Evolution

* * * * * § 52. Were they needed, many further illustrations might be cited. Going back to the early time when the deeds of the god-king, chanted and mimetically represented in dances round his altar, were further narrated in picture-writings on the walls of temples and palaces, and so constituted a rude literature, we might trace the development of Literature through phases in which, as in the Hebrew Scriptures it presents in one work, theology, cosmogony, history, biography, civil law, ethics, poetry; through other phases in which, as in the Iliad, the religious, martial, historical, the epic, dramatic, and lyric elements are similarly commingled; down to its present heterogeneous development, in which its divisions and subdivisions are so numerous and varied as to defy complete classification. Or we might track the evolution of Science: beginning with the era in which it was not yet differentiated from Art, and was, in union with Art, the handmaid of Religion; passing through the era in which the sciences were so few and rudimentary, as to be simultaneously cultivated by the same philosophers; and ending with the era in which the genera and species are so numerous that few can enumerate them, and no one can adequately grasp even one genus.

Or we might do the like with Architecture, with the Drama, with Dress. But doubtless the reader is already weary of illustrations; and my promise has been amply fulfilled. I believe it has been shown beyond question, that that which the German physiologists have found to be the law of organic development, is the law of all development. The advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its surface; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggregation of races; it is seen in the evolution of Society, in respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economical organization; and it is seen in the evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity, which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of yesterday, that in which Evolution essentially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.

* * * * * § 54. At the same time that all evolution is a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, it is also a change from the indefinite to the definite. As well as an advance from simplicity to complexity, there is an advance from confusion to order—from undetermined arrangement to determined arrangement. In the process of development, no matter what sphere it is displayed in, there is not only a gradual multiplication of unlike parts; but there is a gradual increase in the distinctness with which these parts are marked off from each other. And so is that increase of heterogeneity which characterizes Evolution, distinguished from that increase of heterogeneity which does not. For proof of this, it needs only to reconsider the instances given above. The structural changes constituting a disease, have no such definiteness, either in locality, extent, or outline, as the structural changes constituting development. Though certain morbid growths arise much more commonly in some parts of the body than in others (as warts on the hands, cancer on the breasts, tubercle in the lungs), yet they are not confined to these parts; nor, when found on them, are they anything like so precise in their relative positions as are the normal parts around them.

Were it needful, it would be easy to accumulate evidences of various other kinds. The progress from myths and legends, extreme in their misrepresentations, to a history that has slowly become, and is still becoming, more accurate; the establishment of settled systematic methods of doing things, instead of the indeterminate ways at first pursued; and the great increase in the number of points on which conflicting opinion has settled down into exact knowledge; might severally be used further to exemplify the general truth enunciated. The basis of induction is, however, already sufficiently wide. Proof that all Evolution is from the indefinite to the definite, we find to be not less abundant than proof that all Evolution is from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The one kind of change is co-extensive with the other—is equally with it exhibited throughout Nature.

And so we find that while Evolution is a transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, and of the indefinite into the definite, it is also a transformation of the incoherent into the coherent. Along with the differentiation shown in increasing contrasts of parts with each other, there goes on an integration, by which the parts are rendered distinct units, as well as closely united components of one whole. These clauses here added to the definition, are essential ones; not only as being needful to distinguish Evolution from that which is not Evolution, but likewise as being needful to express all which the idea of Evolution includes. Progressive integration with the growing definiteness necessarily resulting from it, is of co-ordinate importance with the progressive differentiation before dwelt upon—nay, from one point of view, may be held of greater importance. For organization, in which what we call Evolution is most clearly and variously displayed, consists even more in the union of many parts into one whole, than in the formation of many parts. The Evolution which we see throughout inorganic nature, is lower than that which organic nature exhibits to us, for the especial reason that the mutual dependence of parts is extremely indefinite, even when traceable at all.

The only obvious respect in which all kinds of Evolution are alike, is, that they are modes of _change_. Every phenomenon to which we apply the term, presents us with a succession of states; and when such succession ceases, we no longer predicate Evolution. Equally in those past forms of it which are more or less hypothetical, and in those forms of it which we see going on around, this is the common characteristic. Note next, that the kind of change which constitutes Evolution, is broadly distinguished from change of an equally general kind, in this, that it is change of internal relations instead of change of external relations. All things in motion through space are the subjects of change; but while in this which we call mechanical motion, the relative position as measured from surrounding objects is continually altered, there is not implied any alteration in the positions of the parts of the moving body in respect to each other. Conversely, a body exhibiting what we call Evolution, while it either may or may not display new relations of position to the things around it, _must_ display new relations of position among the parts of which it is made up.

the Dependence of Morality. 45 that our conduct should be visibly self-moved, or date from ourselves exclusively, to the denial of all outward constraint. But then the surface aspect of thills is precisely what the philoso* pher disregards, being above all things careful to seize their substantial or spiritual import, which alone is conformable to absolute truth. At all events it is just this surface aspect of the case which Swedenborg proves to be eminently fallacious, in showing us that the apparent self- hood or freedom we have from nature, is nothing but an appearance, vouchsafed to us in the inr terest of a higher or spiritual evolution, and contingent upon a certain strict equilibrium which the Divine Providence maintains in our nature between the opposing poles of good and evil. Let me briefly illustrate the practical differ- ence on this point between Swedenborg and the popular theologians, by a familiar example.

The profoundest of our sensuous judgments, and the basis of the religious instinct in us, is, that our natural force is final : that far from be- ing strictly incidental to a grander subsequent evolution of the Divine power in us, it is, on the contrary, its own end: thus that the pleasure and the pain, the health and the disease, the strength and the weakness, the growth and the decay, upon whose equilibrium our natural conscious- ness is contingent, are in themselves absolute goods and evils: to be received, the former with thankfulness, as a mark of the Divine favor; the latter with sorrow, as a mark of the Divine dis- pleasure.

Method of the divine revelation very gradual, beginning with the family, and ending with the social, unity of man ; a temporary or provisional form of it being supplied by the conventional society called the church. — The church, as a visible or ritual economy, has never had any real but only a representative worth ; and at the present time is sadly behind "the world" in spiritual intelligence. But it has had an inestimable use in keep- ing alive men's conscience of unrest towards God, and so preparing the way for his consummate achievement in our nature, which is the evolution of the SOCIAL sentiment. — Swedenborg's conception of the technical church. Has no quarrel with the persons composing it, but only with its un- righteous animus 71-79 CHAPTER XIII. The purely negative office of the church in history illustrated and argued, from reason and scripture 79-85 CHAPTER XIV.

Faith must reconcile herself to this perilous alternative, if she obstinately persist in making our natural morality supernatural by allowing it a truth irrespective of consciousness, or assigning it any objectivity beyond the evolution of human society or fel- lowship. It is not its own end, but a strict means to a higher or spiritual evolution of life in our nature; and they accordingly who persist in ignoring this truth must expect to fall intellectual- ly behind the time in which they live. Some concession hei-e is absolutely necessary to save the religious instinct. For men feel a growing obligation to co-ordinate the demands of freedom or personality with the limitations of science ; and since Kant's re- morseless criticism stops them off — under penalty of accepting his impracticable noumenal world — from postulating any longer an objective being answering to their subjective seeming, they must needs "svith his successors give the whole question of crea- tion the go-by, in qiiietly resolving the minor element of the equation into the major, man into God, or making the finite a mere transient experience of the infinite, by means of which that great unconsciousness attains to selfhood. For this is the sum of the Heo;elian dialectic, to confound existence with beinxr, or make identity no longer serve individuality, but absorb or swallow it up : so bringing back creation to intellectual chaos, which is naught.