113 there are some mistakes which humanity has made and repented so often that there is now really no excuse for making them again. one of these is the injustice which every age does to its predecessor; for example, the ignorant contempt which the Humanists (even good Humanists like Sir Thomas More) felt for medieval philosophy or Romantics (even good Romantics like Keats) felt for 18th century poetry. each time all this 'reaction' and resentment has to be punished and unsaid; it is a wasteful performance. it is tempting to try whether we, at least, cannot avoid it. whey should we not give our predecessors a fair and filial dismissal?
such, at all events, is the attempt I am going to make in this paper. I come to bury the great myth of the 19th and early 20th century; but also to praise it. I am going to pronounce a funeral oration.
by this great Myth I mean that picture of reality which
114 resulted during the period under consideration, not logically but imaginatively, from some of the more striking and (so to speak) marketable theories of the real scientists. I have heard this Myth called 'Wellsianity'. the name is a good one in so far as it does justice to the share which a great imaginative writer bore in building it up. but it is not satisfactory. it suggests, as we shall see, an error about the date at which the Myth became dominant; and it also suggests that the Myth affected only the 'middle-brow mind. in fact it is as much behind Bridges' Testament of Beauty as it is behind the work of Wells. it dominates minds as different as those of Professor Alexander and Walt Disney. it is implicit in nearly eve4ry modern article on politics, sociology and ethics.
I call it a Myth because it is, as I have said, the imaginative and not the logical result of what is vaguely called 'modern science'. strictly speaking, there is, I confess, no such thing as 'modern science'. there are only particular sciences, all in a stage of rapid change and sometimes inconsistent with one another. what the Myth uses is a selection from the scientific theories - a selection made at first and modified afterwards, in obedience to imaginative and emotional needs. it is the work of the folk imagination, moved by its natural appetite for an impressive unity it therefore treats its DATA with great freedom - selecting, slurring, expurgating (amend by removing thing thought offensive) and adding at will.
the central idea of the Myth is what its believers would call 'Evolution' or 'Development' or 'emergence' , just as the central idea in the myth of Adonis is Death and Rebirth. I do not mean that the doctrine of Evolution as held by prct5ising biologists is a Myth. it may be shown, by later biologists, to be a less satisfactory hypothesis that was hoped 50 years ago. but that does not amount to
115 being a Myth. it is a genuine scientific hypothesis. but we must sharply distinguish between
Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism which is certainly a Myth...
117 ...Imagination runs ahead of scientific evidence. 'the prophetic soul of the big world' was already pregnant with the Myth: if science had not met the imaginative need, science would not have been so popular. but probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it desires.
in the second place we have internal evidence. popular Evolutionism or developmentalism differs IN CONTENT from the Evolution of the real biologists. to the biologist Evolution is a hypothesis. it covrs more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. at least, that is what I think most biologists would say. Professor D.M.S.Watson, it is true, would not go so far. according to him Evolution 'is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or...can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible' (Watson, quoted in Nineteeth Century (april 1943) , 'Science and the B.B.C.') this would mean that the sole ground for believing it is not empirical but metaphysical - the dogma of an amateur metaphysician who finds 'special creation' incredible. but I do not think it has really come to that. most biologists have a more robust belief in Evolution than Professor Watson. but it is certainly a hypothesis. in the Myth, however, there is nothing hypothetical about it: it is basic fact: or, to speak
118 more strictly, such distinctions do not exist on the mythical level at all. there are more important differences to follow.
in the science, Evolution is a theory about CHANGES: in the Myth it is a fact about IMPROVEMENTS. thus a real scientist like professor J.B.S.Haldane is at pains to point out that popular ideas of Evolution lay a wholly unjustified emphasis on those changes which have rendered creatures (by human standards) 'better' or more interesting. he adds; 'we are therefor inclined to regard progress as the rule in evolution. actually it is the exception and for every case of it there are 10 cases of degeneration. but the Myth simply expurgates the 10 cases of degeneration. in the popular mind the word 'Evolution' conjures up a picture of things moving 'onwards and upwards' and of nothing else whatsoever. and it might have been predicted that it would do so. already, before science had spoken, the mythical imagination knew the kind of 'Evolution' it wanted. it wanted the Keatian and Wagnerian kind; the gods superseding the Titans and the young, joyous, careless, amorous Siegfried superseding the care-worn, anxious, treaty-entangled Wotan. if science offers any instances to satisfy that demand, they will be eagerly accepted. if it offers any instances that frustrate it, they will simply be ignored.
again, for the scientist Evolution is a purely biological theorem. it takes over organic life on this planet as a going concern and tries to explain certain changes within that field. it makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements...
122 ...I grew up believing in this Myth and I have felt - I still feel - its almost perfect grandeur. let no one say we are an unimaginative age: neither the Greeks nor the Norsemen ever invented a better story. even to the present day, in certain moods, i could almost find it in my heart to which that it was not mythical, but true. and yet, how could it be?
what makes it impossible that it should be true is not so much the lack of evidence for this or that scene in the drama or the fatal self-contradiction which runs right through it. the myth cannot even get going without accepting a good deal from the real sciences.and the real sciences cannot e accepted for a moment unless rational inferences are valid: for every science claims to be a series of inferences from observed facts. it is only by such inferences that you can reach your nebulae and protoplasm and dinosaurs and but-men at all.unless you start by believing that reality in the remotest space and the remotest time rigidly obeys the laws of logic, you can have no ground for believing in any astronomy, any biology, any palaeontology, any archaeology. to reach the positions held by the real scientists -which are then taken over by the myth - you must - in fact, treat reason as an absolute. but at the same time the myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by product
123 of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. the content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true. if my own mind is a product of the irrational - if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel -how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution?..
127 ..the Myth also pleases those who want to sell things to us. in the old days, a man had a family carriage built for him when he got married and expected it to last all his life. such a frame of mind would hardly suit modern manufacturers. but popular Evolutionism suits them exactly. nothing OUGHT to last. they want you to have A NEW CAR, A NEW RADIO SET, A NEW EVERYTHING EVERY YEAR. THE NEW MODEL MUST ALWAYS BE SUPERSEDING THE OLD. MADAM WOULD LIKE THE latest FASHION. FOR THIS IS EVOLUTION, THIS IS DEVELOPMENT, THIS THE WAY THE UNIVERSE ITSELF IS GOING; AND 'SALES-RESISTANCE' IS THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST,THE elan vital...
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