In its semblance of simplicity this form of Evolution-philosophy shows
itself kin to those other old-world attempts to dispense with a
governing mind, and to educe the existing cosmos from the blind strife
of primordial atoms. It has indeed a more plausible basis, seeing how
many things, too quickly attributed to design in a theological age, can
really be explained by the struggle for existence. But in trying to make
an occasional and partial cause universal and ultimate, it has
undertaken the impossible task of bringing the greater out of the less;
which really means bringing their difference out of nothing--and this is
creation with the First Cause left out; that is, spontaneous creation.
It is from first to last an "aggregation" theory, and has to face the
insupportable burdens which such a theory brings with it. Haunted by a
false analogy drawn from the political organism whose members are
intelligent and self-directive, and who put themselves under an
intelligent government to be marshalled and directed to one common
end--haunted by this anthropomorphic conception, it tries to explain how
independent and indestructible units, void of all intelligence, come
together into polities with no assignable government; and how these
groups or polities, which are nothing separate from the sum of their
components, are aggregated to one another in like manner; until at last
we come to the highest organism, which again is only the sum of its
ultimate atoms, and its activity the sum of their activities--the whole
distinction between highest and lowest organism being such as exists
between a society of two and a highly complex civilized state. And all
this political life is the spontaneous work of unintelligent units; that
is to say, we have results exceeding the highest ever attained by human
intelligence, long before intelligence or sentience has yet been
evolved.