Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
Internal
Realities
DARWIN did not live to see the extent to which the basic principle of natural selection, which he formulated, would be carried. The development of the theory of Evolution, to which he first gave definite shape, has been quite commensurate with its acceptance.
The geological record has been greatly improved, evidence has been sifted, and a chain of reason forged that, of its kind, is quite complete until the questions are taken up that appertain to man, society, and moral development.
The inadequacy of the evolutionary explanation of cosmic processes in this regard, Mr. Huxley concedes. For, says he, "Social progress means a checking of the cosmic progress at every step, and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process."
It is remarkable that so keen a thinker as Mr. Huxley should not at once see that the existence in nature of two creative processes is as impossible as the existence of two Creators.
Evolutionary reasonings in regard to the cosmic process are brought to an abrupt end when moral questions are taken up, because the theory of Evolution is constructed without recognition of the moral, and can therefore in no wise account for it. It is far easier to amend the conception of the cosmic process than it is to conceive of two processes in creation diametrically opposed. The tendency of modern thinkers, therefore, is in the direction of reforming the conception of the cosmic process.
As Darwin eliminated the inconsistencies of Lamarck that the theory of Evolution might advance, others will modify the mistakes of the school of Messrs. Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall. In this regard Mr. Fiske, in his "Through Nature to God," performs an admirable service. Says he, "When Huxley asks us to believe that the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends, I feel like replying with the question, Does not the cosmic process exist purely for the sake of moral ends?"[1] Certainly moral ends have been secured. Creation has brought them forth. And taking into consideration the relation between cause and effect, it can be concluded positively that the cosmic process is nothing other than the means through which moral ends have been secured; first in bringing forth a being sufficiently high to be capable of morality, and second in inspiring him with moral ideals and ambitions. The moral motive that is in the first cause terminates in the effect or the final created form. It can be concluded certainly that not only is there a moral motive in the cosmic process, but also that the moral motive in the First Cause, or the Creator, flows through all His agencies into the last effect, and binds all to Himself in unity.
If Evolution, as an explanation of phenomena, merits longer serious consideration, it must at least be so revised that there shall be no break from the creation of the moneron to the finest specimen of religious man. When it is known that the evolutionary conception of the cosmic process cannot be applied alike to matter and mind, it can no longer command the favor of thinking men, and must stand as a monument to the memory of great but misguided genius.
Mr. Fiske aptly suggests a readjustment of Evolution that is a forecast of what is to come, and in doing so he lays down a principle before which all theories must give way, or accommodate themselves to it. "To suppose that during countless ages, from the sea-weed up to man, the progress of life was achieved through adjustments to external realities, but that then the method was all at once changed, and throughout a vast province of evolution the end was secured through adjustments to external non-realities, is to do sheer violence to logic and common sense. . . . . So far as our knowledge of nature goes, the whole momentum of it carries us onward to the conclusion that the unseen world, as the objective term is a relation of fundamental importance that has coexisted with the whole career of mankind, has a real existence."[2] The conspicuous error of Evolution for which it must now pay the penalty is, that it has never acknowledged the very objective term, real or unreal, toward which the cosmic process is moving. But here Evolution has at least been consistent with itself, for how could a theory have an end in view that had its beginning in the "fortuitous concourse of atoms?" The reality of the unseen world offers a rational solution to the whole problem. For how much easier it is to think of the ascent in creation being brought about by adjustment to internal realities rather than by adjustment to external non-realities! If we stop to think what words mean, we shall know that external non-realities are nothing, and that adjustments to external non-realities are adjustments to nothing.
The cosmic process regards two things, external realities and internal realities. There is the external reality of the natural world, to which material creation must conform. The eye is adjusted to the ether, the ear to the sound, the lungs to the atmosphere, the fin to the water, the wing to the air. We have no difficulty in acknowledging the reality of the natural world, because it is cognized by the senses set in the body. It is a corporeal organism perceived by the corporeal senses. To complete our understanding, to advance at all, we must introduce the other factor of a real, spiritual world. Introducing this term need suggest nothing vague, evanescent, or strange. A common-sense view of it will make it both real and already quite familiar. The spiritual world is the world of man's spirit, or of the world proper to it. Its evidences are of daily experience, for as to our spirits we are ever inhabitants of that world, deriving from it our thoughts, affections, states of mind, and life. Nor could the spirit be an occupant of any other.
We can distinguish the faculties of the spirit from those of the body. For no less certainly does the mind see in spiritual light than does the body in natural light. The spirit sees, feels, tastes, perceives, and hears spiritual forces, as surely as the senses of the body cognize natural things. The inner eye sees truth, an inner sense feels kindness, an inner sense tastes love, an inner sense perceives a Divine Providence, an inner sense hears the voice of righteousness. These are all spiritual forces proper to the spiritual world, and are the effects of spiritual entities, though not natural, yet as real as those of heat, light, odor, or matter in any form.
Should it be said that these spiritual forces do exist, but that they are predicated of the mind, let it be remembered that they do not originate in physical sensations, but are purely mental in their primary action, which shows that the mind is not an organ of the body, but of the spirit wherein spiritual forces act; and that the body is simply the mind's instrument of consciousness and action in the natural world.
Let such a factor, a real, spiritual world, be introduced into our reasonings, and surely we have every cause for believing that the development of natural organisms has taken place through adjustment to external realities, and in a similar manner the mind is developed by adjustment to internal realities, which are properly called spiritual.
The intellect is adjusted to knowledge as surely as the fin is to the sea. Understanding bears the same relation to truth as the eye does to light. Love bears the same relation to the spirit as heat does to the body. The will hears as well as the body. The sense of right is adjusted to righteousness as feeling is to matter.
Is it too unreal a thing to believe that as the material organism is framed and developed in adjustment to the external, natural world, so the spirit is developed by adjustment to the internal, spiritual world; and that the development of man is a perpetual adjustment to the Man in God, the Creator?