In 1858, that is, if you have forgotten what year it is, precisely one hundred years ago, Charles Darwin, having some months previously received a letter from another scientist Alfred Russel Wallace, joined with him in communicating to the Linnean society a theory to explain the process of evolution, what we know as the theory of natural selection. I am not a scientist, and it isn’t my purpose to explain precisely what that theory was; since 1858 biologists have modified it, and the history of the course of evolution and the factors that worked to cause it are still xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx matters of controversy and discussion. It remains true, however, that in the history of human thought, and human awareness of the nature of the world and its problems, the year 1858 is one of the most important years since human thought began. For in 1858 a whole outlook on life, a whole idea and scheme of its origin, nature, and purpose, a system of thought which had shown signs of cracking for some time, finally cracked, beyond hope of being patched up and left standing. The system of ideas that fell was a noble system, one of the fine achievements of the human mind. It was also, for the human race, a very comfortable one. It saw man-kind as the triumphant and good creation of God, set as king of a creation, as lord of a creatn, its pride and crown. It saw, however, that man was not wholly good, that the human race had made a mess; and to explain this it formed the belief that God had made his world good, and man good, and that man had fallen away from God’s good intention and involved himself in evil. But from this, by the grace of God, and through the coming of Xt, man could be redeemed. This system of ideas, a noble achievement, was the expression of the moral consciousness of man; it depended for its point and meaning on ideas of good and evil, and it gave men an inspiration towards goodness of life, gave him a purpose, and made his life significant. Expressed as I have expressed it, it has gone. We can no longer believe it. It has taken us about a hundred years to realise this, and some of us haven’t realised it yet. But we now know that the beginning of this story can’t be true. Man was not put in Paradise, from which he fell; he arrived in a world which had been in existence for millions of years, and arrived as the result, or one of the results, of a long process of the development of life, a process involving immense struggle, xx pain, and death, colossal waste, and whole periods and ages of life that arose, flourished, and passed away as though they had never been, except for a few fossils and the fact that they were links in a chain – and even then some of them were links in a chain that ended, and connects with nothing.
Now it may be that God was creator (and I have not said that Darwin destroyed Xty); but he cannot have been the kind of creator that the human race thought he was. He did not suddenly produce a finished product, perfect, which man then ruined. If God is creator, he did not create the world – bang! – he is still creating it, and it isn’t finished. Man’s position in he world, in the creation, is different from what it seemed to be in the old scheme.
What is that position? What is the distinguishing position of man in this scheme of things that has come about in the processes of evolution? Here, I’m afraid, I have to be dogmatic, and give you my own view; my purpose is to make you think, and if you disagree, no harm will be done. It seems to me that in man there first 3. arrived in the world what call a moral consciousness, and awareness of what has gone on, with expressed feelings and opinions about it. The glory of man is not that he has produced a society, an organised civilstion – bees and ants have done that. The glory of man is not that he makes things – beavers and birds do that. The glory of man is that he thinks about life and its nature and purpose in a way, in which, as far as I know, no other living being does. And he thinks about it morally, with ideas about right and wrong, good and evil. Man produces such magnificent thoughts as that beautiful scheme of ideas that cracked in 1858. Now, in 1958, he must look out on the world and produce a new one, before it is too late.
If I asked you to describe the three qualities of the world in which you find yourself alive, what three would you choose? What wd you choose, bearing in mind the process of evolution and human history as you know it, and what you can see out of the window? I’ll give you my three. Beauty; agony; nobility in struggle. First of all, this is a world of amazing beauty, in great things and in small, in mountains and in snowflakes. Secondly, it is full of agony, and lives by pain. When I look at nature, the first thought I have is of its beauty, so that I cd imagine it to be paradise; then comes the realisation that this is produced by death, pain, cruelty. The kitten I love xxxxx torments xxx and kills the bird I love. The hawk I admire crucnches the bones of the bluetit that haunted my window. And this riddles the world, and has riddled it since the beginning of time and life. And yet, in spite of it, animals have gone on caring for their young, men have helped one another, sacrificed for one another, given their lives to save others from death and pain. Now man seems to me the only being conscious of this – except for God. Man is aware, or can be aware, of the beauty, the nobility, and the ghastly suffering of it all. And out of that awareness comes his supreme quality – his moral consciousness. And also there seems to me to follow clearly his duty – to save the beauty and praise it, and to use the nobility of struggle to ease the burden of the agony, not only his own agony but the agony of all living things.
From this I deduce that the peculiar excellence and goodness of man lies in his ability to prevent and ease suffering, in his identification of himself with the sufferers of the world. His peculiar evil, of which only he is capable, lies in consciously increasing this suffering or ignoring it. The lion that tears the living flesh of the deer is not guilty; the lion has no moral consciousness. But the man who torments the bird or the kitten, or causes another man to suffer is evil and guilty; he should know. And looking out on the world, with his moral consciousness, he shd know also that the hare and the rabbit are more delightful and admirable things than the lion, in that their energy is innocent. And yet in our symbolism we have got it wrong. Consider the number of kings who were Lions. No king wd like to be known as King William the Rabbit, or even Richard the Hare. Rulers would rather be eagles than chaffinches, and sparrowhawks than sparrows. But in one instance we have our symbolism right. Christ was the Lamb of God, a Lamb that took away the sins of the world, in that he taught us, by words and example, to identify ourselves with suffering and bear it and ease it, rather than cause it. The crack in thinking in 1858 does not remove Christ; it gives him a new meaning, a real meaning, as the personification of the moral 5. consciousness of man, seen in his title of Son of Man, embodiment, incarnation of the divine nature of which man at his best is capable. And therefore also Son of God, since it is that nature, that joins with the suffering and the good against the evil that we most honour and worship. Xt is the symbol of the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx whole truth, which he wd not have been had he merely taught. He did not construct a system; he acted, and was crucified by the forces of evil. And in his cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” he became the embodiment of the suffering of the whole creation.
What does all this mean to us? Is what I have said merely philosophy, something not meaningful to us and our real lives?. I suggest that it has a very real and immediate meaning. We are human beings, examples of the first animal to have this moral consciousness, of which Xt is the symbol and example. Are we going to use it or not? There are two courses available for us, as individuals and as the human race. One is to see that in the whole world there is a struggle between the forces of tenderness and innocence and the forces of cruelty. Which side are we on? If we live selfishly ignoring the pain we cause to others, men and animals, all living things, we are part of that relentless process of evolution, in which, as is obvious, we become the most powerful animals of all, and may, like many very powerful animals, bring ourselves to destruction
I wonder what all this means to you, as individuals. To me, expressing myself rather brokenly, in an endeavour to be brief, it is a matter of urgency. We are human beings, examples of the first animal to have a moral consciousness, the first to see that in the processes of evolution, in the life of the world, there is this struggle between the tender and innocent and the powerful, magnificent and cruel.
Which side are we on? Are we going to use our moral consciousness, or not? Every time we live ignoring xxxxxxxx the fact that our life may override others and cause them to suffer, every time we, by our cruelty or stupidity, torment someone else, or any other living being, we are on the side of evil, either deliberately or by wilful ignorance of the problem of living. There are two courses available to us as individuals and/human race. One is to be the magnificent animals we are, quarrelling with one another, expressing in our achievements the marvellous power we have developed, and probably going down to destruction like other powerful animals. The other is to realise our position, our awareness of the problem, and live as individuals and as a race dedicated to the elimination or easing of suffering, so that the world remains beautiful less ghastly than when we found it. Man, and each individual man, may be the saviour, the crown of creation, its finest achievement; or he may be the most subtle, the most evil, the most terrible, the most powerful of its mistakes. Which side are you on? It affects what you do now, how you treat your next door neighbour, or the kitten in the courtyard; it gives you some ideas [bottom line of manuscript missing] the whole of the future of the world [ indecipherable word] processes this continuing creation will follow.
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