Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Evolution’s Culs-de-sac
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (March 11, 1911) : 21
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One vaguely takes it for granted, if one is a woman and has been brought up without the stimulating discomfort of male relations, that the theory of evolution works on a straight line of one stage revolving into the next, one species ascending by gradual changes to that above it. Which makes a casual, if illuminating, harangue on the subject productive of much valuable matter in that it disclosed the fact that, though the current of life went straight on until it reached man, conditions made a number of creatures branch off and run down culs-de-sac where they most ignomiously remained as they were. It is safe to imply that the same is still happening and at that point one secures possession of an idea that gives a genuine and most permeating comfort. There is no need of further explanations or elucidations. They might contradict, or at least dilute the wholly desirable bit one has caught. It is perfect as it stands, and all can see on the first moment of gazing at it in its simple beauty that it is the type of idea that, for months, to come, until it is worn and threadbare, will explain and put the final word to all manner of things heretofore puzzling. When anything seems too annoyingly strange, announce it as being in a cul-de-sac. When anything seems too annoyingly strange, announce it as being in a cul-de-sac. There will be such solid satisfaction in having a place to clap all those people with whom one cannot live in comfort until they have been disposed of by a diagnosis.
A giraffe must always expect to be a giraffe, a fish must always expect to be a fish, and so must a person who likes crude fiction. That is not to say that there is any necessity for her resigning herself to being either a fish or a giraffe, but only to the hopeless fate of forever being a person who likes her fiction crude. It would not be reasonable for her to expect to progress to higher stages after once having taken such a false step. A momentary weakness on a railway carriage may have tricked her to her fall, but she undeniably loitered; her eyes were caught by cheap scenic effects, just as were the eyes of the poor little things who found themselves irretrievably fishes and longed to join the rest who were evolving to more human stages.
All the poor, provincial-point-of-view people are lost. We always knew it, but we never knew that the blind end they had reached could be proved scientifically; that they were, in fact, just sad examples of the sternness of Nature’s laws. There never has been a bigger cul-de-sac than Surburbia. The poor souls there are simply done for and we need not marvel any more. The desire we have each of us felt for a means by which we could differentiate between ourselves and other people, not all people, but the trying kind who get in one’s way and block things with their closed minds, is at last supplied, and we now see clearly that almost every one is side-tracked beyond help, while just you and a few choice spirits are to your certain knowledge going on. It is almost superfluous to add that the tune to which we go is a shameless crow of triumph. There have been incidents all along the way, as far back as one can remember, that now, in the light of this new knowledge, are interpreted as very narrow escapes for the choice spirits who accompany you. Those moments when, under a momentary cloud, they, unable to see your point of view, disagreed with you and were even on the point of stubbornly turning off and going down what looked to you suspiciously like a side road, had their happy endings only because you rushed after the foolish creatures, argued them to exhaustion, and dragged them back just in the nick of time to what you unhesitatingly believed to be mid-current. If it shouldn’t be, if in a careless moment you — Ah, but that is unthinkable and most unlikely! Some one would have given a friendly warning; something inside tells you that you have been saved to future stages.
There is an impression in certain feminine minds that the blind alley most thickly populated and most pathetic in its arrested development is that one taken long since by the species known as man, at the juncture where the women alone kept on the advancing road and the men, blinded...There is an impression in certain feminine minds that the blind alley most thickly populated and most pathetic in its arrested development is that one taken long since by the species known as man, at the juncture where the women alone kept on the advancing road and the men, blinded for the time being by their own infuriated snorts of, “Oh, you women!” took the step that has landed them where they are now. But this is a theory one does not like to give support to, as it may prove to be merely a temporary muddying of the stream, and, when we come out into clearer waters, we may be very much surprised and, of course, tremendously pleased to find the men still of our company. At any rate, the matter has not become sufficiently Eocene to make a discussion of it entirely mannerly.
Just as it began to seem impossible that evolution should contain anything farther of the slightest human interest, a fact was disclosed that made the feminine part of the gathering cry out in disappointment that anything as diverting as an education had been withheld from them. Nothing but convulsed delight was a proper reception for the announcement that a creature capable of living in two elements was considered lower than those capable of but living in one. Oh, that amazing, consistent, thrifty old woman, Nature! How often have we seen individuals seriously incommoded by their amphibious potentialities, the world telling them it was a wonderful thing to be so many-sided, we pitying them for their deplorably heavy handicap, never guessing it to be a law of the world that he who can live both on land and in the water should do neither with great success, but, seemingly talented beyond the rest of his kind, should spend his time flopping lamely from one element to the other and receiving nothing but blame for his failure to flourish startlingly in both mediums! Naturally, he can do nothing, and they knew it was going to be impossible ’way back in the chaotic beginning of things, and discouraged legs that walked in different directions, leaving the body they had undertaken to carry precisely where it started, or, worse, sprawling at the side of the road, unable to do as much as keep upright. To think that facts could be so relevant! It opens up a vague hope that facts may have something in them, after all, and only be staggering under an undesirable reputation because of the masculine patronage under which they have long suffered.
5 August 2026