“To thine own self be true!”

CHAPTER VIII

EVOLUTION

Work of Darwin and Spencer—­Bergson’s L’Evolution creatrice—­Life—­ L’elan vital—­Evolution not progress in a straight line—­Adaptation an insufficient explanation—­Falsity of mechanistic view—­Finalist conception of reality as fulfilling a plan false—­Success along certain lines only—­Torpor, Instinct, and Intelligence—­Genesis of matter—­ Humanity the crown of evolution—­Contingency and Freedom—­The Future is being created.

Since the publication of Darwin’s famous work on The Origin of Species in 1859, the conception of Evolution has become familiar and has won general acceptance in all thinking minds.  Evolution is now a household word, but the actual study of evolutionary process has been the work of comparatively few.  Science nowadays has become such a highly specialized affair, that few men cover a large enough field of study to enable them to deal effectively with this tremendous subject.  What is more, those who shouted so loudly about Evolution as explaining all things have come to see that, in a sense, Evolution explains nothing by itself.  Mere description of facts undoubtedly does serve a very useful purpose and may help to demolish some of the stanchly conservative theories still held in some quarters by those who prefer to take Hebrew conceptions as a basis of their cosmology however irreconcilable with fact these may prove to be.  Mere description, however, is not ultimate, some philosophy of Evolution must be forthcoming.  “Nowadays,” remarks Hoffding, “every philosopher has to take up a position with respect to the concept of Evolution.  It has now achieved its place among the categories or essential forms of thought by the fact of its providing indications whence new problems proceed.  We must ask regarding every event, and every phenomenon, by what stages it has passed into its actual state.  It is a special form of the general concept of cause.  A philosophy is essentially characterized by the position which it accords to this concept and by the way in which it applies it.” [Footnote:  The Philosophy of Evolution—­lecture IV, of Lectures on Bergson, in Modern Philosophers, Translated by Mason (MacMillan), p. 270.]

No one has done more to make familiar to English minds the notion of Evolution than Herbert Spencer.  His Synthetic Philosophy had a grand aim, but it was manifestly unsatisfactory.  The high hopes it had raised were followed by mingled disappointment and distrust.  The secret of the unsatisfactoriness of Spencer is to be found in his method, which is an elaborate and plausible attempt to explain the evolution of the universe by referring the complex to the simple, the more highly organized to the less organized.  His principle of Evolution never freed itself from bondage to mechanical conceptions.