Dialectical Spiritualism: Thomas Henry Huxley

BY: SUN STAFF

Conversations wtih HDG A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, excerpted from  Dialectical Spiritualism: A Vedic View of Western Philosophy.

VIII. EVOLUTIONARY NATURALISM 
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895)

Hayagriva dasa: Huxley felt that the main difference between man and the animals is the ability to speak. In his essay "Man and the Lower Animals," he writes: "Man alone possesses the marvelous endowment of intelligible rational speech, whereby… he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost lost with the cessation of every individual life and other animals".

Srila Prabhupada: That is another misconception. Everyone speaks his own language. Animals have theirs, and human beings theirs.

Hayagriva dasa: He specifically mentions "intelligible, rational speech."

Srila Prabhupada: Animals have rational speech.

Hayagriva dasa: They may be able to articulate certain basic facts to one another, but they have no culture or history. They have not been able to accumulate and organize the experience of their species.

Srila Prabhupada: According to the Vedic tradition, the Sanskrit language is the mother of all languages and is spoken in the higher planetary systems, but this is not to say that one is an animal if he doesn't speak Sanskrit. Everyone has his own language — Englishmen, Indians, animals, birds, whatever. It is education that is really important, not language. A human being with developed consciousness can receive a spiritual education, whereas animals cannot. That is the main difference. It is not basically a question of language, because knowledge can be imparted in any language, just as we are imparting Vedic knowledge in English and other languages. It is not language that distinguishes man from the lower species, but knowledge. Animals cannot receive knowledge of God, but a human being, regardless of his language, can under stand God if knowledge is properly imparted to him.

Hayagriva dasa: Although Huxley defended Darwin's theory of evolution, he differed in his belief in the survival of those who are "ethically the best." In Evolution and Ethics, he writes: "Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest… but of those who are ethically the best."

Srila Prabhupada: The cosmic process cannot be checked. It continues functioning in different modes: goodness, passion, and ignorance. In the mode of goodness, there is advancement, but ultimately the individual has to transcend the mode of goodness to come to the platform of the all-good, the platform of pure goodness. In the material world, whatever process we accept for advancement is conditioned by goodness, passion, and ignorance. It is very difficult in the material world to keep a process pure; therefore the soul must come to the platform of goodness and then transcend it. The platform of pure goodness is called bhakti, and on that platform our transactions are only with God. It is only when we come to that platform that we can survive. Otherwise, no one survives, because everyone has to continue transmigrating from one body to another. Tatha dehantara-praptir (Bg. 2.13). However, when we come to the platform of pure goodness, we can understand God and transcend repeated birth and death.

janma karma ca me divyam 
evafn yo vetti tattvatah 
tyaktva deham punar janma 
naiti mam eti so'rjuna

"One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, 0 Arjuna." (Bg. 4.9) Apart from this, there is no meaning to survival. Survival means that the soul remains pure in its original position and does not transmigrate. Survival is only in the spiritual world, where there is no change.

Syamasundara dasa: Huxley believed that it is within our own hands to guide our ethical evolution.

Srila Prabhupada: It is certainly within our hands. First of all, you hear that it is wrong to steal and that those who steal go to jail. Then it is up to you to steal or not.

Syamasundara dasa: Huxley believed that we have to qualify ourselves ethically to be worthy to survive. It is not just a question of the physically fittest.

Srila Prabhupada: Nobody is fit to survive. This idea of survival is simply nonsense. However, we can elevate our consciousness and that of all human society by this Krsna consciousness process. This is a question of education. When we become Krsna conscious, we become worthy to survive. We no longer have to undergo the process of transmigration.

Syamasundara dasa: Huxley maintains that the most morally worthy ought to survive.

Srila Prabhupada: The most morally worthy is he who is Krsna conscious. There is no question of ought; rather, he will survive. But as far as morality is concerned, what is Huxley's morality? We say that cow killing is immoral, but others say that it is moral because by eating beef, the body is developed. Which morality is more worthy for us to select? There are many questions like this, and one person says that this is moral, whereas another says it is immoral. Of course, the meat eaters claim that morality depends on what the majority wants — that is, the majority of meat eaters. Such people will naturally agree that cow killing is very nice, but does this make cow killing moral?