PDF - Wallace Online

ix LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 205production of what we can hardly avoid considering as theultimate aim and outcome of all organised existence intellectual,ever-advancing, spiritual man. It therefore impliesthat the great laws which govern the material universe wereinsufficient for his production, unless we consider (as we mayfairly do) that the controlling action of such higher intelligencesis a necessary part of those laws, just as the action ofall surrounding organisms is one of the agencies in organicdevelopment. But even ifmy particular view should not bethe true one, the difficulties I have put forward remain, and,I think, prove that some more general and more fundamentallaw underlies that of natural selection. The law of" " unconscious intelligence pervading all organic nature, putforth by Dr. Laycock and adopted by Mr. Murphy,is sucha law ;but to my mind it has the double disadvantage ofbeing both unintelligible and incapable of any kind of proof.It is more probable that the true law lies too deep for us todiscover it ;but there seems to me to be ample indicationsthat such a law does exist, and is probably connected with the1absolute origin of life and organisation.1Some of my critics seem quite to have misunderstood my meaning in thispart of the argument. They have accused me of unnecessarily and unphilosophicallyappealing to "first causes" in order to get over a difficulty ofbelieving that " our brains are made by God and our lungs by natural selection;" and that, in point of fact, "man is God's domestic animal." Aneminent French critic, M. Claparede, makes me continually call in the aid of" une Force supfrrieure" the capital F meaning, I imagine, that this" higher Force " is the Deity. I can only explain this misconception by theincapacity of the modern cultivated mind to realise the existence of anyhigher intelligence between itself and Deity. Angels and archangels, spiritsand demons, have been so long banished from our belief as to have becomeactually unthinkable as actual existences, and nothing in modern philosophytakes their place. Yet the grand law of "continuity," the last outcome ofmodern science, which seems absolute throughout the realms of matter, force,and mind, so far as we can explore them, cannot surely fail to be true beyondthe narrow sphere of our vision, and leave an infinite chasm between manand the Great Mind of the universe. Such a supposition seems to me inthe highest degree improbable.Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determiningcauses, I have used the words "some other power" "some intelligent" "power" a superior intelligence "a controlling intelligence," and onlyin reference to the origin of universal forces and laws have I spoken of thewill or power of " one Supreme Intelligence." These are the only expressionsI have used in alluding to the power which I believe has acted in thecase of man, and they were purposely chosen to show that I reject thehypothesis of " first causes " for any and every special effect in the universe,