CHAPTER I.

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CREATION OR EVOLUTION?

A Philosophical Inquiry.

by

GEORGE TICKNOR CURTIS.

New York:

D. Appleton and Company,

1, 3, And 5 Bond Street.

1887.

Copyright, 1887.

by George Ticknor Curtis.

TO

LEWIS A. SAYRE, M. D.,

WHOSE PROFESSIONAL EMINENCE IS RECOGNIZED

IN BOTH HEMISPHERES,

WHOSE SKILL AS A SURGEON

SUFFERING HUMANITY GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES,

TO WHOSE ANATOMICAL LEARNING

THE AUTHOR IS LARGELY INDEBTED,

AND OF WHOSE FRIENDSHIP HE IS PROUD,

This Book

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

"_Dost thou not know, my new astronomer!

Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man?

Man, turning from his God, brings endless night;

Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend,

Amend no manners, and expect no peace._"

_YOUNG'S NIGHT THOUGHTS._

PREFACE.

Perhaps it is expected of a writer who steps out of the sphere of his

ordinary pursuits, and deals with such a subject as that which is

treated in this work, that he will account for his so doing. It is not

necessary for me to say that no class of men can have a monopoly in any

subject. But I am quite willing to take my readers into my confidence

so far as to state how I came to write this book.

Most men, who have a special pursuit, find the necessity for recreation

of some kind. Some take it in one way, and some in another. It has been

my habit through life to seek occasional relief from the monotony of

professional vocations in intellectual pursuits of another character.

Having this habit--which I have found by experience has no tendency

to lessen one's capacity for the duties of a profession, or one's

relish of its occupations--I some years ago took up the study of the

modern doctrine of animal evolution. Until after the death of the late

Mr. Charles Darwin, I had not given a very close attention to this

subject. The honors paid to his memory, and due to his indefatigable

research and extensive knowledge, led me to examine his "Descent of

Man" and his "Origin of Species," both of which I studied with care,

and I trust with candor. I was next induced to examine the writings

of Mr. Herbert Spencer on the subject of evolution, with which I had

also been previously unacquainted except in a general way. I was a

good deal surprised at the extent of Mr. Spencer's reputation as a

thinker, and by the currency which his peculiar philosophy has had in

this country, where it has led, among the young and inexperienced, as

well as among older persons, to very incorrect habits of reasoning on

subjects of the highest importance. The result of my studies of these

writers is the present book. I have written it because I have seen,

or believe that I have seen, where the conflict arises between some

of the deductions of modern science and the principles which ought to

regulate not only religious belief, but belief in anything that is

not open to the direct observation of our senses. But I trust that I

shall not be understood as having written for the purpose of specially

defending the foundations of religious belief. This is no official

duty of mine. How theologians manage, or ought to manage, the argument

which is to convince men of the existence and methods of God, it is

not for me to say. But a careful examination of the new philosophy

has convinced me that those who are the special teachers of religious

truth have need of great caution in the admissions or concessions which

they make, when they undertake to reconcile some of the conclusions

of modern scientists with belief in a Creator. I do not here speak of

the Biblical account of the creation, but I speak of that belief in

a Creator which is to be deduced from the phenomena of nature. While

there are naturalists, scientists, and philosophers at the present

day, whose speculations do not exclude the idea of a Supreme Being,

there are others whose theories are entirely inconsistent with a belief

in a personal God, the Creator and Governor of the universe. Moreover,

although there are great differences in this respect between the

different persons who accept evolution in some form, the whole doctrine

of the development of distinct species out of other species makes

demands upon our credulity which are irreconcilable with the principles

of belief by which we regulate, or ought to regulate, our acceptance

of any new matter of belief. The principles of belief which we apply

in the ordinary affairs of life are those which should be applied to

scientific or philosophical theories; and inasmuch as the judicial

method of reasoning upon facts is at once the most satisfactory and the

most in accordance with common sense, I have here undertaken to apply

it to the evidence which is supposed to establish the hypothesis of

animal evolution, in contrast with the hypothesis of special creations.

I am no ecclesiastic. I advance no arguments in favor of one or another

interpretation of the Scriptures about which there is controversy among

Christians. While I firmly believe that God exists, and that he has

made a revelation to mankind, whereby he has given us direct assurance

of immortality, I do not know that this belief disqualifies me from

judging, upon proper principles of evidence, of the soundness of a

theory which denies that he specially created either the body or the

mind of man. How far the hypothesis of evolution, by destroying our

belief that God specially created us, tends to negative any purpose

for which we can suppose him to have made to us a revelation of our

immortality, it is for the theologian to consider. For myself, I am

not conscious that in examining the theory of evolution I have been

influenced by my belief in what is called revealed religion. I have,

at all events, studiously excluded from the argument all that has been

inculcated by the Hebrew or the Christian records as authorized or

inspired teachings, and have treated the Mosaic account of the creation

like any other hypothesis of the origin of man and the other animals.

The result of my study of the hypothesis of evolution is, that it is an

ingenious but delusive mode of accounting for the existence of either

the body or the mind of man; and that it employs a kind of reasoning

which no person of sound judgment would apply to anything that might

affect his welfare, his happiness, his estate, or his conduct in the

practical affairs of life.

He who would truly know what the doctrine of evolution is, and to

what it leads, must literally begin at the beginning. He must free

his mind from the cant of agnosticism and from the cant of belief. He

must refuse to accept dogmas on the authority of any one, be they the

dogmas of the scientist, or of the theologian. He must learn that his

mental nature is placed under certain laws, as surely as his corporeal

structure; and he must cheerfully obey the necessities which compel him

to accept some conclusions and to reject others. Keeping his reasoning

powers in a well-balanced condition, he must prove all things, holding

fast to that which is in conformity with sound deduction, and to that

alone. But all persons may not be able to afford the time to pursue

truth in this way, or may not have the facilities for the requisite

research. It seemed to me, therefore, that an effort to do for them

what they can not do for themselves would be acceptable to a great many

people.

It may be objected that the imaginary philosopher whom I have

introduced in some of my chapters under the name of Sophereus, or the

searcher after wisdom, debating the doctrines of evolution with a

supposed disciple of that school, whom I have named Kosmicos, is an

impossible person. It may perhaps be said that the conception of a man

absolutely free from all dogmatic religious teaching, from all bias to

any kind of belief, and yet having as much knowledge of various systems

of belief as I have imputed to this imaginary person, would in modern

society be the conception of an unattainable character. My answer to

this criticism would be that I felt myself at liberty to imagine any

kind of character that would suit my purpose. How successfully I have

carried out the idea of a man in mature life entirely free from all

preconceived opinions, and forming his beliefs upon principles of

pure reason, it is for my readers to judge. With regard to the other

interlocutor in the dialogues, I hope it is not necessary for me to

say that I do not impute all of his opinions or arguments to the

professors of the evolution school, or to any section of it. He is a

representative of the effects of some of their teachings, but not an

individual portrait. But as, for the purposes of the antagonism, it

was expedient to put into the mouth of this person whatever can be

said in favor of the hypothesis of evolution, it became necessary to

make him represent the dogmatic side of the theory; and thus to make

the collision and contrast between the minds of the two debaters as

strong as I could. Controversial discussion in the form of debate has

been used from the time of Plato. While I have adopted a method, I have

not presumed to imitate its great exemplars. But for the value of that

method I shall presently cite weighty testimony. It was a relief to

me to resort to it after having pursued the subject in the more usual

form of discussion; and indeed it forced itself upon me as a kind of

necessity, because it seemed the fairest way of presenting what could

be said on both sides of the question. I hope it may have the good

fortune to keep alive the interest of the reader, after he has perused

the previous chapters.

One disadvantage of all positive writing or discourse is that there is

no one to confute, to contradict, or to maintain the negative. At the

bar, and in some public assemblies, there is an antagonist; and truth

is elicited by the collision. But in didactic writing, especially on a

philosophical topic, it is best to introduce an antagonist, and to make

him speak in his own person. Two of the best thinkers of our time have

forcibly stated the advantage--the necessity, in short--of personal

debate. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his essay on Liberty, observes that--

"The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living

apprehension of a truth as is afforded by the necessity of explaining

it to or defending it against opponents, though not sufficient to

outweigh, is no trifling drawback from the benefits of its universal

recognition. Where this advantage can not be had, I confess I should

like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute

for it; some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as

present to the learner's consciousness as if they were pressed upon him

by a dissentient champion eager for his conversion.

"But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost

those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently

exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this

description. They were essentially a discussion of the great questions

of life and philosophy, directed with consummate skill to the purpose

of convincing any one, who had merely adopted the commonplaces of

received opinion, that he did not understand the subject--that he as

yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed, in

order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way

to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the

meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school disputations

of the middle ages had a similar object. They were intended to make

sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary

correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds

of one and confute those of the other. The last-mentioned contests

had, indeed, the incurable defect that the premises appealed to were

taken from authority, not from reason; and as a discipline to the mind

they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which

formed the intellects of the 'Socratici viri.' But the modern mind

owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit; and the

present modes of instruction contain nothing which in the smallest

degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other.... It

is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic--that

which points out weakness in theory or errors in practice, without

establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed

be poor enough as an ultimate result, but as a means to attaining

any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it can not be

valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained

to it there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of

intellect in any but the mathematical and physical departments of

speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name

of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him by

others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would

have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with

opponents."

Mr. Grote, in his admirable work on "Plato and the other Companions of

Socrates," has the following passage:

"Plato is usually extolled by his admirers as the champion of the

Absolute--of unchangeable forms, immutable truth, objective necessity,

cogent and binding on every one. He is praised for having refuted

Protagoras, who can find no standard beyond the individual recognition

and belief of his own mind or that of some one else. There is no doubt

that Plato often talks in that strain, but the method followed in his

dialogues, and the general principles of methods which he lays down

here as well as elsewhere, point to a directly opposite conclusion.

Of this the Phædrus is a signal instance. Instead of the extreme of

generality, it proclaims the extreme of speciality. The objection

which the Socrates of the Phædrus advances against the didactic

efficacy of written discourse is founded on the fact that it is the

same to all readers--that it takes no cognizance of the differences

of individual minds nor of the same mind at different times. Socrates

claims for dialectic debate the valuable privilege that it is constant

action and reaction between two individual minds--an appeal by the

inherent force and actual condition of each to the like elements in the

other--an ever-shifting presentation of the same topics, accommodated

to the measure of intelligence and cast of emotion in the talkers

and at the moment. The individuality of each mind--both questioner

and respondent--is here kept in view as the governing condition of

the process. No two minds can be approached by the same road or by

the same interrogation. The questioner can not advance a step except

by the admission of the respondent. Every respondent is the measure

to himself. He answers suitably to his own belief; he defends by

his own suggestions; he yields to the pressure of contradiction and

inconsistency _when he feels them_, and not before. Each dialogist is

(to use the Protagorean phrase) the measure to himself of truth and

falsehood, according as he himself believes it. Assent or dissent,

whichever it may be, springs only from the free working of the

individual mind in its actual condition then and there. It is to the

individual mind alone that appeal is made, and this is what Protagoras

asks for.

"We thus find, in Plato's philosophical character, two extreme opposite

tendencies and opposite poles co-existent. We must recognize them both,

but they can never be reconciled; sometimes he obeys and follows the

one, sometimes the other.

"If it had been Plato's purpose to proclaim and impose upon every one

something which he called 'Absolute Truth,' one and the same alike

imperative upon all, he would best proclaim it by preaching or writing.

To modify this 'Absolute,' according to the varieties of the persons

addressed, would divest it of its intrinsic attribute and excellence.

If you pretend to deal with an Absolute, you must turn away your eyes

from all diversity of apprehending intellects and believing subjects."

With such testimony to the value of dialectic debate, I hope that my

adoption of it as a method will be regarded as something better than an

affectation.

Mr. Spencer, in one of his works,[1] referring to and quoting from

Berkeley's "Dialogues of Hylas and Philolaus," observes that "imaginary

conversation affords great facilities for gaining a victory. When

you can put into an adversary's mouth just such replies as suit

your purpose, there is little difficulty in reaching the desired

conclusion." I have not written to gain a victory; and, indeed, I

am quite aware that it would be impossible to gain one over those

with whom I can have no common ground of reasoning. In the imaginary

conversations in this work, I have taken great care not to put into

the mouth of the supposed representative of the doctrine of evolution

anything that would suit my own purpose; and, in every instance in

which I have represented him as relying on the authority of Mr. Darwin

or of Mr. Spencer, I have either made him quote the words or have made

him state the positions as I suppose they must be understood, and have

referred the reader to the proper page in the works of those writers.

And here I will render all honor to the admirable candor with which Mr.

Darwin discussed objections to his theory which have been propounded by

others, and suggested further difficulties himself. If I do not pay the

same tribute to Mr. Spencer, the reason will be found in those portions

of my work in which I have had occasion to call in question his methods

of reasoning.

Some repetition of facts and arguments will be found in the following

pages in the different aspects in which the subject is treated. This

has been intentional. When the tribunal that is addressed is a limited

and special one, and is composed of a high order of minds accustomed

to deal with such a science, for example, as jurisprudence, he who

undertakes to produce conviction can afford to use condensation.

He seldom has to repeat what he has once said; and often, the more

compact his argument, the more likely it will be to command assent if

it is clear as well as close. But this work is not addressed to such a

tribunal. It is written for various classes of readers, some of whom

have already a special acquaintance with the subject, some of whom have

less, and some of whom have now none at all. It is designed to explain

what the theory of evolution is, and to encounter it in the mode

best adapted to reach the various minds of which the mass of readers

is composed. If I had written only for scientists and philosophers, I

should not have repeated anything.

For similar reasons I have added to this volume both a general index

and a glossary of the scientific and technical terms which I have had

occasion to use.

The whole of the text of this work had been written and electrotyped

before I had an opportunity to see the very interesting "Life and

Correspondence" of the illustrious naturalist, the late Louis Agassiz,

edited by his accomplished widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, and

published in October, 1885, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston.

For a long period of years, after his residence in this country began,

and until my removal from Boston to New York in 1862, I enjoyed as much

of his intimacy as would be likely to subsist between persons of such

different pursuits. I believe that I understood his general views of

creation, from his lectures and conversation. It is now made entirely

certain that he never accepted the doctrine of evolution of distinct

types out of preceding and different types by ordinary generation;

and it has been to me an inexpressible satisfaction to find that the

opinions and reasoning contained in my work, and adopted independently

of any influence of his, are confirmed by what has now been given to

the world. I need only refer to his letter to Prof. Sedgwick, written

in June, 1845, and to his latest utterance, the paper on "Evolution

and Permanence of Type," in the thirty-third volume of the "Atlantic

Monthly," published after his lamented death in 1873, for proof

that his opinions on the Darwinian theory never changed. Of all the

scientists whom I have ever known, or whose writings I have read,

Agassiz always seemed to me the broadest as well as the most exact and

logical reasoner.

NEW YORK, _September, 1886_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Principles of Psychology," vol. i, p. 336.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

Nature and importance of the subject--Is there a relation of Creator

and creature between God and man?--Rules of rational belief--Is

natural theology a progressive science? 1

CHAPTER II.

The Platonic Kosmos compared with the Darwinian theory of

evolution 44

CHAPTER III.

The Darwinian pedigree of man--The evolution of organisms out of

other organisms, according to the theory of Darwin 87

CHAPTER IV.

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer 131

CHAPTER V.

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer further

considered 167

CHAPTER VI.

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer further

considered 200

CHAPTER VII.

Mr. Spencer's agnosticism--His theory of the origin of religious

beliefs--The mode in which mankind are to lose the consciousness

of a personal God 257

CHAPTER VIII.

The existence, attributes, and methods of God deducible from the

phenomena of Nature--Origin of the solar system 300

CHAPTER IX.

Does evolution account for the phenomena of society and of nature?

--Necessity for a conception of a personal actor--Mr. Spencer's

protoplasmic origin of all organic life--The Mosaic account of

creation treated as a hypothesis which may be scientifically

contrasted with evolution 334

CHAPTER X.

"Species," "races," and "varieties"--Sexual division--Causation 372

CHAPTER XI.

Origin of the human mind--Mr. Spencer's theory of the composition

of mind--His system of morality 394

CHAPTER XII.

Mr. Spencer's philosophy as a whole--His psychology, and his

system of ethics--The sacred origin of moral injunctions, and

the secularization of morals 434

CHAPTER XIII.

Sophereus discourses on the nature and origin of the human mind 467

GLOSSARY 547

INDEX 557

CREATION OR EVOLUTION?

CHAPTER I.

Nature and importance of the subject--Is there a relation of Creator

and creature between God and man?--Rules of rational belief--Is

natural theology a progressive science?

Man finds himself in the universe a conscious and thinking being. He

has to account to himself for his own existence. He is impelled to this

by an irresistible propensity, which is constantly leading him to look

both inward and outward for an answer to the questions: What am I? How

came I to be? What is the limit of my existence? Is there any other

being in the universe between whom and myself there exists the relation

of Creator and creature?

The whole history of the human mind, so far as we have any reliable

history, is marked by this perpetual effort to find a First Cause.

However wild and fantastic may be the idea which the savage conceives

of a being stronger and wiser than himself; however groveling and

sensual may be his conception of the form, or attributes, or action

of that being, he is, when he strives after the comprehension of his

deity, engaged in the same intellectual effort that is made by the

most civilized and cultivated of mankind, when, speculating upon the

origin of the human soul, or its relation to the universe, or the

genesis of the material world, they reach the sublime conception of

an infinite God, the creator of all other spiritual existences and

of all the forms of animal life, or when they end in the theory that

there is no God, or in that other theory which supposes that what we

call the creation, man included, is an evolution out of primordial

matter, which has been operated upon by certain fixed laws, without any

special interposition of a creating power, exerted in the production

of the forms of animal life that now inhabit this earth, or ever have

inhabited it. In the investigation of these contrasted theories, it

is necessary to remember that the faculties of the human mind are

essentially the same in all conditions of civilization or barbarism;

that they differ only in the degree of their growth, activity, and

power of reasoning, and therefore that there must be a common standard

to which to refer all beliefs. The sole standard to which we can refer

a belief in anything is its rationality, or a comparison between that

which is believed and that which is most probable, according to the

power of human reason to weigh probabilities. In the untutored and

uncultivated savage, this power, although it exists, is still very

feeble; partly because it is exercised upon only a few objects, and

partly because the individual has comparatively but little opportunity

to know all the elements which should be taken into account in

determining a question of moral probabilities.

In the educated and cultivated man this power of judging probabilities,

of testing beliefs by their rationality, is carried, or is capable of

being carried, to the highest point of development, so as to comprehend

in the calculation the full elements of the question, or at least to

reduce the danger of some fatal omission to the minimum. It is, of

course, true that the limited range of our faculties may prevent a full

view of all the elements of any question of probability, even when our

faculties have attained the highest point of development experienced

by the age in which we happen to live. This renders the rationality of

any hypothesis less than an absolutely certain test of truth. But this

rationality is all that we have to apply to any question of belief; and

if we attend carefully to the fact that moral probabilities constitute

the groundwork of all our beliefs, and note the mental processes by

which we reach conclusions upon any question depending upon evidence,

we shall find reason to regard this power of testing beliefs by a

conformity between the hypotheses and that which is most probable to

be the most glorious attribute of the human understanding, as it is

unquestionably the safest guide to which we can trust ourselves.

It may be that, while philosophers will not object to my definition

of rationality, churchmen will ask what place I propose to assign to

authority in the formation of beliefs. I answer, in the first place,

that I am seeking to make myself understood by plain but reflecting

and reasoning people. Such persons will perceive that what I mean by

the rationality of a belief in any hypothesis is its fitness to be

accepted and acted upon because it has in its favor the strongest

probabilities of the case, so far as we can grasp those probabilities.

I know of no other foundation for a belief in anything; for belief

is the acceptance by the mind of some proposition, statement, or

supposed fact, the truth of which depends upon evidence addressed to

our senses, or to our intellectual perceptions, or to both. In the

next place, in regard to the influence of authority over our beliefs,

it is to be observed that the existence of the authority is a question

to be determined by evidence, and this question, therefore, of itself

involves an application of the test of rationality, or conformity with

what is probable. But, assuming that the authority is satisfactorily

established, it is not safe to leave all minds to the teaching of that

authority, without the aid of the reasoning, which, independent of

all authority, would conduct to the same conclusion. There are many

minds to whom it is useless to say, You are commanded to believe.

The question instantly arises, Commanded by whom, or what? And if the

answer is, By the Church, or by the Bible, and the matter is left to

rest upon that statement, there is great danger of unbelief. It is

apparent that a large amount of what is called infidelity, or unbelief,

now prevailing in the world, is due to the fact that men are told that

they are commanded to believe, as if they were to be passive recipients

of what is asserted, and because so little is addressed to their

understandings.

I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that there is no place

for authority in matters of what is called religious belief. I am quite

sensible that there may be such a thing as authority even in regard to

our beliefs; that it is quite within the range of possibilities that

there should be such a relation between the human soul and an infinite

Creator as to require the creature to accept by faith whatever a proved

revelation requires that intelligent creature to believe. But, in

view of the fact that what is specially called revealed religion is

addressed to an intelligent creature, to whom the revelation itself

must be proved by some evidence that will satisfy the mind, there is an

evident necessity for treating the rationality of a belief in God as

an independent question. In some way, by some process, we must reach a

belief in the existence of a being before we can consider the claims of

a message which that being is supposed to have sent to us. What we have

to work with, before we can approach the teaching of what is called

revealed religion, is the mind of man and the material universe. Do

these furnish us with the rational basis for a belief in God?

And here I shall be expected to say what I mean by a belief in God.

I have neither so little reverence for what I myself believe in, nor

so little respect for my readers, as to offer them anything but the

common conception of God. All that is necessary for me to do, in

order to put my own mind in contact with that of the reader, is to

express my conception of God just as it would be expressed by any one

who is accustomed to think of the being called God by the Christian,

the Jew, the Mohammedan, or by some other branches of the human race.

These different divisions of mankind may differ in regard to some of

the attributes of the Deity, or his dealings with men, or the history

or course of his government of the world. But what is common to them

all is a belief in God as the Supreme Being, who is self-existing and

eternal, by whose will all things and all other beings were created,

who is infinite in power and wisdom and in goodness and benevolence. As

an intellectual conception, this idea of a Supreme Being, one only God,

who never had a beginning and can have no end, and who is the creator

of all other beings, excludes, of course, the polytheism of the ancient

civilized nations, or that of the present barbarous tribes; and it

especially excludes the idea of what the Greeks called Destiny, which

was a power that governed the gods as well as the human race, and was

anterior and superior to Jove himself. The simple conception of the one

God held by the Christian, the Jew, or the Mohammedan, as the First

Cause of the universe and all that it embraces, creating all things

and all other beings by his will, in contrast with the modern idea

that they came into existence without the volition of a conscious and

intelligent being making special creations, is what I present to the

mind of the reader.

This idea of God as a matter of belief presents, I repeat, a question

of moral probabilities. The existence of the universe has to be

accounted for somehow. We can not shut out this inquiry from our

thoughts. The human being who never speculates, never thinks, upon the

origin of his own soul, or upon the genesis of this wondrous frame of

things external to himself, or upon his relations to some superior

being, is a very rare animal. If he is much more than an animal, he

will have some idea of these things; and the theories by which some of

the most cultivated and acute intellects of our race, from the widest

range of accumulated physical facts and phenomena yet gathered, have

undertaken to account for the existence of species without referring

them to the volition of an infinite creator, are at once a proof of the

universal pressure of the question of creation upon the human mind, and

of the logical necessity for treating it as a question dependent upon

evidence and probability.

I lay out of consideration, now, the longing of the human mind to

find a personal God and Creator. This sentiment, this yearning for an

infinite father, this feeling of loneliness in the universe without the

idea of God, is certainly an important moral factor in the question

of probability; but I omit it now from the number of proofs, because

it is a sentiment, and because I wish to subject the belief in God as

the Creator to the cold intellectual process by which we may discover

a conformity between that hypothesis and the phenomena of Nature as a

test of the probable truth. If such a conformity can be satisfactorily

shown, and if the result of the process as conducted can fairly claim

to be that the existence of God the Creator has by far the highest

degree of probability above and beyond all other hypotheses that have

been resorted to to account for our existence, the satisfaction of a

moral feeling of the human heart may well become a source of happiness,

a consolation in all the evils of this life, and a support in the hour

of death.

But in this preliminary chapter I ought to state what I understand to

be the scientific hypothesis or hypotheses with which I propose to

contrast the idea of God as the creator of species by applying the test

of probability. To discuss the superior claims of one hypothesis over

another, without showing that there is a real conflict between them,

would be to set up a man of straw for the sake of knocking it down as

if it were a living and real antagonist. What I desire to do is not to

aim at a cheap victory by attacking something that does not call for

opposition; but it is to ascertain first whether there is now current

any explanation or hypothesis concerning the origin of the creation, or

anything that it contains, which rejects the idea of God as the creator

of that which we know to exist and as it exists, and then to ascertain

which of the two hypotheses ought to be accepted as the truth, because

it has in its favor the highest attainable amount of probability. There

is an amount of probability which becomes to us a moral demonstration,

because our minds are so constituted that conviction depends upon

the completeness with which the evidence in favor of one hypothesis

excludes the other from the category of rational beliefs.

I pass by the common sort of infidelity which rejects the idea of an

intelligent creator acting in any manner whatever, whether by special

creations or by laws of development operating on some primordial form

of animal life. But among the modern scientists who have propounded

explanations of the origin of species, I distinguish those who do not,

as I understand, deny that there was an intelligent Creator by whose

will some form of animal life was originally called into being, but who

maintain that the diversified forms of animal life which we now see

were not brought into being by the special will of the Creator as we

now know them, but that they were evolved, by a process called natural

selection, out of some lower type of animated organism. Of this class,

the late Mr. Darwin is a representative. There is, however, at least

one philosopher who carries the doctrine of evolution much farther,

and who, if I rightly understand him, rejects any act of creation,

even of the lowest and simplest type of animal existence. This is

Mr. Herbert Spencer--a writer who, while he concurs in Mr. Darwin's

general theory of natural selection as the process by which distinct

organisms have been evolved out of other organisms, does not admit of

any primal organism as the origin of the whole series of animals and as

the creation of an intelligent will.

It will be appropriate hereafter to refer to the doctrine of evolution

as a means of accounting for the existence of the human mind. At

present it is only necessary to say that I understand it to be

maintained as the hypothesis which has the highest attainable amount

of evidence in its favor, that distinct species of animals are not a

creation but a growth; and also that the mind of man is not a special

creation of a spiritual existence, but a result of a long process

by which organized matter has slowly worked itself from matter into

intellect. Wherever, for instance, these scientists may place the

non-human primate, out of which man has been evolved by what is called

natural selection, and whether they do or do not assume that he was a

creation of an intelligent will, they do not, as I understand, claim

that the primate was endowed with what we call intellect; so that at

some time there was a low form of animal life without intellect, but

intellect became evolved in the long course of countless ages, by the

process of natural selection, through the improving conditions and

better organization of that low animal which had no intellect. In

other words, we have what the scientist calls the non-human primate,

a low form of animal without intellect, but capable of so improving

its own physical organization as to create for itself and within

itself that essence which we recognize as the human mind. Here, then,

there is certainly a theory, an hypothesis, which may be and must be

contrasted with the idea that the mind of man is a spiritual essence

created by the volition of some other being having the power to create

such existences, and put into a temporary union with a physical

organization, by the establishment of a mysterious connection which

makes the body the instrument of the soul so long as the connection

exists. If I have stated correctly the theory which assigns the origin

of the human mind to the process of evolution, I have assuredly not set

up a man of straw. I stand confronted with an hypothesis which directly

encounters the idea that the human intellect is a creation, in the

sense of a direct, intelligent, conscious, and purposed production of

a special character, as the human mind and hand, in the production of

whatever is permitted to finite capacities, purposely creates some new

and independent object of its wishes, its desires, or its wants. The

human mind, says the scientist, was not created by a spiritual being as

a spiritual existence independent of matter, but it grew out of matter,

that was at first so organized that it did not manifest what we call

intellect, but that could so improve its own organization as to evolve

out of matter what we know as mind.

And here I lay out of view entirely the comparative dignity of man as a

being whose existence is to be accounted for by the one hypothesis or

the other, because this comparative dignity is not properly an element

in the question of probability. The doctrine of evolution, as expounded

by Darwin and other modern scientists, may be true, and we shall still

have reason to exclaim with Hamlet, "What a piece of work is man!"

On the other hand, the hypothesis that man is a special creation of

an infinite workman, if true, does not enhance the mere _a priori_

dignity of the human race. It may, and it will hereafter appear that

it does, establish the moral accountability of man to a supreme being,

a relation which, if I correctly understand the doctrine of evolution,

is left out of the system that supposes intellect to be evolved out of

the improving process by which matter becomes nervous organization,

whose action exhibits those manifestations which we call mind. The

moral accountability of man to a supreme being may, if it becomes

established by proper evidence, be a circumstance that distinguishes

him from other animals, and may, therefore, raise him in the scale of

being. But then this dignity is a fact that comes after the process

of reasoning has shown the relation of creator and creature, and it

should not be placed at the beginning of the process among the proofs

that are to show that relation. Mr. Darwin, in concluding his great

work, "The Descent of Man," which he maintains to have been from some

very low type of animated creature, through the apes, who became

our ancestors, and who were developed into the lowest savages, and

finally into the civilized man, has anticipated that his theory will,

he regrets to say, be "highly distasteful to many"; and he adds, by

way of parrying this disgust, that "he who has seen a savage in his

native land will not feel much shame if forced to acknowledge that the

blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins." For his own

part, he adds, he would as soon be descended from a certain heroic

little monkey who exposed himself to great danger in order to save

the life of his keeper, as from a savage who delights to torture his

enemies, offers bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide, etc. Waiving

for the present the question whether the man who is called civilized

is necessarily descended from or through the kind of savage whom Mr.

Darwin saw in the Tierra del Fuego, or whether that kind of savage is a

deteriorated offshoot from some higher human creatures that possessed

moral and intellectual characteristics of a more elevated nature, I

freely concede that this question of the dignity of our descent is not

of much logical consequence. However distasteful to us may be the idea

that we are descended from the same stock as the apes, and that their

direct ancestors are to be traced to some more humble creature until

we reach the lowest form of organized and animated matter, the dignity

of our human nature is not to be reckoned among the probabilities by

which our existence is to be accounted for. It is, in this respect,

like the feeling or sentiment which prompts us to wish to find an

infinite creator, the father of our spirits and the creator of our

bodies. As a matter of reasoning, we must prove to ourselves, by

evidence that satisfies the mind, that God exists. Having reached this

conviction, the belief in his existence becomes a vast and inestimable

treasure. But our wish to believe in God does not help us to attain

that belief. In the same way our feeling about the dignity of man, the

nobleness or ignobleness of our descent from or through one kind of

creature or another, may be a satisfaction or a dissatisfaction after

we have reached a conclusion, but it affords us no aid in arriving at a

satisfactory conclusion from properly chosen premises.

And here, in advance of the tests which I shall endeavor to apply to

the existence of God and the existence of man as a special creation, I

desire to say something respecting the question of a logical antagonism

between science and religion. I have often been a good deal puzzled to

make out what those well-meaning persons suppose, who unwarily admit

that there is no necessary antagonism between what modern science

teaches and what religion teaches. Whether there is or is not, depends

upon what we mean by science and religion. If by science we understand

the investigation of Nature, or a study of the structure and conditions

of everything that we can subject to the observation of our senses,

and the deduction of certain hypotheses from what we observe, then

we must compare the hypotheses with the teachings or conclusions

which we derive from religion. The next question, therefore, is, What

is religion? If we make it to consist in the Mosaic account of the

creation, or in the teachings of the Bible respecting God, we shall

find that we have to deal with more or less of conflict between the

interpretations that are put upon a record supposed to have been

inspired, and the conclusions of science. But if we lay aside what is

commonly understood by revealed religion, which supposes a special

communication from a superior to an inferior being of something which

the former desires the latter to know, after the latter has been for

some time in existence, then we mean by religion that belief in the

existence of a superior being which we derive from the exercise of

our reasoning powers upon whatever comes within the observation of

our senses, and upon our own intellectual faculties. In other words,

for what we call natural religion, we look both outward and inward,

in search of a belief in a Supreme Being. We look outward, because

the whole universe is a vast array of facts, from which conclusions

are to be drawn; and among this array of facts is the construction

of our bodies. We look inward, because our own minds present another

array of facts from which conclusions are to be drawn. Now, if the

conclusions which the scientist draws from the widest observation

of Nature, including the human mind itself, fail to account for the

existence of the mind of man, and natural religion does account for

it, there is an irreconcilable conflict between science and religion.

I can not avoid the conviction that Mr. Darwin has missed the point of

this conflict. "I am aware," he says, "that the conclusions arrived

at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but

he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to

explain the origin of man, as a distinct species by descent from a

lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than

to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary

reproduction." I do not understand him, by the terms "religious" or

"irreligious," to refer to anything that involves praise or blame for

adopting one hypothesis rather than another. I suppose he meant to say

that a belief in his theory of the descent of man as a species is no

more inconsistent with a belief in God than it is to believe that the

individual is brought into being through the operation of the laws of

ordinary reproduction which God has established. This would be strictly

true, if the hypothesis of man's descent as a distinct species from

some lower form accounted for his existence by proofs that satisfy

the rules of evidence by which our beliefs ought to be and must be

determined. In that case, there would be no inconsistency between his

hypothesis and that to which natural religion conducts us. On the other

hand, if the Darwinian hypothesis fails to establish a relation between

the soul of man, as a special creation, and a competent creator, then

the antagonism between this hypothesis and natural religion is direct,

immediate, and irreconcilable; for the essence of religion consists in

that relation, and a belief in that relation is what we mean, or ought

to mean, by religion.

There is another form in which Mr. Darwin has depreciated the idea of

any antagonism between his theory and our religious ideas, but it has

the same logical defect as the suggestion which I have just considered,

because it involves the same assumption. It is put hypothetically,

but it is still an assumption, lacking the very elements of supreme

probability that can alone give it force. "Man," he observes, "may

be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, not through his

own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact

of his having so risen, instead of being aboriginally placed there,

may give him some hope for a still higher destiny in the distant

future." I certainly would not misrepresent, and I earnestly desire

to understand, this distinguished writer. It is a little uncertain

whether he here refers to the hope of immortality, or of an existence

after the connection between our minds and our bodies is dissolved, or

whether he refers to the further elevation of man on this earth in the

distant future of terrestrial time. If he referred to the hope of an

existence after what we call death, then he ought to have shown that

his theory is compatible with such a continued existence of the soul

of man. It will be one of the points on which I propose to bestow some

attention, that the doctrine of evolution is entirely incompatible with

the existence of the human soul for one instant after the brain has

ceased to act as an organism, and death has wholly supervened; because

that doctrine, if I understand it rightly, regards the intellect of

man as a high development of what in other animals is called instinct,

and instinct as a confirmed and inherited habit of animal organism to

act in a certain way. If this is a true philosophical account of the

origin and nature of intellect, it can have no possible individual

existence after the organ called the brain, which has been in the habit

of acting in a certain way, has perished, any more than there can be

a digestion of food after the stomach or other assimilating organ has

been destroyed. If, on the contrary, the mind of man is a special

creation, of a spiritual essence, placed in an intimate union with

the body for a temporary period, and made to depend for a time on the

organs of that body as its means of manifestation and the exercise of

its spiritual faculties, then it is conceivable that this union may be

severed and the mind may survive. Not only is this conceivable, but,

as I shall endeavor hereafter to show, the proof of it rises very high

in the scale of probability--so high that we may accept it as a fact,

just as confidently as we accept many things of which we can not have

absolute certainty.

And here I think it needful, although not for all readers, but for

the great majority, to lay down as distinctly as I can the rules

of evidence which necessarily govern our beliefs. I do so because,

in reading the works of many of the modern scientists who have

espoused the Darwinian doctrine of evolution, I find that the rules

of evidence are but little observed. There is a very great, often

an astonishingly great, accumulation of facts, or of assumed facts.

It is impossible not to be impressed by the learning, the industry,

and the range of these writers. Nor would I in the least impugn their

candor, or question their accuracy as witnesses of facts, which I am

not competent to dispute if I were disposed to do so. But there is one

thing for which I may suppose myself competent. I have through a long

life been accustomed to form conclusions upon facts; and this is what

every person does and must do who is asked to accept a new theory or

hypothesis of any kind upon any subject.

Most of our beliefs depend upon what is called circumstantial

evidence. There are very few propositions which address themselves to

our belief upon one direct and isolated proof. We may class most of

the perceptions of our senses among the simple and unrelated proofs

which we accept without hesitation, although there is more or less

of an unconscious and instantaneous process of reasoning, through

which we pass before the evidence of our senses is accepted and acted

upon. Then there are truths to which we yield an instant assent,

because they prove themselves, as is the case with the mathematical

or geometrical problems, as soon as we perceive the connection in the

steps of the demonstration. Besides these, there are many propositions

which, although they involve moral reasoning, have become axioms about

which we do not care to inquire, but which we assume to have been so

repeatedly and firmly established that it would be a waste of time to

go over the ground again whenever they come up. But there is a very

large class of propositions which address themselves to our belief,

which do not depend on a single perception through our senses, and are

not isolated facts, and are not demonstrable by mathematical truth, and

are not axioms accepted because they were proved long ago, and have

by general consent been adopted into the common stock of ideas. The

class of beliefs with which the rules of circumstantial evidence are

concerned are those where the truth of the proposition, or hypothesis,

is a deduction from many distinct facts, but the coexistence of which

facts leads to the inevitable conclusion that the proposition or

hypothesis is true. We can not tell why it is that moral conviction is

forced upon us by the coexistence of certain facts and their tendency

to establish a certain conclusion. All we know is, that our minds are

so constituted that we can not resist the force of circumstantial

evidence if we suffer our faculties to act as reason has taught them.

But, then, in any given case, whether we ought to yield our belief

in anything where we have only circumstantial evidence to guide us,

there are certain rules to be observed. The first of these rules is,

that every fact in a collection of proofs from which we are to draw

a certain inference must be proved independently by direct evidence,

and must not be itself a deduction from some other fact. This is the

first step in the process of arranging a chain of moral evidence.

There is a maxim in this branch of the law of evidence that you can

not draw an inference from an inference. In other words, you can not

infer a fact from some other fact, and then unite the former with two

or more independent facts to make a chain of proofs. Every link in

the chain must have its separate existence, and its existence must be

established by the same kind and degree of evidence as if it were the

only thing to be proved. The next rule is to place the several facts,

when so proved, in their proper relation to each other in the group

from which the inference is to be drawn. In circumstantial evidence a

fact may be established by the most direct and satisfactory proofs,

and yet it may have no relation to other facts with which you attempt

to associate it. For example, suppose it to be proved that A on a

certain occasion bought a certain poison, and that soon after B died

of that kind of poison; but it does not appear that A and B were ever

seen together, or stood in any relation to each other. The fact that

A bought poison would have no proper relation to the other fact that

B died of that kind of poison. But introduce by independent evidence

the third fact, that A knew B intimately, and then add the fourth

fact, that A had a special motive for wishing B's death, you have some

ground for believing that A poisoned B, although no human eye ever saw

the poison administered. From this correlation of all the facts in a

body of circumstantial evidence, there follows a third rule, namely,

that the whole collection of facts, in order to justify the inference

sought to be drawn from them, must be consistent with that inference.

Thus, the four facts above supposed are entirely consistent with the

hypothesis that A poisoned B. But leave out the two intermediate facts,

or leave out the last one, and B might as well have been poisoned by

C as by A. Hence there is a fourth rule: that the collection of facts

from which an inference is to be drawn must not only be consistent

with the probable truth of that inference, but they must exclude the

probable truth of any other inference. Thus, not only must it be shown

that A bought poison, that B died of poison, that A was intimate with

B and had a motive for wishing B's death, but, to justify a belief in

A's guilt, the motive ought to be shown to have been so strong as to

exclude the moral probability that B was poisoned by some one else,

or poisoned himself. It is in the application of these rules that in

courts of justice the minds of jurymen often become perplexed with

doubts which they can not account for, or else they yield a too easy

credence to the guilt of the accused when the question of guilt depends

upon circumstantial evidence.

I shall not spend much time in contending that these rules of evidence

must be applied to scientific investigations which are to affect

our belief in such a proposition as the descent of man from a common

ancestor with the monkey. This is not only an hypothesis depending upon

circumstantial evidence, but it is professedly a deduction from a great

range of facts and from a very complex state of facts. In reasoning

upon such subjects, when the facts which constitute the chain of

circumstantial evidence are very numerous, we are apt to regard their

greater comparative number as if it dispensed with a rigid application

of the rules of determination. Every one can see, in the illustration

above employed, borrowed from criminal jurisprudence, that the facts

which constitute the chain of circumstantial evidence ought to be

rigidly tested by the rules of determination before the guilt of the

accused can be safely drawn as a deduction from the facts. But, in

reasoning from physical facts to any given physical hypothesis where

the facts are very numerous, there is a strong tendency to relax the

rules of evidence, because, the greater the accumulation of supposed

facts becomes, the greater is the danger of placing in the chain of

evidence something that is not proved, and thus of vitiating the whole

process. To this tendency, which I have observed to be very frequent

among scientists, I should apply, without meaning any disrespect,

the term invention. A great accumulation of facts is made, following

one another in a certain order; all those which precede a certain

intermediate link are perhaps duly and independently proved, and the

same may be the case with those which follow that link. But there is

no proof of the fact that constitutes the link and makes a complete

chain of evidence. This vacuity of proof, if one may use such an

expression, is constantly occurring in the writings of naturalists, and

is often candidly admitted. It is gotten over by reasoning from the

antecedent and the subsequent facts that the intermediate facts must

have existed; and then the reasoning goes on to draw the inference of

the principal hypothesis from a chain of proof in which a necessary

intermediate link is itself a mere inference from facts which may be

just as consistent with the non-existence as with the existence of

the supposed intermediate link. In such cases we are often told very

frankly that no one has yet discovered that the intermediate link ever

actually existed; that the researches of science have not yet reached

demonstrative proof of the existence of a certain intermediate animal

or vegetable organization; that geological exploration has not yet

revealed to us all the specimens of the animal or vegetable kingdoms

that may have inhabited this globe at former periods of time; but that

the analogies which lead down or lead up to that as yet undiscovered

link in the chain are such that it must have existed, and that we may

confidently expect that the actual proof of it will be found hereafter.

The difficulty with this kind of reasoning is that it borrows from the

main hypothesis which one seeks to establish the means of showing the

facts from which the hypothesis is to be drawn as an inference. Thus,

for example, the hypothesis is that the species called man is a highly

developed animal formed by a process of natural selection that went on

for unknown ages among the individuals descended from the progenitor

of the anthropomorphous apes. The facts in the physical organization

and mental manifestations of the animal called man, when viewed

historically through all the conditions in which we know anything of

this species, lead up to that common supposed ancestor of the apes.

The facts in the physical organization and instinctive habits of the

ape, when viewed historically through all the conditions in which we

know anything of his species, show that he, too, was evolved by the

process of natural selection out of that same ancestor. Intermediate,

respectively, between the man and the monkey and their primordial

natural-selection ancestor or predecessor, there are links in the chain

of proof of which we have no evidence, and which must be supplied by

inferring their existence from the analogies which we can trace in

comparing things of which we have some satisfactory proof. Thus, the

main hypothesis, the theory of natural selection as the explanation

of the existence of distinct species of animals, is not drawn from a

complete chain of established facts, but it is helped out by inferring

from facts that are proved other facts that are not proved, but which

we have reason to expect will be discovered hereafter. I need not say

that this kind of argument will not do in the common affairs of life,

and that no good reason can be shown why our beliefs in matters of

science should be made to depend upon it.

We do not rest our belief in what is called the law of gravitation

upon any chain of proof in which it is necessary to supply a link

by assuming that it exists. The theory that bodies have a tendency

to approach each other, that the larger mass attracts to itself the

smaller by a mysterious force that operates through all space, is a

deduction from a great multitude of perpetually recurring facts that

are open to our observation, no one of which is inferred from any other

fact, while the whole excludes the moral probability that any other

hypothesis will account for the phenomena which are continually and

invariably taking place around us.

This illustration of the rules of evidence, when applied to scientific

inquiries, leads me to refer to one of the favorite postulates of

the evolution school. We are often told that it ought to be no

objection to the doctrine of evolution that it is new, or startling,

or contrary to other previous theories of the existence of species.

We are reminded again and again that Galileo's grand conception was

scouted as an irreligious as well as an irrational hypothesis, and

that the same reception attended the first promulgation of many

scientific truths which no intelligent and well-informed person now

doubts.[2] Then we have it asserted that the doctrine of evolution

is now accepted by nearly all the most advanced and accomplished

natural philosophers, especially those of the rising scientists who

have bestowed most attention upon it. Upon this there are two things

to be said: First, it is a matter of very little consequence that the

learned of a former age did not attend to the proofs of the law of

gravitation, or of any other new theory of physics, as they should

have done, and that they consequently rejected it. Their logical

habits of mind, their preconceived religious notions, and many other

disturbing causes, rendered them incapable of correct reasoning on some

particular subject, while they could reason with entire correctness

on other subjects. Secondly, the extent to which a new theory is

accepted by those whose special studies lead them to make the necessary

investigations, does not dispense with the application of the laws

of evidence to the facts which are supposed to establish the theory.

The doctrine of evolution addresses itself not only to the scientific

naturalist, but to the whole intelligent part of mankind. How is one

who does not belong to this class of investigators to regulate his

belief in the theory which they propound? Is he to take it on their

authority? or is he, while he accords to their statements of facts all

the assent which as witnesses they are entitled to expect from him, to

apply to their deduction the same principles of belief that he applies

to everything else which challenges belief, and to assent or dissent

accordingly? No one, I presume, will question that the latter is the

only way in which any new matter of belief should be approached. I have

not supposed that any scientist questions this; but I have referred to

the constant iteration that the doctrine of evolution is now generally

admitted by men of science, that the assertion, supposing it to be

true, may pass for just what it is worth. It is worth this and no

more: that candid, truthful, and competent witnesses, when they speak

of facts that they have observed, are entitled to be believed as to

the existence of those facts. When they assume facts which they do not

prove, but which are essential links in the chain of evidence, or when

the facts which they do prove do not rationally exclude every other

hypothesis excepting their own, the authority of even the whole body

of such persons is of no more account than that of any other class

of intelligent and cultivated men. In the ages when ecclesiastical

authority exercised great power over the beliefs of men upon questions

of physical science, the superiority was accorded to the authority

which claimed it, and the scientist who propounded a new physical

theory that did not suit the theologian was overborne. It seems to me

that it is a tendency of the present age to substitute the authority

of scientific experts in the place of the ecclesiastical authority

of former periods, by demanding that something more than the office

of witnesses of facts shall be accorded to them. We are told that it

is a very important proof of the soundness of deductions, that the

deductions are drawn by the greater number of the specialists who

have examined the facts. Sometimes this is carried so far as to imply

presumption in those who do not yield assent to the theory, as if it

ought to be accepted upon the authority of the experts whose proper

office it is to furnish us with the facts, and whose deductions we have

to examine upon the strength of their reasoning. Those of us who are

not professors of the particular science may be charged with ignorance

or incapacity if we do not join in the current of scientific opinion.

But, after all, the new theory challenges our belief. If we examine it

at all, we must judge of it, not by the numbers of those who propound

or accept it, or by any amount of mere authority, but by the soundness

of the reasoning by which its professors support it.

The reader is now informed of what he may expect to find discussed

in this volume. It remains for me to indicate the mode in which the

discussion will be carried on. I propose to divest my own mind, and

so far as I may to divest the mind of the reader, of all influence

from revealed religion. I shall not refer to the Mosaic account of the

creation excepting as I refer to other hypotheses. With its authority

as an account given by the Deity himself through his chosen servant,

I have here nothing to do. Nor shall I rely upon the revelation

recorded in the New Testament. All the inquiries which I propose to

make are those which lie in the domain of natural religion; and while

I can not expect, in exploring this domain, to make discoveries or to

find arguments which can claim the merit of originality, I may avoid

traveling in a well beaten path, by pursuing the line of my own

reflections, without considering whether they coincide with or differ

from the reasonings of others. Although, at a former period of my life,

I have studied the great writers whose speculations in the science

of natural theology are the most famous and important pieces in its

literature, it is more than forty years since I have looked into one of

them; and I do not propose to turn to them now, in order to see whether

they have or have not left any traces in my mind. It is quite possible

that critics may array against me the authority of some great name or

names; but even if I am to be charged with presumption in entering upon

this field, it will not be found, so far as I am conscious, that I have

borrowed an argument, imitated a method, or followed an example.

There is a passage in one of the writings of Lord Macaulay in which

that brilliant essayist maintained that natural theology is not

a progressive science. Macaulay's tendency to paradox was often

aggravated by the superficial way in which he used his multifarious

knowledge. As in the course of this work I am about to do that which

he regarded as idle, namely, to inquire whether natural religion,

aside from revelation, is of any value as a means of reaching a belief

in the existence and attributes of God and the immortality of man, I

cite the passage in which Macaulay makes the assertion that natural

theology has made no progress from the time of the Greek philosophers

to the present day: "As respects natural religion, revelation being

for the present altogether left out of the question, it is not easy to

see that a philosopher of the present day is more favorably situated

than Thales or Simonides. He has before him just the same evidences

of design in the structure of the universe that the early Greeks had.

We say just the same, for the discoveries of modern astronomers and

anatomists have really added nothing to the force of that argument

which a reflecting mind finds in every beast, bird, insect, fish,

leaf, flower, and shell. The reasoning by which Socrates in Xenophon's

hearing confuted the little atheist Aristophanes, is exactly the

reasoning of Paley's 'Natural Theology.' Socrates makes precisely the

same use of the statues of Polycletus and the pictures of Zeuxis which

Paley makes of the watch. As to the other great question, the question

what becomes of man after death, we do not see that a highly educated

European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the

right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences

in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on

the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all

the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted without the

aid of revelation to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to

Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably.

"Then, again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural

theologian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people just

emerging from barbarism is quite sufficient to propound those enigmas.

The genius of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them. It is

a mistake to imagine that subtile speculations touching the Divine

attributes, the origin of evil, the necessity of human actions, the

foundation of moral obligation, imply any high degree of intellectual

culture. Such speculations, on the contrary, are in a peculiar manner

the delight of intelligent children and of half-civilized men. The

number of boys is not small who, at fourteen, have thought enough on

these questions to be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire gives

to Zadig: 'Il en savait ce qu'on a su dans tous les ages; c'est à dire,

fort peu de chose.'

"The book of Job shows that, long before letters and arts were known

to Ionia, these vexing questions were debated with no common skill and

eloquence under the tents of the Idumean emirs; nor has human reason,

in the course of three thousand years, discovered any satisfactory

solution of the riddles which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar. Natural

theology, then, is not a progressive science."[3]

Here, in the space of two not very long paragraphs, is a multitude

of allusions which evince the range of Lord Macaulay's reading, but

which are employed, without very close thinking, in a quite inaccurate

way, to sustain assertions that are not true. If he had said that a

modern philosopher has before him in the structure of the universe

not only all the same evidence of design which the early Greeks had,

but a great deal more, he would have hit the exact truth. It is

simple extravagance to say that modern astronomy has added nothing to

the strength of the argument which shows the existence of a supreme

lawgiver and artificer of infinite power and skill. What did the

early Greeks know about the structure of the solar system, the law

of universal gravitation, and the laws of motion? Compare the ideas

entertained by the Greek philosophers of the phenomena of the universe

with those which modern astronomy has enabled a modern philosopher

to assume as scientific facts established by rigorous demonstration;

compare what was known before the invention of the telescope with

what the telescope has revealed; compare the progress that was made

in Greek speculative philosophy from the time of Thales to the time

of Plato, and then say whether natural religion had not made advances

of the greatest importance even before modern science had multiplied

the means for still greater progress. A brief summary of the Greek

philosophy concerning the producing causes of phenomena will determine

whether Lord Macaulay was right or wrong in the assertion that the

"early Greeks" had as good means of making true deductions in natural

theology as the means which exist to-day.

All scholars who have attended to the history of Greek speculation know

that the Greeks held to the belief in polytheistic personal agents as

the active producers of the phenomena of Nature. This was the system of

Homer and Hesiod and the other old poets. This was the popular belief

held throughout all the Hellenic world, and it continued to be the

faith of the general public, not only after the different schools of

philosophy had arisen, but down to and after the time when St. Paul

stood on Mars Hill and told the men of Athens how he had found that

they were in all things too superstitious. Thales, who flourished in

the first half of the sixth century before Christ, was the first Greek

who suggested a physical agency in place of a personal. He assumed the

material substance, water, to be the primordial matter and universal

substratum of everything in Nature. All other substances were, by

transmutations, generated from water, and when destroyed they all

returned into water. His idea of the earth was that it was a flat,

round surface floating on the immense watery expanse or ocean. In

this he agreed with the old poets; but he did not, like them, suppose

that the earth extended down to the depths of Tartarus. The Thalesian

hypothesis, therefore, rejected the Homeric Okeanus, the father of

all things, and substituted for that personal agency the agency of

one primordial physical substance, by its own energy producing all

other substances. This is about all that is known of the philosophy of

Thales, and even this is not known from any extant writing of his, but

it is derived from what subsequent writers, including Aristotle, have

imputed to him.[4] Why Lord Macaulay should have selected Thales as the

Greek philosopher who was as favorably situated as a philosopher of

the present day for dealing with questions of natural religion, is not

very apparent. All that Thales did, assuming that we know what he did,

was to strike out a new vein of thought, the direct opposite of the

poetical and popular idea of the origin of phenomena.

From Thales to Plato, a century and a half intervened.[5] During this

period there arose, according to Mr. Grote, twelve distinct schemes

of philosophy, the authors of which that learned Englishman has

enumerated, together with an admirable summary of their respective

systems. From this summary certain things are apparent. All these

philosophers, from Thales to Democritus, while each speculated

upon Nature in an original vein of his own, endeavored to find an

explanation or hypothesis on which to account for the production and

generation of the universe by some physical agency apart from the

mythical personifications which were believed in by the populace and

assumed in the poetical theologies. Some of them, without blending

ethics and theology in their speculations, adopted, as the universal

and sufficient agents, the common, familiar, and pervading material

substances, such as water, fire, air, etc.; others, as Pythagoras and

his sect, united with ethical and theological speculations the idea

of geometrical and arithmetical combinations as the primal scientific

basis of the phenomena of Nature. But what was common to all these

speculations was the attempt to find a scientific basis on which to

explain, by physical generation, by transmutation and motion from place

to place, the generation of the Kosmos, to take the place of generation

by a divine personal agency or agencies. But while these speculations

were of course unsuccessful, their abundance and variety, the inventive

genius which they exhibit, the effort to find a scientific basis apart

from the popular and poetic belief in a multitude of personal and

divine agencies, constitute, as Mr. Grote has well said, "one of the

most memorable facts in the history of the Hellenic mind"; and "the

mental effort required to select some known agency and to connect it

by a chain of reasoning with the result, all this is a new phenomenon

in the history of the human mind." Such an amount of philosophical

speculations could not go on for a century and a half without enlarging

the means for dealing with questions of natural theology; for they very

nearly exhausted the "causings and beginnings" which could be assigned

to regular knowable and predictable agencies; and these they carried

through almost every conceivable form of action by which such agencies

could be supposed to operate. While the authors of these systems

of philosophy were constantly hampered by the popular and poetic

conceptions of a diversified and omnipresent polytheistic agency, a

belief which, as Mr. Grote has said, was "eminently captivating and

impressive," and which pervaded all the literature of their time,

their speculations accumulated a vast fund of ideas in the sphere of

scientific explanations, which, although unsatisfactory to modern

science, became, when we reach Plato, the principal influence which led

him to revert to the former idea of a divine agency, intentionally and

deliberately constructing out of a chaotic substratum the system of the

Kosmos; and which also led him to unite with it the idea of a mode in

which it acted on and through the primordial elements of matter.

So that, from the class of philosophers to whom Lord Macaulay

presumably referred as "the early Greeks," down to and including Plato,

there was a great advance. The earlier Greek philosophers did not

divide substance from its powers or properties, nor did they conceive

of substance as a thing acted upon by power, or of power as a thing

distinct from substance. They regarded substance, some primordial

substance, with its powers and properties, as an efficient and

material cause, and as the sole cause, as a positive and final agent.

They did not seek for a final cause apart from the substances which

they supposed to be the sole agents operating to produce important

effects. But, inasmuch as they carried their various theories through

nearly the whole range of possible speculation, they enabled Plato

and Aristotle to see that there was a fundamental defect in their

reasoning; that there must be an abstract conception of power as

something distinct from substance or its properties. It was by Plato

and Aristotle that this abstract conception was reached, of course

without any influence of what we regard as revelation; and, although

they did not always describe correctly the mode in which this power

had acted, their perception of the logical necessity for such a final

cause marks a great progress in philosophical speculation. It entirely

refutes Lord Macaulay's assertion that natural theology is not a

progressive science. It had made great progress from Thales to Plato;

and while in a certain sense it is true that "a modern philosopher

has before him just the same evidence of design in the structure of

the universe which the early Greeks had"--that is, he has the same

physical phenomena to observe--it is not true that the early Greeks

did not develop conceptions of the origin of the universe valuable

to their successors. Lord Macaulay should not have compared Thales

with the modern philosopher, in respect of advantage of situation,

but he should have compared the modern philosopher with Plato, and

Plato with his predecessors; and if he had done this, he could not

have asserted with any show of truth that natural theology has

made no advance as a science from the time of Thales, the Milesian

philosopher, and Simonides, the poet, to the present day. I shall have

occasion hereafter to speak of the masterly intellectual power by

which Plato wrought out his conception of a formative divine agency in

the production of the Kosmos, and the bold and original speculation

by which he avoided the charge of infidelity toward the established

religion of his countrymen.

When I come to speak of what modern astronomy has done in furnishing

us with new means of sound philosophical speculation on the being,

attributes, and methods of God, it will be seen whether Lord Macaulay

is correct in the assertion that it has added nothing to the argument.

At present I will briefly advert to what the "early Greeks," or any of

the Greeks, knew of the structure of the solar system. We learn, from

a work which dates from nearly the middle of the second century of the

Christian era, what was the general conception of the solar system

among the ancients, including the Greeks. This work is known as the

"Almagest" of Ptolemy, and the name of the "Ptolemaic System" has been

given to the theory which he describes. This theory was common to all

the ancient astronomers, Ptolemy's statement of it being a compendium

of what they believed. Its principal features are these: 1. The heavens

are a vast sphere, in which the heavenly bodies are set, and around the

pole of this sphere they revolve in a circle every day. 2. The earth

is likewise a sphere, and is situated in the center of the celestial

plane as a fixed point. The earth having no motion, and being in the

center of all the motions of the other bodies, the diurnal revolutions

of those bodies are in a uniform motion around it. 3. The sun, being

one of the heavenly bodies making a revolution around the earth, was

supposed to be placed outside of the position of Venus in the heavenly

sphere. The order of the Ptolemaic system was thus: The moon was first,

being nearest to the earth; then came Mercury and Venus, the sun being

between Venus and Mars. Beyond Mars came Jupiter and Saturn. Plato's

arrangement was in one respect different, his order being the moon, the

sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. But this ideal heavenly

sphere, with the earth in the center of all the revolutions of the

other bodies, and remaining quiescent--a theory which was common to all

the ancient astronomers--was the result of observing the motions of

the heavenly bodies as they appear to a spectator on the earth. Such a

spectator would have this appearance of a celestial sphere presented

to him wherever he might be; and, judging from the apparent motions

of the heavenly bodies relative to his own position at the center, he

would conclude that the earth is at that center, and that it remains

at rest, supported on nothing. It required certain discoveries to

explode this system of a celestial sphere. First came Copernicus, who,

about the middle of the sixteenth century of our era, published his

demonstrations, which convinced the world of two great propositions: 1.

That the diurnal revolution of the heavens is nothing but an apparent

motion, caused by the revolution of the earth on its own axis. 2. That

the earth is but one of a group of planets, all of which revolve around

the sun as a center. Next came Kepler, who, in the early part of the

seventeenth century, recognizing the truth of the Copernican system,

determined the three laws of planetary motion: 1. That the orbit of

each planet is an ellipse, the sun being in one focus. 2. That as each

planet moves around the sun, the line which joins it to the sun passes

over equal areas in equal times. 3. That the square of the time of a

planet's revolution around the sun is in proportion to the cube of its

mean distance from the sun. These laws were discovered by Kepler as

deductions made upon mathematical principles from observations which

had to be carried on without the aid of the telescope, and without that

knowledge of the general laws of motion which came later. Kepler's

laws, although in the main correct, were subsequently found to be

subject to certain deviations in the planetary motions. It was when

Galileo, the contemporary of Kepler, who, if he was not the first

inventor of the telescope, was the first to use it in astronomical

observations, was able by means of it to discover the general laws of

motion, that the substantial accuracy of Kepler's three laws could be

proved, while at the same time the deviations from them were accounted

for. Still, there was wanting the grand discovery, which would disclose

the cause of these motions of the planets in elliptical orbits, and the

relations between their distances and their times of revolution, and

thus reduce the whole of the phenomena to a general law. Descartes,

who flourished 1596-1650, first attempted to do this by his theory of

Vortices. He supposed the sun to be immersed in a vast fluid, which, by

the sun's rotation, was made to rotate in a whirlpool, that carried the

planets around with it, the outer ones revolving more slowly because

the parts of the ethereal fluid in which they were immersed moved more

slowly. This was a reversion back to some of the ancient speculations.

It was reserved for Newton to discover the law of universal

gravitation, by which, in the place of any physical connection between

the bodies of the solar system by any intervening medium, the force

of attraction exerted by a larger body upon a smaller would draw the

smaller body out of the straight line that it would pursue when under

a projectile force, and would thus convert its motion into a circular

revolution around the attracting body, and make the orbit of this

revolution elliptical by the degree in which the attracting force

varied in intensity according to the varying distance between the two

bodies. When Newton's laws of motion were discovered and found to be

true, the phenomena of the solar system were explained.

It may be interesting, before leaving for the present this branch of

the subject, to advert more particularly to one of the philosophical

systems of the Greeks, which, when compared with the discoveries of

modern astronomy, illustrates the great addition that has been made

to our means of sound speculation upon the origin of the material

universe. I refer to the system of the Pythagoreans--one of the most

remarkable instances of the invention of facts to fit and carry out

a theory that can be found in the history of philosophy, although

we are not without striking examples of this practice in modern

speculations. It has already been seen that, during the whole period

of Greek philosophy before the time of Plato, the problem was to find

a primordial and universal agent by which the sensible universe was

built up and produced; supplying, that is to say, the matter and force

required for the generation of successive products.[6] It has been seen

that the Thalesian philosophers undertook to solve this problem by the

employment of some primordial physical substance, such as water, fire,

air, etc. Pythagoras and his school held that the essence of things

consisted in number; by which they did not mean simply that all things

could be numbered, but they meant that numbers were substance, endowed

with an active force, by which things were constituted as we know them.

In the Pythagorean doctrine number was the self-existing reality; not,

as in Plato's system of ideas, separate from things, but as the essence

or determining principles of things, and having, moreover, magnitude

and active force.[7] This remarkably subtle conception of an agent in

the production of material things evinces the effort that was making,

in a direction opposite to that of Thales and his immediate successors,

to find a First Cause. It was carried out by the Pythagoreans in the

movements of the heavenly bodies, in the works of human art, and in

musical harmony; in all of which departments, according to Mr. Grote,

they considered measure and number as the producing and directing

agencies. We are here concerned only with their application of this

theory to the celestial bodies. One of their writers is quoted by Mr.

Grote as a representative of the school which was founded by Pythagoras

(about 530 B. C.), and which extended into the Græco-Italian

cities, where, as a brotherhood, they had political ascendency

until they were put down and dispersed about 509 B. C.; but

they continued for several generations as a social, religious, and

philosophical sect. According to this writer (Philolaus), "the Dekad,

the full and perfect number, was of supreme and universal efficacy as

the guide and principle of life, both to the Kosmos and to man. The

nature of number was imperative and law-giving, affording the only

solution of all that was perplexing or unknown; without number all

would be indeterminate and unknowable."

Accordingly, the Pythagoreans constructed their system of the universe

by the all-pervading and producing energy of this primordial agent,

Number, in the manner thus described by Mr. Grote (i, 12-15): "The

Pythagoreans conceived the Kosmos, or the universe, as one single

system, generated out of numbers. Of this system the central point--the

determining or limiting One--was first in order of time and in order of

philosophical conception. By the determining influence of this central

constituted One, portions of the surrounding Infinite were successively

attracted and brought into system: numbers, geometrical figures, solid

substances were generated. But, as the Kosmos thus constituted was

composed of numbers, there could be no continuum; each numeral unit

was distinct and separate from the rest by a portion of vacant space,

which was imbibed, by a sort of inhalation, from the infinite space or

spirit without. The central point was fire, called by the Pythagoreans

the Hearth of the Universe (like the public hearth or perpetual fire

maintained in the prytaneum of a Grecian city), or the watch-tower of

Zeus. Around it revolved, from west to east, ten divine bodies, with

unequal velocities, but in symmetrical movement or regular dance.

Outermost was the circle of the fixed stars, called by the Pythagoreans

Olympus, and composed of fire like the center. Within this came

successively, with orbits more and more approximating to the center,

the five planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury; next, the sun,

the moon, and the earth. Lastly, between the earth and the central

fire, an hypothetical body, called the Antichthon, or counter-earth,

was imagined for the purpose of making up a total represented by

the sacred number ten, the symbol of perfection and totality. The

Antichthon was analogous to a separated half of the earth, simultaneous

with the earth in its revolutions, and corresponding with it on the

opposite side of the central fire. The inhabited portion of the earth

was supposed to be that which was turned away from the central fire

and toward the sun, from which it received light. But the sun itself

was not self-luminous: it was conceived as a glassy disk, receiving

and concentrating light from the central fire, and reflecting it upon

the earth, so long as the two were on the same side of the central

fire. The earth revolved in an orbit obliquely intersecting that of the

sun, and in twenty-four hours, round the central fire, always turning

the same side toward that fire. The alternation of day and night was

occasioned by the earth being, during a part of such revolution, on the

same side of the central fire with the sun, and thus receiving light

reflected from him; and during the remaining part of her revolution on

the side opposite to him, so that she received no light at all from

him. The earth, with the Antichthon, made this revolution in one day;

the moon, in one month; the sun, with the planets Mercury and Venus,

in one year; the planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in longer periods

respectively, according to their distances from the center; lastly, the

outermost circle of the fixed stars (the Olympus, or the Asslanes), in

some unknown period of very long duration.

"The revolutions of such grand bodies could not take place, in the

opinion of the Pythagoreans, without producing a loud and powerful

sound; and as their distances from the central fire were supposed to

be arranged in musical ratios, so the result of all these separate

sounds was full and perfect harmony. To the objection, Why were not the

sounds heard by us? they replied that we had heard them constantly and

without intermission from the hour of our birth; hence they had become

imperceptible by habit."

Beautiful as was this theory--the origin of the phrase, "the music of

the spheres"--it owed its perfection as a theory to a pure invention,

resorted to in order to carry out the hypothesis of the sacred

number Ten, of which all the greater numbers were only compounds and

derivatives. This perfect and normal Ten, as a basis on which to

rest a bold astronomical hypothesis, required the imagination of the

Antichthon, or counter-earth, in order, with the other bodies, to make

up the primordial number to whose generative force the whole of these

bodies owed their origin. The resort to this conception of number, as

a formative and active agent, was doubtless due to the fact that the

Pythagoreans were the earliest cultivators of mathematical science. We

are told, in fact, that they paved the way for Euclid and Archimedes,

notwithstanding their symbolical and mystical fancies, and from their

mathematical studies they were led to give exclusive supremacy to

arithmetical and geometrical views of Nature. But what is curious about

this whole speculation is, that in the invention or substitution of

certain facts in order to make a perfect theory, it resembles some

modern hypotheses, in which facts have been assumed, or argued as

existing from analogies, when there is no evidence which establishes

them. Modern instances of this will appear hereafter.

Enough has now been said about the speculations of the "early Greeks"

to show the extravagance of Lord Macaulay's assertion that the

discoveries of modern astronomy have placed the modern philosopher in

no better situation to make safe deductions in natural theology than

that occupied by the Hellenic philosophers from Thales to Plato. The

evidences of design in the formation of the solar system--of that kind

of design which acts in direct and specific exertions of a formative

will--have been enormously multiplied by the discoveries of modern

astronomy. Those discoveries, instead of leaving us to grope among

theories which require the invention or imagination of facts, relate to

facts that are demonstrated; and they tend in the strongest manner to

establish the hypothesis of an infinite Creator, making laws to govern

material objects, and then creating a system of objects to be governed

by those laws. In a future chapter I shall endeavor to show why this

hypothesis in regard to the solar system is most conformable to the

rules of rational belief.

Not to anticipate what will be said hereafter concerning the modern

discoveries in anatomy and in comparative zoölogy, it is enough to

say here that in the writings of the Greek philosophers, especially

of Plato and Aristotle, we may discover what the Greeks knew or did

not know, and may therefore compare their knowledge with what is

now known. What was known about the human anatomy to the Greeks of

Plato's time is probably pretty well reflected in his "Timæus," the

celebrated dissertation in which he developed his theory of the Kosmos;

for, although Plato in that superb philosophical epic made use of the

organs of the human body for ethical and theological purposes, and

did not make a special study of matters of fact, it is not probable

that in his mode of using them he so far departed from the received

ideas of his time respecting the human anatomy that his treatise would

have been regarded by his contemporaries as an absurdity. Indeed,

Mr. Grote considered that Plato had that anatomical knowledge which

an accomplished man of his time could hardly fail to acquire without

special study.[8] Moreover, even Galen, who came five centuries after

Plato, and whose anatomical knowledge was far greater than could have

been commanded in Plato's day, was wholly wrong in respect to the

functions of some of the human organs. He agreed with Plato's ethical

view of the human organism, but not in his physiological postulates.

He considered, according to Mr. Grote, that Plato had demonstrated the

hypothesis of one soul to be absurd; he accepted Plato's triplicity of

souls, but he located them differently. He held that there are three

"originating and governing organs in the body: the brain, which is the

origin of all the nerves, both of sensation and motion; the heart, the

origin of the arteries; the liver, the sanguifacient organ, and the

origin of the veins which distribute nourishment to all parts of the

body. These three are respectively the organs of the rational, the

energetic, and the appetitive soul."[9] Plato, on the other hand, had

placed the rational soul in the cranium, the energetic soul in the

thoracic cavity, and the appetitive soul in the abdominal cavity; he

connected them by the line of the spinal marrow continuous with the

brain, making the rational soul immortal, and the two inferior souls,

or two divisions of one inferior soul, mortal. Galen did not decide

what is the essence of the three souls, or whether they are immortal.

Plato assigned to the liver a very curious function, or compound of

functions, making it the assistant of the rational soul in maintaining

its ascendency over the appetitive soul, and at the same time making

it the seat of those prophetic warnings which the gods would sometimes

vouchsafe to the appetitive soul, especially when the functions of the

rational soul are suspended, as in sleep, disease, or ecstasy.

But while there was much scientific progress from Plato to Galen, and

while Galen's physiological ideas of the functions of the brain, the

heart, and the liver held their place until Harvey's discovery of the

circulation of the blood in the seventeenth century, that discovery

and the subsequent investigations proved that Galen, although not far

wrong as to the brain, was wholly wrong as to the liver, and partially

wrong as to the heart. Yet Galen's physiological theories concerning

these organs were founded on many anatomical facts and results of

experiments, such as could then be made.

There is another fact which marks the state of anatomical knowledge

among the Greeks in the time of Plato, and of Aristotle, who belonged

to the same century. The "Timæus" of Plato shows that there were

physicians at that period, and that he was acquainted with the writings

of Hippocrates. The important fact is, as stated by Mr. Grote, that

"the study and practice of medicine was at that time greatly affected

by the current speculations respecting Nature as a whole; accomplished

physicians combined both lines of study, implicating cosmical and

biological theories."[10]

It is now only needful to say that modern anatomy and physiology

afford aids to sound deductions in natural theology in reference to

the structure of the human body as an animal organism, and all the

functions of its different organs, which immeasurably transcend all

that was known or assumed among the early Greeks, or in the time of

Plato and Aristotle, or in the time of Galen. Notwithstanding the

dispute whether the origin of man as an animal is to be referred to

a special act of creation, or to the process of what has been called

evolution, there can be no controversy on one point, namely, that

modern anatomy and physiology have vastly increased our knowledge

of the structure of the human frame, and the means of rational

speculation upon the nature of intellect, as compared with any means

that were possessed by the most accomplished and learned of the Greeks

of antiquity. It matters little on which side of the controversy,

between creation and evolution, the great anatomists of the present

day range themselves. It is upon the facts which their investigations

have revealed that we have to judge of the probable truth of the one

hypothesis or the other. The probable destiny of man as an immortal

being is an inquiry that has certainly lost nothing by our increased

knowledge of the facts in his animal structure which tend to support

the hypothesis of design in his creation.

Lord Macaulay attributes an utter failure to the efforts of the

philosophers, from Plato to Franklin, to "prove" the immortality of

the soul without the help of revelation. What did he mean by proof?

Revelation is, of course, the only direct proof. It is so, because it

is direct testimony of a fact, proceeding from the only source that

can have direct and certain knowledge of that fact. When the evidences

which are supposed to establish the existence and authority of the

witness have become satisfactory to us, we are possessed of proof of

our immortality, and this proof is the only direct evidence of which

the fact admits, and it constitutes all that should be spoken of as

proof. But there is collateral although inferior evidence--inferior,

because it consists in facts which show a high degree of probability

that the soul of man is immortal, although this kind of evidence

is not like the direct testimony of a competent witness. Is all

this presumptive evidence, with its weighty tendency to establish

the probable truth of immortality, to be pronounced of no value,

because it belongs to a different order of proof from that derived

from the assertion of a competent witness to the fact? It is one of

the advantages of our situation in this life, that the collateral

evidence which tends to show the high probability of a future state of

existence is not withheld from us. As a supplemental aid to the direct

teaching of revelation, it is of inestimable importance if we do not

obscure it by theories which pervert its force, and if we reason upon

it on sound philosophical principles. What we have to do in estimating

the probable truth of our immortality, as shown by the science of

natural religion, is to give the same force to moral evidence in this

particular department of belief, that we give to the moral evidence

which convinces us of many things of which we have no direct proof, or

of which the direct proof lies in evidence of another kind.

"He knew as much about it," said Voltaire, "as has been known in all

ages--that is to say, very little indeed." This, like many of the

witticisms of Voltaire, pressed into the service of an argument against

the value of natural religion at the present day when studied by mature

and disciplined minds, is quite out of place. What human reason has

done in the course of three thousand years is not to be put on a par

with the speculations of intelligent children or half-civilized men;

and although some of the riddles which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar

have not had a perfectly satisfactory solution, it is quite wide

from the truth to assert that there has been no approximation to a

satisfactory solution, or that some of the riddles have not ceased to

be the riddles which they were three thousand years ago. In that period

there has been an accumulation of evidence concerning the phenomena of

Nature, and the phenomena of mind, vast beyond comparison when placed

in contrast with what was known in the tents of the Idumean emirs, and

the importance of this accumulation of evidence is proved by the fact

that theories have been built upon it which undertake to explain it

by hypotheses that were never heard of before, and which may possibly

leave the "riddles" in a far less satisfactory state than they were

in the time of Job. On the other hand, while the companions of Job may

have been unable to suggest to him any solution of the problems of

life, it does not at all follow that we are as helpless as they were,

even if we avail ourselves of nothing but what the science of natural

theology can now teach us.[11]

It will be seen that I attach great importance to natural theology. But

I do not propose to write for the confirmed believers in revelation, on

the one hand, who have become convinced by the evidence which supports

revelation; or for those, on the other hand, who believe nothing, and

who have become confirmed in habits of thinking which unfit them for

judging of the weight of evidence on such subjects as the existence

of God and the creation of man. I write for that great mass of people

of average intelligence, who do not understand accurately what the

doctrine of evolution is as expounded by its leading representatives,

and who do not know to what it leads. It will be found that in some

respects there is a distinction between the school of which Darwin is

the representative and the school which follows Spencer. To point out

this distinction, and yet to show that both systems result in negatives

which put an end to the idea of immortality, and that the weight of

evidence is against both of them, is what I propose to do.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Galileo's "heresy," that the earth moves round the sun, was

condemned by a papal decree in the sixteenth century as "absurd,

philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly

contrary to Holy Scripture." No Roman Catholic now dreams of disputing

what the Florentine astronomer maintained; and the evolutionists are

perpetually foretelling that the time will come when to question

their doctrine will be admitted to be as ridiculous as was the papal

interdict fulminated against Galileo. If their doctrine had nothing

to confront it but a similar condemnation, proceeding from some

ecclesiastical authority claiming to be "infallible," or, if it could

be met only by the assertion that it is "contrary to Holy Scripture,"

there would be some analogy between the two cases. But there is a

vast unlikeness between the two cases. While the hypothesis of animal

evolution is plainly enough "contrary to Holy Scripture," no one who

has any perception of the weakness of its proofs is obliged to rest

his rejection of it on that ground. If, in the sixteenth century,

there had been as good scientific and physical grounds on which to

refute Galileo as there now are for questioning the doctrine of

the evolution of distinct species out of other species, the papal

condemnation would have been superfluous even for churchmen. We must

not forget the age in which we live, or allow any kind of truth to

fail of vindication, from fear of being classed with those who in some

former age have blunderingly mistaken the means of vindicating truth.

Belief in special creations, whatever the Bible may say, does not now,

and in all probability never will, stand on a par with the belief that

the sun moves round the earth.

[3] Macaulay's "Essays," etc., Riverside edition, vol. ii, 502-504.

[4] Grote's "Plato," i, 4.

[5] Thales flourished 620-560 B. C. Plato's life extended from 427-347

B. C.

[6] Grote's "Plato," i, 10. I follow Mr. Grote in describing the

hypothesis of the Pythagoreans.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Grote, iii, 290.

[9] Ibid., 287, 288.

[10] Grote, iii, 289.

[11] It should be stated that the passage from Macaulay's writings

here commented on was written and first published in 1840, before the

speculations of the scientists who maintain the doctrines of evolution

had attracted much attention, or been promulgated in their present

shape.