Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
The Moral Motive
in the
Cosmic Process
MAN believes in God intuitively because God is. He does not doubt His existence and government until he has imbibed falsities from without.
When moral men began to give way to the claims of Evolution, they immediately asked, "What relation does the theory bear to the Creator? What relation does He bear to it? Where is the moral motive in the cosmic process?" Certainly if Evolution is of God, His hand is there. The moral motive must be sought, like all motives, within the law as the end in view. The motive is the soul of law. The law is the means through which the motive is accomplished. The moral motive must exist the first incentive, and be demonstrated in the final purpose. "Every tree is known by his own fruit."
That natural selection, or as expressed in the less apt phrase, survival of the fittest, is, with right interpretation, a law of nature, there is no question. It is even a law of the spirit.
Natural selection, or survival of the fittest, may, in special cases and in limited degree, work out results in a short time; but the greater results, both in nature and in spirit, extend over centuries and even ages.
Natural selection operates in the natural and the spiritual world in a similar way because all law is an instrument of the Divine will and serves the Creator's purpose. The Creator does nothing arbitrarily. Since He acts through law on each plane, whether low or high, law appears to do its own selecting and to work as of itself. With the meaning that the Creator works through constituted agencies natural selection is a true statement of a fact. If one can bring himself to see that God is essentially infinite love, in which all power initially is, and that infinite wisdom is simply His love's mode of action, in which all law is contained, there will be no substantial error in his conception of natural selection.
In accepting survival of the fittest as a law, it is important to know and define what the "fittest" is. What is it that nature saves? If the fittest survive, such it is her purpose to save, for surely nature's purpose is wrought out as well in securing all her designs as in the exaction of penalties for not fulfilling her laws.
We cannot understand by survival of the fittest merely the fittest to survive in the sense of the fittest to exist in and for self. If this were what it means, development would have stopped long ago. Progress would have been checked in the first instance. For the conclusion of Evolution is that the universe, having run its course, will return to the nebula from which it came. In which case nebula is better fitted to survive than anything formed from it.
Again, it is axiomatic that the simpler the form the better fitted it is to exist. That nebula is better fitted to survive (in the sense of existing) than rock, and rock than plants, and plants than animals, need no comment.
Very early, therefore, in the application of the principle we come upon well defined limitations, which could be multiplied almost without limit. The phrase, "survival of the fittest," is more suggestive of the struggle for existence than is the term "natural selection," and refers ostensibly rather to that phase of nature's facts. There also it has extensive limitations.
There are degrees and kinds of life that are brought but little, or not at all, into competition. For example, between grass and the animals that feed upon it, there is practically no competition, for the more grass the more animals, and animals do not diminish the grass-growing area. There is no conflict between rock and the vegetation that grows upon it.
It should also be observed that the struggle for existence naturally tempers itself in certain cases; for, if the herbivorous animals are too much diminished, the carnivorous must suffer correspondingly for want of food. Such extensive limitations to the universality of the law of the survival of the fittest should be taken into consideration.
Survival of the fittest applies with less qualification to the many seeds that cannot all grow, to plants struggling for space, and to animals seeking food in times of scarcity and want. The struggle then is even unto death, though much less general than it is severe.
Desperate as the struggle may be, there is yet a moral motive within it. Says Mr. Fiske, "Beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice are alike to it " (Survival of the Fittest).[1] This in special cases may be an apparent truth, but as a general principle it must be denied, even as an appearance.
Survival of the fittest, so far as it is a law, saves the strongest, the hardiest, the best of both plants and animals, and in so doing it saves the best fitted for use. Herein is the moral motive, for it would not be moral if it saved the ill-fitted rather than the best-fitted in the kingdom of uses. The law operating among plants and animals has saved those that respond most fully to human uses. Operating among mankind it brings human powers, faculties, and energies into action whereby they are developed and advanced, and brought by the very laws of nature more into Divine order, for he is most in Divine order who is best fitted to survive.
Survival of the fittest, in the sense in which it applies, is not only a means of development, but it is also an expression of Divine economy and mercy and the all-governing law of use. It removes the debauchee, the enemy of society, the sickly, the weak, the licentious, the habitual transgressor of any law, natural or spiritual—for these cannot propagate their kind as can the strong, the healthy, the righteous. The idle, sinful, and debauched are the first to succumb to disease. Mr. Fiske sadly misses the truth and falls into grave error in thinking that beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice are alike to the law of the survival of the fittest. For it is by this very process that the vicious are slowly but surely eliminated and the orderly and the suitable are saved. It should be very clearly distinguished that survival of the fittest is true, not in the sense of fittest merely to exist, but fittest for use. Natural law, as it is but the outward expression of spiritual law, works out the fulfillment of the Divine law that "Evil shall slay the wicked," "The righteous shall inherit the land."
The struggle for existence among the healthy, law-abiding, energetic, and wise is a means not only of development, but a source of the greatest enjoyment through activity and the conquest of difficulty.
We can see in the law a Divine provision for human as well as for general development. It is a merciful law, because it eliminates the unfitted, lessens pain by removing the weak and the sickly, and provides the minimum of suffering. The moral motive in cosmic processes is everywhere present in nature's processes, because there is no law that does not work out a final good and the highest welfare of man, who is the end of creation and for whose service all things are and were created. We are obliged, therefore, to conclude, if we look over a greater area of phenomena, that "beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice " are not alike to natural selection, but that the true interpretation of the law is that it exalts beauty and removes ugliness, and that it perpetuates virtue and eliminates vice.
If we confine our view to the small arena of one plant struggling for existence against another, or one animal fighting against another for his food, our conclusions must be as erroneous as our horizon is narrow. We must look over considerable territory to ascertain the direct course of a river. We cannot judge of the moral motive in cosmic processes from a battle between wolves. We must look to the general and final result to know the meaning of the struggle for existence. Can we judge mankind to be without moral motive because of a street fight between ruffians, or competition in trade, or because one drives the crows out of his corn, or gets his bread by the sweat of his brow?
It has been well suggested that the moral motive is evident in plants and animals surrendering their substance and life in the reproduction of their kind. But there is a moral motive deeper and broader than this.
Viewing nature from the beginning we observe in the vaster plan that embraces all, the strongest evidence of the moral motive. The rock surrendered itself to the sea and the atmosphere to form soil. Myriads of plants and animals daily surrendered their bodies to form alluvium; and the sacrifice to nature's purpose was so complete that nothing was wanting to form the basis for the final life-forms. The earth produces vegetation; vegetation provides food and shelter for the animal kingdom; and all offer themselves for the service of mankind, the crowning form in the ascending scale. And moral man offers himself as the servant of Him who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."
There is set to every created thing the seal of Him who holds the servant of all the greatest of all. No other conclusion can be rightly drawn than that a plan of use runs through all things and binds them in mutual service and unity. Forms have come and gone, but the useful in each age survive for their use, and in the end the useful for the end survive. It is an inexorable law that what does not yield to use in the kingdom of mutual service is eliminated.
It does not seem to require a very deep insight into the operations of nature to discern back of all the central motive, the will of God, working at every point for the final good of human kind, and bringing forth and saving that in society which is capable of receiving, and will receive in most perfect form, the human essentials of His own nature.
It is concluded, therefore, that the survival of the fittest is truly a law, if by "fittest" is meant the useful. Survival of the fittest has its limitation, but the Survival of the Useful is a statement of universal law that is true and absolute. When we see the governing principle of cosmic processes working out this purpose, the Survival of the Useful, the moral motive is everywhere present and evident in cause and effect.
But, it may be said, there are the useless thistles and thorns, the vulture and the tiger. Yet this should not obscure the law. Thorns and thistles in human character do not take away the moral motive in man. The vulture and tiger in human disposition do not make men all ravenous and fierce. They rather give the ground for resistance, against which is reaction and development. The doctrine of contrasts is now well known and generally recognized. Were there not the selfish and immoral, the moral would not appear. Nature which is a parable of man, must, like him, have both wheat and tares; yet alike in both the moral motive has the ascendancy. A right standpoint of view enables us to see clearly that the moral motive in all times has struggled through nature in all respects as it does through mankind, and has caused to survive the useful in fulfillment of the Divine purpose.
We must not linger in the single isolated struggle for existence, nor must we mistake a long succession of struggles for the interpretation of the cosmic process, but rather search for the motive that works out through the struggle. The mind must comprehend not only individuals, generations, and ages, but also whole periods of time. Then the moral motive, which is the service of man, naturally and spiritually, and thus the will of God, is as surely present and dominant in nature as it is in man or in God's kingdom. Finally it may be said that since the cosmic process secures moral ends, it must recognize the moral. The better and eternal expression of its law is The Survival of the Useful.
- ↑ "Through Nature to God," page 77.