Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful

Front matter

Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful

PROLOGUE TO A SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE THEIST

George Henry Dole

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I

IT HAS been the work of the last century to present a nearly complete theory of Evolution, and to formulate a chain of reasoning that upholds the doctrine that every genus and species of plants and animals are derived from simple forms through gradual modification of functions.

The first suggestion of this doctrine threw the religious world into consternation. At first its advocates did not openly attack the fundamentals of religion, but with ominous reticence in regard to the spiritual and the Divine, or with the subtlety of cautious but factitious wisdom pleading them unknown, they proceeded to elaborate a theory that, if true, not only undermines all religion, but so thoroughly denies God as to render Him unnecessary.

The religiously inclined saw in Evolution, with its theories of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest," a most dangerous enemy, threatening to do away with religion, spirituality, the Scriptures, and God, as the impressions of superstition made in the childhood of our race.

Evolution was too formidably intrenched behind apparent fact and crafty reason to admit of absolute defeat with the weapons then at hand. Some scoffed, others ridiculed; but never in the world's history have these resorts stayed the progress of good or evil. Yet here and there a stalwart nature has risen and dealt the theory a staggering blow, from which it has tried to recover by shifting position or by re-intrenchment.

Nevertheless, Evolution has extended its lines until it is accepted by many among all thinking classes. There are many of the religious who accept it, in one form or another, as the Creator's method of bringing the universe into existence as it is to-day; though it is a little difficult to comprehend how a system of creation that is all-sufficient in itself could be a method employed by any one.

Yet there has ever been a feeling of dissatisfaction, a sense that Evolution is not all, that it is sadly inadequate. Consequently Evolution has made its way against a reluctance almost universal, and has been accepted, openly by some and tacitly by others, because backed by so formidable an array of apparent fact and contrived reason that no one has been found who could satisfactorily defeat it all along the line and at the same time offer a better solution of phenomena.

In this regard it may be said that the favor with which Evolution is met exists more from the lack of any other well-defined system than from its own merits.

The most prominent defect in Evolution is that it does not go deep enough. It is too superficial. It purports to give a history of outward effects, but openly avows that it cannot explain their inner causes. And so far as the causes are approached, the explanation is ridiculously inadequate to the effect, involving even a greater mystery than the cause itself. For it is easier to conceive of the governing intelligence, order, power, truth, love, and righteousness as existing in a personal God who creates from Himself, than it is to imagine these wonderful things existing in the "primeval units," which hypothesis assumes the very thing to be proved. That society with its marvelous developments, scientific, civil, and spiritual, should have started by the "fortuitous concourse of atoms," is more strange than the creation which it cannot explain. And when we come to the application of the principles of Evolution to social problems, and witness the final conclusions in regard to the origin of right, good, spirituality, conceptions of God, and the like, we are led so far away from the possible, and so deeply into the absurd and profane, that only the most sordid devotee, the shallow, and the credulous can entertain the doctrine.

The same causes that started creation have continued it, even to bringing forth its final form, which is the righteous and holy Christian, with a rational comprehension of a spiritual world, aspirations for eternal life, a living faith in God, and inmost desire to become more and more His image and likeness.

Now if fortune began creation, it has been by luck and chance that each step in the upward development was made; and luck, chance, and fortune are the sum of all intelligence, design, wisdom, love, and life that is or is to come. In which case the essential nature of the creative power and the supreme intelligence is luck, for the first cause must terminate in the last effect. The first cause and all derivative or subsequent causes must be the same in essence.

If luck and chance had failed in one instance in the long line of development, creation would have ended in chaos. If chance started creation it is by chance that oaks bear acorns and not beech-nuts, and that beech-nuts grow into beech-trees rather than into oaks. It is by fortune that of the myriads of plants and animals each bears its kind, and not one mistake ever occurs. It is by luck that the universe is kept in its order, and law itself is merely such good fortune that it never varies. These are legitimate, inevitable conclusions from the premises of Evolution, to which every close and consistent thinker must be forced.

It is creation itself upon which the scholarship of the world should center, and of which it should seek a rational explanation, for the evident reason that the same principles are applicable to each step in its development. Since the superstructure can be no more stable than the foundation upon which it rests, we should not be surprised at the revulsion that the theory of Evolution meets among the more discerning thinkers. For it is this irrational quality carried throughout Evolution that causes a great body of the religious and intelligent to hold the theory in abeyance as something yet inadequate and unsatisfactory.

The unmodified law of the "survival of the fittest" is instinctively seen as pure selfishness. It does not answer back to the unselfishness in human kind. It is not a human explanation. God is good, we feel. His works are good. But if the cold and cruel strug- gle for self-existence is the energizing and inmost thing, nature's beauty is false, the song of the stars is a dirge, and the grand anthem of the universe is a rasping chord. If Evolution, with its theory of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest," with its theory of the "fortuitous concourse of atoms," and the final dissolution of the universe into the nebulas from which it sprang, and the consequent obliteration of human kind, tells the whole story, mankind has been all wrong, and they who rejoice in beauty, love, righteousness, eternal life, and God, are doomed to final disappointment and sorrow, for what they hold most dear, and regard as an expression of the wisdom and love of their Creator, are but as the smooth fur and soft purring of ravenous animals, rending not only the body, but tearing apart the tenderest feelings of faith and love, and devouring all human hopes. If such theories were to pre- vail, the Harpies and cannibal Cyclops are not fabulous creatures of ancient times, but real monsters dwelling in civilized countries, still satiating their cruel appetites with human flesh.

Mr. Drummond saw this, and endeavored to repair the defect by supplementing the struggle for self by the struggle for the lives of others, as observed in the surrender of life-force by plants and animals in the propagation of their kind. And others, feeling deeply the wrong of Evolution as taught by the school of Messrs, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and Hæckel, have worked to modify the theory; so that already, in these rapidly changing times, the old school of Evolution is quite antiquated.

Strong and godly men have taken the more likely part of Evolution as devised by the Sensists, and used it not to confirm materialism and excuse agnosticism, but as a means of advancing nearer to the Divine, into clearer light, and into more intelligent faith. With unsurpassed skill they have used Evolution more effectually in proving what it was intended to disprove than did its inventors in establishing materialism.

It is not only gratifying, but surprisingly so, to notice how righteous men have step by step gone on. Modification upon modification has produced in advanced thought as much difference between evolutionary reasonings now and a few years ago as Evolution is claimed to have wrought between man and the ape. A few more Drummonds, Mivarts, Fiskes, and there will be left none of the sad conclusions of materialistic Evolution, which regards man soulless, the universe Godless, and crowns development not with the break of a radiant world of eternal life and beauty, but with the black pall of "omnipresent death."

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

Harmony in the Cosmic Process

MR. HUXLEY, in his address at Oxford in 1893, says that "the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends." In commenting upon this Mr. Fiske says: "Most assuredly survival of the fittest, as such, has no sort of relation to moral ends."

That Mr. Huxley should fall into this error is not surprising, but that Mr. Fiske should pass over its fatal conclusions without bringing to the surface its self-stultifying fallacy is difficult to understand.

The position is rightly taken that, if the moral motive is not found in Evolution, it does not exist in its products, consequently the moral motive does not exist in man. Or, if the moral motive does not exist in Evolution and does exist in man, Evolution is fundamentally a fallacy, for that which has no moral motive in itself could never produce one out of itself. The least knowledge of the relation of cause and effect prohibits one holding at the same time that there is a moral motive in any created thing and none in the cosmic process that produces it.

Yet Mr. Huxley clearly sees that there is a moral motive in man, though he designates it by so superficial a word as "ethical." He admits the selfishness in "natural selection" and the moral in man, and explains the existence of the two by saying that "the social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process."

The fallacy of such a theory lies in the fact that there would then be two processes of development in nature that are fundamentally and diametrically opposed. And need we go further in unfolding this illogical proposition than to say that the second process is even evolved out of the first?

If God made nature and man, and God be good, the moral motive is as fully present in all natural processes as it is in man. It may not be so evident; it may not be so quick in operation; but it is there as surely and fully.

A right view of nature forbids that we draw conclusions from superficial observations, and requires that we look deeply into it and broadly upon it. In its mode of growth a tree may be said to be selfish, because it regards only itself. But the tree has no power over its growth. It is absolutely a thing of condition, receiving and swelling with life over which it has no control. In determining its relation to selfishness we must look to the source of its life and observe whether selfishness is there. This is determined by inquiring into the uses to which a tree is put. Are its uses all for itself, or are they all for other things? When we search this question deeply the appearance changes entirely, for we come into the reality. The tree is of no use to itself except that it may grow, which self-use is fundamental to all use. Further, the tree spends its whole energy in forming alluvium, in providing shelter and food for animals, and in multiform uses to man. The greater law of usefulness to others comprehends the law of self-use, and makes the existence of a tree absolutely unselfish.

We may look at the subject in another way. As a matter of fact the tree regards nothing, neither its own growth nor its unselfish uses, for it has no mind essential to conscious thought, from which comes regard. The selfish- ness or unselfishness is in the Creator who made it and propagates it. Since the tree serves itself only that it may serve others, that is, its existence is wholly one of service to other things, we are forced to conclude that the Creator is unselfish, and the law of the tree's existence is unselfish.

The same reasoning applies to animals. Though they are of a higher order of life, they are as bound to their instincts as a tree is to its roots. They can no more transcend their instincts than vegetation can its order. Their self-love simply perpetuates their existence, which is fundamental to their unselfish uses. The greater law of use here also nullifies selfishness, and makes nature, because of her universal service, as unselfish as her uses are general.

It ought not to be difficult to perceive that an infinitely good Creator can make neither nature nor man self- ish in their broader and essential relations, and that no unperverted power or law that is from Him is other than unselfish.

There is nothing clearer to rational intelligence than that, if the moral motive cannot be seen in nature struggling as in man for the ascendancy and step by step securing its purpose, we may know our view of nature is yet superficial and its language an unknown tongue. For the reason that compels the acknowledgment of a Divine Being as the Supreme Architect, equally forces upon us that when creation was finished, "God saw that it was good." And good can be predicated of nothing that is without a moral motive, or essentially selfish.

The doctrine of the "unity of plan" in creation, which Mr. Huxley and other Evolutionists have urged and illustrated, and which is generally accepted, cannot be true if man is devel- oped by a process contrary to that under which other things are developed. Creation is not then essentially a unit, but a dual. Not only is it double at the foundation, but being double and antagonistic, there is no such thing as a cosmic process, giving "cosmic" its right meaning of harmonious.

It seems that Mr. Huxley has finally worked out two antagonistic yet fundamental elements in nature, quite in keeping with the old notion of a personal Devil from eternity and a personal God, which to the serious can be none the less ludicrous.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

The Moral Motive in the Cosmic Process

MAN believes in God intuitively because God is. He does not doubt His existence and government until he has imbibed falsities from without.

When moral men began to give way to the claims of Evolution, they immediately asked, "What relation does the theory bear to the Creator? What relation does He bear to it? Where is the moral motive in the cosmic process?" Certainly if Evolution is of God, His hand is there. The moral motive must be sought, like all motives, within the law as the end in view. The motive is the soul of law. The law is the means through which the motive is accomplished. The moral motive must exist the first incentive, and be demonstrated in the final purpose. "Every tree is known by his own fruit."

That natural selection, or as expressed in the less apt phrase, survival of the fittest, is, with right interpretation, a law of nature, there is no question. It is even a law of the spirit.

Natural selection, or survival of the fittest, may, in special cases and in limited degree, work out results in a short time; but the greater results, both in nature and in spirit, extend over centuries and even ages.

Natural selection operates in the natural and the spiritual world in a similar way because all law is an instrument of the Divine will and serves the Creator's purpose. The Creator does nothing arbitrarily. Since He acts through law on each plane, whether low or high, law appears to do its own selecting and to work as of it- self. With the meaning that the Creator works through constituted agencies natural selection is a true statement of a fact. If one can bring himself to see that God is essentially infinite love, in which all power initially is, and that infinite wisdom is simply His love's mode of action, in which all law is contained, there will be no substantial error in his conception of natural selection.

In accepting survival of the fittest as a law, it is important to know and define what the "fittest" is. What is it that nature saves? If the fittest survive, such it is her purpose to save, for surely nature's purpose is wrought out as well in securing all her designs as in the exaction of penalties for not fulfilling her laws.

We cannot understand by survival of the fittest merely the fittest to survive in the sense of the fittest to exist in and for self. If this were what it means, development would have stopped long ago. Progress would have been checked in the first instance. For the conclusion of Evolution is that the universe, having run its course, will return to the nebula from which it came. In which case nebula is better fitted to survive than anything formed from it.

Again, it is axiomatic that the simpler the form the better fitted it is to exist. That nebula is better fitted to survive (in the sense of existing) than rock, and rock than plants, and plants than animals, need no comment.

Very early, therefore, in the application of the principle we come upon well defined limitations, which could be multiplied almost without limit. The phrase, "survival of the fittest," is more suggestive of the struggle for existence than is the term "natural selection," and refers ostensibly rather to that phase of nature's facts. There also it has extensive limitations.

There are degrees and kinds of life that are brought but little, or not at all, into competition. For example, between grass and the animals that feed upon it, there is practically no competition, for the more grass the more animals, and animals do not diminish the grass-growing area. There is no conflict between rock and the vegetation that grows upon it.

It should also be observed that the struggle for existence naturally tempers itself in certain cases; for, if the herbivorous animals are too much diminished, the carnivorous must suffer correspondingly for want of food. Such extensive limitations to the universality of the law of the survival of the fittest should be taken into consideration.

Survival of the fittest applies with less qualification to the many seeds that cannot all grow, to plants struggling for space, and to animals seeking food in times of scarcity and want. The struggle then is even unto death, though much less general than it is severe.

Desperate as the struggle may be, there is yet a moral motive within it. Says Mr. Fiske, "Beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice are alike to it " (Survival of the Fittest). This in special cases may be an apparent truth, but as a general principle it must be denied, even as an appearance.

Survival of the fittest, so far as it is a law, saves the strongest, the hardiest, the best of both plants and animals, and in so doing it saves the best fitted for use. Herein is the moral motive, for it would not be moral if it saved the ill-fitted rather than the best-fitted in the kingdom of uses. The law operating among plants and animals has saved those that respond most fully to human uses. Operating among mankind it brings human powers, faculties, and energies into action whereby they are developed and advanced, and brought by the very laws of nature more into Divine order, for he is most in Divine order who is best fitted to survive.

Survival of the fittest, in the sense in which it applies, is not only a means of development, but it is also an expression of Divine economy and mercy and the all-governing law of use. It removes the debauchee, the enemy of society, the sickly, the weak, the licentious, the habitual transgressor of any law, natural or spiritual—for these cannot propagate their kind as can the strong, the healthy, the righteous. The idle, sinful, and debauched are the first to succumb to disease. Mr. Fiske sadly misses the truth and falls into grave error in thinking that beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice are alike to the law of the survival of the fittest. For it is by this very process that the vicious are slowly but surely eliminated and the or- derly and the suitable are saved. It should be very clearly distinguished that survival of the fittest is true, not in the sense of fittest merely to exist, but fittest for use. Natural law, as it is but the outward expression of spiritual law, works out the fulfillment of the Divine law that "Evil shall slay the wicked," "The righteous shall inherit the land."

The struggle for existence among the healthy, law-abiding, energetic, and wise is a means not only of development, but a source of the greatest enjoyment through activity and the conquest of difficulty.

We can see in the law a Divine provision for human as well as for general development. It is a merciful law, because it eliminates the unfitted, lessens pain by removing the weak and the sickly, and provides the minimum of suffering. The moral motive in cosmic processes is everywhere present in nature's processes, because there is no law that does not work out a final good and the highest welfare of man, who is the end of creation and for whose service all things are and were created. We are obliged, therefore, to conclude, if we look over a greater area of phenomena, that "beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice " are not alike to natural selection, but that the true interpretation of the law is that it exalts beauty and removes ugliness, and that it perpetuates virtue and eliminates vice.

If we confine our view to the small arena of one plant struggling for existence against another, or one animal fighting against another for his food, our conclusions must be as erroneous as our horizon is narrow. We must look over considerable territory to ascertain the direct course of a river. We cannot judge of the moral motive in cosmic processes from a battle between wolves. We must look to the general and final result to know the meaning of the struggle for existence. Can we judge mankind to be without moral motive because of a street fight between ruffians, or competition in trade, or because one drives the crows out of his corn, or gets his bread by the sweat of his brow?

It has been well suggested that the moral motive is evident in plants and animals surrendering their substance and life in the reproduction of their kind. But there is a moral motive deeper and broader than this.

Viewing nature from the beginning we observe in the vaster plan that embraces all, the strongest evidence of the moral motive. The rock surrendered itself to the sea and the atmosphere to form soil. Myriads of plants and animals daily surrendered their bodies to form alluvium; and the sacrifice to nature's purpose was so complete that nothing was wanting to form the basis for the final life-forms. The earth produces vegetation; vegetation provides food and shelter for the animal kingdom; and all offer themselves for the service of mankind, the crowning form in the ascending scale. And moral man offers himself as the servant of Him who "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."

There is set to every created thing the seal of Him who holds the servant of all the greatest of all. No other conclusion can be rightly drawn than that a plan of use runs through all things and binds them in mutual service and unity. Forms have come and gone, but the useful in each age survive for their use, and in the end the useful for the end survive. It is an inexorable law that what does not yield to use in the kingdom of mutual service is eliminated.

It does not seem to require a very deep insight into the operations of na- ture to discern back of all the central motive, the will of God, working at every point for the final good of human kind, and bringing forth and saving that in society which is capable of receiving, and will receive in most perfect form, the human essentials of His own nature.

It is concluded, therefore, that the survival of the fittest is truly a law, if by "fittest" is meant the useful. Survival of the fittest has its limitation, but the Survival of the Useful is a statement of universal law that is true and absolute. When we see the governing principle of cosmic processes working out this purpose, the Survival of the Useful, the moral motive is everywhere present and evident in cause and effect.

But, it may be said, there are the useless thistles and thorns, the vulture and the tiger. Yet this should not obscure the law. Thorns and thistles in human character do not take away the moral motive in man. The vulture and tiger in human disposition do not make men all ravenous and fierce. They rather give the ground for resistance, against which is reaction and development. The doctrine of contrasts is now well known and generally recognized. Were there not the selfish and immoral, the moral would not appear. Nature which is a parable of man, must, like him, have both wheat and tares; yet alike in both the moral motive has the ascendancy. A right standpoint of view enables us to see clearly that the moral motive in all times has struggled through nature in all respects as it does through mankind, and has caused to survive the useful in fulfillment of the Divine purpose.

We must not linger in the single isolated struggle for existence, nor must we mistake a long succession of struggles for the interpretation of the cos- mic process, but rather search for the motive that works out through the struggle. The mind must comprehend not only individuals, generations, and ages, but also whole periods of time. Then the moral motive, which is the service of man, naturally and spiritually, and thus the will of God, is as surely present and dominant in nature as it is in man or in God's kingdom. Finally it may be said that since the cosmic process secures moral ends, it must recognize the moral. The better and eternal expression of its law is The Survival of the Useful.

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV

Divine Selection

THE Survival of the Useful being a true statement of the law, rather than "survival of the fittest," as Mr. Spencer has called it, suggests that Mr. Darwin's companion phrase, "natural selection," is also wanting. Yet Mr. Darwin's expression is more fitting, for it presents one phase of an undeniable and a fundamental truth. Because the Creator effects His purpose in nature by the instrumentality of nature, it follows that nature appears to do her own selecting.

That distinguished and conscientious scientist, Asa Gray, thus pointedly suggests the wanting factor in natural selection, "Given differences and an internal tendency to differ more, i.e., given variation as an inexhaustible factor, and natural selection should suffice for the preservation and increase of the select few as a consequence of the destruction of the intermediate many. . . . For in each variation lies hidden the mystery of a beginning." Natural law is but the ultimate and external expression of spiritual law. By spiritual law is to be understood the law of the spiritual world, of the soul, and of the mind; the law of true religion; the law that made and governs all things superior to matter. Natural law is a material picture of spiritual law.

The Creator never acts abstractly or arbitrarily. He always secures His purposes in nature through her laws. It may be truly said that natural law is as the body of which spiritual law is the soul. The arm moves from a spiritual power in the will; the countenance smiles from a spiritual power. Man loves, thinks, and performs every act from a spiritual power in the soul. Likewise nature, being the body of which the spiritual world is the soul, performs all her operations in minutest particulars and most general aspect from the forces of the spiritual world, which world the Creator fills with life and power from Himself.

Then Mr. Darwin was, in one sense, right in speaking of natural selection; for, as we have said, when the Creator would effect a purpose in nature, He does it through natural law. Indeed, natural law is the way the Creator acts on the natural plane.

There is yet a more comprehensive view of this fact suggested in the conception that the Creator is fully in spiritual law, just as cause is within effect; hence His purposes must be worked out there. And as natural law is the outward expression of spiritual law, or the spiritual law descended and operative in matter, He is also in natural law, which likewise and as fully serves His will.

Now, since natural law is such ultimate expression of Divine law, natural selection is Divine selection. So, while Mr. Darwin was right in speaking of the creative process as natural selection, he was equally wrong in thinking that the power to select is innate in nature. For natural selection expresses only half the truth—the outward, lower half. For the completion of the truth we must supplement it with the inner and higher half—Divine selection. Natural selection being supplemented by Divine selection, the cloud over the tabernacle lifts and we can see to proceed on our journey. The mystery of creation is largely dispelled, for then it is realized how nature has selected so wisely, why she has never made a mistake, and why she never can err. We can then understand how nature could select to form the seas and the dry land, the simplest forms of primeval flora and fauna, and advance so orderly and surely to the creation of man, and lastly work at every point, besetting man before and behind, to make him righteous and holy as the heir to the wisdom, love, and blessings of Divine life itself.