Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

T >> Thomas H. Huxley >> Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays

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Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society
depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal
thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm and to set man to
subdue nature to his higher ends; but I venture to think that the
great intellectual difference between the ancient times with which we
have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid foundation we have
acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain
measure of success.

The history of civilization details the steps by which men have
succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos.
Fragile reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed:
[Note 22] there lies within him a fund of energy operating
intelligently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe,
that it is competent [84] to influence and modify the cosmic process.
In virtue of his intelligence, the dwarf bends the Titan to his will.
In every family, in every polity that has been established, the cosmic
process in man has been restrained and otherwise modified by law and
custom; in surrounding nature, it has been similarly influenced by the
art of the shepherd, the agriculturist, the artisan. As civilization
has advanced, so has the extent of this interference increased; until
the organized and highly developed sciences and arts of the present
day have endowed man with a command over the course of non-human
nature greater than that once attributed to the magicians. The most
impressive, I might say startling, of these changes have been brought
about in the course of the last two centuries; while a right
comprehension of the process of life and of the means of influencing
its manifestations is only just dawning upon us. We do not yet see
our way beyond generalities; and we are befogged by the obtrusion of
false analogies and crude anticipations. But Astronomy, Physics,
Chemistry, have all had to pass through similar phases, before they
reached the stage at which their influence became an important factor
in human affairs. Physiology, Psychology, Ethics, Political Science,
must submit to the same ordeal. Yet it seems to me irrational to doubt
that, at no distant period, they will work as great a revolution in
the sphere of practice.

[85] The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations.
If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet,
some time, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be
commenced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the
suggestion that the power and the intelligence of man can ever arrest
the procession of the great year.

Moreover, the cosmic nature born with us and, to a large extent,
necessary for our maintenance, is the outcome of millions of years of
severe training, and it would be folly to imagine that a few centuries
will suffice to subdue its masterfulness to purely ethical ends.
Ethical nature may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious and
powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. But, on the other hand, I
see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided by
sound principles of investigation, and organized in common effort, may
modify the conditions of existence, for a period longer than that now
covered by history. And much may be done to change the nature of man
himself. [Note 23] The intelligence which has converted the brother of
the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to
do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized
men.

But if we may permit ourselves at larger hope of abatement of the
essential evil of the world than was possible to those who, in the
infancy of [86] exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence more
than a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condition of the
realization of that hope that we should cast aside the notion that the
escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object of life.

We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our race, when
good and evil could be met with the same "frolic welcome;" the
attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in
flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the
youthful overconfidence and the no less youthful discouragement of
nonage. We are grown men, and must play the man

"...strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,"

cherishing the good that falls in our way, and bearing the evil, in
and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So far, we all
may strive in one faith towards one hope:

"... It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

... but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done." [Note 24]

[187]

NOTES.

Note 1 (p. 49).

I have been careful to speak of the "appearance" of cyclical evolution
presented by living things; for, on critical examination, it will be
found that the course of vegetable and of animal life is not exactly
represented by, the figure of a cycle which returns into itself. What
actually happens, in all but the lowest organisms, is that one part of
the growing germ (A) gives rise to tissues and organs; while another
part (B) remains in its primitive condition, or is but slightly
modified. The moiety A becomes the body of the adult and, sooner or
later, perishes, while portions of the moiety B are detached and, as
offspring, continue the life of the species. Thus, if we trace back
an organism along the direct line of descent from its remotest
ancestor, B, as a whole, has never suffered death; portions of it,
only, have been cast off and died in each individual offspring.

Everybody is familiar with the way in which the "suckers" of a
strawberry plant behave. A thin cylinder of living tissue keeps on
growing at its free end, until it attains a considerable length. At
[88] successive intervals, it develops buds which grow into strawberry
plants; and these become independent by the death of the parts of the
sucker which connect them. The rest of the sucker, however, may go on
living and growing indefinitely, and, circumstances remaining
favourable, there is no obvious reason why it should ever die. The
living substance B, in a manner, answers to the sucker. If we could
restore the continuity which was once possessed by the portions of B,
contained in all the individuals of a direct line of descent, they
would form a sucker, or stolon, on which these individuals would be
strung, and which would never have wholly died.

A species remains unchanged so long as the potentiality of development
resident in B remains unaltered; so long, e.g., as the buds of the
strawberry sucker tend to become typical strawberry plants. In the case
of the progressive evolution of a species, the developmental
potentiality of B becomes of a higher and higher order. In
retrogressive evolution, the contrary would be the case. The phenomena
of atavism seem to show that retrogressive evolution that is, the
return of a species to one or other of its earlier forms, is a
possibility to be reckoned with. The simplification of structure,
which is so common in the parasitic members of a group, however, does
not properly come under this head. The worm-like, limbless Lernoea has
no resemblance to any of the stages of development of the many-limbed
active animals of the group to which it belongs. [89] Note 2 (p. 49).

Heracleitus says,[Greek phrase Potamo gar ouk esti dis embenai to suto]
but, to be strictly accurate, the river remains, though the water of
which it is composed changes--just as a man retains his identity
though the whole substance of his body is constantly shifting.

This is put very well by Seneca (Ep. lvii. i. 20, Ed. Ruhkopf):
"Corpora nostra rapiuntur fluminum more, quidquid vides currit cum
tempore; nihil ex his quae videmus manet. Ego ipse dum loquor mutari
ista, mutatus sum. Hoc est quod ait Heraclitus 'In idem flumen bis non
descendimus.' Manet idem fluminis nomen, aqua transmissa est. Hoc in
amne manifestius est quam in homine, sed nos quoque non minus velox
cursus praetervehit."

Note 3 (p. 55).

"Multa bona nostra nobis nocent, timoris enim tormentum memorin
reducit, providentia anticipat. Nemo tantum praesentibus miser est."
(Seneca, Ed. v. 7.)

Among the many wise and weighty aphorisms of the Roman Bacon, few sound
the realities of life more deeply than "Multa bona nostra nobis
nocent." If there is a soul of good in things evil, it is at least
equally true that there is a soul of evil in things good: for things,
like men, have "les defauts de leurs qualites." It is one of the last
lessons one learns from experience, but not the least important, that
a [90] heavy tax is levied upon all forms of success, and that failure
is one of the commonest disguises assumed by blessings.

Note 4 (p. 60).

"There is within the body of every man a soul which, at the death of
the body, flies away from it like a bird out of a cage, and enters
upon a new life ... either in one of the heavens or one of the hells
or on this earth. The only exception is the rare case of a man having
in this life acquired a true knowledge of God. According to the
pre-Buddhistic theory, the soul of such a man goes along the path of
the Gods to God, and, being united with Him, enters upon an immortal
life in which his individuality is not extinguished. In the latter
theory his soul is directly absorbed into the Great Soul, is lost in
it, and has no longer any independent existence. The souls of all
other men enter, after the death of the body, upon a new existence in
one or other of the many different modes of being. If in heaven or
hell, the soul itself becomes a god or demon without entering a body;
all superhuman beings, save the great gods, being looked upon as not
eternal, but merely temporary creatures. If the soul returns to earth
it may or may not enter a new body; and this either of a human being,
an animal, a plant, or even a material object. For all these are
possessed of souls, and there is no essential difference between these
souls and the souls of men--all being alike mere sparks of the Great
Spirit, who is [91] the only real existence." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert
Lectures, 1881, p. 83.)

For what I have said about Indian Philosophy, I am particularly
indebted to the luminous exposition of primitive Buddhism and its
relations to earlier Hindu thought, which is given by Prof. Rhys
Davids in his remarkable Hibbert Lectures for 1881, and Buddhism
(1890). The only apology I can offer for the freedom with which I have
borrowed from him in these notes, is my desire to leave no doubt as to
my indebtedness. I have also found Dr. Oldenberg's Buddha (Ed. 2,
1890) very helpful. The origin of the theory of transmigration stated
in the above extract is an unsolved problem. That it differs widely
from the Egyptian metempsychosis is clear. In fact, since men usually
people the other world with phantoms of this, the Egyptian doctrine
would seem to presuppose the Indian as a more archaic belief.

Prof. Rhys Davids has fully insisted upon the ethical importance of
the transmigration theory. "One of the latest speculations now being
put forward among ourselves would seek to explain each man's
character, and even his outward condition in life, by the character he
inherited from his ancestors, a character gradually formed during a
practically endless series of past existences, modified only by the
conditions into which he was born, those very conditions being also,
in like manner, the last result of a practically endless series of
past causes. Gotama's; speculation might be stated in the same words.
But it attempted also to explain, in a way different from [92] that
which would be adopted by the exponents of the modern theory, that
strange problem which it is also the motive of the wonderful drama of
the book of Job to explain--the fact that the actual distribution here
of good fortune, or misery, is entirely independent of the moral
qualities which men call good or bad. We cannot wonder that a teacher,
whose whole system was so essentially an ethical reformation, should
have felt it incumbent upon him to seek an explanation of this
apparent injustice. And all the more so, since the belief he had
inherited, the theory of the transmigration of souls, had provided a
solution perfectly sufficient to any one who could accept that
belief." (Hibbert Lectures, p. 93.) I should venture to suggest the
substitution of "largely" for "entirely" in the foregoing passage.
Whether a ship makes a good or a bad voyage is largely independent of
the conduct of the captain, but it is largely affected by that
conduct. Though powerless before a hurricane he may weather a bad
gale.

Note 5 (P. 61).

The outward condition of the soul is, in each new birth, determined by
its actions in a previous birth; but by each action in succession, and
not by the balance struck after the evil has been reckoned off against
the good. A good man who has once uttered a slander may spend a
hundred thousand years as a god, in consequence of his goodness, and
when the power of his good actions is exhausted, may be born [93] as a
dumb man on account of his transgression; and a robber who has once
done an act of mercy, may come to life in a king's body as the result
of his virtue, and then suffer torments for ages in hell or as a ghost
without a body, or be re-born many times as a slave or an outcast, in
consequence of his evil life.

"There is no escape, according to this theory, from the result of any
act; though it is only the consequences of its own acts that each soul
has to endure. The force has been set in motion by itself and can
never stop; and its effect can never be foretold. If evil, it can
never be modified or prevented, for it depends on a cause already
completed, that is now for ever beyond the soul's control. There is
even no continuing consciousness, no memory of the past that could
guide the soul to any knowledge of its fate. The only advantage open
to it is to add in this life to the sum of its good actions, that it
may bear fruit with the rest. And even this can only happen in some
future life under essentially them same conditions as the present one:
subject, like the present one, to old age, decay, and death; and
affording opportunity, like the present one, for the commission of
errors, ignorances, or sins, which in their turn must inevitably
produce their due effect of sickness, disability, or woe. Thus is the
soul tossed about from life to life, from billow to billow in the
great ocean of transmigration. And there is no escape save for the
very few, who, during their birth as men, attain to a right knowledge
of the Great Spirit: and thus enter into immortality, or, as the later
[94] philosophers taught, are absorbed into the Divine Essence." (Rhys
Davids, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 85, 86.)

The state after death thus imagined by the Hindu philosophers has a
certain analogy to the purgatory of the Roman Church; except that
escape from it is dependent, not on a divine decree modified, it may
be, by sacerdotal or saintly intercession, but by the acts of the
individual himself; and that while ultimate emergence into heavenly
bliss of the good, or well-prayed for, Catholic is professedly
assured, the chances in favour of the attainment of absorption, or of
Nirvana, by any individual Hindu are extremely small.

Note 6 (P. 62).

"That part of the then prevalent transmigration theory which could not
be proved false seemed to meet a deeply felt necessity, seemed to
supply a moral cause which would explain the unequal distribution here
of happiness or woe, so utterly inconsistent with the present
characters of men." Gautama "still therefore talked of men's previous
existence, but by no means in the way that he is generally represented
to have done." What he taught was "the transmigration of character."
He held that after the death of any being, whether human or not, there
survived nothing at all but that being's "Karma," the result, that is,
of its mental and bodily actions. Every individual, whether human or
divine, was the last inheritor and the last result of the Karma of a
long series of past individuals--"a series [95] so long that its
beginning is beyond the reach of calculation, and its end will be
coincident with the destruction of the world." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert
Lectures, p. 92.)

In the theory of evolution, the tendency of a germ to develop according
to a certain specific type, e.g. of the kidney bean seed to grow into
a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus vulgaris, is its
"Karma." It is the "last inheritor and the last result" of all the
conditions that have affected a line of ancestry which goes back for
many millions of years to the time when life first appeared on the
earth. The moiety B of the substance of the bean plant (see Note 1) is
the last link in a once continuous chain extending from the primitive
living substance: and the characters of the successive species to
which it has given rise are the manifestations of its gradually
modified Karma. As Prof. Rhys Davids aptly says, the snowdrop "is a
snowdrop and not an oak, and just that kind of snowdrop, because it is
the outcome of the Karma of an endless series of past existences."
(Hibbert Lectures, p. 114.)

Note 7 (p. 64).

"It is interesting to notice that the very point which is the weakness
of the theory--the supposed concentration of the effect of the Karma
in one new being--presented itself to the early Buddhists themselves
as a difficulty. They avoided it, partly by explaining that it was a
particular thirst in the creature dying (a craving, Tanha, which plays
other [96] wise a great part in the Buddhist theory) which actually
caused the birth of the new individual who was to inherit the Karma of
the former one. But, how this too place, how the craving desire
produced this effect, was acknowledged to be a mystery patent only to
a Buddha." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, P. 95.)

Among the many parallelisms of Stoicism and Buddhism, it is curious to
find one for this Tanha, "thirst," or "craving desire" for life.
Seneca writes (Epist. lxxvi. 18): "Si enim ullum aliud est bonum quam
honestum, sequetur nos aviditas vitae aviditas rerum vitam
instruentium: quod est intolerabile infinitum, vagum."

Note 8 (P. 66).

"The distinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was that it started a
new line, that it looked upon the deepest questions men have to solve
from an entirely different standpoint. It swept away from the field of
its vision the whole of the great soul theory which had hitherto so
completely filled and dominated the minds of the superstitious and the
thoughtful alike. For the first time in the history of the world, it
proclaimed a salvation which each man could gain for himself and by
himself, in this world, during this life, without any the least
reference to God, or to Gods, either great or small. Like the
Upanishads, it placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no
longer a knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real
nature, as [97] they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it added
to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of purity, of courtesy,
of uprightness, of peace and of a universal love far reaching, grown
great and beyond measure." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 29.)

The contemporary Greek philosophy takes an analogous direction.
According to Heracleitus, the universe was made neither by Gods nor
men; but, from all eternity, has been, and to all eternity, will be,
immortal fire, glowing and fading in due measure. (Mullach, Heracliti
Fragmenta, 27.) And the part assigned by his successors, the Stoics,
to the knowledge and the volition of the "wise man" made their
Divinity (for logical thinkers) a subject for compliments, rather than
a power to be reckoned with. In Hindu speculation the "Arahat," still
more the "Buddha," becomes the superior of Brahma; the stoical "wise
man" is, at least, the equal of Zeus.

Berkeley affirms over and over again that no idea can be formed of a
soul or spirit--"If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here
delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can form any idea of
power or active being; and whether he hath ideas of two principal
powers marked by the names of will and understanding distinct from
each other, as well as from a third idea of substance or being in
general, with a relative notion of its supporting or being the subject
of the aforesaid power, which is signified by the name soul or spirit.
This is what some hold but, so far as I can see, the words will, soul,
spirit, do not stand for different ideas or, in truth, for any idea at
all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which,
being an agent, cannot be like unto or represented by Any idea
whatever [though it must be owned at the same time, that we have some
notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as
willing, loving, hating, inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning
of these words". (The Principles of Human Knowledge, lxxvi. See also
sections lxxxix., cxxxv., cxlv.)

It is open to discussion, I think, whether it is possible to have
"some notion" of that of which we can form no "idea."

Berkeley attaches several predicates to the "perceiving active being
mind, spirit, soul or myself" (Parts I. II.) It is said, for example,
to be "indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, and incorruptible." The
predicate indivisible, though negative in form, has highly positive
consequences. For, if "perceiving active being" is strictly
indivisible, man's soul must be one with the Divine spirit: which is
good Hindu or Stoical doctrine, but hardly orthodox Christian
philosophy. If, on the other hand, the "substance" of active
perceiving "being" is actually divided into the one Divine and
innumerable human entities, how can the predicate "indivisible" be
rigorously applicable to it?

Taking the words cited, as they stand, the amount to the denial of the
possibility of any knowledge of substance. "Matter" having been
resolved into mere affections of "spirit", "spirit" melts away into an
admittedly inconceivable and unknowable [99] hypostasis of thought and
power--consequently the existence of anything in the universe beyond a
flow of phenomena is a purely hypothetical assumption. Indeed a
pyrrhonist might raise the objection that if "esse" is "percipi"
spirit itself can have no existence except as a perception,
hypostatized into a "self," or as a perception of some other spirit.
In the former case, objective reality vanishes; in the latter, there
would seem to be the need of an infinite series of spirits each
perceiving the others.

It is curious to observe how very closely the phraseology of Berkeley
sometimes approaches that of the Stoics: thus (cxlviii.) "It seems to
be a general pretence of the unthinking herd that they cannot see God.
. . But, alas, we need only open our eyes to see the Sovereign Lord of
all things with a more full and clear view, than we do any of our
fellow-creatures . . . we do at all times and in all places perceive
manifest tokens of the Divinity: everything we see, hear, feel, or any
wise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect of the power of God" .
. . cxlix. "It is therefore plain, that nothing can be more evident to
any one that is capable of the least reflection, than the existence of
God, or a spirit who is intimately present to our minds, producing in
them all that variety of ideas or sensations which continually affect
us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short, in
whom we live and move and have our being." cl. "[But you will say hath
Nature no share in the production of natural things, and must they all
be ascribed to the immediate and sole operation of God? ... if by
Nature is [100] meant some being distinct from God, as well as from
the laws of nature and things perceived by sense, I must confess that
word is to me an empty sound, without any intelligible meaning annexed
to it.] Nature in this acceptation is a vain Chimaera introduced by
those heathens, who had not just notions of the omnipresence and
infinite perfection of God."

Compare Seneca (De Beneficiis, iv. 7):

"Natura, inquit, haec mihi praestat. Non intelligis te, quum hoc
dicis, mutare Nomen Deo? Quid enim est aliud Natura quam Deus, et
divina ratio, toti mundo et partibus ejus inserta? Quoties voles tibi
licet aliter hunc auctorem rerum nostrarum compellare, et Jovem illum
optimum et maximum rite dices, et tonantem, et statorem: qui non, ut
historici tradiderunt, ex eo quod post votum susceptum acies Romanorum
fugientum stetit, sed quod stant beneficio ejus omnina, stator,
stabilitorque est: hunc eundem et fatum si dixeris, non mentieris, nam
quum fatum nihil aliud est, quam series implexa causarum, ille est
prima omnium causa, ea qua caeterae pendent." It would appear,
therefore, that the good Bishop is somewhat hard upon the "heathen,"
of whose words his own might be a paraphrase.

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