Human History Not Explained by Evolution

Human History not Explained by Evolution

BY ROBERT C. WEBB

[This article is a continuation of a series of contributions by thesame author, which appeared in Volumes XVII and XVIII of the Er\The earlier writings have dealt more particularly with the develop-ment of organisms, and the bearing of the doctrine of "Evolution"thereon; the present article treats the subject of the varied traits andtendencies of man as summarized under the title "Human Nature,"and considers the origin and source thereof. While each article iscomplete in itself, students are advised to study the entire series.—Editors.]

in three parts part i

According to the evolution philosophy, the affairs of theworld, and of humanity in particular, are determined by an un-escapable tendency to a "necessary progress." Thus, we are ac-customed to class among established truths the statement thatthere has been an evident improvement throughout historic time.We pass, without challenge or comment, therefore, the expressedclaim that "we"—meaning the peoples of present-day Europe andAmerica—have evidently "advanced," in a biological sense, be-yond the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Semites,etc., just as they were "ahead of" savages, and these latter, inturn, superior to the alleged primordial ape ancestors. We alsoallow, in accord with current fashions in thinking, that savagesrepresent merely persistent examples of the type original to allhumanity, and the earliest state in which, historically, man isdifferentiated from the brute. It has occurred to very few thought-ful people, apparently, to ask in what consists this assumed prog-ress—this claimed superior advancement—through which modernsof European stock are to be considered biologically so superiorto civilized peoples of antiquity. The answer to such a questionis by no means as clear as, at first thought, one might be inclinedto expect. As history reveals the facts, however, it is entirely safeto state that by far the greater part, if, indeed, not all, of ourboasted progress consists in improvements of methods, devicesand instruments of human use and expression, rather than in thatof human nature itself. Thus, instead of discovering presump-tions of the notion that the type of man has advanced to its pres-ent condition from something not precisely "human," as at pres-ent understood, and is still advancing, the conclusion is nearly in-evitable that human nature has been the same throughout his-toric time. When so strong a case may be made for this conten-

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tion by an examination of the facts, we may readily understandthat—since changes in human nature have been of negligible im-port throughout history—the further biological "improvement" ofthe race, as postulated on evolutionary principles, must occupysuch immense periods of time, that, with the consummation ofhuman perfection, the earth will be nearly ready to lapse into thebarren and lifeless condition which has overtaken the moon. Forsuch, as our scientists hold, is the destiny of all worlds in the uni-verse, our own included. How alluringly the evolution "phil-osophy" sets forth the "glorious destiny" of the race!

The human differs from all other creatures in his relationsto the external world. The range and efficiency of his mentaloperations are increased directly as the number of facts assimilatedinto the forms of thinking. Thus, as the known world growsgreater for him, he also grows greater, or rather achieves a bet-ter efficiency—using this word in the sense familiar in mechanics—and is able, so long as he maintains his grasp on a wider areaof knowledge, to think and act like a creature very essentially su-perior to his less favored fellows, who have a smaller command offacts. This follows from the reason that, just as a man dependsupon the breadth and sufficiency of his knowledge for the achieve-ment of such orders of progress and culture as he is able to man-ifest, so, also, can he thereby avail himself of a greater number ofnew functions, in the shape of extra-organic, or artificial, toolsor instruments, with the help of which, as one might suppose, heis capable of increasing his powers almost without limit. By theaid of instruments and machines, constructed in accordance withnatural physical laws, discovered in the course of extending hisknowledge, and not to be known except through labored investi-gations, he is able to increase the range and capacity of his everysense and faculty, and achieve results, otherwise impossible inthe natural order.

In the acquisition, dissemination, preservation and use ofknowledge we find the core and essence of all that is included inhuman progress and development. The discovery of natural lawsand the ability to apply them in the construction and use of in-struments for the achievement of certain ends, also, in the im-provement of such instruments, enlarge man's physical environ-ment and increase his practical abilities, but can not, by any log-ical necessity, be assumed to improve the human type. Thus, ifrepresentatives of the most civilized peoples on earth should bemarooned in a wild and abandoned region, where they would bethrown entirely upon their own resources, and with no help from,or communication with outside peoples, they must, unless pos-sessed of expert special knowledge of using nature's resources forcivilized purposes, quickly revert to the most "primitive" arts andmethods, and the use of the crudest kinds of tools and instruments.

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They would, in fact, become "stone-age" men. If unable to re-discover and utilize the fundamental sciences of metallurgy, chem-istry and mechanics, their descendants in each successive genera-tion must depart further and further from civilized standards. Infact, the superiority of such descendants to indigenous barbarianswould consist quite entirely in the arts and sciences which theymight be capable of preserving. All this means simply that, inhis numerous achievements, man has merely erected a structure orentity distinct from himself—call it progress, civilization, culture,or what one will—and that, apart from the mass of mankind, andfrom their associations, traditions, achievements and history, thecapacities of the individual, by which he would be able to main-tain himself in extreme circumstances, are limited by the confinesof the practical knowledge, which he has mastered, as one mas-ters a trade or an art.

On the other hand, even with the fullest admission that allorganisms in nature may have developed, or been "evolved," fromthe simplest beginnings, it must be evident that the "progress" ofmankind, their development of the numerous arts and sciences ofcivilization, is a process of quite another description. When, innature, there is need or occasion for some special organ or func-tion, some particular tool or weapon, the requirement is supplied—developmentally or creatively, as one will—by some suitablemodification of a structural element characteristic of the "genericplan" involved, and such modification becomes, from thenceforth,permanent to the type or species. Thus, the wings of all flyingvertebrates are evidently variants, structural homologues, of thefore limbs and hands possessed by other non-flying representativesof allied genera. If developed, in course of some historical, ortime, process, from true ancestral hands—as is not proven in anysense—we may see in the achievement a fresh example of nature'smethod of adapting an organism by suitable structural modifica-tions, to meet the requirements of a new environment. Further-more, with such structural modifications, however they may havebeen produced, we are compelled to recognize a commensurateinvolved knowledge, or awareness, of the proper way to controland use the organ for the purposes that it was evidently adaptedto serve. The "soldier" ant differs from the "worker," not merelybecause of "training in arms"—to use a term borrowed from hu-man experience—but because its formidable "weapons" are a partof its anatomy, and the knowledge of using them is involved inthe structure of its ganglionic system. If, therefore, flying ani-mals and specialized communal insects represent "improvements,"as compared with alleged ancestral forms, and their perfectingis due to the operation of natural laws, it is evident that humanhistory affords no analogies to any of the essential processes in-volved.

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The achievement of such results as are possible to the civil-ization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must, in allnatural necessity, follow only from constantly progressive accumu-lations of known facts—from the simplest to the most complex;the simplest facts forming the material for the complex deduc-tions—just as the education of the individual, by which he is madeacquainted with the world of facts and his relations to it, mustbegin with the most obvious elements and proceed to the mostobscure. And yet, the entire process, in which the race has finallyapproximated the conquest of a few of the forces of nature hasdepended: (1) upon the attention devoted to particular subjectsat special times, and (2) upon the methods followed in the searchfor truth. That the attention given to any subject at any periodhas been limited, or that the methods of searching for or treatingfacts have been defective, are to be attributed to ignorance in thespecial departments in question, or to lack of interest in contem-poraneous minds, with very much more propriety than to defi-cient mentality.

Thus, for example, although people had known for severalcenturies, perhaps for thousands of years, that a considerable en-ergy is generated, or released, when water, under the action ofheat, passes into steam, that fact lay among the curiosities of na-ture, until about 150 years ago, simply because no one had inves-tigated the phenomena of steam generation with attention suffi-cient to discover the true method of using its energy for practicalpurposes. Also, the process, in course of which the problem wasfinally solved, embodied a progress or development of knowledge,from the simplest principles, upward. Probably the first reallymechanical use of steam—although a very inefficient one—was byNewcomen in 1710. Sixty years later, after long experience withNewcomen's device, Watt produced his first double-acting en-gine, which utilized for the first time the expansive energy ofsteam, against a partial vacuum created in a separate condenser.The high-pressure engine, using steam for pressures greater thanatmosphere (14.7 lbs. per sq. in.), and enabling efficient andeconomical utilization of natural energy, was not produced untilthe beginning of the nineteenth century. The perfecting of thesteam engine, occupying numerous minds during the better partof a century examples, most conspicuously, the first use for prac-tical research of the so-called "scientific method," by which con-clusions are derived from experimental observation of facts, ratherthan upon general and a priori deductions, without special experi-mentation. Because they had failed to use this method, and notbecause of any deficiency in native intelligence, scientists and phys-icists previous to the opening of the eighteenth century failed todiscover the real facts regarding steam and the best availablemethod of using it mechanicallv. Similarly, also, even such a bril-liant and revolutionary investigator as Watt never thought of the

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possibility of generators—or boilers—capable of yielding highpressures with safety and economy: in fact, he bitterly opposedthe suggestion that formed the basis of modern steam engine prac-tice. Thus because he had neglected to turn his attention into anew direction, he failed to achieve full credit as inventor of thefirst great mechanical contrivance of modern times.

The situation existing in the history of the steam engine isthe same as exists in all other sciences. We find that the dis-covery of a new truth always follows on the use of a propermethod of treating facts, while defective methods have been re-sponsible for the continuance of errors and misconceptions. WhenArchimedes, cogitating the problem of determining the amount ofgold in an irregularly shaped crown, concluded, in his bath, thata material body, no matter what its shape, must always displacethe equivalent of its own bulk, when immersed in water, he formeda generalization characteristic of a mind strongly intelligent, evenif uninformed upon some special subjects. When, on the otherhand, the alchemists of mecMpev^ Europe, in spite of the few val-uable discoveries to their credit, experimented at random, in thehope of achieving probably impossible results, they demonstratedmerely how a false method, or no method at all, can negative theefforts of even able minds. From such scattered examples wemay understand that for a person familiar with the known factsof a given department of knowledge the discovery of new onesis far easier than for one less learned. Nor, apart from theirrespective stores of knowledge, is the success of the former or thefailure of the latter to be attributed to essential differences inactual intelligence. Very many of the facts of nature are, likethe metal stored in "refractory ores," difficult of extraction, and tobe obtained only through skill and effort. In fact, truth neveryields to intelligence alone, but rather to the force exerted by alarge "head" of knowledge, previously accumulated, like waterretained by a dam for utilization of its propulsive weight.

Such principles furnish a clue to judging the work andachievements of prehistoric man, as well as those of the historic.From the apparent advances in the making and using of tools,weapons, etc., observed in definite regions of the earth, scientistshave concluded that there must have been a universal "stone age,"in which mankind made all their implements of stone, and had noknowledge of the extraction and working of metals. Later on, asthev claim, there was a "copper age," then a "bronze age," and,finally, the "iron age," which preceded the beginning of a "highercivilization." Of course, the implication is that we have, in theseapparent "stages" of development, some warrant for the suppo-sition that, at a definite epoch in his history, man first became atool-using animal, and that, previously, he had been devoid of allability to construct even the simplest weapons or implements.

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While there is no respectable evidence that, any civilized peopleknown to history was developed from crude and barbarous tribeshaving no knowledge of metal working, there is much to be saidfor the contention that the "stone-age" men of Europe, the Nilevalley, etc., represented isolated tribes, precisely like the Amer-ican aborigines—these latter continued the use of stone weaponsand implements to the time of the discovery of America, althoughtheir contemporaries in Mexico and Central and South Americahad considerable metallurgical knowledge—who had lost, or whohad failed to develop the metal-working arts. The remains of somesuch tribes were found in the excavation of the ancient city ofTroy, in deposits of soil above the level of the Homeric con-flict. Such facts serve as good partial offsets to the conclusionsof evolution advocates.

Although deficient in special knowledge of several branches,the men of the so-called "stone age" were not, evidently, of lowand brutal types, as commonly supposed. In spite of the oc-casional discovery of a low-browed or heavy-jawed skull, strong-ly suggesting low mentality or brutish approximations in someone or other, unknown, who is dead, these ancients, if we are tojudge them by their works, must be credited with an intelligenceand capacity that are distinctly human. Although, through ig-norance of many facts, since, or elsewhere, widely mastered, theycould not produce the material effects easy to peoples having theknowledge of working metals, their productions are most cred-itable, considering their limitations. A man who has the skill toflake a flint to a cutting edge or to haft a stone ax or club, couldcertainly master the rudiments, at any rate, of metal working,should he have the opportunity to learn them. The fact that theydid not, apparently, understand metallurgy, or, at any rate, didnot use such knowledge, if possessed, to any visible extent, arguesthat they were ignorant of this science, just as our predecessorsof a hundred years ago knew nothing of telegraphs, telephones,gas engines or aeroplanes, and, in no sense whatever, that theywere imbeciles or semi-apes. Thus, as if to controvert the pseudo-scientific teachings of too many writers, we find that, in spite oflimitations of any varieties, some of these people, at least, pos-sessed a high degree of artistic ability. They have left, carvedon bone or ivory, or painted, or modeled in clay, on the walls oftheir caves, representations of some of the wild animals living intheir times. These drawings, paintings or models, although"crude" or "unfinished," as judged by the standards of artisticperfection, show, in general, a distinct ability to note and repro-duce the outlines and physical details of the creatures depicted.Thus, their elephants—mammoths, etc.—are recognizable, notonly because possessed of trunk and tusks, but also in the contoursand anatomical proportions that are, in very many cases, amply

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sufficient to identify the particular species from others in thesame natural group. As "sketches" they are distinctly meritorious.To claim, therefore, that the people capable of such performanceswere of "low mentality"—somewhat more "bestial" than our owncontemporaries—is both unwarranted and absurd. They certainlypossessed good powers of observation—they saw correctly—andsufficient co-ordination of brain and hand to express the ideaspresent in their thought. Such capability is positively immenselyabove every known faculty possessed by brutes, and is distinctlycharacteristic of a well-developed human intelligence. Yet thesepeople were, as supposed, very close in time to the earliest humans,of whom we have evidence. Of those of whom we have no evi-dence and no remains, we cannot, of course, speak.

Singers of the Little Songs

Some there are whom God hath chosen

Great of soul, whose songs sublime'Waken in each heart the measures

Of a melody divine.

Yet, the Lord gave other singers

Who the little songs may croon:The hopeful sower in the dawning;

The reaper in the field at noon;The mother bending o'er a cradle;

The little lad and maid at play;The multitude of busy toilers

Plodding through each day.

Though you may not wear the laurel,

May not seek a crown of bay,Like a thrush hid in a thicket,

You may sing beside the way:Sing of bravery, sing of courage,

As the meadow-lark, of joy,And those who faint shall pass on strengthened,

Though no art you may employ.

Then voice thy little song with rapture,

To you it will contentment bring—Jehovah hears the Earth's great pean

And he harks the stave you sing.

Maud Baggarley.

WATERLOO, UTAH