Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
A Law
of
Creation
IT IS argued that the impact of light rays and sound waves formed respectively the eye and the ear. Then, according to the same principle, odors formed the sense of smell, flavor the sense of taste, and material objects the sense of feeling. But since taste and feeling are not acted upon except they act, for appetite or desire must precede the act, the conclusion cannot be drawn, and the principle fails; and failing as to one sense it fails as to all. No more potent are light rays to form the eye, or air waves to form the ear without the introduction of another factor. The object of a sense cannot form the sense. Nowhere in all the realms of life did an object form its subject. If it were possible for the object to form the subject, it would be an inevitable fact that creation made the Creator. Whatever service nature renders in forming the senses, which truly is great, there is yet something back of nature.
Before we can locate that something, it must be understood that the organ of sight is not the sense of sight. The organ of any sense is not the sense. The seat of sensation is admitted to be in the brain, which reaches to the eye by the optic nerve, to the ear by the auditory nerve, and throughout the body to all senses and parts by extension of telegraphic nerve-lines. If the external organ, as the eye or ear, is impaired, or the connecting nerve intercepted, the sense cannot operate, yet the faculty remains the same; for when the obstruction is removed, the sense again operates. The blind have in potency the mental faculty of sight, but not the organ of sight. The deaf have the faculty of hearing, but not the organ of hearing. Sensation is a faculty of the brain exercised through the sense organ, for the eye does not see nor the ear hear unless attention is given.
Go a step further. The brain itself is not the primary organ of sense. The soul within is the real person of sense and faculty. The brain is as much an organ of the soul's faculties as the eye is an organ of the brain's faculties.
Physiologically the eye is an organism put forth by the brain that it may sensate rays of light. Likewise the brain and the whole material body are an organism put forth by the soul that it may live in and sensate nature. And this occurs that the soul may have a beginning on the lowest and outward plane, and commence its development. So it is neither the eye that sees, nor the brain, but it is the person, in whom is the faculty of sight, that sees in nature through the instrumentality of brain and eye.
Of course there can be no faculty without an organ of faculty. But the potency of all the faculties is primarily in the human essence. The soul, necessarily a complete human form, having organs for all its faculties, is the real, sentient being. This basic principle is not new. Paul says: "There is a natural body, and there is" (not will be) "a spiritual body." This is but another way of saying that man is the soul and has a body. If any sense is wanting, as in the blind or deaf, it is not that the faculty is not in the person of the soul, but it is because the physical instrument is out of adjustment to the inner faculty, to which the sense organ bears the same relation as an impaired lens to the eye, or a broken ear-trumpet to the ear. Correct the material eye and the soul will see; repair the ear and the soul will hear.
Now if we have succeeded in drawing the distinction between a merely material organism and the mind, or soul, in which is all faculty, and which uses the external organ as its instrument of action, we can proceed still further.
We are told that the hair sac is developed into an eye by the impact of light rays, or into an ear by the impact of sound waves. We have noted the unsatisfactoriness of this as an explanation of either, because we know that in light or in sound waves there is no adequate power of design. The senses of seeing and of hearing not being in ether or air, ether and air have no power to form these organs, much less are they able to impart the faculties of seeing and of hearing.
The essential faculty of seeing proper to the soul not only sees through, but forms the organ of sight in the body. That light did not form the eye ought to be evident from the fact that the eye is now formed before the animal comes to the light. If it needed the impact of light to form the first eye, there would be the same requirement now. The first eye must have been formed according to the same laws and by the same forces that all subsequent ones are. The same of the ear and of every sense organ. The essential sense-faculty of the soul forms its organ of use in the body. Yet the activities of nature's elements are essential, not to form the sense directly, but to co-operate with the sense-faculty of the soul in the perfection of the material organism by use.
The eyes of the fish in Mammoth Cave are mere specks, and their nerves senseless threads, because there is no co-operation of light waves with the sense-faculty. The rudimentary eye is formed by the sense-faculty, and it is developed into complete form between the sense-faculty and the medium of light by use. The organ of any sense-faculty is formed by the sense-faculty itself, and is developed to its fullness by the sense-faculty using it in nature.
The eye of the Cave-fish is sightless, not because of the absence of the essential sense-faculty, but it is due to the absence of the plane of reaction that use in nature provides, and has, following the law of non-use, suffered atrophy.
That both the eye and the ear are developed alike from the sensitive hair sac, does not indicate that the senses are derived from one, that of feeling. It only reveals that the eye and the ear are developed from the same material substance and planes. It only argues that the faculty of seeing uses the same matter to form the organs of the eye as the faculty of hearing uses to form the organ of hearing. Because the whole human body is made of protoplasm does not argue in any degree that all its faculties are derived from one. Because a house and a church are built of brick does not indicate that both were built by the same architect. If the finger is cut, and the inner and outer skin, the muscles, membranes, and nerves are reproduced from the same material, it does not argue that all these are one, and are developed immediately from the same unit. It only shows that the soul uses the same material to build different parts of its earthly dwelling. It shows that there is a substantial framework within that remains intact when the body is wounded, and proceeds to reclothe itself when it is laid bare. If it were the purpose here to enter into a psychological discussion, it might be shown that seeing and feeling are essentially very different faculties, seeing being a faculty derived from the soul's mental function or the understanding, and feeling being derived from the other division of the mind, or the will.