Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics

Chapter 6

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[34] Article on "Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation," in "Macmillan"s Magazine" for 1871, pp. 152 et seq.

[35] The quotations, of which those in the text are abridgments, will be found in "Lay Sermons," xiv. pp. 364-7.

CHAPTER V.

_RECENT PHASES OF SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM._

"Wonder is the basis of worship. That progress of science which is to destroy wonder, and in its stead subst.i.tute mensuration and numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates those two latter processes."--_Sartor Resartus._

By the train of thought pursued in the last chapter, we were led to the conclusion, not, indeed, that matter has no existence, but that its nature or const.i.tution is altogether different from what is commonly supposed. The difference thus discovered does not, however, imply any corresponding difference with respect to the properties--_sensible_ properties, as they are commonly called--whereby matter affects the senses. Equally, whether matter be, in all and each of its various species, inanimate, inert, pa.s.sive substance, or a combination of self-acting forces--equally whether it be the author or merely the subject of whatever activity it manifests, that activity is equally manifested in certain sequences which are as unvarying as if they were prescribed by inexorable and irresistible laws, and which, indeed, by a convenient, though exceedingly treacherous metaphor, are usually styled laws--laws of Nature when spoken of collectively, laws of attraction, repulsion, gravitation, motion, heat, light, and the like, when separately referred to. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, however closely we pry, into whatever depths of infinity we peer, we observe the most perfect harmony between structure and law, law moulding structure and structure utilising law. Afar off we descry systems upon systems, solar and sidereal, like sand upon the sea-sh.o.r.e for mult.i.tude, and every individual orb thereof rotating or revolving in strictest accordance with inflexible mathematical principles, and evidently owing to the previous influence of those same principles its characteristic configuration. Near at hand we discern organic forms innumerable, each with its own special arrangement of component parts admirably apt for the performance in ordinary circ.u.mstances of special functions, admirably, as circ.u.mstances change, accommodating itself by corresponding changes for continuing the same or undertaking other and equally appropriate functions, nor merely performing them all in despite of the restraints imposed by law, but availing itself of those very restraints as means and aids for their performance. Where so much aptness is, adaptation surely must have been: where arrangement is so plainly conducive to ends, the ends must surely have been foreseen, and the arrangement effected by design and according to preconceived plan.

And there cannot have been design without a designer or designers: the plan cannot but have had its author or authors: nor could the plan have been executed without an artificer or artificers. Author or authors, too, artificer or artificers, be the same singular or plural, must have possessed, individually or collectively, not less of wisdom, power, and goodness than are displayed by the finished work. Now of each of these attributes, the amount to which the aspect of the universe bears witness, albeit not infinite, inasmuch as the universe is not without imperfections, is yet indefinite; as plainly without measure as the universe is without bounds. Wherefore, not only must the universe have had an author or authors, an artificer or artificers, but his or their wisdom, power, and goodness, must, whether infinite or not, have been at least illimitable.

Such is the argument from design, and such, to my thinking, the only absolute certainties legitimately deducible from it; and although these, in comparison with the numerous probabilities ordinarily a.s.sociated with them, may appear somewhat meagre, yet are they intrinsically of exceeding moment. They const.i.tute the only basis on which any rational religion, any that appeals to the intellect as well as to the feelings, can rest securely. Whoever accepts them, by whatever other name he prefer to call himself, is essentially a theist. He only who denies or ignores them can justly be stigmatised as an atheist. Yet, although an inquiry into their soundness is thus plainly second in interest to none, it is not that in which I propose to engage at present, unless indirectly. My immediate concern is not with the strength of theism, but with the weakness of atheism, and the hollowness of the latter"s dialectical pretensions. What in every form of piety is most provocative of philosophic scorn, is its forwardness of faith, its eagerness of acquiescence; but to this sort of reproach I expect to be able to show that none are more obnoxious than those very philosophers by whom it is most freely cast. That nothing is more unphilosophical than uncompromising irreligion, nothing more credulous than its credulity, no other beliefs more monstrous than those by which it strives to fill up the void created by its own unbelief: this is my present thesis, and this I propound, not unaware what formidable antagonists I am thereby challenging, but not without something of the same confidence, and something withal of the same ground for it, as David had when, in equal strait, exclaiming, "The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me?"

Let us at the outset consider what denial of plan in the structure of the universe implies, and note, among other things signified, the following. The exact conformity on matter"s part to Nature"s laws, everywhere observable, and even more striking perhaps in minute details than in grandiose generalities, is purely accidental. The laws were not enacted in order to be obeyed; matter"s various shapes were not given to or a.s.sumed by it in order that its obedience might serve any particular purpose. All appearances of ingenious contrivance in the collocation of elementary particles, or in the co-operation of elementary forces, are mere appearances. It was not designed that under the influence of the laws of motion, chaos should resolve itself into systems, and time divide itself into years and seasons and days and nights. It is quite unintentionally that the countless varieties of mechanism appertaining to different vegetable and animal fabrics have been rendered fit for performing those special processes which, by reason in each case of some special arrangement of parts, they actually do perform with such marvellous precision. It is a total mistake to suppose that the eye was meant for seeing, or the ear for hearing, or the heart for initiating and regulating the circulation of the blood, or nervous ramifications for receiving and disseminating sensible impressions. These various organs have been discovered to be useful, and are used accordingly; but they were not intended to be so used, or contrived with any such view, or, indeed, contrived at all. The forces, whatever they be, and whether identical with or totally distinct from itself, whereby matter, on one supposition, acts, and, on the other, is acted upon, and by whose operation the universe and all its contents have been fashioned and are sustained, are in either case perfectly heedless and reckless forces, operating always without the slightest reference to result.

Language like this was much in vogue among the French encyclopaedists of the last century. By opposing it, even Voltaire incurred the reputation of bigotry, and Hume probably had to listen to a good deal of it on that memorable occasion when, dining with Baron D"Holbach, and intimating to his host his disbelief in the existence of atheists, he was informed by way of reply that he was actually at table with seventeen members of the sect.[36] That in England, too, it was a good deal talked at about the same and a somewhat later period, may be inferred from the fact that against its teaching one of Paley"s most celebrated treatises was expressly directed. Doctrine which was once so fashionable, and which even now cannot be said to be obsolete, was not, of course, without some show of reason to support it, and somewhat in this wise the chief arguments in its behalf were usually marshalled:--In order to account for actual result, there is no need to imagine previous purpose. All things that exist, all events that occur, must bear to each other some relations in situation and time, which relations are not less likely to be orderly than disorderly, or, rather, indeed, are more likely to be the former than the latter. For necessarily the rarer rises above the denser; the stronger compels the weaker; that which is pushed hardest runs fastest. And even though, among organic forms, orderly and disorderly had been, by the purely fortuitous concurrence of atoms, originally produced in equal numbers, the former would be sure in the course of ages to become the more numerous, and that in proportion to the orderliness of their composition, and to their consequent suitableness for the reception and maintenance of organic life, by which they in turn would be maintained and multiplied, while less aptly organised forms, succ.u.mbing in the struggle for existence, perished and vanished away. Thus everything arranges itself--_everything_, however, being here another name for Nature, which alone does or can exist, which is all and does all; yet, though doing all things in general, does whatever it does quite unintelligently, and without the least desire of doing any one thing in particular more than another.

Though speaking of this as a show of reasoning, I would by no means be understood to consider it as merely a show. On the contrary, I must admit that it contains a modic.u.m of reality sufficient, in my opinion, to secure the position taken up from being utterly overthrown by any direct attack not followed up by reference to a certain palpable absurdity which we shall presently perceive to be inseparably connected with the position. To so much of real reasoning as we have before us, let then all due respect be shown. No doubt all existences must necessarily dispose themselves or be disposed somehow. No doubt all occurrences must succeed each other somehow. No doubt, either, that if the disposing or otherwise originating forces operated quite regardlessly of plan, no one disposition or succession would be a whit less possible than any other--the most symmetric or evenly graduated than the most disjointed or confused. Now although, since exertion is utterly inconceivable without volition, and since volition is equally inconceivable without consciousness, it must be impossible for any forces ever to exert themselves altogether unintentionally, it is yet perfectly possible for their exertion to have no ulterior intention beyond that of gratifying an unprospective will. This is all that one fidgetting about, as the phrase is, intends, when he has no special motive for fidgetting in any particular direction more than in any other, and similarly it may by possibility be the mere fidgettiness of Nature that gives rise to all natural phenomena. Nature, indeed, cannot, any more than any other force or combination of forces, be utterly dest.i.tute of intelligence, but its intelligence may not inconceivably be of no higher sort than that which the sensitive plant exhibits or mimics. Nature cannot exert itself quite unconsciously, nor consequently quite unintentionally, but its exertions, though not unintended, may possibly not be intended for any result. It must be admitted, then, that, so far, no reason has appeared why the force or forces by which the universe was originally moulded, may not, as contended, have been perfectly heedless and reckless; may not, without the least premeditation or the slightest view to any ulterior object, have produced certain phenomena in those particular sequences to which the name of natural laws has been given; and may not, with the same total absence of purpose, have adopted certain other courses of action which, very fortunately, though quite undesignedly, have resulted in the production of endless varieties of mechanism, most of them of marvellously intricate and complex structure, and all and each of them of structure marvellously suitable for performing, in co-operation with Nature"s laws, functions of an utility as varied as their structure. And what any forces have been equal to do once, those same forces, if remaining unimpaired, must be equal to repeat times without number.

Although, if you found your opponent at dice invariably throwing double-sixes, you might feel confident that his dice were loaded, your confidence, unless otherwise corroborated, would not amount to entire certainty. With unloaded dice there would be nothing strange in double-six being thrown once; but, if once, why not twice running? and if twice, why not three, four, or a million times running, provided that the thrower"s strength held out so long? No one of the separate throws, from the first to the millionth, would be attended with more difficulty than any other. Whoever made the first might with no greater effort make any one, and therefore every one, of the rest. In the fact of his having commenced the series there would be proof of the possibility of his completing it. In like manner, if it be not inconceivable that Nature"s forces may once, by a single unpremeditated exertion, have bestowed on the universe its actual const.i.tution, it is not inconceivable that by continual repet.i.tion of similarly unpremeditated exertions, they may have ever since maintained that const.i.tution. In this supposition there is nothing patently absurd. It is perfectly legitimate to suppose that any event or combination of events, not demonstrably impossible, may have occurred in the absence of complete certainty that they have not occurred. It may not be illegitimate, therefore, to suppose that all phenomena of the description termed physical, and all repeated sequences of such phenomena, may have occurred, not causally, but casually--that it may have been a fortuitous concourse of atoms which originally established the existing economy of the universe, and an uninterrupted succession of similar fortuitous concourses that has ever since maintained that economy. That supposition, I repeat, involves no absolute absurdity. What however is, if not absurd, at any rate egregiously unscientific and most unphilosophically credulous, is to treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality; for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between organic structure and natural law was not designedly established. In considering this point, it will be convenient to take law first.

Inasmuch as, on the a.s.sumption that all phenomena of inorganic matter are effects, purely unpremeditated, of Nature"s capricious restlessness, there would of course be no more reason why any one such phenomenon than any other should not at any time occur, there would equally of course on the same a.s.sumption, be no more reason why it should. An infinity of phenomena being at all times equally possible, the chances against any one being, on any occasion, preferred to all the rest, would be infinity less one. Against any particular sequence of phenomena they would be as infinity less one multiplied by the number of phenomena composing the sequence, and against one or more repet.i.tions of the same sequence they would be the same multiple of virtual infinity multiplied by the number of repet.i.tions. Against perpetual repet.i.tion, they would, as it were, be virtual infinity multiplied by infinity. On the a.s.sumption stated, an apple loosened from the parent stem, might quite possibly fall to the ground, but quite as possibly might remain suspended in mid air, or rise straight upwards, or take any one of the innumerable directions intervening between zenith and nadir, travelling too, unless interrupted, in the direction selected for any period, from a single moment to endless ages. Experience, however, teaches that an apple or any other body of greater specific gravity than air, does invariably, when deprived of support, fall straight downward, such downward movement being part of one of those sequences of phenomena which are cla.s.sed under the head of gravitation. Now, to a.s.sert that this, or any other, and consequently every other, specimen of gravitation, cannot possibly have been unpremeditated would no doubt be unwarrantable. No doubt there is one solitary, one infinitesimal chance that the force whose action results in gravitation may, when producing that result, be acting with as little choice of direction as a fidgetty man makes when moving his arms or legs about for no better reason than that he will not take the trouble to keep them quiet. Only, as on the supposition that the force did not select its course, the chances against its always taking the same course would be infinity less one indefinitely multiplied, the probability that it does select must needs be the same indefinite multiple of virtual infinity. Not less than this is the preponderance of probability that the invariably recurrent sequences of phenomena which we are in the habit of referring to gravitation, are premeditated, and that the law of gravitation has, so to speak, been wittingly ordained. And in this respect all invariable sequences of phenomena, otherwise termed laws of nature, stand plainly in the same category. One solitary and infinitesimal unit is the sole deduction to be made from what would otherwise be infinite certainty, that the a.s.sumption we started with is false, and that all invariable sequences are premeditated, all the laws of nature enacted by a law-giver who intended what he was enacting.

Intention, however, is not quite the same thing as design. It is possible for action to be at once intentional and purposeless. If a man, taking regularly a const.i.tutional walk, is observed always to take the same road, and to stop exactly at the same point, there can be no reasonable doubt as to his intention to walk just so far and no farther; but it does not follow that he has any object in walking which he supposes would not be equally served by his walking a few paces more or less. Similarly whatever be the certainty that the laws of nature have been intentionally established, there is in that certainty no proof of their having been established for any purpose beyond that of gratifying some whim or humour of the lawgiver. For indications of design in the universe we must look rather to organic than to inorganic nature, rather to structure than to law. We shall find applying to the former the same reasoning as to the latter, and likewise some more besides.

Inasmuch as, of the innumerable combinations of which the elements or elementary forces are susceptible, each and every one, in the absence of any preference for one over another on the part of the volition on which the occurrence of all depends, would have equal chances of occurring, the chances against the occurrence at any particular time of any particular combination would be as the number, or rather as the innumerosity, of all the rest to one. Such, in the absence of any intentional action on Nature"s part, would be the odds against any one single occurrence of any one elemental combination. Against the perpetual repet.i.tion of the same combination the odds would be the same innumerosity innumerable times multiplied. Nevertheless there actually is everlastingly recurring, not simply one single specimen, but an innumerable mult.i.tude of the same elemental combinations. Whatever were the combinations necessary for producing all the existing organisms, vegetable and animal, with which our earth swarms, the constant recurrence of those same or nearly the same combinations is indispensable both for the maintenance of the organisms during life and for the production of successors to them; and such constant recurrence is plainly going on. The chances then against its being unintended must be the aforesaid multiple of innumerosity. But this is not all. The multiple in question represents the chances against perpetual repet.i.tion of any set whatever of elemental combinations, but about the actually recurrent set there is this peculiarity, that it produces and maintains innumerable organisms or machines, which--inasmuch as all of them are marvellously fit, by reason of their respective specialities of structure, for performing different obviously useful purposes--have all the appearance of having been expressly constructed for the performance of those purposes. If these appearances of adaptation were fallacious, if the apparent utility were undesigned, the chances against the perpetual recurrence of so singularly useful, rather than of some totally useless, set of combinations would be a multiple of innumerosity similar to that which has clearly been shown to represent the preponderance of probability against the constant repet.i.tion of any set of combinations whatever, whether useful or useless. If, then, it were permissible to use so extravagant an hyperbole to indicate an idea of mult.i.tude to which it is not in the power of words to give adequate expression, it might be said that while the chances against Nature"s habitual action being _unintentional_, or the result as it were of mere fidgettiness or restlessness, are an indefinite multiple of infinity, the chances against its being _purposeless_ and _undesigned_, without view to end or object, is the same multiple doubled.

Still, in order to give the solitary and infinitesimal chance on the other side its full due, let us confess it to be as yet not quite conclusively demonstrated that the actual order of inorganic, and the actual const.i.tution of organic, nature are results of uninterrupted repet.i.tion of one and the same purposeless volition, and of the same purely fortuitous concourses of atoms. Let us admit it to be not absolutely impossible, not utterly inconceivable, that vegetable and animal organisms were not contrived such as they are with any view to their becoming habitations of vegetable and animal life, but that having been accidentally discovered to be fit to be lived in, they have been taken possession of by life and inhabited accordingly; that, similarly, the wondrously complex and varied mechanisms of which most organisms are composed were not made to be used, but are used because certain uses have been accidentally discovered for them--the eye, for instance, to take one example out of myriads not less remarkable, not having been meant to be seen with, but being employed for seeing because, by a happy coincidence, the particles composing it have got to be collocated in such wise that a picture of whatever is opposite to it is formed upon the retina, and is thence by a nervous concatenation transmitted to the brain. Although, if the most consummate skill, in comparison with which that displayed in the fabrication of Mr. Newall"s telescope were downright clumsiness, had striven to devise a seeing apparatus, capable of exact self-adjustment to all degrees of light, all gradations of distance, all varieties of refrangibility, it could not have adopted a contrivance more exquisitely ingenious, or evincing more minutely accurate knowledge of the most secret laws of optics, than the mechanism of the eye apparently betokens, let it still be admitted to be not quite beyond the bounds of possibility, that not skill but the blindest and densest ignorance may have presided over the whole operation. But even though the modes of procedure involved in these admissions were not quite impossible or inconceivable, belief in them would, I repeat, be palpably irrational, and that almost to the last degree. The nearest approach to a reason that can be imagined for it is the _Credo quia incredibile est_ to which philosophers in despair have occasionally been known to resort. _Dudum in scholis audiveram_, says Descartes, _nihil tam absurde dici posse quod non dicatur ab aliquo Philosophorum_. In his early college days he had heard that nothing so absurd can possibly be said, but that some philosopher or other may say it. Such words are too hard for me. I make as yet no charges of absurdity, contenting myself for the moment with saying that no notion can be too unscientific to be adopted by those scientific men who, gratuitously running counter to the strongest possible presumption, set the science of probabilities so utterly at naught as to adopt as reality an hypothesis the chances against which are but one single iota short of infinite.

What, however, is unequivocally absurd, is a certain notion which I hinted would be found to be inevitably consequent on the foregoing premisses, and whose self-evident falsity carries with it condemnation of the premisses. To say that the creative agency denominated Nature, or by whatever other name known, neither had any ends in view when originally adopting certain sequences of action, and originally fabricating innumerable organisms exactly suitable for the performance, in concert with those sequences, of innumerable useful functions; nor, although ever since repeating the sequences, and maintaining or reproducing the organisms, has so done with any reference to the purposes which the sequences and organisms serve, is equivalent to saying that the agency in question is not even aware that any purposes are served. He who planted the eye doth not then see. He who fashioned the ear doth not hear. He who teacheth man knowledge doth not, it seems, know. Yet what, according to this, creative agency, whether G.o.d or Nature, Creator or Creatress, can not perceive, the creature can. Even an a.s.s knows that thistles are good to eat, and that certain movements of his tongue and larynx will result in a bray; while man not only daily discovers fresh uses for things, but imagines that if he had had the fashioning of them, he might have materially increased their utility; King Alfonso of Castile, for instance, boasting of the valuable cosmogonical advice he could have given had he been taken into council; and one of Kaiser Wilhelm"s predecessors on the throne of Prussia intimating that he, in like case, would have proved conclusively that pounded quartz and silex may easily be in excess in arable soil. The creature, then, has intelligence of which the Creator has always been dest.i.tute. Yet the creature can have nothing save what, either directly or indirectly, he derives from a creator. Wherefore that, in becoming endowed with intelligence, man must have received from the Creator that which the Creator had not to give, is an article inseparable from the profession of faith of those moderate Atheists who are content to regard man as a creature.

There are, however, others of a more uncompromising temper, who do not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce creation, in the sense of formation of something out of nothing, to be an incomprehensible myth; and it cannot be denied to these that, however difficult it be to conceive an uncreated universe existing from all eternity, the conception of an eternally existent Creator is not one whit easier. Fairly enough, therefore, these may proceed to argue that in the production of that compound, man, the share of the agency usually styled creative must have been limited to combining and arranging the elemental particles of his corporeal moiety.

Quite fairly, advancing still farther, they may hazard a conjecture that it is from the union of the corporeal const.i.tuents of man that the generation of his spiritual moiety has resulted. But for such generation it is plainly indispensable that the corporeal const.i.tuents should have been not inert particles but self-acting forces, and that, as such, they must have been in possession of more or less intelligence, which intelligence again either was or was not equal in amount to that of the human spirit or mind generated by them. If it were not equal, then the forces must have given to their offspring more than they had themselves got to give--which is sheer nonsense. If it were equal, then, inasmuch as the human mind is quite clever enough to discover uses for the various parts of the human body and of other organisms, the forces to which the human mind owes its origin must be at least equally clever.

The elementary forces by whose action the human and other organic bodies have been constructed, must have been perfectly aware what they were constructing, and what services the resulting structures would be fitted to render. In other words, they must in their constructive operations have worked towards specific ends, according to preconceived plan and set design, wittingly contriving various machines for various purposes.

The advanced Atheists, with whose speculations we are here especially concerned, are thus at liberty to choose between two horns of a dilemma, but must not hope to escape both. Either they stand self-refuted by a.s.suming something to have been made out of nothing--a process which they began by p.r.o.nouncing impossible--or they must imagine intelligence, competent to devise all organisms, to be diffused throughout the universe, thereby showing themselves to have a.s.sumed their sectarian appellation without sufficient warrant, and to be in reality rather Pantheists than Atheists.

A third hypothesis indeed remains for any who are content to believe that Nature"s elementary forces having, without knowing what they were about, constructed the human body, the human mind, until then a houseless wanderer, lit upon it by chance, and, observing it to be a habitation suitably swept and garnished, entered in and dwelt there.

Upon this supposition there must be, within the limits of our terrene sphere, two distinct species of intelligence, a greater and a lesser--the one competent to construct all sorts of marvellously complex and marvellously serviceable machines, yet incompetent to understand their utility, the other fully perceiving the utility of the machines, yet utterly incompetent to fabricate them. But there are probably few adventurers on the ocean of speculation who would not prefer total shipwreck to the shelter of such a harbour of refuge as this.

Atheism must in fairness be acknowledged to have much mended its manners within the last two or three generations. Its tone and language are no longer of the rude, scoffing sort at which Voltaire may be readily pictured as breaking into voluble protest, or Hume as contemptuously opening his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. Though grown more civil, however, it cannot be complimented on having grown more rational. At most may it be credited with being more elaborately irrational than of old. It now no longer denies, it only ignores. It does not p.r.o.nounce G.o.d non-existent. It only insists that there is not complete proof that G.o.d exists; thereupon, however, proceeding to argue as if He did not exist, and thereby, not simply confounding deficiency of proof on one side with sufficiency of proof on the other, but overlooking an amount of proof that on any other subject would, provisionally at least, be deemed conclusive, and perversely rejecting an hypothesis which, whether correct, or not, is at least a good working hypothesis, coinciding exactly with most of the facts, and inconsistent with none of them, in favour of an hypothesis which, even in the hands of a Huxley or a Darwin, cannot be made to work at all.

II.

To my mind there is a genuine pleasure in giving expression to admiration of any great intellectual achievement; and it is much rather for that reason than on account of any value which I imagine my opinion on such a subject can possess, that, having had occasion to name the ill.u.s.trious author of the "Origin of Species," I desire to preface my criticism on what appears to me to be a grave defect in his theory, by intimating my hearty concurrence in its leading principles. That inasmuch as, owing to the exceeding fecundity of the generality of organic beings, more individuals of almost every species are born than can possibly survive, and that consequently a desperate struggle for existence must take place amongst them; that in such a struggle the smallest grain may turn the scale, the minutest advantage possessed by some individuals over others determine which shall live and which shall die; that, as the circ.u.mstances in which life is to be maintained change, the character and structure of organisms must change also in order to be accommodated thereto, but that the changes which consequently take place in some individuals are better suited to the altered circ.u.mstances than those which take place in other individuals; that individual offspring, moreover, although always strongly resembling their parents in the majority of particulars, always exhibit some slight differences from them; that of these differences such as do not render the offspring less fit will almost of necessity render them more fit for coping with their rivals; and that superior fitness, however acquired, is as likely as any other quality to be transmitted to succeeding generations--all these are indisputable facts, and from these, as premisses, it seems to me not so much to be legitimately deducible that most existing species may have been produced "by descent, with modification, through natural selection," or "survival of the fittest," as necessarily to follow that they cannot have originated in any other way. For _all_ species to have been created such as they now are, is simply inconsistent with the premisses. Whatever beings may at any remote epoch have been created, there must, according to the conditions involved, have been amongst their descendants some better fitted, by reason of divergence from the parent type, for engaging in internecine strife than those, if any such there were, which adhered closely to that type. Whether, then, among the survivors from the first engagement in that never-ending struggle for life which must have commenced soon after the creation, there were or were not any exact representatives of the parent type, there must have been some exhibiting more or less of divergence from that type. Among the descendants of these, again, there must have been some who, together with the structural or other advantages inherited from their immediate ancestors, possessed, moreover, some advantages first nascent in themselves, and who were similarly enabled thereby to prevail over their less gifted compet.i.tors, and similarly to transmit all their advantages to a posterity, some members of which would similarly be born with certain new advantages in addition. By continual repet.i.tion of these processes, and the consequent acc.u.mulation of divergencies from the original pattern, however slight those divergencies might separately be, there could not but eventually become formed breeds so distinct from each other as to be to all intents and purposes distinct species, in whichsoever of its many vague senses the term "species" be understood.

Now these species, instead of having been created, would be the result of divergence from their created progenitor. Whether, therefore, any created species do or do not still exist, it is certain that among existing species there are some that were not created, but which have been gradually evolved, and evolved, too, through survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin, then, is fairly ent.i.tled to the praise of having placed beyond dispute that a process called by himself "Natural Selection," and by Mr. Herbert Spencer "Survival of the Fittest," has almost from the commencement of organic life been, and still is, in active operation; that it is a cause which must needs have originated some species, and is quite competent to have originated all that still exist; whereas creation, the only other suggested cause, cannot be conceived to have done this latter unless every minutest shade of difference between offspring and parent be regarded as the effect of a separate creative act. Unless creation have originated every one of those divergencies the acc.u.mulation of which const.i.tutes a species, clearly it cannot have originated that species. With some of the phenomena connected with species the theory of creation cannot be reconciled unless this novel interpretation be placed upon the word creation, whereas there are none of the phenomena with which the evolutionary hypothesis conflicts, and few, if any, which, when restricted to its proper office of auxiliary, it will not help to explain.

To what we might thus be a.s.sured of, even if we had only general principles to guide us, all obtainable evidence unanimously testifies.

Geology distinctly proclaims that every portion of our globe"s surface has undergone vast changes, and that its organic inhabitants have changed simultaneously and proportionately. The proof absolute, which it furnishes, that at a period when few, if any, existing species had made their appearance, many species now extinct already existed, is proof equally absolute that if all species extinct and extant were created, they cannot, at any rate, have been created at the same time. Of so much at least we must be satisfied, unless we are prepared to accept the ingenious conjecture of an orthodox divine, that, while our earth was being formed out of chaos, Satan, to confound the faith of remote generations, brought over bones of monsters from other worlds and embedded them in the soil of ours, or that, as the same idea has been otherwise expressed, while the earth"s crust was a baking the devil had a finger in the pie. Moreover, on the supposition that there was a break of ages between the creations of extinct and of extant species, as geology positively declares there must have been if both were separately created, how pa.s.sing strange is the "grand fact that all extinct beings can be cla.s.sed with all recent beings"! The strangeness disappears, however, when both are regarded as descendants of common progenitors.

The wonder would then be if they could not be so cla.s.sed. Again, how astonishing on the creative, how natural on the evolutionary hypothesis, that the arrangement of bones in the hand of a man, the wing of a bat, the fin of a porpoise, the leg of a horse, should be precisely the same; the number of vertebrae in the neck of a giraffe, and in that of an elephant the same; the primitive germs from which a man, a dog, a frog, and a lobster are gradually evolved, to all appearance the same--the same microscopic atom of h.o.m.ogeneous matter, undistinguishable by any known test from an animalcule almost at the bottom of the organic scale!

Above all, that the courses by which animals of all degrees of complexity are gradually developed from apparently equally simple germs should, whenever traceable, be found to consist of progressive ramifications, so that every higher animal, before arriving at maturity, pa.s.ses through several stages at the end of each of which lower animals have stopped! How impossible, or how easy, to understand, according as the one or the other hypothesis is adopted, is the phenomenon of what in the one case will be treated as rudimentary, in the other as obsolete, organs! No one need scruple to regard these as apparatus which the creature has outgrown and allowed to fall into decay through neglect; but whatever there is in us of real n.o.bleness of feeling revolts against the notion of their being apparatus which a divine Creator began to build but was not able to finish. And yet again, how insultingly irreconcilable with any rational estimate of Divine nature is the possibility of any existing type of mammals having been created, seeing that if so, it must have been created with _false_ marks of nourishment from the womb of a mother that never existed!

These are some of the main grounds on which the Darwinian theory rests.

Of the abundance of detailed ill.u.s.trations from which it may derive additional support no adequate idea can be formed, except by careful perusal of its author"s own writings, and these fortunately may without much exaggeration be said to be in everybody"s hands. Of the arguments that have been brought forward in opposition to it, all seem to me to be susceptible of very complete answers, and one or two of the strongest, of answers more complete than they have yet received. True, there is no disputing the testimony borne by the paintings and sculptures of Egyptian tombs, and of Ninevite palaces, that the bas.e.m.e.nt floors in Thebes and Memphis were infested by much the same sort of beetles as those which are such nuisances in London kitchens; that Sardanapalus, if ever he exchanged indoor for outdoor sports, may have hunted with dogs and horses that might pa.s.s muster at an English meet, and that the Pharaohs were served by negro slaves as like as two peas in all externals to those who in the United States have recently and prematurely been metamorphosed into free and independent electors. But all this only proves that certain species which existed 4,000 years ago are still represented by unchanged descendants. It does not prove that other descendants and groups of descendants from the same species have not within the same period undergone changes sufficiently great to convert them into distinct races; neither, if it did prove thus much, would it do more than afford a presumption, and a very deceptive one, that 4,000 years are too short a time for the formation of a new race, affording besides, at the same time, much stronger presumption that, within the remotest limits to which Mosaic chronology can be pushed back, the various races of mankind, white, black, and intermediately tinted, can not possibly have descended from one pair of ancestors.

That domesticated animals, when suffered to run wild, always return to the primitive wild type--this, instead of an argument against, is one of the strongest arguments for the evolution theory, from which it is indeed, as Mr. G. H. Lewes says, a necessary deduction. It is simply because, as the conditions of life change, structure must, for adaptation"s sake, change likewise, that wild animals are capable of being domesticated, of being, that is, made to undergo modifications by being brought from the conditions of wildness to those of domesticity.

How, then, should they possibly retain those modifications, how escape return to their previous shape and habits, when retransferred from domesticity to wildness?

The question, Why are not new species continually produced? may be aptly met by another. How, consistently with the theory, is it possible they should? Natural Selection is represented as acting "solely by acc.u.mulating slight successive favourable variations," as taking only short and slow steps. By what possibility, then, can it suddenly produce modifications sufficiently conspicuous to mark off a new species? New species may be, and indeed are, constantly in process of formation on all sides, under our very eyes, without our being aware; for since the process requires ages for its accomplishment, it must needs be imperceptible by the keenest observation. So that even when a new species is completed, it is not recognised as new, so minute is the difference between the perfection to which it has attained, and the imperfect state in which we and our fathers before us had long known it.

"Why, however, since, according to the theory of Natural Selection, an interminable number of intermediate forms must have existed, linking together all the species in each group by gradations as fine as are our present varieties--why do we not see these linking forms all around us?"

To this objection the very theory against which it is urged affords a partial and almost adequate reply, the deficiencies of which are besides to some extent supplied by embryology and geology, and to a farther extent accounted for by the meagreness of the geological record.

Natural selection for survival necessarily implies extinction of all that are not selected to survive, so that fossil remains are now the only procurable evidence that any of these latter that have long been extinct ever existed. But very many organic beings are incapable of being preserved in a fossil condition, while of those which can be so preserved "the number of specimens in all our museums is absolutely as nothing compared with the countless generations of countless species that must have existed." It should be recollected, too, that among still existing forms are to be included several which result from uterine transformation, and are never found alive except _in utero_.

Another objection, notwithstanding the great stress often laid on it, seems to me to be altogether beside the real issue. It is the one derived from the invariable sterility, real or supposed, of hybrids. A fact cited by Mr. Lewes,[37] that of the fecundity of a cross called _Leporides_, bred by M. Rouy of Angouleme, between the hare and rabbit, of which a thousand on an average were for many years, and probably are still, sent annually to market, would seem to be decisive against the a.s.sumed sterility; but, however this be, matters not the least in regard to the efficacy of Natural Selection, which, be it once again observed, is represented as producing new species, not suddenly by the copulation of two old and utterly distinct ones, but very gradually and slowly, by the acc.u.mulation of minute differences occurring in successive individuals of the same species.

The chief if not the only serious obstacles to acceptance of Darwinism seem to me to be of the author"s own creation. Now and then he appears somewhat needlessly to overstrain his principles, as for instance when he intimates his conviction that "all individuals of the same species, and all the closely allied species of most genera," will hereafter be discovered to "have descended from one parent and to have migrated from some one birthplace." This, to my mind, is much more unlikely than his further suggestion that "all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype." Startling as this second proposition may be on first hearing, it may not very improbably express the real fact, provided by "some one prototype" be signified, not a single individual, but several individuals of one and the same type. Beyond all doubt there was a time when on and about our earth all matter was as yet inorganic, and when whatever spirit,[38] of the sort so termed in contradistinction to matter, either permeated the earth"s substance or moved about its surface, must have been as yet unembodied. Mr. Darwin demands whether any one can "really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth"s history, elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues." I for one certainly am far from believing this. I see no reason for believing that, whatever other phenomenon, at all similar, may at any stage of the world"s progress have occurred, it has at innumerable subsequent stages been repeated; neither do I consider that the phenomenon is likely to have worn the guise of a sudden flash. But I do firmly believe, and am quite unable to subst.i.tute any equally plausible subst.i.tute for the belief, that when the crust of the earth had sufficiently cooled, and when other physical conditions had become such as to admit of the manifestation of that life which we are accustomed to distinguish by attaching to it the epithet "organic,"

certain of those forces[39] which, in my opinion, const.i.tute matter, did, either of their own accord or under superior direction--not suddenly flash, but--slowly elaborate themselves into organic structures of some exceedingly simple type; that in the course of ages these simple structures either developed themselves or were developed into structures rendered by slow degrees more and more complex, until the degree of complexity attained, being such as to fit them for being inhabited by spirit previously unembodied, they were, by individualised portions of such spirit, appropriated and inhabited accordingly. Beyond all doubt, at some period or other, what had always previously been unorganised matter must have become organised. Of two things one, then. Either this matter must, whether under superior direction or not, have organised itself, or it must have been organised by some other agency. Mr. Darwin, together with all thorough-going Darwinians, inclines, I suspect, to the opinion that matter organised itself; but if so, it cannot possibly have been inert or lifeless, but must have been active and animate, and capable of volition; and on that condition, there is no great stretch of fancy in imagining it to have spontaneously adopted the series of arrangements indicated. If, on the other hand, we are content to admit that some external superior intelligence may have performed, or conducted, or presided over operations, all room for wonder vanishes.

In regard to the character of the structural prototype, that, of course, would depend in part on surrounding physical conditions, and if these have ever been the same in all parts of the globe, there is no apparent reason why any number of specimens of the prototype may not anywhere have been independently elaborated. It is not possible, however, that, since the earth began to revolve round the sun, physical conditions can have been _simultaneously_ the same in all lat.i.tudes; while, on the other hand, it seems probable that, although the same set of conditions might perhaps admit of the production of only one organic type, there might be other sets of conditions favourable to the production of other types. On the whole, then, it seems more probable that inorganic matter combined (or _was_ combined) in the first instance in several modes, than in one single mode, in order to become organic. But whatever may have been the organic form or forms it first took, to a.s.sume that only a single individual of each form was independently elaborated, and that all other individuals, both of the same form and of all the more complex forms, gradually evolved from that one--are descendants from the same first individual, the same first parent--surely very gratuitously increases the difficulties of the subject. Especially it complicates the problem of the distribution of the same plants and animals over countries immemorially separated by gulfs apparently impa.s.sable by natural means.

The obstruction which Mr. Darwin has created to the progress of his opinions by the exaggerated shape in which some of them have been presented is, however, as nothing in comparison with the injury he does to his theory by obstinately rejecting certain materials indispensable for its satisfactory completion. What an admirable theory it is so far as it goes! How nicely it fits into all the facts it comes in contact with, even into those which it is, of itself and una.s.sisted, incompetent to explain! How elevating too and enn.o.bling, when rightly conceived! for who can fail to rejoice in the view it presents of "Natural selection working solely by and for the good of each being" that it spares, and causing "all corporal and mental endowments to tend towards perfection"?

or who need mind suspecting himself to be descended, through an ape, from a triton or a hydra, if he may compensate himself by hoping to have a distant posterity of angels? How well, moreover, would it, if permitted, chime in with any rational religion, besides being, as already hinted, absolutely essential to that part of the Mosaic creed which represents all the variously coloured and variously featured races of men as springing from one single couple. By what perversity then is it that Mr. Darwin takes such pains, if not to render his theory irreligious, at least to exclude from it the a.s.sistance which religion alone can afford, and which it so greatly needs, that whoever, without that a.s.sistance, attempts to apply the theory to the complete elucidation of phenomena, will be found inevitably committing himself to the most astounding hypotheses? Here I picture to myself a curl on the lip of some advanced Darwinian who, having accompanied me so far, cannot altogether suppress his compa.s.sionate scorn at the proposed recurrence now-a-days to a mode of thought so obsolete in the treatment of scientific subjects as the theological. "Positive biology," he will perhaps superbly exclaim, repeating the words of Mr. G. H. Lewes, "declines theological explanations altogether." Yes, but positive biology is therein very unwise, for as, if the same reader will accompany me a little further, I pledge myself to show, it is the untheological or atheistical, not the theistical, mode of treatment which is here utterly out of place and flagrantly unscientific. Be it, without the slightest reserve, admitted that the formation of almost all, and probably of quite all, existing species is due, and cannot be otherwise than due, to survival of the fittest, the superior fitness of these, moreover, being due to the gradual acc.u.mulation of innumerable and, for the most part, exceedingly slight divergencies from the parent stock. But whence and why these divergencies? It cannot be without a cause that even one more feather than the parent possessed appears in the offspring"s wing, or a novel tint on its coat, or that the curve of beak or talons is not precisely the same in each. What then is the cause? Unphilosophic people will most likely call it "all chance,"

getting sneered at for their pains, and justly too, as using words without meaning. But are not philosophers themselves doing much the same thing, and merely restating facts which they profess to explain, when, like Mr. Lewes,[40] they talk of the "specific shape" a.s.sumed by an "organic plasma" being "always dependent on the polarity of its molecules," "or due to the operation of immanent properties;" or declare that, in the process of organic evolution, "each stage determines its successor," "consensus of the whole impressing a peculiar direction on the development of parts, and the law of Epigenesis necessitating a serial development," insomuch that, "every part being the effect of a pre-existing, and in turn the cause of a succeeding part," the reason why, when a crab loses its claw, the member is reproduced, is that the group of cells remaining at the stump "is the necessary condition of the genesis" of precisely that new group which the reproductive process imperatively requires to follow next in order, this second group equally the necessary condition for genesis of the one required third, the third for the fourth, and so on; and that the reason why the thorns of a blackberry admit of somewhat close comparison with the hooks and spines of certain crustaceae, is that portions of the integument of both plant and crawfish "_tend_ under similar external forces to develop" into similar forms?

I pa.s.s rapidly over one or two minor difficulties that here present themselves. I will not stop to ask how--if reproduction of lost limbs be due to polarity of the molecules, in other words to the direction which in the circ.u.mstances of the case the molecules are bound to take, and if the polarity of each particular set of molecules be impressed upon them by the group formed immediately previously--how it is that the group terminating the docked stump of a limb, which group is represented as commencing the work of reproduction, imparts a different direction or tendency to the fresh molecules of nourishment that are supplied to it, from that which it has been accustomed to communicate to previous molecular supplies. Hitherto it has used such molecules solely for the repair of its own waste; now it employs a large portion of them to build up an entirely new fabric. It seems then that molecular polarity is not a fixed but a variable property, and, being such, cannot be inherent or originate in the molecular nature. But I will not linger over this point nor yet over the fact, absolutely unintelligible on the polar hypothesis, that it is comparatively only few animals that are capable of reproducing severed parts. Although the process required, no doubt, is, as Mr. Lewes says, "in all essential respects the same as that which originally produced" the parts, the last layer of cells left at the place of excision after a human leg or arm has been cut off, lacks the skill to repeat an operation, which according to the hypothesis it has once before performed. It cannot so determine the polarity of the molecules with which it is supplied by the arteries as to constrain them to group themselves into a new layer, instead of merely repairing an old one. A crab or a lobster, or a polype"s molecules are clever enough for this, a man"s not. Without pressing these objections, but on the contrary, conceding for the nonce and for argument"s sake, to molecular polarity, to immanent properties, to Epigenetic evolution, all the efficacy claimed for them, I limit myself to inquiring what causes the various tendencies and directions which these imply. Tendency pre-supposes impulse; direction control. What is it that here imparts the impulse and exercises the control? Whatever else it be, it must, for reasons stated at length on a previous page, be something possessing at least enough of intelligence to exercise volition, and which at least intends that the movements which it originates shall take place, whether it further intends or not the ends which eventually result from the movements. To myself it seems barely conceivable that even the least marvellous of these ends should have been undesigned. Take, for instance, half a dozen _infusoria_ of some exceedingly low type, all individually single cells or sacs of matter perfectly transparent and dest.i.tute of any approach to structure that can be detected with a magnifying power of five thousand diameters. Observe how, after feeding for a while, and increasing proportionately in size, one will divide itself in half, each half becoming a separate and complete animalcule, another line itself internally and clothe itself externally with cl.u.s.tered cells, which, by a series of differentiations, traceable through a number of animalcular varieties, eventually exhibit the outlines of respiratory and circulatory systems. To me, I repeat, it seems all but inconceivable, and altogether incredible, that the intelligence which willed these cellular divisions, multiplications, and differentiations to take place, did not foresee what would be their results, and did not will them for the sake of those results. And if I do not deem it still more incredible that there should be _natural_ selection separating the fittest for survival by acc.u.mulating upon them slight advantages which qualify them to survive, without there being at the same time a _nature_, or other exalted intelligence, however designated, which selects, and which acc.u.mulates advantages upon the objects of its selection, _in order_ that they may survive, it is only because I consider the extremest limits of credibility to have been already pa.s.sed. But I forget. On reflection I perceive that I am doing scant justice to the elasticity of philosophic belief. How far this is capable of stretching on occasion, let one or two notable Darwinian specimens show.

No single piece of organic mechanism is oftener or more confidently appealed to by Theists as rendering conclusive evidence on their side than the eye, nor would they run much risk by allowing sentence to go for or against them according as Mr. Darwin has or has not succeeded in his attempt to explain that evidence away. Possibly he may disclaim having made any attempt of the kind, and I must admit that it is less by what he says than by what he leaves unsaid, that he lays himself open to the charge. Indeed, in almost all he says on the subject, I myself cordially agree, embracing even some of his views with less of hesitation than he seems to have felt in putting them forward. He seems to me, for instance, to have somewhat gratuitously admitted it to be apparently "in the highest degree absurd to suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection." For since, as he proceeds unanswerably to argue, "numerous gradations, from an imperfect and simple eye to one perfect and complex, each grade being useful to its possessor, can certainly be shown to exist;" since, as certainly, slight variations of the eye do occur, and are inherited, and since of these variations there cannot but be some which are useful to the animal exhibiting them under changing conditions of life, the difficulty of believing in the formation of a perfect and complex eye by natural selection can be little else than a prejudice of the imagination. He proceeds to indicate some probable stages in the a.s.sumed process. Some of the lowest organisms, in which no trace of nerves can be detected, are known to be sensible to light, owing, probably, to the presence in the _sarcode_ of which they are mainly composed, of certain elements which, in organisms somewhat higher in the scale, become aggregated and developed into nerves specially endowed with the same sensibility. An optic nerve thus formed, surrounded by pigment cells, and covered by translucent skin, is the simplest organ that can be called an eye, but it is an eye incapable of distinct vision, and serving only to distinguish light from darkness. In certain star-fishes, small depressions in the layer of pigment-cells are filled with transparent gelatinous matter projecting with a convex surface like a rudimentary cornea, and this, it has been suggested, may serve, not only to form an image, but to concentrate the luminous rays.

In insects, the numerous facets in the cornea of their great compound eyes have now been ascertained to form true lenses, the cones, moreover, having been discovered to include curiously modified nervous filaments.

It is impossible not, in this series of changes, to perceive the appearance of graduation, nor ought there to be much difficulty in believing the apparent graduation to be real, when we consider how few comparatively are the still living forms in which the changes cited have been observed, and how far more numerous the extinct forms by which intermediate changes may have been presented. If there be no extravagance in supposing that natural selection may have occasioned these early steps, neither is there any in supposing that, by continued progress in the same direction, it may at length have fabricated the most perfect optical instrument possessed by any member of the _articulata_. And, if credited so far, why not still further? why not with competence to form a man"s or an eagle"s eye? So far I am as completely at one with Mr. Darwin in respect to the eye as in respect to any other of the subjects taken by him for ill.u.s.tration. The fact is, however, that in this, as in every similar instance, he has completely evaded the real difficulties of the case. It is not a whit more startling to be told that the most complex eye, with all the latest improvements, than to be told that the earliest rudiment of an optic nerve, may have been formed by the gradual acc.u.mulation of minute differences. Only allow time enough for the requisite acc.u.mulation, and neither operation is one whit more unintelligible than the other. The difficulty, equally and utterly insuperable in both cases, is to understand how the difference can have been undesigned. "How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light," says Mr. Darwin, "hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated." Perhaps not; nor, indeed, very well could it, for the second question of the two is surely one of almost unsurpa.s.sed concernment; but, at any rate, when either of the two is asked, nothing can be more reprehensible than, by studiously ignoring the only alternative reply, to leave it to be inferred that the nerve made itself, or that life caused itself to live, that both are in short examples of what Mr. Darwin strangely calls "_variation causing alterations_."[41] Let us briefly consider a few of the results supposed to be attributable to this singular process. The eye, as every reader of course knows, though here and there one perhaps may not be the worse for being reminded, consists of four coats--the _sclerotic_, outermost and strongest, which const.i.tutes the white of the eye; the circular, tough, and coloured, yet pellucid, _cornea_, in the centre of which is seen the pupil; the _choroid_, full charg

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