Dreiser’s Supernatural Naturalism 57
“It is very necessary to presuppose some vast intelligence,
some pervading spirit, to explain the guidance of the lower
forces in accordance with the preordained system of evolu-
tion we see prevailing. Nothing less will do. . . .
“If, however, we go as far as this, we must go further. . . .
We have a perfect right, on logical and scientific grounds, to
see in all the infinitely varied products of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms, which we alone can make use of, a
preparation for ourselves, to assist in our mental develop-
ment, and to fit us for a progressively higher state of existence
as spiritual beings.” (ibid., p. 698)
A difficulty with the term “Darwinism,” in any context, is
that even Charles Darwin was not a perfect Daiwinite. As
is well known, he harmonized his authorship of The Origin
of Species with Clmstian orthodoxy, and could “see no good
reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the
religious feelings of any one” (Ch. XV: “Recapitulation and
Conclusion”). It is perhaps not so often remarked that, much
in the same spirit, he sought to reconcile his theory of natural
selection with certain older principles of Lamarckism; in-
deed, he sharply protested against a “steady misrepresenta-
tion” to the effect “that I attribute the modification of species
exclusively to natural selection” (loc. citi)-so that with some
plausibility Lysenkoism has been known as “Darwinism” in
Russia. If A. R. Wallace, fifty years after he had helped
Charles Daiwin to set the doctrine of evolution upon a firmly
naturalistic base, could reinterpret it in mystical-teleological
terms, it is not surprising to find Theodore Dreiser’s fictive
naturalism often strikingly un-“Darwinian.”
Another severe difficulty is that the first generation of
Darwinists, both biological and Rterary, lacked a sound
theory of inheritance. Conceivably, had Theodore Dreiser
been more alert to the twentieth-century developments of
Mendehan genetics, he might have advanced significantly
beyond the imaginative, intuitive determinism of Zola and