The Doctrine of Evolution | Page 3

freedom of the will; questions as to the evolution of mind and the way mind and matter are related force the investigator to consider the problem of immortality. But these and similar subjects in the field of extra-science are beyond its sphere for the very good reason that scientific method, which we are to define shortly, cannot be employed for their solution. Evolution is a science; it is a description of nature's order, and its materials are facts only. In method and content it is the very science of sciences, describing all and holding true throughout each one.
The overwhelming importance of knowing about natural laws and universal principles is not often realized. What have we to do with evolution and science? Are we not too busy with the ordering of our immediate affairs to concern ourselves with such remote matters? So it may appear to many, who think that the study of life and its origin, and of the vital facts about plants and animals may be interesting and may possess a certain intellectual value, but nothing more. The investigation of man and of men and of human life is regarded by the majority as a mere cultural exercise which has no further result than the recording of present facts and past histories; but it is far otherwise. Science and evolution must deal with mere details about the world at large, and with human ideals and with life and conduct; and while their purpose is to describe how nature works now and how it has progressed in the past, their fullest value is realized in the sure guidance they provide for our lives. This cannot be clear until we reach the later portions of our subject, but even at the outset we must recognize that knowledge of the great rules of nature's game, in which we must play our parts, is the most valuable intellectual possession we can obtain. If man and his place in nature, his mind and social obligations, become intelligible, if right and wrong, good and evil, and duty come to have more definite and assignable values through an understanding of the results of science, then life may be fuller and richer, better and more effective, in direct proportion to this understanding of the harmony of the universe.
And so we must approach the study of the several divisions of our subject in this frame of mind. We must meet many difficulties, of which the chief one is perhaps our own human nature. For we as men are involved, and it is hard indeed to take an impersonal point of view,--to put aside all thoughts of the consequences to us of evolution, if it is true. Yet emotion and purely human interest are disturbing elements in intellectual development which hamper the efforts of reason to form assured conceptions. We must disregard for the time those insistent questions as to higher human nature, even though we must inevitably consider them at the last. Indeed, all the human problems must be put aside until we have prepared the way for their study by learning what evolution means, what a living organism is, and how sure is the evidence of organic transformation. When we know what nature is like and what natural processes are, then we may take up the questions of supreme and deep concern about our own human lives.
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Human curiosity has ever demanded answers to questions about the world and its make-up. The primitive savage was concerned primarily with the everyday work of seeking food and building huts and carrying on warfare, and yet even he found time to classify the objects of his world and to construct some theory about the powers that made them. His attainments may seem crude and childish to-day, but they were the beginnings of classified knowledge, which advanced or stood still as men found more or less time for observation and thought. Freed from the strife of primeval and medieval life, more and more observers and thinkers have enlarged the boundaries and developed the territory of the known. The history of human thought itself demonstrates an evolution which began with the savages' vague interpretation of the "what" and the "why" of the universe, and culminates in the science of to-day.
What, now, is a science? To many people the word denotes something cold and unfeeling and rigid, or something that is somehow apart from daily life and antagonistic to freedom of thought. But this is far from being true. Karl Pearson defines science as organized knowledge, and Huxley calls it organized common sense. These definitions mean the same thing. They mean that in order to know anything that deserves confidence, in order to obtain a real result, it is necessary in the first place to establish the reality of facts