PEACE BETWEEN RELIGION AND DARWINISM.
§ 1. _Darwin, Wallace, R. Owen, Asa Gray, Mivart, McCosh, Anderson, K. E.
v. Baer, Alex. Braun, Braubach, etc._
It still remains for us to take a glance at those who think religion and
Darwinism, and Christianity and Darwinism, hold toward one another
reciprocally amicable relations.
In the first place, we have to mention Darwin himself. In his earliest
work, "Origin of Species," he repeatedly gives this opinion, as on page
421: "I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock
the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how
transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery
ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also
attacked by Leibnitz 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of
revealed, religion.' A celebrated author and divine has written to me that
he 'has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of
the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of
self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He
required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action
of His laws.'" On page 428, he speaks of the laws which God has impressed
on matter; and at the end of his work, on page 429, he says: "There is
grandeur in this {218} view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." In his
"Descent of Man," he also protests against the reproach that his views are
irreligious, and says: "The birth both of the species and of the individual
are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse
to accept as the result of blind chance." In treating of the question as to
the development of the moral instincts, he says: "If he [man] breaks
through the fixed habits of his life, he will assuredly feel
dissatisfaction. He must likewise avoid the reprobation of _the one_ God or
gods in whom, _according to his knowledge_ or superstition, he may
believe." And furthermore he remarks: "The question whether there exists a
Creator and Ruler of the Universe, has been answered in the affirmative by
some of the highest intellects that have ever existed."
It is true, all these expressions about religion are very general; but
since in his works we do not find any utterance contrary to them and
hostile to religion, we have a right to rank the celebrated originator of
the whole agitation among those naturalists who are conscious of the limits
of the realms of the natural and the religious, and are convinced of the
possibility of a harmony between the two. For his casual utterances against
a "creation" of single species always combine with the word creation the
idea of that direct creation out of nothing, without intervening agencies,
which is entirely correct for the idea of the first, origin of the
universe, but which for the origin of the single formations within the
universe is neither asked for by the religious view of the world, nor
established by the Holy {219} Scriptures, nor by a cautiously reasoning
theology, although it very often controls the conceptions of naturalists as
well as of theologians. Now, while Darwin rejects the idea of a sudden
appearance of a new species out of nothing--or, as he once expressed
himself in his "Origin of Species," the idea "that at innumerable periods
in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly
to flash into living tissues,"--and he is no doubt right in rejecting
it,--still at the same time he does not deny the dependence of the
successive origin of a new species on a divine author. But in calling that
process creation and this one not, he gives the appearance of an opposition
to the religious idea of creation--an appearance of which the greater part
of the guilt is borne by those theologians who define the idea of the
creation, even of a single form, in a manner which is only proper for the
idea of the first origin of the universe.
It is true, we could rank Darwin still more readily among the scientists
who are at peace with all the claims of religion, did he not in his
"Descent of Man," when enumerating the "excellent naturalists and
philosophers" who with him reduce the pedigree of man to lower forms,
mention names of men who in their works firmly unite Darwinism and monistic
naturalism or even materialism, and expressly protest against a separation
of their naturo-historical results and their philosophic points of view. We
mean Büchner and Häckel. The latter's "Natural History of Creation," he
especially praises: "If this work had appeared before my essay had been
written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the
conclusions at which I have {220} arrived I find confirmed by this
naturalist," etc. The entire silence in regard to the anti-Christian
results which these two authors derive from their naturo-historical
premises, makes Darwin's own position in reference to religion again very
uncertain. It seems that Darwin in his theology is not only inclined to
theism, but, following the traditions of his countrymen of the last
century, to a quite cool and superficial deism, and that he permits himself
to be too much impressed by the anti-teleological deductions of many of his
followers, and to be induced to separate in his later publications the
Creator and his work more widely than he has done in the beginning. For
while in his "Origin of the Species," and in his "Descent of Man" he
nowhere contests a teleological view of nature, and rejects the idea of
single creations only under the erroneous supposition that the idea of the
creation of the single also excludes the action of intervening agencies, we
find, on the other hand, in "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals" a passage which, though in a reserved way, seems to give just as
much support to the adversaries of teleology as to its advocates, if,
indeed, not more. He says (page 338): "The belief that blushing was
_specially_ designed by the Creator is opposed to the general theory of
evolution, which is now so largely accepted; but it forms no part of my
duty here to argue on the general question. Those who believe in design
will find it difficult to account for shyness being the most frequent and
efficient of all the causes of blushing," etc. This inconsistency in his
utterances has its origin in the fact that the strength of this naturalist
does not seem to lie in logical philosophic thought. {221}
A. R. Wallace, the independent and contemporaneous co-originator of the
Darwinian theory, still more evidently and more decidedly expresses himself
favorably as to the position of this theory in reference to religion. In
his "Natural Selection," he says on page 368: "It does not seem an
improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force; and thus, that the
whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the WILL of
higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."
He pronounces the belief that God created the new species in "continual
interference" with the regular process of things, a lower conception, "a
limitation of the Creator's power" (page 280), hence something which he
makes objection to directly in the interest of religion. Moreover, he sees,
especially in those stages which caused the physical development of man,
and which became the material basis of his spiritual productions, moments
of development which cannot be explained by natural selection or by a
coincidence of material circumstances, but only by the preformation of the
body after a certain design and for a certain purpose.
Richard Owen, the celebrated anatomist, and palæontologist of England, who,
after having for a long time resisted the Darwinian theories, lately
accepted the idea of development and rejected that of selection, takes a
similar position. In the last part of his "Comparative Anatomy of
Vertebrates," which was issued separately in 1863 under the title
"Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species," he sees in the causes which
produced the new species only the servants of a predestinating {222}
intelligent will--for instance, the horse predestinated and prepared for
man; and on page 90 of vol. V. of "Transactions of the Zoölogical Society,"
he says, "that natural evolution, through secondary causes, by means of
slow physical and organic operations through long ages, is not the less
clearly recognizable as the act of all-adaptive Mind, because we have
abandoned the old error of supposing it the result of a primary, direct and
sudden act of creational construction.... The succession of species by
continuously operating law is not necessarily a 'blind operation.' Such
law, however designed in the properties and successions of natural objects,
intimates, nevertheless, a preconceived progress. Organisms may be evolved
in orderly succession, stage after stage, towards a foreseen goal, and the
broad features of the course may still show the unmistakable impress of
Divine volition."
Professor Huxley, of London, the zealous and oft-mentioned advocate of the
descent of man from the ape, says--what is so energetically contested by
his warmest friends in Germany, by Büchner, Häckel, O. Schmidt, and
others--that the teleological and the mechanical mode of viewing nature by
no means exclude one another. He does this, of course, without going into
any details of the religious question.
Asa Gray, an eminent and highly esteemed American botanist, who is
particularly respected by Darwin, and is supported also by Sir Charles
Lyell in "The Antiquity of Man," says in his essay on "Natural Selection
not Incompatible with Natural Theology, a Free Examination of Darwin's
Treatise" (London, Trübner, 1861), on page 29: "Agreeing that plants and
animals {223} 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,' etc., 'the living creature,'
etc.,--seems even to imply them, and leads to the conclusion that the
different species were produced through natural agencies." And on page 38:
"Darwin's hypothesis concerns the _order_ and not the _cause_, the _how_
and not the _why_ of the phenomena, and so leaves the question of design
just where it was before." And finally, in a passage which is adopted by
Sir Charles Lyell (ib. page 505): "We may imagine that events and
operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at the
first, and without any subsequent interference, or we may hold that now and
then, and only now and then, there is a direct interposition of the Deity;
or, lastly, we may suppose that all the changes are carried on by the
immediate orderly and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of
the intelligent efficient Cause."
Mivart, an English Catholic, most decidedly advocates a reconcilability of
Darwinian views, and especially of the evolution theory, as he establishes
it with the full contents of Christian orthodoxy, in his remarkable book
"On the Genesis of Species" (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 2d. ed.
1871), in which we find a great many independent naturo-historical
investigations. He assigns to the selection theory only a subordinate
position, but on the other hand accepts an _evolution_, and, in close
connection with R. Owen, explains it from inner and innate impulses of
development of the organisms, which act now more slowly and gradually, now
more by impulses; he places man as to {224} his _physical_ part entirely
among the effects of the evolution principle, although, taking into
consideration some utterances of Wallace, he thinks it possible, but not
probable, that the creation and the preceding stage of his physical nature
is also different from that of animals. But, on the other hand, in fully
adopting the old scholastic creationism, he supposes a special creation of
the _soul_, a separation of body and soul, which in this form is very
contestable, and might better have been replaced by a separation of natural
and rational or of physico-psychical and pneumatical parts of his being.
With such a view of nature, he finds the fullest harmony between the
evolution theory and religion, reconciles the plausible antagonism of
creation and development by dividing the idea of creation into a primary
creation (creation of the beginning out of nothing) and into a secondary
creation (creation through intervening agencies, although that which is
produced through them is still a creation and a work of the Creator), and
declares his conviction that what is acting according to law in nature also
stands under the causation and government of God like the first beginning
of the universe--a postulate of our primary views without which the whole
universe and our existence in it would harden into a cold mechanism without
consolation or ideality.
Finally, at the assembly of the Evangelical Alliance in New York (October,
1873), there were heard many voices of eminent advocates of a theistic and
Christian view of the world, which maintained the full consistency of an
evolution theory with religion and Christianity. McCosh, for instance, as
referee in the philosophic section as to the relation of the evolution
theory and {225} religion, said[10]: "I am not sure that religion is
entitled to insist that every species of insects has been created by a
special _fiat_ of God, with no secondary agent employed." And still more
plainly and more courageously, President Anderson, of the University of
Rochester, in his very remarkable address, speaks about the unnecessary and
unworthy fear of many Christian men, when they see the appearance of
hypotheses with which science operates. At the end of his address, he says:
"The evidence for the existence of a personal Creator cannot be affected by
any considerations drawn from the mode, relative rapidity, or the nature of
the proximate antecedents and consequences in the creative process."
From German sources, we can note fewer utterances of a friendly or at least
neutral position between Darwinism and religion. For this fact there are
many reasons. One may be, that on the continent in general there is a
smaller number of those who, without being specialists in both realms,
unite active religious interest and reasoning with a thorough study of
those naturo-historical questions, while in Great Britain
physico-theological studies have been for generations traditional and the
object of interest for the majority of educated men. A second reason,
indeed, is that some of the warmest scientific advocates of Darwinism at
once attacked also theism and Christianity; hence with all those who did
not have time and incitement enough to study the questions for themselves,
they necessarily created the opinion that Darwinism really attacks even the
fundamentals of {226} religion, and their whole tendency had but a
repelling influence even on scientists of deeper spiritual and ethical
disposition and need. Finally, in Germany as well as on the whole
continent, the number of those who do not care for religious questions in
general, and who therefore interest themselves in the scientific questions
brought up by Darwin, but do not trouble themselves farther for their
position in reference to religion and Christianity, is unfortunately larger
than in Great Britain.
Nevertheless, such friendly voices are not entirely wanting in our country.
The botanist Alex Braun says, in his beautiful and significant lecture on
the importance of development in natural history, p. 48: "Some said that
the descent theory denies creation, and it is true, the Darwinians
themselves caused this opinion by contrasting creation and development as
irreconcilable ideas. But this contrast does not actually exist, for as
soon as we look upon creation as a divine effect, not merely belonging to
the past, or appearing in single abrupt movements, but connected and
universally present in time, we can seek and find it nowhere else but in
the natural history of development itself.... Theologians themselves,
according to the Mosaic documents, acknowledge a _history_ of creation;
natural history, looked upon from its inner side, is nothing else but the
farther carrying out of the history of creation."
Even K. E. von Baer, who expressly contests the idea of selection, thinks
it only scientifically indefensible, but not anti-religious; an opinion
also held by Wigand.
A similar friendly relation between Darwinism and religion is advocated by
Braubach, in his publication, {227} "Religion, Moral und Philosophie der
Darwin'schen Artlehre nach ihrer Natur and ihrem Character als kleine
Parallele menschlich-geistiger Entwicklung" ("Religion, Morality, and
Philosophy of the Darwinian Doctrine of Species, as to its Nature and
Character; a Small Parallel of Human Intellectual Development"), Neuwied,
Hansen, 1869, a publication to which we pay special attention, since
Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," twice paid it the honor of a quotation. It
is true, the essay, through its peculiar dependence on an original and
quite arbitrarily grouped scheme, gives the impression of something very
singular, and is not very agreeably and easily read; but it shows such an
energetic union of respect for science and its work and results, with
adhesion to all the fundamentals of Christian truth, that it has to be
mentioned as one of the rare voices which, even in regard to the realm of
nature, pronounce the fullest harmony between religion and science.
Braubach finds in the animal kingdom the _elements_ of all the spiritual
life of mankind, even of _religion_ and _morality_; but everything is still
wrapped in the lowest stage of sensuality. Nevertheless, he assigns to
mankind, by its possession of the idea of _infinity_, something absolutely
new, absolutely superior to the animal world, and sees the Darwinian ideas,
even in the religious and moral possession of mankind, confirmed by the
fact that they develop themselves on the way from the sensual stage to the
rational exactly according to the principles of Darwin--namely, through
transmission with individual variability in the struggle for existence,
through selection of the fittest. With special earnestness, he pronounces
the indissoluble unity of religion and morality, {228} and says that
religion, as it presents itself upon Darwinian grounds, is a moral
religion.
We find here and there in periodicals many more voices which pronounce the
conviction that, out of the present contest of minds, peace between
religion and science will result.
* * * * *
_B. THE DARWINIAN THEORIES AND MORALITY._
PRELIMINARY VIEW.
We can treat much more briefly of this portion of our task than of the
position of the Darwinians in reference to the religious question, for the
reason that the contrasts in the ethical realm are far less sharply drawn
than in the religious realm, although in principle they are not less widely
apart. For while there are a great many men who think that it belongs to
good society and to the indispensable characteristics of high modern
education to show either cold indifference or direct hostility in reference
to religion and to the whole religious question; while a great many of the
much-read works of _belle lettres_ never tire of teaching the reading
public that the religious question really no longer exists for the educated
man, on the other hand, nobody, not even the extremest atheist and enemy of
religion, wishes to renounce the reputation of having moral principles.
Thus it happens that the positions taken by the Darwinians in reference to
the ethical question are less varied than those taken by them in reference
to the religious question. And we may also be brief for another reason,
{229} namely, that by reviewing the position of the Darwinians in reference
to the religious question, we have essentially prepared the way for the
principal questions which will have to be treated.
We shall group the utterances upon the relation of the Darwinian theories
to morality as we did those in regard to the relation of Darwinism to
religion; and shall first let the advocates of an irreconcilableness
between the two speak, then those advocating a reformative influence of
Darwinism upon morality, and finally those striving for neutrality and
peace between the two. We shall have no occasion, except incidentally, to
discriminate between the different fundamental principles and parts of
ethics, but shall in the last part of our work treat of the question
independently. In making subdivisions for them here, we should but cause
infinite repetitions, unnecessarily complicate our review, and render it
more difficult.
* * * * * {230}