EVOLUTIONISM AND MANS HOPE 



replete with queer sexual urges and traumas, and his conscious 

 activity is often guided by desires of economic gain or by an 

 appetite to dominate others. But man is also ashamed of his 

 defects and suffers from his depravity. He is able to construct 

 in his imagination worlds different from the actual one, and 

 can visualize himself in these imaginary worlds. His imagina- 

 tion tells him that he is not what he ought to be. Biologists 

 have been afraid to probe the terrifying depths of human nature. 

 These depths have been explored by thinkers like Plato, Dos- 

 toevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and more recently, and in what 

 I feel is fair to describe as quasi-biological and quasi-scientific 

 terms, by Freud. But the riddle of man is in part a biological 

 riddle. It is evident that Man, the whole man and not merely 

 his bodily frame, has biological components. The settings of 

 man's spiritual evolution have taken shape in his biological 

 evolution. 



Now, whether man's self-awareness is, as such, adaptive in 

 the biological meaning of the term may well be questioned. It 

 does not necessarily help man to harmonize his existence with 

 his environment. It may even be disadvantageous under many 

 conditions. Among the consequences of self-awareness are the 

 thirst for freedom and aspirations of self-transcendence. Is this 

 biologically useful to man? It rather seems that complacent 

 mediocrities and willing slaves are favored in most human so- 

 cieties. In a sense, human self-awareness and consciousness can 

 hardly be regarded as legitimate products of adaptive evolution. 

 They came, as it were, through a back door of the evolutionary 

 process. 



The hypothesis that they are products of biological evolution, 

 at all, may easily be challenged. But if not, where did they come 

 from? It is incumbent upon us to consider whether this hypo- 

 thesis can be sustained. I believe that it can; it is not an ad hoc 

 hypothesis. It is an application to man of a reasonably well- 

 known biological principle. 



5. Success and Imperfection in Evolution 



Establishment in organic evolution of adaptively useless and 

 even harmful traits is not an infrequent occurrence. This does 

 not contradict the principle of utilitarianism of natural selection. 



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