Part 22 (2/2)

Even if we go back beyond the organic, a.s.suming a development of the organic from the inorganic, we must come, in the last a.n.a.lysis, to irresolvable elements whose motion, as distinct and particular action and reaction, must have definite form. If we begin with a supposit.i.tious simple organism conceived as lowest,--the primal form to which the name ”organism” may be applied,--we must likewise conceive of this as embodying motion distinctive as its form, which may be regarded as concomitant and coordinate with that form,--or, that is, as function.

The ultimate elements of this organism represent positive factors and the primal organism itself must be regarded as a positive factor (or positive composite) without which the evolution of highest organisms would be impossible. We may, therefore, regard it as in this sense embracing the potentialities of evolution. But are we to regard it as representing potentiality in a further sense--in the sense that, beyond the particular life-motion coordinate with its particular composition and form, it represents an independent force that prefigures the whole animate evolution? To such an a.s.sumption the a.n.a.logy--which is something far more than a mere a.n.a.logy--of Embryology logically reduces us, on Weismann's theory, unless we a.s.sume a fixity of species that practically does away with the whole theory of Evolution and returns to the original darkness that on which Darwin threw light. Or, if we leave out of account this a.n.a.logy and begin with s.e.xual propagation, the problem, on Weismann's theory, is very nearly as difficult. Are we to look upon the conditions involved in the environment as mere negatives and simply developing the positive potentialities of the germ-plasm? If we resolve the environment into its elements, even the ultimate a.n.a.lysis must show it composed of positive factors of matter and motion, each one of which has its full worth in any resultant of incidence. The positivity of these elements takes from the primal germ-plasm any superiority of potentiality; the potentiality lies also in the environment. That the organism is in constant contact with the environment is evident; and that this contact, involving incidence of force, cannot be without result, and result representing a full equivalent of all the factors, is also evident. It may seem as if we could understand human progress, or progress in other species, in the limited province open to direct observation, on Weismann's theory; but evolution as a whole becomes, on this theory, a mystery, and indeed, as Eimer terms it, a miracle.

Logical consistency thus tells against the theory; and undeniable exceptions to its fundamental conception, furnished by such authorities as Darwin and Haeckel, raise a further presumption against it, that, taken in connection with the logical inconsistencies noticed, const.i.tutes the strongest probability against its truth.

The general experience of mankind has recognized, in a thousand ways, that the individual is ”a creature of habit.” The strength of the muscle, the cunning of hand or eye or ear, mental acuteness, and even liability to temptation in any direction, or, on the other hand, moral strength, all are coincident with exercise within the bounds set by the normal of the organ,--that is, within its ability to repair its waste in labor, an ability defined by the food-supply and its power of a.s.similation; for even the moral struggle that is so great as to exhaust physically ends in a weakness which may represent the very condition of conquest by the temptation opposed, if this present itself again before the system has had time to repair its loss. We may regard this weakness as a lessening of force in one particular direction, the resultant of action deviating in favor of the other of the opposing forces or tendencies manifested in the struggle. In this connection I cannot do better than refer to the ”Kritik der reinen Erfahrung” already mentioned, in which the influence of the environment on the individual is minutely traced. The special feature of the work is its entire freedom from the thousand metaphysical implications which have gradually gathered about our philosophical vocabulary and which render it well-nigh impossible to write from any new standpoint without danger of misunderstanding. This perspicuity and exactness are secured by a new vocabulary which may seem at first glance, on account of its unfamiliarity, elaborate and incomprehensible, but which is, when mastered, the greatest possible aid to understanding. Nevertheless, the terminology of the book and the exceeding closeness of its a.n.a.lysis, while rendering it peculiarly valuable to the expert in Philosophy, place it beyond the grasp of the average reader; and Ethics is a science which concerns, not the specialist in Philosophy alone, but all thinking minds.

The influence of exercise even beyond the individual has long been recognized. Lamarck advanced the theory that the development of organs and their force of action is in ratio to their employment. Darwin also laid stress, particularly in his later works, on Use and Disuse, but he often defined the term more specifically than many other authors, Lamarck among them, seem to have done. The very ma.s.s and magnitude of Darwin's knowledge made it, as Huxley has said, somewhat unwieldy, and, in diverting the attention to minute features, sometimes prevented distinctness in broad generalizations; the very virtue of Darwin's work conditioned also its defect. If we begin with the general theory of use and disuse, we may regard each present form of organic action or function, whether conscious or unconscious, as in some manner the result of exercise, the processes of food-taking, digestion, repair of waste, being cla.s.sed, not as, in any case, mere negative reactions, but as positive organic functions. If we apply the term ”habit” to all these, it is evident that we must, in so doing, extend the significance of the word beyond its ordinary interpretation. From our present point of view, such an extension of meaning might be claimed to be legitimate; the question here is, in reality, only one of expediency, namely, whether it is not better to retain the more specific significance of the word. It may be useful, at least, to indicate the relations of Habit to Use and Disuse. In its ordinary interpretation, the term ”habit” refers more particularly to a form of action acquired during the life of the individual, and may be used to imply the action of the will in its formation, or may simply have in view the organic concomitants of whatever mental action is included in such formation. Since our present standpoint supposes a certain equivalence of the mental and physical, that is, uniformity in their connection (without entering into the question of their dependence or independence, or considering which, in case of dependence, is to be regarded as dependent, which as fundamental and independent), we may leave for the moment the mental side of function out of account, to take it up later. Darwin's definition of habit was, as we have seen, no distinct and invariable one, and while he speaks of ”inherited habit,” referring both to forms of action acquired during the life of the individual and to such acquired through use favored by constancy of environment during several generations, it is not always plain whether he has in mind the action of the will, or only its organic equivalents. He inclines, like many other authors, to give prominence to the physical side of action in lower species, to the mental side in higher. If we use the term ”habit” in the sense of tendency to function acquired by use, we employ what is certainly a useful terminology, yet we are in danger, if we do not carefully define our terms, of elevating to the position of a reality an abstraction that has none. Function and Tendency to Function are not separable; the distinction is not an inner, but an outer one, of favorable or unfavorable environment by which tendency to function becomes function or _vice versa_. To habit, then, we can attach, from our present standpoint, no distinctive implication beyond that of individual acquirement,--an implication obviously not fundamental in a theory of organic function. Use and disuse are rather the fundamental concepts with which, in a consideration of function under Heredity and Adaptation, we have to do.

But, in this connection, it is also obvious that, when we, from our point of view, distinguish between the organism as acted on by the environment and the environment as acting, we make a distinction that may be both useful and necessary for many purposes, but that is yet an arbitrary one. The organism is not the dependent, pa.s.sive, the environment the independent, formative factor in the process of development, the organism is not purely reactive, the environment active, but the two are interactive; and from their interaction arises change, as resultant, in both organism and environment. So, too, if we return to Fechner's conception, the separation of function as effect from use and disuse as cause is an arbitrary one. Every function, as representing a state of more or less perfect, moving equilibrium, may be regarded either as the final form issuing from a long process of action and reaction or, as determined at present, by such a comparative constancy of all its conditions as makes the line followed by the resultant approximately a repet.i.tion of that which it has followed before; and we may lay stress upon either the inferior resistance in this line or the continual application of superior force, the acc.u.mulation of energy, in its direction. Use or exercise is function; long continuance of the same or approximately the same form of function may be regarded as concomitant with a certain constancy of environment, sufficient to furnish the complementary condition always necessary. The present form of function may be regarded as the result of an evolution of function in the sense that it is the end-form a.s.sumed by the same, but not in a sense that separates it from previous forms of function by a distinction of kind; since each of these may be regarded, in like manner, as the result of the preceding evolution. As in the definition of Habit, so in that of Use, the element of animal will or of a distinct vital principle is likely to be consciously or unconsciously included, lending it thus a superior significance to that of mere organic function regarded as its result. Again it must be said, however, that, whatever the metaphysical truth of freedom, will does not interfere with the equivalence of physical conditions and results or prevent perfect uniformity of relation between the physical and the psychical, and that a special vital force cannot be demonstrated. Disuse may be defined either as the mere discontinuance of Use or as Use in a sense opposed to the form of function particularly under consideration.

The idea of some special vital principle doubtless has its origin in the mysterious tendency of every organic form to develop along certain lines. The mystery involved is here, again, besides that of ultimate fact on which the metaphysician lays stress, the lack of the ability of present science to furnish such a description of the process as shall resolve it into its elements and demonstrate the uniformities of relation among these elements in this last a.n.a.lysis. But it is to be remarked that the metaphysician is apt to confuse these two meanings of the word ”mystery,” and regard the mystery of the organism as a greater metaphysical one than that of simpler processes whose elements are better known; and this in spite of the fact that he himself does not at all deny the uniformity in natural process which we term Law, or expect to find it less in an ultimate a.n.a.lysis than in a more superficial one.

We understand the simple parallelogram by which the physicist represents to us the action of two forces at incidence, we may represent to ourselves the motion of any one of the heavenly bodies as the resultant of the centrifugal and centripetal forces, but when we come to consider the formation of a crystal, and watch the regularity of shape and grouping, this very uniformity which had been before an explanation now seems all at once to represent an insoluble mystery separating the process forever from those others. The more complicated the process becomes, the more the mystery appears to increase, until we build up, out of a negative ignorance, some positive new ent.i.ty to baffle us. And yet neither do we deny, as has been said, the constancy of nature in its most final elements, nor can it at all be shown or supposed that those simpler processes we seemed to understand were less along fixed lines than the more complicated ones. If we grant, then, the insoluble mystery of the transcendental meaning of things claimed by the metaphysician, we cannot admit the presence of this mystery in the organic more than in the inorganic, nor discover in the science of the former any further element lacking than in that of the latter, except a remediable ignorance which, when remedied, can only reveal in new particulars the workings of natural law. It may be remarked, in this connection, that those who are so ready to claim the workings of some special force or power in the development of the organism make no a.s.sertion of such in the so a.n.a.logous growth of the crystal. The pa.s.sage of the inorganic into the organic and back into the inorganic is, in fact, no more (if the metaphysician will, no less) mysterious than the evaporation of water and its recondensation, the propagation of animal form no greater mystery than the continued flowing of a stream in spite of evaporation, or the growth of a crystal to the form of its kind. The propagation of species is, in one sense, an isolated fact; but so, in like sense, is the evaporation of water or the formation of the crystal of a particular chemical: but none of these phenomena are isolated in any other sense, as less or more than a part of a universal whole. We carry our notion of human importance into all our science, and so invest with greater weight and mystery ignorance that concerns our own life and that of allied forms. As we have seen, a connection of use, or of duration and intensity of function, with its strength is evident in the individual, and we are compelled to suppose the connection a constant one even where such constancy cannot be directly demonstrated. There is evidently a relation likewise between degree, or duration and intensity, of use or exercise of function, and strength of tendency in the species, which we must also suppose to be constant. Darwin distinctly recognizes this, everywhere in his work, in a.s.serting that such function as is favored by the environment for several generations is more likely to be transmitted. But though the separation of organism and environment into cause and effect may be useful in the solution of some problems, it is yet to be kept in mind that the distinction is an arbitrary selection of some factors as dependent, others as independent variables, while all are, in fact, interdependent. Function may be regarded as at every moment determined by the factors given in environment and organism, in which either may seem the more important, according to the particular case or the point of view from which it is regarded. The tendency of the organism may represent such an acc.u.mulation of potential energy that a slight favorable element in the environment may be like a spark in a magazine of gunpowder, followed by results seemingly most disproportionate to its own significance; yet the acc.u.mulation of energy in the organism can have taken place only under previous favorable circ.u.mstances of the environment; and if we regard the organism in its relation to the whole environment, that is, to the universal conditions outside it, the primary importance may seem to attach to these. But yet, which is, in the last a.n.a.lysis, the more important to the explosion of the magazine--spark or powder? Either is insufficient without the other; the two are simply complementary and both indispensable to the result.

So too habit, use, or exercise of function and influence of the environment cannot be held distinct; exercise of function is impossible without a sufficient complementary factor in the environment, but this is evidently sufficient only with the existence of that tendency in the organism of which it is the complement. Regarding strong tendency as the result of a long process of evolution in which the environment has presented sufficient complementary elements to condition its development, the strength of tendency being coordinate with the duration and intensity of the process of evolution, we can understand that any such change in the environment as shall prevent such function may be of so much significance, the suppression of the function represent so great departure from what was previous resultant, that even the destruction of the organism may supervene in cases where longest exercised and strongest functions are prevented; and we can understand, from the same standpoint, the slight comparative importance of the experience of individuals as influencing their descendants, except under especially favorable conditions of the organism.

All biologists make much of the mixture of types in s.e.xual propagation; and Rolph, perhaps, lays especial stress on it in connection with progressive heredity. He calls attention to the intricacy of interaction of forces at once introduced by it in its action and reaction with the environment, and shows, in this connection, the extreme similarity of the younger generation to the parent where propagation is non-s.e.xual, that is, does not involve such mixture of types. It may be said that every new factor in development introduces a complexity greater as the complexity of the conditions already attained by the organism is greater, since its influence on the different elements and combinations of elements varies; or (if we choose to put it thus) since the possible chemical compounds and especially the possible combinations and permutations of elements and parts increase enormously with the increase of the latter in number. But the importance of the presence of any particular new element in these complexities depends, further, on its particular nature.

The final decision of the princ.i.p.al question of progressive heredity which our argument concerns must be left to Biology; but biologists themselves have as yet discussed these questions chiefly from a philosophical standpoint,--on general, as distinguished from specific, grounds. All theory is at this point tentative. But if only for this reason we have a right, in a.s.suming a working theory, to select that which seems best to accord with philosophic principles of universal application as well as with general biological fact. For the rest, it has at least been made evident, by all that has been said above concerning the constant contact and interaction of organism and environment, that the selection of one of these two factors as the positive and one as the negative, one as the formative the other as the formed, one as the active the other as the pa.s.sive factor, one as independent the other as dependent, one as invariable the other as alone variable, is an arbitrary one. In dealing with the complexity of the universe, whether mathematically or logically, we cannot grasp all factors at once, and so are obliged to regard some sides to the exclusion of others, to disregard the variable and dependent nature of some factors in the consideration of that of others. The method is useful as well as necessary, useful because necessary; but we are too apt to forget that we are dealing with half-truths, devices of reason, and come to regard them as whole truths. Thus the abstraction of Natural Selection is too often elevated to a separate ent.i.ty, a particular power residing in the environment as such. It is, on the contrary, a mere fiction, a device for a.s.sisting our comprehension of complex action and reaction. Not only does the action of the environment alter the organism, the action of the organism also alters the environment; or, to put it more plainly, the state of organism and environment at any moment is the result of the interaction of preceding states of organism and environment. Material combinations, whether organic or inorganic, when fitted to their environment, survive; those best fitted, where perfect fitness does not exist, thrive best; this is only another method of saying that absence of resistance is coordinate with the preservation of form and its inherent motion to the extent of the non-interference. As organic forms survive only to the extent to which they are in harmony with each other and with inorganic conditions, so inorganic forms or combinations survive unaltered only when they are in harmony with other inorganic conditions and uninterfered with by organic forms. Matter and motion in some form must survive, both being indestructible. Natural Selection in this sense, as at each moment regulating inorganic combinations and motions and organic form and function, is either ultimately the origin of variation, or else it is not its preserver. It is to be remembered that the organism is, from the physical point of view, simply form (that is, organization) and function; when we have subtracted these, we have subtracted the organism.

The inability of the reason to grasp all sides of the complexity of natural processes at once, even where these are known, is a thing to be kept in mind in our future investigations; we are apt to take our a.n.a.lyses for the syntheses of nature.

In the preceding considerations, an ”equivalence of the Physical and the Psychical” has been a.s.sumed, which, though already in a measure defined, should have been, perhaps, more fully explained. It may be repeated that, in such equivalence, no materialistic a.s.sumption is made of the dependence of the Psychical on the Physical; nor is the intention to a.s.sert that the Psychical can be measured by the weights and measures of the Physical. The a.s.sertion is intended in the sense that there is always a physical function connected with the psychical, and that the relation of the two is not an accidental or variable, but a constant one. All that is claimed is, in other words, that, whatever the metaphysical truth as to the freedom of the will, such freedom cannot interfere with the constancy of nature. But, in fact, all that is postulated by physical science in the a.s.sertion of the equivalence of physical forces is such a uniformity or constancy of relation as we postulate of the Psychical and Physical; for the different forms of physical force can no more be measured by the same standards than can thought and brain-process.

It may be added, further, that by ”force” as used in the above arguments, no metaphysical ent.i.ty is implied; the word simply serves as the generic term embracing different forms of motion and the equivalent of motion in resistance, and enables us to deal with motion regarded as potential as well as with motion actually existent.

FOOTNOTES:

[96] ”Problems of Life and Mind,” second series, chap. on Evolution.

[97] ”The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication,” 1868, II. 272.

[98] Vol. II. Chap. XXII.

[99] ”Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,” II. p. 257.

See also ”Origin of Species,” 6th ed., I. pp. 7-9, etc.

[100] ”Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,” II. p. 418.

[101] Ibid.

[102] For elaboration of definition and theory, _vide_ the article in question, ”Vierteljahrschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie,” 1890.

[103] As confirming this a.n.a.lysis of evolution, reference is made to Mach: ”Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklungen,” p. 128, and ”Beitrage zur a.n.a.lyse der Empfindungen,” pp. 25, 154; also Avenarius: ”Kritik der reinen Erfahrung.”

[104] See above essay by Petzoldt.

[105] ”Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls,” 1882.

[106] ”Gestaltungen des Zweckma.s.sigen.”

[107] ”Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls,” chap. I.

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