Naturalism And Religion Part 4

Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.

(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be accepted as "given." If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import.

They become a strictly united system of _means_. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and "beginning,"

to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself.

The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the "endeavour after end and aim," the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only a.s.sumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences-that is, the world as we know it-can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both a.s.sumptions are not only possible, but necessary.

In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and a.s.sociated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.

CHAPTER IV. DARWINISM IN GENERAL.

Darwinism, which was originally a technical theory of the biological schools, has long since become a veritable tangle of the most diverse problems and opinions, and seems to press hardly upon the religious conception of the world from many different sides. In its theory of blind "natural selection" and the fortuitous play of the factors in the struggle for existence, it appears to surrender the whole of this wonderful world of life to the rough and ready grip of a process without method or plan.

In the general theory of evolution and the doctrine of the descent of even the highest from the lowest, it seems to take away all special dignity from the human mind and spirit, all the freedom and all the n.o.bility of pure reason and free will; it seems to reduce the higher products of religion, morality, poetry, and the aesthetic sense to the level of an ign.o.ble tumult of animal impulses, desires and sensations. Purely speculative questions relative to the evolution theory, psychological and metaphysical, logical and epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, and finally even historical and politico-economical questions have been drawn into the coil, and usually receive from the Darwinians an answer at once robust and self-a.s.sured. A zoological theory seems suddenly to have thrown light and intelligibility into the most diverse provinces of knowledge.

But in point of fact it can be shown that Darwinism has not really done this and cannot do it. It leaves unaffected the problem of the mind with its peculiar and underivable laws, from the logical to the ethical.

Whether it be right or wrong in its physiological theories, its genealogical trees and fortuitous factors, preoccupation with this theory is a task of the second order. Nevertheless it is necessary to study it, because the chief objections to the religious interpretation of the world have come from it.

The Development of Darwinism.

In studying it we should like to follow a method somewhat different from that usually observed in apologetic writings. "Darwinism," even in its technical, biological form, never was quite, and is to-day not at all a unified and consistent system. It has been modified in so many ways and presented in such different colours, that we must either refrain altogether from attempting to get into close quarters with it, or we must make ourselves acquainted to some extent with the phases of the theory as it has gradually developed up to the present day. This is the more necessary and useful since it is precisely within the circle of technical experts that revolts from and criticisms of the Darwinian theory have in recent years arisen; and these are so incisive, so varied, and so instructive, that through them we can adjust our standpoint in relation to the theory better than in any other way. And in thus letting the biologists speak for themselves, we are spared the fatal task of entering into the discussion of questions belonging to a region outside our own particular studies.

We cannot, however, give more than a short sketch. But even such a sketch may do more towards giving us a general knowledge of the question and showing us a way out of the difficulties it raises than any of the current "refutations." To supplement this sketch, and facilitate a thorough understanding of the problem, we shall give somewhat fuller references than are usual to the relevant literature. And the same method will be pursued in the following chapter, which deals with the mechanical theory of life. This method throws more upon the reader, but it is probably the most satisfactory one for the serious student.

The reactions from the Darwinism of the schools which we have just referred to, and to which the second half of this chapter is devoted, are, of course, of a purely scientific kind. And while we are devoting our attention to them, we must not be unfaithful to the canon laid down in the previous chapter, namely that with reference to the question of teleology in the religious sense no real answer can be looked for from scientific study, not even if it be anti-Darwinian. In this case, too, it is impossible to read the convictions and intuitions of the religious conception of the world out of a scientific study of nature: they precede it. But here, too, we may find some accessory support and indirect corroboration more or less strong and secure. This may be ill.u.s.trated by a single example. It will be shown that, on closer study, it is not impossible to subordinate even the apparently confused tangle of naturalistic factors of evolution which are summed up in the phrase "struggle for existence" to interpretation from the religious point of view. But matters will be in quite a different position if the whole theory collapses, and instead of evolution and its paths being given over to confusion and chance, it appears that from the very beginning and at every point there is a predetermination of fixed and inevitable lines along and up which it must advance. In many other connections considerations of a like nature will reveal themselves to us in the course of our study.

Darwinism, as popularly understood, is the theory that "men are descended from monkeys," and in general that the higher forms of life are descended from the lower, and it is regarded as Darwin's epoch-making work and his chief merit-or fault according to the point of view-that he established the Theory of Descent. This is only half correct, and it leaves out the real point of Darwinism altogether. The Theory of Descent had its way prepared by the evolutionist ideas and the speculative nature-philosophy of Goethe, Sch.e.l.ling, Hegel and Oken; by the suggestions and glimmerings of the nature-mysticism of the romanticists; by the results of comparative anatomy and physiology; was already hinted at, at least as far as derivation of species was concerned, in the works of Linne himself; was worked out in the "zoological philosophies," by the elder Darwin, by Lamarck, Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Buffon; was in the field long before Charles Darwin's time; was already in active conflict with the antagonistic theory of the "constancy of species," and had its more or less decided adherents. Yet undoubtedly it was through and after Darwin that the theory grew so much more powerful and gained general acceptance.

Darwinism and Teleology.

But the essential and most characteristic importance of Darwin and his work, the reason for which he was called the Newton of biology, and which makes Darwinism at once interesting and dangerous to the religious conception of the world, is something quite special and new. It is its radical opposition to teleology. Du Bois-Reymond, in his witty lecture "Darwin versus Galiani,"(4) explains the gist of the matter. "Les des de la nature sont pipes" (nature's dice are loaded). Nature is almost always throwing aces. She brings forth not what is meaningless and purposeless, but in great preponderance what is full of meaning and purpose. What "loaded" her dice like this? Even if the theory of descent be true, in what way does it directly help the purely scientific interpretation of the world? Would not this evolution from the lowest to the highest simply be a series of the most astonis.h.i.+ng lucky throws of the dice by which in perplexing "endeavour after an aim," the increasingly perfect, and ultimately the most perfect is produced? And, on the other hand, every individual organism, from the Amba up to the most complex vertebrate, is, in its structure, its form, its functions, a stupendous marvel of adaptation to its end and of co-ordination of the parts to the whole, and of the whole and its parts to the functions of the organism, the functions of nutrition, self-maintenance, reproduction, maintenance of the species, and so on. How account for the adaptiveness, both general and special, without _causae finales_, without intention and purposes, without guidance towards a conscious aim? How can it be explained as the necessary result solely of _causae efficientes_, of blindly working causes without a definite aim? Darwinism attempts to answer this question. And its answer is: "What appears to us 'purposeful' and 'perfect' is in truth only the manifold adaptation of the forms of life to the conditions of their existence. And this adaptation is brought about solely by means of these conditions themselves. Without choice, without aim, without conscious purpose nature offers a wealth of possibilities. The conditions of existence act as a sieve. What chances to correspond to them maintains itself, gliding through the meshes of the sieve, what does not perishes."

It is an old idea of the naturalistic philosophies, dating from Empedocles, which Darwin worked up into the theory of "natural selection"

through "the survival of the fittest" "in the struggle for existence." Of course the a.s.sumption necessary to his idea is that the forms of life are capable of variation, and of continually offering in ceaseless flux new properties and characters to the sieve of selection, and of being raised thereby from the originally h.o.m.ogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher. This is the theory of descent, and it is, of course, an essential part and the very foundation of Darwin's theory. But it is _the doctrine of descent based upon natural selection_ that is Darwinism itself.

The Characteristic Features of Darwinism.

We do not propose to expound the Darwinian theory for the hundredth time; a knowledge of it must be taken for granted. We need only briefly call to mind the characteristic features and catchwords of the theory as Darwin founded it, which have also been the starting points of subsequent modifications and controversies.

All living creatures are bound together in genetic solidarity. Everything has evolved through endless deviations, gradations, and differentiations, but at the same time by a perfectly continuous process. Variation continually produced a crop of heterogeneous novelties. The struggle for existence sifted these out. Heredity fixed and established them. Without method or plan variations continue to occur (indefinite variations). They manifest themselves in all manner of minute changes ("fluctuating"

variations). Every part, every function of an organism may be subject individually to variation and selection. The world is strictly governed by what is useful. The whole organisation as well as the individual organs and functions bear the stamp of utility, at least, they must bear it if the theory is correct. In the general continuity the transitions are always easy; there are no fundamentally distinct "types," architectural plans, or groups of forms. Where gaps yawn the intermediate links have gone amissing. There is no fundamental difference between _genus_, _species_, and _variety_. Even the most complicated organ such as the eye, the most puzzling function such as the instinct of the bee, may be explained as the outcome of many more primitive stages.

The chief evidences of the theory of descent are to be found in h.o.m.ologies, in the correspondences of organs and functions, as revealed by comparative anatomy and physiology, in the recapitulation revealed by embryology, in the structure of parasites, in rudimentary organs and reversions to earlier stages, in the distribution of animals and plants, and in the possibility of still transforming, at least to a slight extent, one species into another, by experimental breeding.

Transformation and differentiation go on in nature as a vast, ceaseless, but blind process of selection. In artificial selection evolution is secured by choosing the most fit for breeding purposes; so it is secured in natural selection by the favouring and survival of those forms which are the most fit among the many unfit or less fit, which happened to be exposed to the struggle for existence, that is, to the compet.i.tion for the means of subsistence, to the struggle with enemies, to hostile environment, and to dangers of every kind. The adaptation thus brought about is of a purely "pa.s.sive" kind. The variations arise fortuitously out of the organism, and present themselves for selection in the struggle for existence; they are not actively acquired by means of the struggle. The secondary factors of evolution recognised are: correlation in the growth and in the development of parts, the origin of new characters through use, their disappearance through disuse (Lamarck), the transmission of characters thus acquired, the influence of environment and s.e.xual selection.(5)

The Darwinian theory, the interpretation of the teleological in the animate world by means of the theory of descent based upon natural selection, entered like a ferment into the scientific thought-movement, and in a s.p.a.ce of forty years it has itself pa.s.sed through a series of stages, differentiations, and transformations which have in part resulted in the present state of the theory, and have in part antic.i.p.ated it. These are represented by the names of workers belonging to a generation which has for the most part already pa.s.sed away: Darwin's collaborateurs, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently and simultaneously expounded the theory of natural selection, Haeckel and Fritz Muller, Nageli and Askenasy, von Kolliker, Mivart, Romanes and others. The differentiation and elaboration of Darwin's theories has gone ever farther and farther; the grades and shades of doctrine held by his disciples are now almost beyond reckoning.

Various Forms of Darwinism.

The great majority of these express what may be called popular Darwinism ["Darwinismus vulgaris"], theoretically worthless, but practically possessed of great powers of attraction and propagandism. It expresses in the main a conviction, usually left unexplained, that everything "happens naturally," that man is really descended from monkeys, and that life has "evolved from lower stages" of itself, that dualism is wrong, and that monism is the truth. It is exactly the standpoint of the popular naturalism we have already described, which here mingles unsuspectingly and without scruple Lamarckian and other principles with the Darwinian, which is enthusiastic on the one hand over the "purely mechanical"

interpretation of nature, and on the other drags in directly psychical motives, unconscious consciousness, impulses, spontaneous self-differentiation of organisms, which nevertheless adheres to "monism"

and possibly even professes to share Goethe's conception of nature!

Above this stratum we come to that of the real experts, the only one which concerns us in the least. Here too we find an ever-growing distance between divergent views, the most manifold differences amounting sometimes to mutual exclusion. These differences occur even with reference to the fundamental doctrine generally adhered to, the doctrine of descent. To one party it is a proved fact, to another a probable, scientific working hypothesis, to a third a "rescuing plank." One party is always finding fresh corroborations, another new difficulties. And within the same group we find the contrasts of believers in monophyletic and believers in polyphyletic evolution, the mechanists and the half-confessed or thoroughgoing vitalists, the preformationists and the believers in epigenesis. Opinions differ even more widely in regard to the _role_ of the "struggle for existence" in the production of species. On the one hand we have the Darwinism of Darwin freed from inconsequent additions and formulated as orthodox "neo-Darwinism"; on the other hand we have heterodox Lamarckism. The "all-sufficiency" of natural selection is proclaimed by some, its impotence by others. Indefinite variation is opposed by orthogenesis, fluctuating variation by saltatory mutation (Halmatogenesis in "Greek"), pa.s.sive adaptation by the spontaneous activity and self-regulation of the living organism. The struggle for existence is variously regarded as the chief factor, or as a co-operating factor, or as an indifferent, or even an inimical factor in the origination of new species.

And among the representatives of these different standpoints there are most interesting personal differences: in some, like Weismann, we find a great loyalty to, and persistence in the position once arrived at, in others the most surprising transitions and changes of opinion. Thus Fleischmann, a pupil of Selenka's, after ill.u.s.trating during many years of personal research the orthodox Darwinian standpoint, finally developed into an outspoken opponent not only of the theory of selection but of the doctrine of descent. So also Friedmann.(6) Driesch started from the mechanical theory of life and advanced through the connected series of his own biological essays to vitalism. Romanes, a prominent disciple of Darwin, ended in Christian theism, and Wallace, the discoverer of "the struggle for existence," landed in spiritualism.

Nothing like an exhaustive view of the present state of Darwinism and its many champions can here be attempted. But it will be necessary to get to know what we may call its possibilities by a study of typical and leading examples. In the course of our study many of the problems to which the theory gives rise will reveal themselves, and their orientation will be possible.

This task falls naturally into two subdivisions: (1) the present state of the theory of Evolution and Descent, and how far the religious conception of the world is or is not affected by it; (2) the truth as to the originative and directive factors of Evolution, especially as to "natural selection in the struggle for existence," whether they are tenable and sufficient, and what att.i.tude religion must take towards them. These two problems must be kept distinct throughout, and must be discussed in order.

For the validity of what is characteristically _Darwinism_ is in no way decided by proving descent and evolution, although it appears so in most popular expositions.(7)

The Theory of Descent.

Again and again we hear and read, even in scientific circles and journals, that Darwinism breaks down at many points, that it is insufficient, and even that it has quite collapsed. Even the a.s.surances of its most convinced champions are rather forced, and are somewhat suggestive of bills payable in the future.(8) But here again it is obvious that we must distinguish clearly between the Theory of Descent and Darwinism. Of the Theory of Descent it is by no means true that it has "broken down." With a slight exaggeration, but on the whole with justice, Weismann has a.s.serted that the Theory of Descent is to-day a "generally accepted truth." Even Weismann's most p.r.o.nounced opponents, such as Eimer, Wolff, Reinke, and others, are at one with him in this, that there has been evolution in some form; that there has been a progressive transformation of species; that there is real (not merely ideal) relations.h.i.+p or affiliation connecting our modern forms of life, up to and including man, with the lower and lowest forms of bygone aeons.

The evidences are the same as those adduced by Darwin and before his time, but they have been multiplied and more sharply defined:-namely, that the forms of life can be arranged in an ascending scale of evolution, both in their morphological and their physiological aspects, both as regards the general type and the differentiation of individual organs and particular characters, bodily and mental. All the rubrics used by Darwin in this connection, from comparative anatomy, from the palaeontological record itself, and so on, have been filled out with ever-increasing detail.

Palaeontology, in particular, is continually furnis.h.i.+ng new ill.u.s.trations of descent and new evidence of its probability, more telling perhaps in respect of general features and particular groups than in regard to the historical process in detail. For certain species and genera palaeontology discloses the primitive forms, discovers "synthetic types" which were the starting-point for diverging branches of evolution, bridges over or narrows the yawning gulfs in evolution by the discovery of "intermediate forms"; and, in the case of certain species, furnishes complete genealogical trees. The same holds true of the facts of comparative anatomy, embryology, and so on. In all detailed investigations into an animal type, in the study of the structure, functions, or the instincts of an ant, or of a whale or of a tape-worm, the standpoint of the theory of descent is a.s.sumed, and it proves a useful clue for further investigation.

In regard to man-so we are a.s.sured-the theory finds confirmation through the discovery of the Neanderthal, Spy, Schipka, La Naulette skulls and bones-the remains of a prehistoric human race, with "pithecoid" (ape-like) characters. And the theory reaches its climax in Dubois' discovery of the remains of "Pithecanthropus," the upright ape-man, in Java, 1891-92, the long sought-for Missing Link between animals and man;(9) and in the still more recent proofs of "affinity of blood" between man and ape, furnished by experiments in transfusion. Friedenthal has revived the older experiments of transfusing the blood of one animal into another, the blood of an animal of one species into that of another, of related species into related species, more remote into more remote, and finally even from animals into man. The further apart the two species are, the more different are the physiological characters of the blood, and the more difficult does a mingling of the two become. Blood of a too distantly related form does not unite with that of the animal into which it is transfused, but the red corpuscles of the former are destroyed by the serum of the latter, break up and are eliminated. In nearly related species or races, however, the two kinds of blood unite, as in the case of horse and a.s.s, or of hare and rabbit. Human blood serum behaves in a hostile fas.h.i.+on to the blood of eel, pigeon, horse, dog, cat, and even to that of Lemuroids, or that of the more remotely related "non-anthropoid"

monkey; human blood transfused from a negro into a white unites readily, as does also that of orang-utan transfused into a gibbon. But human blood also unites without any breaking-up or disturbance with the blood of a chimpanzee; from which the inference is that man is not to be placed in a separate sub-order beside the other sub-orders of the Primates, the platyrrhine and catarrhine monkeys, not even in a distinct sub order beside the catarrhines; but is to be included with them in one zoological sub-order. This cla.s.sification was previously suggested by Selenka on other grounds, namely, because of the points in common in the embryonic development of the catarrhine monkeys and of man, and their common distinctiveness as contrasted with the platyrrhines.(10)