Parallel Paths: a Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art

CHAPTER V. The Mechanical Theory of Evolution: the

The Mechanical Theory of Evolution: the Darwin-Weismann Explanation

Lamarck, or ‘Metaphysics’? 91

Weismann’s Escape 93

The Struggle among the Determinants 95

Chance-Variations and Co-adaptation 97

Other Difficulties of the Chance-Variation Theory 99

Natural Selection 103

Impossible before Competition Existed 104

Co-operation and Competition 104

Protective Mimicry, Inexplicable by Chance-Variations and Natural Selection 106

Innate Capacities of Life 109

Outline of Preceding Arguments 111

CHAPTER VI. The Directive Theory of Evolution

The Directive Theory of Evolution

Nature’s Power of Response 115

Reinke’s Theory of Dominants 120

Cases of their Action in Evolution 123

Law and Directivity 128

Intelligence and Directivity 130

The Analogy of Social Evolution 131

The Analogy of Language 133

Synthetic Movement of the Cosmic Reason 137

Objections from Imperfect Adaptations and Regressive Forms Stated 143

Mechanical and Psychic Agencies, how Distinguished 146

Science versus ‘Mysticism’ 150

Reply to Objection from Imperfect Adaptations, etc. 152

Man, the Growing-point of Earthly Life 154

Immanence or Transcendence of the Cosmic Reason? 155

Man’s Relations to the Whole 157

Part Ii. Ethics

CHAPTER VII

Law, Free Will, Personality

Free Will and Determinism 161

The Determinist Position 163

The Free Will Position 164

Conditions necessary for Free Will 168

Has the Will an Ethical Bias? 169

Limitations of Free Will 172

Evolution of the Will 174

Free Will and Monism 176

Free Will and Brain-structure 177

Relations of Mind and Matter 186

Immortality 189

CHAPTER VIII. The Ethical Criterion

The Ethical Criterion

The Visible and the Invisible Worlds 194

Dualism and Monism 195

Monism and the Moral Law 198

The Hedonistic Basis of Morals 200

The Natural Basis of Morals 203

CHAPTER IX. The Ethical Sanction

The Ethical Sanction

The Individual and the Whole 208

A Scale of Motives 210

Conscience and its Commands, how respectively Derived 211

Results of Duty and of Self-indulgence Compared 212

The False and the True Asceticism 214

Ethics for Life: Implications of this Doctrine 220

Is Life Dependent on Matter? 222

The Cosmic Life gives Immortality to the Individual 225

And Demands his Allegiance 226

Ethics Originates in the Visible Order, but does not end there 228

Hence, Ethics is for Death as well as Life 229

The Martyrdoms of Socrates and of Christ 230

Outline of the Conclusions arrived at 233

Part Iii. Art

CHAPTER X

Art and Life

Tolstoy’s Account of the Nature of Art 236

Of the Standard of Art 241

Of the Purpose of Art 241

Criticism of his Conclusions 245

Art, Man’s expression of Life 246

Art and Beauty 251

Order and Change as Principles of Life and Art 253

Classification of the Arts 254

Examples of the Presentative Arts—(a) Architecture 256

(b) Ornament 259

(c) Music 261

The Representative Arts—(a) The Plastic Arts 265

(b) Dancing 270

The Evocative Art: Literature 271

The Union of Music and Poetry 272

Conclusion 273

APPENDIX A

Sum ergo Cogito 275

APPENDIX B

Co-operation and Competition 279

Appendix C

Is Life worth Living? 282

APPENDIX D

St. Francis the Poet 285

APPENDIX E

Isabella and Claudio 288

Index 295

PARALLEL PATHS

PART I: BIOLOGY

CHAPTER I

THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN

“The wisdom of the divine rule is apparent not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world.”—Lord Acton.

Paley’s Natural Theology though not by any means an epoch-making may perhaps be called an epoch-marking book. It was the crown of the endeavour of eighteenth-century religious philosophy to found a theology on the evidences of external nature. According to such exact knowledge of Nature’s operations as was then generally available, Paley’s attempt might well be thought to have succeeded. He opens his argument with a striking and effective illustration. He imagines a wayfarer crossing a heath who strikes his foot against a stone, and who asks himself how it came into being. Paley thinks he might be content with vaguely supposing that it was there ‘always.’ But suppose that what he had found at his foot was not a stone but a watch and that he now saw such an instrument for the first time. He would then certainly have not been so easily contented with an answer to the riddle of its existence. He would, if he examined it minutely, have observed that it was a structure intended for a certain purpose, and having all its parts arranged for that object, and mutually interdependent The different substances of which it was composed would be discovered to have each its special appropriateness for the fulfilling of some particular function in the economy of the whole. Though unacquainted with watches he would, if he was a man of sense and cultivation, infallibly conclude that he had before him an instrument intelligently constructed with a certain object in view—the object of measuring the flight of time. He would feel assured of this, even though he should find that the object of the mechanism were not attained with absolute accuracy, and even though there were some parts of it whose functions were not clear to him. The watch would be rightly regarded as a work of design; and the observer would be justified in arguing from it to the existence of a designer, endowed with the faculties of intelligence and conscious purpose, by whom the watch must have been put together.

The rest of Paley’s Natural Theology is an application of this analogy to the question of the origin of the universe. Ranging over the whole field of animate and inanimate nature he points to instance after instance of what appears to be the minute and thoughtful adaptation of means to ends, the co-ordination of part with part in the interest of the whole, and he has no difficulty, from this point of view, in showing the world of nature to be a piece of mechanism far more wonderfully and ingeniously constructed than any watch, and bearing prima facie evidence of the most convincing kind of its construction by a Being possessed of intelligence, purpose and foresight precisely resembling those attributes as displayed by man, but vastly heightened and enlarged. As the watch must have been made by man, so a manlike being, endowed with the necessary powers and faculties, must be postulated as the maker of the material universe. And thus the existence of a God made in the image of man appeared to have been demonstrated to the satisfaction of eighteenth-century theology.

But minds of real philosophic depth have always shrunk from pressing home deductions of this sort. They have felt that the matter is probably not quite so simple as it might appear on the surface, and they have recognised that if one is allowed to argue from the phenomena of nature to the qualities of the author of nature one cannot draw an arbitrary line including only those facts which testify to wisdom, power and goodness, and excluding from view all those which reveal imperfection of design and execution, or which would convict a man, if he were their author, of inhumanity and injustice. If the universe is really analogous to a watch one is entitled to examine it throughout as one would examine a watch. All watches testify to intelligence and design, but besides good watches there are bad ones, there are those which are made of cheap materials, rudely put together, with showy exteriors and unreliable works. Every watch, if examined by experts in mechanism, in art, and so forth, would reveal the characteristics of its designer and maker, and these characteristics would not always be admirable. They would rarely, in fact, be altogether admirable. If we apply these methods of inquiry to a universe which contains malarial mosquitoes, slave-making ants, snakes, earthquakes, and all the pests which blight and deform life without calling forth any strong or noble qualities to carry on the contest with them, we shall go where Paley certainly never intended to lead us, but we shall go there by Paley’s road. The fact is that these methods are altogether fantastic and inapplicable. The universe is not made like a watch. When we observe a human being or one of the higher animals we say, ‘He has such and such qualities; he is faithful, false, brave, cowardly, diligent, indolent, strong, weak, beautiful or ugly,’ but we do not think of referring his qualities back to certain attributes of an unknown maker of his physical and mental organism. A philosophy worthy of the name has always tended to regard the world as in some sense a vital organism, and has asked ‘What is it?’ rather than ‘What does it prove about some other being?’ “How green must be the maker of all grass” was quite a legitimate satire on all such attempts to deduce the qualities of a hypothetical creator from the phenomena of the universe. Thus the mistake of Paley and his school was fundamental. It was the mistake of seeking God in fragmentary phenomena—the same mistake, essentially, as that rebuked by Christ, by which every calamity or material blessing is regarded as a ‘judgment’ or a reward. His method, if applied with thorough-going consistency, destroys its own basis, for the One and the Many, the Whole and the Parts, cannot be apprehended at one and the same time by one and the same faculty of any human mind. Looking at phenomena alone, and thinking in that sphere, we cannot say that God made the world but rather that the world is becoming divine. Philosophically and religiously, God is all in all—historically, He is not the beginning, He is rather the end, the end in which the whole history is resumed.

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