Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful. George Henry Dole
in the upward development was made; and luck, chance, and fortune are the sum of all intelligence, design, wisdom, love, and life that is or is to come. In which case the essential nature of the creative power and the supreme intelligence is luck, for the first cause must terminate in the last effect. The first cause and all derivative or subsequent causes must be the same in essence.
If luck and chance had failed in one instance in the long line of development, creation would have ended in chaos. If chance started creation it is by chance that oaks bear acorns and not beech-nuts, and that beech-nuts grow into beech-trees rather than into oaks. It is by fortune that of the myriads of plants and animals each bears its kind, and not one mistake ever occurs. It is by luck that the universe is kept in its order, and law itself is merely such good fortune that it never varies. These are legitimate, inevitable conclusions from the premises of Evolution, to which every close and consistent thinker must be forced.
It is creation itself upon which the scholarship of the world should center, and of which it should seek a rational explanation, for the evident reason that the same principles are applicable to each step in its development. Since the superstructure can be no more stable than the foundation upon which it rests, we should not be surprised at the revulsion that the theory of Evolution meets among the more discerning thinkers. For it is this irrational quality carried throughout Evolution that causes a great body of the religious and intelligent to hold the theory in abeyance as something yet inadequate and unsatisfactory.
The unmodified law of the "survival of the fittest" is instinctively seen as pure selfishness. It does not answer back to the unselfishness in human kind. It is not a human explanation. God is good, we feel. His works are good. But if the cold and cruel struggle for self-existence is the energizing and inmost thing, nature's beauty is false, the song of the stars is a dirge, and the grand anthem of the universe is a rasping chord. If Evolution, with its theory of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest," with its theory of the "fortuitous concourse of atoms," and the final dissolution of the universe into the nebulas from which it sprang, and the consequent obliteration of human kind, tells the whole story, mankind has been all wrong, and they who rejoice in beauty, love, righteousness, eternal life, and God, are doomed to final disappointment and sorrow, for what they hold most dear, and regard as an expression of the wisdom and love of their Creator, are but as the smooth fur and soft purring of ravenous animals, rending not only the body, but tearing apart the tenderest feelings of faith and love, and devouring all human hopes. If such theories were to prevail, the Harpies and cannibal Cyclops are not fabulous creatures of ancient times, but real monsters dwelling in civilized countries, still satiating their cruel appetites with human flesh.
Mr. Drummond saw this, and endeavored to repair the defect by supplementing the struggle for self by the struggle for the lives of others, as observed in the surrender of life-force by plants and animals in the propagation of their kind. And others, feeling deeply the wrong of Evolution as taught by the school of Messrs, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and Hæckel, have worked to modify the theory; so that already, in these rapidly changing times, the old school of Evolution is quite antiquated.
Strong and godly men have taken the more likely part of Evolution as devised by the Sensists, and used it not to confirm materialism and excuse agnosticism, but as a means of advancing nearer to the Divine, into clearer light, and into more intelligent faith. With unsurpassed skill they have used Evolution more effectually in proving what it was intended to disprove than did its inventors in establishing materialism.
It is not only gratifying, but surprisingly so, to notice how righteous men have step by step gone on. Modification upon modification has produced in advanced thought as much difference between evolutionary reasonings now and a few years ago as Evolution is claimed to have wrought between man and the ape. A few more Drummonds, Mivarts, Fiskes, and there will be left none of the sad conclusions of materialistic Evolution, which regards man soulless, the universe Godless, and crowns development not with the break of a radiant world of eternal life and beauty, but with the black pall of "omnipresent death."
Harmony in the Cosmic Process
CHAPTER II
Harmony
in the
Cosmic Process
MR. HUXLEY, in his address at Oxford in 1893, says that "the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends." In commenting upon this Mr. Fiske says: "Most assuredly survival of the fittest, as such, has no sort of relation to moral ends."[1]
That Mr. Huxley should fall into this error is not surprising, but that Mr. Fiske should pass over its fatal conclusions without bringing to the surface its self-stultifying fallacy is difficult to understand.
The position is rightly taken that, if the moral motive is not found in Evolution, it does not exist in its products, consequently the moral motive does not exist in man. Or, if the moral motive does not exist in Evolution and does exist in man, Evolution is fundamentally a fallacy, for that which has no moral motive in itself could never produce one out of itself. The least knowledge of the relation of cause and effect prohibits one holding at the same time that there is a moral motive in any created thing and none in the cosmic process that produces it.
Yet Mr. Huxley clearly sees that there is a moral motive in man, though he designates it by so superficial a word as "ethical." He admits the selfishness in "natural selection" and the moral in man, and explains the existence of the two by saying that "the social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process."
The fallacy of such a theory lies in the fact that there would then be two processes of development in nature that are fundamentally and diametrically opposed. And need we go further in unfolding this illogical proposition than to say that the second process is even evolved out of the first?
If God made nature and man, and God be good, the moral motive is as fully present in all natural processes as it is in man. It may not be so evident; it may not be so quick in operation; but it is there as surely and fully.
A right view of nature forbids that we draw conclusions from superficial observations, and requires that we look deeply into it and broadly upon it. In its mode of growth a tree may be said to be selfish, because it regards only itself. But the tree has no power over its growth. It is absolutely a thing of condition, receiving and swelling with life over which it has no control. In determining its relation to selfishness we must look to the source of its life and observe whether selfishness is there. This is determined by inquiring into the uses to which a tree is put. Are its uses all for itself, or are they all for other things? When we search this question deeply the appearance changes entirely, for we come into the reality. The tree is of no use to itself except that it may grow, which self-use is fundamental to all use. Further, the tree spends its whole energy in forming alluvium, in providing shelter and food for animals, and in multiform uses to man. The greater law of usefulness to others comprehends the law of self-use, and makes the existence of a tree absolutely unselfish.
We may look at the subject in another way. As a matter of fact the tree regards nothing, neither its own growth nor its unselfish uses, for it has no mind essential to conscious thought, from which comes regard. The selfishness or unselfishness is in the Creator who made it and propagates it. Since the tree serves itself only that it may serve others, that is, its existence is wholly one of service to other things, we are forced to conclude that the Creator is unselfish, and the law of the tree's existence is unselfish.
The same reasoning applies to animals. Though they are of a higher order of life, they are as bound to their instincts as a tree is to its roots. They can no