Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/26

24 The whole process of evolution, as the abstract aspect of this process of growing is called, may be illustrated by the way in which we learn to engage in any new kind or principle of action. Take the case of one learning to pronounce new words. A child heard her teacher talking about organisms. This to her was a new word, a change in her environment. In adjusting to the change she must learn to pronounce a new word. In reporting the teachers talk, she spoke of “orgacisms.” The way in which the members of her family, a part of her environment, reacted to this caused her to be dissatisfied and led her to put forth new efforts, efforts that resulted successively in the forms, “organocisms,” “organcisms,” and finally “organisms.” The last form or new species of pronunciation fit harmoniously into the environment and still persists. The other forms ceased to be used. All forms but the last one were selected out by the environment.

Just so, as new organic species arise and meet all the tests imposed by the environment satisfactorily they become fixed. The interests of the superhuman spiritual reality which in interaction with all lives capable of being stimulated to reaction give rise to new organic forms become automatized. To those who carefully study these forms they become capable or accurate description and the uniformities in their appearance become as predictable as do the appearances of any forms that occur in inorganic nature. To those who come to regard all of nature as impersonal, like the inorganic and organic forms when these are taken abstractly, all the changes of nature regarded as automatic are regarded also as predictable. To all such the appearance of a new species must finally come to be regarded as a miracle. But when the personal or creative character of the interests that cause these changes is recognized, the appearance of new species, being understood in terms of our own experience, will cease to seem magical.

The formation of a new species would be analogous to the extension of a man’s life through the discovery of a new invention. A water faucet means to us what will happen if it is turned so that water pours forth. Our need or convenience impelled us to its creation. The eye appeared in response to the need of interests not fully satisfied by lower sense organs like those of touch. Through the efforts put forth by the lesser spiritual realities, as these were automatically reacted to by the higher spiritual reality, the lower sense organs were slowly and tentatively developed into the eye. The water faucet and most inventions of that type are but extensions of the human hand, and are a part of the organic form that constitutes the organic form of man, and so is the eye. Both are parts of us because they help us in what we do. They are an established, a taken for granted, a fully