Freeman Summary - Chapter 12

Chapter Summary Of The Philosophy Of Freedom
Arnold Freeman

CHAPTER 12 DARWINISM AND ETHICS
We used to believe that a Being of Immeasurable Power and Wisdom and Goodness decreed our creation with the words: —"Let us make man in our image." We once felt we were at the center of things. We thought of ourselves as known by the Cosmos and loved by it. We called the Universe "Our Father." We held up our hands to it in prayer.

Physical Science requires us to think otherwise. It indicates a world-whole which is not only indifferent to us but is altogether unaware of us. It Insists that neither at the outset nor anywhere along the line was there any prevision of what has actually taken place in evolution nor any intention to bring about the results with which we are familiar. That we exist at all is explained as merely the final result of a series of "accidents." Astro-physicists are still in debate about the origins of our earth. A hypothesis until recently much in favor was that somewhere about 2000 million years ago another star in our galaxy happened to pass near enough to what was then "the sun" to attract out of it the blazing substances which became in due course the planets of our solar system —among them a planet on which by a chance the physical conditions were such as to make life as we know it practicable. After some 1000 million years; at a certain place or at certain places; at a certain moment or at certain moments; conditions occurred which resulted in the formation of special chemical compounds having the property of "livingness." Living matter, having been brought forth, somehow maintained itself. It not only maintained itself; it reproduced itself and it evolved. It evolved blindly into many blind-alleys. It evolved with equal blindness along what we unscientifically regard as a uniquely important and specifically intended main-line —cell —cluster of single-celled organisms —some sort of jelly-fish —flat-worm stage —round-worm stage —coelomate —primitive chordate —fish —amphibian —reptile —monotreme —marsupial —true mammal —insectivore —some sort of tree-shrew —some sort of lemur —some sort of monkey —some sort of ape —and finally man.

The full title of Darwin's great first book on evolution was "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." Here in the title are indicated the essentials of Darwin's doctrine. He asked his readers to look at facts on every hand observable in nature: —that organisms vary; that features are transmitted by heredity; that in every environment at every level of life, there is among living organisms competition for survival. He argued convincingly that in the struggle for life in any given environment, those that survive will be those that possess characteristics giving them in that particular situation some biological advantage over their competitors; he argued further that those surviving would tend to hand on their helpful qualities to their off-spring. Working along these lines, he saw every environment mechanically eliminating organisms ill-adapted to it and mechanically bringing into existence organisms that could adapt themselves.This materialistic, mechanistic mode of accounting for what has taken place in evolution was applied more and more comprehensively. Darwin himself brought man into his evolutionary scheme in his "Descent of Man." Darwin's followers out-Darwined Darwin. In the period from 1859 to the present day we have witnessed the rise of an official biology, almost universally accepted in universities and schools, which purports to explain man as originating exclusively from blind physical and chemical events.

What Julian Huxley writes in his Foreword to Eileen Mayo's "Story of Living Things" (1947) is typical:—

"The discoveries of the 19th Century concerning life rank with those of the 17th concerning lifeless matter as the two achievements of science which have had the greatest influence on general thought. Galileo and Newton following on Copernicus and Kepler, finally robbed our earth of its claim to a central position in the universe. At the same time, they introduced us to the idea of universal scientific law, by demonstrating that the behavior of the moon, the earth and the other planets was due to the same force of gravity that makes a rain-drop or a stone fall to the ground.

"So, two centuries later, Darwin, following on Lamarck and the other great naturalists, comparative anatomists and physiologists who preceded him finally dethroned man from his claim to a unique position as Lord of Creation. At the same time he introduced us to the idea of universal law in biology, by demonstrating that all plants and animals, including man himself, share many basic similarities, and that the origin of human species is due to the same general type of agency which is involved in producing a local variety of snail or a new breed of poultry: evolution operates as automatically as gravity.

Those who look at things with the quantitative eyes of Modern Physical Science see no point in the long evolutionary process where man could have possessed himself of any private, inner, ethical reality. They see him as in the last resort nothing other than a highly organised chemical structure, an ephemeral assemblage of molecules. If such a view were valid, it would be unthinkable for Dr. Steiner to try to elaborate a philosophy of free activity.

Fortunately, there is among theories of evolution themselves, a struggle for existence....

Alfred Russel Wallace came forward with the notion of Natural Selection at the same moment as Darwin himself. But unlike his less imaginative confrere, he did not allow the theory to run amok in his speculations. He allowed it only a circumscribed range. That evolution in general can be accounted for on what are now called "Darwinistic principles"; and that in especial man himself was materialistically and mechanically evolved into existence; Wallace flatly denied. Here are a handful of quotations from the last chapter of the book he generously called "Darwinism":—

"The special faculties we have been discussing clearly point to the existence in man of something which he has not derived from his animal progenitors —something which we may best refer to as being of a spiritual essence or nature, capable of progressive development under favorable conditions. On the hypothesis of this spiritual nature, superadded to the animal nature of man, we are able to understand much that is otherwise mysterious or unintelligible in regard to him, especially the enormous influence of ideas, principles, and beliefs over his whole life and actions.... And still more surely can we refer to it those progressive manifestations of Life in the vegetable, the animal and man —which we may classify as unconscious, conscious and intellectual life.

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