m. h. fisch evolution in american philosophy

8/10/2019 M. H. Fisch Evolution in American Philosophy

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Evolution in American Philosophy

Max H. Fisch

The Philosophical Review , Vol. 56, No. 4. (Jul., 1947), pp. 357-373.

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EVOLUTION IN AMERICAN

PHILOSOPHY

I T H E MI DDLE period of the century of American thought with

which our sytnposium is concerned, there was one idea which sofar oversl~adowed ll others that we tnay fairly confine our attentionto it. Tha t idea was evolution. Like the ideas of earlier periods, it was

imported, and inlported chiefly frotn Britain. But the cultural lag, theinterval between publication there and assitnilation here, was rapidly

lessening. Indeed, except for a slow start due to the Civil War , the ideaof evolution spread as rapidly here as abroad. Moreover, American

thinkers were from the start acknowledged though junior partners inshaping, criticizing, and confirnling the idea in its biological and

other applications, and they have led the way in working out the logic

of evolutionary theory and the theory of evolutionary logic.Both in preparing the Origin of Species and for defending it after

its appearance, Darwin leaned heavily on his American friend AsaGray, much as he did on Joseph Hooker in England. Other American

biologists, geologists, and paleontologists, before and after 1859, dis-covered and adduced some of the nlost telling evidences of evolution.T o cite but one instance, when Huxley came to America in 1876 todeliver the inaugural lecture at Johns Hopkins, he spent a week with0 C. Marsh in New Haven studying his collection of fossil horses,which for the first time established the direct line of descent of a livinganimal, and his collection of fossil toothed birds, which completed the

series of transitional fortns between birds and reptiles. Huxley recast

his New York lectures on evolution to take account of these evidencesand said he knew of no collection from any one region and series of

strata comparable, for extent, or for the care with which the remains


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wrote to Marsh in 1880 that his work on these fossils afforded thebest support to the theory of evolution that had come forward in

the twenty years since the Origin.2'4 convenient symbol for the way in which, with respect to evolution,Britain and America formed from the start a single intellectual com-

munity may be found in the following fact. The famous Wilberforce-Huxley debate at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in

1860, just a few months after the appearance of the Origin took placein the course of discussion of a paper by John \V. Draper, the NewYork physiologist, On the Intellectual Develop~nent of Europe Con-sidered with Reference to the Views of Mr . Darwin and Others That

the Progression of Organisms is Determined by Law. 3

No good cause should be without an eminent and vigorous adversary,

who prevents it from being ignored. Such an adversary was Louis

Agassiz. Many of the American scientists who declared for evolution

in the first generation had been his pupils and were converted to it byhis arguments against it. To some of them it seenled that he had laid

the whole foundation of evolution, solid and broad, and thenrefused to build any scientific structure on it. 4 So it seemed to lay-

men also. John Fiske, for instance, says that the immediate cause

which drove me to the development theory was the mental reactionexperienced in reading Agassiz's arguments against that theory in

his Essay on Classification, in 1859, shortly before Darwin's book waspublished. nd Fislce became the nlost influential American pro-

ponent of evolution as an idea of general and even cosmic application:The age of evolution, however, was also the great age of American

enterprise, and the most distinctly American service to the cause was

to provide it with an entrepreneur. The New York firm of Appleton

had been cautiously edging into the hitherto unprofitable field of

Schuchert and LeVene, 0 C. Morsk ( N e w H a v e n , 1940) p. 246. FrancisDarwin ( ed . ) , L i fe a~ tdLe tter s of Charles Daywilt ( N e w Yo rk , 1887), 11 417.

Vtkerzaejltiz, July 14, 1860, 11 64 f. Leonard Huxley, Life a ~ ~ detters of 7 . H

H z ~ x l e y(New York , y o , I, 195.Joseph LeConte, Ez~olz~tloiz~ zd t s Relatiolz to Religious Thouglzt ( N e wYork , 1889), p. 44.

olin Fiskc, Edward Livilzgstoi~Youtizaias ( N e w Yo rk , 1894), p. j8 n. It isl f dd h C h h h hl f ll d


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scientific book publishing, at the instigation of Edward L. Youmans.As a rival publisher, Henry Holt, later put it, Youmans became the

scientific adviser of the house, and brought to it so many of the impor-tant books on the great questions of that epoch, as to place the house

first 011 those subjects, and the rest now l~er e. ~ t was on Youmans' in-

itiative that the first volunle of Buckle's H is to ry of C ivilization wasreprinted by Appleton's in 1858, and that they got out an Americanedition of Darwin's Origin within two months of its publication inEngland. When Ticknor Fields of Boston, who had previously

published Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, declined his Education in1860, Yo un ~a ns ecured it for Appleton's by writ ing to Spencer: Ithought. .that if our house had the management of the work I might

possibly in various small ways contribute to urge it forward; for wehave found on this side that the straight and narrow way that leads

right up to the heaven of success is traversable by but one motor-namely, p~rslz."~Three years later, Youtnans wrote to Spencer: Iatn an ultra and thoroughgoing American. I believe there is great work

to be done here for civilization. What we want are ideas-large,organizing ideas-and I believe there is no other man whose thoughts

are so valuable for our needs as yours are. sJohn Fiske describes the pushing Younlans did as follows:

As soon as [hooks] were ready for the market he wrote reviews of them,and by no means in the usual perfunctory way. His reviews aud uotices wereturued out by the score, and scattered about in the magazines aud newspaperswhere they would do the most good. Not content with this, he made numerouspithy and representative extracts for the reading columt~s of various daily andweekly papers. Whenever he found another writer who could be pressed intothe service, he would give him Speucer's books, kiudle him with a spark from hisown blazing enthusiasm, and set him to writing for the press. The effects ofthis work were multi farious and far-reaching, and-year in and yea r out-itwas never fo r a moment allowed to flag. Th e most indefatigable vender of wareswas never more ruthlessly persistent in advertising for lucre's sake than EdwardYoumans in preachiug in a spiri t of t he purest disinterestedness the gospel ofevolution.

When Appleton's sent Youtnans to visit Spencer and other Britishscientists in 1862, he learned that only five hundred copies of Spencer's


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Psychology had been printed, and that three hundred remained unsold ;that five hundred of his Educat io~zhad been printed, and only two

hundred were sold; that the Social Statics had been more popular,but that eleven years had not sufficed to exhaust the seven hundred

and fifty copies printed.1 By the time Youmans' Spencer boom sub-

sided, Appleton's alone had sold five hundred thousand copies of his

twenty-five works.ll Of the First Prificiples alone, 162,000 copies weresold in less than thirty years.12

One of the best essays on the derivations of American thought, but anessay not yet as widely known as it should be, is Merle Curti's The

Great Mr. Locke: America's Philosopher 1783-1861. ~~ he period

with which we are concerned deserves a sinlilar essay: Herbert

Spencer America's Philosopher 1861-1916. The difference is that

whereas Locke had long been dead before his American vogue began,

Spencer was adopted, subsidized, and promoted by America during his

lifetime, and owed the completion and success of his Sylztlzetic Plzilos-oplzy in large part to that fact. Hi s thus becoming American intellectual

property did not, however, increase his honor in his own country.Justice Holmes could write to Sir Frederick Pollock in 1895

Hl'erbertl Spencer you English never quite do justice to. . H e is

dull. He writes an ugly u n c h ar ~ ~ ~ in g atyle, his ideals are those of

lower n~iclclle lass British Philistine. And yet after all abatelnents Idoubt if any writer of English except Darwin has clone so much to

affect our whole way of thinking about the universe. 14

As a promotional medium for the scientific books brought out underhis editorship, Youmans founded the Popular Sc ience M on t l ~ lyn 1872and continued as editor until his death in 1887. The early numbers

carried installn~ents of Spencer's S tu d y of Sociology,written at You-mans' suggestion to prepare the public for the Descriptive Sociologywhich appeared in later years. Within a year and a half the Monthlyreached a circulation of twelve thousand. Students of American

philosophy remember with amusement but with a strange lack of

curiosity that Peirce's Illustrations of the Logic of Science were

l0 Ib id . p 123.


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published in it as a series of six articles. Even as unacademic a philos-

opher as James spoke with a certain condescension of those hard-

headed readers who subscribe to the Popula r Sc ience Month ly andN a t u r e and whose sole philosopl~cr Mr. Spencer is ;l ut the factis that the M o n t h l y was then the chief inedium of periodical publicatiotlfor so much of American philosophy as was in touch with science.

Not content with reprinting here the works of overseas scientists,

Yournans conceived and launched in 1873 the International ScientificSeries of books published simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic.

Within Youmans' lifetime the Series ran to fifty-seven volun~es, and

eventually to nearly a hundred. The first was Tynclall's Forws ofWa t e r the second Eagehot's Ph ysic s and Poli tics the classic of socialDarwinism. Among other early volumes were Eain's Mind and BodySpencer's Stl idy of Socio logy Cooke's TIze N e w Clzemist ry Stewart'sConserv ation of E ne rg y Whitney's Lif e and Growtlz of L ang uag eHuxley's The Cmyf i s lz Darwin's Form ation of Vegetab le Mo uldStallo's Con cep ts and Tlzeories of M od er n Physics Romanes' Ankfza l

Intelligence and Clifford's Cowwvton S e n s e of tlze En-act Sc ien ces.Thebest seller was Draper's H is to ry of the ConfEict B et w ee n Scie nce andReligion which ran through fifty printings and was translated intonearly every language of commercial publication.

lihile Youtllans was enthusiastic in propagating, both through the

International Scientific Series and through the Popular ScienceMontlzly modern views in physics, chemistry, geology, and biology

generally, everything was tributary to the philosophy of evolution. AsFiske puts it As presenting the supreme organizing idea of modern

thought, his chief effort at all times lay in directing inquirers to Mr.

Spencer's works, in explaining their doctrines, defending them froin

misquotatioll and misunderstanding-in being, in short, the American

apostle of evolution, fervid, instant in season and out of season, making

opportunities where he did not find them. l0

ymbol for the relationship between the intellectual and the in-

dustrial entrepreneur in the age of enterprise may be found in the

fact that when Spencer was about to board ship for home after his


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visit to America in 882 he seized the hands of Edward Youmans andAndrew Carnegie and cried to the reporters: Here are my two best

American friends. 17A complete sketch of the fortunes of the idea of evolution in America

would include the early opposition from the side of religion, the irenicwork of religious-minded biologists like Gray, the reconciliations of

evolution and religion, the theologies of evolution which sought to makereligious capital of it, the American forms of social Darwinism, the cos-

mic philosophies of Fiske and Abbot, the rise of the distinctively Ameri-

can science of sociology, the attempts of idealists like Howison to fix the

limits of evolution and of others like Royce to digest evolution andentropy together in the Absolute, the genetic social philosophies of

Balclwin, Mead, and others, and the emergence of those forms ofevolutionary naturalism that are still current among us. The story of

most of these matters, however, has recently been so well told by

Professor Schneiderls that I shall take his chapters as read and devotethe rest of my time to tracing the early steps in what I take to be the

legitimate line of descent (not from Spencer but) from Darwin inAmerican philosophy.

The crux of the theory of biological evolution was of course man, andthe difficulty was not so much that of finding the links between the

human organism and those of lower animals, as it was that of finding

the links between animal instinct and human reason. Darwin made abeginning in those chapters of his escen t o Man devoted to com-

parison of the mental powers of man with those of lower animals, andto the development of the intellectual and moral faculties during

primeval and civilized times. The naturalization of the human mind

there begun was continued by the pragmatists. The story goes backto a time which Charles Peirce remembered, as follows, nearly halfa century later

I was away surveying in the wilds of Louisiana when Darwin's great work

appeared, and though I learned by letters of the immense sensation it had created,I did not return until early in the following summer when I found [Chauncey]

Burton J. Hendrick: Life o ndrew Carnegie (New York, 1932), I, 240.


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Wright al l enthusiasm for Darwin, whose doctr ines appeared to h im as a sortof supplement to those of Mill. I remember well that I then made a remark tohim which, although he did not assent to it, evidently impressed him enough to

perplex him. T h e rem ark w as that these ideas of development had m ore vitalityby far than any of his other favorite conceptions and that though they might atthat moment be in his mind like a little vine clinging to the tree of Associational-ism, yet after a time tha t vine would inevitably kill the tree. H e asked me w hyI said that and I replied that the reason was that Mill 's doctrine was nothingbut a metaphysical point of view to which Darwin's, which was nourished bypositive observation, must be deadly.''

Peirce saw in the idea of evolution a welcome antidote to the pre-

vailing nominalisin and associationalism, but what Wright valued mostin Mill was neither of the latter but the principle of utility, and heprojected a synthesis of utilitarianism and Darwinism. Leslie Stephen

in his classic work on the English Utilitarians has called attention to

the paradox of their indifference to history combined with their appeal

to experience. They and the British empiricists generally seemedalways to be in need of, and yet always to reject by anticipation, sometheory of evolution. Their difficulty was that theories of evolution

appeared to them to involve something mystical and transcendental.

This, says Stephen, may help to explain the great influence of the

Darwinian theories. They marked the point at which a doctrine of

evolution could be allied with an appeal to ex p e r i e n ~ e . ~ ~ o it seemed

to Wright.Though he was a mathematician and a computer for the Nautical

Almanac, Wright had had some training in biology under Asa Gray

and had published essays on the origin and uses of the arrangementsof leaves in plants and on the architecture of honeycombs. Gray had

sent some of these essays to Darwin in 1859, but the mathematicshad been too much for

Over a period of some months after his first reading of the O.riginof Species Wright composed a review essay which Gray forwarded

T. S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Cambridge, Mass.), 5.64.T h e Engl ish Ut i l ita r ians ( N e w Yo rk , goo), 111, 375.James R. Thayer (ed . ) , Let te rs o f Chauncey W r i gh t (Cambridge, Mass.,

1878), p. 232. Fra ncis D arw in (e d. ),M ore L ette rs of Cha rles Darwilz ( N e wYork, 1go3), I, 124. Cf. Philip P. W iener, Chauncey W right 's Defense of D ar -


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to Darwin in 1861 and Darwin turned over to Huxley for publicationin the Natural Histovy Review;but apparently it was thought too

philosophical and was never published.22At that time Herbert Spencer's First Prirzciples was coming out in

parts. William James, who was scarcely twenty, later wrote: I . . .

was carried away with enthusiasm by the intellectual perspectives

which it seemed to open. When a maturer con~panion, Mr. Charles S.

Peirce, attacked it in my presence, I felt spiritually wounded, as bythe defacement of a sacred image or picture, though I could not verballydefend it against his criticism^. ^^

Peirce and Wright, though intellectually far apart in some respects,

were agreed that there was no way of being a good Darwinian and

a Spencerian at the same time, and they had no qualms about renounc-

ing Spencer and adhering to Darwin. James soon came around to their

view and used Spencer as his chief whipping boy for thirty years.24

In 1865 Wright published in the or th A+~ erictzneviewan articleon The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, in which, in the course of

criticizing Spencer, he indicated the philosophy of science in terms ofwhich the pragmatists were to resolve Darwin's problem.

Ideas ar e developed by the sagacity of the exper t, rather than by the systematicprocedures of the philosopher. But when and however ideas are developed sciencecares nothing, for it is only by subsequent tests of sensible experience that ideasare admitted into the pandects of science.. .Science asks no questions aboutthe ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judgeit by its performance. . Th e principles of modern natural philosophy, bothmathematical and physical. . ar e ra ther the eyes with which nature is seen,than the elements and constituents of the objects discovered.. Nothing justifiesthe development of abstract principles in science but their utility in enlargingour concrete knowledge of nature. T he ideas on which mathematical Mechanicsand the Calculus are founded, the morphological ideas of Natural History, andthe theories of Chemistry are such working ideas,-finders, not merely sum-maries of truth.

By 1870 the pragmatic case was much farther developed. I n anarticle on the Limits of Natural Selection, Wrigh t gave it as his

ZLIli~toricalecords Survey, Caletldar of the Le tte rs of Ch ar lesR Darnc~irzto Asa Gray (Boston, 1939)~ Letter 35; cf. 97, 103, 132, 133; also 56.

M e ~ ~ o r i e srzd Stzldies (New York, 1912), pp. 127 f.' . B. Perry, T h e Th oi ~g ll t nd Character of W ill la l~z anzcs(Boston 1935)~


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opiilion that consciousness, language, and thought were so far from

being beyond the province of natural selectioil, as Alfred Wallace sup-

posed, that they afforded one of the most promising fields for its futureinvestigations. 111 a long and revealing footnote applying the principle

of natural selection to the development of the individual mind by its

ow11 experieilces, he argued that our knowledges and rational beliefs

result, truly and literally, from the survival of the fittest among ouroriginal and spontaneous beliefs. H e suggested that the chief prej-

udice against this conclusion would be removed if we adopted Bain's

definition of belief. Now it will be remembered that the Metaphysical

Club, of which Wright, Peirce, James, and Holnies were members, was

meeting at this tii11e.~~ eirce says that Nicholas Green, a lawyer

among them, often urged the importance of applying Bain's definition

of belief as that upon which a mail is prepared to act. From this defini-

tion, Peirce adds, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary. I sliall

therefore quote enough of Wright's note to show that one application

of Bain's definition was to the solution of the problem our pragnla-

tists had inherited from Darwin.

Human beliefs, like human desires, are naturally illimitable. The generalizinginstinct is native to the mind. I t is not the result of habitual experiences, as iscommonly supposed, but acts as well on single experiences, which are capableof producing, when unchecked, the most unbounded beliefs and expectations ofthe future. The only checks to such unconditional natural beliefs areother andequally unconditiollal and natural beliefs, or the contradictions and limiting con-ditions of experience. H er e, then, is a close analogy, a t least, to those fund ame ntalfacts of the organic world on which the law of Natural Selection is based; thefacts, namely, of the rapid increase of organisms, limited only by the condi-tions of existence, and by competition in th at strug gle for existence whichresults in the survival of the fittest. A s the tendency to a n unlimited increasein existing organisms is held in check only by those conditions of their existence

*North Antericatt Review, C X I 1870), 302 n. PhilosoQhical Discussions, p.116 n.

P h i l i p P. W iene r, Peirce's Metaphysical Club and the Genesis of Pra gm a-tism, Journal of the History of Ideas, V I I 1946), 218-233. Mr. W iener expects

to publish shortly a book on The Am erican Fou nders of Pragm atism in whichthe evolutiollary ideas of the several members of Peirce's club are discussedat length.

Collected Papers, 5.12. Green's articles, reviews, and notes have been col-d h f d


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which are chiefly comprised in the like tendencies of other organisms to unlimitedincrease, and is thus maintained (so long as external conditions remain un-changed) in an unvarying balance of life; and as this balance adjusts itself

to slowly changing external conditions, so, in the history of the individual mind,beliefs which spring spontaneously from simple and single experiences, and froma naturally unlimited tendency to generalization, are held mutually in check, andin their harmony represent the properly balanced experiences and knowledges ofthe mind, and by adaptive changes are kept in accordance with changing externalconditions, or with the varying total results in the memory of special experiences.This mutual limitation of belief by belief, in which consists so large a part of theirproper evidence, is so prominent a feature in the beliefs of the rational mind,that philosophers had failed to discover their true nature, as elementary facts,until this was pointed out by the greatest of living psychologists, ProfessorAlexander Bain. The mutual tests and checks of belief have, indeed, always ap-peared to a great majority of philosophers a s their only proper evidence; andbeliefs themselves have appeared as purely intellectual phases of the mind. ButBain has defined them, in respect to their ultimate natures, a s phases of the willor as the tendencies we have to act on mere experience, or to act on our simplest,most limited experiences. The y are tendencies, however, which become so involvedin intellectual developments, and in their mutual limitations, that their ultimateresults in rational beliefs have very naturally appeared to most philosophers aspurely intellectual facts and their real genesis in experience has been generally

discredited, with the exception of what a re designated specially as empiricalbeliefs. '

About the same time another application of Bain s definition was

being made by Holmes. H e was developing a conception of law in

terms of expectancies or predictions and the readiness to act upon them.

In the ~~zericanaw Review for July, 1872 he criticized Austin sview that command was the essence of law, that custom only became

law by the tacit consent of the sovereign manifested by its adoption

by the courts, and that before its adoption it was only a motive for

decision. Wha t more, Holmes asked, was the decision itself in relation

to any future decision?

What more indeed is a statute; and in what other sense law, than that webelieve that the motive which we think that it offers to the judges will prevail,and will induce them to decide a certain case in a certain way, and so shape ourconduct on that anticipation? A precedent may not be followed a statute may beemptied of its contents by construction, or may be repealed without a saving

clause after we have acted on it ; but we expect the reverse, and if our expecta-tions come true, we say that we have been subject to law in the matter in hand.

N o r t h Anzevica iz Review, C X I (1870)~ 301 11. Phzlosophical Discussio~zs,p I 5 11


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Holmes does not expressly connect his prediction theory of law with

evolution, but it seems likely that he had it in mind, for he published

a criticism of Spencer in the following year.I t has always seemed to us a singular anomaly [he said] that believers in

the theory of evolution and in the natura l development of insti tutions by suc-cessive adaptations to the environment, should be found laying down a theoryof government intended to establish its limits once for all by a logical deductionfrom axiom s.. .M r. Spencer is forever putting cases to show that the reactionof legislation is equal to its action. B y changing the law, he argues, you d o notget rid of any burden, but only change the mode of bearing i t ; and if the changedoes not make it easier to bear for society, considered as a whole, legislation is

inexpedient. Thi s tacit assumpt ion of the solidar ity of the interests of society isvery common, but seems to us to be false .. . I n the last resort a man rightlypre fer s his own interest to that of his neighbors.. .T he more powerful interestsmust be more or less reflected in legislation; which, like every other device ofman or beast, must tend in the long run to aid the survival of the fi t t e~ t .~ '

IVe return now to Chauncey Wright. In July, 1871 he publishedail essay in defence and illustration of the theory of Natural Selection

against the criticisills of St. George Mivart. H e sent advance proof

sheets of this essay to Darwin. My special purpose, he said, hasbeen to contribute to the theory by placing it in its proper relations topl~ilosophical nquiries in general. Darwin was so pleased with this

essay that, with Wright's permission, he had it reprinted at his own

expense in Idondon, along with a n appendix supplied by Wright , and

distributed it to the leading naturalists of the British Isles and to some

Mivart replied to Wright, and Wright met his new criticisnls in

an essay published in July, 1872 of which again he sent proof sheetsto Darwin, who replied:Nothing can be clearer than the way in which you discuss the permanence orfixity of species .. . 4 s your mind is so clear, and as you consider so carefullythe n~eall illg f words, I wish you would take some incidental occasion to considerwhen a th ing may properly be said to be effected by the will of man. I havebeen led to the wish by reading an article by your Professor W hit ney. . . H eargues, because each step of change in language is made by the will of man, thewhole language so changes: but I do not think that this is so, as man has no in-tention or wish to change the language. It is a parallel case with what I have

A?r~cricanLaze h'cz~iezcr, V (1872-1873), 582 f.'? Le tt ers of Clzazlllcey Wri gh t, p. 230. L ~ f ealid Letters of Clzarles Darze~in,


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terpretations of old ones (and combinations, under more precise and qualifiedstatements) are made, which disregard old decisions, seemingly by new andbetter definitions of that which in its nature is unalterable, but really, in their

practical effects, by alterations, a t least in the proximate grounds of decision;so that nothing is really unalterable in law, except the intention to do justiceunder universally applicable principles of decision, and the instinctive judgmentsof so-called natural law.37

This was to be one the themes of Holmes's great lectures on The

Comn~on aw, published seven years later. We know frotn an earlier

essay that Wright was interested in the relations between legal and

scientific thinking, and I have indicated elsewhere the importance ofthese relations in the beginnings of p r a g n ~ a t i s n ~ . ~ ~

In November, 1872, shortly after Wright 's return frotn his visitto Darwin, the Metaphysical Club met to hear Peirce read a paper

expounding some of the views which he later said he had been urging

all along under the name of p r a g m a t i ~ m . ~ e began by saying that

each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic and that the

Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question of logic, as

Wright 's papers had shown it to be. Mr. Darwin, he said, proposedto apply the statistical method to biology. .While unable to say what

the operation of variation and natural selection in every individual

case will be, [he1 demollstrates that in the long run they will adapt

aniinals to their circumstance^. ^^ Peirce proceeded to outline the

lesson in logic of this new step in science. The now familiar argument

runs as follows:

The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attainbelief.. .Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the settlement of opinion.. .The

North A~nerican Review, CXVI (1873), 303. Philosofihical Discussio~zs,pp. 258 f.

R Essay cited in n. 30 above. Holmes was quite conscious of his intellectualindebtedness to Wright. As late as I929 in a letter to Pollock expounding hisown general philosophy, Holmes said : Chauncey Wright, a nearly forgottenphilosopher of real merit, taught me when young that I must not say necessaryabout the universe, that we don't know whether anything is necessary or not.

So I describe myself as a bettabilitarian. I believe that we can bet on the behaviorof the universe in its contact with us. Holnzes-Polloclz Letters, 11, 252.Collected Papers, 5.1 3.

40Popular Science Monthly, XI1 (1877-1878), f., Collected Papers, 5.363 f.


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problem becomes how to fix belief not in the individual merely but in the com-munity.. . .The method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every manshall be the same. Such is the method of science.. .The essence of belief is the

establishment of habit and different beliefs are distinguished by the differentmodes of action to which they give rise. . . .T he re is no distinction of meaningso fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of prac tice.. . .Our ideaof anything is our idea of its sensible effects.. . [The way to make our ideasclear is to ] consider what effects which might conceivably have practical bear-ings we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception ofthese effects is the whole of our conception of the object. . . .[If we apply thisprescription to the ideas of t ruth and reality we get this result:] Th e opinionwhich is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we meanby the tru th and the object represented in this opinion is the real.ll

This paper was later published as two articles in the Po pu la r SciegzceM o n t h l y and followed by four others on "The Doctrine of Chances,""The Probability of Induction," "The O rd er of Nature," a i d "Deduc-

tion, Induction, and Hypothesis"; all six under the general title,

"Illustrations of the Logic of Science." I t will be noted that Peirce's

version of Darwinian logic, like Wright's, turns on Bain's definition

of belief.

As we have remarked before, Peirce had an ulterior interest in the

logic of evolution as a weapon in his lifelong war against nominalism,

but this was not shared by his fellow-pragmatists at the time, and Ishall therefore oinit any further reference to it and pass on to James.

James was trained in medicine. H e had known Darwin's writings

from his student days. In 1868 he had reviewed Darwin's Var ia t ionof A ni m al s and Platzts cind er Do ~wc sticatio ~zor both the Atlantic

Montlzly and the N o r t l z A ~ w r i ca l zR e v i e w remarking, among otherthings, that there was no law explaining the origin of variations. I n

the year 1872-1873, and during the five years from 1874 to 1880, hegave a course in Harvard College on "Comparative Anatonly and Phys-

iology." In the first half-year he tended to use comparative anatomy

as affording proofs and illustrations of evolution, and in the second

half-year to use physiology as an approach to psycl~ology.~~

In 1878 James published his first original philosophical article,"Iienlarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Corresponclence," or

"adjustment of inner to outer relations." H e argued that in the work-


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ing out of his theory Spencer made mind pure product and ignored

the role of emotion, volition, and action.

I, fo r my par t, cannot escape the consideration, forced up011 me at every turn ,tha t the knower is not simply a mir ro r floating with no foot-hold anywhere, andpassively reflecting an order that he comes upon and finds simply existing. Theknower is an actor, and co-efficient of the tr uth on one side, whilst on the otherhe registers the truth which he helps to create. Mental interests, hypotheses,postulates, so fa r as they ar e bases for human actioil-action which to a greatext en t transforms the world-help to make thc truth which they declare. Inother words, there belongs to mind, from its birth upward, a spontaneity, a vote.I t is ill the game, and not a mere looker-on..

111 thi s and later attacks on Spencer, Jaines identified himself withDarwin. The identification is most complete in the lecture on Great

Men and Their Environment, delivered before the Harvard Natural

History Society and published in 1880. H e began with this sentence:A remarkable parallel, which I think has never been noticed, obtains

between the facts of social evolution on the one hand, and of zoological

evolutioll as expoutlded by Mr. Darwin on the other. James's

melnory was at fault, for it had been often noticed by Wright. H e wenton to say, as Wright had, that the great merit of Darwin was to dis-

criminate clearly between the causes which originally produced

variatiolls and the causes that preserved them after they were

produced. James applied this distinction, as Wright had, to nlental

evolution.

.the new conceptions, emotions, and active tendencies which evolve are orig-

inally produced in the shape of random images, fancies, accidental out-births ofspontaneous variat ion in the functional act ivity of the excessively instable humanbrain, which the outer environment simply confirms or refutes, adopts or rejects,

43C011ected Es sa ys und Reviews, p. 67. When the pragmatists rejected thespectator theory of mind they adopted the instrumental theory, with i ts suh-ordination of intelligence to will and action. n James's case as in Wright's, theshift to iilstrumeiltalism was connected with evolutionary biology. In a n essayof 1880 James w ro te : The theory of evolution is beginning to do very goodservice by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. Cognition,

ill this view, is but a fleeting moment, a cross-section a t a cert ain point, afwhat ill its totality is a motor phenomenon. T h e W i l l to Believe, p. 84.) Andin an essay of 1881 : The willing department of our na tu re .. .dominates both theconceiving department and the feeling department; or, in plainer English,

ti d thi ki l th f b h i ' k I I t


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preserves or destroys,-selects, it1 sho rt, jus t as it selects morphological andsocial variations due to molecular accidents of an analogous so rt. Even theconceiving of a law] is a spontaneous var iat ion in the strictest sense of t he term.

I t flashes out of one brain, and no other , because the instability of that brain issuch as to tip and upset itself in just that particular direction. But the importantthing to notice is that the good flashes and the bad flashes, the triumphant hypo-theses and the absurd conceits, ar e on an exact equality in respect of the ir ~ r i g i n . ~

From this lecture it is an easy step to James's Principles of Psychology published a decade later, and particularly to the last chaper, on

Necessary Truths and the Effects of Experience, in which he applied

the Darwinian notions of variation and selection to the a priori factors

in l ~uman nowledge.

What was really novel in James's lecture of 1880 was the furtheruse of Darwin's distinction to defend against Spencer the great-man

theory of history.

The causes of production of great men lie in a sphere wholly inaccessible tothe social philosopher. H e must simply accept geniuses as data, just a s Darwinaccepts his spontaneous variations. For him, as for Darwin, the only problem is,

these data being given, How does the environment affect them, and how do theyaffect the enviro nment? Now, I affirm th at the relation of the visible environmentto the great man is in the main exactly wha t it is to the 'variation' it1 the Da r-winian philosophy: It chiefly adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys, it1 short

selects him. And whenever it adopts and preserves the great man, it becomes

modified by his influence in an enti rely original and peculiar way.40

Such a man, J imagine James would say, is John Dewey. Though

born in the year the Origin of Species appeared, he came to Darwin

by way of Hegel and did not reach him until nearly the end of thecentury. Since that time, however, he has worked in the legitimate

line of descent from Darwin, and the whole developtllent whose early

steps I have traced may be said to have reached a kind of cultllination

5 Ibid., pp. 247, 249.6 I b i d , pp. 225 f. an essay on Sociology and Hero-Worship (Atl anti c

Monthly, XLVII , 1881, pp. 75-44), Fiske replied to James's critique of Spencer,and James promptly acknowledged that he had overstated his case. Cf. John

S. Clark (ed .), Lifc nnd Letters of J o h Fisk e (Boston, 1917), 11, 192-199.Morton G White, 7'he Oriqiit of Dezelcy's Iizstrzc~tzcizfalzs~~z New York,1943). n Darwinisrn in Dewey's lat er work see W. T . Feldman, T h e Philosoplzyof Johrl l l c z~ ~ c yRaltimore, rg34), ch. iv. See also David F. Bowers (ed.),


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O N E H U N D R E D Y E A R S O F A M E R I C A N P H I L O S O P H Y

in 1938 in his Logic: T h e Th eor y of Inquiry. It rests on the principleof the continuurn of inquiry and on the theory that all logical forrns

(with their characteristic properties) arise within the operation ofinquiry and are concerned with control of inquiry so that it rnay yield

warranted assertions. Dewey rerninds us that the movelnent away

fro111 Aristotelian logic is closely connected with the reversed at-

titude of science toward change.

Conzplctiou of the cycle of scientific reversal may be conveniently dated fromthe appearance of Darwin's O ri gi ~t f Species. Th e very title of the book expressesa revolution in science, for the conception of biological species had been a con-

spicuous manifestation of the assumption of complete immutability. Thi sconception had been banished before Darwin from every scientific subject savebotany and zoology. But the latter had remained the bulwark of the old logicin scientific subject-matter.lD

Consciously following Peirce, Dewey expounds the new logic which

claims to have learned the lesson of the reversal the early praglnatists

helped to complete.MAX H. FISCH

U ni ve rs ity of Illinois

V o< jZ c: TIze T he or y of Itzqzhiry(N ew Yor k, 1938), pp. 3 f .D Ibid., p. 92.


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Evolution in American PhilosophyMax H. FischThe Philosophical Review , Vol. 56, No. 4. (Jul., 1947), pp. 357-373.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108%28194707%2956%3A4%3C357%3AEIAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9

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[Footnotes]

21 Chauncey Wright's Defense of Darwin and the Neutrality of SciencePhilip P. Wiener Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 6, No. 1. (Jan., 1945), pp. 19-45.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28194501%296%3A1%3C19%3ACWDODA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

27 Peirce's Metaphysical Club and the Genesis of PragmatismPhilip P. Wiener Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 7, No. 2. (Apr., 1946), pp. 218-233.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28194604%297%3A2%3C218%3APMCATG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O

28 The Pragmatic Legal Philosophy of N. St. John Green (1830-76)Philip P. Wiener Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 9, No. 1. (Jan., 1948), pp. 70-92.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28194801%299%3A1%3C70%3ATPLPON%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

30 Justice Holmes, the Prediction Theory of Law, and PragmatismM. H. FischThe Journal of Philosophy , Vol. 39, No. 4. (Feb. 12, 1942), pp. 85-97.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%2819420212%2939%3A4%3C85%3AJHTPTO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23

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40 The Evolutionism and Pragmaticism of PeircePhilip P. Wiener Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 7, No. 3. (Jun., 1946), pp. 321-350.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28194606%297%3A3%3C321%3ATEAPOP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

40 The Peirce-Langley Correspondence and Peirce's Manuscript on Hume and the Laws of

Nature (At the Smithsonian Institution)Philip P. Wiener; Charles Sanders Peirce; Samuel P. LangleyProceedings of the American Philosophical Society , Vol. 91, No. 2. (Apr. 5, 1947), pp. 201-228.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%2819470405%2991%3A2%3C201%3ATPCAPM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

47 The Revolt Against Formalism in American Social Thought of the Twentieth CenturyMorton G. White Journal of the History of Ideas , Vol. 8, No. 2. (Apr., 1947), pp. 131-152.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28194704%298%3A2%3C131%3ATRAFIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

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m. h. fisch evolution in american philosophy

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