A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

Twenty years ago, any one about to deal with moral science from the standpoint of the Theory of Evolution, might have deemed it necessary to preface his work with a statement of cogent reasons for the assumption of such a standpoint. At a time when Theology saw in Darwinism only a weapon of the anti-theological party, and when even many scientists were not yet decided as to the worth of the new ideas, the right of the student to make use of them in psychological and ethical investigations might have been a subject for dispute. Yet even in the beginning the attitude of apology was assumed oftener without, than within, English-speaking countries, for the very reason that exactly among the race from which Darwin sprang, the warfare of his conception of animate nature with older systems was fiercest. At the present date, the attitude of opinion is changed in all countries. The Theory of Evolution has few, if it can be said to have any, enemies among the students of science. "With Louis Agassiz died the last opponent of Darwinism deserving scientific notice," says Haeckel.[87] Theology itself has ceased from extreme hostilities, and many theologians have even found in the idea of Evolution an argument with which to defend teleological doctrine. The present opponents of Darwinism as applied to psychology and ethics rather contest its special worth for these provinces than deny its validity in them. Nevertheless, a universal acceptance cannot be claimed for the theory; and since[Pg 270] ethics is, above all other sciences, the one that should most desire to persuade rather than to alienate,and this the more, the stronger its conviction of its own truth,it may be well to state or restate some of the reasons which justify, from almost all modern standpoints, at least a tentative application of the ideas of Evolution to ethical theory. Such a statement, or restatement, must be an attempt to demonstrate the validity of the theory in this province, and to give some good reasons for supposing, a priori, that a survey of ethical questions from the point of view it furnishes may be of ethical utility. The proof of such utility can be found, ultimately, only in the results of the investigation itself. There is but one phase of the theological doctrine of Creation with which the mere idea of an evolution of life, by itself considered, is directly at variance; this is the doctrine of Creation as taught by the older Theology, which accepted the opening chapters of Genesis as literal history, not as, by any possibility, an oriental allegory. Between the theory of Evolution and the idea of Creation as a primal formation of matter with force or motion in accordance with fixed laws, between it and the idea of an initial application of force from without,an impulsion which set the universe in motion,between it and the conception of a transcendental guidance through natural law or of a pantheistic order of development, there is no such necessary contradiction as could justify the denial of Evolution from the standpoint of any of these theories. It is, therefore, with the defenders of the older theological doctrine of creation only that an a priori defence of Evolution has to deal. The argument which this doctrine has always regarded as one of its strongest defences is that of the universality of the notion of a Creating Spirit. But this defence is no longer available; modern research has proved the idea to be by no means universal. Sir John Lubbock says, "The lower races have no idea of a Creation; and among those somewhat more advanced it is, at first, very incomplete." "The lower savages regard their gods as scarcely more powerful than themselves;... they are not creators; they are neither omniscient nor all-powerful; far from conferring immortality on man, they are not even in all cases immortal themselves."[88] "Stuhr, who was, as Mller says, a good[Pg 271] observer of such matters, reports that the Siberians had no idea of a Creator. When Burchill suggested the idea of creation to the Bachapin Kaffirs, these 'asserted that everything made itself,' and that trees and herbage grew by their own will."[89] "As regards Tahiti, Williams observes that the 'origin of the gods and their priority of existence in comparison with the formation of the earth, being a matter of uncertainty even among the native priests, involves the whole in the greatest obscurity.'"[90] "When the Capuchin missionary, Merolla, asked the queen of Singa in Western Africa who made the world, she, 'without the least hesitation, readily answered, "My ancestors."'"[91] "The Bongos of Sudan had no conception of there being a Creator,"[92] the Adipones, the Californian Indians, before they came in contact with white men, the Crees, the Zulu Kaffirs, the Hottentots, had no idea of a creation. "Even in Sanscrit, there is no word for creation, nor does any such appear in the Rigveda, the Zendavesta, or in Homer."[93] The idea of a creation in any sense is not, then, universal, and cannot be asserted to be innate, a priori, primordial, or essential to human nature. Nor, assuming the standpoint of belief in a Creator, is there any ground for supposing that he would have chosen the one rather than any other method of creation. The internal as well as the external difficulties in the way of a too literal exegesis of the Old Testament are rapidly causing the abandonment of dogmatism with respect to this point; and any other interpretation than a literal one cannot, as has been said, logically object to a theory of Becoming based on scientific grounds. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 39155
Author: Williams, Cora May
Release Date: Mar 15, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English