Chapter III: The Organizing Tendency

Is it possible to think of any ingenious contrivance in nature as the result of chance, or of the fortuitous clashing and jostling of the elements? Living things are full of these ingenious contrivances which serve a definite end and keep life going. In the inorganic world there are no such contrivances; there is not the simplest bit of machinery--parts adjusted to parts, and the whole adjusted to some specific end. In all the clashing and jostling of bodies and forces through all the astronomic and geologic ages, not so much as the simplest mechanical device--a coiled spring or a carpenter’s hammer--has been struck out, and never can be. It is true that there are certain static conditions of matter that suggest design--natural bridges, natural obelisks, rude architectural and monumental structures, and human profiles on the rocks; but these are not the result of a constructive process, of a building-up, but the result of degradation: the erosive forces carve them out in obedience to the laws of matter and energy. We easily see how it all came about; and we can guide these forces so that they will repeat the process. But we do not see how the living body, with all its marvelous adjustments and coördinations, came about, and we cannot manipulate matter so as to produce the simplest living thing. Darwinians profess to see in natural selection--which is simply a name for an eliminating or sifting process--the explanation of even man himself. But the elimination of the weaker forms, which has gone on for whole geologic ages--for example, in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado--has not resulted in so much as one perfect, four-square foundation, or one perfect flying arch. Natural selection is not a creative, but a purely mechanical, process. We involuntarily personify it, and think of it as involving will and power of choice; think of it as selecting this and that, as a man does when he weeds his garden or selects his seeds, or breeds his animals. But it is not positive at all. It is negative--a dropping-out process.

Chance, or chance selection, works alike in the organic and the inorganic realms, but it develops no new forms in the inorganic, because there is no principle of development, no organizing push. But in organized matter there is, in and behind all this organizing, a developing principle or tendency; the living force is striving toward other forms; in other words, development occurs because there is something to develop. An acorn develops, but a quartz pebble only changes.

The living body is placed in a world of non-living bodies and forces, and it takes its chances; it develops only by their aid; if warmth and moisture are withheld, it ceases to develop; or, if warmth and moisture are in excess, it ceases to develop; its well-being is insured when it rides the inorganic forces, and is not ridden by them. It is subject to the law of chance of the world in which it is placed, but that law of chance does not explain its origin or its development as it does that of the non-living forms.

That it is all the result of design or purpose of an all-wise Being, working his will upon matter, is equally unthinkable. Yet if it is the result of chance, then the world of mind and soul is only a phase of mechanics and chemistry. In that case the head of a Paul or a Homer is no greater wonder than a volcanic bomb, having essentially the same origin. If we regard it as the work of design, we are compelled to saddle all the sin and misery, all the delays and failures and wastes of the geologic ages, upon Infinite Wisdom and Goodness, together with all the famine and pestilence and carnage and miscarriages of history.

For untold millions of years the earth was given up to low, groveling, all but brainless, bestial forms, devouring and devoured; for other untold millions it was the scene of a carnival of terrible dragon-like monsters--in the sea, on the earth, and in the air--a tragedy of monstrous forms enacted upon an unstable stage that rose and sank or was overwhelmed by fire and flood. For other long ages it was the scene of ape-like creatures struggling to be man, living in caves, contending with savage beasts, hirsute, forbidding, living by tooth and claw and muscular strength more than by wit, followed by the long historical period during which man appeared and has fought his way to his present stage of development, through blood and carnage and suffering and misdirected activities, dogged by all the evil and destructive passions, obstructed and thwarted, cut off by plagues and wars, engulfed by earthquakes, devoured by fire and flood, blinded by his own ignorance, consumed by his own evil passions, yet making steady progress toward the position which he now holds in the animal kingdom.