01.03 - Part 1, Chapter 3

AMONG those who accept without substantial modification the naturalistic theory of the universe are some who find a compensation for the general nonrationality of Nature in the fact that, after all, reason, human reason, is Nature’s final product. If the world is not made by Reason, Reason is at all events made by the world; and the unthinking interaction of causes and effects has at least resulted in a consciousness wherein that interaction may be reflected and understood. This is not Teleology. Indeed it is a doctrine which leaves no room for any belief in design. But in the minds of some who have but imperfectly grasped their own doctrines, it appears capable of partially meeting the sentimental needs to which teleology gives a fuller satisfaction, inasmuch as reason thus finds an assured place in the scheme ci things, and is enabled, after the fashion of the Chinese, in some sort to ennoble its ignoble progenitors. This theory of the non-rational origin of reason, which is a necessary corollary of the naturalistic scheme, has philosophical consequences of great interest, to some of which I have alluded elsewhere, 1 and which must occupy our attention in a later chapter of these Notes. In the meanwhile, there are other aspects of the subject which deserve a moment’s consideration. From the point of view of organic evolution there is no distinction, I imagine, to be drawn between the development of reason and that of any other faculty, physiological or psychical, by which the interests of the individual or the race are promoted. From the humblest form of nervous irritability at one end of the scale, to the reasoning capacity of the most advanced races at the other, everything, without exception sensation, instinct, desire, volition has been produced, directly or indirectly, by natural causes acting for the most part on strictly utilitarian principles. Convenience, not knowledge, therefore, has been the main end to which this process has tended. ’ It was not for purposes of research that our senses were evolved,’ nor was it in order to penetrate the secrets of the universe that we are endowed with reason.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the faculties thus laboriously created are but imperfectly fitted to satisfy that speculative curiosity which is one of the most curious by-products of She evolutionary process. The inadequacy of our intellect, indeed, to resolve the questions which it 1 Philosophic Doubt, Pt. iii., ch. xiii. is capable of asking is acknowledged (at least in words) both by students of science and by students of theology. But they do not seem so much impressed with the inadequacy of our senses. Yet, if the current doctrine of evolution be true, we have no choice but to admit that with the great mass of natural fact we are probably brought into no sensible relation at all. I am not referring here merely to the limitations imposed upon such senses as we possess, but to the total absence of an indefinite number of senses which conceivably we might possess, but do not. There are sounds which the ear cannot hear, there are sights which the eye cannot see. But besides all these there must be countless aspects of external Nature of which we have no knowledge; of which, owing to the absence of appropriate organs, we can form no conception; which imagination cannot picture nor language express. Had Voltaire been acquainted with the theory of evolution, he would not have put forward his Micromegas so much as an illustration of a paradox which cannot be disproved, as of a truth which cannot be doubted. For to suppose that a course of development carried out, not with the object of extending knowledge or satisfying curiosity, but solely with that of promoting life, on an area so insignificant as the surface of the earth, between limits of temperature and pressure so narrow, and under general conditions so exceptional, should have ended in supplying us with senses even approximately adequate to the apprehension of Nature in all her complexities, is to believe in a coincidence more astounding- than the most audacious novelist has ever employed to cut the knot of some entangled tale. For it must be recollected that the same natural forces which tend to the evolution of organs which are useful tend also to the suppression of organs that are useless. Not only does Nature take no interest in our general education, not only is she quite indifferent to the growth of enlightenment, unless the enlightenment improve our chances in the struggle for existence, but she positively objects to the very existence of faculties by which these ends might, perhaps, be attained. She regards them as mere hindrances in the only race which she desires to see run; and not content with refusing directly to create any faculty except for a practical purpose, she immediately proceeds to destroy faculties already created when their practical purpose has ceased; for thus does the eye of the cave-born fish degenerate and the instinct of the domesticated animal decay. Those, then, who are inclined to the opinion that between our organism and its environments there is a correspondence which, from the point of view of general knowledge, is even approximately adequate, must hold, in the first place, that samples or suggestions of every sort of natural manifestation are to be found in our narrow and limited world; in the second place, that these samples are of a character which would permit of nervous tissue being so modified by selection as to respond specifically to their action; in the third place, that such specific modifications were not only possible, but would have proved useful at the period of evolution during which our senses in their present shape were developed; and in the fourth place, that these modifications would have proved useful enough to make it worth while to use up, for the purpose of producing them, material which might have been, and has been, otherwise employed.

All these propositions seem to me improbable, the first two of them incredible. 1 It is impossible,

1 It may perhaps be said that it is not necessary that we should be specifically affected by each particular kind of energy in order either to discover its existence or to investigate its character. It is enough that among its effects should be some which are cognisable by our actual senses, that it should modify in some way the world we know, that it should intervene perceptibly in that part of the general system to which our organism happens to be immediately connected. This is no doubt true, and our knowledge of electricity and magnetism (among other things) is there to prove it. But let it be noted how slender and how accidental was the clue which led us to the first beginnings, from which all our knowledge of these great phenomena is derived. Directly they can hardly be said to be in relation with our organs of perception at all (notwithstanding the fact that light is now regarded as an electro-magnetic phenomenon) and their indirect relation with them is so slight that probably no amount of mere observation could, in the absence of experiment, have given us a notion of their magnitude or importance. They were not sought for to fill a gap whose existence had been demonstrated by calculation. Their discovery was no inevitable step in the onward march of scientific knowledge. They were stumbled upon by accident; and few would be bold enough to assert that if, for example, the human race had not happened to possess iron, magnetism would ever have presented itself as a subject requiring investigation at all. therefore, to resist the conviction that there must be an indefinite number of aspects of Nature respecting which science never can give us any information, even in our dreams. We must conceive ourselves as feeling our way about this dim corner of the illimitable world, like children in a darkened room, encompassed by we know not what; a little better endowed with the machinery of sensation than the protozoon, yet poorly provided indeed as compared with a being, if such a one could be conceived, whose senses were adequate to the infinite variety of material Nature. It is true, no doubt, that we are possessed of reason, and that protozoa are not. But even reason, on the naturalistic theory, occupies no elevated or permanent position in the hierarchy of phenomena. It is not the final result of a great process, the roof and crown of things. On the contrary, it is, as I have said, no more than one of many experiments for increasing our chance of survival, and, among these, by no means the most important or the most enduring.

II

People sometimes talk, indeed, as if it was the difficult and complex work connected with the maintenance of life that was performed by intellect. But there can be no greater delusion. The management of the humblest organ would be infinitely beyond our mental capacity, were it possible for us to be entrusted with it; and as a matter of fact, it is only in the simplest jobs that discursive reason is permitted to have a hand at all; our tendency to take a different view being merely the self-importance of a child who, because it is allowed to stamp the letters, imagines that it conducts the correspondence. The best way of looking at mind on the naturalistic hypothesis is, perhaps, to regard it as an instrument for securing a flexibility of adaptation which instinct alone is not able to attain. Instinct is incomparably the better machine in every respect save one. It works more smoothly, with less friction, with far greater precision and accuracy. But it is not adaptable. Many generations and much slaughter are required to breed it into a race. Once acquired, it can be modified or expelled only by the same harsh and tedious methods. Mind, on the other hand, from the point of view of organic evolution, may be considered as an inherited faculty for self-adjustment; and though, as I have already had occasion to note, the limits within which such adjustment is permitted are exceedingly narrow, within those limits it is doubtless exceedingly valuable. But even here one of the principal functions of mind is to create habits by which, when they are fully formed, it is itself supplanted. If the conscious adaptation of means to ends was always necessary in order to perform even those few functions for the first performance of which conscious adaptation was originally required, life would be frittered away in doing badly, but with deliberation, some small frac. tion of that which we now do well without any deliberation at all. The formation of habits is, therefore, as has often been pointed out, a necessary preliminary to the ’ higher ’ uses of mind; for it, and it alone, sets attention and intelligence free to do work from which they would otherwise be debarred by their absorption in the petty needs of daily existence. But while it is thus plain that the formation of habits is an essential pre-requisite of mental development, it would also seem that it constitutes the first step in a process which, if thoroughly successful, would end in the destruction, if not of consciousness itself, at least of the higher manifestation of consciousness, such as will, attention, and discursive reason. 1 All these, as we may suppose, will be gradually superseded in an increasing number of departments of human activity by the growth of instincts or inherited habits, by which even such adjustments between the organism and its surroundings as now seem most dependent on self-conscious mind may be successfully effected.

These are prophecies, however, which concern themselves with a very remote future, and for my part I do not ask the reader to regard their fulfilment as an inexorable necessity. It is enough if

1 Empirical psychologists are not agreed as to whether the apparent unconsciousness which accompanies completed habits is real or not. It is unnecessary for the purpose of my argument that this point should be determined. they mark with sufficient emphasis the place which Mind, in its higher manifestations, occupies in the scheme of things, as this is presented to us by the naturalistic hypothesis. Mr. Spencer, who pierces the future with a surer gaze than I can make the least pretence to, looks confidently forward to a time when the relation of man to his surroundings will be so happily contrived that the reign of absolute righteousness will prevail; conscience, grown unnecessary, will be dispensed with; the path of least resistance will be the path of virtue; and not the ’ broad,’ but the ’ narrow way will ’ lead to destruction.’ These excellent consequences seem to me to flow very smoothly and satisfactorily from his particular doctrine of evolution, combined with his particular doctrine of morals. But I confess that my own personal gratification at the prospect is somewhat dimmed by the reflection that the same kind of causes which make conscience superfluous will relieve us from the necessity of intellectual effort, and that by the time we are all perfectly good we shall also be all perfectly idiotic.

I know not how it may strike the reader; but I at least am left sensibly poorer by this deposition of Reason from its ancient position as the Ground of all existence, to that of an expedient among other expedients for the maintenance of organic life; an expedient, moreover, which is temporary in its character and insignificant in its effects. An irrational Universe which accidentally turns out a few reasoning animals at one corner of it, as a rich man may experiment at one end of his park with some curious ’ sport ’ accidentally produced among his flocks and herds, is a Universe which we might well despise if we did not ourselves share its degradation. But must we not inevitably share it? Pascal somewhere observes that Man, however feeble, is yet in his very feebleness superior to the blind forces of Nature; for he knows himself, and they do not. I confess that on the naturalistic hypothesis I see no such superiority. If, indeed, there were a Rational Author of Nature, and if in any degree, even the most insignificant, we shared His attributes, we might well conceive ourselves as of finer essence and more intrinsic worth than the material world which we inhabit, immeasurable though it may be. But if we be the creation of that world; if it made us what we are, and will again unmake us; how then? The sense of humour, not the least precious among the gifts with which the clash of atoms has endowed us, should surely prevent us assuming any airs of superiority over members of the same family of ’phenomena,’ more permanent and more powerful than ourselves.