Chapter II: Metaphysical Evolution

It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such
capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have
been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could
first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious
ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human
intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute
ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its
expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualities, and of
man’s social system—the form in which his ideas of morality were
first displayed.

The expression “evolution of morality” need not offend, for the
question in regard to the _laws_ of this evolution is the really
important part of the discussion, and it is to the opposing views on
this point that the most serious interest attaches.

* * * * *

The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are
quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays
stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to
and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s
principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might
be called the _Conflict theory_. The second view recognizes the
workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions
accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other
exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more
related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical
octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the
_Harmonic theory_. In other words, the first principle deduces
perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the
coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony
comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered
extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material
and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that
which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the
harmonious development of the whole.

All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that
there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described
to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and
all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

α. Development of Intelligence.

If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that
the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from
that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no
one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning
upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity
differ in number and importance from those achieved by human
intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where
we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the
brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or
of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two
degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like
manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that
of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on
which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the
water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some
floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great
transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of
progress.

What point of progress in such a history would account for this
accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been
answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us
picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from
its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to
a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where
every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with
its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over
the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled,
that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his
labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the
employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.

The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists
as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they
appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do
not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found
in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.

The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented
this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a
process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through
moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which
represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe
that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some
races continued to the present day.

_β. Evidence from Archæology._

As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the
evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to
give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts
only will be noticed.

_Improvement in the use of Materials._ As is well known, the remains
of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but
rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and
preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the
ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper
instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still
attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of
Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South
America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite,
silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found
to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in
most of the regions of the earth.

Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some
of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a
material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while
malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by
succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this
material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable,
however, did the hardening of the material appear for the
improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals
were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze
and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver
appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was
consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.

The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands
of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his
needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this
direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron
itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.

The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it
its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does
not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or
subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress
there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and
their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and
higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this
view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze
and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior
culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this
kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,”
stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The
successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to
prove, and this seems to be established.

The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is
unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the
ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an
acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether
those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter
races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it
is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven
hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the
Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations,
already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as
they are now.

_Improvement in Architecture._ The earliest periods, then, were
characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and
construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for
architectural display, which have always employed so much time and
power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over
much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in
the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones
planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at
Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great
Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the
Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi
in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped
or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern
India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is
cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in
elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one
thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of
the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive
basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in
detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions
and brought nearer the sea-shore.

Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex
structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt,
represent the period of greatest display of architectural
expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been
expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of
beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing
intellectuality.

Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his
boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true
disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that
“spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.

No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the
salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities
of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina,
while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those
places flint was exclusively used.

The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind,
are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds.
Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations.
Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground.
Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more
intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment
is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations
at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we
shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our
race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of
the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who
visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase,
tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.

γ. The Development of Language.

In this department the fact of development from the simple to the
complex has been so satisfactorily demonstrated by philologists as
scarcely to require notice here. The course of that development has
been from monosyllabic to polysyllabic forms, and also in a process
of differentiation, as derivative races were broken off from the
original stock and scattered widely apart. The evidence is clear
that simple words for distinct objects formed the bases of the
primal languages, just as the ground, tree, sun and moon represent
the character of the first words the infant lisps. In this
department also the facts point to an infancy of the human race.

δ. Development of the Fine Arts.

If we look at representation by drawing or sculpture, we find that
the efforts of the earliest races of which we have any knowledge
were quite similar to those which the untaught hand of infancy
traces on its slate or the savage depicts on the rocky faces of
hills. The circle or triangle for the head and body, and straight
lines for the limbs, have been preserved as the first attempts of
the men of the stone period, as they are to this day the sole
representations of the human form which the North American Indian
places on his buffalo robe or mountain precipice. The stiff,
barely-outlined form of the deer, the turtle, etc., are literally
those of the infancy of civilized man.

The first attempts at sculpture were marred by the influence of
modism. Thus the idols of Coban and Palenque, with human faces of
some merit, are overloaded with absurd ornament, and deformed into
frightful asymmetry, in compliance with the demand of some imperious
mode. In later days we have the stiff, conventionalized figures of
the palaces of Nineveh and the temples of Egypt, where the
representation of form has somewhat improved, but is too often
distorted by false fashion or imitation of some unnatural standard,
real or artistic. This is distinguished as the day of archaic
sculpture, which disappeared with the Etruscan nation. So the
drawings of the child, when he abandons the simple lines, are stiff
and awkward, and but a stage nearer true representation; and how
often does he repeat some peculiarity or absurdity of his own! So
much easier is it to copy than to conceive.

The introduction of the action and pose of life into sculpture was
not known before the early days of Greece, and it was there that the
art was brought to perfection. When art rose from its mediæval
slumber, much the same succession of development may be discovered.
First, the stiff figures, with straightened limbs and cylindric
drapery, found in the old Northern churches—then the forms of life
that now adorn the porticoes and palaces of the cities of Germany.

ε. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence.

The history of material development shows that the transition from
stage to stage of development, experienced by the most perfect forms
of animals and plants in their growth from the primordial cell, is
similar to the succession of created beings which the geological
epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assumption of main
characters in the line of succession in early geological periods
produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased rapidity
of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of
superiority. It is not to be supposed that in “acceleration” the
period of growth is shortened: on the contrary, it continues the
same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same rate of
succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is necessarily
inferior. “Acceleration” means a gradual increase of the rate of
assumption of successive characters in the same period of time. A
fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual increase in the
length of the period of growth, would produce the same result—viz.,
a longer developmental scale and the attainment of an advanced
position. The first is in part the relation of sexes of a species;
the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If from an
observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are permitted,
when we see in another class of facts similar relations, to suspect
that a similar law has operated, differing only in its objects. We
find a marked resemblance between the facts of structural progress
in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and spiritual progress.

If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the
preceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of
human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, and
that but little was attained to; that through the profitable
direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to time
by which the process of individual development in all metaphysical
qualities has been accelerated; and that up to the present time the
consequent advance of the whole race has been at an increasing rate
of progress, This is in accordance with the general principle, that
high development in intellectual things is accomplished by rapidity
in traversing the preliminary stages of inferiority common to all,
while low development signifies sluggishness in that progress, and a
corresponding retention of inferiority.

How much meaning may we not see, from this stand-point, in the
history of the intelligence of our little ones! First they crawl,
they walk on all fours: when they first assume the erect position
they are generally speechless, and utter only inarticulate sounds.
When they run about, stones and dirt, the objects that first meet
the eye, are the delight of their awakening powers, but these are
all cast aside when the boy obtains his first jackknife. Soon,
however, reading and writing open a new world to him; and finally as
a mature man he seizes the forces of nature, and steam and
electricity do his bidding in the active pursuit of power for still
better and higher ends.

So with the history of the species: first the quadrumane—then the
speaking man, whose humble industry was, however, confined to the
objects that came first to hand, this being the “stone age” of
pre-historic time. When the use of metals was discovered, the range
of industries expanded wonderfully, and the “iron age” saw many
striking efforts of human power. With the introduction of letters it
became possible to record events and experiences, and the spread of
knowledge was thereby greatly increased, and the delays and mistakes
of ignorance correspondingly diminished in the fields of the world’s
activity.

From the first we see in history a slow advance as knowledge gained
by the accumulation of tradition and by improvements in habit based
on experience; but how slow was this advance while the use of the
metals was still unknown! The iron age brought with it not only new
conveniences, but increased means of future progress; and here we
have an acceleration in the rate of advance. With the introduction
of letters this rate was increased many fold, and in the application
of steam we have a change equal in utility to any that has preceded
it, and adding more than any to the possibilities of future advance
in many directions. By its power, knowledge and means of happiness
were to be distributed among the many.

The uses to which human intelligence has successively applied the
materials furnished by nature have been—First, subsistence and
defence: second, the accumulation of power in the shape of a
representative of that labor which the use of matter involves; in
other words, the accumulation of wealth. The possession of this
power involves new possibilities, for opportunity is offered for the
special pursuits of knowledge and the assistance of the weak or
undeveloped part of mankind in its struggles.

Thus, while the first men possessed the power of speech, and could
advance a little in knowledge through the accumulation of the
experiences of their predecessors, they possessed no means of
accumulating the power of labor, no control over the activity of
numbers—in other words, no wealth.

But the accumulation of knowledge finally brought this advance
about. The extraction and utilization of the metals, especially
iron, formed the most important step, since labor was thus
facilitated and its productiveness increased in an incalculable
degree. We have little evidence of the existence of a medium of
exchange during the first or stone period, and no doubt barter was
the only form of trade. Before the use of metals, shells and other
objects were used: remains of money of baked clay have been found in
Mexico. Finally, though in still ancient times, the possession of
wealth in money gradually became possible and more common, and from
that day to this avenues for reaching this stage in social progress
has ever been opening.

But wealth merely indicates a stage of progress, since it is but a
comparative term. All men could not become rich, for in that case
all would be equally poor. But labor has a still higher goal; for,
thirdly, as capital, it constructs and employs machinery, which does
the work of many hands, and thus cheapens products, which is
equivalent in effect to an accumulation of wealth to the consumer.
And this increase of power may be used for the intellectual and
spiritual advance of men, or otherwise, at the will of the men thus
favored. Machinery places man in the position of a creator,
operating on Nature through an increased number of “secondary
causes.”

Development of intelligence is seen, then, in the following
directions: First, in the knowledge of facts, including science;
second, in language; third, in the apprehension of beauty; and, as
consequences of the first of these, the accumulation of power by
development—First, of means of subsistence; and second, of
mechanical invention.

Thus we have two terms to start with in estimating the beginning of
human development in knowledge and power: First, the primary
capacities of the human mind itself; second, a material world, whose
infinitely varied components are so arranged as to yield results to
the energies of that mind. For example, the transition points of
vaporization and liquefaction are so placed as to be within the
reach of man’s agents; their weights are so fixed as to accord with
the muscular or other forces which he is able to exert; and other
living organizations are subject to his convenience and rule, and
not, as in previous geological periods, entirely beyond his control.
These two terms being given, it is maintained that the present
situation of the most civilized men has been attained through the
operation of a law of mutual action and reaction—a law whose
results, seen at the present time, have depended on the acceleration
or retardation of its rate of action; which rate has been regulated,
according to the degree in which a third great term, viz., the law
of moral or (what is the same thing) true religious development has
been combined in the plan. What it is necessary to establish in
order to prove the above hypothesis is—

I. That in each of the particulars above enumerated the development
of the human species is similar to that of the individual from
infancy to maturity.

II. That from a condition of subserviency to the laws of matter,
man’s intelligence enables him, by an accumulation of power, to
become in a sense independent of those laws, and to increase greatly
the rate of intellectual and spiritual progress.

III. That failure to accomplish a moral or spiritual development
will again reduce him to a subserviency to the laws of matter.

This brings us to the subject of moral development. And here I may
be allowed to suggest that the weight of the evidence is opposed to
the philosophy, “falsely so called,” of necessitarianism, which
asserts that the first two terms alone were sufficient to work out
man’s salvation in this world and the next; and, on the other hand,
to that anti-philosophy which asserts that all things in the
progress of the human race, social and civil, are regulated by
immediate Divine interposition instead of through instrumentalities.
Hence the subject divides itself at once into two great
departments—viz., that of the development of mind or intelligence,
and that of the development of morality.

That these laws are distinct there can be no doubt, since in the
individual man one of them may produce results without the aid of
the other. Yet it can be shown that each is the most invaluable aid
and stimulant to the other, and most favorable to the rapid advance
of the mind in either direction.