.
If this be so, and if mercy be an aspect of love,
how can we regard justice as derived from altru
ism ? But it is evident, on brief consideration, that
even such an abstract moral sentiment as the
idea of justice depends upon the assumption that
complete egoism — as in stealing the property of
another — is incompatible with the law of love.
Every act of immorality, regarded as such by the
evolutionary ethics, is so classified because it im
pugns this law, and everything which impugns this
law is so classified. On this criterion, therefore,
it is an immoral act, for instance, for a painter to

261

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

destroy certain of his sketches, not because they
are bad, but because their existence will lower the
price of the others; and to this may be referred
such diverse acts of morality as Spencer's renun
ciation of fishing, a favorite sport, and his refusal
ever to buy shares save with the intention of
making a permanent investment. The whole of
morality can thus be resolved into a single prin
ciple which ultimately depends upon the fact that
the organic world has been so evolved as to con
sist of individuals which are related to one an
other ; and the all - embracing character of this
principle may best be expressed in the words of
St. Paul, "Love is the fulfilling of the law."

XXIV

THE PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT

THE conclusion of the last chapter will have
reminded the reader that ethical principles derived
from the study of biology are by no means new;
but I have already tried to demonstrate the im
portance of deriving these principles from facts,
from nature, rather than from the dicta of teachers,
however illustrious or sublime. But the accom
plishment of this is merely the initial service of
the evolutionary ethics. For it takes the main
principle of morality, the law of love, shows us
its relations to biological, psychological, and socio
logical facts, and thereby guides us in the applica
tion of the principle. If we take, for instance, the
older utilitarianism, which is associated with the
ever-glorious name of that great saint and phi
lanthropist and philosopher Jeremy -Bentham, we
find an ethical system which is purely empirical
and lacks that guidance by principles which distin
guishes the new ethics. Believing, as every one
now believes, that our end must be the "greatest
good of the greatest number," the older utilitarians

18 263

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

completely failed when they attempted to show
how this end may be attained. The reason for
this failure is evident. These thinkers were unable
to make their science more than empirical, more
than an inference from the facts of human life as
observed by all. It was thus hardly worthy to
be called scientific. But the new ethics grounds
the principles of morality in the facts of life and
mind and society. It is precisely because of the
thirty years he spent on these studies that Spencer
was enabled to reach his goal; and this is true
even though he himself regretted that the princi
ples of evolution had not furnished him, in this
final inquiry, with as much guidance as he had
hoped.

Spencer was the first to make explicit the as
sumption which underlies all ethical systems, the
assumption that life is worth living. This I will
not further examine until we come to discuss
evolution and optimism. Given this primary
datum, we are enabled to frame a definition of the
best conduct. If life, on the whole, be worth
living, "that conduct is best which achieves the
greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in
fellow-men." [Let us mark the inclusion of self in
this definition, for it prepares us for some consid
eration as to the ultimate relation between egoism
and altruism.] This definition must, of course, be
interpreted in its highest and most liberal sense, as
its author states in the context. Life must gain in
"breadth" as well as "length." It must be "com-

264

THE PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT

plctc living," ' the "fuller life," as Tennyson has it.
One must insist upon the undesirableness of inter
preting this definition in the vulgar and mean sense,
because certain critics are not above doing so. In
his essay "What was Shakespeare's Religion?"1
Mr. W. S. Lilly actually permits himself to write
thus of "Measure for Measure":

"And it must be confessed that if judged by the latest,
and presumably the most perfect, system of Protestant
morals, Isabella's virginal constancy is indefensible. ' To
tality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow -men,' is
Mr. Herbert Spencer's criterion of most highly evolved
conduct, of conduct superlatively ethical. Such totality
Isabella would certainly have achieved by compliance
with Angelo's desire; and therefore, I suppose, her non-
compliance stands condemned by the Spencerian rule
of right and wrong."

Would it were possible to say that Mr. Lilly docs
himself less than justice in this outrageous pas
sage.

Leaving this luminous definition of the most
highly evolved conduct,3 since its fitness is almost
self-evident, and since every reader is at least as

1 We may recall the aphorism in the world-famous Educa
tion : "To prepare us for complete living is the function which
education has to discharge."

2 Studies -in Religion and Literature, Chapman & Hall, 1904,

p. 22.

3 Spencer defines conduct as "the adjustment of acts to ends,"
a definition which consorts with Matthew Arnold's familiar
dictum (in Literature and Dogma) that conduct is three parts
of life.

265

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

competent as I am to trace its applications for
himself, and merely noting that it affords a practi
cal guidance which is lacking to Bentham's prin
ciple when unsupplemented, let us finally take note
of the evolutionary assertion as to the ultimate
relation between altruism and egoism. We have
already observed that the claims of egoism are
recognized in the definition of the most highly
evolved conduct; and this prepares us for Spen
cer's criticism of the fallacy that there is an in
herent opposition — a necessary and irreconcilable
antagonism — between egoism and altruism. On
consideration, the fact that the antagonism is not
essential becomes apparent to all. Without labor
ing for the obvious, one may merely cite such an
instance as that of husband and wife almost quar
relling because each insists on doing what the other
wants. If it gives you more pleasure to give up
your pleasure for another's pleasure than to follow
your original inclination, is your satisfaction of
this higher pleasure egoistic, altruistic, or neither
or both? Plainly it is both. Thus the best
among us are already approximating — and even
those who are far from the best do, in their best
moments, approximate — to that "perfect conduct"
daily witnessed in the mother, whose pleasure and
welfare are her child's, and who would be miser
able if compelled to follow her own supposed
pleasure at the cost of her child's pleasure. Al
ready we not infrequently see not merely a com
promise between egoism and altruism, but the

266

THE PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT

common and complete satisfaction of both in the
one action.

With this consideration we may fitly enter upon
a discussion of the manner and degree in which
the doctrine of universal evolution justifies op
timism.

PART V
EVOLUTION AND OPTIMISM

XXV

THE VARIETIES OF OPTIMISM

THE observed varieties of optimism may be
classified, I think, according to their origin or ac
cording to their measure. In attempting such a
classification one is perhaps likely to meet with
more success than if it were essayed to answer
the question, "What is optimism?" This, I be
lieve, would be almost profitless; for I have heard
two admirers of Mr. George Meredith, each thor
oughly conversant with his work, declare respec
tively that he is an optimist and a pessimist. In
this and a hundred other cases it is probable that
the argument is not about facts, but about names.
It is better, therefore, to forego any definition, and
to ask ourselves what are the states of mind that
may be included in the widest meaning of the
term optimism.

Probably the most common and certainly the
most practically important variety of optimism—
to begin with the classification by origins — is not
so much a state of mind as a state of body. This
variety one may call organic, constitutional, visce
ral, or — if you like — gastric optimism. It invaria-

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

bly presupposes a good digestion. Though entire
ly non-rational, it is capable of a rational expla
nation. It is now known that the most impor
tant of the various "senses" which supplement
the familiar five is dependent upon the innumer
able sensory nerves which proceed from the in
ternal organs to the brain. In health, these nerves
combine to produce the " organic sense of well-
being," the perversion and reversal of which are
the characteristic feature common to all forms
of melancholia. In other states, such as certain
forms of mania, and in ecstasy, this sense may be
heightened, but not reversed. In health, then,
every man has an organic bias towards optimism.
The overwhelming majority of people, whose nor
mal health is not qualified even by the "malady
of thought," are therefore optimists in virtue of
their "organic sense of well-being." This variety
of optimism is, as I have said, entirely non-rational,
and thus may be compatible with a belief in hell,
which no sympathetic person could realize without
loss of his sanity, not to mention his optimism.
But so powerful is the control exercised by the
organic sensations over the higher faculties of
most of us, that, given healthy viscera, it may be
doubted whether the imagination is capable of
realizing and explicitly appreciating the unspeak
able ghastliness of such a belief. In describing
gastric optimism as non-rational, however, I do
not mean to stigmatize it. Granted that not one
per cent, of the population thinks about the things

272

THE VARIETIES OF OPTIMISM

that permanently matter, it is indeed well that
gastric optimism 'should exist and exercise such
power. Its genesis is obvious to the evolutionist,
who sees in it a factor that makes for fitness and
survival. We therefore note its existence, congrat
ulate ourselves thereupon, admit its inestimable
practical worth, but dismiss it as of no rational or
philosophic weight, save in so far as its existence is
itself an argument for rational optimism.

Next in order of importance, perhaps, is the
optimism which has a very different origin — not in
the abdomen, but in the acceptance of some com
forting creed. The reader certainly does not need
my assistance in recalling the innumerable creeds
— all, of course, of Oriental origin, Western man
never yet having achieved the making of a religion,
unless we except Christian Science and the like —
which postulate a happy and illimitable hereafter
to compensate for these present ills, "which are
but for a moment." It is a common characteristic
of these many creeds, ancient and modern, that
they emphasize the ills of this life in contrast with
the promise of the next. They thus inculcate
a terrestrial pessimism, but a celestial optimism.
Herein is a distinction to be noted in comparing
this, which is the optimism of faith, with the third
species now to be named, which is the optimism of
reason. But again I protest that I am attempting
to classify, not to pass judgment. And though it
would be easy, and might on occasion be expedient,
to jeer at gastric optimism, or at the optimism

273

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

of the faith which anticipates a happy hunting-
ground, or a harem, or a harp, yet I believe that
writer and readers in good health would probably
each acknowledge some share in each of these va
rieties of optimism — that of the abdomen, that
of faith (or hope), and that of reason. Most will
offer some measure of some sort of assent to the
optimism of faith as expressed by Socrates — "To
the good man no evil can happen."

If I may be allowed yet another array of terms, I
will name these three varieties of optimism, accord
ing to their origin, sensory optimism, emotional
optimism, rational optimism.

Let us now attempt another classification, ac
cording to the measure of optimism. Obviously
this classification will include various beliefs which
may be referred, in their origin, to one or all of the
causes named.

We must begin with the most thorough-going
optimism — to which alone the term can properly
be applied; for all the others are no more than
greater or less degrees of meliorism. This, then, I
take it, is the most universal form of the doctrine
which used to be known as universalism, and
which teaches that there is an eternally happy
future for all men. [It is interesting to observe
that modern theological teaching seems to be
tending towards this position. I knew a child
who was officially taught that though there is a
hell, yet there is probably no one in it but Judas
Iscariot.] But the most universal form of Uni-

274

THE VARIETIES OF OPTIMISM

versalism would extend its optimism to every
sentient thing: "Admitted to that equal sky, his
faithful dog shall bear him company." The
broken bird whom Mr. Thomas Hardy has described
as crawling away to die, with the "sportsman's"
missile in its soft tissues; the albatross shot by
the ancient mariner ; the coster's donkey — all alike
are to be recompensed, and much more than recom
pensed. No pang of pain, no distress of mind or
soul, ever felt by any sentient thing since the
dawn of sentiency, but shall be paid for with "good
measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and
running over." This alone can literally be called
optimism. The next approach to it is Universal-
ism proper, which postulates salvation and com
pensation for all men, just and unjust — but not
for a "missing link," an ape, a bird, a kitten, or a
worm. Whether these doctrines are sensory, emo
tional, or rational in origin the reader will consider.
Pope, who has already given me one quotation,
will serve to illustrate another form of optimism.
[One must use the word despite its inaccuracy.]
This teaches that all partial evil is universal good :
"One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." This,
as Dickens somewhere remarks, involves the as
sertion that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
Perhaps that is not a very profound criticism ; but,
at any rate, here is another variety of optimism
well denned. A variant of it, much more poignant
and affecting in expression, as well as more philo
sophic and intelligible, is to be found in Brown-

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

ing's " Abt Vogler " : " There shall never be one lost
good"; "Why rushed the discords in, but that
harmony should be prized?" This, I think, is
more in consonance with the teaching of evolu
tionary science than is Carlyle's "The great soul
of the world is just"; or the vague corresponding
line from the "Essay on Man": "All discord,
harmony not understood." If we hear only dis
cord and are racked therewith, what avails it to us
that some one may be listening to the music of the
spheres ? Whereas Browning teaches that the dis
cord is the condition of the harmony.

Browning's sublime lines naturally suggest an
other variety of optimism of which we may regard
Leibnitz as a type, with his " best of all possible
worlds." This, of course, did not mean, as is
sometimes thought, that no improvement on this
world is conceivable — a doctrine which, like the
most universal Universalism, would, indeed, be
properly entitled to be described as optimism.
Leibnitz by no means meant to deny the existence
of any kind of evil: his conception was nearer
Browning's. Given certain conditions inherent
in things — by whom given, we are not told — the
Deity has done His best. This may be a vale of
tears, but that is not the Deity's fault — no more
could fairly have been expected of Him in the cir
cumstances ; this is the best word that was possible.
Doubtless we can imagine a better, but if we re
member how seriously He was handicapped, we
must admit that He is not to blame. The reader

276

THE VARIETIES OF OPTIMISM

will acquit me of any intention to be irreverent;
and perhaps he will agree that so puerile a con
ception of the Eternal is as well and seriously met
by ridicule as by ostensibly serious argument. This
saying of Leibnitz excellently illustrates the result
of trying to trim truth to the taste of theologians.
Nowadays we are hardly likely to worship, in
place of the Unconditioned Condition of All things,
a supposititious person who is conceived as "mak
ing the best of a bad job."

From these and many other variants of so-called
optimism we pass by slow degrees, through such
opinions as that which belittles present and per
sonal evil by saying "it will be all the same a
century hence," to attitudes which are optimistic
only in so far as they repudiate explicit pessimism.
Language is plainly in need of a word which shall
express the doctrine that good and evil are bal
anced, or that " things might have been better and
might have been worse" —an opinion which is
usually, and most improperly, regarded as opti
mistic, as if any denial of pessimism were optimism ;
but at present we ask whether a man is an optimist
or a pessimist, as if there were no choice save be
tween two antithetic superlatives.

After this attempt to classify the varieties of
opinion usually called optimistic, first according
to their genesis, and secondly according to their
measure, it remains to be considered what measure
of rational optimism or meliorism may be based
upon evolutionary considerations. We must ask

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ourselves whether all forms of optimism, even
though digestive or emotional in their origin, are
not in some measure their own justification; and
while attempting to discount the bias of health
towards "looking on the bright side of things,"
we must inquire into the truth of such sayings as
that "the darkest hour comes before the dawn,"
and that "when things are at their worst they
begin to mend." Last we must ask whether the
true rational optimism is, not "whatever is, is
right" — but "whatever is wrong may be righted."

XXVI

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES

HAVING analyzed our concept of optimism, we
found three varieties : oldest and most general, the
animal optimism which has for its most complete
expression, " Fate cannot touch me — I have dined
to-day"; secondly, the optimism of faith, which
has for its most sublime and quintessential ex
pression, not the insane cry of Tertullian, "Credo
quia impossibile," but the insuperable conviction
of Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
Him." In subsequent chapters we must consider
the grounds of the third variety of optimism, which
we call rational; and it goes without saying that
here evolution is the "master- light of all our
seeing."

But ere we consider the manner in which op
timism may be grounded on evolution, it is neces
sary first to stigmatize as fallacious the popular
notion that evolution teaches the necessary per-
fectioning of man and man's lot in time coming.
Science knows no law of progress, but a law of
change. Progress is obviously an anthropic term,
denoting merely an ideal of ours ; and if this ideal
19 279

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

is to become real, it is we that must make it so.
Evolution teaches us that the task is possible, but
that it is our task. Let us look at the brief his
tory of this grave and dangerous error.

Scarcely more than a hundred years ago great
words were on men's lips: formalism and formu
lism were tottering; Wordsworth felt that "bliss
was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young
was very heaven" ; Beethoven, soon to be betrayed,
had not yet indignantly torn from the title-page
of the "Eroica" symphony the name of that in
comparable criminal who consumed eight millions
of human lives; men had once again discovered
that progress is possible.

The intervening century has added more to the
sum of human knowledge than any of its prede
cessors; and in the dawn of the twentieth century
men are coming to apply certain now established
truths of the scholar and the student to the facts
of every day. In a word, last century established,
on an inexpugnable basis, the idea that change is
orderly and universal — the idea of evolution. And
in especial are men concerned with change as il
lustrated in their own bodies — many folk under
standing by evolution merely the assertion of
man's simian origin. Man, then, being descended,
as Stevenson has it, from "Probably Arboreal,"
has undoubtedly made progress. Not only so : his
progress is part of a universal process or immu
table law; hence, while our predecessors of a cen
tury ago had concluded that progress is possible,

280

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES

we may go, it is said, a step further and say that
progress is inevitable.

But it does not follow from the fact of man's
simian origin that he must necessarily bceome an
angel. The popular logic is grossly fallacious.
Evolution has not shown progress to be inevitable ;
but it has proved the contention of a century ago
that progress is possible.

At first Spencer did not see this. Brought up
to believe in progress, he employed that term in
his early essays. It was not until he saw the
illegitimacy of the assumption involved that he
introduced the non-committal word evolution.

Properly speaking, I should here attempt to
define the term progress — ignoring the example
of the thousands who use the term without any
nice inquiry into the meaning which they and
their hearers attach to it. But space fails me, and
I must merely protest that I will not hesitate to
accept the noblest definition that can be given to
it. I should not quarrel with a reference, in that
definition, to the "beauty of holiness" or to the
assertion that "righteousness exalteth a nation."

But let me at once try to show that evolution
makes no statement as to the inevitableness of
progress. Biology, to begin with, knows of species
whose individuals are free-swimming when young,
parasitic when adult. It knows of descent as well
as of ascent. It is familiar with species of lowly
form which occur unchanged in every fossil-bear
ing stratum of the earth's crust, and arc multitudi-

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

nously alive to-day, having marked time these fifty
million years. The existence of such forms has
indeed, crassly enough, been urged as an argument
against the theory of organic evolution, proving,
however, only that the antagonist did not under
stand the theory. Spencer's copiously misinter
preted phrase is "survival of the fittest," not
"survival of the best." In certain conditions,
such as lack of sunlight, the fittest organism may
not be the best. The best needs better condi
tions and dies out ; the worse, being the fitter, sur
vives. What is true of the fungus is true of man.
The conditions may be such that mercy, justice,
and genius cannot survive under them, while bru
tality, fraud, and convention can; then again the
worse, being fitter, survives. This might apply
to newspapers, to men under a military regime, to
books, to what you please. It is invariably the
fittest that survive; but the fittest may be the
worst. Progress, then, is not inevitable, and the
proof is furnished both by universal experience
and by scientific generalizations.

Huxley's famous Romanes lecture, "Evolution
and Ethics," furnishes me with a quotation which
is to the point:

"There is another fallacy which appears to me to
pervade the so-called 'ethics of evolution.' It is the
notion that because, on the whole, animals and plants
have advanced in perfection of organization by means
of the struggle for existence and the consequent 'sur
vival of the fittest,' therefore men in society, men as

282

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES

ethical beings, must look to the same process to help
them towards perfection. I suspect that this fallacy has
arisen out of the unfortunate ambiguity of the phrase
'survival of the fittest.' 'Fittest' has a connotation
of 'best,' and about 'best' there hangs a moral flavor.
In cosmic nature, however, what is 'fittest' depends upon
the conditions. Long ago » I ventured to point out that
if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival of the
fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom,
a population of more and more stunted and humbler
organisms, until the ' fittest ' that survived might be noth
ing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organ
isms as those which give red snow its color; while, if it
became hotter, the pleasant valleys of the Thames and
Isis might be uninhabitable by any animated beings save
those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They, as the
fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, would
survive."

It is, then, a fallacy which must never be forgot
ten or mistaken that, because evolution has proved
the almost incredible baseness of the degrees by
which we did ascend, we are therefore necessarily
still ascending. That we are ascending I do not
doubt, but that facilis descensus Averni I also do
not doubt. The ground gained can be held only by
effort, and only by further effort can we go further.

This, as I see it, is a fact of the first importance.
If, as might almost excusably be thought, we are
in the hands of a law which urges us irresistibly ad
astra, why need we take thought for the morrow
and for the men of the morrow's morrow? At

'"Criticisms on the Origin of Species," Collected Essays,

II., 91-

283

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

best we can only perchance expedite an inevitable
advance; and, for that matter, may not our inter
ference with the natural process which, without our
aid, has evolved us from the worm, be as likely to
retard as to accelerate ?

But it is not so. Last century's revelation of a
law which, on the whole, has proved itself so be
nign will be worse than useless if it suggest that
humanity may rest upon its oars and drift with the
tide. The tide, as far as we can judge, moves
nowhither, is utterly indifferent. Who will ques
tion that, even to-day, a man, rather than to as
cend, finds it as easy — nay, easier, given certain
conditions — to sink, in his own brief lifetime, to a
level simian and infinitely worse than simian, for
corruptio optimi pessima?

Man has fought his way to a state a little lower
than the angels' by converse with forces which treat
alike the just and the unjust. I am an optimist
because I am an evolutionist; because I look on
man's amazing record and know that what man
has done man can do ; but, remembering the change
of conditions that will ensue when the sun is in
articulo mortis, I place my trust not in any supposed
inevitable law which makes for progress, but in
action, in effort, in

"exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

But if we must regard as inadmissible the in
ference that we are being borne forward, in supine

284 .

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES

certainty, upon a wave of progress which is none
of our raising, we must also abjure the contrary
error, which consists in rehearsing the base degrees
by which we did ascend, and assuming our bestial
origin to condemn us to irredeemable bestiality.
This, as has well been said, is like setting forth to
tell a good story and leaving out the point. The
sound inference is surely that if the beast can
become human, man may become superhuman.
What the beast has done, man can do.

Furthermore, we still suffer from a fallacy which
may be traced to Nietzsche, and of which the
accredited philosopher of the many -headed in
Anglo-Saxondom is a typical representative. The
Nietzscheans take the law of the survival of the
fittest — the struggle for life, the law of egoism —
as the basis of scientific morality, or, rather, de
nial of morality, and close their eyes to the equal
ly salient correlative law of altruism — the "strug
gle for the life of others," to use the phrase of
Drummond. This their myopia and their prej
udice against Christianity enable them to do, de
spite the fact upon which I propose to insist until
I wear out, that without altruism no human being
ever survived or ever will survive for one week
after birth. Thus, using the word in two senses,
I say that to abolish humanity would be to
abolish humanity. When I hear of a single baby,
past, present, or to come, that lived or shall live
for seven days without the care of another human

285

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

being (or another animal, if you care to cite the
Romulus-Remus fable), then I shall be prepared
to retract the opinion that Nietzscheanism is the
grossest, the most blasphemous, and the most gro
tesquely imbecile of all lies whatsoever, conceived
or conceivable.

Nevertheless, there be those who still believe,
with the Nietzscheans, that morality is essentially
an artificial and unnatural thing, no inevitable
product of evolution, but a thing dependent upon
men's acceptance of certain dogmas. Destroy—
we are told — the belief in free - will, moral re
sponsibility, and future retribution, and man will
straightway wallow unrestrained in that sink of
iniquity so pleasing to his "desperately wicked"
heart.

Those, however, whose eyes are opened to the
master-light are apt to resent this view as the most
outrageous of all impertinences, a colossal libel, a
blasphemy but thinly disguised. According to
them, morality is a cosmic product, naturally
evolved, with roots now buried in geological strata
of vast antiquity. We have discussed, in a pre
vious chapter, the Spencerian revelation of the
genesis of morality. We know the immense sig
nificance of the zoological term Mammalia, finding
in the breast of the mammalian mother the fount
whence love has flowed; and we have traced the
strange sequence with which the young of suc
cessively higher orders of animal are found each
to be more and more helpless at their birth. But

286

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES

it is only until one lives with a baby that one can
realize, in anything like adequate measure, the
wonder of this biological truth.

It was John Fiske, the admirable writer who did
so much to popularize the synthetic philosophy in
America, that first pointed out a fact which affords
striking confirmation of Spencer's theory of the
origin of morality. Fiske observed that the pro
longation of the infantile period, so notable in
human kind, must have been a most important
factor in the development of our altruistic sense.
The tigress robbed of her whelps is obviously not
without altruism — though a learned and distin
guished Jesuit friend of mine insists that it is only
"unconscious altruism" -but the young of the
lower animals do not long need parental care. The
tiger-cub and the fledgling of the bird are soon able
to shift for themselves. In no preceding case, as
Fiske observed, is the period of dependence so
prolonged as in that of the human infant.

Indeed, the helplessness of infancy is not fully
to be appreciated until one lives with it; nor is its
significance to be measured until one appreciates
its contrast with what is to be. Consider a week-
old baby. Unable to stand, much less to wander
in search of food ; very nearly deaf ; all but blind ;
wellnigh indiscriminating as to the nature of what
is presented to its mouth; utterly unable to keep
itself clean, yet highly susceptible to the effects of
dirt ; able to indicate its needs only by alternately
turning its head, open-mouthed, from side to side

287

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

and then crying ; possessed of an almost ludicrous
ly hypersensitive interior ; unable to fast for more
than two or three hours, yet having the most pre
cise and complicated dietetic requirements ; needing
the most carefully maintained warmth; easily in
jured by draughts ; the prey of bacteria (which take
up a permanent abode in its alimentary canal by
the eleventh day) — where is to be found a more
complete picture of helpless dependence? Can
we wonder that one in seven, even in the most
wealthy and civilized lands, dies before the first
anniversary of its birthday?

Yet this is the creature which has spread over
the earth so that he numbers some fifteen hun
dred millions to-day. He is the " lord of creation,"
master of creatures bigger, stronger, fleeter, longer-
lived than himself. The earth is his and the ful
ness thereof. Yet without love not one single speci
men of him has a chance of reaching maturity,
or even surviving for a week. Verily love is the
greatest thing in the world.1

1 The infant's requirements, if I interpret them aright,
afford an evolutionary explanation of at least one adult feat
ure which has often puzzled me. For sleep it is desirable to
exclude light and sound; while we have eyelids, no appartus
for closing the ears is known save, I believe, in certain animals
which inhabit the sea, and whose ears are of small auditory
importance. In these days, when barrel organs assail us with
the "Ave Maria," playing Bach's accompaniment in G and
Gounod's air in somewhat more than G, and when the motor
car makes night hideous, one sighs for earlids. And I have
even wondered why natural selection has not so endowed us;
for it might seem an advantage to be able at will to protect

288

SOME POPULAR FALLACIES

It would seem, then, that the gospel of force, the
Nietzschean doctrine which is supposed to be a de
duction from the law of the survival of the fittest,
is based upon a gross misapprehension of the facts
of biology. These facts teach us, without any aid
from rhetoric or sentiment, but with entire im
partiality, that altruism has been an invaluable
factor, not merely in the ennobling of human life,
but in its actual production. They further teach
us that morality is no artificial and artificially-to-
be-fostered product, but an inalienable possession
of humanity, older than all the churches, much
older than human thought. Thus, though "Nat
ure, red in tooth and claw," may appear indifferent
to good and evil, her sun shining alike on the just
and the unjust, yet every new baby teaches us
that love is a cosmic product of which humanity
itself is not the author, but the fruit; and that,
therefore, Emerson was nevertheless justified when
he said that "the universe is moral."

The untutored daily observation of all men, in
all times, then, and the generalization of evolution,
which is the highest product of the tutored ob-

one's nervous system from sound as from light. But it oc
curred to me that I had not appreciated the significance of the
"infant crying in the night, and with no language but a cry"
— crying, however, not for the light, but for its food. It would
be a sorry business if a child had to rely for its nocturnal re
freshment upon the willingness and ability of its mother to
keep awake, or to waken spontaneously when wanted. This,
perhaps, may partially explain our deprivation of earlids. If
our mothers had been able to exclude our infantile cries, where
should we be ?

289

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

servation of all times, alike teach us that altruism
is an inalienable factor in human life, older than
all religions and ethical systems, independent of
them, and destined to outlive, not, indeed, Truth,
which " fails not, but her outward forms that bear
the longest date." Or, to turn from Wordsworth
to St. Paul: "Charity never faileth: but whether
there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there
be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be
knowledge, it shall vanish away."

XXVII

THE GROUNDS OF RATIONAL OPTIMISM

IF, now, having denned the varieties of optimism,
and having noticed certain erroneous inferences
from the law of organic evolution, we proceed more
precisely to inquire into the grounds of a rational
optimism, we must begin by making the convenient,
though philosophically untenable, distinction be
tween "physical" and "moral" evil. And, physi
cal evil being prior in order of time, we may first
consider the evolutionary grounds for optimism in
this respect— first as regards the present and then
as regards the future.

Thinkers in all ages have argued as to the bal
ance between pleasure and pain. Influenced in
the main — as one may guess — by their internal
sensations, some have declared that pleasure out
weighs pain, some that pain outweighs pleasure.
Others have inferred from certain psychological
considerations that, in the life of each, pleasure
and pain are necessarily balanced, each being
purely relative.1 But this is another question

1 An American correspondent of mine, Mr.Vogel, of Brooklyn,
N. Y., hence argues that the lot of all is equal — that " even-
handed justice " prevails.

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

which the genius of Herbert Spencer has finally
solved. In controversion of the theory which
has been upheld by so many religions, that the
pleasurable is evil and deleterious, and vice versa,
Spencer has demonstrated that the pleasurable
is normally correlated with health, and that the
painful brings disease and ultimately death. Plain
ly, pain is none other than dis-ease.

Once this principle is grasped, the problem is
solved. The very fact that we wish to live, that
there is a struggle for life at all, implies a balance
of pleasure over pain. Further, the law of natural
selection is seen, despite Tennyson's indictment
of nature as "red in tooth and claw," to be benefi
cent; for the fittest are necessarily the happiest,
and the survival of the fittest necessarily means
the survival of the happiest, the extinction of
those least fitted for happiness. To question this
conclusion is to question that health and happi
ness are correlated. It is thus a necessary part
of the constitution of sentient things, and has ever
been so, that pleasure has predominated over pain.
This fact is a refutation of, at any rate, complete
pessimism.

Let us now look to the future, and inquire into
the grounds for expecting an amelioration of phys
ical evil — pain, disease, and death.

Though it need not be doubted that scientific
discovery — which teaches us to dose bacilli with
carbolic acid, and so forth — can be subsumed under
the law of evolution, and though much might be

292

GROUNDS OF RATIONAL OPTIMISM

written concerning the probable disappearance, in
time not far distant, of disease as an important
factor in human life, my concern here is with the
all-embracing biological generalization which its
discoverer, Herbert Spencer, called the law of mul
tiplication. Disease is due either to imperfect
adaptation of man to his environment (a term
which includes bacilli), or to competition between
man and man — as is abundantly taught us by the
coincidence between the curves of death-rate and
overcrowding. Biological theory and actual ob
servation, however, teach us that the law of com
petition, as stated by Malthus, is only a half-truth.
True, in its measure, it certainly is that if the pop
ulation increases in geometrical ratio while the
means of life increases only in arithmetical ratio, the
weakest must go to the wall — so true that this state
ment suggested to Darwin and Wallace indepen
dently the theory of natural selection ; but another
truth of equal importance was unrecognized by
Malthus. This truth, which immediately abro
gates the horribly pessimistic inference from the
Malthusian proposition, is that the population
does not increase in geometrical ratio, but that
its rate of increase constantly tends, with the
development of the individual organism, to di
minish. In other words, the higher the organism,
the lower the birth-rate. This is a fact demonstra
ble not only a priori, by consideration of the fact
that if the individual expends more energy upon
his own individualization he has less to expend

293

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

upon reproduction, but also a posteriori, by con
sideration of the observed facts of animal and
human reproduction. The falling birth-rates of
civilization are unquestionably, to my mind, re
lated in some measure to this biological law.

And so, also, are the falling death-rates of ^ civil
ized peoples. We are evidently approaching a
period of adequate adaptation, when the abomi
nable infantile mortality which now disgraces civil
ization will be abolished — as it might be to-morrow
if we cared enough — and when the number of
births and of deaths will fall almost to a minimum;
every birth being the beginning, and almost every
death being the conclusion, of a complete life^: in
stead of, as now, an immense proportion of births
being the prelude to, and deaths the expression of,
failure. In those days men will see shame and not
humor in the question attributed to the dead in
fant : If I was so soon to be done for, what was I be
gun for ? That question should be addressed to,^and
answered by, not Deity, but man and his humanity.

But those who have not come to see that moral
evil is so called only because it implies physical or
mental evil or disease to its subject or to others,
may argue that the practical abolition of disease,
and of any deaths save such as peacefully close a
rounded life, are matters of no moment if moral
evil is to survive. Let us, then, ask whether, in
this relation also, science permits us to call our
selves meliorists.

294

But, before doing so, let us make a digression
concerning our concept of sin, or moral evil. It
does not need more than a few moments' impartial
consideration of the subject to compel agreement
with Spencer when he declares that " happiness
is an inexpugnable element of the conception" of
good. The good, or the good action, is that which
makes for the happiness of some one. No matter
what the religion or the philosophy, this remains
true — grounded as it is in biological facts. An
action may be thought to be, and may indeed be,
good, though it makes for present pain or unhap-
piness, but only because the present discipline
makes for future happiness on this earth, or the
present renunciation for an eternally happy life
hereafter. Even if the present or future happi
ness of self or others be not thought of, yet an ac
tion may be deemed good — because it is conceived
as pleasing, or conducing to the happiness of, the
Deity. Hence it is self-evident that physical, men
tal, and moral evil are, in the last analysis, one; for
the moral evil which does not entail physical or
mental unhappiness to some one, human or divine,
cannot even be conceived.

Further, the Spencerian analysis of the concept
of evil furnishes a further argument in refutation
of pessimism. Optimism, so called, or the belief
that life brings a predominance of pleasure over
pain, is so universally admitted that it is every
where and at all times implicit in all systems of
ethics and in all our moral judgments. Did life
ao 295

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

normally bring a balance of pain over pleasure, the
saving of life would be criminal, the "giving of
one's life for others" would be an abominable
selfishness, murder would be the highest virtue,
and Napoleon, therefore — in effect — the saint of
saints. Whoso is unprepared to admit these con
clusions is ipso facto committed to a denial of pes
simism.

Having found the simple principle that unifies
all our conceptions of evil — toothache, death, self-
indulgence — we may now consider the future of
moral evil.

In the last chapter we saw reason to believe,
despite the Nietzscheans, that altruism is an in
alienable law of organic nature.

But even this is not an adequate expression of
the faith that is in the evolutionist ; for he believes
not only in the permanence of altruism, but in its
ultimate triumph. The student of the Principles
of Ethics finds cause to believe — human nature,
thank Heaven, not being the same in all ages—
that men will one day become so adapted to the
social environment that right conduct will be as
natural as is the act of breathing by reason of the
adaptation of the respiratory apparatus to the
atmospheric environment. The unbounded prej
udice which attends the efforts of academic criti
cism has caused Herbert Spencer's prediction to
be called "somewhat dreary"; and exponents of
the free-will theory and the punishment -reward
morality see little to please them in the prospect

296

GROUNDS O F R A T I O N A L O P T 1 M 1 S M

which dissociates right-doing from an accompani
ment of effort. To do justly and to love mercy is
no "merit," they think, unless, in one's heart of
hearts, one hates mercy and would rather do un
justly. Nevertheless, the evolutionist, who is not
concerned with imputing merit or with passing
such judgments, is well content to believe that
human nature, which is at bottom responsible for
nearly all evil, may one day attain to such heights
that men shall do as they would be done by, not
for extrinsic and (ultimately) egoistic reasons, but
because that is their inevitable mode of self-ex
pression. And if our opponents maintain that in
evitable virtue is no more worthy of merit than
cloistered virtue, and, indeed, that doing the right
is not really to be called virtue if one likes doing
it, we, whose study of the human will leads us to
refrain from passing any such judgments upon
anybody, will not quarrel with them. It suffices
us that, seeing virtue already expressive of the
innermost nature of our holiest to-day, we may
believe it possible that, in time to come, the many
shall be raised to their level, so that sanity and
virtuousness shall be synonymous, and wrong
doing be regarded as the mark of a rare and terrible
disease.

The profoundest thinker among English poets
anticipated this vision of Spencer's; and perhaps
the critics who would deny and decry this most
radiantly optimistic of all the inferences from the
law of universal evolution will be surprised to hear

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

that their abuse is directed against Wordsworth's
"Ode to Duty."

"There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them . . .

Glad hearts! without reproach or blot;
Who do thy work, and know it not."

The evolutionist is an optimist because his study
of sociology and ethics has led him to regard as
more than possible the realization — though only
after many centuries — of the ideal of the triumph
of righteousness, which Wordsworth saw just one
century ago:

"Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security."

PART VI

DISSOLUTION

XXVIII

THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION

WE are now compelled to consider a theory of
incalculable significance, which goes by the name
of dissolution. It was only after many years that
Spencer found it necessary to add to his definition
of evolution a description of a correlative process
which he called dissolution. Had he appreciated
earlier the facts on which this theory is based, we
would not be subject to the confusion in the use of
the term evolution, which is properly a general
and universal process, but may also be used to in
dicate the "upward" phases of that process, as
distinguished from the "downward" phases, which
we describe as dissolution.

The doctrine that "progress," or increasing
heterogeneousness, or complication, cannot con
tinue forever, but must be followed by a phase of
retrogression, involution, or dissolution, is of great
est interest, not only in relation to creeds or so
cieties or individual lives, but also in relation to
the present phase of activity manifested through
out the known universe.

It is a commonplace that the sun is moribund.
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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

Judging by the cogent evidence before us, we are
led to the conclusion that there must be a term to
the "upward" course of cosmic evolution. Of all
the predictions of contemporary thought, this is
the most dismal. It sorely distressed the beautiful
and sympathetic soul of Charles Darwin, who did
so much to establish the doctrine of hope, only to
face the probability that the sun must ultimately
cease to support life upon the earth filled with
happy peoples in the coming time. And though
the recent discovery by Professor Rutherford that
radium is a general constituent of the earth's
crust,1 and the high degree of probability that this
potent source of heat is also present in the sun,
give us reason to believe that the future duration
of life upon the earth may be much longer than
was formerly supposed, yet we are still asked to
believe that "the last catastrophe" is as inevitable
as the laws of physics can make it.

This, then, is the local and personal illustration
of that converse of evolution which Spencer termed
dissolution. In the present state of our knowledge
there are grave reasons to believe that not merely
this lukewarm bullet, but the stellar universe— in
virtue of the law of the dissipation and degradation
of energy — is travelling towards universal death.

This is a hopeless conclusion — a circumstance
which, indeed, gives us no warrant for rejecting it,
but which has led physicists strenuously to seek

»See Harper's Magazine, January, 1905.
302

THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION

reasons why it may appear untenable. Further
more, it bears the inevitable implication that to
this strictly finite process there must have been a
beginning.

If the universe, as Robert Boyle and Paley
thought, be like a clock or watch, made and wound
by an Almighty Clockmaker, it is to be expected
that this world-machine will ultimately run down
and stop — not even the cosmos as a whole is to be
regarded as a perpetual -motion machine. Or if
we regard the universe as a living thing, whose
motion is the evidence of its life, we may expect
that, like other living things, it must ultimately
die. Its substance will remain intact, as the
doctrine of the conservation of energy assures us,
but its life will have ceased; it will be merely a
corpse immune from decay.

Now there is a well-established " law" of thermo
dynamics, discovered by Lord Kelvin in 1852, which
bears directly upon these two metaphors that re
gard the life or activity of the universe, though
not its mere existence, as having had a beginning
and as destined to end. The doctrine of the dissi
pation of energy teaches us that, while energy
never disappears, it ever tends to become unavail
able. For the purposes of the present argument
we may regard heat as the common or undiffer-
entiated form of energy which all the other forms
constantly tend to assume. Now heat, like water,
must always "seek its own level," and when we
suitably arrange any system of which one part is

3°3

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

hotter than another, we can make it do work.
But when the water has fallen from the height, or
the heat has distributed itself, no more work can
be got out of it. The energy is still there, but it
is no longer available. At present there is a great
difference of heat potential between the different
parts of the solar system, one consequence of
which is the presence of life upon the earth. But
in time to come the heat will have distributed it
self so that what corresponds to the solar system
of to-day will be all of one temperature, and life
will be impossible.

Now if energy, as represented by heat, is ever
seeking its own level, the time must come when, if
there be no compensatory process, all the energy
in the universe ceases to be available. To state
the case broadly, the heat will still be there — the
dead universe will have a certain temperature —
but there will be no difference of potential, and the
cosmic life will have run its course. If the law of
the dissipation of energy be the whole truth, the
universe is certainly comparable, in this connection,
to a watch that is running down. Furthermore,
there is within it — if this law be the whole truth-
no possibility of being wound up again, for it is a
prime character of natural processes, as Lord Kel
vin was the first to point out, that they are irre
versible. "This remarkable property of all nat
ural processes," as Dr. Merz says, "seems to lead
us to the conception of a definite beginning and to
shadow forth a possible end — the interval, which

304

THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION

contains the life or history of nature, being occu
pied with the slow but inevitable running -down
or degradation of the great store of energy from
an active to an inactive or unavailable condition."
Recent discoveries, such as that of intra-atomic
energy, radio-activity, and the presence of radium
in the earth's crust, may show that the watch will
run for millions of aeons longer than we had thought ;
but they do not affect the fact that it is running
down. The imminent picture suggested by the law
of the degradation of energy into heat and its dis
sipation throughout space is that of a dead uni
verse, existent, indeed, but no better than a perdur
able corpse — "stable in desolation," as Stevenson
has it.

Now ere we inquire whether there are indications
that this is the whole truth we may note how
remarkably this, which is the accepted scientific
teaching of the time, consorts with various con
ceptions of the Deity. It is exactly compatible
with the idea of God as entertained by Boyle and
Paley and Cowper — the Great Artificer. He built
the watch, wound it up, and, as Carlyle has it
in Sartor Resartus, is now the absentee God, who
has sat idle since the first Sabbath, watching the
universe go. And when it has at last run down,
He alone can wind it up. If we pursue the meta
phor somewhat further, we may inquire whence the
Watch-maker obtained the materials from which
the watch is made. And here is an analogy which
breeds an insuperable difficulty. For the human

305

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

watch-maker does not create the steel and rubies
and so forth of which his watches are made.
They were extant before him. And similarly the
doctrine of the conservation of energy teaches
that the substance of the cosmos, its corporeal
frame, is from everlasting. The scientific teaching
thus appears nicely to confirm the ancient concep
tion of an aboriginal Chaos, into which the Deity
infused at some definite period the breath of life —
or which He built into a machine, wound up and
set going. It is therefore possible to construct a
scientific defence for the doctrine of a primeval
entity, without form and void, which is presum
ably " self -existent " — whatever that may mean—
and to which a Deity, conceived as independent
thereof and having His (or Her) habitat beyond the
range of any telescope yet constructed, has given
form and a finite period of activity. His sole ob
ject in constructing it was, as Dr. A. R. Wallace
has lately written a book to prove, the production
of the human soul. Thereafter the machine will
run down, having served its purpose; and will so
remain unless its Maker should care to wind it up
again.

On this position there are two criticisms to be
made. The first has reference to the origin of the
energy or stuff of which the universe is composed.
Plainly any ultimate answer which leaves out of
account or fails to explain the existence of the
universe, apart from its life or activity, cannot be
regarded as adequate, or even as true in so far as

306

THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION

it goes, for we can scarcely be satisfied with any
explanation that does not meet all the facts.
Furthermore, we cannot accept as final any ex
planation which proceeds on the assumption that
time is what, for our daily purposes, we regard it.
Few will now dispute the proposition that time is
no more than the symbol by which we express our
consciousness of change without and within us.
Now evolution is simply an assertion of universal
and ordered change, so that time is thus merely
an expression or symbol of our consciousness of
evolution, and cannot be included in any ultimate
explanation of the fact of evolution. Let me
make a second attempt to express myself. The
foregoing theory states that evolution, change, life,
activity — to live is to change, says Newman — had
a beginning and therefore a Beginner, and will
have an end. But if time be an expression of our
consciousness of change or activity, we cannot
introduce this (derived) temporal concept into our
explanation of the cause of that which it symbol
izes. Judged by any philosophical canon, there
fore, the argument for a beginning of the cosmic
activity must be regarded as circular and vain.
We might, indeed, apply to it, as to any other
circular argument, that blessed word "self-exist
ent," with which Professor Haeckel explains the
prime fact of Nature's being.

Secondly, we may leave the philosophic and
consider the scientific question. Ere we infer
from the law of the dissipation of energy that the

307

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

universal clock is running down, let us ask our
selves what it is that we really know. We shall
find that even when the objective validity of the
concept of time is impugned, there still remain
some difficulties in our argument. 'For instance,
we know nothing, or practically nothing, as to the
destiny of the heat-energy and light-energy which
are incessantly being radiated from the solar sys
tem. Perhaps they are restoring the balance else
where; the energy that is dissipated for us may
be marshalled for others. All we have observed
are certain facts as to the part of the universe
which we know ; but when the doctrine of the dis
sipation of energy was framed, our universe was
thought to be infinite and the only universe. Yet
to-day the astronomers are inclined to think that
the stellar universe — bounded by the Milky Way-
may possibly be to the sum of things no more than
the solar system is to it. And even if our universe
be running down, there may be that in process else
where which shall wind it up again ; a speculation
in which is implicit, let us mark, the assumption
that other universes, if such there be, and ours,
are interrelated. Yet who shall say whether this
assumption is gratuitous or not? Indeed, the
prophecy of universal death is a sorry piece of
presumption when we come to inquire into it.
Here, in a point of what they call infinite space-
not that they can conceive space to be either in
finite or finite — is a race of beings, born but yes
terday, whom gravitation bloweth where it listeth.

308

THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION

They have lately discovered that their prison-home
is moving, but are not sure whither. The other
day they made a few experiments, which they
have interpreted as their reason permits them,
and which they infer to imply that All things
are coming to a stand-still. They were not there
when the dance began, nor will they see its con
clusion. Their total life history can be but a
moment in its course, but they are assured that it
did begin and will end; for are they not the priv
ileged spectators of "all time and all existence"?
The reader must not say that science points to a
conclusion which I dislike, and that I am trying to
sail away from it on the inflated wings of rhetoric.
If science does point to this conclusion, then it
must be accepted; but the question is whether so
tremendous an inference, involving a whole host
of tacit and unexamined assumptions, can legiti
mately be drawn from the known data. I main
tain that it cannot. If it were necessary, I might
quote the considerations advanced by Lord Kelvin
himself in 1874, to show that certain indications
point to the restoration, not of energy, but of its
availability; and these considerations might be re
inforced by the inquiries of the past thirty years.
But I am not prepared to admit that the question
of the death of the universe can be solved by any
balancing of known or conceivably knowable con
siderations. If, for instance, there be no other
universes than that which perhaps the galaxy
bounds, I do not see how their existence could be

3°9

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

disproved save by the lapse of infinite time during
which no disturbance attributable to them was
observed in ours. To say that our macrocosm is
to die when it may be no more than an atom in a
greater whole, to which it is of no more account
than a constituent atom of one of your blood cor
puscles is to you, would surely be madness. In
deed, we may venture to say — while not forgetting
the many instances in which apparently similar
assertions have been falsified, as when Comte de
clared that we could never tell whether gravita
tion acts among the stars, or of what they are com
posed—that even if the life of the All be finite, we
shall never be able to prove it. Radium clocks
have been made that will go for a million years;
but I believe that the universe was never made
and will go forever.

Herbert Spencer, arguing not from physical
facts, but rather from certain principles at which
he had arrived— such as that of the universality
of rhythm — declined to accept the view that the
cosmos is doomed. This, indeed, goes without say
ing, for such a view of the world-process is quite
incompatible with Spencer's First Principles, and,
if it be true, evolution is a dream. We may fair
ly inquire, therefore, into such reasons as Spencer
can give us against the acceptance of this appalling
sentence provisionally pronounced — and already
being provisionally withdrawn— by contemporary

physics.

After demonstrating the fact that dissolution
310

THE MEANING OF DISSOLUTION

inevitably follows upon evolution, alike in the
history of societies, living things, the earth's sur
face, and the earth itself, Spencer is met with the
inference that "evolution must come to a close in
complete equilibrium or rest," which, for aught
that appears to the contrary, may last indefinitely.
This, as we have seen, is the inference of the phys
icists.

But there is no questioning the astronomical evi
dence which Spencer quotes, and which has been
abundantly confirmed since his time, that evolu
tion and dissolution are both proceeding " in many
thousands of places throughout our sidereal sys
tem." As far as the visible evidence goes, there is
no hint of any imminent full stop, any more than
there is of "one far-off divine event to \vhich the
whole creation moves." The conclusion to which
Spencer is led is that

"It is not inferable from the general progress towards
equilibrium that a state of universal quiescence or death
will be reached; but that if a process of reasoning ends
in that conclusion, a further process of reasoning points
to renewals of activity and life."

It is to this last conclusion that the physics of
to-day is trying to find its way ; but whether Spen
cer's a priori assertion will or will not be confirmed
by the inductive or experimental method we can
scarcely yet decide.

But to return for a moment to the personal ques
tion, it is evident that, have it which way we will,

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

there is little satisfaction for us. Whether the
cosmos is tending towards universal and final
death, or whether there is to be eternal re-formation
and ceaseless re-attack upon the weary ascent1 —
the whole business seems futile and vain. But I
sometimes wonder whether in First Principles or in
the modern theory of entropy sufficient allowance
is made for the influence of human intelligence upon
the evolutionary process. M. Maeterlinck, at any
rate, with his brilliant daring, is little concerned
about a solar catastrophe. Postpone it for a cen
tury or two, he says, and man will have learned
to control gravitation and steer his planet where
he will. And, though one does not quite see how
such power could avail us much, considering the
long journey through inconceivable cold to the
nearest fixed star, yet we will do well, in predicting
the future of matter and motion, not to deem im
potent the factor of mind.

*See chapter vi.

XXIX

THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL RHYTHM1

ALLUSION has more than once been made in the
preceding pages to Spencer's law of rhythm, which
we saw illustrated notably in the chapter on " Cos
mic Evolution." In the last chapter we have seen
that Spencer adopted the "cyclical" view of uni
versal change —

"rhythm in the totality of changes — alternate eras of
evolution and dissolution. And thus then is suggested
the conception of a past during which there have been
successive evolutions analogous to that which is now
going on; and a future during which successive other
such evolutions may go on — ever the same in principle,
but never the same in concrete result." — First Principles,
first ed., p. 536.

These sentences do not appear in the last edition
of First Principles, but they express the specula-

1 In writing this chapter I have availed myself of the in
valuable references in Dr. Merz's History of European Thought
in the Nineteenth Century (see II., 286 et scq.). This work of
unrivalled industry and insight, a conspicuous illustration
both of the love of truth and the philosophic temper, must
necessarily be studied by all who take a serious interest in
that mighty being of which they form a part.

313

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

tive and avowedly tentative opinion of the author.
Here, however, we are less concerned with his
opinions than with the most reasonable opinions
that may be held. In the last edition, Spencer
advanced various considerations which seem to
qualify the likelihood that the sentences quoted
are really in consonance with the past and the fut
ure facts. At the end of the last chapter I have
advanced another consideration, the influence of
man's mind on the future of things, which does
not appear to have occurred to Spencer. I am
certainly not prepared to express any opinion as
to what this suggestion is worth ; but perhaps it is,
at any rate, worth considering.

The cyclical idea of the cosmos appears to have
originated with Heraclitus, the first evolutionist,
and to have been borrowed from him by the Stoics,
who thought that "the history of the world and
the Deity moves in an endless cycle through the
same stages . ' ' The Pythagoreans thought that ' ' the
succeeding worlds resemble one another down to
the minutest detail."1 This doctrine Spencer ex
pressly denies in the passage quoted. Some day,
when a scholar and student like Dr. Merz, aided
by many collaborators, has given us that Histori
cal Dictionary of Ideas for which I provided the
title a year or two ago, but with which no one
has yet been good enough to supply me, he will
doubtless spend many pleasant hours in studying

1 Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, III., 136.

THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL RHYTHM

the history of this idea of endless repetition, which
delighted Heraclitus, the Stoics, the Pythagore
ans, Empedocles, Virgil (in his fourth eclogue),
Nietzsche, and many more.1

But it is plain that this idea, haunt us as it may,
cannot be prevented from arousing a sense of
futility. Surely all is vanity, if it expresses the
whole truth. What, for instance, could be more
disheartening than its partial expression in a
passage that occurs near the end of the twelfth
book of Aristotle's Metaphysics : "Every art and
every philosophy having probably been found out
many times up to the limits of what is possible and
again destroyed"? For myself, I am the rather
attracted by the conception of the world-drama
expressed in Lotze's Microcosmos : "The series of
cosmic periods, . . . each link of which is bound
together with every other ; . . . the successive order
of these sections shall compose the unity of an
onward-advancing melody."

The question, however, in science and philosophy
is not what we would prefer to believe, but what,
if anything at all, it is compatible with intellectual
honesty and the philosophic temper to believe.
Doubtless there are many serious and thoughtful
men who will say that this question can affect no
practical issue, and that our duty is merely to
"work while it is called to-day." Nevertheless,

1 A living poet and essayist, Mrs. Alice Meynell, has a fine es
say in this vein, entitled "The Rhythm of Life."

315

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

it may be maintained that even a speculative
opinion on this matter may well affect conduct in
that it can scarcely fail to affect one's intellectual
and emotional attitude towards life.

Let us note, then, in the first place, that the
Pythagorean idea of exact recurrence, or, indeed,
the idea of anything like exact recurrence, is in
compatible with the modern scientific belief that
causation is universal. This belief, if it be true,
implies that every act, however small, whether per
formed on the house-tops or in solitude, affects,
in its measure, the whole subsequent course of
events — of all events, since

"thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star"

—a statement which Newton has taught us to be
literally true.

In the second place, there is the fact, which
cannot be discounted by the Aristotelian specula
tion quoted above, that human knowledge is now
capable of influencing external events in a measure,
which, amazing though it would have seemed to
our great-grandfathers, promises future develop
ments to which we can set no measure whatever.
The agnostic assertion as to our knowledge of
reality, which is implied in the term unknowable,
and which is deduced from the considerations of
psychology, is entirely compatible with the belief
that there is no necessary limit whatever to

THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL RHYTHM

man's knowledge of phenomena — knowledge which
is power.

Thus, though the scientific assertion may be that
dissolution is imminent in our part of the universe,
and that, in accordance with the laws of 'rhythm,
the upward or ascending phase must yield to a
stage of undoing and disintegration, yet I, for one,
am unprepared to yield assent to this most hope
less of propositions until I am assured that mind
is negligible as a factor in the future history of
things. Until they can show that man's mind
cannot possibly avert the threatened ruin of itself
and its products, the upholders of the theory of
mechanical rhythm, as futile as stupendous, cannot
be held to have proved their case.

PART VII

EVOLUTION AND THE RELIGION
OF THE FUTURE

XXX

THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS

THE question of questions is the concern of phi
losophy — which is the quest of reality. Hence
we may divide all schools of philosophic thought
into two great categories — those which believe
that they have found the answer to this question,
and those which believe that it is unanswerable.

Truth not being determinable by a counting of
heads, however distinguished, we need not expect
to reach any conclusion as to whether or not re
ality is knowable, by citation of the authorities
for or against. Perhaps the great names are equal
ly balanced ; and perhaps exception might be taken
to any off-hand attempt to assign the great think
ers to one or other category. But Plato (?) and
Kant, Spinoza and Spencer may be named as
representative of those who, though widely differ
ing among themselves, agree in denying that the
ultimate reality can be known. The terms nou-
menon, thing - in - itself , and unknowable may be
recalled; while even "the God-intoxicated" Spi
noza, who spoke of Deus sive Natnra, declared that
"to define God is to deny Him."

321

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

On the other hand, there are many illustrious
thinkers who teach that reality can be known.
It is true that most of them lived before the days
in which men began to study the knowing process ;
but their names compel our respect. It will prob
ably be admitted that Democritus, Aristotle, and
Berkeley were of their number. But if the mutual
differences of the first — the ultimately sceptical or
agnostic group — are immense, profounder still are
the differences between the thinkers of the gnostic
or dogmatic group. For this method of classifica
tion — which I am nevertheless prepared to regard
as the primary classification of all philosophic sys
tems — • groups together, in respect of their dog
matism, the theologians of all creeds — Christian,
Buddhist (if it be not incorrect to speak of a Bud
dhist theologian), Mohammedan, Hebrew, or what
you please — since every religious system includes a
philosophy or theory of reality, and all such theories
are necessarily dogmatic or gnostic: the idealists,
who maintain that mind, which they regard as
obviously and immediately knowable, is the ulti
mate reality; the materialists, who regard matter
or atoms as the (knowable) reality ; and their suc
cessors, who answer the question of questions by
referring us to an (equally knowable) energy or
force. Thus, in respect of their belief that the
quest of philosophy is attainable, the theist, some
pantheists, and some atheists may be found to
agree.

But in one respect, at any rate, all the philo-
322

THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS

sophic thinkers of any weight, whether gnostic or
agnostic (I use the words in their primary senses),
are found to agree— and that is in the belief that
reality, whether knowable or unknowable, whether
personal or impersonal, material or immaterial, is
one. No philosophy that counts is content with
anything but some form of monism. If we believe
in God and nature as antithetic, we must at any
rate declare that God made nature from His own
substance ; if we believe in mind and matter as anti
thetic, though knowable, we must at any rate de
clare that reality consists in the "union of subject
and object"; and so forth. Mr. Balfour, who
ranks at times beside the ancient sceptic who de
nied everything, even to denying that he denied
anything, doubts whether there are any grounds
for this constant search for the One;1 but, at any
rate, we find that a belief in the unity of reality is
common to all the systems that are not negligible.
Whether reality be a knowable God, or the un
known God, or matter, or the "unknowable," it
is believed to be one.

As a camp-follower of those who believe that we
cannot know reality, I am in company too good to
permit me any distress at the allegation of "hav
ing one of those uncentred minds which cannot be
happy without a mystery"; and so I hope I can
refer, without any resentment due to such an un
kind heart- thrust, to a lately published volume —

'Presidential address to the British Association, Oxford,
1904.

323

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

The Evolution of Knowledge, a Review of Philoso
phy, by Raymond St. James Perrin.1 The author of
this book believes that " the reason why our knowl
edge is only of phenomena is that there is nothing
but phenomena"; he regards the postulating of
anything that cannot be known as mysticism and
superstition, and his main thesis, which he con
siders to be abundantly proved, is that the ulti
mate reality is motion. He is an evolutionist,
and it would appear that, from the doctrine of
universal change, he infers reality to be none other
than material change or motion. It would be idle
to follow him in the whole of his argument — how
idle no reader will need more than ten pages to
show — but it is expedient, I think, to consider the
chief difficulty which he has to encounter — the
resolution of mind into motion.

While we who believe that neither mind nor not-
mind is the ultimate reality, but that both are
phenomenal of an underlying reality, can afford
to recognize a proximate dualism of mind and not-
mind, those who believe that they have found the
answer to the question of questions are commonly
compelled, by the passion for unity which they
share with us, to resolve mind into not -mind, or
vice versa.

A few years ago we could have used the word
materialism to describe the doctrine which pro
fesses to explain mind in terms of not-mind. But

1 Published by Messrs. Williams & Norgate.
324

THE QUESTION OP QUESTIONS

recent discovery, as every one knows, has cracked
the clay feet of materialism, and we are now at a
loss for a word until people shall become familiar
with the appropriate substitute, which is, I suppose,
energism. Let us admit that everything that is
not mind may be resolved into energy — ignoring
the palpably derivative concept of motion — and
let us then inquire into the contention that mind
may be resolved into energy.

From our author we may take the very crudest
conceivable form of the doctrine which explains
mind in terms of not-mind. In words which this
pen is too feeble to characterize, Mr. Perrin gives,
as "the modern scientific definition of mind" —
"that part of the sensorium capable of the greatest
molecular activity" — a definition \vhich is almost
enough to make one forswear science forever and
go in for black magic or the hell - fire theology or
the Baconian theory. But admitting that the mat
ter of which the human sensorium is composed
is really like all matter, a manifestation of that
form of energy which \ve call electricity, let us
consider it in relation to our author's theory of
mind.

Now ere we consider the teaching of the evolu
tionary philosophy, which is one of those that
regard the question of questions as unanswerable,
we may notice the most popular and therefore the
most important of the proposed answers. This is
the philosophy which, in one form or another,
regards mind as an attribute or function or occa-

325

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

sional property of not-mind — the said not-mind
being regarded as the knovvable reality. This
doctrine has taken many forms. The oldest and
crudest is that which regards mind as a proper
ty of (knowable) matter. But now that modern
physics has shown matter to be no more than a
fleeting manifestation of something else, material
ism in its crudest form has been abandoned. This
solution was, indeed, never other than fallacious,
since, as the distinguished French scientist M. Poin-
care" remarks,1 it is meaningless to assert that mind
is a property of something which, on analysis, can
only be regarded as symbolic.

Therefore the modern successors of the materi
alistic theory are framed in somewhat less vulner
able terms. Here, then, we may resume considera
tion of one of these quasi-materialistic theories,
which is, at any rate, no worse than any of its
fellows.

It is an easy thing to dissect a human brain.
The post-mortem-room attendant preserves it in
formalin or alcohol and sells it to the student, who
proceeds with a long knife to slice it from above
downward, examining each section seriatim. He
can also make microscopic sections of the gray
matter from various areas, stain them with silver
salts, and examine them under a high power. He
thus is certain to encounter "that part of the
sensorium capable of the greatest molecular ac-

1 Science et Hypotliese.
326

THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS

tivity"; but as he fingers and smells and sees it,
does it ever occur to him that he is fingering and
smelling and looking at mind ? — so that he is entitled
to say, "This morning I bought a small piece of
consciousness, cut a thin section of it, stained it by
Golgi's method, and mounted it in Canada bal
sam"? Even granted that the thin section is
really a manifestation of energy, can anything
more fatuous than such a mode of thinking be
conceived ?

Of course the materialistic or energistic theory
of mind can be framed in terms slightly less ridicu
lous. If we avoid the use of the term "matter"
and confine ourselves to such words as "energy,"
we can declare, if we like, that "consciousness is a
form of energy." This is by far the most plausible
form in which the theory can be presented, for we
are easily deceived by the excellence of the meta
phor into thinking that it is more than a metaphor.
But — to name the most serious objection that oc
curs — all the natural sciences have united in the
demonstration of the fact expressed by the phrase
"conservation of energy." Heat, light, electricity
may be transformed, but they are never lost; nor
is any energy ever created. Those who would
persuade us that "consciousness is a form of en
ergy" must be good enough to demonstrate that
its manifestations are compatible with this law.
But how is this to be done while no one can even
furnish us with any unit or scale of consciousness?
Even if we assume, for argument's sake, that ex-
" 327

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

actly the same number of milligrammes of phos
phorus are oxidized during an hour's conscious
ness — whether of a Shakespeare or a sot — who
will declare that those two conscious entities, even
though accompanied by exactly equal amounts of
chemical change, are equal? Burn a gramme of
phosphorus, in a brain or a pan, and you will always
obtain an invariable amount of heat. But one
brain will yield, meantime, the prelude to " Parsi
fal," another the "Washington Post March,", while
the pan yields nothing at all but the heat. The law
of the conservation of heat - energy is observed,
but to resolve mind into energy (which is, as a
fact, a material concept) you must demonstrate
that the prelude to "Parsifal," Mr. Sousa's march,
and nothing are equal. We wish you joy of the
task.

The law of the conservation of energy might be
stated as the law of the conservation of not-mind.
If it could be demonstrated to be applicable to
mind, the discovery would be welcomed by those
who seek for evidence of the persistence of the
individual consciousness after death;1 but it has
not been so extended ; nor is there any conceivable
method of such extension. Meanwhile the theory
that not-mind is the reality which philosophy
seeks must be rejected.

1 "Thought, we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning?"— " AUONAIS."
328

THE y U Ji S T 1 O N O F Q UESTIONS

Even less plausible is the converse theory of
those who hold that reality is knowable. Whereas
materialism, to use the old term, teaches that mind
is in the brain, idealism, as held by its greatest
representative, Bishop Berkeley, teaches that the
brain and all else that is not mind are in mind,
which is the knowable and only reality. The ul
timate reality is the idea; and as it is assuredly
ideas of which we have immediate and unqualified
knowledge, reality may be known to us if we will
but earnestly pursue it.

Modern science, however, guided by its most sub
tle and important study, which is that of mind,
declares neither for crude realism nor for idealism,
but for what we may know as transfigured realism.
This teaches that the external world does indeed
exist, whether we be there to perceive it or not ; but
that our sense-knowledge of it is conditional and
qualified by the nature of the sensory process.
The most noble presentation of this theory is as
suredly to be found— we need not now inquire into
its author's own meaning — in that moving and
memorable fable of Plato,1 who pictures a group
of men doomed forever to sit facing a blank wall,
upon which are thrown the shadows of the real,
which moves behind them. Might such an one
but turn his head for a moment and then resume
his doom, could he, like his comrades, remain con
tent with shadows? Not so; for to him has been

1 lu the Republic.
329

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

granted a moment's vision of things not as they
seem, but as they are.

So, according to science, we know but shadows
or phenomena: the noumenon (Plato), reality-in-
itself (Kant), or substance (Spinoza) being forever
hidden from us. A correspondent has lately re
marked to me that agnosticism is in need of sani
tation and antisepsis ; but I submit this conclusion,
whether false or untrue, as at any rate reverent,
modest, and decent.

In a subsequent chapter I shall attempt to show
that mind itself is, strictly speaking, as unknow
able as the reality which is manifested in not-
mind.

Repudiating, then, alike the materialistic and
idealistic assertions as to the nature of reality, we
may pass on to the consideration of the answer-
in so far as it is an answer — given by the synthetic
philosophy to the question of questions.

XXXI

THE UNKNOWABLE

SPENCER was not primarily an ontologist. His
philosophy, designed to deal with phenomena, was
not at first intended to include any ultimate con
siderations. The section upon the unknowable
was not included as a basis for the rest of the
philosophy, which, as a unification of our phenom
enal knowledge, is independent of any statement
of an ontological position, just as is the law of
gravitation. But it was very wisely pointed out
to Spencer that, in the absence of any statement
as to his ultimate beliefs, misconception would arise.
It would naturally be supposed that he imagined
his description of phenomena to be a description
of reality. He would, indeed, be accused of being
a materialist. The section upon the unknowable
was therefore included, in the very natural ex
pectation that it would remove all misconception
and leave him free to develop his philosophy of
phenomena without let or hinderance from the
ontologists. This, however, was an entire mis
calculation. Despite the unequivocal assertions
of this section and their frequent repetition and

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

amplification elsewhere — as in the Principles of
Psychology — the academic opponents of Spencer
have never stickled at misrepresentations which
cannot possibly be explained without an assump
tion of either wilful misinterpretation or sheer stu
pidity. In his article "Metaphysics," written for
the Encyclopedia Britannica but the other day,
Professor Case, of Oxford, classes Spencer under
the heading " Materialistic tendencies," and demon
strates to his own satisfaction that Spencer was a
materialist without knowing it, though no reader
of First Principles could possibly avoid — or, one
would think, could possibly forget — that fine say
ing about "A mode of being as much transcending
intelligence and will as these transcend mere me
chanical motion." I offer no explanation of this
remarkable feat of Professor Case; but this is not
because there is none to offer.

It is a curious but perfectly intelligible fact that
the opponents of Spencer, when they have attempt
ed to refute him, have confined themselves to this
small section of his work — a section upon which
the validity of the synthetic philosophy does not
and obviously cannot depend. Among scientists,
of course, he has no opponents, except upon de
tails in different spheres of expert knowledge. The
great mass of his work is concerned with a unifica
tion of science — this last word being used in the
wide and only defensible sense. But this is ob
viously outside the sphere of writers such as T.
H. Green, James Ward, Bradley, Case, and Caird.

332

THE UNKNOWABLE

The Oxford school has had to confine itself to
that small section of the synthetic philosophy with
which its limitations permitted it in any manner to
deal. Such writers could not attack the Principles
of Biology, to take an instance, for reasons too ob
vious to name. The fact that the idea of evolution
is essentially independent of the section upon the
unknowable explains a circumstance which is at
first sight difficult to interpret— the fact, namely,
that Principal Caird, for instance, while scorning
what he regards as the basis of the evolution
philosophy — the first section — can yet issue vol
ume after volume with the word evolution in its
title and as its guiding idea. Even the Oxford
school is compelled to accept the Spencerian con
ceptions — but fancies itself absolved from the ne
cessity of making acknowledgment, because it fan
cies that it has already disposed of this thinker by
its criticisms upon a small section of his philoso
phy, the truth of which, however, is demonstrably
non-essential to the validity of the rest.

But though the order of phenomena — the body
of science, that is to say— is capable of study and
unification, whatever our theory of ultimate reality
may be, or, indeed, in the absence of any theory as
to reality, yet all thinking persons admit that this
question as to ultimate reality is supreme and
of infinitely greater importance than any question
whatsoever with which science deals. The mind
of man can never rest content even with the most
perfect and complete knowledge of phenomena

333

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

alone. We may, therefore, finally inquire into this
first section of the synthetic philosophy and see
whether it has any more searching light for us,
after our consideration of the greater part of
the philosophy which deals with the knowable
phenomena of star and star - fish, mind and
morals.

It has been said, without knowledge or any at
tempt to gain it, that the section on the unknow
able took its origin in the fact that Spencer had to
set down something about reality, and therefore
fished about in the metaphysical text -books of
the time for something that would do. It sounds
likely. The present chapter may, therefore, fitly
conclude with a refutation of that assertion ; where
after we may proceed to look at the doctrine which
Spencer actually conceived. In a letter written to
his father in 1849, Spencer says, as to the "ulti
mate nature of things":

"My position is simply that I know nothing about it,
and never can know anything about it, and must be
content in my ignorance. I deny nothing and I affirm
nothing, and to any one who says that the current theory
is not true, I say, just as I say to those who assert its truth:
' You have no evidence. Either alternative leaves us in
inextricable difficulties. An uncaused deity is just as in
conceivable as an uncaused universe. If the existence of
matter from all eternity is incomprehensible, the crea
tion of matter out of nothing is equally incomprehensible.
Thus finding that either attempt to conceive the origin of
things is futile, I am content to leave the question unset
tled as the insoluble mystery.' '

334

THE UNKNOWABLE

This letter refers to a conversation of the year
before, so that at the age of twenty-eight the
young engineer "had reached," as he says, "a
quite definite form of that conviction" which he
found it desirable to set forth twelve years later in
First Principles.

The idea that all objective things are merely the
signs or manifestations or symbols of reality is
familiar to all of us ; and the word phenomena is an
expression of this idea. Behind all such phenom
ena we are compelled to postulate a noumenon, or
reality, which the very nature of our knowledge
renders forever unknowable to us. And in our
haste we may be tempted to suppose that this con
ception of phenomenon and noumenon suffices to
express all that we need to say of reality ; but so to
suppose would be to forget the mind to which
these phenomena or appearances are presented.
That mind is a reality, or the expression of a reality, is
even more certain than that there is a reality behind
matter. Are we then committed to a dualism of
mind as one entity and the objective universe, or
the reality which it represents, as another? At
first sight this would appear to be the conclusion.

Now we find, in reading the Synthetic Philosophy,
that its author uses the word phenomena in a wider
sense than that above indicated; and official phi
losophers have declared the whole Spencerian sys
tem invalid because of what they call the con
fusion which enters into Spencer's use of this word.

335

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

The word phenomenon, they say, refers only to the
appearances of objective things, and it is a misuse
of the term to speak of phenomena of mind, mind
being that to which phenomena are presented.
Herbert Spencer, we are assured, begs the whole
question by his illegitimate use of the word phe
nomenon in two totally distinct and irreconcilable
meanings.

Now when an ephemerid accuses an immortal of
confusion and incoherence, the chances are pretty
high that the critic has not fully acquainted himself
—either through carelessness, incapacity, or lack
of desire — with the object of his attack. Spencer's
use of the word phenomena, as applicable to what
we know both of matter and of mind, is a deliberate
and logical application of his conception of reality.
To him the reality of the perceiving mind and the
reality underlying that which it perceives are not
two realities, but one. To quote his own words,
the unknowable power of which all objective phe
nomena are the manifestation is the same power
that wells up in ourselves in the form of conscious
ness. The ultimate reality, both of mind and
matter, is therefore one.

It may be said, of course, that this is simply
cutting the Gordian knot. Apart from our wish
to arrive at a unity, what evidence have we that
the power underlying stars and trees and dust is
identical with the power that produces the con
sciousness to which these things are made manifest ?
And if we take the aflult human consciousness and

336

THE UNKNOWABLE

study it without inquiry as to its origin, we may
well decline to recognize any community of origin
between it and the reality that underlies a piece
of "dead" rock, or even what Wordsworth, with
poetic insight, calls the "living air." But if we
recognize the psychology which Spencer revealed,
and apply the law of evolution to an adult human
consciousness, seeking to explain it by a study of
the consciousness of a new-born or unborn child,
of a clog, or an amoeba, we come to a different
conclusion. We find that the ignorant and con
temptuous distinction between living and "brute"
matter has utterly broken down. We can trace
the rudiments of a perceiving consciousness not
merely in the embryo of a man, but in any one of
the millions of white blood-cells that circulate in
that embryo's blood. We discover that "brute
matter," ingested as food by a sentient organism,
may pass to its brain and take its temporary place
as the material constituent of that organ with
which the more obvious forms of consciousness are
inseparably associated. Thus reflecting, we have
little difficulty in seeing good reason to believe
that the unknowable reality which underlies the
phenomena of objective things is identical with
that which underlies the phenomena of mind, and
that the Rig- Veda was right in its assertion, many
millennia old, that "the real is one."

Spencer arrived independently at this conclu
sion, and gave it a certainty and a proof which it
never before possessed, but ere the tubercle bacil-

337

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

lus claimed the greatest Jew of our era, it left him
time enough to formulate the same idea. Spencer
has merely proved that which Spinoza had seen
and asserted two centuries earlier — that mind and
matter are but the correlative manifestations of
one underlying reality, of which mental and ma
terial phenomena are the revelations. The work
of Spencer in the realm of ontology was the in
dependent conception and establishment upon the
evolutionary psychology of this thought of the
God-intoxicated Spinoza, which Goethe might well
declare to be the grandest, profoundest, and truest
of all ages.

XXXII

ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE'

THIRTY years ago, physicists unacquainted with
psychological inquiry and with the subtler physi
cal considerations, believed that they could claim
complete knowledge of matter, which they regard
ed as the only reality other than mind. It is
not meant that they claimed to have exhausted
all the possibilities of chemistry or physics, but
that they believed they had identified and could
describe the ultimate units of matter, the atoms
which, as Clerk-Maxwell said, are "the foundation-
stones of the material universe, which have existed
since the creation, unbroken and unworn." But
modern physics has proved that matter is none
other than the expression of an eternal power
which can be known to us only in its appearances,
or phenomena. Materialism as a dogmatic system
has been irremediably destroyed by the continued
application of those methods on whose early, un
critical employment it was based. We may leave
it now for those whose scientific knowledge is suf
ficiently imperfect and antiquated.

'Reprinted, with some modification, by permission, from the
Occult Review, June, 1905.

339

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

But though modern physical inquiry has ousted
the dogmatists from their fortress of matter, they
have, as it would appear, an impregnable citadel in
mind. They may freely admit the lessons taught
by the phenomena of radio-activity, and may
freely assent to the doctrine, truly time-honored,
that our knowledge of the "external world"— of
not-mind — is merely an inference, however irresist
ible, from certain changes in our consciousness.
All this the dogmatist may grant, but yet find a
stable footing in the doctrine that, though matter
is but an inference from mental states, yet mind,
on the other hand, is directly known to us — the
only thing, indeed, that is so known. It would
thus follow that whereas the phenomena of not-
mind are demonstrably occult, mind and its phe
nomena are demonstrably patent ; for, whereas our
knowledge of not-mind is mediate, inferential,
at the mercy of sensation, with its few avenues,
each of which is known to be imperfect and mis
leading, our knowledge of mind is immediate,
direct, involved in the possibility of any knowing
at all, independent of all external factors, and care
less of all sources of fallacy, since mind's knowledge
of itself is supra or extra or pre logical.

But if we really know mind as it has been argued
that we must, there could be no psychology or
"metapsychics." For these sciences treat mind
objectively just as physics treats matter, and yet
they would appear to have their problems still to
solve — which is not conceivable on the theory that

34°

ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE

mind is known to us as Deity might be conceived
as known to Himself. Furthermore, if mind itself
be not occult, hidden, unknowable, but, on the
contrary, the only entity that is directly and es
sentially known, there cannot be anything inex
plicable in its characters in any circumstances.
The phenomena which so many keen thinkers are
studying to-day must be not only fictitious, but
factitious; indeed, the term phenomena cannot be
used of mincl ; for a phenomenon is an appearance,
which implies a reality of which it is the appearance,
whereas the csscntia, or substance, of mind is a thing
given in all its operations. The idea is the only
reality, and, in so far, reality is known to us. So
they say.

On the contrary, it may be shown, by the same
analytical methods as have disintegrated dog
matic materialism, and with equal facility and
certainty, that dogmatic idealism is merely the
converse expression of the same error. The ma
terialist thinks, or thought, that matter, as he
conceived it, is not phenomenal, but veritable
reality, and very easily knowable reality at that.
The idealist, for his part, thinks that ideas, or
various states of his consciousness, are not phenom
enal, but noumenal, real, essential, substantial, in
the proper, undegraded meaning of those fine
terms; and, like the materialist, he thinks that
this reality is not only knowable, but very easily
knowable. Indeed, no other knowledge so easy
can be conceived. And just as materialism pro-

34i

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

posed to shut men's eyes to every attribute and
indication and significance of matter that was
worthy of the philosopher's attention, so the ideal
ism which fancies that consciousness — all the mind
it knows — is the noumenon, the reality of mind,
proposes to shut men's eyes to every fact of mind
that bears upon the sole and supreme question of
philosophy, which is the quest of reality — of things
not as they seem, but as they are, as Plato would
have said, or of essences, not accidents, in the
phraseology of the school-men.

Hence it is that our academic philosophers, who,
just now, are followers of Hegel — in accordance
with the generalization that "Good German philos
ophies, when they die, go to Oxford" — and who
regard their own consciousness as portions of reality
directly and wholly known to them, are to be
heard discussing, for instance, the psychology of
Herbert Spencer, on the ground that he speaks
of mental facts as phenomena (or appearances),
whereas the term should properly be confined, they
say, to material facts. To discuss the "phenom
enal ego," they aver, is to abuse language and
evidence an incapacity for appreciating the con
ditions of the problems under discussion, for the
ego is that to which the non-ego appears — i. e., is
phenomenal. The one thing known as it is, not
as it appears, is the ego, and from it may, therefore,
be constructed a complete dogmatic system of the
Cosmos, not as it appears, but as it verily is.

But as we well know to-day, academic idealism
342

ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE

involves the identification of conscioitsness with
mind, an error which is more than verbal, more
than relevant to the superstructure of the system,
but vitiates it root and branch, and is comparable
only to the analogous error which has made ma
terialism a name of perpetual scorn. The classic
researches of many students, varying in philosophic
stand-point as widely as did Carpenter and Myers,
have revealed to us the amazing fact, the full
philosophic and ontological significance of which
has hitherto been appreciated by few, if any, that
consciousness, even as known to the conscious
subject himself, is precisely the analogue of matter
as known to him. Each is the expression, appear
ance, or phenomenon of an underlying reality ;
and as he can never know not-mind in its essence,
since his consciousness cannot become identified
with its objects, so he can never know mind in its
essence, since his consciousness can never become
identified with the non-conscious entity of which
it is the efflorescence, or phenomenon.

It is scarcely possible to overestimate the validity
and certainty of this conclusion. Let us consider
some of the evidence in its favor. In the first
place, we have seen that the academic doctrine of
the immediate knowableness of mind can be dis
proved by the reductio ad absurdum, directly we
contrast its pretensions with the notorious and, as
I believe, essentially insoluble difficulties of psy
chology. On the academic theory, there is only
one plain - sailing, self - evident science, which is
>3 343

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

psychology ; whereas the physical sciences, such as
astronomy, are necessarily inferential and con
fined to phenomenal knowledge alone. The facts
immediately negative this conclusion, so that if we
were compelled to declare either mind or not- mind
to be the more unknowable, the palm would have
to be awarded to mind, as the present state of our
knowledge thereof clearly indicates.

In the second place, the conclusion of the essen
tial unknowableness of mind — again I use the
word essential in the great scholastic sense — is
forced upon us by the infinitely complex character
of its manifestations. (In order to believe that,
say, the idea of the good is ultimate noumenal
reality, one must be wholly ignorant of its incal
culable antiquity and complexity — in other words,
one must deny evolution.) Each year brings with it
more cogent evidence that, whatever we may know,
even phenomenally, of matter, we certainly know
hardly anything, even phenomenally, of mind. We
do not even seem to see our way towards any
such generalizations concerning phenomenal mind
as we have framed concerning phenomenal matter
—such as the laws of gravitation or conservation.
While we are assured that the reality underly
ing not-mind is eternal, indestructible, uncreated,
we see consciousness daily — and nightly — arrested
(destroyed?) and recreated. We have hardly yet
asked whether this implies that the law of conser
vation is not universal, or whether, as I believe, it
must not be interpreted as showing that conscious-

344

ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE

ness — the phenomenon consciousness — is imper
manent, as the phenomenon called radium is now
known to be impermanent; and while the phys
icist is assured that the reality of which the ra
dium atom is the fleeting manifestation is never
theless permanent and changeless, so I assuredly
believe that the unknowable reality of which con
sciousness is the fleeting manifestation is also eter
nal and changeless.

In the third place, there is the remarkable fact
that the most diverse thinkers, whose names
would be anathema in one another's ears — save
in the few cases where the philosopher has the
philosophic temper — converge to this conclusion.
The student of "psychic phenomena," for instance,
is assured that there is more in mind than "meets
the eye" of consciousness. From such workers,
who may loosely be called "spiritualists," let us
turn to those who, with equal impropriety, have
been called materialists. John Locke, who was
accused of atheism, and whose perdurable work
was proscribed by his university, clearly showed,
though he had never heard of " unconscious cerebra
tion " or the "subliminal mind," that our knowl
edge, even of our own minds, is no more than
phenomenal — that we know it only as it appears
to us, not as it is "in-itself." 1 This opinion of
Oxford's great glory does not recommend itself
to the consideration of those who now prosecute

1 See Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy, Routledge's
ed., p. 507.

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EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

the study of the "human understanding" by the
Isis.

If, now, we turn from Locke to one of his great
successors in the associationist school of psychology
— to John Stuart Mill, whom no one will accuse of
mystical tendencies— to Mill, the disciple of Auguste
Comte, than whom dogmatic materialism never
had a more persuaded exponent — we find, in an
early chapter of his masterpiece, the System of
Logic, the clearest possible demonstration of the
fact that our knowledge of mind is, in reality, as
empirical and inferential as our knowledge of not-
mind. Spencer, as we have seen, held the same
opinion. It appears to me that serious and im
partial students of the more recondite psychic phe
nomena should not be lacking in appreciation of
the fact that the leading thinkers of the school
most opposed to their own in its methods and
traditions and underlying assumptions have united
in asserting that mind, as we know it, is not mind
as it is ; just as the idealists — and, later, the phys
icists — have shown that matter, as known to us,
is not matter as it is.

If the reader is still unconvinced, let him inquire
as to the terms in which we think and speak of
mind. He will discover that they are terms of
matter. With fine confusion — but in support of
my present contention that mind is really unknow
able — we have spiritualists quoting the evidence
of spirit-photographs, thus suggesting that their
conception of spirit is of something that reflects

346

ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE

light. There is little need to labor this truth.
The whole of language is framed for the convenience
of the materialist, and every term in which we
speak of mind is a metaphor from the material.
Compare, for instance, the two meanings of the
word spirit. That the essence of mind is not only
unknowledge, but unthinkable and inexpressible
by language, all languages demonstrate.

But it is evidently not enough to establish the
sceptical or agnostic conclusion, and to rest con
tent therewith. If mind, as known to us, and
matter, as known to us, are only phenomenal ex
pressions of underlying realities, can we say aught
of that which they express? Must we remain
content with a dualism only one whit less unsatis
factory than those of the past? Is there no final
synthesis towards a true monism? The answer is
that mind and matter as we know them, or the
spiritual and the non-spiritual, or that of which
consciousness is the manifestation, and that of
which mud or diamonds or lips or eyes are the
manifestation, are the correlative expressions of
one reality, which has been "nicknamed God"
(as a Roman Catholic priest once said) ; which has
been apotheosized as Nature by the pantheists and
pantheistic poets ; which St. Paul calls unspeakable,
and Spencer named unknowable, but the eternal
existence of which is, in the last resort, our one
indefeasible certainty.

XXXIII

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

THE title of this chapter, as it stands, is plainly a
contradiction in terms. And indeed the term un
knowable, fine though it is, has proved unfortu
nate in that it has led the superficial to twit Spen
cer with self-contradiction in attributing certain
characters to the unknowable, and the malignant
to make inept and impudent criticisms, as that
Spencer desires us all to worship at the shrine of
"XV However, I fancy both Mr. Bradley and
Mr. Frederic Harrison have lived to be ashamed
of themselves for their brilliant efforts in this
direction.

But if, in this chapter, we take as granted the
existence of the unknowable, there arises a sub
lime question. Granted that most of us — to use
the Platonic image — are forever chained upon a
bench which permits us but to gaze upon shadows,
have there ever been, can there ever be, moments
during which the thrice-happy few may turn their
heads and attain a clearer, a transcendental vision
of the transcendent? If, in truth, there be mind
underneath all, and if our minds be indeed frag-

348

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

ments or sparks of the All-Sustaining Mind, may
not it sometimes be granted to the pure in heart
that "they shall see God"?

Let me put the question in the clear words of a
friend :

"You say that reality is, strictly speaking, unknow
able, yet we can infer somewhat of its nature by the be
havior of its appearances! It seems to me that this
should commend itself to everybody, so long as our
ordinary faculties are relied on. But does this inability
to escape beyond the limits of consciousness necessarily
preclude our arriving at reality? What of that higher
consciousness which pantheists possess — that ardor, that
feeling of association with nature and the universe,
often tempered with a deep sense of beauty, which we
meet with in Wordsworth, Shelley, Richard Jeffries, Walt
Whitman, and others ? Does not this consciousness with
in the consciousness lead to reality? Is it too much to
say that reality is limitedly known to the pantheistic
mystic?"

Here, indeed, is a question to be approached
barefooted, lest we be on holy ground. If an
swered at all, it can be only after a serious study of
mysticism in all places and ages — some such study
as Professor Seth's. Thereafter is answer to be
made in general and comprehensive terms by any
student ? or must we make personal experience our
guide ? And if so, what shall those say who have
no such experiences? Are they to explain away,
or to accept, or to withhold judgment? Ere we
continue, let us hear the case as put by Plotinus
the Alexandrian. "The finite, as finite, can never

349

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

know the infinite, because it cannot be the infinite.
The faculty by which the mind divests itself of its
personality is ecstasy, in which, separated from
individual consciousness, it contemplates reality,
becoming absorbed in the infinite intelligence from
which it emanated." Thus Neo-Platonism.

Save once, when the scherzo of the "C Minor
Symphony " passed into the finale, and the heavens
seemed opened, I have never had an ecstasy, and
am therefore negligible. We must inquire of those
who have had experience. One such, who has
suffered greatly, writes to tell me of his case; but,
alas, he speaks of his disillusionment "when reason
returned." With infinite regret, and hope perhaps
not quite extinguished, the student must declare
that, as far as he can see, ecstasy is not the vision
of the soul. For we know ecstasy not merely as
Wordsworth knew it —

"I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts"

—but also as a sad phenomenon of the asylum and
the mind diseased. If the one be a veritable
vision, what of the other? If ecstasy be vision,
what of agony ? Here I leave what is too high for
me.

But whatever be the true answer to these awful
questions, there is more than mere negation for us
to whom the moment of vision, if indeed it be such,
has been denied. Though not illuminati or mystics,

35°

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

we may yet yearn to know reality, and surely some
measure of knowledge may be attained by a study
of scientific truth. At least reality cannot be
inconsistent with its appearances. We must not
follow those whose laughter Solomon has described
as the "crackling of thorns under a pot," and
fancy that the term unknowable excludes the
possibility of all knowledge. To assert the exist
ence of an unknowable is to assert some knowledge
of it.

It is plain that though reality be, strictly speak
ing, unknowable, yet science, which deals with its
appearances, can yet infer from them somewhat of
its nature. If, for instance, science can prove, as
it has conclusively proved, that all phenomena are
inter-related, that in virtue of gravitation, for in
stance, I cannot push this table without affecting
the position of every atom in the universe through
out all coming time, or, as Mr. Francis Thompson
says,

"Thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star,"

then we may surely make the sublime inference
that there are not many realities, but one reality;
or, to adapt in the light of modern knowledge the
words of the Athanasian Creed, not many incom-
prehensibles, but one incomprehensible. The inter
relations of phenomena lead us to the assured in
ference that the noumenon is not many, but one.
We are compelled to believe that there is no con-

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

tradiction in the cosmos ; that there is no fact in
consistent with any other; that just as all the "ele
ments ' ' can be resolved into manifestations of one
truly elementary entity, and just as all forms of
activity — heat, light, electricity, and so forth —
are known to be mutually convertible forms of
energy, so all phenomena, multifarious though
they be, are yet expressions of a supreme unity.
So, as no one accuses the Athanasian Creed of
absurdity because it makes many definite state
ments about Him whom it calls incomprehensible,
we may be spared petty criticism in making this
definite statement about the unknowable (which
we might just as well call the incomprehensible)—
that it is not many, but one.

In the second place, to admit the doctrine of the
conservation of energy is to assert that we may
know the unknowable to be "eternal and un
created"; for these are precisely the qualities
which that doctrine attributes to phenomena. It
is true that the law of the conservation of energy
merely asserts that energy is indestructible, and
that there is no iota of energy which is not, though
apparently new, a transformation of pre-exist ent
energy. The inference that all energy has always
been is not only justifiable and consistent with the
oldest known generalization — ex nihilo nihil fit —
but is, indeed, a truth of the highest certainty,1
since the negation of it is inconceivable. Fur-

1 See chapter xvi., "The Test of Truth."
352

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

ther, the philosophical conception of time renders
meaningless the crude popular notion of creation,
which is merely a pseud-idea. If, then, its phe
nomena are uncreated and eternal, so is reality.
This we may properly predicate of it, though we
continue to call it unknowable.

Hitherto we have not reached any conclusions
that have more than a purely intellectual and im
personal interest. If, indeed, it be possible to as
sert of reality that it is one, uncreated and eternal,
we may be impressed and even awed ; but we have
said nothing that even remotely affects human life
and human action. As I see it, the implacable
fact is that the more poignant and practical the
questions we put, the less certain is the answer.
Thus of these three attributes there can surely be
no question whatever; but henceforth doubt seems
to creep in.

To make any assertion about the unknowable is
surely to assert that it is, in some measure, in
telligible, and therefore in intimate relation with
our intelligences. Is it not, indeed, the "infinite
and eternal energy from which all things pro
ceed " that "wells up in ourselves in the form
of consciousness"? — a belief which seems to im
ply that, at least, the unknowable is semi-intel
ligible or partially knowable. We may conclude,
then, that the eternal is, in a limited sense, intel
ligible.

To assert the existence of mind is surely to assert
that there is an intelligence at the heart of things.

353

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

But here we have reached a new stage in our
speculations. The ideas of unity, intelligibility,
eternity are entirely non - anthropomorphic ; but
the idea of intelligence is as plainly anthropomor
phic — i. e., based upon a human character. Now,
it has been argued by some, including Fiske,1 that
all human thinking must be anthropomorphic ; but
I am unconvinced that there is not here some
confusion as to the meaning of this term. All
human thinking must certainly be human — must
conform to the laws of the human mind; but by
anthropomorphism much more than this is meant.
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human
characters to what is not human; and is as fairly
to be applied to the idea that, say, a worm suffers
pain as we do, as to the stupendous impertinence
that "God made man in his own image." And
there is surely a very sharp and real distinction, as
I have said, between the attribution to the un
knowable of perdurableness, which is not a human
character, and of intelligence, which is. If, then,
we are bound to avoid anthropomorphism con
sistently and without exception, are we to deny
that the Eternal is intelligent? In other words,
are we to regard reality as lower than one of its
manifestations? That would surely be absurd.
That there was a third possibility has been seen
by Herbert Spencer alone. May there not be, he
says, "a mode of being as much transcending in-

» See The Idea of God.
354

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

telligence and will as these transcend mere me
chanical motion?"1 Of all the ideas we owe to
him, this I hold to be supreme.

Hereupon we are faced with the question of
personality. The glibness with which this is dis
cussed and settled must amaze every thoughtful
person. To talk of personality without asking in
what it consists is surely, as Job said, to " darken
counsel by words without knowledge." To as
cribe personality to the Eternal is really no less
anthropomorphic than to talk, with Genesis, of
his hinder parts. Furthermore, it is palpably to
assign a limitation to him and to ignore the wise
counsel, " Enlargissez Dieu." Now, if personality
means anything, it connotes the possession of in
telligence and will, and the answer to the supposed
alternative between attributing to the Eternal either
personality or something lower is the same as the
answer to the question of intelligence — that the
choice is not between the personal and something
lower, but between the personal and something
higher. Form a "clear and distinct idea," in
the Cartesian phrase, of the supra-personal, we
indeed cannot; but that is surely because the un
knowable is unknowable. And in relation to this
question of personality we may remember that it
has always been in losing his personality and its
limitations that the mystic has thought that he has
attained to a vision of the Eternal.

1 1 offer no apology for repeating so soon a saying so splendid.
355

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

If, then, we must apparently deny the validity
of the vision of the soul, can we continue to do
so when the vision of those who have so seen coin
cides with the conclusions reached by reason ? The
mystic and the realist may agree that reality is
one, is eternal, is intelligent, is, at the very least,
intelligible. May not conclusions reached by such
different methods be regarded as valid ?

Indeed, there is a cloud of witnesses. For if the
mystic and the realist can agree that reality is one,
so certainly will the idealist ; and he, too, will regard
It as uncreated and eternal, though he may not go
so far with the Athanasian Creed as to admit that
It is incomprehensible.1 It may surely, then, be
maintained that, even if we question the evidence
of ecstasy, yet witness of so many orders may
be accepted when it teaches that reality, whether
knowable or unknowable, is one — and intelligent,
or, rather, endowed with something that far tran
scends intelligence.

But reader and writer are each keenly aware of a
conceivable attribute of which mention has not
been made, and that is benevolence. Here, indeed,
the witnesses disagree. The majesty of the Atha
nasian Creed is disfigured by its denial of benevo
lence in the awful language of its later clauses.
The idealist inclines to attribute benevolence to the
Eternal ; the scientific realist is inclined to the view

1 The word in the Latin is not incomprehensibilis, but int-
mensus. Immeasurable, however, is almost synonymous with
incomprehensible.

356

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

that when we speak of benevolence we are in the
chains of anthropomorphism. The mystics assure
us that their ecstatic visions show them love as
the supreme attribute of the Supreme. Yet this
question, on which the witnesses differ, is of more
import to us, hearing each other groan, than any
on which they agree. Indeed, while none of the
more or less certain conclusions to which we may
be led by consideration of phenomena and infer
ence from them as to the nature of the unknowable,
are of any appreciable, practical import to us, it
is this last question the answer to which is vital.
From our present point of view no answer is pos
sible, because the question is meaningless, apart
from the fact that it involves a palpably anthro
pomorphic assumption. Furthermore, even the
answers given by philosophers of the past are
meaningless. Leibnitz declared that this was the
best of all possible worlds, not meaning thereby,
as is sometimes thought, that no better could be
conceived, but that the circumstances of existence
did not admit of things being better than they are.
The less ambiguous rendering of his meaning
would be not "the best of all possible worlds," but
"the best world possible." In the light of the
evolutionary explanation of the problem of evil,
even this ceases to have a meaning, for the world is
better now than it was in the time of Leibnitz, and
will assuredly be better yet. As far as I can see,
the answer of the evolutionary philosophy to the
question whether the unknowable is benevolent

357

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

would be that the question itself is now a mean
ingless anachronism.

The critic may say, as I have heard it said, that
the facts we allege of the unknowable — that it is
one, eternal, uncreated, supra-personal, and supra-
intelligent — are of no use to him and can be of
no use to us. They afford no solace, no guidance,
no inspiration. And certainly if he asks whether
what we believe to be our partial knowledge of
that which, in its essence, transcends knowledge,
in any way affects the conduct or the happiness of
the Spencerians, we must answer that it does not.
But we must add that the problem is not to find
something useful or potent or satisfying or solacing,
but to find what is true; and, in our allegiance to
Truth, to refrain from seeking to outstrip her, but
to be content, or, at any rate, willing, merely to
follow wherever she leads.

This, also, we may add. It may appear that
doubt and an assertion of ignorance must mean
mental distress, or, at least, mental unrest; and
certainly the creed which I have tried to present
is no bulwark in the hour of sorrow as is that
which teaches, in glorious imagery, that "under
neath are the Everlasting Arms." On the other
hand, it is still left to us that we may "faintly
trust the larger hope"; and, further, the belief in
the unknowable is not entirely without its own
solace, though we strenuously repudiate the sug
gestion that we believe in it for that reason. It
is immeasurably better than blank materialism;

358

KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNKNOWABLE

not only because philosophic doubt or suspension
of judgment is less unbearable as a mental state
than some suppose, and not even merely because
anything that saves us from dogmatism makes
for intellectual health and a decent humility; not
merely because it leaves us free to dream the most
salutary dream that there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy; but especially because, in leaving us
unbound either by the facile optimism or the
plausible pessimism which, each alike, is an argu
ment against action, it permits us to use our ac
tivities in the practical belief that, even though,
as we suspect, the Eternal is non-moral or supra-
moral, yet evil is not an irreducible or even a
necessary fact of existence. We are still free to
believe, with the immortal Socrates, that to the
wise man no evil can happen. Doubt of any
kind, said Goethe, can be relieved only by action,
and our doubt of the attributes of the unknowable
can thus be practically solved. If it impel to
action, it may be worth more than any positive
belief.

SUBJECT INDEX

ABIOGENESIS, no.
Acquired characters, 124.
Altruism and egoism, 266.
Ancestor- worship, 234.
Animism, 233.
Anthropoid apes, 135.
Antinomies, 214.
Archebiosis, no.
Atoms, 83.
Attention, 192.

BIOMETRY, g8.
Blood test, 137.

CAUSATION universal, 58, 254.

Conduct, the best, 264; defi
nition of, 265.

Conscience, 209, 252.

Conservation, of energy, 5, 39,
51, 182, 328, 352; of matter,
40; of momentum, 73.

DARWIXISMUS, 121.

"Descent of Man," 98.

Determinism, 189; and fatal
ism, 203; and education,
207.

Discontinuous variation, 119.

Dissolution, 301.

Dream theory of origin of re
ligion, 234.

Duck-mole, 26o;earlids, 288 n.

EDUCATION, definition of, 207,
243-

Electrons, 90.

Environment, 97.

Eugenics, 100, 140.

Evolution, abuse of the word,'
6, n ; introduction, 8; an
tiquity of idea, 10; founda
tion of evolutionary philos
ophy, 61; of sex, 259; and
progress, 279.

FREE will, 202.
GAMETES, 118.
HOMOGAMY, 98, 131.

IDEALISM, 254.
Inhibition, 194.
Innate ideas, 211.
Instinct, 187.
Intuitional ethics, 252.

LAW of limit of growth, 157.
Law of multiplication, 293.
Law of segregation, 119.
Life, its definition, 156.

MATERIALISM, 31, 45, 174, 339.
Medicine, origin of, 227.
Metaphysics, 30.
Monotremes, 259.
Moon, origin of, 79.
Morality and religion, 236.
Multiple personality, 171.
Mutation theory, 120.

361

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

NEBULAR theory, 71.
ONTOLOGY, 30.

PANENTHEISM, 15.
Persistence of force, 51.
Phenomena, 37, 317, 333,

34i-

Physiological units, 158.

336,

RADIO-ACTIVITY, 85.
Radium, 86.
Realism, crude, 35.
Reason and will, 199.
Reflex action, 190.
Responsibility of determinism,
189, 208.

SECONDARY sexual characters,
130.

Sexual selection, 98, 129.
Social organism, 26, 225.
Sociology, origin of word,

224.
Space, tridimensional, our idea

of, 217.

Spinthariscope, 85.
Spiral nebula?, 73.
Spontaneous generation, 102.
Stirpiculture, 144.
Subconsciousness, 172.

"TABULA rasa," 212.
Transmission of acquirements,
124, 242.

UNIVERSALISM, 274.
Unknowable, the, 235, 316,331,

348.
Utilitarianism, 263.

INDEX TO NAMES

ARISTOTLE, 30, 315, 322.
Arnold, Matthew, '265.
Athanasius, 15.

BAER, VON, 65.

Bain, Alexander, 199.

Ball. Robert, 79.

Bastian, Dr. Charlton, 107, no.

Bateson, Professor, 117, 120.

Bentham, Jeremy, 263.

Berkeley, Bishop, 48, 322, 329.

Boyle, Robert, 303.

Browning, Robert, 276.

Buckle, 24.

Buffon, Comtc dc, 108.

Burke, Butler, 114.

Byron, 252.

CARLYLE, 17, 57, 305.
Chambers, Robert, 126.
Clerk-Maxwell, 84.
Clifford, Professor W. K.
Comte, Augustc, 60, 95,

Crookes, Sir William, 48, 85.
Curie, Madame, 86.

DALTON, 40, 41.

Darwin, Charles, n, 19, 293,

302.

Erasmus, 123.
George, 71, 78.

O ~ i

Democritus, 322.
Descartes, 186, 191
Drummond, 259.

EMERSON, 19, 254.
Empedocles, 84.

FISK.E, JOHN, 287, 354.

GALTON, FRANCIS, 100, 141.
Gautama, 84.
Gibbon, 235.
Gladstone, 224.
Goethe, 45, 53.

HAECKEL, PROFESSOR, 30, 50,

109, 124, 307.

Hamilton, Sir William, 18 1.
Harrison, Frederic, 89.
Harvey, 103.
Hegel, 39, 56, 181.
Henslow, George, 134 n.
Heraclitus, n, 82, 314.
Howard, Dr. George Elliot, 239.
Hudson, Professor, 7, 245.
Huggins, Sir William, 13, 70,

76.
Huxley, Professor, 9. 10, 19,

46, 50, 282.

IVERACH, PROFESSOR, 25.

JACKSON. HUGHLINGS, 194.
James, William, 199.

KANT, 33, 52, 69, 185, 209,

212, 214, 321.
Kelvin, Lord, 14, 41, 96, 105,

3°3. 3°9-
363

EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY

LAISANT, M., 20.

Lamarck, Jean Baptiste de, 97,

123, 242.
Laplace, 69.
Lavoisier, 40.
Leibnitz, 276, 307.
Lewes, 14.
Lilly, W. S., 265.
Locke, John, 33, 212, 345.
Lotze, 315.
Lucretius, 69.

MAETERLINCK, M., 312.

Mallock, 215.

Malthus, 129, 293.

Maudsley, Dr. Henry, 143.

Mendel, Gregor, 99, 116.

Mcndeleef, 92.

Mcrcier, Dr. Charles, 143.

Meredith, George, 239.

Merz, Dr., 10, 70, 155, 304,

3J3- 3!4-
MetchnikofT, 136.
Mill, John Stuart, 203, 216

218, 346.

Milne-Edwards, Henri, 229.
Morley, John, 17.

NEWMAN, CARDINAL, 183, 307.

Newton, 39.

Nietzsche, 129, 240, 253, 285.

PALEY, 303.

Patmore, Coventry, 259 n.

Pearl, Raymond, 133.

Pearson, Karl, 130.

Perrin, Raymond St. James,

.324-.

Pickering, Professor, 113.
Plato, 321, 329.
Plotinus, 349.
Poincare, 326.

Pope, 275.
Protagoras, 168.

RAMSAY, SIR WILLIAM, 85.
Reid, Archdall, 116.
Rosse, Lord, 74.
Rutherford, Professor, 302.

ST. PAUL, 262, 290.
Salisbury, Marquis of, 127.
Schopenhauer, 205, 208.
Sedgwick, 13.
Shelley, 257.
Sherrington, 192.
Socrates, 23.
Sidgwick, 249.
Simpson, Sir James, 242.
Soddy, Frederick, 85.
Spencer, passim.
Spinoza, 15, 45, 250, 321.
Stewart, Professor, 249.
Sully, James, 10.

TAIT, PROFESSOR, 44.
Tennyson, 292.
Thales, Ionian, 52.
Thomson, Professor, 90.
Tyndall, 17, 105.

VERNON, Dr. H. M., 128.
Virchow, Rudolf, 103.
Vries, Hugo de, 99.

WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL,

84, 126, 138, 293, 306.
Weismann, Auguste, 122, 242.
Weldon, Professor, 131.
Westermarck, Edward, 239.
Wordsworth, 4, 280, 298 -5150
Wandt, Wilhelm, 194.

YOUNG, DR. THOMAS, 39.

THE END

oaleeby, Caleb Williams

Evolution
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