It seems probable therefore that new species may arise from some constitutional affection of parental forms—an affection mainly, if not exclusively, of their generative system. Mr. Darwin has carefully collected[235] numerous instances to show how excessively sensitive to various influences this system is. He says:[236] "Sterility is independent of general health, and is often accompanied by excess of size, or great luxuriance," and, "No one can tell, till he tries; whether any particular animal will breed under confinement, or any exotic plant seed freely under culture." Again, "When a new character arises, whatever its nature may be, it generally tends to be inherited, at least in a temporary and sometimes in a most persistent manner."[237] Yet the obscure action of conditions will alter characters long inherited, as the grandchildren of Aylesbury ducks, removed to a distant part of England, completely lost their early habit of incubation, and hatched their eggs at the same time with the common ducks of the same place.[238]
Mr. Darwin quotes Mr. Bartlett as saying: "It is remarkable that lions breed more freely in travelling collections than in the zoological gardens; probably the constant excitement and irritation produced by moving from place to place, or change of air, may have considerable influence in the matter."[239]
Mr. Darwin also says: "There is reason to believe that insects are affected by confinement like the higher animals," and he gives examples.[240]
Again, he gives examples of change of plumage in the linnet, bunting, oriole, and other birds, and of the temporary modification of the horns of a male deer during a voyage.[241]
Finally, he adds that these changes cannot be attributed to loss of health or vigour, "when we reflect how healthy, long-lived, and vigorous many animals are under captivity, such as parrots, and hawks when used for hawking, chetahs when used for hunting, and elephants. The reproductive organs themselves are not diseased; and the diseases from which animals in menageries usually perish, are not those which in any way affect their fertility. No domestic animal is more subject to disease than the sheep, yet it is remarkably prolific.... It would appear that any change in the habits of life, whatever these habits may be, if great enough, tends to affect in an inexplicable manner the powers of reproduction."
Such, then, is the singular sensitiveness of the generative system.
As to the means by which that system is affected, we see that a variety of conditions affect it; but as to the modes in which they act upon it, we have as yet little if any clue.
We have also seen the singular effects (in tailed Lepidoptera, &c.) of causes connected with geographical distribution, the mode of action of which is as yet quite inexplicable; and we have also seen the innate tendency which there appears to be in certain groups (birds of paradise, &c.) to develop peculiarities of a special kind.
It is, to say the least, probable that other influences exist, terrestrial and cosmical, as yet un-noted. The gradually accumulating or diversely combining actions of all these on highly sensitive structures, which are themselves possessed of internal responsive powers and tendencies, may well result in occasional repeated productions of forms harmonious and vigorous, and differing from the parental forms in proportion to the result of the combining or conflicting action of all external and internal influences.
If, in the past history of this planet, more causes ever intervened, or intervened more energetically than at present, we might a priori expect a richer and more various evolution of forms more radically differing than any which could be produced under conditions of more perfect equilibrium. At the same time, if it be true that the last few thousand years have been a period of remarkable and exceptional uniformity as regards this planet's astronomical relations, there are then some grounds for thinking that organic evolution may have been exceptionally depressed during the same epoch.
Now, as to the fact that sudden changes and sudden developments have occurred, and as to the probability that such changes are likely to occur, evidence was given in Chapter IV.
In Chapter V. we also saw that minerals become modified suddenly and considerably by the action of incident forces—as, e.g., the production of hexagonal tabular crystals of carbonate of copper by sulphuric acid, and of long rectangular prisms by ammonia, &c.
We have thus a certain antecedent probability that if changes are produced in specific manifestation through incident forces, these changes will be sensible and considerable, not minute and infinitesimal.
Consequently, it is probable that new species have appeared from time to time with comparative suddenness, and that they still continue so to arise if all the conditions necessary for specific evolution now obtain.
This probability will be increased if the observations of Dr. Bastian are confirmed by future investigation. According to his report, when the requisite conditions were supplied, the transformations which appeared to take place (from very low to higher organisms) were sudden, definite, and complete.
Therefore, if this is so, there must probably exist in higher forms a similar tendency to such change. That tendency may indeed be long suppressed, and ultimately modified by the action of heredity—an action which would increase in force with the increase in the perfection and complexity of the organism affected. Still we might expect that such changes as do take place would be also sudden, definite, and complete.
Moreover, as the same causes produce the same effects, several individual parent forms must often have been similarly and simultaneously affected. That they should be so affected—at least that several similarly modified individuals should simultaneously arise—has been seen to be a generally necessary circumstance for the permanent duration of such new modifications.
It is also conceivable that such new forms may be endowed with excessive constitutional strength and viability, and with generative prepotency, as was the case with the black-shouldered peacock in Sir J. Trevelyan's flock. This flock was entirely composed of the common kind, and yet the new form rapidly developed itself "to the extinction of the previously existing breed."[242]
Indeed, the notion accepted by both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, and which is plainly the fact (namely, that changes of conditions and incident forces, within limits, augment the viability and fertility of individuals), harmonizes well with the suggested possibility as to an augmented viability and prepotency in new organic forms evolved by peculiar consentaneous actions of conditions and forces, both external and internal.
The remarkable series of changes noted by Dr. Bastian were certainly not produced by external incident forces only, but by these acting on a peculiar materia, having special properties and powers. Therefore, the changes were induced by the consentaneous action of internal and external forces.[243] In the same way then, we may expect changes in higher forms to be evolved by similar united action of internal and external forces.
One other point may here be alluded to. When the remarkable way in which structure and function simultaneously change, is borne in mind; when those numerous instances in which nature has supplied similar wants by similar means, as detailed in Chapter III., are remembered; when also all the wonderful contrivances of orchids, of mimicry, and the strange complexity of certain instinctive actions are considered: then the conviction forces itself on many minds that the organic world is the expression of an intelligence of some kind. This view has been well advocated by Mr. Joseph John Murphy, in his recent work so often here referred to.
This intelligence, however, is evidently not altogether such as ours, or else has other ends in view than those most obvious to us. For the end is often attained in singularly roundabout ways, or with a prodigality of means which seems out of all proportion with the result: not with the simple action directed to one end which generally marks human activity.
Organic nature then speaks clearly to many minds of the action of an intelligence resulting, on the whole and in the main, in order, harmony, and beauty, yet of an intelligence the ways of which are not such as ours.
This view of evolution harmonizes well with Theistic conceptions; not, of course, that this harmony is brought forward as an argument in its favour generally, but it will have weight with those who are convinced that Theism reposes upon solid grounds of reason as the rational view of the universe. To such it may be observed that, thus conceived, the Divine action has that slight amount of resemblance to, and that wide amount of divergence from what human action would be, which might be expected a priori—might be expected, that is, from a Being whose nature and aims are utterly beyond our power to imagine, however faintly, but whose truth and goodness are the fountain and source of our own perceptions of such qualities.
The view of evolution maintained in this work, though arrived at in complete independence, yet seems to agree in many respects with the views advocated by Professor Owen in the last volume of his "Anatomy of Vertebrates," under the term "derivation." He says:[244] "Derivation holds that every species changes in time, by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto. 'Natural Selection' holds that no such change can take place without the influence of altered external circumstances.[245] 'Derivation' sees among the effects of the innate tendency to change irrespective of altered circumstances, a manifestation of creative power in the variety and beauty of the results; and, in the ultimate forthcoming of a being susceptible of appreciating such beauty, evidence of the pre-ordaining of such relation of power to the appreciation. 'Natural Selection' acknowledges that if ornament or beauty, in itself, should be a purpose in creation, it would be absolutely fatal to it as a hypothesis."
"'Natural Selection' sees grandeur in the view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one. 'Derivation' sees therein a narrow invocation of a special miracle and an unworthy limitation of creative power, the grandeur of which is manifested daily, hourly, in calling into life many forms, by conversion of physical and chemical into vital modes of force, under as many diversified conditions of the requisite elements to be so combined."
The view propounded in this work allows, however, a greater and more important part to the share of external influences, it being believed by the Author, however, that these external influences equally with the internal ones are the results of one harmonious action underlying the whole of nature, organic and inorganic, cosmical, physical, chemical, terrestrial, vital, and social.
According to this view, an internal law presides over the actions of every part of every individual, and of every organism as a unit, and of the entire organic world as a whole. It is believed that this conception of an internal innate force will ever remain necessary, however much its subordinate processes and actions may become explicable:
That by such a force, from time to time, new species are manifested by ordinary generation just as Pavo nigripennis appeared suddenly, these new forms not being monstrosities but harmonious self-consistent wholes. That thus, as specific distinctness is manifested by obscure sexual conditions, so in obscure sexual modifications specific distinctions arise.
That these "jumps" are considerable in comparison with the minute variations of "Natural Selection"—are in fact sensible steps, such as discriminate species from species.
That the latent tendency which exists to these sudden evolutions is determined to action by the stimulus of external conditions.
That "Natural Selection" rigorously destroys monstrosities, and abortive and feeble attempts at the performance of the evolutionary process.
That "Natural Selection" removes the antecedent species rapidly when the new one evolved is more in harmony with surrounding conditions.
That "Natural Selection" favours and develops useful variations, though it is impotent to originate them or to erect the physiological barrier which seems to exist between species.
By some such conception as this, the difficulties here enumerated, which beset the theory of "Natural Selection" pure and simple, are to be got over.
Thus, for example, the difficulties discussed in the first chapter—namely, those as to the origins and first beginnings of certain structures—are completely evaded.
Again, as to the independent origin of closely similar structures, such as the eyes of the Vertebrata and cuttle-fishes, the difficulty is removed if we may adopt the conception of an innate force similarly directed in each case, and assisted by favourable external conditions.
Specific stability, limitation to variability, and the facts of reversion, all harmonize with the view here put forward. The same may be said with regard to the significant facts of homology, and of organic symmetry; and our consideration of the hypothesis of Pangenesis in Chapter X., has seemed to result in a view as to innate powers which accords well with what is here advocated.
The evolutionary hypothesis here advocated also serves to explain all those remarkable facts which were stated in the first chapter to be explicable by the theory of Natural Selection, namely, the relation of existing to recent faunas and floras; the phenomena of homology and of rudimentary structures; also the processes gone through in development; and lastly, the wonderful facts of mimicry.
Finally, the view adopted is the synthesis of many distinct and, at first sight, conflicting conceptions, each of which contains elements of truth, and all of which it appears to be able more or less to harmonize.
Thus it has been seen that "Natural Selection" is accepted. It acts and must act, though alone it does not appear capable of fulfilling the task assigned to it by Mr. Darwin.
Pangenesis has probably also much truth in it, and has certainly afforded valuable and pregnant suggestions, but unaided and alone it seems inadequate to explain the evolution of the individual organism.
Those three conceptions of the organic world which may be spoken of as the teleological, the typical, and the transmutationist, have often been regarded as mutually antagonistic and conflicting.
The genesis of species as here conceived, however, accepts, locates, and harmonizes all the three.
Teleology concerns the ends for which organisms were designed. The recognition, therefore, that their formation took place by an evolution not fortuitous, in no way invalidates the acknowledgment of their final causes if on other grounds there are reasons for believing that such final causes exist.
Conformity to type, or the creation of species according to certain "divine ideas," is in no way interfered with by such a process of evolution as is here advocated. Such "divine ideas" must be accepted or declined upon quite other grounds than the mode of their realization, and of their manifestation in the world of sensible phenomena.
Transmutationism (an old name for the evolutionary hypothesis), which was conceived at one time to be the very antithesis to the two preceding conceptions, harmonizes well with them if the evolution be conceived to be orderly and designed. It will in the next chapter be shown to be completely in harmony with conceptions, upon the acceptance of which "final causes" and "divine ideal archetypes" alike depend.
Thus then, if the cumulative argument put forward in this book is valid, we must admit the insufficiency of Natural Selection both on account of the residuary phenomena it fails to explain, and on account of certain other phenomena which seem actually to conflict with that theory. We have seen that though the laws of nature are constant, yet some of the conditions which determine specific change may be exceptionally absent at the present epoch of the world's history; also that it is not only possible, but highly probable, that an internal power or tendency is an important if not the main agent in evoking the manifestation of new species on the scene of realized existence, and that in any case, from the facts of homology, innate internal powers to the full as mysterious must anyhow be accepted, whether they act in specific origination or not. Besides all this, we have seen that it is probable that the action of this innate power is stimulated, evoked, and determined by external conditions, and also that the same external conditions, in the shape of "Natural Selection," play an important part in the evolutionary process: and finally, it has been affirmed that the view here advocated, while it is supported by the facts on which Darwinism rests, is not open to the objections and difficulties which oppose themselves to the reception of "Natural Selection," as the exclusive or even as the main agent in the successive and orderly evolution of organic forms in the genesis of species.
THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION.
Prejudiced opinions on the subject.—"Creation" sometimes denied from prejudice.—-The unknowable.—Mr. Herbert Spencer's objections to theism; to creation.—Meanings of term "creation."—Confusion from not distinguishing between "primary" and "derivative" creation.—Mr. Darwin's objections.—Bearing of Christianity on the theory of evolution.—Supposed opposition, the result of a misconception.—Theological authority not opposed to evolution.—St. Augustin.—St. Thomas Aquinas.—Certain consequences of want of flexibility of mind.—Reason and imagination.—The first cause and demonstration.—Parallel between Christianity and natural theology.—What evolution of species is.—Professor Agassiz.—Innate powers must be recognized.—Bearing of evolution on religious belief.—Professor Huxley.—Professor Owen.—Mr. Wallace.—Mr. Darwin.—A priori conception of Divine action.—Origin of man.—Absolute creation and dogma.—Mr. Wallace's view.—A supernatural origin for man's body not necessary.—Two orders of being in man.—Two modes of origin.—Harmony of the physical, hyperphysical, and supernatural.—Reconciliation of science and religion as regards evolution.—Conclusion.
The special "Darwinian Theory" and that of an evolutionary process neither excessively minute nor fortuitous, having now been considered, it is time to turn to the important question, whether both or either of these conceptions may have any bearing, and if any, what, upon Christian belief?
Some readers will consider such an inquiry to be a work of supererogation. Seeing clearly themselves the absurdity of prevalent popular views, and the shallowness of popular objections, they may be impatient of any discussion, on the subject. But it is submitted that there are many minds worthy of the highest esteem and of every consideration, which have regarded the subject hitherto almost exclusively from one point of view; that there are some persons who are opposed to the progress (in their own minds or in that of their children or dependents) of physical scientific truth—the natural revelation—through a mistaken estimate of its religious bearings, while there are others who are zealous in its promotion from a precisely similar error. For the sake of both these then the Author may perhaps be pardoned for entering slightly on very elementary matters relating to the question, whether evolution or Darwinism have any, and if any, what, bearing on theology?
There are at least two classes of men who will certainly assert that they have a very important and highly significant bearing upon it.
One of these classes consists of persons zealous for religion indeed, but who identify orthodoxy with their own private interpretation of Scripture or with narrow opinions in which they have been brought up—opinions doubtless widely spread, but at the same time destitute of any distinct and authoritative sanction on the part of the Christian Church.
The other class is made up of men hostile to religion, and who are glad to make use of any and every argument which they think may possibly be available against it.
Some individuals within this latter class may not believe in the existence of God, but may yet abstain from publicly avowing this absence of belief, contenting themselves with denials of "creation" and "design," though these denials are really consequences of their attitude of mind respecting the most important and fundamental of all beliefs.
Without a distinct belief in a personal God it is impossible to have any religion worthy of the name, and no one can at the same time accept the Christian religion and deny the dogma of creation.
"I believe in God," "the Creator of Heaven and Earth," the very first clauses of the Apostles' Creed, formally commit those who accept them to the assertion of this belief. If, therefore, any theory of physical science really conflicts with such an authoritative statement, its importance to Christians is unquestionable.
As, however, "creation" forms a part of "revelation," and as "revelation" appeals for its acceptance to "reason" which has to prepare a basis for it by an intelligent acceptance of theism on purely rational grounds, it is necessary to start with a few words as to the reasonableness of belief in God, which indeed are less superfluous than some readers may perhaps imagine; "a few words," because this is not the place where the argument can be drawn out, but only one or two hints given in reply to certain modern objections.
No better example perhaps can be taken, as a type of these objections, than a passage in Mr. Herbert Spencer's First Principles.[246] This author constantly speaks of the "ultimate cause of things" as "the Unknowable," a term singularly unfortunate, and as Mr. James Martineau has pointed out,[247] even self-contradictory: for that entity, the knowledge of the existence of which presses itself ever more and more upon the cultivated intellect, cannot be the unknown, still less the unknowable, because we certainly know it, in that we know for certain that it exists. Nay more, to predicate incognoscibility of it, is even a certain knowledge of the mode of its existence. Mr. H. Spencer says:[248] "The consciousness of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena has been growing ever clearer; and must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intuition, and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first been progressing." One would think then that the familiar and accepted word "the Inscrutable" (which is in this passage actually employed, and to which no theologian would object) would be an indefinitely better term than "the unknowable." The above extract has, however, such a theistic aspect that some readers may think the opposition here offered superfluous; it may be well, therefore, to quote two other sentences. In another place he observes,[249] "Passing over the consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that of conceivability, we see that atheism, pantheism, and theism, when rigorously analysed, severally prove to be absolutely unthinkable;" and speaking of "every form of religion," he adds,[250] "The analysis of every possible hypothesis proves, not simply that no hypothesis is sufficient but that no hypothesis is even thinkable." The unknowable is admitted to be a power which cannot be regarded as having sympathy with us, but as one to which no emotion whatever can be ascribed, and we are expressly forbidden "by duty," to affirm personality of God as much as to deny it of Him. How such a being can be presented as an object on which to exercise religious emotion it is difficult indeed to understand.[251] Aspiration, love, devotion to be poured forth upon what we can never know, upon what we can never affirm to know, or care for, us, our thoughts or actions, or to possess the attributes of wisdom and goodness! The worship offered in such a religion must be, as Professor Huxley says,[252] "for the most part of the silent sort"—silent not only as to the spoken word, but silent as to the mental conception also. It will be difficult to distinguish the follower of this religion from the follower of none, and the man who declines either to assert or to deny the existence of God, is practically in the position of an atheist. For theism enjoins the cultivation of sentiments of love and devotion to God, and the practice of their external expression. Atheism forbids both, while the simply non-theist abstains in conformity with the prohibition of the atheist and thus practically sides with him. Moreover, since man cannot imagine that of which he has no experience in any way whatever, and since he has experience only of human perfections and of the powers and properties of inferior existences; if he be required to deny human perfections and to abstain from making use of such conceptions, he is thereby necessarily reduced to others of an inferior order. Mr. H. Spencer says,[253] "Those who espouse this alternative position, make the erroneous assumption that the choice is between personality and something lower than personality; whereas the choice is rather between personality and something higher. Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will, as these transcend mechanical motion?"
"It is true we are totally unable to conceive any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse." "May we not therefore rightly refrain from assigning to the 'ultimate cause' any attributes whatever, on the ground that such attributes, derived as they must be from our own natures, are not elevations but degradations?" The way however to arrive at the object aimed at (i.e. to obtain the best attainable conception of the First Cause) is not to refrain from the only conceptions possible to us, but to seek the very highest of these, and then declare their utter inadequacy; and this is precisely the course which has been pursued by theologians. It is to be regretted that before writing on this matter Mr. Spencer did not more thoroughly acquaint himself with the ordinary doctrine on the subject. It is always taught in the Church schools of divinity, that nothing, not even existence, is to be predicated univocally of "God" and "creatures;" that after exhausting ingenuity to arrive at the loftiest possible conceptions, we must declare them to be utterly inadequate; that, after all, they are but accommodations to human infirmity; that they are in a sense objectively false (because of their inadequacy), though subjectively and very practically true. But the difference between this mode of treatment and that adopted by Mr. Spencer is wide indeed; for the practical result of the mode inculcated by the Church is that each one may freely affirm and act upon the highest human conceptions he can attain of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, His watchful care, His loving providence for every man, at every moment and in every need; for the Christian knows that the falseness of his conceptions lies only in their inadequacy; he may therefore strengthen and refresh himself, may rejoice and revel in conceptions of the goodness of God, drawn from the tenderest human images of fatherly care and love, or he may chasten and abase himself by consideration of the awful holiness and unapproachable majesty of the Divinity derived from analogous sources, knowing that no thought of man can ever be true enough, can ever attain the incomprehensible reality, which nevertheless really is all that can be conceived, plus an inconceivable infinity beyond.
A good illustration of what is here meant, and of the difference between the theistic position and Mr. Spencer's, may be supplied by an example he has himself proposed. Thus,[254] he imagines an intelligent watch speculating as to its maker, and conceiving of him in terms of watch-being, and figuring him as furnished with springs, escapements, cogged wheels, &c., his motions facilitated by oil—in a word, like himself. It is assumed by Mr. Spencer that this necessary watch conception would be completely false, and the illustration is made use of to show "the presumption of theologians"—the absurdity and unreasonableness of those men who figure the incomprehensible cause of all phenomena as a Being in some way comparable with man. Now, putting aside for the moment all other considerations, and accepting the illustration, surely the example demonstrates rather the unreasonableness of the objector himself! It is true, indeed, that a man is an organism indefinitely more complex and perfect than any watch; but if the watch could only conceive of its maker in watch terms, or else in terms altogether inferior, the watch would plainly be right in speaking of its maker as a, to it, inconceivably perfect kind of watch, acknowledging at the same time, that this, its conception of him, was utterly inadequate, although the best its inferior nature allowed it to form. For if, instead of so conceiving of its maker, it refused to make use of these relative perfections as a makeshift, and so necessarily thought of him as amorphous metal, or mere oil, or by the help of any other inferior conception which a watch might be imagined capable of entertaining, that watch would he wrong indeed. For man can much more properly be compared with, and has much more affinity to, a perfect watch in full activity than to a mere piece of metal, or drop of oil. But the watch is even more in the right still, for its maker, man, virtually has the cogged wheels, springs, escapements, oil, &c., which the watch's conception has been supposed to attribute to him; inasmuch as all these parts must have existed as distinct ideas in the human watchmaker's mind before he could actually construct the clock formed by him. Nor is even this all, for, by the hypothesis, the watch thinks. It must, therefore, think of its maker as "a thinking being," and in this it is absolutely and completely right.[255] Either, therefore, the hypothesis is absurd or it actually demonstrates the very position it was chosen to refute. Unquestionably, then, on the mere ground taken by Mr. Herbert Spencer himself, if we are compelled to think of the First Cause either in human terms (but with human imperfections abstracted and human perfections carried to the highest conceivable degree), or, on the other hand, in terms decidedly inferior, such as those are driven to who think of Him, but decline to accept as a help the term "personality;" there can be no question but that the first conception is immeasurably nearer the truth than the second. Yet the latter is the one put forward and advocated by that author in spite of its unreasonableness, and in spite also of its conflicting with the whole moral nature of man and all his noblest aspirations.
Again, Mr. Herbert Spencer objects to the conception of God as "first cause," on the ground that "when our symbolic conceptions are such that no cumulative or indirect processes of thought can enable us to ascertain that there are corresponding actualities, nor any predictions be made whose fulfilment can prove this, then they are altogether vicious and illusive, and in no way distinguishable from pure fictions."[256]
Now, it is quite true that "symbolic conceptions," which are not to be justified either (1) by presentations of sense, or (2) by intuitions, are invalid as representations of real truth. Yet the conception of God referred to is justified by our primary intuitions, and we can assure ourselves that it does stand for an actuality by comparing it with (1) our intuitions of free-will and causation, and (2) our intuitions of morality and responsibility. That we have these intuitions is a point on which the Author joins issue with Mr. Spencer, and confidently affirms that they cannot logically be denied without at the same time complete and absolute scepticism resulting from such denial—scepticism wherein vanishes any certainty as to the existence both of Mr. Spencer and his critic, and by which it is equally impossible to have a thought free from doubt, or to go so far as to affirm the existence of that very doubt or of the doubter who doubts it.
It may not be amiss here to protest against the intolerable assumption of a certain school, who are continually talking in lofty terms of "science," but who actually speak of primary religious conceptions as "unscientific," and habitually employ the word "science," when they should limit it by the prefix "physical." This is the more amazing as not a few of this school adopt the idealist philosophy, and affirm that "matter and force" are but names for certain "modes of consciousness." It might be expected of them at least to admit that opinions which repose on primary and fundamental intuitions, are especially and par excellence scientific.
Such are some of the objections to the Christian conception of God. We may now turn to those which are directed against God as the Creator, i.e. as the absolute originator of the universe, without the employment of any pre-existing means or material. This is again considered by Mr. Spencer as a thoroughly illegitimate symbolic conception, as much so as the atheistic one—the difficulty as to a self-existent Creator being in his opinion equal to that of a self-existent universe. To this it may be replied that both are of course equally unimaginable, but that it is not a question of facility of conception—not which is easiest to conceive, but which best accounts for, and accords with, psychological facts; namely, with the above-mentioned intuitions. It is contended that we have these primary intuitions, and that with these the conception of a self-existent Creator is perfectly harmonious. On the other hand, the notion of a self-existent universe—that there is no real distinction between the finite and the infinite—that the universe and ourselves are one and the same things with the infinite and the self-existent; these assertions, in addition to being unimaginable, contradict our primary intuitions.
Mr. Darwin's objections to "Creation" are of quite a different kind, and, before entering upon them, it will be well to endeavour clearly to understand what we mean by "Creation," in the various senses in which the term may be used.
In the strictest and highest sense "Creation" is the absolute origination of anything by God without pre-existing means or material, and is a supernatural act.[257]
In the secondary and lower sense, "Creation" is the formation of anything by God derivatively; that is, that the preceding matter has been created with the potentiality to evolve from it, under suitable conditions, all the various forms it subsequently assumes. And this power having been conferred by God in the first instance, and those laws and powers having been instituted by Him, through the action of which the suitable conditions are supplied, He is said in this lower sense to create such various subsequent forms. This is the natural action of God in the physical world, as distinguished from His direct, or, as it may be here called, supernatural action.
In yet a third sense, the word "Creation" may be more or less improperly applied to the construction of any complex formation or state by a voluntary self-conscious being who makes use of the powers and laws which God has imposed, as when a man is spoken of as the creator of a museum, or of "his own fortune," &c. Such action of a created conscious intelligence is purely natural, but more than physical, and may be conveniently spoken of as hyperphysical.
We have thus (1) direct or supernatural action; (2) physical action; and (3) hyperphysical action—-the two latter both belonging to the order of nature.[258] Neither the physical nor the hyperphysical actions, however, exclude the idea of the Divine concurrence, and with every consistent theist that idea is necessarily included. Dr. Asa Gray has given expression to this.[259] He says, "Agreeing that plants and animals were produced by Omnipotent fiat, does not exclude the idea of natural order and what we call secondary causes. The record of the fiat—'Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,' &c., 'let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind'—seems even to imply them," and leads to the conclusion that the various kinds were produced through natural agencies.
Now, much confusion has arisen from not keeping clearly in view this distinction between absolute creation and derivative creation. With the first, physical science has plainly nothing whatever to do, and is impotent to prove or to refute it. The second is also safe from any attack on the part of physical science, for it is primarily derived from psychical not physical phenomena. The greater part of the apparent force possessed by objectors to creation, like Mr. Darwin, lies in their treating the assertion of derivative creation as if it was an assertion of absolute creation, or at least of supernatural action. Thus, he asks whether some of his opponents believe "that at innumerable periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues."[260] Certain of Mr. Darwin's objections, however, are not physical, but metaphysical, and really attack the dogma of secondary or derivative creation, though to some perhaps they may appear to be directed against absolute creation only.
Thus he uses, as an illustration, the conception of a man who builds an edifice from fragments of rock at the base of a precipice, by selecting for the construction of the various parts of the building the pieces which are the most suitable owing to the shape they happen to have broken into. Afterwards, alluding to this illustration, he says,[261] "The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct, for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws, on the nature of the rock, on the lines of stratification or cleavage, on the form of the mountain which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly, on the storm and earthquake which threw down the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may strictly be said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware that I am travelling beyond my proper province."
"An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him; but can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes, so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it with any greater probability be maintained that He specially ordained, for the sake of the breeder, each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants—many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary, in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But, if we give up the principle in one case—-if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided, in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigour, might be formed,—no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that the variations, alike in nature, and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through Natural Selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief that 'variation has been led along certain beneficial lines,' like a stream 'along definite and useful lines of irrigation.'"
"If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time pre-ordained, the plasticity of the organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the Natural Selection and survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of freewill and predestination."
Before proceeding to reply to this remarkable passage, it may be well to remind some readers that belief in the existence of God, in His primary creation of the universe, and in His derivative creation of all kinds of being, inorganic and organic, do not repose upon physical phenomena, but, as has been said, on primary intuitions. To deny or ridicule any of these beliefs on physical grounds is to commit the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi. It is to commit an absurdity analogous to that of saying a blind child could not recognize his father because he could not see him, forgetting that he could hear and feel him. Yet there are some who appear to find it unreasonable and absurd that men should regard phenomena in a light not furnished by or deducible from the very phenomena themselves, although the men so regarding them avow that the light in which they do view them comes from quite another source. It is as if a man, A, coming into B's room and finding there a butterfly, should insist that B had no right to believe that the butterfly had not flown in at the open window, inasmuch as there was nothing about the room or insect to lead to any other belief; while B can well sustain his right so to believe, he having met C, who told him he brought in the chrysalis and, having seen the insect emerge, took away the skin.
By a similarly narrow and incomplete view the assertion that human conceptions, such as "the vertebrate idea," &c., are ideas in the mind of God, is sometimes ridiculed; as if the assertors either on the one hand pretended to some prodigious acuteness of mind—a far-reaching genius not possessed by most naturalists—or, on the other hand, as if they detected in the very phenomena furnishing such special conception evidences of Divine imaginings. But let the idea of God, according to the highest conceptions of Christianity, be once accepted, and then it becomes simply a truism to say that the mind of the Deity contains all that is good and positive in the mind of man, plus, of course, an absolutely inconceivable infinity beyond. That thus such human conceptions may, nay must, be asserted to be at the same time ideas in the Divine mind also, as every real and separate individual that has been, is, or shall be, is present to the same mind. Nay, more, that such human conceptions are but faint and obscure adumbrations of corresponding ideas which exist in the mind of God in perfection and fulness.[262]
The theist, having arrived at his theistic convictions from quite other sources than a consideration of zoological or botanical phenomena, returns to the consideration of such phenomena and views them in a theistic light without of course asserting or implying that such light has been derived from them, or that there is an obligation of reason so to view them on the part of others who refuse to enter upon or to accept those other sources whence have been derived the theistic convictions of the theist.
But Mr. Darwin is not guilty of arguing against metaphysical ideas on physical grounds only, for he employs very distinctly metaphysical ones; namely, his conceptions of the nature and attributes of the First Cause. But what conceptions does he offer us? Nothing but that low anthropomorphism which, unfortunately, he so often seems to treat as the necessary result of Theism. It is again the dummy, helpless and deformed, set up merely for the purpose of being knocked down.
It must once more be insisted on, that though man is indeed compelled to conceive of God in human terms, and to speak of Him by epithets objectively false, from their hopeless inadequacy, yet nevertheless the Christian thinker declares that inadequacy in the strongest manner, and vehemently rejects from his idea of God all terms distinctly implying infirmity or limitation.
Now, Mr. Darwin speaks as if all who believe in the Almighty were compelled to accept as really applicable to the Deity conceptions which affirm limits and imperfections. Thus he says: "Can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered" "that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes, so that the builder might erect his edifice?"
Why, surely every theist must maintain that in the first foundation of the universe—the primary and absolute creation—God saw and knew every purpose which every atom and particle of matter should ever subserve in all suns and systems, and throughout all coming æons of time. It is almost incredible, but nevertheless it seems necessary to think that the difficulty thus proposed rests on a sort of notion that amidst the boundless profusion of nature there is too much for God to superintend; that the number of objects is too great for an infinite and omnipresent being to attend singly to each and all in their due proportions and needs! In the same way Mr. Darwin asks whether God can have ordered the race variations referred to in the passage last quoted, for the considerations therein mentioned. To this it may be at once replied that even man often has several distinct intentions and motives for a single action, and the theist has no difficulty in supposing that, out of an infinite number of motives, the motive mentioned in each case may have been an exceedingly subordinate one. The theist, though properly attributing to God what, for want of a better term, he calls "purpose" and "design," yet affirms that the limitations of human purposes and motives are by no means applicable to the Divine "purposes." Out of many, say a thousand million, reasons for the institution of the laws of the physical universe, some few are to a certain extent conceivable by us; and amongst these the benefits, material and moral, accruing from them to men, and to each individual man in every circumstance of his life, play a certain, perhaps a very subordinate, part.[263] As Baden Powell observes, "How can we undertake to affirm, amid all the possibilities of things of which we confessedly know so little, that a thousand ends and purposes may not be answered, because we can trace none, or even imagine none, which seem to our short-sighted faculties to be answered in these particular arrangements?"[264]
The objection to the bull-dog's ferocity in connexion with "man's brutal sport" opens up the familiar but vast question of the existence of evil, a problem the discussion of which would be out of place here. Considering, however, the very great stress which is laid in the present day on the subject of animal suffering by so many amiable and excellent people, one or two remarks on that matter may not be superfluous. To those who accept the belief in God, the soul and moral responsibility; and recognize the full results of that acceptance—to such, physical suffering and moral evil are simply incommensurable. To them the placing of non-moral beings in the same scale with moral agents will be utterly unendurable. But even considering physical pain only, all must admit that this depends greatly on the mental condition of the sufferer. Only during consciousness does it exist, and only in the most highly-organized men does it reach its acme. The Author has been assured that lower races of men appear less keenly sensitive to physical pain than do more cultivated and refined human beings. Thus only in man can there really be any intense degree of suffering, because only in him is there that intellectual recollection of past moments and that anticipation of future ones, which constitute in great part the bitterness of suffering.[265] The momentary pang, the present pain, which beasts endure, though real enough, is yet, doubtless, not to be compared as to its intensity with the suffering which is produced in man through his high prerogative of self-consciousness.[266]
As to the "beneficial lines" (of Dr. Asa Gray, before referred to), some of the facts noticed in the preceding chapters seem to point very decidedly in that direction, but all must admit that the actual existing outcome is far more "beneficial" than the reverse. The natural universe has resulted in the development of an unmistakable harmony and beauty, and in a decided preponderance of good and of happiness over their opposites.
Even if "laws of nature" did appear, on the theistic hypothesis, to be "superfluous" (which it is by no means intended here to admit), it would be nothing less than puerile to prefer rejecting the hypothesis to conceiving that the appearance of superfluity was probably due to human ignorance; and this especially might be expected from naturalists to whom the interdependence of nature and the harmony and utility of obscure phenomena are becoming continually more clear, as, e.g., the structure of orchids to their illustrious expositor.
Having now cleared the ground somewhat, we may turn to the question what bearing Christian dogma has upon evolution, and whether Christians, as such, need take up any definite attitude concerning it.
As has been said, it is plain that physical science and "evolution" can have nothing whatever to do with absolute or primary creation. The Rev. Baden Powell well expresses this, saying: "Science demonstrates incessant past changes, and dimly points to yet earlier links in a more vast series of development of material existence; but the idea of a beginning, or of creation, in the sense of the original operation of the Divine volition to constitute nature and matter, is beyond the province of physical philosophy."[267]
With secondary or derivative creation, physical science is also incapable of conflict; for the objections drawn by some writers seemingly from physical science, are, as has been already argued, rather metaphysical than physical.
Derivative creation is not a supernatural act, but is simply the Divine action by and through natural laws. To recognize such action in such laws is a religious mode of regarding phenomena, which a consistent theist must necessarily accept, and which an atheistic believer must similarly reject. But this conception, if deemed superfluous by any naturalist, can never be shown to be false by any investigations concerning natural laws, the constant action of which it presupposes.
The conflict has arisen through a misunderstanding. Some have supposed that by "creation" was necessarily meant either primary, that is, absolute creation, or, at least, some supernatural action; they have therefore opposed the dogma of "creation" in the imagined interest of physical science.
Others have supposed that by "evolution" was necessarily meant a denial of Divine action, a negation of the providence of God. They have therefore combated the theory of "evolution" in the imagined interest of religion.
It appears plain then that Christian thinkers are perfectly free to accept the general evolution theory. But are there any theological authorities to justify this view of the matter?
Now, considering how extremely recent are these biological speculations, it might hardly be expected a priori that writers of earlier ages should have given expression to doctrines harmonizing in any degree with such very modern views,[268] nevertheless such most certainly is the case, and it would be easy to give numerous examples. It will be better, however, only to cite one or two authorities of weight. Now, perhaps no writer of the earlier Christian ages could be quoted whose authority is more generally recognized than that of St. Augustin. The same may be said of the mediæval period, for St. Thomas Aquinas; and, since the movement of Luther, Suarez may be taken as a writer widely venerated as an authority and one whose orthodoxy has never been questioned.
It must be borne in mind that for a considerable time after even the last of these writers no one had disputed the generally received view as to the small age of the world or at least of the kinds of animals and plants inhabiting it. It becomes therefore much more striking if views formed under such a condition of opinion are found to harmonize with modern ideas regarding "Creation" and organic life.
Now St. Augustin insists in a very remarkable manner on the merely derivative sense in which God's creation of organic forms is to be understood; that is, that God created them by conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions. He says in his book on Genesis:[269] "Terrestria animalia, tanquam ex ultimo elemento mundi ultima; nihilominus potentialiter, quorum numeros tempus postea visibiliter explicaret."
Again he says:—
"Sicut autem in ipso grano invisibiliter erant omnia simul, quæ per tempora in arborem surgerent; ita ipse mundus cogitandus est, cum Deus simul omnia creavit, habuisse simul omnia quæ in illo et cum illo facta sunt quando factus est dies; non solum cœlum cum sole et lunâ et sideribus ... ; sed etiam illa quæ aqua et terra produxit potentialiter atque causaliter, priusquam per temporum moras ita exorirentur, quomodo nobis jam nota sunt in eis operibus, quæ Deus usque nunc operatur."[270]
"Omnium quippe rerum quæ corporaliter visibiliterque nascuntur, occulta quædam semina in istis corporeis mundi hujus elementis latent."[271]
And again: "Ista quippe originaliter ac primordialiter in quadam textura elementorum cuncta jam creata sunt; sed acceptis opportunitatibus prodeunt."[272]
St. Thomas Aquinas, as was said in the first chapter, quotes with approval the saying of St. Augustin that in the first institution of nature we do not look for Miracles, but for the laws of Nature: "In prima institutione naturæ non quæritur miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat, ut Augustinus dicit."[273]
Again, he quotes with approval St. Augustin's assertion that the kinds were created only derivatively, "potentialiter tantum."[274]
Also he says, "In prima autem rerum institutione fuit principium activum verbum Dei, quod de materia elementari produxit animalia, vel in actu vel virtute, secundum Aug. lib. 5 de Gen. ad lit. c. 5."[275]
Speaking of "kinds" (in scholastic phraseology "substantial forms") latent in matter, he says: "Quas quidam posuerunt non incipere per actionem naturæ sed prius in materia exstitisse, ponentes latitationem formarum. Et hoc accidit eis ex ignorantia materiæ, quia nesciebant distinguere inter potentiam et actum. Quia enim formæ præexistunt eas simpliciter præexistere."[276]
Also Cornelius à Lapide[277] contends that at least certain animals were not absolutely, but only derivatively created, saying of them, "Non fuerunt creata formaliter, sed potentialiter."
As to Suarez, it will be enough to refer to Disp. xv., 2, n. 9, p. 508, t. i. Edition Vives, Paris; also Nos. 13—15, and many other references to the same effect could easily be given, but these may suffice.
It is then evident that ancient and most venerable theological authorities distinctly assert derivative creation, and thus harmonize with all that modern science can possibly require.
It may indeed truly be said with Roger Bacon, "The saints never condemned many an opinion which the moderns think ought to be condemned."[278]
The various extracts given show clearly how far "evolution" is from any necessary opposition to the most orthodox theology. The same may be said of spontaneous generation. The most recent form of it, lately advocated by Dr. H. Charlton Bastian,[279] teaches that matter exists in two different forms, the crystalline (or statical) and the colloidal (or dynamical) conditions. It also teaches that colloidal matter, when exposed to certain conditions, presents the phenomena of life, and that it can be formed from crystalline matter, and thus that the prima materia of which these are diverse forms contains potentially all the multitudinous kinds of animal and vegetable existence. This theory moreover harmonizes well with the views here advocated, for just as crystalline matter builds itself, under suitable conditions, along certain definite lines, so analogously colloidal matter has its definite lines and directions of development. It is not collected in haphazard, accidental aggregations, but evolves according to its proper laws and special properties.
The perfect orthodoxy of these views is unquestionable. Nothing is plainer from the venerable writers quoted, as well as from a mass of other authorities, than that "the supernatural" is not to be looked for or expected in the sphere of mere nature. For this statement there is a general consensus of theological authority.
The teaching which the Author has received is, that God is indeed inscrutable and incomprehensible to us from the infinity of His attributes, so that our minds can, as it were, only take in, in a most fragmentary and indistinct manner (as through a glass darkly), dim conceptions of infinitesimal portions of His inconceivable perfection. In this way the partial glimpses obtained by us in different modes differ from each other; not that God is anything but the most perfect unity, but that apparently conflicting views arise from our inability to apprehend Him, except in this imperfect manner, i.e. by successive slight approximations along different lines of approach. Sir William Hamilton has said,[280] "Nature conceals God, and man reveals Him." It is not, according to the teaching spoken of, exactly thus; but rather that physical nature reveals to us one side, one aspect of the Deity, while the moral and religious worlds bring us in contact with another, and at first, to our apprehension, a very different one. The difference and discrepancy, however, which is at first felt, is soon seen to proceed not from the reason but from a want of flexibility in the imagination. This want is far from surprising. Not only may a man naturally be expected to be an adept in his own art, but at the same time to show an incapacity for a very different mode of activity.[281] We rarely find an artist who takes much interest in jurisprudence, or a prizefighter who is an acute metaphysician. Nay, more than this, a positive distaste may grow up, which, in the intellectual order, may amount to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in that which appears to be in opposition to the more familiar concept, and this at all times. It is often and truly said, "that past ages were pre-eminently credulous as compared with our own, yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the credulity, as in the direction which it takes."[282]
Dr. Newman observes: "Any one study, of whatever kind, exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, nay the perception of any other. Thus Cicero says, that Plato and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might have respectively excelled in each other's province, but that each was absorbed in his own. Specimens of this peculiarity occur every day. You can hardly persuade some men to talk about anything but their own pursuit; they refer the whole world to their own centre, and measure all matters by their own rule, like the fisherman in the drama, whose eulogy on his deceased lord was 'he was so fond of fish.'"[283]
The same author further says:[284] "When anything, which comes before us, is very unlike what we commonly experience, we consider it on that account untrue; not because it really shocks our reason as improbable, but because it startles our imagination as strange. Now, revelation presents to us a perfectly different aspect of the universe from that presented by the sciences. The two informations are like the distinct subjects represented by the lines of the same drawing, which, accordingly as they are read on their concave or convex side, exhibit to us now a group of trees with branches and leaves, and now human faces." ... "While then reason and revelation are consistent in fact, they often are inconsistent in appearance; and this seeming discordance acts most keenly on the imagination, and may suddenly expose a man to the temptation, and even hurry him on to the commission of definite acts of unbelief, in which reason itself really does not come into exercise at all."[285]
Thus we find in fact just that distinctness between the ideas derived from physical science on the one hand and from religion on the other, which we might a priori expect if there exists that distinctness between the natural and the miraculous which theological authorities lay down.
Assuming, for argument's sake, the truth of Christianity, it evidently has not been the intention of its Author to make the evidence for it so plain that its rejection would be the mark of intellectual incapacity. Conviction is not forced upon men in the way that the knowledge that the government of England is constitutional, or that Paris is the capital of France, is forced upon all who choose to inquire into those subjects. The Christian system is one which puts on the strain, as it were, every faculty of man's nature, and the intellect is not (any more than we should a priori expect it to be) exempted from taking part in the probationary trial. A moral element enters into the acceptance of that system.
And so with natural religion—with those ideas of the supernatural, viz. God, Creation, and Morality, which are anterior to revelation and repose upon reason. Here again it evidently has not been the intention of the Creator to make the evidence of His existence so plain that its non-recognition would be the mark of intellectual incapacity. Conviction, as to theism, is not forced upon men as is the conviction of the existence of the sun at noon-day.[286] A moral element enters also here, and the analogy there is in this respect between Christianity and theism speaks eloquently of their primary derivation from one common author.