--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Webb, Robert C. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 19 number: 6 published: 1916-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Robert C. Webb, "Human History Not Explained by Evolution," *Improvement Era* 19, no. 6 (April 1916): 518–523.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1906unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1906unse start_page: 518 end_page: 523 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1916-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1906unse publication_year: 1916 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1916, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # 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 Era.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 THREE To understand the significance of all these movements, be-ginning with the discovery of America, we must understand thatthe activities of any period have an inner, a mental or spiritual,as well as an outer expression in acts and efforts. Thus, whilesome people were going forth to make homes in the New World,others were going about to make a new world at home, crystaliz-ing tendencies to individualism, insurgency, and general restless-ness into systems of reform, revised notions on life and morals,and ill-dissembled dreams of universal justice and happiness.These ideals were talked about and fought for, not because peo-ple had achieved a higher standard of mentality, so as to be cap-able for the first time, of appreciating them, but because desiringwhat they did not possess, as had been vividly illustrated to them,they had found unprecedented opportunities for voicing and prop-agating their opinions, even by exciting opposition to and per-secutions against them. Tn fact the activities of the age furnishedready and unparalleled channels of publicity. It is easy to under-stand, however, that, while people are still agitating these "higherideals," they have not as yet realized the wise method expressedin the advice to "build firm foundations under the castles in theair." Tn spite of Paine and Jefferson, and the high phrases ofthe Declaration of Independence, all abuse of power and exploita-tion of humanity were not scotched by the victory at Yorktown. Still other elements, however, were released in the generalactivities of the 15th. 16th and 17th centuries. The shaping ofevents brought the mind of man into closer contact with materialfacts, begetting thereby a better ability to grasp and assimilate theintellectual achievements of former ages. The labors of Coper-nicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and other conspicuous exponentsof the scientific method, wrought such a revolution in the habits HUMAN HISTORY NOT EXPLAINED BY EVOLUTION 519 of dealing- with nature that the progress of the practical sciences.mechanics, chemistry, etc., was made possible. Nor, as previouslysuggested, do we owe the wonderful scientific achievements ofthe nineteenth century to anything but the inculcation of a newmethod of deriving conclusions from the things observed to be,rather than from a priori assumptions as to what ought to be,or could be reasoned to be, the correct solutions. The old habitof seeking to make the facts fit the theory, rather than derivingthe theory from analysis of the facts, still affects many branchesof learning apart from the practical and industrial sciences. It is difficult to realize that, very little over a century ago, noone on earth had ever traveled faster than people could travel inthe days of Abraham. Yet the wonderful achievements of prac-tical science, all made within this same period, have come to beingsolely because a few people, out of all the millions in the world,had learned the evidential value of facts. This is a grand lessonfor humanity, particularly in the present day, when there are somany advanced ideas, derived according to the good old methodof ignoring facts and inventing conditions to suit one's own preju-dices. We learn that the great achievements of history have cometo be through no process of evolution, considered as a sort ofuniversal analogue of the development of the germ-potential inthe egg into the completed creature, unless, indeed, the "potential"that is developed, or led forth, into reality, is the innate powerof the mind to meet the requirements of its environment, or unlessit is the working-out of a providential scheme for the develop-ment of human affairs. The justification for such a conclusion isfound in the fact that the causes and impulses to the grandachievements of the greatest civilization of history are so evi-dently external to mankind, so entirely adventitious, also sounprecedented in their scope and importance, that the results thathave followed are all but inevitable consequences. Civilization is essentially an artificial environment, which mancreates more or less inevitably as a substitute for natural physicalconditions—and for some reasons, not perfectly apparent, thesefail to satisfy his requirements—just as, having no protective peltor fleece, he covers his body with artificial clothing. But artificialclothing, used to afford needed warmth and protection, tends toreduce the vital resistant powers of the body against cold, heat,etc. So also the use of tools, instruments and machines, althoughnecessary in art and industry, limits dependence on, and conse-quent cultivation of, muscular strength, agility and capability.Thus, for health, comfort, practical efficiency, as well as in otherdepartments of his life, man is found to be more or less com-pletely the one element of a total, the other element of which isthe artificial contrivance for supplying the deficiencies of hisadjustment with nature. By the formation of social organisms, 520 I M PR( >VEM ENT ERA chisses, conventions, laws, etc., the significance and efficiency ofthe individual is further reduced, until, apart from association withand dependence on his fellows, and on their conventions and tradi-tions, each man becomes increasingly unable to maintain himself.In all the particulars mentioned w*e may understand how thorough-ly man's artificial environment tends to become an essential partol himself, in so far, at least, as he becomes increasingly dependentupon them, in the performance of the social, industrial and otherIunctions of life. Indeed, in a very real and vivid sense, manunder civilization clings to his conventions and to his materialpossessions very much as a castaway clings to a fragment ofwreckage. It would seem that he must dread separation fromthem in just about the same degree that, habitually, he dreadsthe separation of his body and spiritual part, or as he dreadsthe possible loss of a limb or any sense or function of his body.In a certain sense, his attitude toward, and his dependence on theartificial environments that have been erected throughout timesuggest the possession of instincts for the exercise and control ofsome physical function, as for example flight, while lacking in hispersonal body all traces of an organ suited for the performance ofsuch function. As a general rule, indeed, achievements in the direction ofelaborating civilized institutions, arts, sciences, etc., have beenrealized at the expense of the vital biological significance of thegreater majority of individuals. The savage lacks the "refine-ments" of life, and is, in many ways, a ready victim to derange-ments of various orders, because of his ignorance of natural fact.Rut the rank and file of individuals in communities possessingsuch knowledge—that is allowing certain classes to develop in-tellectually, etc.—are little, if any, better biologically; often ratherworse. Nor are the ignorance, stupidity and brutality in the onecase either worse or better than in the other. The differences be-tween individuals of different races are mostly determined by thenature or character of the institutions in which they have beenreared. The principal advantage possessed by the average "civil-ized" individual is that he can more easily conceal his essentialcharacter, a degree of cultivation not achieved by the savage. _ We may understand, therefore, that, taking an average in-dividual at random from among his fellows, and examining hisphysical, mental and moral capacities and performances, it mustbecome quickly evident that the "progress" of civilization, inbringing man's artificial environment to great perfection, as itdoubtless has done, has achieved no perfectly stable and seif-suf-ficient condition of human life—one in perfect harmony with the requirements of individual well-being, and maintaining it far less any order whatever of biological "improvement" in'the typeof mankind. (In such a judgment, we must compare an individ- HUMAN HISTORY NOT EXPLAINED BY EVOLUTION 521 ual with the progenitors, or ancient representatives of his ownrace or nation, so far as we have data for judging these, and notwith the ancients or moderns of alien races and trihes, as is oftendone.) The facts of history, of progress and of the development ofthe arts of civilization, are perfectly compatible with the theorythat the human animal has actually lapsed from a condition ofbiological sufficiency and of entire adjustment to natural environ-ment—even such a condition of harmony with nature's laws asis possessed and manifested by wolves, lions and the worms inthe ground; lest any one should suspect reference to "gloriouspasts"—and that he has fallen into a persistent condition of actualdegeneration, as compared with his proper nature, in which hevainly attempts to realize the conditions of his lost "estate"by the erection of an artificial environment. It is not necessary toenlarge on the fact that human tradition has generally postulateda "Golden Age," or original state of happiness and harmony,followed by conditions far otherwise; nor yet to discuss thenearly universal belief that the "ancients" were possessed of "mag-ical," "miraculous," or other exceptional orders of power overnature and natural forces. It is in place, however, to call attentionto the fact that a large part of human effort has always been di-rected to gaining (or regaining?) these very powers and posses-sions—occasionally, as in the present age, with a show of partialsuccess in some limited particulars. On any estimate of theirvalue, these traditions may indicate merely that the presentachievements of science—and some greater ones also—were dup-licated in very ancient times. The bearing on the present discus-sion is about the same on either supposition. The facts argue toone conclusion, which is that no theory of universal or necessaryprogress, with biological significances, has any bearing on thehistory of man on earth. Because the most essential peculiarity of the human mind isthat it can not function to its full capacity, unless brought intodefinite conscious relation with a sufficient number of facts, to gainits attention, start its activities, and "give it a footing," as it were,the whole significance of man's life-experience is that of an edu-cational process—a "leading-forth" of his latent or unused mentalfaculties, by bringing theminto contact with facts, which become,forthwith, the material of thinking. The greater the numberof "useful" facts at the command of the intelligence, and thegreater their co-ordination, inter-relationing, the more practicaland rational the individual's adjustment to the outer world. But,in a very real sense, the process of acquiring knowledge in thehuman way involves that the mental development taking place, inthe meantime, consists importantly and essentially in greater facil-ity, through exercise and experience, in handling and combining 522 I M PR< >VEMENT ERA facts. To a mind capable of mastering; the facts and principlesof a science the acquisition of the most advanced and involved isno more of an achievement—when it is taken in its proper logicalorder, in relation to the facts that base it—than is the learning ofthe most elementary. The hearing on the history of mankind, andon the more or less intermittent progress in the upbuilding ofcivilizations is obvious. Thus, from the standpoint of our pres-ent advances in science, we are too much inclined to view thecomparatively rudimentary achievements of former ages with ascorn that is wholly unintelligent. Following the lead of numer-ous unreflecting writers, we will even speak slightingly of theancients, particularly of the "stone-age" and "bronze-age" men,calling them '"rudimentary in intelligence," etc. Yet, as there canl>e no doubt whatever in an informed mind considering the con-ditions with unprejudiced intelligence, the first discovery of themethods of smelting and working metals—whenever or howeverit was made—by persons having no previous knowledge of thekind, was as brilliant, radical and revolutionary, also demandingthe possession and exercise of as high and complete mentality asthe invention of wireless telegraphy, of the flying aeroplane, orof any others of the most recent and startling achievements ofpractical science, as they have emerged, each in its proper se-quence to the facts and principles on which it depends, in theprocess of building the fabric of human knowledge. Such in-ventions could not have been made before—their perfecting out oforder in the development of the department in which they belongwould have involved too many "coincidences" to warrant belief—not because human mentality would have been insufficient to ap-prehend them long ago, could their principles have been clearlyexplained and tested, but because human knowledge had not asyet reached and included the facts, which could alone make themintelligible. In the stage of scientific enlightenment when elec-trical knowledge had reached no further than the "static" phe-nomena, such as follow when amber, (Greek, elektron) is rubbedwith silk, all talk of currents, direct, alternating or polyphase,of whatever tensions or "frequencies," would have been one massof incomprehensible verbigeration. Thus, as we find, things thatwould have been classed as "miracles," or attributed to "witch-craft," two hundred years ago, are among the familiar common-places of today, merely because we have mastered the lines of factthat lead up to them. Isaac Newton would have marveled atan electric door bell, with its modest push-button, its familiarbattery of cells and its simple electro-magnets—this outfit woul 1have been a museum of wonders to the man who formulated thelaw of gravitation and took his recreation among the subtleties ofthe higher mathematics. He would have hesitated to admit thepossibility of telegraphy, being unable to traverse all the many HUMAN HISTORY NOT EXPLAINED BY EVOLUTION 523 difficulties in the way of its practical success; nor could he havespared attention for the trans-continental wireless telephone, inthe midst of his amazement at the transmission of speech, evenby wire. Yet Isaac Newton was no school boy. He differs from thegreatest scientist among us merely in having had a smaller numberof facts at his command. So it has been throughout history. Theadvance among men has been in the progressive up-building—more or less slow and irregular—of man's "artificial environ-ment," the entity known as knowledge, science, culture and civil-ization. But human nature and mentality have been the same,whenever, indeed, they have had access to knowledge. We havenot yet outgrown the greatness of Plato or Homer; nor learnedbetter wisdom than was written in the "Precepts" of Ptah-Hotep,who. in 3,000 B. C, as claimed, extolled the virtues of the''ancients." When we have learned to apply the "scientificmethod," the method of fact and experiment, to morals, sociologyand economics, we shall—and that without further hatching ofunborn possibilities of the human soul—achieve, undoubtedly, asgrand results as have been won in the practical sciences. For,although we have learned to fly, to speak across continents, and totravel with the speed of the wind, we still lack the power of himthat "ruleth his spirit," and are too forgetful of "true religionand undefiled." Why have all these achievements been delayed,as though so much more difficult ? In some aspects of the matterwe seem to have begun at the wrong end with our progress, inspite of the evident character of the facts of life, and the inevit-able witness of God and righteousness readily discernible at ourdoors. Refuge T shrink from the battle, stern, relentless, hard,When in the throes of Doubt and Fear I lie,And hear no answer to my wav'ring cry,I shrink from the battle, stern, relentless, hard,Blind to the glories of the brave's reward.Trust in my fellows' faith in an unseen God,Shrink like all nature from the freezing sod;Leaving me lost on the trackless plain,Hopeless, afraid, and torn with bitter pain.'Tis then I yearn for thee, dear Lord,And turn for solace to thine holy Word;With prayer I conquer and the future face,Resolved to cherish fast my Savior's grace.To bury deep the corpses of the slain,Assured that they shall ne'er appall again. Frank C. Steele MAGRATH, ALBERTA .