The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope

Part 1

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Columbia University Lectures

THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

THE HEWITT LECTURES

1906-1907

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS

NEW YORK: LEMCKE & BUECHNER 30-32 WEST 27TH STREET

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LECTURES

THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

ITS BASIS AND ITS SCOPE

HENRY EDWARD CRAMPTON, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF ZOOeLOGY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

New York

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

1916

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1911,

By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1911. Reprinted December, 1912; September, 1916.

Norwood Press J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

The present volume consists of a series of eight addresses delivered as the Hewitt Lectures of Columbia University at Cooper Union in New York City during the months of February and March, 1907. The purpose of these lectures was to describe in concise outline the Doctrine of Evolution, its basis in the facts of natural history, and its wide and universal scope. They fall naturally into two groups. Those of the first part deal with matters of definition, with the essential characteristics of living things, and, at greater length, with the evidences of organic evolution. The lectures of the second group take up the various aspects of human evolution as a special instance of the general organic process. In this latter part of the series, the subject of physical evolution is first considered, and this is followed by an analysis of human mental evolution; the chapter on social evolution extends the fundamental principles to a field which is not usually considered by biologists, and its purpose is to demonstrate the efficiency of the genetic method in this department as in all others; finally, the principles are extended to what is called "the higher human life," the realm, namely, of ethical, religious, and theological ideas and ideals.

Naturally, so broad a survey of knowledge could not include any extensive array of specific details in any one of its divisions; it was possible only to set forth some of the more striking and significant facts which would demonstrate the nature and meaning of that department from which they were selected. The illustrations were usually made concrete through the use of photographs, which must naturally be lacking in the present volume. In preparing the addresses for publication, the verbal form of each evening's discussion has been somewhat changed, but there has been no substantial alteration of the subjects actually discussed.

The choice of materials and the mode of their presentations were determined by the general purpose of the whole course. The audiences were made up almost exclusively of mature persons of cultivated minds, but who were on the whole quite unfamiliar with the technical facts of natural history. It was necessary to disregard most of the problematical elements of the doctrine so as to bring out only the basic and thoroughly substantiated principles of evolution. The course was, in a word, a simple message to the unscientific; and while it may seem at first that the discussions of the latter chapters lead to somewhat insecure positions, it should be remembered that their purpose was to bring forward the proof that even the so-called higher elements of human life are subject to classification and analysis, like the facts of the lower organic world.

It may seem that the biologist is straying beyond his subject when he undertakes to extend the principles of organic evolution to those possessions of mankind that seem to be unique. The task was undertaken in the Hewitt Lectures because the writer holds the deeply grounded conviction that evolution has been continuous throughout, and that the study of lower organic forms where laws reveal themselves in more fundamental simplicity must lead the investigator to employ and apply those laws in the study of the highest natural phenomena that can be found. Another motive was equally strong. Too frequently men of science are accused of restricting the application of their results to their own particular fields of inquiry. As individuals they use their knowledge for the development of world conceptions, which they are usually reluctant to display before the world. It is because I believe that the accusation is often only too well merited that I have endeavored to show as well as circumstances permit how universal is the scope of the doctrine based upon the facts of biology, and how supreme are its practical and dynamic values.

It remains only to state that the present volume contains nothing new, either in fact or in principle; the particular form and mode of presenting the evolutionary history of nature may be considered as the author's personal contribution to the subject. Nothing has been stated that has not the sanction of high authority as well as of the writer's own conviction; but it will be clear that the believers in the truth of the analysis as made in the later chapters may become progressively fewer, as the various aspects of human life and of human nature are severally treated. Nevertheless, I believe that this volume presents a consistent reasonable view that will not be essentially different from the conceptions of all men of science who believe in evolution.

CONTENTS

Part 2

CHAPTER PAGE

I. EVOLUTION. THE LIVING ORGANISM AND ITS NATURAL HISTORY 1

II. THE STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMALS AS EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION 35

III. THE EVIDENCE OF FOSSIL REMAINS 73

IV. EVOLUTION AS A NATURAL PROCESS 106

V. THE PHYSICAL EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES AND OF HUMAN RACES 150

VI. THE MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN 197

VII. SOCIAL EVOLUTION AS A BIOLOGICAL PROCESS 241

VIII. EVOLUTION AND THE HIGHER HUMAN LIFE 278

INDEX 313

EVOLUTION. THE LIVING ORGANISM AND ITS NATURAL HISTORY

The Doctrine of Evolution is a body of principles and facts concerning the present condition and past history of the living and lifeless things that make up the universe. It teaches that natural processes have gone on in the earlier ages of the world as they do to-day, and that natural forces have ordered the production of all things about which we know.

It is difficult to find the right words with which to begin the discussion of so vast a subject. As a general statement the doctrine is perhaps the simplest formula of natural science, although the facts and processes which it summarizes are the most complex that the human intellect can contemplate. Nothing in natural history seems to be surer than evolution, and yet the final solution of evolutionary problems defies the most subtle skill of the trained analyst of nature's order. No single human mind can contain all the facts of a single small department of natural science, nor can one mind comprehend fully the relations of all the various departments of knowledge, but nevertheless evolution seems to describe the history of all facts and their relations throughout the entire field of knowledge. Were it possible for a man to live a hundred years, he could only begin the exploration of the vast domains of science, and were his life prolonged indefinitely, his task would remain forever unaccomplished, for progress in any direction would bring him inevitably to newer and still unexplored regions of thought.

Therefore it would seem that we are attempting an impossible task when we undertake in the brief time before us the study of this universal principle and its fundamental concepts and applications. But are the difficulties insuperable? Truly our efforts would be foredoomed to failure were it not that the materials of knowledge are grouped in classes and departments which may be illustrated by a few representative data. And it is also true that every one has thought more or less widely and deeply about human nature, about the living world to which we belong, and about the circumstances that control our own lives and those of our fellow creatures. Many times we withdraw from the world of strenuous endeavor to think about the "meaning of things," and upon the "why" and "wherefore" of existence itself. Every one possesses already a fund of information that can be directly utilized during the coming discussions; for if evolution is true as a universal principle, then it is as natural and everyday a matter as nature and existence themselves, and its materials must include the facts of daily life and observation.

Although the doctrine of evolution was stated in very nearly its present form more than a century ago, much misunderstanding still exists as to its exact meaning and nature and value; and it is one of the primary objects of these discussions to do away with certain current errors of judgment about it. It is often supposed to be a remote and recondite subject, intelligible only to the technical expert in knowledge, and apart from the everyday world of life. It is more often conceived as a metaphysical and philosophical system, something antagonistic to the deep-rooted religious instincts and the theological beliefs of mankind. Truly all the facts of knowledge are the materials of science, but science is not metaphysics or philosophy or belief, even though the student who employs scientific method is inevitably brought to consider problems belonging to these diverse fields of thought. A study of nervous mechanism and organic structure leads to the philosophical problem of the freedom of the will; questions as to the evolution of mind and the way mind and matter are related force the investigator to consider the problem of immortality. But these and similar subjects in the field of extra-science are beyond its sphere for the very good reason that scientific method, which we are to define shortly, cannot be employed for their solution. Evolution is a science; it is a description of nature's order, and its materials are facts only. In method and content it is the very science of sciences, describing all and holding true throughout each one.

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