Chapter II: Part 2

Is it a reflection upon the power, the glory, and the dignity of the Almighty to say that the creative act was by the operation of natural law--a slow, gradual, long-continued act--rather than a short, quick, mechanical, or supernatural, process? Before the dawn of science even the brightest minds, knowing little or nothing of the law of cause and effect, could not conceive of God as performing his mighty works save in some manlike manner. It seems that they had the idea--and a great many still have it--that during those six days of twenty-four hours each the Creator went about his work at his little old mud-mill, mixing and grinding the material, and shaping and moulding it into all sorts of animal forms on his potter wheel. It is time for the world to rid itself of the primitive idea that man originated as a sort of hand-made, table-turned piece of pottery.

Others say that God merely “spoke” all things into existence. If that view be correct, then according to the rest of the Genesis story of creation God became so tired from this lingual feat of six days’ duration that he was compelled to take a rest at the week’s end. Is it possible that a God of infinite power and endurance should become so weary with a week’s work, either of hand or tongue, that he would require a rest?

There is not the slightest evidence that God ever did an hour’s work save through natural law.

Between the scientists and the literal interpreters of the Bible the war has been long and fierce, and has raged on many a battle front; but so far, the scientists have won in every contest. There was once a battle between the scientists and those who believed the earth to be flat--for did not John, the Revelator, see four angels standing on the four corners of the earth? The literalists were defeated. There was once a contest between the astronomers and those who believed the sun and moon revolved around the earth--“And he said in the sight of all Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajelon.... So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” (Joshua, 10:12, 13). The literalists were defeated. There was once a clash between the geologists and those who believed the world to have been created in six twenty-four-hour days. Again the literalists were defeated. There is a combat between those who hold the view that all organisms including man were created by natural laws--operating just as they do today--and those who hold to either the potter or the vocal process of creation. The latter--well, they occupy the same position as those did who said the earth is flat, and that it was made between the blink o’ morn on that great First Monday 6,000 years ago and the evening twilight the following Saturday.

Scientists do not claim that life on this earth began by accident, or that anything “just happens.” On the contrary, it is owing to science that a belief in accidents and chance in the material world has been banished from thinking minds. It is true that a great majority of the people still believe in chance in the psychic world; such as, a certain individual prompted by certain motives, and acting in accord with his nature under certain conditions, did a certain thing, when the same individual prompted by the same motives could have done otherwise--that is to say, the same causes acting under the same conditions can produce effects of various kinds, either good acts or bad acts. But science will finally force the world to accept the whole truth--that mind is as much subject to law as is matter; that the thoughts, desires, deeds of men are shaped by law.

Scientists are trying to teach us to exercise our powers of reason, to form our own opinions from the evidence, not passively to accept opinions on authority. Their method is the direct opposite of that of the orthodox theologians. The latter wish us to regard authority, in matters of religion especially, as superior to reason. No, Mr. Opponent, I don’t wish anyone to forsake his old belief and accept mine on my authority--or that of anyone else. Let reason and evidence be the only authority.

To win converts to evolution is not my only object in discussing the subject. What is quite as important (and, frankly, to me as enjoyable) is to make use of the opportunities the discussion affords me of giving a sort of fifth-rib dig o’ the thumb to those complacent ones who (judging by the manner they acquired, and still retain, their beliefs) seem to think that the mere accident of one’s birth and parentage in a certain time and place, thus bringing him in contact with certain prevailing opinions, is proof that those opinions are true.

This writer is speaking largely from his own mental experience. He, like his opponent, absorbed orthodox theology along with political standpattism and a few other “safe and sane” _isms_ from his early environment. My opponent, like most others, never thought of questioning the truth of those beliefs, but left them undisturbed until they fossilized. On the other hand some of us, perhaps because of a radical twist in our mental make-up, set ourselves to examining those hand-me-down beliefs and found some of them lacking in some important essentials. Having changed sides on one or more important questions we naturally lost faith in the more-or-less popular theory that because an idea is old, or is held by a majority of the people, it must therefore necessarily be true. That is the extent of this writer’s “sponginess.” As a rule when we have learned that we have absorbed most of our political, religious and other early opinions from our environment through the pores of our skin we become less cock-sure we have a monopoly on truth.

As a rule latitude and longitude instead of reason shapes our opinions on the most important issues. We are generally Protestants, Catholics, Mohammedans, Confucians, Monarchists, democrats or republicans, according to whether we happened to be born and reared in Spain, Turkey, China, Mississippi or Vermont.

An old English Philosopher says: “Men have always thought and believed in masses. Throughout the whole earth you may observe opinions and ideas, like swarms of bees, clustering together upon particular spots, or as if, like certain trees and plants, they were indigenous to the soil.” Another writer says, “Men think in packs as jackals hunt.”

A young minister exclaims: “There is a gulf between man and the inferior animals which no amount of sophistry, alias science, can ever bridge. There is more than a missing link--a thousand links. Man differs from animals in mental faculties. Lower animals cannot originate an idea.... If man was evolved from a beast, where did he get his soul? You cannot say it evolved, too. There was a definite hour when man, possessing an immortal spirit, walked this earth, or else man is yet a beast.

“If the soul was slowly evolved, and if that long-tailed monkey who squatted upon the lower branches of your ancestral tree had a piece of a soul, and you should meet that poor little piece of a soul in the future land of spirits, wouldn’t you be ‘sorter’ ashamed on the morning after the Resurrection to walk up to it and say, ‘Howdy, Grandpa?’

“You may boast that your grandfather was a monkey, your great-grandfather a bullfrog, and your great-great-grandfather a wiggletail but I claim for mine no such illustrious ancestry.”

Well, that settles it! To save our pride--or our vanity rather--I suppose we’ll have to shut our eyes to the evidences and reject evolution. After all, perhaps the world’s greatest thinkers have been following the wrong trail in the pursuit of truth; instead of weighing the evidence for and against a theory they should have adopted the infinitely simpler plan of deciding it according to whether or not we like it! All anti-evolutionists find it necessary to appeal to our pride of ancestry to hold us to an ancient dogma. Even Mr. Bryan regards this appeal to petty personal vanity as legitimate argument against evolution. How they hate to give up the ennobling idea that we are the degraded descendants of a perfect, god-like pair!

Are the lower animals so very inferior to man because, as my friend says, they cannot originate an idea? Lots of us higher animals could plead guilty to the same charge; and, what is worse, two or three generations must pass before the majority of us will even seriously consider an idea some one else originated--even when all the facts are for, and none against it.

It is not necessary to bridge every gulf between man and amoeba to prove evolution. If all gaps between species were filled with “links” as thick as down on a goose’s feather then all creatures from Shakespeare to angle worms would belong to the same species. In that case all animals would be either poets or fishbait.

I know of no reason why man evolved from a lower mammal could not have acquired a soul just as easily as if he were fashioned directly from a batch of mud. And I infer from that sublime paragraph of my reverend friend’s closing with the touching salutation, “Howdy, Grandpa,”--whoop-ee!--that his idea of heaven is that it is just about as stagnant a place as he believes this world to be. May not poor little stunted souls--if there are such there--be permitted to unfold and develop in the genial environment of the realm of the blest?

My opponent seems to be perturbed in regard to the exact period in the development of the race, “the definite hour,” when man came into possession of a soul. To this question let us apply cold, merciless logic. The biologic history of the human race is recapitulated in the embryonic life of each individual. There are no difficulties in the way of determining at what precise period the soul was injected into the race-man that are not also met with in regard to the individual. My reverend friend, can you point out the “definite hour”--why not definite minute, or second?--when in your embryonic development you became possessed of a soul? And just three seconds before that event were you not in as woeful a plight as any soulless monkey that ever cooled himself by swinging to and fro, suspended from a leafy bough by means of his prehensile caudal appendage?

Is it not possible that a little bit of envy of that large-souled race of the future does not mingle with your shame of an animal ancestry when you rise and exclaim, “Away with the theory of the upward trend in God’s works; I will none of it?”--for it is a fact that whatever sense of shame one may feel for our lowly ancestors it is more than compensated for by the pride one may feel for the noble race that is to be; because if the path along which we have travelled in past ages points downward in the rear, it just as surely points upward in front. Our destiny will be as high as our origin was low. And as man drops his foolish prejudices and grows more intelligent, as he learns more about the laws of his development, the more rapidly will he advance physically, mentally, spiritually.

Ah! Parson, far better to be the tadpole ancestor of an ever-progressive angel breed than be the degraded descendant of a race of gods; yet a race without hope of ever again reaching the much-lauded, pristine purity and perfection of Adam--a creature really whose moral status was so low, and who was so weak, that he fell at the first temptation.

Civilization, culture, the moral nature of man, have been developed; they are not the remains of something that has been lost. Human nature is not ruined, but is unfinished. The god-like race is not of the past, but belongs to the future. Man entered the zone of sin not from above, but from below. Probably no man who ever walked this earth save Jesus Christ has ever breathed the pure moral atmosphere above the zone of sin. Through this zone, from the pre-human to the man of Galilee, from the sinless state of the lower animals and of the child-man to the sinless perfection of the divine, the whole race, ’mid struggles and trials and sorrows and anguish, must pass, is passing.

NATURAL SELECTION AND FUTURE PROGRESS

Every truth man has discovered, every sound moral precept, is rooted in Nature. She is the rough model to be followed by man if his institutions are to endure. He goes wrong when he opposes her laws; he is right when he is in agreement with her, refining away her crudeness. Man creates nothing; he can only imitate, often poorly. He boasts of his works--really they are the product of Nature working through him, using him as an instrument.

We have seen that Nature does not hesitate to destroy the individual if the species to which it belongs is thereby benefitted. She looks beyond the present generation to the welfare of the race that is to be, thus teaching us the highest morality we can know, the broadest religion, i.e., that the good of the race, the COMMON GOOD, is all important, and that the individual should willingly sacrifice his labor, his life, when the good of humanity demands it. Jesus Christ, Socrates, and a host of less known martyrs have proved their devotion to the common good by making the supreme sacrifice. In so doing they have hewn to the line chalked out by Mother Nature eons ago when inorganic matter first felt the stir of life. Jesus was announcing this principle when he said, “For whosoever will save his life”--strive for self alone--“shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake”--and the sake of humanity which Jesus himself valued higher than his own life--“shall find it.” Though only a few will have occasion to suffer martyrdom, the call to all of us is to live the life of unselfishness, be the end what it may. To live for the race is just as noble, if less dramatic, as to die for it.

Thus we find that Nature’s most vital principle is in perfect accord with the profoundest religious truths. We have been taught that Nature is cruel, that her hands are red with the blood of the innocent, but this idea was born of our short-sightedness. We could not see beyond the outward act to the underlying law and its results.

For man so to shape his life and deeds as to be in harmony with the great law of natural selection and with the fundamental principle of religion does not mean self-effacement, the suppression of individuality. On the contrary, it means self-development, individuality in the best sense. As a species or a race is composed of individuals, the more highly developed are the individuals the greater the species. Self-development is the growth of the individual out of narrow selfishness and in accord with the laws of human betterment. Selfishness expanded, refined and ennobled becomes altruism, the love of others.

That the selfish person defeats his own ends, cheats himself, is a truism. Only the unselfish person, holding humanity dearer than his own self, enjoys to the fullest all that belongs to selfhood, for he alone has the capacity for real enjoyment--or deserves it. The supremely selfish--the criminal, the grafter, the one who seeks to profit in any way at the expense of others--stands in the same relation to his race as the inferior animal to its species--he pulls down the average of the race, and is at cross purposes with Nature.

To condone in one’s self any of the many forms of selfishness, whether it be greed, theft, lying, lust, or vanity, is to put one’s self in the same class with those defective wild creatures which Nature ruthlessly destroys.

When a great ethical doctrine is grounded on a scientific basis it becomes doubly convincing. Let the whole truth in regard to each individual’s duty to the race be taught--the scientific half of it along with the emotional, idealistic half. No one who feels the full force of this truth will, in order to “make a living,” take out of the COMMON GOOD fund more than he puts into it, but less, rather. It should be instilled into the minds of youth that the welfare of the race is the supreme duty of each, and that the greatest individual happiness is attained only through the self-development and self-expression of the individual along this line. But, alas! the enlightened legislatures of some of our sovereign states have forbid the teaching of natural selection to children. The reason given is that it might rob them of their religion!

The time is near when the conduct of man in every field of endeavor will be tested by the standard of loyalty and devotion to the common good. Certain gainful occupations injurious to the common welfare are already gone or going. Eliminated as unfit will be the greedy parasites that fasten themselves onto the social body on pretense of aiding some industry to function, and who give little or nothing in return for the public pap that fills their maws to repletion--eliminated just as Nature eliminates the animal that would bring degeneracy to its species. They will be forced to take up a work wherein their services shall equal their pay. The route between the producer and the consumer will be shortened, and the two will stand nearer on a level--as viewed from the price of the product.

This lesson from the book of Nature we have been studying has a universal application. Its truths are applicable in every field and department wherein man and his activities are employed--in private conduct, religion, government and industry.

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Of all animals man is most subject to disease and defect in body and in mind. Sickly, or mal-formed wild animals are so rare as seldom to be seen. This is almost as true of domesticated animals, though epidemics sometimes sweep them off. Animals mentally defective are almost unknown. But man is assailed with a thousand ailments. Defective organs, functional disorders, chronic invalidism are common. Malformations of body, also of brain causing idiocy, stupidity, insanity and crime, are a hundred times more frequent in man than in lower animals, wild or domesticated. Why this difference? The answer is easy for anyone familiar with the laws of evolution.

The sedulous sifting by natural selection of animals in the wild state has left no sickly or half-witted degenerates to burden the world with a like progeny. If at rare intervals the law of variation should drop a mal-formed specimen into Nature’s sieve it would be quickly eliminated along with the great mass of averages. Practically the same is true of domesticated animals where the watchful eye of man is substituted for Nature’s.

As natural selection is hampered in its operation among domesticated animals by the interference of man, so is it limited on the human plane. There, we find virtually no selection, neither natural nor artificial. Hence the degeneracy--physical, mental, moral. Both Nature and man, in their respective fields of operation, select only a few of the best for propagating purposes--Nature eliminating the rest by death, and man by sterilization. But on the human plane man--acting mercifully toward the individual, mercilessly toward the race--does his best to thwart Nature. He prolongs the lives of weaklings, of the maimed-from-birth, of the deaf and dumb and blind, and of the mentally sub-normal. So far, all is well. But he permits these victims of an inferior ancestry to marry and procreate almost without limit. What then can we expect but for the world to be burdened with invalids, runts, and the mal-formed--cursed with morons, sub-morons, half-wits, quarter-wits, and predestined criminals? And worse for the entire race, this class shades upward by imperceptible degrees into all gradations, mingling its inferior strains with the best. It has always been so; therefore all of us, far more than wild animals, have a mixed ancestry, of the good and the less good.

Why is it that man has not learned to rid himself of this lower fringe of degeneracy as is done in the case of every other species of animal? It is mainly because the superstition of an out-worn theology has so muddled his brains that he has been unable to see that the laws of Nature are as applicable to himself as to all other creatures. He has always fancied himself as occupying a higher plane than that on which Nature has her laboratory. So he has always depended on “divine” laws, not those of “carnal nature,” to plant his feet on higher ground. And we see the result. Notwithstanding his high intellectual and moral faculties, as a race, he is the most defective animal on earth. What is the remedy?

If we would solve this pressing problem we must apply the laws of Nature to man in some such manner as they have always applied to the rest of the animal kingdom. The unfit must be prevented from reproducing its kind. How? There are only two methods: Nature’s, by bringing about the death of the unfit prospective parent, and man’s, the sterilization method. But among the better traits of man which have been slowly evolved in his agelong struggle reaching back to an immemorial past is sympathy, mercy. This bars him from using Nature’s method of preventing undesirable offspring; nor can he use the sterilization method except in extreme cases. Born criminals, perverts, and other abnormal misfits who persist in indulging their selfish passions in detriment of the Common Good--for such, comprising perhaps 5 to 10 per cent of the race, sterilization is the quickest and surest preventive. Once the milder type of defectives are made to realize the heinous crime of bringing degenerate children into the world they would in most cases refrain from marriage and procreation. Wise restrictive laws and an awakened public opinion would do the rest. This eugenical system is the only one that promises hope for the salvation of the race. From generation to generation, owing to the fecundity of the less fit and their proneness to “let Nature take her course,” their numbers increase, and so, too, the danger increases of their swamping the fitter.

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From the exposition of natural selection it will be seen that all the laws of organic development--either of individuals, varieties or species--fall under two heads: those of heredity (the harking back to ancestral characters) and those of environment (all outside influences). Variation, which seems so contradictory of the law of “like producing like,” is in reality a result of heredity. Offspring inherit traits, more or less repressive in one or both parents, in different degrees--this is variation.

The gist of the matter is: heredity transmits to environment the ancestral traits or characters, good and bad, of each creature. From these inherited traits environmental laws select and nourish those best fitted to each particular environment, and neglect, repress or destroy the less fit. At the birth of the individual heredity has done its work, for good or ill; then environment receives the legacy bequeathed by its ancestry and completes the job--whether for the individual’s weal or woe depends both upon the quality of the material heredity handed down, and upon the character of the particular environment that works upon the material. As prior to birth heredity is the only factor in producing the individual, the absolute necessity of preventing the reproduction of the unfit, the inferior, becomes apparent; as after birth environment is the only factor, or sum of factors, in his production, the making the best possible environment for every one is the one absolute essential.

The individual man, no less than other organisms, is a creature of heredity and environment. This is as true of his intellect and of his moral character as of his body. He is not a thing separate and apart, but a link in the chain of cause and effect. He is orbit-bound as planets are. Every thought of his brain, every desire of his heart, every deed of his hand is a natural and (circumstances considered) unavoidable result of the laws of Nature working in and through him--as surely as every cause produces an effect and that every cause is itself an effect of a prior cause. In cases where opposing forces or influences tend to move the will in different directions it obeys the stronger--follows the path of least resistance. It cannot do otherwise--no more than Newton’s apple could have moved toward the moon.

Scientists are generally agreed that none but “inborn” traits, the inherited ones, are transmissible to posterity--though Dr. Krammerer has recently furnished some evidence to the contrary. If the generally accepted view be the true one, then of course “acquired” characters--the “improvements” of environment--die with the individual. Certainly, environment cannot put into the individual what it had no capacity for at birth; it can only develop what is already there. Hence the conclusion: We may, we must, improve the environment for the good of the living generations as they arise; but above all, prevent the reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable benefit of the countless generations that are now waiting their turn in the womb of the future.

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Man is such an egotistical creature--being a near relative of the gods, as he imagined, and being specially created and made lord over the other creatures--that he has always regarded himself as above and beyond Nature and not subject to her laws, or only so far as his body was concerned--that being the one link connecting him with Nature.

As the little boy evolved from his inner consciousness his idea of the camel, of which he had never seen even a picture, so man in olden times evolved his theories of the origin of the world and of himself, and the part he was to play in life. According to his primitive way of thinking, the earth--which he regarded as the center of the universe--was a very small affair, over which Nature presided as a sort of satrap whose rulership was subject to interference at any time by the Great King. According to his theory there were two sets of laws, natural and divine, and they were often in conflict with each other. But man always had the right to appeal his case to the higher authority when not satisfied with Nature’s rulings. She had neither part nor jurisdiction in the human mind or soul--that coming not by way of her but directly from God.

This was essentially the belief of millions for thousands of years, and it is the belief of millions today. This is the soil in which nearly all the creeds of today are rooted.

The old theologians made a distinction between God’s works and Nature’s works, divine laws and natural laws. It is because of this dual idea of God and Nature that the most fruitful scientific discovery of all time is barred from the schools in some states and denounced as “atheism” from many a pulpit. Those who hold to the old theology do not realize how completely science has destroyed the foundations of their ancient belief, nor have they any conception of what an incalculable service modern thought has been to religion in clearing it of its impediments.

The bringing of science and reason to play in the progress of man, the bringing of the blind forces of Nature more and more under subjection to his enlightened intelligence--this is but Nature exalting herself. Having built up a higher plane, the human plane, Nature works upon that to refine and ennoble herself--not purposely, or only so far as man works with a purpose. All, all is Nature.

Transcriber’s note:

Obvious printing errors, such as partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Full stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added.

Spelling in common use at the time of publishing, such as “aligator” and “agelong”, has been kept as is. Obvious typos have been corrected.