But the same Rules may not apply to man. Man is not a trillion times more complicated than an electron; he is trillions of times more complicated than a unit cell, which in turn is trillions of times more complicated than an atomic particle. So one man’s life may be completely without purpose, have no evolutionary undercurrent, be without even the ability to desire to be like the Creator; whereas another may have purpose and the desire to know his Creator. The first may die, and disintegrate into a heap of dust; and that will be that. “Full stop. No more explanation needed”, as young girls say when in love. Another man may have the capacity to reach heaven, or if he is too ambitious, hell. And we bump up against Calvin’s ideas on predestination; not ideas that I have ever liked, but then of course one must embrace the truth even if is very depressing truth. And the truth for one man may not be the truth for another. Who says it should be?
It is fashionable nowadays to discredit Lamarck, and his ideas of inherited characteristics. Yet Darwin agreed with Lamarck’s views; so it is difficult to suggest there can be a serious conflict between natural selection and inherited characteristics. Again the mistake of those biologists who disagree is surely to think on too small a scale. This is why I keep emphasising that science’s greatest gift is to have given us back the cosmic outlook; the ability to see things as a whole. I accept that if a biologist says that inheriting characteristics through the genes is just not possible, the high probability is he is right. His mistake is to think that inheritance must be through the genes, because that is what he knows about. On the contrary, inheritance can come through the atmosphere of the home, books, education, the ethos of school, the esprit de corps of Regiment, the conventions of a profession. In ordinary speech all this is called an inheritance; and it is correct in every sense to describe it so. Indeed such an inheritance may be a more powerful influence in life, than the inheritance of genes. If Lamarck made a mistake, it may have been no more than attributing to genes a function in creating what he saw clearly enough in the world of the spirit, either in whole or in part.
I could quite understand a biologist saying that his lifetime’s study of natural selection had led him to think that God played no part in it. He might have given the process a push to start with; but after that [if He existed at all] He remained transcendent in his heaven. But firstly, why need evolution be a single stranded process? Why should not inherited characteristics be at least as important, once creatures have achieved a certain consciousness? And secondly, if you argue that studying natural selection proves the absence of God, why not go on to say it proves the world of the spirit is an illusion too? Proves that all imagination, all poetry and beauty, all love and mutual affection, all truth in the Law Courts, all heroism in War and all ruthlessness in conflict, is a bi-product of biochemical reactions in the brain, set in motion by the genes?