Evolution. F. B. Jevons

ultimate defeat of the ethical process matters, or it does not. If it does not, why suffer sorrow and pain in the vain endeavour to stave it off? If it does, then to whom? No longer to man, for he will have joined the extinct fauna. Therefore to some moral intelligence to whom the triumph of right is a matter of importance.

      From this dilemma the only escape seems to be frankly to admit that a billion years hence it will be "all the same," but to deny that, because it will be all the same then, it is a matter of indifference now. This argument, then, maintains that it will be all the same ultimately, and that it is an illusion to imagine that when man is extinct it can possibly matter. Here and now, however, and indeed as long as mankind continues to exist, right-doing is of the highest conceivable importance to man, more important even than happiness. But it is only as long as mankind continues to exist that it can continue to be important: its importance only exists in man's mind, and perishes with it. To say, therefore, that the ultimate defeat of the ethical process will, when established, be regrettable, is only to say that if we, or any other moral judge, were there to see it, we should feel regret about it; but we cannot possibly maintain that, because a moral judge would regret it, if he were there, therefore there will be one there to regret it. Of course, it is possible that the Unknowable may be a moral intelligence of this kind, because everything is possible with regard to the Unknowable. But we can neither affirm nor deny that or anything else about the Unknowable, for then the Unknowable would cease so far to be unknowable.

      The contention of this argument, then, is that for us men, and (as far as we have any positive knowledge) for us men alone, the laws of morality are real, intensely real; but their reality begins with man and ends with man. To this contention the reply is that as regards their reality the laws of morality are on exactly the same footing as the laws of science. Take the theory of evolution for instance: from scientific observations of what is going on now it infers what has been and what will be, it reconstructs the past and forecasts the future; it frames pictures of the globe as it was before man was evolved; it forms conceptions of the earth as it will be long after man is extinct. These conceptions and pictures, however, exist only in the mind of man, for the future does not yet exist and the past has ceased to be. That is to say, evolution is an inference, or rather a mass of inferences, which like all inferences exist in the mind, could not have existed before the mind, and cannot exist when the mind has ceased to be. Science, being the work of the mind (for we cannot say that it requires no intelligence), is just man's notion of what has been, is, and will be, in the same way that morality is man's conception of what ought to be. If we say that what ought to be will cease and become meaningless when man is extinct, then we must say the same of what has been, is, and will be. If the good, the noble, the right, are merely human ideas of what ought to be, matter and motion are merely human conceptions of what is. If the reality of the former is only to be found in the human mind, so is the reality of the latter. If the reality of the one is to cease with human existence, so must the reality of the other. On the other hand, if either is to exist when mankind is no more, it is only in some mind that it can exist. It is only for a person that anything can be right or good. It is only a person that can see the past summed up or the future contained in the present. If it is legitimate and logical to infer that what is will continue to be after man's disappearance from the earth, so it is to draw the same inference with regard to what ought to be. If science is true really, and does not merely appear so to man, it must be true for some mind other than human: by an intelligence alone can truth be apprehended, or the right approved. But if truth is limited to the human mind, and ceases with it, then evolution must cease to be true when men cease to exist. Nay, in that case it cannot claim to be true at all, or rather does not claim to be true, but only seeming. On the other hand, if the law of gravity, for instance, was true before man's appearance, its truth must have dwelt in some mind. If it was not true then, we have no better reason for believing it to be true now. In fine, truth and right, what is and what ought to be, must either be dismissed as mere human imaginings, or be accepted as everlasting facts of an Eternal Moral Consciousness.

      Shall we, then, say that the description which science gives of the constitution and working of the universe is indeed consistent and coherent enough with itself, and is a logical deduction from its premises, but to assert that it expresses or even corresponds to any reality beyond itself is a statement which we have no right to make? To take up this position is simply to maintain that science is consistent and logical, but that we have no reason or right to believe that it is true. If our accounts are based on imaginary figures, they may be kept as strictly as you please, but they will never show us our true position. Indeed, if our premises are incorrect to start with, the more logical our inferences are, the more certain our conclusions are to be wrong.

      Shall we, then, say that the account which science gives of the cosmic process is not only consistent and logical, but expresses or corresponds to a reality? Then in that case the cosmic process, so far as it is truly expressed by science, is a logical process. But it is only a mind which can be logical or can go through a logical process. Once more, therefore, the facts of science as much as the facts of morality imply that the real is an Intelligence. In fine, the truth of science and the truth of morality are bound up together and have the same basis. If the one is valid for facts beyond the range of human observation, so is the other. If the one implies a consciousness other than human, equally so does the other.

      It may be said that to regard the ruling principle of the cosmos as a moral agent is to commit the anthropomorphic fallacy. What, then, shall we say of science, which is engaged in demonstrating that the cosmic process is always logical? That science simply describes the facts as they are, and that if they are logical, it is not her fault? Then the presence of an intelligence other than human is revealed to science in the facts; and it is false to say that science merely imports her own intelligence into them. In the same way, the presence of a moral personality other than our own is revealed to us in the facts of conscience, and not imported into them by us. The presence of the Comforter is one of the facts apprehended by the religious consciousness; it is not merely the religious man's way of interpreting some other fact. From this conclusion the only way of escape is to say that anthropomorphism is a fallacy, and that it is a fallacy to which the human mind, by its very constitution, is always and inevitably subject. This argument gets rid at one blow of all indications of any intelligence or morality other than human. But how? Simply by begging the question, by tacitly taking it for granted that there is no other personality than human personality. In that case it is obvious, indeed, that man's perpetual discovery of personal power in the forces of nature, of more than human wisdom in nature's laws, and of more than human goodness in the human heart, is and must be fallacious. But only on the assumption that there is no wisdom in the world but man's, no love in all the universe but his, can we say that man reads into the facts a wisdom and a love which are not there. Are we, then, prepared to say that, in giving us a logical account of the cosmic process, science has—naturally and necessarily indeed, but none the less completely—been mistaken? If the scientific account corresponds to the facts, then the facts behave logically. If it is the anthropomorphic fallacy to imagine that things can behave logically, then science's description of the facts must be fallacious.

      Perhaps it will be sought to save science by saying that science is anthropomorphic, but not fallacious. This, however, gives away the whole case: it is an admission that, in interpreting the cosmic process as a logical process, science is simply recognising, and rightly recognising, the logical character of the facts—the anthropomorphic interpretation happens to be right. But we must note that it is not right because it is anthropomorphic, but anthropomorphic because it faithfully describes the facts. Science aims at describing and formulating facts as they are: if the laws of science are rational, it is because she found reason already in the facts, and not because she put it there. She does not make the laws of nature, neither does she dictate the behaviour of facts, nor is their behaviour merely her way of interpreting facts. Man discovers in nature wisdom, which is an attribute of personality, not because he cannot help being anthropomorphic in his views, but because nature is a manifestation of the power and wisdom of a personality other and greater than man's. So far, then, is this discovery from creating a presumption that man makes nature after his own image, that it constitutes a proof that man is made in the image of that personal will and wisdom which is expressed in nature as well as manifested in man. In discovering personality we discover what is fundamentally real in nature, and for us what is