Copyright © 1977 by Theosophical University Press. All rights reserved.
The question of evolution has become a burning one, because men and women have come to realize that there is a moral question involved in the teachings concerning even the physical derivation of the human race.
If the derivation of man from an inferior animal stock were true, that is, a fact of nature, knowing as we do that the universe pursues logical courses and that man has in him a directing moral sense, then we should say it is all right; no harm can come from believing in a fact of nature.
But if, on the other hand, the teaching is based, as it is, not wholly on a fundamental truth but very largely on a speculative theory which is inherently lacking in moral power, and which man in following therefore follows in a necessarily immoral manner, then the case is vastly different; and all thinking men and women find that it is time to call a halt, and to investigate the bases upon which this former speculative thinking rested. Investigate them impartially, not from the standpoint of partisanship nor from the standpoint of a parti pris, but making a searching investigation into the actuality of the theory itself -- whether it is based on nature or whether it is one of those many fads or hypotheses partly based on nature and partly evolved from the speculative imagination of the framers of it.
Let me turn again to Dr. Osborn. Writing in the Encyclopaedia Britannica under the heading "Palaeontology," he speaks forcibly as regards the causes of evolution:
The net result of observation is not favourable to the essentially Darwinian view that the adaptive arises out of the fortuitous by selection, but is rather favourable to the hypothesis of the existence of some quite unknown intrinsic law of life which we are at present totally unable to comprehend or even conceive. We have shown that the direct observation of the origin of new characters in palaeontology brings them within that domain of natural law and order to which the evolution of the physical universe conforms. The nature of this law, which, upon the whole, appears to be purposive or teleological in its operations, is altogether a mystery which may or may not be illumined by future research. In other words, the origin, or first appearance of new characters, which is the essence of evolution, is an orderly process so far as the vertebrate and invertebrate palaeontologist observes it. -- XIth ed., vol. XX, p. 591
What a change from the scientific views of the last century! I would like to point out in this truly remarkable paragraph the emphasis laid upon the purposive or teleological principle implicated in this unquestionable truth -- teleological meaning that which tends to a well-defined end or object.
Professor G. W. Patrick of the University of Iowa, writing on the broader views of twentieth-century ideas of evolution, has this to say:
Another feature of twentieth-century evolution is the lesser emphasis put upon the notion of nature as a battlefield -- as a scene of sanguinary and ruthless struggle in which the fittest survive. This was one of the unhappy ideas associated with the name of Darwin, even until recently made the excuse and vindication of every evil thing in human society. It is unfortunate that a part of this precious twentieth century has got to be spent in "unthinking our convenient Darwinism." Professor Patten, writing as a biologist, says that the altruism and cooperation which we are coming to recognize as the absolutely indispensable condition of further social evolution are basal and primary factors in the grand strategy of evolution in nature itself.
In fact, there seem to be indications that the whole evolutionary nomenclature of the nineteenth century was unfortunate. Perhaps we need a new set of terms all around to describe that great world movement which for seventy-five years has gone by the name of evolution. Many biologists are beginning to question the presupposition of the nineteenth century that the concepts of the mechanical sciences have any special prerogative in the interpretation of life and mind and society. Professor Haldane has gone so far as to reverse the order and suggests that "the idea of life is nearer to reality than the idea of matter and energy" . . . -- "The Convergence of Evolution and Fundamentalism," The Scientific Monthly, July 1926, pp. 12-13
I interrupt a moment. Here we find a reaction against the old idea of matter and energy as lifeless, soulless, unanimated, unimpulsed, dead things, combining helter-skelter, driven about space fortuitously, collecting together without coherent reason or order to form what we call life and men.
To continue the quotation:
and J. Arthur Thomson believes that the formulae of physics and chemistry are no longer adequate for the description of behavior or of development or of evolution. It is generally felt that Herbert Spencer "put something over" on the scientific world when be exalted a certain trio of concepts, namely, matter, motion and force, whose redistribution was to explain the whole world.
Biologists of the present time are largely engaged in patient and persistent investigation in the field of genetics, wisely refraining from speculation as to the causes and meaning of evolution. But it is difficult to refrain from all speculation, and when biologists do enter the field of philosophy and speak of theories of evolution, it is interesting to notice the new terms which they are using. We hear much of creative evolution, not always in the strict Bergsonian sense. We hear of "emergent evolution." We hear evolution described as "a struggle for freedom," or as a process in "self-expression." We hear of the material fabric of nature as being "alert" rather than "inert." We hear of "the grand strategy of evolution." We even hear of evolution as a process of achievement, in which life and mind and moral conduct and social organization and science and art are values which have been won.
Again, what a change from the earlier scientific views!
Professor Louis Trenchard More of the University of Cincinnati, writing on "Man's Nature," has the following to say, among other things of interest, on the inadequacy of the mechanistic biologic theory of transformism, usually miscalled evolution, and of the misuse of that theory, such as it is, by most of the popularizers of scientific hypotheses. He writes:
For many decades the world has been governed by the philosophy of progress and evolution which was established by the work of the biologists of the nineteenth century. To them we owe not only the solid foundations of the science of biology, but also the dogmatic assumption of the Darwinian theory of natural selection and a philosophy of monistic naturalism. -- The Hibbert Journal, April 1927, pp. 509-10, 522
Let me interrupt a moment to say that these scientific theories are not proved facts of nature; they are merely speculations, hypotheses, elevated to the rank of truths of being; but now our modem scientific theorists know better. Professor More continues:
In the meanwhile later biologists have proved, by their own experimental work, that the Darwinian theory is entirely inadequate to explain the appearance of new species, and they have found no other satisfactory cause of variations. They are thus reduced to the position of asking us to accept a general theory of evolution on faith.
This seems to imply that there is a scientific church wherein if we wish to be in good standing and popular, and not to be considered as "cranks" by the unthinking, we must accept things on faith. The statement by Professor More we do not believe to be one iota overdrawn or exaggerated. He continues:
While these results are known by all well-informed biologists, they have permitted, without protest, the popularisers of science, the sociologists, and the clergy to present the subject as one founded on positive evidence. And, still worse, students in schools and colleges are taught biology in such a manner that they are convinced that the special theories of evolution are established as indisputable facts, and that the philosophy of naturalism is the logical conclusion of those facts.
We conclude the extract thus:
There is little wonder that the world at large confuses Darwinism with evolution, and atheism with biology and scientific theory in general. Popular accounts of "missing links" are constantly appearing, and they are not contradicted authoritatively by biologists. And yet they know that to look for a "missing link" means that we have not only the two ends of a chain, but also most of the intermediate parts. The truth is, we have one end of a possible chain, ourselves, and we have certain fragments of fossil remains which have some of our characteristics. But biologists do not know what, if any, animal ancestor forms the other end of the chain, or what links connect us with the past. . . .
And since [the biologist] knows neither the cause nor the method of variations, he is unable to predict the characteristics of even the next generation.
Is not this a most remarkable plea of ignorance, and yet how honest and forthright it is. Evolution is indeed a fact of being. Growth, learning, advancement, progress, is the general law of the universe. That is one thing which any sane man today admits. But the theories, the ideas, the dogmatic assumptions, the teachings, the hypotheses, the fads, of any particular popularizer of science, be he small or great, are another thing; and we, as thinking men and women, have perfect right, and are upheld by the greater biologists themselves, in accepting such ideas or in refusing to accept them.
It is the so-called popularizers of science, many of them nevertheless very earnest and sincere men, with whom theosophists have bones to pick; at any rate, these are the ones with whom we differ, and positively in some cases, because instead of confining themselves to the noble principles of natural research, they are too often given to dogmatic asseverations concerning facts which have not yet been fully understood or explained.
In The Story of Philosophy, Dr. Will Durant says:
With this new orientation, evolution appears to us as something quite different from the blind and dreary mechanism of struggle and destruction which Darwin and Spencer described. We sense duration in evolution, the accumulation of vital powers, the inventiveness of life and mind. . . . We are prepared to understand why the most recent and expert investigators, like Jennings and Maupas, reject the mechanical theory of protozoan behavior, and why Professor E. B. Wilson, dean of contemporary cytologists, concludes his book on the cell with the statement that "the study of the cell has, on the whole, seemed to widen rather than to narrow the enormous gap that separates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic world." And everywhere, in the world of biology, one hears of the rebellion against Darwin. -- pp. 497-8
Let me here repeat: theosophists do not admit the existence of any so-called inorganic or lifeless matter; everything is living because everything is a focus of force and therefore of life, for life is energy; life is force. What else can it be? Energies and forces are simply manifestations or phenomena of life. Life is the living fountain, and energies and forces are the streams pouring forth from that fountain.
At a joint meeting of biology and chemistry teachers, physics and botany clubs of New York City, Dr. John M. Coulter spoke on the nature and foundation of evolution. His opening remarks follow:
The meaning of evolution is probably more misunderstood than any doctrine of science. The reason is that it has been discussed very freely by those who are not informed, and in this way much misinformation has been propagated.
The general meaning of organic evolution is that the plant and animal kingdoms have developed in a continuous, orderly way, under the guidance of natural laws, just as the solar system has evolved in obedience to natural laws. -- "The History of Organic Evolution" presented on March 27, 1926, at the request of the science committee of the Board of Education, New York City. For full text see Science, vol. LXIII, May 14, 1926; also Annual Report Smithsonian Institution, 1926.
We agree; only these "natural laws" are merely the manifesting activities of indwelling intelligences, "the gods," if we may use an unfashionable word. These laws are the expression of the activities of their vegetative or vehicular side, as it were, while the kinetic or active side which they possess, is that which manifests on their own higher planes, and is the expression of their high spiritual and sublimely intellectual activities. These latter activities are the root of the harmony, consistency, correlating nature which the universe manifests; while, on the other hand, it is the corporeal or vegetative side of their nature, so to say, which manifests the energies and forces which play through the physical universe that we know.
Dr. Coulter then points out that Darwinism is quite a different thing from evolution per se; and further, that Darwinism is only one of the attempted explanations of the evolutionary biologic phenomena of life. Evolution, he says, is an undoubted fact; but it is quite a different thing, he adds, whether any proposed transformist or evolutionary theory is adequate as an explanation of the natural phenomena of growth and progress. Not a single hypothesis so far advanced, he declares, fits or covers all the facts known.
All this is exactly what we point out. But what I wish to lay emphasis on here is the unfortunate moral effect which these transformist teachings have had upon the world. When men believe that they have a common spiritual ancestry, and spring from a common vital-spiritual root, and are journeying on together through vastly long periods of evolutionary development; when they realize that the blood which beats in the veins of each man is similar to, or perhaps almost identical with, the blood which beats in the veins of all men, no matter how great be the differences between the various races; then men have a spiritual conception of life, which functions as a strong anchor by which they can hold the ship of life in times of stress or danger. Inwardly knowing this, they are not swept away from their moral moorings by false biologic teachings, born of physiologic and psychological fallacies and psychoses of various kinds, and eventuating in the conscious or unconscious belief, which is even taught to our little children, that life is a desperate struggle for superiority, in which each man must succeed through selfishness or "go to the wall," and that, among the religious-minded, the devil gets the hindmost -- if indeed there be a devil!
Now what has this biologic bogey of the last century eventuated in? In the idea that man, being nothing but a transformed beast, without a directing soul or an overshadowing spirit, is a creature of haphazard chance, without hope of a spiritual future, and ungoverned by any innately moral sanctions found in the operations of nature itself; and that the only restraining forces are those of social conventions or an intangible kind of moral code arising out of opportunism, and the fear of being caught if his innate aberrant selfishness wanders too far from the straight road. Or again, in the idea that if indeed man has a soul, that soul is only some kind of effluvium arising out of chemico-physiologic action in and on the brain -- or some similar nonsense.
These nightmares of the imagination -- for they are truly that -- are largely responsible for the terrible struggle for material supremacy and power which the world is passing through.
Even Professor Frederick Soddy, ardent champion though he is of science as the great benefactor of the world of men, was driven by the logic of facts to voice in no uncertain terms the same conclusions. Knowledge was misused from lack of a restraining moral and spiritual influence.
Does it do any good to our children to go into museums and see brutish creatures painted on the walls, or in picture books, or to gaze at plaster-of-paris casts or statues of absolutely imaginary apelike ancestors of man?
Professor Wood Jones some years ago wrote on the subject of the "missing link" which anthropologists are so fond of constructing:
Any so-called missing link would be very unlike the popular picture of a brutish, slouching creature made more horrible than any gorilla by a dawning touch of humanity. This missing-link picture must be deleted from our minds, and I find no occupation less worthy of the science of anthropology than the not unfashionable business of modeling, painting, or drawing these nightmare products of imagination, and lending them, in the process, an utterly false value of apparent reality.
I have never used words as strong as these from one of the most eminent anatomists of today. This quotation was taken from The Problem of Man's Ancestry (pp. 39, 40), which he concludes as follows:
Man is no new begot child of the ape, born of a chance variation, bred of a bloody struggle for existence upon pure brutish lines. Such an idea must be dismissed by humanity, and such an idea must cease to exert any influence upon conduct. We did not reach our present level by these means; certainly we shall never attain a higher one by intensifying them. Were man to regard himself as being an extremely ancient type, distinguished now, and differentiated in the past, purely by the qualities of his mind, and were he to regard existing Primates as misguided and degenerated failures of his ancient stock, I think it would be something gained for the ethical outlook of humanity -- and it would be a belief consistent with present knowledge.
Verily so. It is a lack of recognition of our essential oneness in our spiritual origin that allows the growth in the human heart of the evil fountain of selfishness, of self-seeking. This is the root of all evil and of all evil-doing, so far as humans are concerned, as it is the cause as well of all individual misery and unhappiness; because from this evil fountain of selfishness, the child of our lower nature, there pour forth, if they can, when released from the benign and restraining influences of the higher nature, all the things which make life dark and sad and unhappy.
It is of ethics I speak, and they are beautiful indeed. Ethics and morals are founded on the laws of the universe, because they are naught else than rules of harmony in human conduct, copying the harmony prevailing in the cosmic spaces. All that we need to do is to understand those laws, to realize them in our hearts, to take them into our consciousness; for then we shall be able consciously to follow the fundamental operations of the universal life, because thus we are in intellectual touch with those harmonies.
We cannot be in touch with these basic universal laws until we banish from our minds utterly the idea that man is merely his physical body, a body unensouled, and evolved in the mechanical and uninspired method taught by the transformists. We have to recognize man as a spiritual entity, a monadic center, whose origin is the heart of universal life. It is this inner spark of light, in man as in all beings, that furnishes and has furnished the evolutionary urge towards producing ever fitter vehicles of self-expression.