Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

An Evolutionary Problem

THE London Times Literary Supplement (July 27, 1946), in the course of a critical estimate of Bernard Shaw, writes:

"Mr. Shaw pats Lamarck on the back and accepts his theory that 'living organisms change because they want to'.

If you have no eyes and want to see and keep trying to see, you will finally get eyes. If, like a mole or a subterranean fish, you have eyes and don't want to see, you will lose your eyes. If you like eating the tender tops of trees enough to make you concentrate all your energies on the stretching of your neck, you will eventually get a long neck like the giraffe.

But the metaphysics here are surely false. If a species has no eyes, has never possessed eyes, is unconscious of sight, or of the fact that there are sights to be seen, is unaware of any necessity for sight, how can that species desire sight or will itself into the possession of eyes? We can only will what we need."

I am afraid the metaphysics here found fault with is not surely false, it is the critic's appreciation that is at fault. The metaphysics is perhaps somewhat too physical in its imagery and terminology, that is to say, graphic in the Shavian manner, but the matter seems to us quite all right. What the critic fails to understand is that it is not the conscious idea in the mind that brings about its concrete realisation. What is there at the outset in the evolutionary urge is a life-force, blind, no doubt in the usual sense, but driving towards greater expression and articulation, towards a more and more conscious and clear perception of ends and means. Thus, for example,

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growth simply means a gradual enlargement of that form – but that there is a pattern of ultimate particles – vital quanta – a rhythm and vibration of life energy, that is the origin, the formal and efficient cause, of the material form. Deeper still, behind the blind instinctive urge of life, the unconsciousness that is the inertia of matter, there is a consciousness, a vision, a supernal self-conscious energy that inspires, guides, fashions the whole evolutionary scheme in the large as well as in all details.

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