The Destiny of Man, by John Fiske III. On the Earth there will never be a Higher Creature than Man. Return In elucidating these points, we may fitly begin by considering the question as to the possibility of the evolution of any higher creature than Man, to whom the dominion over this earth shall pass. The question will best be answered by turning back and observing one of the most remarkable features connected with the origin of Man and with his superiority over other animals. And let it be borne in mind that we are not now about to wander through the regions of unconditional possibility. We are not dealing with vague general notions of development, but with the scientific Darwinian theory, which alleges development only as the result of certain rigorously defined agencies. The 27chief among these agencies is Natural Selection. It has again and again been illustrated how by the cumulative selection and inheritance of slight physical variations generic differences, like those between the tiger and the leopard, or the cow and the antelope, at length arise; and the guiding principle in the accumulation of slight physical differences has been the welfare of the species. The variant forms on either side have survived while the constant forms have perished, so that the lines of demarcation between allied species have grown more and more distinct, and it is usually only by going back to fossil ages that we can supply the missing links of continuity. In the desperate struggle for existence no peculiarity, physical or psychical, however slight, has been too insignificant for natural selection to seize and enhance; and the myriad fantastic forms and hues of animal and vegetal life illustrate the seeming capriciousness of its workings. Psychical variations have never been unimportant 28since the appearance of the first faint pigment-spot which by and by was to translate touch into vision, as it developed into the lenses and humours of the eye.2 Special organs of sense and the lower grades of perception and judgment were slowly developed through countless ages, in company with purely physical variations of shape of foot, or length of neck, or complexity of stomach, or thickness of hide. At length there came a wonderful moment—silent and unnoticed, as are the beginnings of all great revolutions. Silent and unnoticed, even as the day of the Lord which cometh like a thief in the night, there arrived that wonderful moment at which psychical changes began to be of more use than physical changes to the brute ancestor of Man. Through further ages of ceaseless struggle the profitable variations in this creature occurred oftener and oftener in the brain, and less often in other parts of the organism, until by and by the size of his brain had been doubled 29and its complexity of structure increased a thousand-fold, while in other respects his appearance was not so very different from that of his brother apes.3 Along with this growth of the brain, the complete assumption of the upright posture, enabling the hands to be devoted entirely to prehension and thus relieving the jaws of that part of their work, has coöperated in producing that peculiar contour of head and face which is the chief distinguishing mark of physical Man. These slight anatomical changes derive their importance entirely from the prodigious intellectual changes in connection with which they have been produced; and these intellectual changes have been accumulated until the distance, psychically speaking, between civilized man and the ape is so great as to dwarf in comparison all that had been achieved in the process of evolution down to the time of our half-human ancestor’s first appearance. No fact in nature is fraught with deeper meaning than this two-sided fact of the 30extreme physical similarity and enormous psychical divergence between Man and the group of animals to which he traces his pedigree. It shows that when Humanity began to be evolved an entirely new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. Henceforth the life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance, and the bodily life became subordinated to it. Henceforth it appeared that, in this direction at least, the process of zoölogical change had come to an end, and a process of psychological change was to take its place. Henceforth along this supreme line of generation there was to be no further evolution of new species through physical variation, but through the accumulation of psychical variations one particular species was to be indefinitely perfected and raised to a totally different plane from that on which all life had hitherto existed. Henceforth, in short, the dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, but the progress of Civilization. 31As we thoroughly grasp the meaning of all this, we see that upon the Darwinian theory it is impossible that any creature zoologically distinct from Man and superior to him should ever at any future time exist upon the earth. In the regions of unconditional possibility it is open to any one to argue, if he chooses, that such a creature may come to exist; but the Darwinian theory is utterly opposed to any such conclusion. According to Darwinism, the creation of Man is still the goal toward which Nature tended from the beginning. Not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of Humanity, is to be the glorious consummation of Nature’s long and tedious work. Thus we suddenly arrive at the conclusion that Man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among God’s creatures. On the primitive barbaric theory, which Mr. Darwin has swept away, Man was suddenly flung into the world by the miraculous act of some unseen and incalculable Power acting 32from without; and whatever theology might suppose, no scientific reason could be alleged why the same incalculable Power might not at some future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier creature in whose presence Man would become like a sorry beast of burden. But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes things come to pass, must take afar higher view. He sees that in the deadly struggle for existence which has raged throughout countless aeons of time, the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God’s handiwork, the Human Soul. To the creature thus produced through a change in the direction in which natural selection has worked, the earth and most of its living things have become gradually subordinated. In all the classes of the animal and vegetal worlds many ancient 33species have become extinct, and many modern species have come into being, through the unchecked working of natural selection, since Man became distinctively human. But in this respect a change has long been coming over the face of nature. The destinies of all other living things are more and more dependent upon the will of Man. It rests with him to determine, to a great degree, what plants and animals shall remain upon the earth and what shall be swept from its surface. By unconsciously imitating the selective processes of Nature, he long ago wrought many wild species into forms subservient to his needs. He has created new varieties of fruit and flower and cereal grass, and has reared new breeds of animals to aid him in the work of civilization; until at length he is beginning to acquire a mastery over mechanical and molecular and chemical forces which is doubtless destined in the future to achieve marvellous results whereof today we little dream. Natural selection 34itself will by and by occupy a subordinate place in comparison with selection by Man, whose appearance on the earth is thus seen more clearly than ever to have opened an entirely new chapter in the mysterious history of creation.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 18:02:32 +0000
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