Evolution and Geology by George McCready Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 11, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 2.

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Evolution and Geology

By George McCready Price

BY GEO. McCREADY PRICE

VI. EVOLUTION AND THE WORLD PROBLEMS.

(Concluded.)

A Despotic Government.

THE first of these, viz., that of a strong, centralized, if despotic government, of course suggests itself to those politicians who sympathize with capital and the trusts, or to even those individuals of a conservative stamp who are not prepared to concede anything to the insistent demands of “rabid” democracy. These can not but see that it is the outworking of knowledge and individual liberty on the part of the turbulent classes that is bringing about the social evils he deplores. An intellectual knowledge that brings the daily paper within the comprehension of a discontented man only enlarges the field of his vision, multiplies indefinitely the objects of his envy, and thus increases a thousand-fold his discontent and his hatred of those more fortunate in any way than himself. At the same time the telegraph, the daily press, and the hundred other agencies of our day that bring one continent in almost instant touch with all the others, are producing possible means of quickly and extensively organizing millions of men together for any purpose whatever, in a way that former ages never dreamed of; and this in an age and a civilization where the people are supposed to be the real rulers of the country, but where the same people have lost the power of individual self-government, must inevitably produce most disastrous results. Knowledge and liberty are not in themselves regenerative; they are only forms of power placed within the reach of the individual, enabling him to better disguise for a time, or to carry out on a broader scale, his real governing motives of character, and we all know that an increase of power, in the hands of any but the unselfish, only brings an increase of blasphemy, rebellion, and wo.

But the only remedy that the politician can think of is to regulate and restrain the causes; in other words, to regulate free speech and individual action. Here is the necessity and seeming justification of a paternal despotism. And history testifies that whenever a people have ceased to be capable of governing themselves, there has always been found waiting a man or a set of men anxious to assume the job. As a recent writer very ominously expressed it: “The populace have had their day, and have proved to be ignorant, criminal, and corruptible.”

Mr. Herbert Spencer, just before his death, expressed the conviction that the financial tyranny of the trusts in America would result in a civil war accompanied by immense bloodshed, and eventually in the establishment of a severe military despotism.

A Popular Trend.

We all know that there is everywhere a strong current setting in against the old-time principles of government by consent of the governed. When well-known scholars, like Dr. Lyman Abbott, undertake to lead this reaction, we can neither deny nor ignore this trend of the popular mind. For what the scholars advocate to-day, the people will believe and act upon to-morrow. What with the labor unions and with the trusts, we are certainly beholding the fast passing of individualism. And this not in America only, but in the Old World also. In every one of the great world powers the popular mind seems to be tending steadily away from the rights of the individual, and toward the aggrandizement of the state, subordinating everything to the one idea of corporate “progress.” Some go even further than this, for a prominent scientific writer recently remarked, “As care for the tribe preceded care for the nation, so care for the nation may only precede care for a federation of the nations.”

Suppression of Individual Rights.

But when this federation of the nations is really accomplished, altho it be but the exact logic of the evolution theory, may Heaven pity not only the smaller states, but the poor individual atom in every one of these great, soul-crushing machines. How can men acquainted with even the outlines of history be indifferent to the steady growth of this heaven-darkening despotism over the grave of liberty?

Some quotations in illustration of these tendencies may be useful.

Lord Salisbury, in his Guildhall speech of 1900, speaking of how well-conducted governments and clear thinking statesmen are liable to be hurried by popular clamor into actions directly contrary to their better judgment, said:

We can not be certain that any government will not yield its powers to the less educated and less enlightened classes, by whom more and more in many countries of the world public affairs are being governed.

Lord Strathcona, returning about the same time from Europe to Canada, is reported as saying, “There is a wave of imperialism sweeping irresistibly over Europe.” And in the current political agitation in England led by Joseph Chamberlain, we see a further development of this idea there.

In the United States these developments are even more marked. A generation ago who ever dreamed of seeing in a leading American magazine, such unblushing statements as the following about those historic sentences of the Declaration of Independence:

All men are simply not created equal in any possible sense of the word. . . . The creation of man has been a gradual process of evolution, and they have been coming into being in different parts of the earth through long generations, with differences and inequalities, which development has varied and widened, and not obliterated.—North American Review, December, 1899.

From this we see that the doctrine of universal Evolution is used as the reason and justification of this movement toward imperialism and away from the rights of the individual. A generation ago who ever dreamed that a paper like the Independent would set aside the great bulk of natural rights as only a “theory,” and appear well pleased that “the revolt against it grows apace”?

Subversive Principles of Government.

As was already stated, Dr. Lyman Abbott, the editor of The Outlook, is leading out in this crusade against men having any natural rights whatever. In a recent number of his paper, after declaring that government is not founded upon the consent of the governed, but upon the inherent right of every man to protect himself, his property and those dependent upon him, this author defines government as follows:

What is government?—It is nothing less than the control of one man’s will by another man’s will. The real question as to the basis of government, then, is this. When has one man a right by his will to control the wills of other men, to overrule them, to substitute himself as the director of the action of other men, to make his personality dominate another’s personality? And this question brings us to the same result we have already reached,—he has the right to do this whenever that other is, in the exercise of his own will, violating the rights of his fellow-men.”

I can not here go into a discussion of this monstrous definition of government, or show how such a definition would not only answer for the most outrageous and absolute tyranny that was ever exercised upon the earth, but any that we can conceive of being exercised. As a recent reviewer has said of it: “Government is not the control of men’s wills; it is the protection of men’s rights. It has nothing whatever to do with the wills of men; it has only to do with the actions of men which infringe upon the rights of others. . . . Government, much less than being the control of one man’s will by another man’s will, is neither a matter of will on one side or the other; it is neither the enforcement of will nor the subjection of will. There is no need of quoting authority on this point. Search the annals of Anglo-Saxon history and jurisprudence from King Alfred down, and the overwhelming answer you will get is that there can be no rule of will but the rule of tyranny.”

These three journals quoted above might well be taken as representing almost all the educated American public. But they are much more than mere reflectors of public opinion. Perhaps no other three public agencies have such a moulding, educating influence upon public opinion, or can so turn its attitude on great public questions, but when the above are scattered broadcast with scarcely a word of protest we may well say that a most tremendous change has come over public sentiment, and we scarcely know how soon the full effect of these imperialistic doctrines will be seen in the process of practical application. Surely this phase of the evolution theory is fast ripening its harvest.

The Panacea of State Religion.

The other remedy, the other panacea for the evils of our time, that of religion by law, is just as logically the fruit of Evolution, if possible its results will prove even more horrible. The Roman Catholic Church has always advocated, and where practicable has practised, the enforcement of the teachings and worship of the church. Now the Protestant churches have for years been looking for the speedy triumph of religion over all forms of evil. Not seeing the progress desired in this direction, and having denied and discarded the “supernatural” part of religion, they seem to be planning for an organized raid on all unrighteousness to hasten on the speedy triumph of religion. Would it not be for the greatest good of the greatest number? Why should the commercial and industrial concerns secure all the benefit resulting from this new

system of organized and combined effort?

For many years these things have been discussed by the pulpit and the press, and the vast majority of all the real efforts of the church for the good of the world seem to be devoted more to the salvation of the state than to that of the individual, till the contagion of this trust fever has quickened their pulses, and we can see looming in the near distance a confederation together of all the “orthodox” churches for economy of work and to secure the enforcement of those things that are held by them in common. But in the light of the history of the first centuries, where a similar work was carried on and developed into the Roman Catholic Church, and the enforcement of its regulations by civil law, I would ask, What can we expect from such work but that worst of all despotisms, religion by law?