An essay in universal history from an Orthodox Christian Point ofView part the age of revolution

54. THE WILL IN NATURE: DARWIN

Parallel with these developments and influencing them was the wider retreat of European thought from traditional religious ideas and customs. This anti-religious onslaught was carried out in tandem by two apparently opposing movements that actually converged in their final end: the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and the irrationalism of the Counter-Enlightenment and the Romantic movement. However, the defeat of the 1848 revolution, and the vast industrial boom of the 1850s, placed a temporary damper on these irrationalist tendencies. So this was the age of the realistic novel in art and positivism in philosophy, when Hegel's definition: "the real is the rational" became the motto of all "progressive" spirits.

The Bible of the new rationalism was Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, published in 1859 but written considerably earlier.²⁴¹ The year 1859, according to M.S. Anderson, "can be seen as the beginning of a new era in intellectual life"; for it "gave birth not merely to the Origin of Species but also to Marx's Critique of Political Economy and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde".²⁴² If eighteenth-century Deism had banished God to the heavens, leaving for Him only the function of Creator, Darwinism deprived Him even of this function, ascribing all creativity to the blind will of nature working entirely through chance. Of course, this could be seen as the height of irrationalism - which it was, and a return to the crudest pagan nature-worship - which it also was. But Darwin succeeded in ascribing to his pagan mysticism the aura of science - and few there were, in the 1860s, who dared to question the authority of science.
The theory maintains that all life, even the most complex, has evolved from the simplest organisms over a period of hundreds of millions of years. This process is entirely random, being propelled forward by two mechanisms: natural selection, which "selects out" for survival those organisms with advantageous variations (this was Darwin's preferred mechanism), and genetic mutations, which introduce variations into the genotypes of the organisms (this is the favoured mechanism of the "neo-Darwinists").
"Therefore," writes Bertrand Russell, "among chance variations those that are favourable will preponderate among adults in each generation. Thus from age to age deer run more swiftly, cats stalk their prey more silently, and giraffes' necks become longer. Given enough time, this mechanism, so Darwin contended, could account for the whole long development from the protozoa to homo sapiens."²⁴³
"Given enough time…" Time - enormous amounts of it - was indeed a critical ingredient in Darwin's theory; in fact it took the place of a satisfactory causal mechanism. But such a theory chimed in with the historicist temper of the times. It also chimed in with the idea, as Jacques Barzun writes, "that everything is alive and in motion - a dynamic universe".²⁴⁴
Liberals believed in gradual progress, socialists believed in progress through revolution, everyone except for a few diehards like the Pope believed that things had to change, and that change had to be for the better. Above all, evolution appealed to man's pride, in the belief that man was destined for greater and greater things. "You know," says Lady Constance in Disraeli's novel Tancred (1847), "all is development - the principle is perpetually going on. First, there was nothing; then - I forget the next - I think there were shells; then fishes; then we came - let me see - did we come next? Never mind, we came at last and the next change will be something very superior to us, something with wings."²⁴⁵
It will be noted that this was written twelve years before Darwin's Origin of the Species, which shows that the "scientific" theory filled an emotional need already expressed by poets and novelists. Evidently not feeling this need himself, Disraeli said that as between the idea that man was an ape or an angel, he was "on the side of the angels"²⁴⁶; but he forgot that, as Lady Constance had opined in his novel, evolution was for many a way of attaining angelic status ("something with wings") in the very long run. For those who did not believe in the deification of man through Christ, evolution provided another, secular and atheist form of deification. This elicited the not unfounded derision of the conservatives. Thus Gobineau said that man was "not descended from the apes, but rapidly getting there".²⁴⁷
Paradoxically, Darwin's book never actually discussed the origin of species - the very first and simplest step in evolution, the supposed transformation of inorganic matter into organic. This was perhaps because Darwin knew of Louis Pasteur's contemporary discovery that spontaneous generation is impossible. But modern scientists have continued to try and prove the impossible to be possible in their laboratories, if not in nature - with no success whatsoever. Instead, they have discovered more and more theoretical barriers - especially in the fields of genetics (DNA) and molecular biology - to the creation of life out of non-life.
The most recent of these is the discovery that even the simplest living cell is irreducibly complex - that is, it cannot be built up piece-meal from simpler ingredients, but every single ingredient has to be in its exactly assigned place in the extraordinarily complex structure of the cell from the beginning.
Darwin even had doubts about natural selection. "To suppose,” he wrote. “that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."²⁴⁸ Instead he turned to the discredited theory of Lamarck, that acquired characteristics are inherited - a theory accepted, in modern times, only by Stalin's scientists...
Many contemporaries rejected the theory, including, perhaps surprisingly, the German philosopher Nietzsche. He pointed out, as Copleston writes, "that during most of the time taken up in the formation of a certain organ or quality, the inchoate organ is of no use to its possessor and cannot aid it in its struggle with external circumstances and forces. The influence of ‘external circumstances’ is absurdly overrated by Darwin. The essential factor in the vital process is precisely the tremendous power to shape and create forms from within, a power which uses and exploits the environment."²⁴⁹
The idea that all things came into being out of nothing by chance was rejected already in the fourth century by St. Basil the Great: "Where did you get what you have? If you say that you received it by chance, you are an atheist, you do not know your Creator and are not grateful to your Benefactor."²⁵⁰ And St. Nectarius of Aegina, writing in the 1880s, was withering in his rejection of this new version of the old heresy: "The followers of pithecogeny [the derivation of man from the apes] are ignorant of man and of his lofty destiny, because they have denied him his soul and Divine revelation. They have rejected the Spirit, and the Spirit has abandoned them. They withdrew from God, and God withdrew from them; for, thinking they were wise, they became fools... If they had acted with knowledge, they would not have lowered themselves so much, nor would they have taken pride in tracing the origin of the human race to the most shameless of animals. Rightly did the Prophet say of them: 'Man being in honour, did not understand; he is compared to the dumb beasts, and is become like unto them."²⁵¹
A little later, St. Nectary of Optina affirmed that the fossils, the only scientific evidence for evolution, were actually laid down by the Great Flood: "Once a man came to me who simply couldn't believe that there had been a flood. Then I told him that on very high mountains in the sand are found shells and other remains from the ocean floor, and how geology testifies to the flood, and he came to believe. You see how necessary learning is at times." And again the elder said: "God not only permits, but demands of man that he grow in knowledge. However, it is necessary to live and learn so that not only does knowledge not ruin morality, but that morality not ruin knowledge."²⁵²
The ruination of morality by false theories such as Darwin's was emphasised by St. Nectary's fellow-elder at Optina, St. Barsanuphius (+1912): “Darwin created an entire system according to which life is a struggle for existence, a struggle for the strong against the weak, where those that are conquered are doomed to destruction. This is already the beginning of a bestial philosophy, and those who come to believe in it wouldn't think twice about killing a man, assaulting a woman, or robbing their closest friend - and they would do all this calmly, with a full recognition of their right to commit their crimes.”²⁵³
It was the implicit denial of the rational, free and moralizing soul that particularly shocked the early critics of Darwinism. For as Darwinism rapidly evolved from a purely biological theory of origins into universal evolutionism going back to what scientists now call the Big Bang, the image of man that emerged was not simply animalian but completely material. Man was made in the image, not of God, but of dead matter.
Moreover, evolutionism turned out to be an explanation of the origins of the whole universe on the basis of a supposedly new philosophy or religion that was in fact very old and very pagan. For "all things were made" now, not by God the Word, the eternal Life and Light of the world, but by blind mutation and "natural selection" (i.e. death). These were the two hands of original Chaos, the father of all things - a conception as old as the pre-Socratic philosophers Anaximander and Heraclitus and as retrogressive as the pre-Christian religions of Egypt and Babylon.
Darwin’s idea of species evolving into and from each other also recalls the Hindu idea of reincarnation. A more likely contemporary influence was Schopenhauer’s philosophy of Will. For both Schopenhauer and Darwin the blind, selfish Will to live was everything; for both there was neither intelligent design nor selfless love, but only the struggle to survive; for both the best that mankind could hope for was not Paradise but a kind of Buddhist nirvana.
Schopenhauer in metaphysics, Darwin in science, and Marx in political theory formed a kind of unholy consubstantial trinity, whose essence was Will.²⁵⁴ Marx liked Darwinism because it appeared to justify the idea of class struggle as the fundamental mechanism of human evolution. "The idea of class struggle logically flows from 'the law of the struggle for existence'. It is precisely by this law that Marxism explains the emergence of classes and their struggle, whence logically proceeds the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead of racist pre-eminence class pre-eminence is preached."²⁵⁵
However, Darwinism was also congenial to Marxism because of its blind historicism and implicit atheism. As Richard Wurmbrand notes: "After Marx had read The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, he wrote a letter to Lassalle in which he exults that God - in the natural sciences at least - had been given 'the death blow'".²⁵⁶
"Karl Marx," writes Hieromonk Damascene, "was a devout Darwinist, who in Das Kapital called Darwin's theory 'epoch making'. He believed his reductionist, materialistic theories of the evolution of social organization to be deducible from Darwin's discoveries, and thus proposed to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. The funeral oration over Marx's body, delivered by Engels, stressed the evolutionary basis of communism: 'Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.'"²⁵⁷
"The years after 1870," writes Gareth Stedman Jones, "were dominated by the prestige of the natural sciences, especially that of Darwin. Playing to these preoccupations, Engels presented Marx's work, not as a theory of communism or as a study of capitalism, but as the foundation of a parallel 'science of historical materialism'. Socialism had made a transition from 'utopia' to 'science'"...²⁵⁸
Not only Marxism, but also its ideological rival, capitalism, found support in Darwinism. For Darwinism can be seen as the application of the principles of capitalist competition to nature. Thus Bertrand Russell writes: "Darwinism was an application to the whole of animal and vegetable life of Malthus's theory of population, which was an integral part of the politics and economics of the Benthamites - a global free competition, in which victory went to the animals that most resembled successful capitalists. Darwin himself was influenced by Malthus, and was in general sympathy with the Philosophical Radicals. There was, however, a great difference between the competition admired by orthodox economists and the struggle for existence which Darwin proclaimed as the motive force of evolution. 'Free competition,' in orthodox economics, is a very artificial conception, hedged in by legal restrictions. You may undersell a competitor, but you must not murder him. You must not use the armed forces of the State to help you to get the better of foreign manufacturers. Those who have the good fortune to possess capital must not seek to improve their lot by revolution. 'Free competition', as understood by the Benthamites, was by no means really free.
"Darwinian competition was not of this limited sort; there were no rules against hitting below the belt. The framework of law does not exist among animals, nor is war excluded as a competitive method. The use of the State to secure victory in competition was against the rules as conceived by the Benthamites, but could not be excluded from the Darwinian struggle. In fact, though Darwin himself was a Liberal, and though Nietzsche never mentions him except with contempt, Darwin's 'Survival of the Fittest' led, when thoroughly assimilated, to something much more like Nietzsche's philosophy than like Bentham's. These developments, however, belong to a later period, since Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, and its political implications were not at first perceived…"²⁵⁹
As for the political implications of Darwin's book, they are obvious from its full title: On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the struggle for life. Darwin did not mean by "races" races of men, but species of animals. However, the inference was easily drawn that certain races of men are more “favoured” than others; and this inference was still more easily drawn after the publication of The Descent of Man in 1871.
Very soon different races or classes or groups of men were being viewed as if they were different species. "Applied to politics," writes Jacques Barzun, "[Darwinism] bred the doctrine that nations and other social groups struggle endlessly in order that the fittest shall survive. So attractive was this 'principle' that it got the name of Social Darwinism."²⁶⁰ Thus Social Darwinism may be defined as the idea that "human affairs are a jungle in which only the fittest of nations, classes, or individuals will survive".²⁶¹
Social Darwinism leads to the conclusion that certain races are congenitally superior to others. "Only congenital characteristics are inherited," writes Russell, "apart from certain not very important exceptions. Thus the congenital differences between men acquire fundamental importance." ²⁶² As Fr. Timothy Alferov writes: "The ideas of racial pre-eminence - racism, Hitlerism - come from the Darwinist teaching on the origin of the races and their unequal significance. The law of the struggle for existence supposedly obliges the strong races to exert a strong dominance over the other races, to the extent of destroying the latter. It is not necessary to describe here the incarnation of these ideas in life in the example of Hitlerism, but it is worth noting that Hitler greatly venerated Darwin."²⁶³
However, while appearing to widen the differences between races of men, Social Darwinism also reduces them between men and other species - with some startling consequences. Thus Russell writes: "If men and animals have a common ancestry, and if men developed by such slow stages that there were creatures which we should not know whether to classify as human or not, the question arises: at what stage in evolution did men, or their semi-human ancestors, begin to be all equal? Would Pithecanthropus erectus, if he had been properly educated, have done work as good as Newton's? Would the Piltdown Men have written Shakespeare's poetry if there had been anybody to convict him of poaching? A resolute egalitarian who answers these questions in the affirmative will find himself forced to regard apes as the equals of human beings. And why stop at apes? I do not see how he is to resist an argument in favour of Votes for Oysters. An adherent of evolution should maintain that not only the doctrine of the equality of all men, but also that of the rights of man, must be condemned as unbiological, since it makes too emphatic a distinction between men and other animals."²⁶⁴
Arthur Balfour, who became British Prime Minister in 1902, described the world-view that universal evolutionism proclaimed as follows: "A man - so far as natural science is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligent enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish…"²⁶⁵
A truly melancholy philosophy – but fortunately there is no reason to believe in it. C.S. Lewis wrote: "By universal evolutionism I mean the belief that the very formula of universal process is from imperfect to perfect, from small beginnings to great endings, from the rudimentary to the elaborate, the belief which makes people find it natural to think that morality springs from savage taboos, adult sentiment from infantile sexual maladjustments, thought from instinct, mind from matter, organic from inorganic, cosmos from chaos. This is perhaps the deepest habit of mind in the contemporary world. It seems to me immensely implausible, because it makes the general course of nature so very unlike those parts of nature we can observe. You remember the old puzzle as to whether the owl came from the egg or the egg from the owl. The modern acquiescence in universal evolutionism is a kind of optical illusion, produced by attending exclusively to the owl's emergence from the egg. We are taught from childhood to notice how the perfect oak grows from the acorn and to forget that the acorn itself was dropped by a perfect oak. We are reminded constantly that the adult human being was an embryo, never that the life of the embryo came from two adult human beings. We love to notice that the express engine of today is the descendant of the 'Rocket'; we do not equally remember that the 'Rocket' springs not from some even more rudimentary engine, but from something much more perfect and complicated than itself - namely, a man of genius. The obviousness or naturalness which most people seem to find in the idea of emergent evolution thus seems to be a pure hallucination…"²⁶⁶