Evolution and Ethics | Page 8

revelation of the nature of things, which we call
scientific knowledge, has [7] yet gone, it tends, with constantly
increasing emphasis, to the belief that, not merely the world of plants,
but that of animals; not merely living things, but the whole fabric of the
earth; not merely our planet, but the whole solar system; not merely our
star and its satellites, but the millions of similar bodies which bear
witness to the order which pervades boundless space, and has endured
through boundless time; are all working out their predestined courses of
evolution.
* See "Evolution in Biology," Essays, vol. ii. p. 187
With none of these have I anything to do, at present, except with that
exhibited by the forms of life which tenant the earth. All plants and
animals exhibit the tendency to vary, the causes of which have yet to be
ascertained; it is the tendency of the conditions of life, at any given
time, while favouring the existence of the variations best adapted to
them, to oppose that of the rest and thus to exercise selection; and all
living things tend to multiply without limit, while the means of support
are limited; the obvious cause of which is the production of offspring
more numerous than their progenitors, but with equal expectation of
life in the actuarial sense. Without the first tendency there could be no
evolution. Without the second, there would be no good reason why one
variation should disappear and another take its place; that is to say there
would be no selection. Without the [8] third, the struggle for existence,
the agent of the selective process in the state of nature, would vanish.*
* Collected Essays, vol. ii. passim.
Granting the existence of these tendencies, all the known facts of the
history of plants and of animals may be brought into rational
correlation. And this is more than can be said for any other hypothesis
that I know of. Such hypotheses, for example, as that of the existence
of a primitive, orderless chaos; of a passive and sluggish eternal matter
moulded, with but partial success, by archetypal ideas; of a brand-new
world-stuff suddenly created and swiftly shaped by a supernatural

power; receive no encouragement, but the contrary, from our present
knowledge. That our earth may once have formed part of a nebulous
cosmic magma is certainly possible, indeed seems highly probable; but
there is no reason to doubt that order reigned there, as completely as
amidst what we regard as the most finished works of nature or of
man.** The faith which is born of knowledge, finds its object in an
eternal order, bringing forth ceaseless change, through endless time, in
endless space; the manifestations of the cosmic energy alternating
between phases of potentiality and phases of explication. It may be that,
as Kant suggests,*** every cosmic [9] magma predestined to evolve
into a new world, has been the no less predestined end of a vanished
predecessor.
**Ibid., vol. iv. p. 138; vol. v. pp. 71-73. ***Ibid., vol. viii. p. 321.
II.
Three or four years have elapsed since the state of nature, to which I
have referred, was brought to an end, so far as a small patch of the soil
is concerned, by the intervention of man. The patch was cut off from
the rest by a wall; within the area thus protected, the native vegetation
was, as far as possible, extirpated; while a colony of strange plants was
imported and set down in its place. In short, it was made into a garden.
At the present time, this artificially treated area presents an aspect
extraordinarily different from that of so much of the land as remains in
the state of nature, outside the wall. Trees, shrubs, and herbs, many of
them appertaining to the state of nature of remote parts of the globe,
abound and flourish. Moreover, considerable quantities of vegetables,
fruits, and flowers are produced, of kinds which neither now exist, nor
have ever existed, except under conditions such as obtain in the garden;
and which, therefore, are as much works of the art of man as the frames
and glasshouses in which some of them are raised. That the "state of
Art," thus created in the state of nature by man, is sustained by and
dependent on him, would at once become [10] apparent, if the watchful
supervision of the gardener were withdrawn, and the antagonistic
influences of the general cosmic process were no longer sedulously
warded off, or counteracted. The walls and gates would decay;
quadrupedal and bipedal intruders would devour and tread down the
useful and beautiful plants; birds, insects, blight, and mildew would
work their will; the seeds of the native plants, carried by winds or other

agencies, would immigrate, and in virtue of their long-earned special
adaptation