The existence, attributes, and methods of God deducible from the
phenomena of Nature--Origin of the solar system.
In all that has been said in the preceding chapters respecting the
two hypotheses of special creation and evolution, the existence and
attributes of the Supreme Being have been assumed. The question of the
existence and attributes of God has been reserved for discussion as
an independent inquiry; and this inquiry it is now proposed to make,
without any reference to the teachings of revealed religion, or to
the traditionary beliefs of mankind. The simple idea of God, which I
suppose to be capable of being reached as a philosophical deduction
from the phenomena of the universe, embraces the conception of a
Supreme Being existing from and through all eternity, and possessed of
the attributes of infinite power and goodness, boundless, that is to
say in faculties, incapable of error, and of supreme beneficence. While
this idea of God corresponds with that which has been held from an
early period under more or less of the influence exerted by teachings
which have been accepted as inspired, or as authorized by the Deity
himself, the question here to be considered is whether the same idea of
God is a rationally philosophical deduction from the phenomena of the
universe without the aid of revelation.
In order to conduct this inquiry so as to exclude all influence of
traditionary beliefs derived from sources believed to have been
inspired, or from any authority whatever, let us suppose a man to
have been born into this world in the full maturity of average human
faculties, as they are found in well-disciplined intellects of the
present age, but without any inculcated ideas on religious subjects.
In the place of education commencing in infancy and carried on to the
years of maturity, in the course of which more or less of dogmatic
theology would have become incorporated almost with the texture of the
mind, let us suppose that the mind of our inquirer is at first a total
blank in respect to a belief in or conception of such a being as God,
but that his intellectual powers are so well developed that he can
reason soundly upon whatever comes within the reach of his observation
or study. Let us further imagine him to be so situated that he can
command at will the knowledge that science, as it now exists, could
furnish to him, and that he is able to judge impartially any theories
with which he meets. Such a person would be likely to deal rationally
and independently with any question that might arise in the course of
his investigations; and the fundamental question that would be likely
to present itself to his mind would be, How came this universe and its
countless phenomena to exist?
Stimulated by an eager curiosity, but careful to make his
investigations with entire coolness of reasoning, let us suppose
that our inquirer first turns his attention to the phenomena of the
solar system, and to what astronomy can teach him in regard to its
construction. He finds it to consist of--
1. The sun, a great central body giving forth light and heat.
2. A group of four interior planets: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and
Mars.
3. A group of small planets, called asteroids, revolving beyond the
orbit of Mars, and numbering, according to the latest discoveries,
about two hundred and twenty.
4. A group of four planets beyond the asteroids: Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune.
5. The satellites of the planets, of which there are twenty now known;
all but three of them belonging to the outer planets.
6. An intermediate number of bodies called comets and meteors, which
revolve in very eccentric orbits.
This system of bodies, constituting a mechanism by itself, apart from
what are called the fixed stars, is the first object in nature to which
our inquirer directs his studies. Inasmuch as the comets and meteors
move in very eccentric orbits, and are supposed to come into our system
from the illimitable spaces beyond it, although in the case of the
comets, or some of them, mathematical calculations enable astronomers
to predict their return when they have passed out of the solar system,
and inasmuch as the sun and the superior planets may be contemplated
as a grand piece of mechanism, and as the greatest mechanical object
in nature of whose construction and movements we have some accurate
knowledge, we will suppose that our inquirer confines his attention
to this part of the solar system, without adverting to the action of
the bodies which are not always, as these are, within the range of the
telescope.
One of the first things that would strike him would be the enormous
range in the sizes, distances, and relative weights of these different
bodies. He would learn, for example, that Neptune is eighty times as
far from the sun as Mercury, and that Jupiter is several thousand times
as heavy; and he would observe that these differences in magnitude,
distance from the sun, and weight of each mass, are carried through a
range of proportions stupendously great. If he followed the best lights
of modern astronomy, he would learn that what is known, or accepted as
known, in regard to the operation of any law among these bodies, is
that they are bound together by the law of universal gravitation as
a force to which all matter would be subjected when it should come to
exist, in whatever forms it might be distributed; secondly, that when
the bodies now composing the solar system should come into existence,
the system would not owe its proportions to the operation of the law of
gravitation, but would be the result of a plan so shaped as to admit
of its being governed by the law of gravitation after the system had
been made, in such a manner as to produce regularity and certainty of
movement and to prevent dislocation and disturbance. What the great
modern telescopes have enabled astronomers to discover tends very
strongly to show that the plan of the solar system, in respect to the
relative distances, magnitudes, and revolutions of the different bodies
around the sun, and their relations to that central body and to each
other, are not the result of any antecedent law which gradually evolved
this particular plan, but that the plan itself was primarily designed
and executed as one on which the law of gravitation could operate
uniformly, and so as to prevent any disturbance in the relations of the
different bodies to each other.[105]
An illustration will help to make the meaning of this apparent. Let
us suppose a human artificer to project the formation of a complex
mechanism, in which different solid bodies would be made to revolve
around a central body; and let us imagine him to be situated outside
of the earth's attraction, so that its attraction would not disturb
him. He would then have to consider the law of gravitation only in
reference to its operation among the different bodies of his machine;
and he would adjust their relative distances, weights, and orbits of
revolution around the central body, so that the law of gravitation,
instead of producing dislocation and disturbance, would bind the
whole together in a fixed system of movement, by counteracting the
centrifugal tendency of a revolving body to depart from its intended
orbit, and at the same time relying on the effect of the two forces in
preventing the revolving bodies from falling into the center or from
rushing off into the endless realms of space.
This is what may well be supposed to have taken place in the formation
of the solar system, for it is consistent with the law which must have
preceded the existence of that system. We can not suppose that the law
of gravitation was itself a mere result of the relative distances,
magnitudes, and orbits of the different bodies. This supposition would
make gravitation not a law, but a phenomenon. We do indeed arrive at
the existence of the law of gravitation by observing the actions of
the bodies which compose the solar system; in other words, we discover
the law that holds them together, by observing their actions. But we
should entirely reverse the proper process of reasoning, if we were to
conclude that the law of gravitation is a phenomenon resulting from
an arrangement of certain bodies according to a certain plan. The
discoveries of astronomy, on the contrary, should lead us to regard
gravitation as a universal law, which existed before the existence of
the bodies which have been subjected to it. This is the only way in
which our inquirer could reason in regard to the formation of the solar
system, whether he supposed its plan to have been a special creation,
or to have been evolved out of a nebulous vapor by the operation of
the laws of motion or any other laws. Reasoning upon the hypothesis
that the law of gravitation existed before there were any bodies for
it to operate upon, or, in other words, that it had become in some
way an ordained or established principle by which all bodies would be
governed, he would have the means of understanding the adaptation of
the solar system to be operated upon by the law which he had discovered.
He would next ask himself, How came this law of gravitation to exist?
That it must have had an origin, must have proceeded from some lawgiver
competent to make and enforce it, would be a conclusion to which he
would be irresistibly led, for the very idea of a law implies that
it is a command proceeding from an authority and power capable of
ordaining and executing it. When it is said that a law is a rule of
action ordained by a supreme power, which is perhaps the most familiar
as it is the most exact definition, the idea of a command and of a
power to enforce it is necessarily implied. This is just as true of a
physical as it is of a moral law; of a law that is to govern matter as
of a law that is to govern moral and accountable beings. Both proceed
from a supreme authority and power, and both are commands. There is,
however, one distinction between a moral law and a law of Nature,
which relates to the mode in which we arrive at a knowledge of the
law; a distinction which our inquirer would learn in the course of his
investigations. We infer the existence of a law of Nature, or a law
designed to operate upon matter, from the regularity and uniformity
of certain physical phenomena. As the phenomena occur always in the
same way we infer it to be an ordinance of Nature that they shall
occur in that way. But the moral phenomena exhibited by the actions
of men have not this regularity and uniformity. They are sometimes
in accordance with and sometimes grossly variant from any supposed
rule of moral action. We can not, therefore, deduce a moral law from
our observation of the actions of the beings whom it was designed to
govern, but we must discover it from the rules of right reason and
from such information as has been given to us by whatever revelation
may have come to us from another source than our own minds. But this
distinction between the modes of reaching a knowledge of physical
and moral laws does not apply to the authority from which they have
proceeded. Both of them being commands, or fixed rules of action, both
must have had an enacting authority. We learn the one by observing the
phenomena of Nature. We learn the other from reason and revelation.
To return now to the examination of the solar system, which our
inquirer is supposed to be prosecuting. The study, which astronomy
and its implements will have enabled him to make, has taught him
the existence of the law of gravitation, and has led him to the
conclusion that it must have had an enacting authority. Following out
the operation of this law, through the stupendous spaces of the solar
system, he would begin to form conclusions respecting the attributes
of its author. He would see that the power must have been superhuman;
in other words, that it must have immeasurably transcended anything
that can be imagined of power wielded by a being of less than infinite
capacities; for, although the space occupied by the solar system, from
the central sun out to the orbit of the planet Neptune, is a measurable
distance, the conception of the law of gravitation, and its execution,
through such an enormous space and among such a complex system of
bodies, evince a faculty in the lawgiver that must have been boundless
in power and skill. The force of gravitation is found to exactly
balance the centrifugal tendency of the bodies revolving around the
sun, so that, when once set in motion around that center, they remain
in their respective orbits and never fall into the sun or into each
other. Our learner would thus see the nature of the adjustment required
to produce such a result; and, even if he endeavored to follow out
this balancing of forces no farther than to the extreme boundary of
the solar system, he would see that the being, who could conceive and
execute such a design on such a scale, must have had supreme power and
boundless intelligence. So that, by the study of the solar system, as
its arrangements and movements are disclosed by astronomy, our inquirer
would be naturally led to the conception of a lawgiver and artificer of
infinite power and wisdom, ordaining the law of gravitation to operate
against the centrifugal force, which would otherwise conduct out of its
orbit a body revolving around a center, and then adjusting the relative
distances, weights, and revolutions of the different bodies, so as to
subject them to the operation of the great law that is to preserve them
in fixed relations to each other.
If, next, our inquirer should go farther in his investigations of the
solar system, and endeavor to satisfy himself concerning the mode in
which the different bodies of this system came into existence in their
respective positions, the history of astronomy would teach him that
there has been a theory on this subject which fails to account for
the existence of this system of bodies without the hypothesis of some
special creation. This theory is what is called the nebular hypothesis.
It supposes that the solar system was evolved out of a mass of fiery
vapor, which filled the stellar spaces, and which became the bodies
now observable by the telescope, and that they were finally swung into
their respective places by the operation of the fixed laws of motion.
But all that astronomers now undertake to say is that this hypothesis
is a probably true account of the origin of the solar system, and not
that it is an established scientific fact, or a fact supported by
such proofs as those which show the existence of the laws of motion.
The history of the nebular hypothesis, from the time of its first
suggestion to the present day, shows that there are no satisfactory
means of accounting for the method in which the supposed mass of
fiery vapor became separated, consolidated, and formed into different
bodies, and those bodies became ranged and located in their respective
positions. The hypothesis that these results were all produced by
fixed laws working upon a mass of fiery vapor, is one that has been
reasoned out in very different ways; and this diversity of views is
such that astronomers of the higher order do not undertake to say that
opinions may not reasonably differ in regard to the principal question,
namely, the question between the nebular hypothesis and the hypothesis
of a special act or acts of creation.
Inasmuch, therefore, as scientific astronomy would present to our
inquirer nothing but the nebular hypothesis to account for the
production of the bodies of the solar system as they now exist, and as
there are admitted difficulties in this hypothesis which may not be
insurmountable but which have not been as yet by any means overcome,
it can not be said that philosophers are warranted in assuming that
all the phenomena of the solar system are to be explained by this
theory. The hypothesis that the phenomena, or some part of them, have
been produced by a cause operating in a different way, that is, by
an act or acts of intentional and direct or special creation, is not
excluded by the discoveries of the astronomer. Those discoveries lie
in the domain of astronomy, and they do not exclude the hypothesis of
a special creation of the solar system upon the plan on which we find
it arranged. The latter hypothesis lies in the domain of philosophy. It
is to be judged by the inquiry whether it is a rational explanation of
phenomena, which astronomy does not show as an established scientific
fact, or by proofs that ought to be deemed satisfactory, to have been
produced by the method suggested by the nebular hypothesis.
The philosophic reasoning, which would conduct our inquirer to his
conclusions, would begin for him with the existence of an omnipotent
being, by whom the laws of matter and motion were established. This
conception and belief he has attained from having discovered those
laws, which must have had an author. He would soon hear the scientist
speak of "natural" and "supernatural" methods, and he would understand
that by the former is meant the operation of certain fixed laws, and,
by the latter, a mode of action in a different way. But he would also
and easily understand that the power which could establish the laws
of matter and motion, the operation of which the scientist calls the
natural method, could equally act in another way, which the scientist
calls the supernatural, but which, in the eye of philosophy, is just
as competent to the Infinite Power as the method called natural. To
state it in different words, but with the same meaning, that which
the scientist calls the supernatural is to the philosopher just as
conceivable and just as consistent with the idea of a supreme being as
the order of what we call Nature; for Nature is the phenomena that are
open to our observation, and from which we deduce the probable method
by which they have been brought about. It will never do to say that
they could not have been produced by a cause operating differently from
a system of fixed laws so long as we reason from the hypothesis of the
existence and attributes of a Supreme Being. If we reason without that
hypothesis, we may persuade ourselves of anything or of nothing.
This idea of a Supreme Being, possessed of the attributes of infinite
power and wisdom, is one that our inquirer would have reached as a
rational deduction from the operation of a law (gravitation) which must
have had an author; from the structure of a mechanism so designed as to
be governed successfully by that law, and from the execution of the law
through such enormous spaces that nothing short of infinite power and
wisdom could have produced the result.
At this stage of his investigations, our inquirer encounters a modern
scientist. I shall take the liberty of coining convenient names for
these two interlocutors: calling the one Sophereus, as representing
the spirit of unprejudiced research in the formation of beliefs without
the influence of previous teaching; and the other Kosmicos, as a
representative of the dogmatic school of evolution and agnosticism.
Sophereus has imparted to his scientific friend the conclusions which
he has thus far reached, concerning the existence and attributes of a
supreme lawgiver and artificer, as deduced from the phenomena of the
solar system. The discussion between them then proceeds as follows:
KOSMICOS. I do not wish to convince you at present of my
own views on this subject, but I put before you a difficulty which
you ought to solve, if you can, to your own satisfaction, before you
proceed farther. You have learned of the law of gravitation; and you
have imagined a being who has established this and other laws by which
matter is to be governed. To this being you have imputed certain
personal attributes, which you call infinite power and boundless
wisdom. Observe now that the laws to which you assign this origin are
of perpetual duration; they have operated without change from the
remotest period of their existence just as they operate now, and we
have no reason to doubt that they will continue to operate in the same
way through the indefinite future. They constitute the order of Nature.
Now, you suppose a Supreme Being, who has established these invariable
laws, but has not left them anything to do; has not left to them the
production of the solar system, but has specially interposed, and in a
supernatural mode of action has constructed the machine which has the
sun for its center and the surrounding bodies which revolve about it.
How can you suppose that the same being has acted in different ways?
How can you suppose that the being who you imagine established the
general laws of Nature and gave to them a fixed operation throughout
the universe, so that they never would be suspended or interrupted,
has gone aside from them, and made occasional constructions by special
interpositions of his power? Is it not a contradiction to suppose that
an Almighty Being, who must have acted by uniform methods without
reference to occasions, has acted on certain occasions by special
methods that were not uniform with his fixed laws? Does not this
hypothesis imply that his fixed laws were insufficient for the purposes
for which he designed them, and that he had to resort to other means?
How do you get over this difficulty?
SOPHEREUS. What you propound as a difficulty does not disturb
me. I understand the distinction which you make between the natural
and the supernatural. I can see in the solar system how the law of
gravitation and all the other laws of motion operate; but I do not
see, nor can you explain, how these laws, or the laws of chemical
combination or any other laws, can have evolved the plan of the solar
system out of a mass of fiery vapor. I can understand the enactment and
establishment of laws of motion, of chemical combination, and of the
mechanical action of different states of matter upon each other, to
operate in fixed and invariable ways, in certain conditions. But I do
not see that there is any interruption or displacement of these laws,
after they are established, when an end that is to be accomplished
calls for a complex system of new objects among which they are to
operate. It is manifest that the question is whether the different
bodies of the solar system have been formed and placed in their
respective positions, according to a special design of their relative
distances, magnitudes, and orbits, or whether these are the results
of the operation of fixed laws, without any special interposition
of a creating power. Astronomers have not explained how the latter
hypothesis is anything more than a probable conjecture. It remains
for me to consider whether the hypothesis of a special interposition,
whereby the plan of the solar system has been made, is attended with
the difficulty which you suggest. We are reasoning about a period of
the remote past when this system of bodies did not exist, but when the
general laws that were to govern all matter may be supposed to have
been previously ordained. If we think of the solar system, conceived
and projected by the Supreme Being, as a complex mechanism that was to
exist in Nature, the occasion would be one calling for the exercise
of infinite wisdom and power. The production of such a mechanism, to
answer any ends for which it was intended that it should exist, implies
attributes that transcend all our human experience of the qualities of
power and wisdom. That it was an occasional exercise of power, in no
way implies any irregularity or inconsistency of method, if the power
was so exercised as to leave all the general laws of Nature in full
operation, so that there would be no clashing between what you call
the natural and the supernatural. I have first to ascertain what was
the probably intended scope of the general laws which are supposed to
have been ordained before the solar system came into existence. If
it appears to have been the purpose of the constructor to have these
laws work out this system of bodies without any special interposition
and formative skill directly exercised, I need go no further. But I
see no evidence of that purpose. No one has suggested anything but a
theory on this subject, which is not supported by any satisfactory
proofs. I am left, therefore, to the consideration of the question
whether an act of special interposition, in the formation of a plan
obviously calling for the exercise of infinite wisdom and power, is
in any way inconsistent with the establishment of a system of laws
which were to operate on these bodies and among them after they had
come to exist. My conclusion, from what I have learned of the solar
system, is, that in the exercise by the same being of the method which
you call the natural, and the exercise of the method which you call
the supernatural, there is no inconsistency; that each of the fixed
laws of matter and motion was designed to have its own scope; and that
each of them may well consist, within its limitations, with occasional
exercises of power, for the production of objects that were to be
operated upon by the laws, but of which they were not designed to be
the producing cause. Thus it seems to me to be a rational conclusion
that the law of gravitation, the general laws of motion, and all the
other laws of matter, which preceded the existence of the solar system,
were not designed to be the agents by which the plan of that system
would be worked out, but that the plan was so formed and executed that
the bodies composing it would be subject to the operation of laws
enacted by the Infinite Will for the government of all the forms of
matter. The question is, whether the plan of the solar system is due to
the operation of the fixed laws, or to a special interposition; or, to
state it in another way, whether the whole of the phenomena, the plan
and arrangement of the solar system included, are to be referred to the
operation of certain fixed laws as the producing agents, or whether
some part of the phenomena, namely, the mechanism of the system,
should be referred to the special interposition. I am taught, by the
physics on which astronomers are now agreed, that gravitation is a
force by which the particles of matter act on each other; _that every
particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with
a force varying directly as their masses, and inversely as the square
of the distance which separates them_. This I understand to be the
formula in which the law of universal gravitation is expressed. But,
for the purpose of illustrating what I understand to be the operation
of this force, I have constructed a diagram, in which two bodies are
represented as A and B. From each of these bodies there radiates in
all directions an attracting force, which acts directly upon every
other body in the universe, and which is represented in the diagram
by dotted lines. In the diagram, the bodies A and B are first supposed
to be one thousand miles apart. A certain portion of the attracting
rays proceeding from A would strike directly upon B. All the other rays
proceeding in the same direction from A would pass on either side of B
without striking it. If B is removed to the distance of two thousand
miles from A, the sum total of the attractive force which A would exert
upon B would be diminished by the square of the distance, because B
would intercept just one fourth of the number of rays proceeding from
A compared with the number which it intercepts when the two bodies
are only one thousand miles apart; and the rays which B does not
intercept would pass along through the realms of space, until they
encountered some other body, on which they would exert a force that
would follow the same law of diminution. In the diagram, the two bodies
A and B may be single particles of matter or collections of particles;
they are represented as cubes; but the law of direct action of the
attracting force and the law of its diminution would be the same if the
bodies were spheres or oblongs. The power of attraction which bodies
exert upon each other resides in every individual particle of matter
composing the body, and the attraction which that body exerts upon
another body is the sum total of the attractions which proceed from all
the particles composing the mass and which impinge upon that other body.
[Illustration]
In the diagram the two bodies A and B are supposed to be of the same
mass. If, as in the case of the sun and the earth, one of the bodies
is of far greater mass than the other, then the attraction of the
sun for the earth is the same as the attraction of the earth for the
sun, because the action is mutual; but the sun, being the greater
mass, tends, by reason of its correspondingly greater inertia, to
remain comparatively stationary, or, in other words, it has a greater
resistance to being pulled out of its normal position, while the
earth, having less inertia, is more easily deflected from its straight
course in which its momentum tends to carry it, and so travels in an
orbit around the sun, the resisting or centrifugal pull of the earth,
due to its inertia, exactly balancing the inward pull due to the
mutual attraction. I understand that, besides the law of universal
gravitation, there are two fundamental laws of motion. By one of these
laws, if a body be set in motion and be acted on by no other than the
projectile force, it will move forward in a straight line and with a
uniform velocity forever. But by another law, if the moving body is
acted on by another force than that which originally projected it in
a straight line, it will deviate from that line in the direction of
that other force and in proportion to it. If A, the earth, liable to
be drawn toward B, the sun, by their mutual attraction, was originally
projected into space, at a certain distance from the sun, by a force
which would carry it on in a straight line, it would be acted on by two
forces: the projectile force would cause it to move in a straight line;
the force of the mutual attraction would cause it to deviate from that
line in the direction of the sun. The result would be that the earth
would be carried around the sun in a circular or an elliptical orbit.
Every other planet in the solar system would be under the operation of
the same compound forces governed by the same laws; and while the sun
would exert upon each of them its force of attraction, and they would
each exert upon the others an attractive force that would be diminished
by the squares of their distances from one another, each of them
would be deflected from the straight line that would have otherwise
been the path of its motion, and the result would be a perpetual
revolution around the body that could exert upon each just the amount
of attraction requisite to overcome the projectile force by which it
was first put in motion.
KOSMICOS. You have made an ingenious explanation of the law of
gravitation, which may or may not be correct. But now let me understand
what you infer from this hypothesis, supposing it to be true. What
should have prevented the law of gravitation and the laws of motion
from working out this very system of bodies, by operating upon a mass
of crude matter lying in the universe, supposing it to have been fiery
vapor or anything else?
SOPHEREUS. I have thus far arrived, by the aid of what
astronomy teaches, at a complex system of physical laws, the law of
universal gravitation, and the laws of motion. I must suppose that
these laws had an intelligent author. I must suppose that they were
enacted, in the same sense in which we speak of any rule of action
ordained by a power competent to conceive of it and to put it into
execution. To me, as I view the facts of the solar system, the idea
that the law of gravitation and the laws of motion are to be regarded
as mere phenomena of matter, or as qualities of matter according to
which, from some inherent condition, it must act, does not explain the
solar system. I can not explain to myself what I see, without asking
myself how these qualities of matter came to exist. How came it to
be a condition of all matter that its particles should attract each
other by a certain force according to a certain rule? How came it to
be a law of motion that bodies projected into space should continue to
move on forever in a straight line, unless deviated from that line by
some other force? To say that things happen, but that no power ever
commanded them to happen; that things occur because they do occur, and
not because some power has ordained that they shall occur, is to me an
inconceivable kind of reasoning, if it be reasoning at all. Because men
act or profess to act upon certain principles of moral conduct, I can
not suppose that justice, and truth, and mercy are mere phenomena of
human conduct, that they never had any origin as moral laws in the will
of a lawgiver. For the same reason I can not suppose that the physical
laws of matter, stupendous in their scope, and of unerring certainty in
their operation, did not proceed from an enacting authority. In short,
it seems to me that the conception of power, as something independent
of the qualities of substance, is a logical necessity.
KOSMICOS. I am not now trying to persuade you that the law
of gravitation and the laws of motion did not have an intelligent
author. For the purposes of the argument, I will concede that they were
enacted, as you term it. You have explained your understanding of the
operation of these; laws as they are expressed in the formula given
by astronomers, and for the present I will assume that they operate
in some such way. I will also concede that the idea of power in the
abstract, as something independent of the qualities of substance, is
necessary to the explanation of all physical phenomena. But I now
recall your attention to the point which I originally suggested.
Explain to me how it has happened that the being who you suppose
established certain laws for the government of all matter has not
allowed those laws to evolve out of diffused matter certain bodies
which we find grouped together in the universe, but has specially
interposed by another act, and constructed this system of bodies
without the agency of his own laws. All that we know about the law of
gravitation and the laws of motion we derive from observing the actions
of these bodies which compose the solar system. We infer the existence
of these laws from the actions of these bodies. Now tell me how you
suppose that the same being who ordained these laws as fixed conditions
to which matter was to be subjected, and made them to operate upon all
matter, whether in a crude and unformed state or after it had become
organized into bodies of definite shapes and dimensions, did not rely
upon these inherent conditions of matter to produce those shapes and
dimensions, but went to work by special interposition, and produced the
mechanism of the solar system as a human artificer would make a machine
of a corresponding character.
SOPHEREUS. We must take things in a certain order. I
understand you to concede, for the present, that the laws of
gravitation and motion must, or may, have existed before the sun
and the planets were formed. We are agreed, then, that power has an
existence anterior to and separate from the qualities of substance.
What, then, is the difficulty attending the hypothesis that the
Infinite Power, which devised and established the laws of gravitation
and motion before the bodies of the solar system were formed, so
fashioned and distributed those bodies that while each of them
shall exert upon every other a certain amount of direct attraction,
that attraction shall diminish in a certain fixed ratio, as the
distance between them increases? We can not suppose that the relative
magnitudes, weights, and distances of these bodies were accidental, or
that they resulted from the property of attraction that was given to
the particles of matter of which they are composed. That property of
mutual attraction became at some time a fixed condition of all matter,
but it will not account for the formation of a system of bodies so
adjusted that the attracting force will act among them by a specific
law, by the operation of which they will be prevented from exerting
on each other an excessive amount of such force, or any amount but
that which is exactly needful to preserve their relative distances
from each other. Let it be supposed that the property of attraction
was impressed upon all the particles of matter in the universe, and
then that the Infinite Power, abstaining from all farther action, and
without forming and arranging the bodies of the solar system upon any
intentional plan, left all that plan to be worked out by that property
of matter; what reason have we to conclude that the law of gravitation
would, as the sole efficient cause, have produced just exactly this
complex piece of mechanism, so wonderfully adjusted? What reason have
we to conclude that the property of attraction, although ordained as an
inherent quality of all matter, would not, if left without any special
interposition, have resulted in some very different arrangement and
disposition of the matter lying in the space now occupied by the solar
system?
KOSMICOS. Give me your idea of the condition which is called
"chaos," and I will then explain to you why it is that you do not do
justice to the scientific distinction between the natural and the
supernatural method by which things have been produced as we see them.
SOPHEREUS. I presume you do not mean to ask how I suppose
chaotic matter came to exist. Its origin is one thing--its condition
is another. In regard to its condition, it seems very plain that there
was a period when diffused matter had not received the impress of the
qualities or been subjected to the laws which we now recognize. Take
the Mosaic hypothesis, where it speaks of the earth, for example, as
"without form and void." In this terse expression, there is embraced
the idea of a condition of matter without qualities, properties, or
laws; lying in an utterly crude state, waiting to receive the impress
of the divine will. The laws of motion have not begun to operate upon
it; the laws of chemical combination have not been applied to it. It
is a rational conclusion that this was the condition of things in that
remote period of eternity before the solar system was formed. Chaos,
then, was the condition of primeval matter before it had received the
fixed properties that were afterward to belong to it, and before the
laws that were ever afterward to govern it had been ordained. Lying in
this utterly crude state, without tendencies, without combinations,
without definite motion, floating in the universe without fixed form or
qualities, it awaits the action of the Infinite Power. It pleases that
power, out of its illimitable resources, to bestow upon this chaotic
matter certain properties, and to subject it to certain laws. One of
these properties is that its particles shall attract one another by a
certain force; one of these laws is that this force shall operate by an
invariable and fixed rule of direct action, and by an invariable and
fixed rule of diminution, according to the distance of the particles
from each other; and another law is that a body projected into space,
by any force, shall continue to move in a straight line until and
unless it is deflected from that line by some other force. There
are, too, chemical properties belonging to matter as we know it, by
which it takes on certain combinations and undergoes modifications
and arrangements of its particles. All these properties, qualities,
and laws--these unavoidable methods of action--must have been imposed
upon the chaotic matter at some time by a power competent to establish
them, and to put them in operation. But the laws and the methods of
their operation do not account for the PLAN on which the solar
system has been formed, consisting of different bodies of such shapes,
dimensions, and relative distances, that the laws, when applied to
them, will produce the wonderfully exact and perpetual movements which
the telescope reveals. That PLAN is a _creation_, for which we
must look to something more than the laws and properties of matter; and
we can only find it in the will and purposes of the infinite artificer
who devised the laws by which this mechanism was to be governed after
it had been made, and who has so made it that it would be governed by
them.
KOSMICOS. I do not see that you have yet reached a stronger
ground on which to rest the hypothesis of special interposition than
that on which is based the hypothesis which imputes the formation of
the solar system to certain fixed laws operating upon crude matter
not yet formed into definite shapes or placed in certain relative
positions. You will have to adduce some proof that has a stronger
tendency to exclude the supposition that the mechanism of the solar
system was produced by the laws of matter and motion working upon some
material that lay in the condition which you have described as "chaos."
SOPHEREUS. Let us, then, look a little farther into some of
the details of this vast machine. Take one that is most obvious, and
that lies the nearest to us; I mean the moon, which accompanies our
earth as its satellite. The most remarkable thing about the motion of
the moon is the fact that she makes one revolution on her axis in the
same time that she takes to revolve around the earth, and consequently
she always presents to us the same face, and her other side is never
seen by human eyes. How came this to be the case? How came this to be
the adjustment of the two motions, the axial revolution of the moon and
her revolution around the earth, causing her always to present to us
the same side? It is said by astronomers that the two motions are so
exactly adjusted to each other that the longer axis of the moon always
points to the earth, without the slightest variation. It is conceded,
as I understand, to be infinitely improbable that this adjustment was
the result of chance. A cause for it is therefore to be found. Where
are we to look for that cause, unless we look for it in the will and
design of the Creator, who established it for some special purpose?
KOSMICOS. You are aware that there is a physical explanation
of this phenomenon which accounts for it without the special design.
This explanation is that the moon was once in a partially fluid state,
and that she rotated on her axis in a period different from the present
one. In such a condition, the attraction of the earth would produce
great tides in the fluid substance of the moon; this attraction,
combined with the centrifugal force of the moon's rotation on her own
axis, would cause a friction, and this friction would retard the rate
of her axial rotation, until it became coincident with the rate of her
revolution around the earth. It is highly improbable that the moon was
originally set in rotation on her axis with just the same velocity with
which she was made to revolve around the earth. This improbability is
based on the ellipticity of the moon's orbit, which is caused by the
attraction of the sun. The mean distance of the moon from the earth
is 240,300 miles; her smallest possible distance is 221,000 miles;
and the greatest possible distance is 259,600. The usual oscillation
between these extremes is about 13,000 miles on each side of the mean
distance of 240,300. The diameter of the moon is 2,160 miles, or less
than two sevenths of the earth's diameter. In volume she is about one
fiftieth as large as the earth, but her density, or the specific
gravity of her material, is supposed to be a little more than half
of that of our globe; and her weight is about three and a half times
the weight of the same bulk of water. When she is nearest to the sun,
the superior attraction of that body tends to draw her out of her
circular orbit around the earth; when she is farthest from the sun,
this attraction is diminished, and thus her terrestrial orbit becomes
slightly elliptical. But there is another attraction to be taken into
account. This other attraction, in her former fluid condition, has
given her the shape, not of a perfect sphere, but of an ellipsoid, or
an elongated body with three unequal axes. The shortest of her axes is
that around which she rotates; the next longest is that which points
in the direction in which she is moving; and the longest of all points
toward the earth. This shape of the moon, resulting from the earth's
attraction, has been produced by drawing the matter of the moon which
is nearest to the earth toward the earth, and by the centrifugal force
which tends to throw outward the matter farthest from the earth. The
substance of the moon being a liquid, so as to yield freely, she would
be elongated in the direction of the earth. But if she was originally
set in motion on her own axis at precisely the same rate with which
she was made to revolve around the earth, the correspondence between
the two motions could not have been kept up; her axial rotation would
have varied, by reason of the fact that her relative distance from the
sun and the earth varies with the ellipticity of her orbit around the
earth, and thus the two motions would not correspond. But if we allow
for the attraction of the earth upon a liquid or semi-liquid body,
producing for the moon an elongated shape, her axial rotation would,
if the two motions were in the beginning very near together, vary
with her revolutions around the earth, and the correspondence between
the two motions would be kept up. Here, then, you have a physical
explanation of the phenomenon which strikes you as so remarkable--a
result brought about by natural causes, without the supposition of what
you call intentional design, or formative skill directly exercised by a
supernatural interposition.
SOPHEREUS. This is a very plausible theory, but it all depends
upon two assumptions: First, it assumes it to be extremely improbable
that the two motions were aboriginally made to correspond, by an
intentional adjustment of the moon's weight, dimensions, and shape,
upon such a plan that the laws of gravitation and movement would keep
the two motions in exact correspondence. Why should not the rates
of movement have been originally designed and put in execution as
we find them? You anticipate the answer to this question by another
assumption, namely, that the substance of the moon was at first in a
fluid or semi-fluid state, so that she owed her present shape to the
effect of the earth's attraction, and the centrifugal tendency of
its most distant part to be thrown out of the line of its motion. I
should be glad to have you explain why it is extremely improbable that
the Creator planned this part of the solar system, the earth and its
satellite, and so adjusted the dimensions, shapes, and weights of each
of them, and fixed the rates of revolution of the satellite, that the
laws of attraction and motion would find a mechanism which they would
keep perpetually in operation, and thus preserve a constant relation
between the moon's axial rotation and her revolution around the
earth. I have thus far learned to regard the probable methods of the
Creator somewhat differently from those which you scientists ascribe
to him. Most of you, I observe, have a strong tendency to regard
the Deity as having no specific plan in the production of anything,
which plan he directly executed; and, so far as you regard a First
Cause as the producing cause of phenomena, you limit its activity to
the establishment of certain fixed laws, and explain all phenomena
upon the hypothesis that the Supreme Being--if you admit one--made no
special interpositions of his will and power in any direction, after
he had established his system of general laws. But to me it seems that
the weight of probability is entirely against your hypothesis. In this
particular case of which we have been speaking, that of the moon's
revolution, the supposed improbability of an original and intentional
adjustment of the two motions turns altogether on the argument that if
they had been so adjusted at the beginning they would not have kept
on, and this argument is supported by the assumption that the moon
was at first a mass of fluid. I do not understand this mode of making
facts to support theories; and I wish you would explain to me why, in
this particular instance, the inference of a divine and intentional
plan in the structure of this part of the solar system is so extremely
improbable. To me it seems so obvious a piece of invented mechanism,
that I can not avoid the conclusion that it was the intentional work
of a constructor, any more than I could if I were to find a piece of
mechanism under circumstances which indicated that it was produced by
human hands.
KOSMICOS. You do not even yet do justice to the scientific
method of reasoning. The deductions of science--the conclusions
which the scientist draws from the phenomena of Nature--rest upon
the postulate of fixed laws of Nature, which never change, and which
have not been varied by any supernatural interference. We mean by
a supernatural cause one which is not uniformly in operation, or
which operates in some way different from the fixed laws which we
have deduced from the observed order of the phenomena that we have
studied and found to be invariable. We adopt this distinction between
the natural and the supernatural because the observable phenomena of
Nature do not furnish any means of discovering as a fact the operation
of anything but the fixed laws, or any cause which has acted in a
different way. Let us now apply this to the phenomena which we have
been considering--the composition and arrangement of the solar system.
What do we find? We find a system of bodies in the movements of which
we detect certain fixed laws operating invariably in the same way.
When the question is asked, How were these bodies produced? we have no
means of reaching a conclusion except by reasoning upon the operation
of the forces which these laws disclose, working on the primordial
matter out of which the bodies became formed. It is for this reason
that, in accounting for their existence, we speak of the method of
their formation as the natural, in contradistinction to some other
method which we call the supernatural; by which latter term we mean
some mode in which there has been a power exerted differently from the
established and fixed agency of the laws of matter, which constitute
all that we have ever discovered. The nebular hypothesis affords a
good illustration of the distinction which I am endeavoring to show
you, whether it is well established or not, or is ever likely to be.
It supposes that there was a mass of fiery vapor, floating in the
space now occupied by the solar system. Under the operation of the
laws of gravitation and motion, of mechanical forces and chemical
combination, this crude matter becomes consolidated and formed into
the different bodies known to us as the sun and the planets, and the
laws which thus formed them continue to operate to keep them in the
fixed relations to each other which resulted from the process of their
formation. Whether as a matter of fact the solar system was formed in
this way, this, or some other mode of operation through the action of
certain established laws operating upon primeval matter, is what we
call the natural method, in opposition to the supernatural; and we can
not discover the supernatural method, because the closest and most
extensive investigations never enable us to find in nature any method
of operation but that which acts in a fixed and invariable way.
SOPHEREUS. What you have now said brings me to a question that
I have all along desired to ask you: How do you know that the Infinite
Power never acts, or never has acted, in any way different from the
established order of Nature? Is science able to determine this? If it
is not, it must be for philosophy to consider whether there can have
been, or probably has been, in operation at any time any cause other
than those fixed laws of Nature which the scientist is able to deduce
from observable phenomena. Because science can only discover certain
fixed laws as the forces governing the bodies which compose the solar
system, or governing the materials of which they are supposed to be
made, it does not seem to me that a philosopher is precluded from
deducing, by a proper method of reasoning upon a study of the solar
system, the probable truth that its mechanism was specially planned
and executed by a special act of the creating power. The degree to
which this probability rises--whether it rises higher in the scale
than any other hypothesis--must depend upon the inquiry whether any
other hypothesis will better account for the existence of this great
object, with its enormous mechanism, its adjustments, and its unerring
movements. I must say, from what I have learned of this planetary
system, with the sun as its center, viewed as a mechanism, that I can
conceive of no hypothesis concerning its origin and formation which
compares in probability with the hypothesis that it was directly and
specially created, as we know it, by the Infinite Artificer.
KOSMICOS. Pray, tell me what you mean by an act of creation?
Did you or any other man ever see one? Can you tell what creation is?
SOPHEREUS. I think that your question can be answered.
Creation is the act of giving existence to something that did not
previously exist. We see such acts performed by men, very frequently,
so that we do not hesitate to speak of the product as a created thing.
We do not see acts of creation performed by the Infinite Power, but it
is surely not unphilosophical to suppose that what can be and is done
by finite human faculties, can be and has been done by the infinite
faculties of the Deity, and done upon a scale and in a perfection that
transcend everything that human power has produced. The sense in which
I have been led to conceive of the solar system as a creation is the
same as that by which I represent to myself the production, by human
power and skill, of some physical object which never existed before,
such as a machine, a statue, a picture, a pyramid, or an obelisk; any
concrete object which, whether or not new of its kind, did not as an
individual object previously exist. In weighing the probabilities as
to the mode in which the solar system came to exist, the reasons why
the idea of its special creation stands by far the highest in the scale
are these: 1. There must have been a period when this great object in
nature did not exist, and therefore it must have been caused to exist.
2. The necessary hypothesis of a causing power leads inevitably to the
conclusion that the power was adequate to the production of a system of
bodies so proportioned and arranged that they would act on each other
by certain fixed rules. 3. The causing or creating power must have
conceived the proportions and arrangements of the different bodies as
a plan, and must have executed that plan according to the conception.
4. While as a theory we can represent to ourselves that the causing
power established certain laws of matter and motion, which would by
their fixed operation on crude substances lying in the universe produce
this system of bodies without any preconceived and predetermined plan,
without any occasional or special interposition, yet that the system,
as we find it, is a product of such a nature as to have called for
and required the special interposition of a formative will. For, if
we proceed upon the hypothesis that this enormous and exact mechanism
was nothing but the product of certain pre-established laws operating
on crude matter, without direct and special interposition exerted in
the execution of a formed design, we have to obtain some definite
conception, and to find some proof of a method by which these laws
can have operated to produce this system of bodies exactly as we know
them to be proportioned and arranged. Astronomical science, and all
other science, has not discovered, or even suggested, any method by
which this result could have been brought about, without a special
act of creation in the execution of an original design. On the other
hand, the hypothesis of a special interposition in the execution of a
preconceived plan of construction is the most rational, the most in
accordance with probability, because it best meets the requirements of
the case. These requirements were that the proportions, arrangements,
and relations of the different bodies composing one grand mechanism,
should be such that the laws of gravitation and motion would operate
upon and among them so as to keep them in uniform and unvarying
movement.
KOSMICOS. Very well. You have now come to the end of your
reasoning. Tell me, then, why it is not just as rational a supposition
that the Deity conceived of the plan of the solar system as a product
that would result, and that he intended should result, from the
operation of his fixed laws of matter and motion, and then left it to
the unerring certainty of their operation to produce the mechanism by
the process of gradual evolution?
SOPHEREUS. The being who is supposed to hold and exercise
supreme power over the universe, holds a power to execute, by direct
and special creation, any design which he conceives and proposes to
accomplish. I am prepared to concede that the process of gradual
evolution can produce and apparently has produced some results. But
when we are looking for the probable methods of the Deity in the
production of such a mechanism as the solar system, we must recognize
the superior probability of the direct method, because the indirect
method which you describe as gradual evolution does not seem adequate
to the production of such a system of bodies. If we could obtain
facts which could have any tendency to show that, without any special
interposition, the mechanism of the solar system, or any part of it, is
a mere result of the working of the laws of gravitation and motion upon
a mass of crude matter, we might yield assent to the probability of
that occurrence. But of course we have no such facts; we have nothing
but theories; and therefore there appears nothing to exclude the
probable truth of a special creation.
KOSMICOS. We shall not convince each other. You have stated
your conclusions concerning the solar system fairly enough, and I have
endeavored to answer them. But now let me understand how you propose
to apply them to other departments of Nature, in which we have means
of closer investigation. You will find it very difficult, I imagine,
to maintain that every organism, every plant, animal, fish, insect, or
bird, is a special creation, or even that man himself is.
SOPHEREUS. Let me state for myself just what my conclusions
are in regard to the solar system. You will then know what the
convictions are with which I shall come to the study of other
departments. I have arrived at the conception of an Infinite Being
having the power to create anything that seems to him good; and I
have experienced no difficulty in conceiving what an act of creation
is. I have also reached the conviction that there is one great object
in Nature, the existence of which I can not account for without the
hypothesis of some special act of creation. Whether I shall find this
to be the case in regard to every other object in Nature, I can not
now tell. Perhaps, as many of these objects are nearer to us, and more
within our powers of investigation, the result may be different. I
shall endeavor to keep my mind open to the necessary discriminations
which facts may disclose. Possibly I may find reason to reverse the
conclusions at which I have arrived in regard to the solar system, if
I find that the hypothesis of evolution is fairly sustained by other
phenomena.
NOTE.--Newton, whose reasoning powers have certainly not
been surpassed by those of any other philosopher, ancient or modern,
not only deduced the existence of a personal God from the phenomena
of Nature, but he felt no difficulty in ascribing to the Deity those
personal attributes which the phenomena of Nature show that he must
possess, because without them "all that diversity of natural things
which we find suited to different times and places" could not have
been produced. They could, he reasons, "arise from nothing but the
ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing." Newton does indeed
say that all our notions of God are taken from the ways of mankind;
but this is by way of allegory and similitude. There is a likeness,
but not a perfect likeness. There is therefore no necessity for
ascribing to God anthropomorphic attributes, because the enlargement
of the faculties and powers to superhuman and boundless attributes
takes them out of the category of anthropomorphic qualities and
capacities. In his "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy,"
Newton had occasion to treat of the theory of vortices, as a
hypothesis by which the formation of the solar system is to be
explained. The "General Scholium," by which he concludes the third
book of his "Principia," lays down the masterly reasoning by which he
maintains that the bodies of the solar system, while they persevere
in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, could by no means have
at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from
those laws. I had written the whole of the preceding chapter on the
origin of the solar system just as I have printed it, before I looked
into the "Principia" to see what confirmation might be derived from
Newton's speculations. I found that while I had not included the
comets in my examination of the solar system, but had confined myself
to the bodies that are at all times within the reach of the telescope,
the same deductions are re-enforced by the comets, eccentric as are
the orbits through which they range into and out of our system. I
quote the entire Scholium, as given in Motte's English translation of
the "Principia" from the Latin in which Newton wrote, published with a
Life by Chittenden, at New York, in the year 1848.
"GENERAL SCHOLIUM.
"The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.
That every planet by a radius drawn to the sun may describe areas
proportional to the times of description, the periodic times of the
several parts of the vortices should observe the duplicate proportion
of their distances from the sun; but that the periodic times of the
planets may obtain the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances
from the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the vortex ought
to be in the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances. That the
smaller vortices may maintain their lesser revolutions about _Saturn_,
_Jupiter_, and other planets, and swim quietly and undisturbed in the
greater vortex of the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the
sun's vortex should be equal; but the rotation of the sun and planets
about their axes, which ought to correspond with the motions of their
vortices, recede far from all these proportions. The motions of the
comets are exceedingly regular, are governed by the same laws with the
motions of the planets, and can by no means be accounted for by the
hypothesis of vortices; for comets are carried with very eccentric
motions through all parts of the heavens indifferently, with a freedom
that is incompatible with the notion of a vortex. Bodies projected in
our air suffer no resistance but from the air. Withdraw the air, as is
done in Mr. _Boyle's_ vacuum, and the resistance ceases; for in this
void a bit of fine down and a piece of solid gold descend with equal
velocity. And the parity of reason must take place in the celestial
spaces above the earth's atmosphere; in which spaces, where there is no
air to resist their motions, all bodies will move with the greatest
freedom; and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their
revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws
above explained; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in
their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means
have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves
from those laws.
"The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles
concentric with the sun, and with motions directed toward the same
parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the
earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with
the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits
of those planets; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical
causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets
range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits; for by
that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbits of the planets,
and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the
slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest
distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance
from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun,
planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion
of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the
centers of other like systems, these being formed by the like wise
counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since
the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of
the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems;
and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity,
fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense
distances one from another."
FOOTNOTES:
[105] The reader will understand that I do not assert this to be what
astronomers teach, but I maintain it to be a rational deduction from
the facts which they furnish to us.