Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/795

Rh EVOLUTION 759 passage of his Physics (chap. 25, sect. 5) he says that the universal existence of sensation in matter cannot be dis proved, though he shows that when there are no organic arrangements the mental side of the movement (^hantasma) is evanescent. The theory of the origin of society put forth by Hobbes, though directly opposed in most respects to modern ideas of social evolution, deserves mention here by reason of its enforcing that principle of struggle (bellnm omnium contra omnes) which has played so conspicuous a part in recent doctrines of evolution. Gassendi, with some deviations, follows Epicurus in his theory of the formation of the world. The world consists of a finite number of atoms, which have in their own nature a self-moving force or principle. These atoms, which are the seeds of all things, are, however, not eternal but created by God. Gassendi distinctly argues against the existence of a world- soul or a principle of life in nature. Descartes. In the philosophy of Descartes we meet with a dualism of mind and matter which does not easily lend itself to the conception of evolution. His doctrine that consciousness is confined to man, the lower animals being unconscious machines (automata), excludes all idea of a progressive development of mind. Yet Descartes, in his Principia Pkilosophia, laid the foundation of the modern mechanical conception of nature and of physical evolution. In the third part of this work he inclines to a thoroughly natural hypothesis respecting the genesis of the physical world, and adds in the fourth part that the same kind of explanation might be applied to the nature and formation of plants and animals. He is indeed careful to keep right with the orthodox doctrine of creation by saying that he does not believe the world actually arose in this mechanical way out of the three kinds of elements which he here sup poses, but that he simply puts out his hypothesis as a mode of conceiving how it might have arisen. Descartes s account of the mind and its passions is thoroughly materialistic, and to this extent he works in the direction of a material istic explanation of the origin of mental life. Spinoza. In Spinoza s pantheistic theory of the world, which regards thought and extension as but two sides of one substance, the problem of becoming is submerged in that of being. Although Spinoza s theory attributes a mental side to all physical events, he rejects all teleolo- gical conceptions and explains the order of things as the result of an inherent necessity. He recognizes gradations of things according to the degree of complexity of their movements and that of their conceptions. To Spinoza (as Kuno Fischer observes) man differs from the rest of nature in the degree only and not in the kind of his powers. So far Spinoza approaches the conception of evolution. He may be said to furnish a further contribution to a meta physical conception of evolution in his view of all finite individual things as the infinite variety to which the unlimited productive power of the universal substance gives birth. Mr F. Pollock has taken pains to show in more than one essay how nearly Spinoza approaches certain ideas contained in the modern doctrine of evolution, as for example that of self-preservation as the determining force in things. Cudworth. One or two English writers belonging to the latter part of the 17th century must be glanced at here. Of these the first is Cudworth, who, in his work The True, Intellectual System of the Universe, elaborately criticises the various &quot;atheistic&quot; modes of explaining the origin and form of the world as a natural process. Cudworth emphasizes especially the difficulty of explaining the rise of consciousness, and seeks to show how the early Greek atomical physiologists were driven to assume a spiritual principle over and above their material elements. [Jo dwells on the signs of purpose in nature, and argues that no fortuitous combination of elements could have sufficed to produce that balance of male and female individuals on which the preservation of species depends. Yet though thus an anti-evolutionist, Cudworth provides a way of in terpreting the evolution of life by means of an immanent principle, since he refers the forms of nature to a plastic principle, which does not involve consciousness, though it may be called a drowsy unawakened cognition. Locke. In Locke we find, with a retention of certain anti-evolutionist ideas, a marked tendency to this mode of viewing the world. To Locke the universe is the result of a direct act of creation, even matter being limited in dura tion and created. Even if matter were eternal it would, ho thinks, be incapable of producing motion ; and if motion is itself conceived as eternal, thought can never begin to be. The first eternal being is thus spiritual or &quot;cogitative,&quot; and contains in itself all the perfections that can ever after exist. He repeatedly insists on the impossibility of senseless matter putting on sense. 1 Yet while thus placing himself at a point of view opposed to that of a gradual evolution of the organic world, Locke prepared the way for this doctrine in more ways than one. First of all, his genetic method as applied to the mind s ideas which laid the foundations of English analytical psychology was a step in the direction of a conception of mental life as a gradual evolution. Again he works towards the same end in his celebrated re futation of the scholastic theory of real specific essences. In this argument he emphasizes the vagueness of the boundaries which mark off organic species with a view to show that these do not correspond to absolutely fixed divisions in the objective world, that they are made by the mind, not by nature. 2 This idea of the continuity of species is developed more fully in a remarkable passage (Essay, bk. iii. ch vi. 12), where he is arguing in favour of the hypothesis, afterwards elaborated by Leibnitz, of a graduated series of minds (species of spirits) from the Deity down to the lowest animal intelligence. He here observes that &quot; all quite down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each re move differ very little from one another.&quot; Thus man approaches the beasts, and the animal kingdom is nearly joined with the vegetable, and so on down to the lowest and &quot; most inorganical parts of matter.&quot; Finally, it is to be observed that Locke had a singularly clear view of organic arrangements (which of course he explained accord ing to a theistic teleology) as an adaptation to the circum stances of the environment or to &quot; the neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us.&quot; Thus he suggests that man has not eyes of a microscopic delicacy, because he would receive no great advantage from such acute organs, since though adding indefinitely to his speculative knowledge of the physical world they would not practically benefit their possessor (e.y., by enabling him to avoid things at a con venient distance). 3 Idea of Progress in History. Before leaving the 17th century we must just refer to the writers who laid the foun dations of the essentially modern conception of human his tory as a gradual upward progress. According to Prof. Flint, 4 there were four men who in this century seized and mado 1 Yet he leaves open the question whether the Deity has annexed thought to matter as a faculty, or whether it rests on a distinct spiritual principle. 2 Locke half playfully touches on certain monsters, with respect to which it is difficult to determine whether they ought to be called men. (Essay, book iii. rh. vi. sect. 26, 27.) 3 A similar coincidence between the teleological and the modern evo lutional way of viewing things is to be met with in Locke s account of the use of pain in relation to the preservation of our being, bk. ii. ch. vii. sect. 4. 4 Philosophy of History, Introduction, p. 28 tq., where an in teresting sketch of the growth of the idea of progress is to be found.