Evolution

The consciousness of Mr. Darwin lays it down as axiomatic that self-preservation or survival is the essential or universal good for all living things. The mechanical processes of "spontaneous variation" and "natural selection" bring about this good by their combined action; but being physical processes they can in no sense be said to intend it. It merely floats off here and there accidentally as one of a thousand other physical results. The followers of Darwin rightly scorn those teleologists who claim that the physical process, as such; of evolution follows an ideal of perfection. But now suppose that not only our Darwinian consciousness, but with even greater energy the [p. 8] consciousness of the creature itself, postulates survival as its summum bonum, and by its cognitive faculty recognises as well as Mr. Darwin which of its actions and functions subserves this good; would not the addition of causal efficacy to this consciousness enable it to furnish forth the means as well as fix the end -- make it teleologically a fighter as well as a standard-bearer? Might not, in other words, such a consciousness promote or increase by its function of efficacity the amount of that "usefulness" on the part of the brain which it defines and estimates by its other functions? To answer such a question, we must analyse somewhat closely the peculiarities of the individual consciousness as it phenomenally presents itself to our notice.

The hypothesis we are advocating might, if confirmed, considerably mitigate one of the strongest objections to the credibility of the Darwinian theory. A consciousness which should not only determine its brain to prosperous courses, but also by virtue of that hereditary influence of habit (nowadays so generally believed in by naturalists) should organise from generation to generation a nervous system more and more mechanically incapable of wandering from the lines of interest chosen for it at first, would immensely shorten the time and labour of natural selection. Mr. Darwin regards animated nature as a sort of table on which dice are continually being thrown. No intention presides over the throwing, but lucky numbers from time to time fortuitously turn up and are preserved. If the ideas we have advanced concerning the instability of a complicated cerebrum be true, we should have a sort of extension of this reign of accident into the functional life of [p. 16] every individual animal whose brain had become sufficiently evolved. As his body morphologically was the result of lucky chance, so each of his so- called acts of intelligence would be another; and ages might elapse before out of this enormous lottery-game a brain should emerge both complex and secure. But give to consciousness the power of exerting a constant pressure in the direction of survival, and give to the organism the power of growing to the modes in which consciousness has trained it, and the number of stray shots is immensely reduced, and the time proportionally shortened for Evolution. It is, in fact, hard to see how without an effective superintending ideal the evolution of so unstable an organ as the mammalian cerebrum can have proceeded at all.

Creation essentially miraculous 194 LETTER XVI. Our selfish and worldly loves made evil by the influence of proprium 195 The excess of them even not hateful to God, because he utilizes it in the hells 198 The only intolerable evil to God is proprium, selfhood, or self- righteousness 200 Tor this is spiritual or living evil ; and fatal, if allowed, to the human race 201 The church alone produces this desperate evil in men 204 Conscience the evidence of an infinite and a finite struggle in our nature 206 The church a mere rudimentary exponent of conscience 208 Change of plan 210 LETTER XVII. Laws of the spiritual creation 211 Spiritual creation inert without the creature's natural constitution 214 CONTENTS. vii I indication of nature in creation gives it all its interest to the heart 218 Spiritual creation interpreted by the doctrine of evolution 220 Difference between the philosophic aud the scientific idea of it 222

Evolution relatively a spiritual flower ; involution its natural stem 224 Science essentially ministerial, not magisterial to the mind 226 Nature neither begins nor ends anything 228 LETTEE XVIII. The forte and foible of science 229 Nature's first lesson to the intellect 231 Difference between physical and natural existence 232 The philosopher has no call to look at nature outwardly 234 Science has no perception of the spiritual ends of nature, and therefore confounds nature with physics 236 It claims that natural existence is identical with spiritual being . . . 240 Professor Huxley as a philosopher 242 "What protoplasm symbolizes to the intellect 244 Physicism a providential gospel 246 LETTER XIX. Swedenborg's philosophy of nature 247 Good and evil the mere earth of the finite consciousness 250 Heaven and hell have only a subjective truth 252 Subjective genesis of hell in man 254 Hell is always heaven to the evil man but when he is forced not to do evil 256

The autobiographic fragment dates from an earlier period. He had often been urged by members of his family to express his religious philosophy under the form of a personal evolution of opinion. But egotistic analysis was less to his taste than enunciation of objective results; so that, although he sat down to the autobiographic task a good many times, it was at long intervals; and the work, " Society the Redeemed Form of Man," as well as the one now first published, were both written after the Autobiography was begun. The Stephen Dewhurst, whose confessions it is supposed to be, is an entirely fictitious personage. The few items of personal and geographic fact he gives have been rectified in foot-notes, so as to be

" You see, in short, how infinitely remote from spiritual sonship to God our natural creation leaves us, and how obligatory it is upon him therefore, if he would ever spiritually affiliate us to himself, to give us redemption from our own nature. And this great redemption, how shall it ever be able to;ome about? By the very nature of the case, the sphere of its evolution is restricted to the limits of the created consciousness, so that the creator can command absolutely no enginery to effect it which is not supplied exclusively by the resources of that The tragic evolution of the selfhood itself, " a limitation upon human life which on its face is one of inconceivable malignity," is the only enginery required. But of its tragedy anon. Meanwhile —

This puts us on the track of a distinction between the normal and the trance mode of perception, which partly explains the latter. The evolution of man's mind is altogether in the analytic direction. He deals with objects by picking out their " essential " character, tracing its consequences, and ignoring other features. He remembers a house in a street by the one little inconspicuous detail of its number, very likely observing nothing else about it; and similarly he retains the line on the foolscap paper by not dispersing his attention over the sheet, but counting the number of lines between the one selected and the nearest edge. The number thus obtained is a permanent part of the mind's possession, and is obviously for practical purposes more exact than any reminiscence of the " general look " of the line in its place would be.

One monkey of Horsley and Schaefer’s was as tame, and did certain tricks as well, after as before the operation.55 It is probable that we have about reached the limits of what can be learned about brain-functions from vivisecting inferior animals, and that we must hereafter look more exclusively to human pathology for light. The existence of separate speech and writing centres in the left hemisphere in man; the fact that palsy from cortical injury is so much more complete and enduring in man and the monkey than in dogs; and the farther fact that it seems more difficult to get complete sensorial blindness from cortical ablations in the lower animals than in man, all show that functions get more specially localized as evolution goes on. In birds localization seems hardly to exist, and in rodents it is much less conspicuous than in carnivora.

All nervous centres have then in the first instance one essential function, that of ‘intelligent’ action. They feel, prefer one thing to another, and have ‘ends.’ Like all other organs, however, they evolve from ancestor to descendant, and their evolution takes two directions the lower centres passing downwards into more unhesitating automatism, and the higher ones upwards into larger intellectuality.94 Thus it may happen that those functions which can safely grow uniform and fatal become least accompanied by mind, and that their organ, the spinal cord, becomes a more and more soulless machine; whilst on the contrary those functions which it benefits the animal to have adapted to delicate environing variations pass more and more to the hemispheres, whose anatomical structure and attendant consciousness grow more and more elaborate as zoological evolution proceeds.

to get complete sensorial blindness from cortical ablations in the lower animals than in man, all show that functions get more specially localized as evolution goes on. In birds localization seems hardly to exist, and in rodents it is much less conspicuous than in carnivora. Even for man, however, Munk's way