Contemporary Mind - Some Modern Answers. J. W. N. Sullivan

      INTRODUCTION

      THE problems discussed in this book may justly be called fundamental problems. They are the questions that remain, as it were, “behind” all our specialised interests. Our general outlook on life is determined chiefly by our attitude towards these questions. They have probably been discussed ever since man found sufficient leisure to think about anything other than his bodily wants. They have assumed different forms at different times, however, and the relative gravity and acuteness of them has changed considerably.

      The differences between the modem age and any preceding age, so far as they are essential, are due chiefly to science. This is obviously true, of course, so far as the mere mechanism of life is concerned, but it is also true that our general outlook on life has been largely influenced by science. It is not that science has originated new answers concerning the why, whence and whither of existence, but it has made certain answers much more plausible than others.

      The theory, for instance, that all life is purposeless, the product of a blind, impersonal fate, was held by Democritus and was doubtless held before him. But, in the form in which it was preached by Democritus and popularized by Lucretius, it was more the expression of an emotion than a reasoned philosophy. To say that everything came about in a purposeless manner, when no description of the process could be given, was not particularly convincing. For the world, particularly the world of animate nature, appears to be full of instances of purpose and design. But modern science has made the general outlook of Democritus much more plausible. Darwin, in his theory of natural selection, attempted to give a mechanism whereby all the exquisite adaptations we meet with in animate nature could have come about “accidentally.” He stated that variations are constantly occurring in all living creatures, that some of these variations are inheritable, and that those that enable the creature to adapt itself more perfectly to its environment will tend to be preserved in the struggle for existence. In the form in which the theory was popularized by the materialists of the nineteenth century it was assumed that the variations occurred “at random.” That is to say, that although the variations doubtless occur in accordance with laws of nature of which we at present know practically nothing, we are not to suppose that they reveal any purpose, any “upward and on” tendency in nature. The march from the amœba to man has not been designed. So far as the nature of things is concerned, as it were, it might have been the other way round.

      Thus we see, in this particular instance, that modern science has made an age-old philosophy much more plausible. It is now possible to believe that existence is purposeless in a way quite impossible to an intelligent mediaevalist, or even to a man of Paley’s time. The instances of design on which they relied have now been accounted for in terms of a purely mindless mechanism.

To say this is perhaps to go too far. The mechanism by which new adaptations are produced is not yet understood, and there are some biologists who doubt whether they can be accounted for by blind mechanical forces. They think that “inherent tendencies” and the like, processes not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry, may have to be assumed in order to explain the origin and development of living things. But even if such notions are introduced it is evident that the old conception of Design, and of a Great Designer, will have been profoundly modified. For the design is carried through with a wastefulness altogether beyond human standards. For every living creature that succeeds in getting a footing in life there are thousands or millions that perish. There is an enormous random scattering for every seed that comes to life. This does not remind us of intelligent human design. “If a man, in order to shoot a hare, were to