Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/806

Rh 70 EVOLUTION connects the first beginnings of human speech with a superiority in the command of the actions of respiration which is involved in man s erect posture. (d) Darwinism and Psychology. From anthropology we pass to psychology. Here the influence of Darwinism meets us too. Among recent psychologists W. Wuudt, in his Grundziige der physiologischen Psychologie, makes fre quent use of the doctrine of a gradual evolution of mental dispositions by means of heredity. He would, for example, explain the rapidity with which the space perception is formed in the infant mind by help of such an inherited dis position. Wuudt appears to lean to the hypothesis of ulti mate sentient elements, by the summation of whose rudi mentary feelings arises the unity of consciousness. The wider consequences of Mr Darwin s theory in the domain of psychology are briefly indicated by Dr Georg von Giz ycki, in his little work Die philosophischen Con- sequenzen der Lamarck-Danvin scken Entwicklungstlieorie. He argues against attributing sensation to all material things, which supposition (unlike Professor Clifford) he does not regard as a necessary consequence of the evolution hypo thesis. He distinctly seizes the bearing of this doctrine on our conception of mind (animal as well as human) as identical in its fundamental laws, and as presenting to the psychologist a single serial development ; and he still further follows Mr Spencer in connecting all mental activity with vital functions essential to the preservation of the in dividual and of the race. Finally, he adopts the view that the mental organism depends on the laws of the external universe. The harmony or adaptation which we see holding between thoughts and things must be inter preted as the effect of the latter acting on and modifying the former in conformity with themselves. Darwinism and Ethics and Religion. Passing now to the region of practical philosophy, we find that Darwinism has occasioned in Germany, as in England, a good deal of curious speculation. Among the many writers who have touched on the aspects of Darwinism we can only refer to one or two. Among these we may mention Dr Paul Rde, who, in a recent work, Der Ursprung der moral isc/ien Empfindungen, argues that moral dispositions or altruistic impulses have been developed as useful to society, yet rather odJly combines with this idea the pessimistic doctrine that man is not on the whole growing more moral. Again Dr Giz ycki, in the work just referred to, emphasizes the bearing of the doctrine of human descent on our feeling towards the lower animals as closely linked to ourselves. He goes on to show that this doctrine involves the most definite and stringent form of determinism, and so has a bearing on our ideas of right and wrong, blame, &c, The writer thinks Darwinism by no means excludes a teleologi- cal conception of the world as a process striving towards the highest manifestation of mental life, and this idea lead ing back to that of an absolute first cause of the order of the world, becomes the starting-point for religious and aesthetic aspiration. In Dr G. Jager s work, Die Daruin sche Theorie und Hire Stdlung zu Moral und Religion, we find a practical deduction from Darwinism which curiously contrasts with that of Dr Giz ycki. Jager argues that this doctrine teaches us to place ourselves in the greatest pos sible opposition to the lower animals. The aim of morality, as taught by Darwinism, must be to develop to the utmost those excellences which mark off man from the brute. The author seeks to account for the genesis of social institutions and religious ideas, as utilities which benefited those com munities possessing them in the struggle for existence. A work iu which are traced the ethical and religious consequences of the doctrine of evolution is The Old Faith and the New of David Strauss. According to Strauss, all morality has its root in the recognition and realization of the idea of kind in ourselves and in others. He argues from the fact that nature has produced man as her last and highest achievement, and the lower forms of creatures but as steps in the progress towards man, that our end and aim must be the furtherance of that which marks us off from the brutes. Religion again begins with the sense of unity with nature, and the new doctrine of the cosmos enables us to regard nature as the source whence our life, as all life, springs. Interpretation of Modern Scientific Doctrine. A word or two, in conclusion, respecting what is known as the modern doctrine of evolution. It is important to empha size the fact that this is a scientific doctrine, which has been built up by help of positive research. As such, of course, it embodies the mechanical, as distinguished from the teleological, view of nature s processes. Yet it still awaits its final philosophic interpretation. We cannot yet say under what head of our historical scheme it is destined to fall. We think the question of the universal applicability of the doctrine to- physical and mental phenomena may be allowed. There are no doubt wide gaps iriour knowledge of both orders. Thus it may reasonably be doubted whether physical theory can as yet enable us fully to see the necessity of that uni versal process from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in which evolution consists; yet in a rough and vague way the process is being made theoretically intelligible. Again, the transition from the inorganic to the organic is, as Professor Tyndall has lately told us, far from being con ceivable in the present state of our knowledge; and this seems to be implied in the remarkable hypothesis by which Professor Helmholtz and Sir W. Thomson seek to account for the first appearance of life on our planet. Yet we may reason from the general tendencies of research that this step may some day be hypothetically explained in physical and mechanical terms. Again, in spite of Mr Spencer s brilliant demonstration of the general continuity of mental life, much remains to be done before all the steps in the process (e.&amp;lt;/., from particular to general knowledge, from single feelings to self-consciousness) are made plain. Never theless, we may even now dimly see how such mental processes may be knit together in one larger process. Allowing, then, that the doctrine of evolution as a scientific hypothesis is probably true, the question arises, what is its exact philosophical purport ? How far does it help to unify our knowledge, and is it the final explana tion of the complex events of our world ? First of all, then, as a unifying generalization, it is clearly limited by the fact of the correlation of mental and physical evolution. These two regions of phenomena may be seen to manifest the same law, yet they cannot be identified. All the laws of physical evolution can never help us to understand the first genesis of mind; and this difficulty is in no way reduced by Mr Spencer s con ception of a perfect gradation from purely physical to conscious life. The dawn of the first confused and shape less feeling is as much a &quot;mystery&quot; as the genesis of a distinct sensation. Our best exponents of evolution, including Professor Du Bois Rcyniond (Ueler die Grenzen des Natiirerkennens, p. 25 sq. ), fully recognize this diffi culty. We have here much the same &quot;mystery&quot; which meets us in the conversion of a nerve-stimulus into a sensation in the developed organism. TLe sequence is unlike any properly physical succession, and so cannot be further explained by being brought under a more general law. Not only so, the doctrine of the conservation of energy, as applied to organic processes, leads to the con clusion that the genesis of mind in general and of every single mental phenomenon is, from a physical point of view, something non-essential.