Part 2

There are two ways of living: a man may be casual and simply exist, or constructive and deliberately try to do something with his life. The constructive idea implies constructiveness not only about one’s own life, but about that of society, and the future possibilities of humanity.

In pre-human evolution, the blind chances of variation and the blind sifting of natural selection have directed the course of evolution and of progress. It is on survival and the production of offspring that the process has hinged; the machinery is in reality blind, but these emerge as its apparent ends or purposes. The realization of ever higher potentialities of living substance has happened, but only as a secondary result and slow by-product of the main process.

In human evolution up till the present, the apparent ends and aims have for the most part and in the bulk of men remained the same; it is only the methods of pursuing them that have changed. True or conscious purpose comes in and aids the unconscious biological forces already at work.

However, to most men at some time, and to some men at most times, these purely biological ends and purposes of life become altogether inadequate. They perceive the door opened to a thousand possibilities higher than this, all demanding to be satisfied. The realization of what for want of a better term we can call spiritual values becomes the true end of life, superposed on and dominating the previous biological values.

When civilizations and societies are organized so that their prime purpose is the pursuit of spiritual values, then life will have passed another critical point in its evolution; as always, what has gone before is necessary as foundation for what is coming, and the biological conditions must be fulfilled before the new and higher edifice can be built; but, as when the mammals superseded the reptiles, so this change of aim will mean the rise of a new type to be the dominant and highest form of life.

This can only come about so far as man consciously attempts to make it come about. His evolution up to the present can be summed up in one sentence--that through his coming to possess reason, life in his person has become self-conscious, and evolution is handed over to him as trustee and director. “Nature” will no longer do the work unaided. Nature--if by that we mean blind and non-conscious forces--has, marvellously, produced man and consciousness; they must carry on the task to new results which she alone can never reach.

Mr. Trotter, in his delightful book on the Herd-instinct, draws a distinction between the stable-minded or resistive and the unstable-minded or adaptive, and points out how the destinies of society have usually been entrusted to the former--whence spring our persecutions of prophets and our neglect of innovating genius. This will continue so long as the accepted belief of the majority is that there exists a Providence who has assigned every one his proper place, or even (oddest whim!) ordained the present type of society; so long as they rely more on authority than experience, look to the past more than to the future, to revelation instead of reason, to an arbitrary Governor instead of to a discoverable order.

The general conceptions of the universe which a man or a civilization entertains come in large part to determine his or its actions. There are only two general and embracing conceptions of the sort (though any number which are not general, and fail because they leave out whole tracts of reality): in the fewest possible words, one is scientific, the other unscientific; one tries to use to its fullest extent the intellect with which we have been evolved, the other does not. The thread running through most of these essays is the attempt to discover and apply in certain fields as much as possible of this scientific conception to several different fields of reality.

Of these essays, “Progress” has already appeared in the Hibbert Journal, “Biology and Sociology” in the Monist, “Ils n’ont que de l’âme” and “Philosophic Ants” in the Cornbill Magazine, “Rationalism and the Idea of God” in the Rationalist Press Annual, and “Religion and Science” in Science and Civilization, this year’s representative of the annual “Unity” series edited by Mr. F. S. Marvin and published by the Oxford University Press. They have all, however, been considerably revised and enlarged before appearing in the present volume. I have to thank the proprietors and publishers for kindly permitting me to reprint these.

OXFORD, April 1923.

CONTENTS

I PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER 3

II BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 69

III ILS N’ONT QUE DE L’ÂME: AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND 107

IV SEX BIOLOGY AND SEX PSYCHOLOGY 133

V PHILOSOPHIC ANTS: A BIOLOGIC FANTASY 177

VI RATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF GOD 207

VII RELIGION AND SCIENCE: OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES 235

PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER

EVOLUTION: AT THE MIND’S CINEMA

I turn the handle and the story starts: Reel after reel is all astronomy, Till life, enkindled in a niche of sky, Leaps on the stage to play a million parts.

Life leaves the slime and through all ocean darts; She conquers earth, and raises wings to fly; Then spirit blooms, and learns how not to die,-- Nesting beyond the grave in others’ hearts.

--I turn the handle: other men like me Have made the film: and now I sit and look In quiet, privileged like Divinity To read the roaring world as in a book. If this thy past, where shall thy future climb, O Spirit, built of Elements and Time!

MUNICH, Jan. 1923.

PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER

“Usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis Paulatim docuit pedetemtim progredientes.” --LUCRETIUS.

“As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental environments will tend to progress towards perfection.” --CHARLES DARWIN.

“Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another which may be called the ethical process.” --T. H. HUXLEY.