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.
A long interval has elapsed since the conference described in the last
chapter, between the searcher after wisdom and his scientific friend.
At their next interview they take up the subject of a First Cause where
they left it at the conclusion of their debate on the solar system.
KOSMICOS. Well, Sophereus, what have you been studying since
we last met?
SOPHEREUS. Many things. I have been studying what is commonly
called Nature, and I have been studying society. With regard to
society, I have been endeavoring to discover to what the phenomena of
social life are to be attributed as their producing cause or causes;
whether they can be said to owe their existence to the direct action
or influence of intelligent wills, or are to be considered as effects
produced in the course of an ungoverned development, wrought by
incidental forces in varying conditions of human existence. The latter,
I find, is one of the theories now prevailing.
KOSMICOS. And what is your conclusion?
SOPHEREUS. My general conclusion in regard to the phenomena
of human society is the same as that which I formed from a study of
the phenomena of the solar system. I find a great many things which
I can not explain without the hypothesis of a direct creating power
exerted by an intelligent being. I know that you object to the idea
of creation, but I explained to you in our last discussion that I
understood it to mean the causing something to exist which did not
exist before, and the doing it by an intentional and direct act of
production.
KOSMICOS. No matter about your definition. What are the facts
that you propose to discuss?
SOPHEREUS. In the social phenomena I find many acts of
creation. I do not find that buildings spring out of the ground without
human intervention, or that machinery is formed by the spontaneous
arrangement of matter in certain forms and relations, or by the
tendencies that are implanted in matter as its inherent properties.
I find an enormous multitude of concrete objects, formed out of dead
matter, by human intervention, availing itself of those properties of
matter, which without such active intervention would have remained
quiescent, and would not have resulted in the production of these
objects. It is a common form of expression to speak of the "growth"
of cities, but no one understands by this form of speech that a city
has become what it is without the action of numerous individuals
projecting and building their separate structures, or without the
combined action of the whole body of the inhabitants in determining and
executing a general plan to which individuals are to conform, more or
less exactly, their particular erections. Again, I find that there are
rules of social life, which take the form of what are called "laws,"
and these are imposed by the will of some governing authority; they are
always the product of some one human will, or of the collective will
of a greater number of persons. I have looked into history and have
found many instances of military conquest, invasions of the territory
inhabited by one race of men by another race, domination of different
dynasties, overthrow of one governing power, and substitution of
another. Although the changes thus produced are often very complex,
sometimes rapid and sometimes slow in reaching the consequences, I do
not find that they have ever taken place without the direct action of
some one human will, or of the aggregate force of many human wills.
The conquests of Alexander and Napoleon are instances of what a single
human will can do in changing the condition of nations; and I have
not been able to read history by the interpretation that makes such
men mere instruments in the hands of their age, which would, without
their special existences and characters, have brought about the same or
something like the same results. The invasions of the Roman Empire by
the Northern barbarians are instances of the pressure of one population
upon another, not attributable, perhaps, to the will and leadership
of any one individual, but produced by the united force of a great
horde of individuals determined to enjoy the plunder which a superior
civilization spread before them. Then, with regard to the phenomena of
what are called constitutions of government, or the political systems
of exercising public authority, I find numerous cases in which the
force of an individual will and intelligence has been not only a great
factor, but by far the largest factor in the production of particular
institutions. The genius of Cæsar, and his extraordinary constructive
faculties, molded the institutions of Rome in the most direct manner,
and created an imperial system that lasted for a thousand years,
and that even out of its ruins affected all subsequent European
civilization. In such cases, more than once repeated in modern times,
the particular circumstances of the age and the co-operation of many
other individuals have helped on the result, but the conception, the
plan, the purpose, and the execution, have had their origin in some
one mind. But for the individual character, the ambition, the force,
and the mental resources of the first Napoleon, can one believe that
the first French Empire of modern times would have grown out of the
condition of France? Suppose that Oliver Cromwell had never lived. The
protectorate, the system of government which he gave to England, was
the most absolute product of the will and intellect of one man that the
world in that kind of product had ever seen; for, although the people
of England were ready for and needed that system, and although the
antecedent and the surrounding circumstances furnished to Cromwell many
materials for a political structure that was not the old monarchy, and
yet had while it lasted all the vigor, and more than the vigor, of the
old monarchy, still, without his personal characteristics, his ambition
to found a dynasty on the wants of his country, and his personal
capacity to devise and execute such a system, one can not believe that
England would have had what he gave her. What he could not give her
was a son capable of wielding the scepter which he had fashioned. Here
is this America of yours--a country in which, to a certain extent,
the political institutions have been influenced by the circumstances
that followed the separation of your colonies from the English crown.
Undoubtedly, your ancestors of the Revolutionary epoch could not
construct a monarchy for the group of thirteen newly existing States,
each with its right and enjoyment of an actual autonomy. The habits
and genius of the people forbade the experiment of monarchical or
aristocratic institutions; no materials for either existed. But within
the range of republican institutions there was a choice open, and the
people exercised that choice. They made one system of confederated
States, and found it would not answer. They then deliberately assembled
their wisest and greatest men. They gave to them a commission that
was restricted by nothing but the practical necessity of framing
a government that would unite the requirements of power with the
requirements of liberty. The result was the Constitution of the United
States--a system of government that was, within the limitations of
certain practical necessities, both in its fundamental principles and
in many of its details, the deliberate choice and product of certain
leading minds, aided by the public consent, to a degree that is almost
unparalleled in the formation of political institutions. After it had
gone into operation, it was believed that the requirements of liberty
had not been sufficiently regarded, and it was directly and purposely
modified by the intervention of the collective will of the whole
people. And when I turn to the history of philosophies, of religions,
of the fine arts, or of the mechanical arts, I find everywhere traces
of the force of individual genius, of the direct intervention of
individual wills, and of the power of men to cause new systems of
thought and action to come into existence, and to create new objects of
admiration or utility. In regard to languages, I have read a good deal
about the controversy concerning their origin, but I have observed one
thing to be very apparent: whether the gift of articulate speech was
bestowed on man, when he had become a distinct being, in a manner and
for a purpose which would distinguish him from all the other animals,
or whether it became a developed faculty akin to that by which other
animals utter vocal sounds intelligible to those of their species, it
is certain that in man there is a power of varying his vocal utterances
at pleasure, which is possessed by no other creature on this earth.
The expansion of languages, therefore, the coinage of new words,
the addition of new inflections, the introduction of new shades of
meaning, the method of utterance which is called pronunciation, and
the different dialects of the same tongue, are all matters which have
been under the control of individuals dwelling together, and have all
resulted from the arbitrary determination of more or less numerous
persons, followed by the great mass of their nation, their race, or
their tribe. Even when a new and third language has been formed by
the contact of two peoples speaking separate tongues, we may trace the
same arbitrary adoption of parts of each separate tongue, in the first
beginning of the fusion, and the new language consequently exhibits a
greater or a less predominance of the characteristics of one of its
parent tongues, according as the one population has compelled the other
to adopt the greater part of its peculiar modes of speech.
KOSMICOS. You have gone over a good deal of ground, but now
what do you infer from all this, supposing that you have taken a right
view of the facts?
SOPHEREUS. I infer that, as in the social phenomena there are
products and effects which have owed their existence to human will
and direct human action, so, in other departments, for example, in
the domain which is called Nature, and which is out of the sphere of
human agency and human force, it is reasonable to conclude that there
are products and effects which must have owed their existence to a
will and a power capable of conceiving and producing them. And this is
what leads me, as I was led in the examination of the solar system,
to the idea of a Supreme Being, capable of producing those objects in
nature which are so varied, so complex, so marvelously constructed, so
nicely adapted to the conditions of each separate organism, that if we
attribute their existence to any intelligent power, it must be to a
power of infinite capacities, since nothing short of such capacities
could have conceived and executed them.
KOSMICOS. You have now come to the very point at which I have
been expecting to see you arrive, and at which I will put to you this
question: Why do you personify the power to which you trace these
products in the natural world? Substitute for the term God, or the
Creator, the power of Nature. You then have a force that is not only
immense, but is in truth without any limit--a force that embraces
everything, gives life to everything, is at once cause and effect,
is incessantly active and inexhaustible. It commands all methods,
accomplishes all objects, and uses time, space, and matter as its
means. Why do you personify this all-pervading and sufficient power of
Nature? Why make it a being, a deity, when all you know is that it is a
power? "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the world?" is a
question that God is supposed to have asked of Job; and it simply shows
that Job had been traditionally taught to believe that there is such a
being as God, and that that being laid the foundations of the world.
Substitute Nature in the question, let Nature ask the question, and it
is just as pertinent, and involves the same problem of human existence.
Where was man when Nature began to exhibit that power which has evolved
all things that we see out of the primeval nothingness?
SOPHEREUS. Well, here I must say that you have left out
certain ideas that are essential to all true reasoning on this
subject. Power without a guide, power without control, power without a
determining will, power that acts without a volition which determines
the how and the when, is a thing that I can not conceive. I thought
that in our former conversation, when we were considering the solar
system, you conceded that power, as something abstracted from substance
or its properties, was a logically necessary conception.
KOSMICOS. I did. But I did not concede that power must be
converted into a person. You must not misunderstand me. It certainly is
my idea that power is a thing to be contemplated by itself; and we are
surrounded everywhere by its manifestations. But it is not my idea that
it is held and exercised by the being called God, or by any being. We
only know of it by its effects; and these show that Nature is, after
all, both cause and effect, manner and execution, design and product.
You can go no farther. You can not go behind Nature and find a being
who sat in the heavens and laid the foundations of the world, unless
you mean to accept a story which wise men have at last abandoned along
with many kindred beliefs which came from the ages of the greatest
ignorance.
SOPHEREUS. Pardon me: the question that was put to Job has
more than one aspect. But I have considered the narrative that is found
in the first chapter of Genesis only as a hypothesis to be weighed
with other hypotheses of the origin of the world and its inhabitants.
I have studied the phenomena to which you give the name of Nature, and
I will tell you what seems to me to be a postulate necessary to be
carried into that study. I have observed that in the works of man two
things are apparent: One is, that power is exercised; the other is,
that the exercise of the power is always accompanied by a determining
will, which decides that the power shall be exerted, or that it shall
be deferred, or that it shall be applied variously as respects the mode
and the time. In human hands, power is not illimitable, but within
certain limitations it may be exercised, and it is always under the
guidance of a will. A man determines to build a house; he decides
on its dimensions, and when he will begin to erect it. A general
determines to attack the enemy on a certain day, and he marshals his
forces accordingly. A people determine to change their government, and
they decide what their new government shall be. An artist determines to
paint a certain picture, and he paints it. Whenever we see human power
exercised, so that we can connect product and power, the power itself
is put in motion by an intelligent will. I say, therefore, that the
idea of power without a controlling will, without a determining design,
is inconceivable: for I am obliged to draw my conclusions from what
I observe, and certainly the phenomena of society do not present any
instances of a product resulting from an exercise of power without a
determination to exercise it. Power diffused, power without guidance,
power moving by its own volition and without the volition of any
intelligent being, is not exhibited in the works of man.
KOSMICOS. But we are now dealing with the works of Nature;
and the question is, whether the power that is manifest in Nature is,
to adopt your language, under the control or guidance of a being who
is something other than the power itself. You must remember that this
is a domain in which you can see nothing but products and effects. You
must also remember that if the immensity and variety of those products
and effects lead to the conclusion that the power transcends all
human faculty, is superhuman, and, so far as we can tell, boundless,
all that we can know is that the power itself is illimitable. The
quality of an infinite and illimitable capacity may be imputed to the
power of Nature, because a power without limit seems necessary to
the production of such effects as we see. But here we must stop. We
have no warrant for believing that the power which we trace in the
phenomena of Nature is held and controlled by a person, as man holds
and controls the power which he exercises with his hands. What we
see in Nature is the exercise of an immense and apparently boundless
power. But the imputation of that power to a being distinct from the
power itself, is a mere exercise of the human imagination, without
any proof whatever. See how this imagination has worked at different
periods. Monotheism and polytheism are alike in their origin. The one
has imputed to different beings all the phenomena in the different
departments of Nature, one being having the charge and superintendence
of one department and another being having another department. Good
and evil have thus been parceled out to different deities or demons.
On the other hand, monotheism attributes all to some one being, and
his existence is no more rational than the existence of the whole
catalogue of the mythologies of all antiquity, or the stupid beliefs of
the present barbarous tribes. But Nature is a great fact, or rather a
vast store-house of facts, which we can study; and what we learn from
it is that there is a power which Nature is constantly exerting, which
is without any assignable limit, which is itself both cause and effect,
and beyond this we can not go.
SOPHEREUS. Let us see if you are correct. In the first
place, do you not observe that the tendency of mankind to personify
the powers of Nature is one of the strongest proofs of the logical
necessity for an interpretation which seeks for an intelligent being
of some kind as the actor in the production of the phenomena? It is
the fashion, I find, among a certain class of philosophers, to impute
this propensity to the proneness of the human mind toward superstitious
beliefs; to the mere effect of poetical or imaginary temperament
in certain races of men, or to fear in other races; or to a vague
longing for some superior being who can sympathize with human sorrows
or assist human efforts. Something of all these influences has, no
doubt, in different degrees and in various ways, worked itself into
the religious beliefs of mankind. But neither any one of them, nor the
whole of them, will satisfactorily account for either polytheism or
monotheism. We must go deeper. There has been an unconscious reasoning
at work, more or less unconscious, which has led to the conclusion
that power, the manifestation of power, necessarily implies that the
power is held and wielded by some intelligent being. The beliefs of
mankind, whether embracing one such being or many, have not been the
mere results of superstition, or fear, or longing for divine sympathy,
or for superhuman companionship or protection. Those beliefs owe as
much to the reasoning powers of mankind as they do to the influence
of imagination. In many ages there have been powerful intellects,
which have been free from the influence of superstition or fancy, and
which have recognized the logical necessity for a conception of power
as a force that must be under the guidance and control of intellect.
While the popular belief has not attained this conviction by the same
conscious and logically conducted process of reasoning, it has been
unconsciously led through the same process, by what is open to the
observation of human faculties, even in the less civilized portions of
the human race. The savage who is sufficiently raised above the brute
creation to exercise his own will and intelligence in the pursuit of
his game, or in building his wigwam, or in fighting his enemy, knows
that he exercises a power that is under his own control; and, as
soon as he begins to observe the phenomena of Nature, he conceives
of some being who holds a like power over the material universe, and
whom he begins to personify, to propitiate, and to worship. This is
the result of reasoning: feeble in some cases, but in all cases the
intellectual process is the same. Now let us see whether this process
is a sound one. Are you sure that you are correct in saying that the
power of Nature is without limit? Is there a single force in Nature,
a single property of matter, or any sequence of natural events, that
is not circumscribed? Do not the very regularity and uniformity of
the phenomena of Nature imply that some authority has said, from the
beginning, Thus far shalt thou go and no farther? You surely do not
imagine that the law of universal gravitation made itself, or that it
settled itself into an exact and invariable method of action by the
mere force of habit, beginning without prescribed and superimposed
limits, and finally resulting in a fixed rule which never changes.
You do not imagine that the mysterious, impalpable motion to which is
now given the name of electricity, created for itself, as a matter
of habit, the perpetual tendency to seek an equilibration of the
quantity accumulated in one body with the quantity that is contained
in another, by transmission through intermediate bodies; or that it
established for itself the conditions which make one substance a
better conducting medium than another. You do not suppose, I take it,
that certain particles of matter adopted for themselves a capacity
to arrange themselves in crystals of certain fixed combinations and
shapes, and that other particles of matter did not choose to take on
this habit. All these forces, powers, and tendencies are of very great
extent, much beyond any that man can exercise; but they all have their
limitations, their prescribed and invariable methods of action; they
all act as if they have been commanded to act in a certain way and to
a certain extent, and not as if they have chosen for themselves both
method and scope. Now, is it not a rational deduction that what is
really illimitable is not the power of Nature, but the power which made
Nature what it is? Is it not a necessary conclusion that, inasmuch as
all Nature acts within certain limits, stupendous and minute and varied
as the products or effects may be, there must have been behind Nature
a power that could and did prescribe the methods, the limitations, the
lines within which Nature was to move and act? You can not put into
the mouth of Nature the question, Where wast thou (Man) when I laid
the foundations of the world? without suggesting the retort, "Where
wast _thou_ (Nature) when the foundations of the world _were_ laid?"
And this question Nature can no more answer, for itself, than man can
answer for himself when the question is put to him. Each must answer,
I was nowhere--I did not exist. Each must answer, There was a power
which called me into being, which prescribed the conditions of my
existence, which gave me the capacities that I possess, which ordained
the limitations within which I was to act.
KOSMICOS. And all this you derive from the fact that a being
whom we call Man has some power over matter; that he has an intelligent
faculty by which he can do certain things with matter, and that he
actually does produce certain concrete forms of new things that he did
not find made to his hand. Is this the basis of your reasoning about
the origin of Nature?
SOPHEREUS. It is, and I will tell you why. Man is the
one being on this earth in whom we find an intelligent will and
constructive faculty united, to a degree which shows a power of
variation and execution superior to that of all other beings of whose
actions we have the direct evidence of our senses. We might select one
or more of the inferior animals, and find in them a strong constructive
faculty; but we do not find it accompanied by a power of variation and
adaptation that is equal to that of man in degree, or that is probably
the same in kind. I will not insist on the distinction between reason
and instinct, but I presume you will admit that, when we compare
the constructive faculty of man and that of the most ingenious and
wonderfully endowed animal or insect, the latter acts always under an
implanted impulse, which we have no good ground for regarding as of
the same nature as man's reasoning power, however striking may be the
products. When, therefore, we select the human power of construction
or creation as the basis of reasoning upon the works of Nature, we
resort to a being in whom that power is the highest of which we have
direct evidence. In the works of man we have direct and palpable proof
that the phenomena--the products of human skill and human force--are
brought about by the faculties of an intelligent and reasoning being.
If we dig into the earth and find there a statue, an implement, or a
weapon, we do not hesitate to conclude that the spot was once inhabited
by men, just as surely as we should conclude the same thing if we
found there human bones. The world, above-ground and below-ground,
is full of concrete objects that we know must have been fashioned by
human skill, guided by human intelligence. This intelligence, this
intellect, is not matter; it is a being; it is a person. It is not a
force, acting without consciousness; it is a being wielding a force
which is under the control of volition. The force and the volition are
both limited, but within the limitations they constitute the power
of man. Pass, then, to the works of Nature, or to what you call the
power of Nature. As, in the case of man, you can not conclude that he
created for himself his own faculties, that he prescribed for himself
the limitations of his power over matter, or that he formed those
limitations as mere matters of habit, or that it was from habit alone
that he derived his great constructive powers, so, in studying the
works of Nature, you must conclude that some intelligent being made the
laws of matter and motion, prescribed the unvarying order and method
of action, laid down the limitations, originated the properties, and,
in so doing, acted by volition, choice, and design. The distinction,
as I conceive, between man and Nature is, that there has been bestowed
on man, in a very inferior degree, a part of the original power of
creation. On Nature there has been bestowed none of this power. As we
find that the existence of man as an intelligent being, endowed with
certain high faculties, among which is a certain degree of the power of
creating new objects, can not be accounted for without the hypothesis
of a creator, still less can we account for the existence and phenomena
of Nature, which has in itself no degree of the creating power, without
the same hypothesis.
KOSMICOS. Stop where you are. Why do you separate man from
Nature? Have you yet to learn that man is a part of Nature? I suspect
you have, after all, been reading the book of Genesis for something
more than a hypothesis, and that you have adopted the notion that God
made Adam a living soul. Put away all the nursery-stories, and come
down to the "hard-pan" of actual facts, which show by an overwhelming
array of evidence that man had a very different origin.
SOPHEREUS. You know, my friend, that I never learned any
nursery-stories, and therefore I have none to unlearn. It may be my
misfortune, but I find myself here in the world in mature years,
studying the phenomena of life, without having had any early teaching,
but with such reasoning as I can apply to what I observe, and to what
science, history, and philosophy can furnish to me. I belong to no
church, to no sect, to no party, and I have not even a country. I am
a citizen of the world, on my travels through it, learning what I
can. Now, what are your facts? Let us get down, as you say, upon the
"hard-pan," and make it as hard as you please.
KOSMICOS. First answer my question: Why do you separate man
from Nature?
SOPHEREUS. I know very well that in a certain sense man is a
part of Nature. But it is necessary to contemplate man apart from all
the rest of Nature, because we find that he is endowed with intellect,
and we have very good and direct evidence that his intellect is an
actor; and we know that he is endowed with consciousness, and we have
very good and direct evidence that, by introspection, he becomes aware
of his own consciousness, and what it is.
KOSMICOS. Very well, assume all that if you choose. Now let me
show you an origin of man, with his intellect and consciousness, which
will entirely overthrow the idea that he was a special creation in the
sense to which you seem to be drifting, namely, that of miraculous
interposition by a being called God. You must be aware, as you have
read so much, that modern science has made great discoveries, and that
there are certain conclusions on this subject which are drawn from
very numerous and important data. Those data involve the origin of
all the different animals, man included. They are all to be accounted
for in the same way and by the same reasoning. Now, if we go back to
a period when none of them existed, we find a method of accounting
for them that is infinitely superior as a hypothesis to any idea of
their special creation as an act or as a series of acts of divine and
direct interposition. I will take this method as it is given by Herbert
Spencer, because, as he has reasoned it, it accounts for both intellect
and consciousness; and Mr. Spencer is allowed to be one of the leading
minds of this age. Mark the starting-point of his whole philosophy
on this subject of organic life. Darwin, as you know, supposes some
one very low form of organic life, an aquatic grub, and out of it he
evolves all the other animal organisms, by the process of natural and
sexual selection, through successive generations, ending in man. This
hypothesis leaves the original organism to be accounted for, and,
although Darwin does not expressly assert that it was the Creator who
fashioned the first organism, he leaves it to be implied. Spencer, on
the other hand, explicitly denies the absolute commencement of organic
life on the globe. Observe that the terms of his theory of evolution
are much more complete than Darwin's, for he says that "the affirmation
of universal evolution is in itself a negation of an absolute
commencement of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every
kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by
insensible gradations on a pre-existing being; and this holds as fully
of the supposed commencement of organic life, or a first organism, as
of all subsequent developments of organic life."[106]
You will see, therefore, that the idea of a Creator, fashioning a
type of animal organism, or making a commencement of organic life, is
excluded by this great philosopher, although he does concur in the main
in Darwin's general explanation of the mode in which one organism is
evolved out of a pre-existing organism. He goes much farther, because
his system of universal evolution embraces the elements out of which
any organic life whatever has been developed, and negatives the idea
of any absolute commencement of anything whatever. He begins with the
original molecules of organizable matter. By modifications induced
upon modifications these become formed, by their inherent tendencies,
into higher types of organic molecules, as we see in the artificial
evolution effected by chemists in their laboratories; who, although
they are unable to form the complex combinations directly from their
elements, can form them indirectly through successive modifications
of simpler combinations, by the use of equivalents. In Nature, the
more complex combinations are formed by modifications directly from
the elements, and each modification is a change of the molecule into
equilibrium with its environment, subjecting it, that is to say, to
new conditions. Then, larger aggregates, compound molecules, are
successively generated; more complex or heterogeneous aggregates arise
out of one another, and there results a geometrically increasing
multitude of these larger and more complex aggregates. So that by the
action of the successive higher forms on one another, joined with the
action of the environing conditions, the highest forms of organic
molecules are reached. Thus in the early world, as in the modern
laboratory, inferior types of organic substances, by their mutual
actions under fit conditions, evolved the superior types of organic
substances, and at length ended in organizable protoplasm. Now, let
me read to you Mr. Spencer's description of the mode in which the
substance called "protein" becomes developed into organic life. "And
it can hardly be doubted," he says, "that the shaping of organizable
protoplasm, which is a substance modifiable in multitudinous ways
with extreme facility, went on after the same manner. As I learn
from one of our first chemists, Prof. Frankland, protein is capable
of existing under probably at least a thousand isomeric forms; and,
as we shall presently see, it is capable of forming, with itself
and other elements, substances yet more intricate in composition,
that are practically intricate in their varieties of kind. Exposed
to those innumerable modifications of conditions which the earth's
surface afforded, here in amount of light, there in amount of heat,
and elsewhere in the mineral quality of its aqueous medium, this
extremely changeable substance must have undergone, now one, now
another, of its countless metamorphoses. And to the mutual influences
of its metamorphic forms, under favoring conditions, we may ascribe
the production of the still more composite, still more sensitive,
still more variously-changeable portions of organic matter, which, in
masses more minute and simpler than existing _protozoa_, displayed
actions varying little by little into those called vital actions, which
protein itself exhibits in a certain degree, and which the lowest known
living things exhibit only in a greater degree. Thus, setting out
with inductions from the experiences of organic chemists at the one
extreme, and with inductions from the observations of biologists at the
other extreme, we are enabled to deductively bridge the interval--are
enabled to conceive how organic compounds were evolved, and how, by a
continuance of the process, the nascent life displayed in these becomes
gradually more pronounced."[107]
It is in this way that Spencer accounts for the formation of the cell
which becomes developed into a living organism, out of which are
successively evolved all the higher forms of animal organisms, until we
reach man.
SOPHEREUS. And is this put forward as something which rational
people are to believe?
KOSMICOS. Undoubtedly it is put forward as something that is
to be believed, because it is supported by a vast array of evidence;
and let me tell you that this conception of Nature as a whole is
the consummate flower of this nineteenth century in the domain of
philosophic speculation.
SOPHEREUS. Perhaps it is. But although this nineteenth
century has witnessed many great scientific discoveries, and has
produced extraordinary inventions, I do not find that among the
speculative philosophers of this age there are such very superior
powers of reasoning displayed that we ought to regard them as
authorities entitled to challenge our acceptance of their theories
without examination. I must say that among your scientific people of
the present day, and especially among the philosophers of the class
of which Mr. Spencer is the leading representative, there are certain
tendencies and defects which surprise me. One of their defects is that
they do not obviate remote difficulties, perhaps because they have not
been trained, as other men have, to foresee where such difficulties
must arise. This is sometimes apparent even when the difficulties
are not very remote, but are quite obvious. One of their tendencies
is to arrive at a theory from some of the phenomena, and then to
strain the remaining phenomena to suit the theory; and sometimes
they proceed to the invention or imagination of phenomena which are
necessary to the completion of a chain of proof. This last process
is called bridging the interval. I will now apply this criticism to
Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the origin of man. In the first place he
has not obviated a fundamental difficulty, whether it be a near or a
remote one. Where did the molecules get their tendency or capacity to
arrange themselves into higher and more complex forms? Whence came the
auxiliary or additional force of their surrounding environment? What
endowed _protein_ with its capacity to assume a thousand isomeric
forms? What made the favoring conditions which have helped on the
influence of its metamorphic tendencies, so as to produce still more
sensitive and variously-changeable portions of organic matter? These
questions must have an answer; and, when we ask them, we see the
significance of the inquiry, "Where wast thou (man) when I laid the
foundations of the world?" For these things, on the evolution theory,
_are_ the foundations of the world. It is no answer to say, as Mr.
Spencer does, that these tendencies, or capacities of matter, and
these laws of the favoring conditions, came from the Unknown Cause.
Known or unknown, did they have a cause, or did they make themselves?
Did these, the foundations of the world, have an origin, or were they
without any origin? If they had an origin, was it from the will and
power of a being capable of giving existence to them and prescribing
their modes of action? If they had no origin, if they existed from all
eternity, how came it that they formed this extraordinary habit of
invariable action in a certain method, which amid all its multiformity
shows an astonishing persistency? If we deny, with Mr. Spencer, the
absolute commencement of organic life on the globe, we must still go
back of all the traces of organic life, and inquire whence matter,
molecules, organized or unorganized, derived the capacities or
tendencies to become organized, and how the favoring conditions became
established as auxiliary or subsidiary forces. And therefore it is that
this difficulty, whether remote or near at hand, is not met by Mr.
Spencer: for whether we call the cause an unknown or a known cause, the
question is, Was there a cause, or did the foundations of the world
lay themselves? The reasoning powers of mankind, exercised by daily
observation of cause and effect, of creative power and created product,
are equal to the conception of a First Cause as a being who could have
laid the foundations of the world, but they are utterly unequal to
the conception that they had no origin whatever. Again, consider how
numerous are the missing links in the chain of evolution, how many gaps
are filled up by pure inventions or assumptions. The evolution of one
distinct and perfect animal, or being, out of a pre-existing animal
or being of a different type, has never been proved as a fact. Yet
whole pedigrees of such generation of species have been constructed
upon the same principles as we should construct the pedigree of an
individual. Furthermore, if we regard the facts about which there can
be no controversy, we find not only distinct species of animals, but
we find the same species divided into male and female, with a system
of procreation and gestation established for the multiplication of
individuals of that species. Now go back to the imaginary period when
protein began to form itself into something verging toward organic
life, and then there became evolved the nascent life of an organized
being. How did the division of the sexes originate? Did some of the
molecules or their progressive forms, or their aggregates, or masses,
under some conditions, tend to the production of the male, and others
under certain conditions tend to the development of the female, so
that the sexes were formed by a mere habit of arrangement without any
special intervention? Here is one of the most serious difficulties
which the doctrine of evolution, whether it be the Darwinian or the
Spencerian theory, has to encounter. There is a division into male and
female: there is a law of procreation by the union of the two sexes.
This is a fact about which there can be no dispute. It is one of the
most remarkable facts in Nature. It is the means by which species are
continued, and the world is peopled with individuals of each species.
Is it conceivable that this occurred without any design, that it had no
origin in a formative will, that it had, properly speaking, no origin
at all, but that it grew out of the tendencies of organized matter to
take on such a diversity in varying conditions? And if the latter was
all the origin that it had, whence came the tendencies and whence the
favoring conditions that helped them on toward the result? It seems to
me that the Spencerian theory, so far as it suggests a mode in which
the two sexes of animals came to exist, is hardly less fanciful than
what Plato has given us in his "Timæus." I have studied them both.
If you will hand me Mr. Spencer's work from which you have just quoted,
I will point out a passage which fully justifies my criticism. It is
this: "Before it can be ascertained how organized beings have been
gradually evolved, there must be reached the conviction that they have
been gradually evolved." He says this in praise of De Maillet, one of
the earliest of the modern speculators who reached this conviction,
and whose "wild notions" as to the way should not make us, says Mr.
Spencer, "forget the merit of his intuition that animals and plants
were produced by natural causes."[108] That is to say, first form
to yourself a theory, and have a thorough conviction of it. Then
investigate, and shape the facts so as to support the theory. Is it
not plain that an inquiry into the mode in which organized beings have
been gradually evolved must precede any conclusion or conviction on the
subject? It is one of those cases in which the _how_ a thing has been
done lies at the basis of the inquiry whether it has probably been done
at all. If a suggested mode turns out to be wild and visionary, what is
the value of any "intuition" of the main fact? But, what is still more
extraordinary in this kind of deduction, which is no deduction, is the
way in which, according to Mr. Spencer, the first conviction is to be
reached before one looks for the facts. The process of the evolution
of organisms, according to Mr. Spencer's philosophy, is contained as
a part in the great whole of evolution in general. We first convince
ourselves that evolution obtains in all the other departments of
Nature, and is the interpretation of all their phenomena. Then we
conclude that it has obtained in the animal kingdom, and so we have the
conviction necessary to be acquired before we examine the phenomena;
and then we make that investigation so as to reconcile the facts with
the supposed universal laws of matter and motion. I do not exaggerate
in the least. Here is what he says: "Only when the process of evolution
of organisms is affiliated on the process of evolution in general can
it be truly said to be explained. The thing required is to show that
its various results are corollaries from first principles. We have
to reconcile the facts with the universal laws of the redistribution
of matter and motion."[109] What would Bacon have thought of this
method of establishing the probable truth of a theory? It leaves out
of consideration a multitude of facts, and one of them at least is of
the utmost importance. It is that in the domain of animated matter,
in organized beings, and most signally in the animal kingdom, there
is a principle of life; and, whatever may be the universal laws of
the redistribution of matter and motion, in their operation upon or
among the products which are not endowed with this principle, when
we come to reason about products that _are_ endowed with it we are
not entitled to conclude that this principle of animal life is itself
a product of the operation of those laws because they have resulted
in products which do not possess life, or life of the same kind. In
order to reach the conviction that animal organisms have resulted
solely from the operation of the laws of matter and motion, we must
not undertake to reconcile the facts with those laws, but we must have
some evidence that those laws have produced living beings with complex
and diversified organisms, and this evidence must at least tend to
exclude every other hypothesis. It is not enough to flout at all other
hypotheses, or to pronounce them _ex cathedra_ to be idle tales.
KOSMICOS. You must not catch at single expressions and
make yourself a captious critic. That would be unworthy of such an
inquirer as you profess to be, and as I believe you are. Mr. Spencer
did not mean, by reconciling the facts with the laws of matter and
motion, that we are to distort the facts. He meant that we are to
discover the correspondence between the facts and the operation of
those laws. Now, let me show you more explicitly that he is quite
right. There are certain laws of matter and motion, discoverable and
discovered by scientific investigation, which prevail throughout all
Nature. The phenomena which they produce, although not yet fully
understood, justify the assumption of their universality and their
modes of operation. It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, to reason
that the same laws which have produced the observable phenomena in
other departments of Nature have had a like potency as causes by which
the phenomena in the animal kingdom have been produced. Using this
legitimate mode of reasoning, Mr. Spencer traces the operation of
those laws upon the primal molecules, which are peculiarly sensitive
to their effects. He follows them through the successive aggregations
of higher combinations until he arrives at the protoplasmic substance,
out of which, from its capability of assuming an infinity of forms,
aided by the environing conditions, the simplest organic forms become
evolved, and thus what you call the principle of life gradually arose
through a vast extent of time. He is therefore perfectly consistent
with himself in denying the absolute commencement of organic life on
the globe; for you must understand that he means by this to deny that
there was any point of time, or any particular organism, at or in which
animal life can be said to have had its first commencement, without
having been preceded by some other kind of being, out of which the more
highly organized being has been produced by modifications wrought by
insensible gradations. If you will attend closely to his reasoning,
you will see that you have small cause for criticising it as you have;
and, if you will look at one of his illustrations, you will see the
strength of his position. Hear what he says: "It is no more needful to
suppose an absolute commencement of organic life or a 'first organism'
than it is needful to suppose an absolute commencement of social life
and a first social organism. The assumption of such a necessity in this
last case, made by early speculators with their theories of 'social
contracts' and the like, is disproved by the facts; and the facts,
so far as they are ascertained, disprove the assumption of such a
necessity in the first case."[110] That is to say, as the social facts,
the social phenomena, disprove the "social contract" as an occurrence
taking place by human design and intention, so the phenomena of animal
life disprove the assumption of such an occurrence as its commencement
by divine intervention, or its commencement at all.
SOPHEREUS. I think I understood all this before, just as you
put it, but I am not the less obliged to you for the restatement.
In regard to society, I know not why the family, the institution of
marriage, is not to be regarded as the first social organism, and
the union of two or more families in some kind of mutual league is
certainly the first society in a more comprehensive sense. I care
very little about the theory of the social contract, as applied to
more complex societies, although, as a kind of legal fiction, it is
well enough for all the uses which sound reasoners nowadays make of
it. But the institution of marriage, the family, is no fiction at
all; it is a fact, however it was first established, and it was the
absolute commencement of social life. But I do not hold to this sort
of analogies, or to this mode of reasoning from what happens in a
department, in which the actions of men have largely or exclusively
influenced the complex phenomena, to a department in which human
influence has had nothing to do with the phenomena. But now let us come
back to the proposition that there never was any absolute commencement
of organic life on the globe. I will take Mr. Spencer's meaning--his
denial, as you put it--and will test it by one or two observations
upon his own explanation, as given in the elaborate paper in which
he replied to a critic in the "North American Review" a little more
than four years ago.[111] In the first place, then, as to time. It
will not do to say that there never was a time when such a product as
life, animated or organized life, had its first existence. To whatever
it owed its existence, it must at some time have begun to exist. It
matters not how far back in the ages of the globe you place it: you
must contemplate a time when it did not exist, and a point of time at
which it began to exist. It matters not that you can not fix this time.
There was such a time, whether you can fix it chronologically or not.
In the next place, however minute the supposed gradations which you
trace backward from a recognizable organism to the primal protoplasmic
substance, out of which you suppose it to have been gradually evolved,
and through whatever extent of time you imagine these gradations
to have been worked out by the operation of the forces of Nature,
modifying successive beings, you must find an organism to which you can
attribute life. Whatever that organism was, it was the commencement of
organic life; for, when you go back of it in the series, you come to
something that was not organic life, but was merely a collection of
molecules or a product of aggregated molecules, that had a capacity to
be developed into an animated organism under favorable conditions. "It
is," says Mr. Spencer, "by the action of the successively higher forms
on one another, joined with the action of environing conditions, that
the highest forms are reached." Some one, then, of those highest forms,
something that can be called an animal organism, some being endowed
with life, was the commencement of organic life on the globe; and it
is just as correct and necessary to speak of it as the "absolute"
commencement as it is when we speak of Darwin's aquatic grub, or of the
Mosaic account of the creation of the different animals by the hand
and will of God. Neither Mr. Spencer nor any other man can construct a
chain of animated existence back into the region of its non-existence
without showing that it began to have an existence. He can say that
the affirmation of universal evolution is in itself a negation of an
absolute commencement of anything. And so it is theoretically. But this
does not get over the difficulty. On his own explanation of the mode
in which organisms have been evolved, there must have been a first
organism, and in that first organism life began. So that I am not yet
prepared to yield my criticism, or to yield my convictions to a writer
who is so much carried away by his theory.
KOSMICOS. But you will allow that the theory is perfect in
itself; and why, then, do you say that he is carried away by it? You
ought either to give up your criticism, or to show that there is a
superior hypothesis by which to account for the origin of organisms,
and one that is supported by stronger proofs and better reasoning. You
have nothing to oppose to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the origin of
organic life, excepting the fable which you find in the book of Genesis.
SOPHEREUS. Undoubtedly the opposite hypothesis is that which
attributes to a Creator the production of organic life; and whether
the Mosaic account, as it stands, be a fable or a true narrative of an
actual occurrence, what we have to do is to ascertain, upon correct
principles of reasoning, whether the creating power can be dispensed
with. Mr. Spencer dispenses with it altogether. He gives it a direct
negative in the most absolute manner. But the perfection of his theory
depends upon its ability to sustain itself as an explanation of the
existence of organisms without the intervention of a creating power
anywhere at any time. I have already suggested the serious defect of
his whole philosophic scheme as applied to the existence of organisms,
namely, that the foundation of the theory, the existence of the
molecules with their properties and capacities tending to rearrangement
under the laws of matter and motion, those laws themselves, and the
environing conditions which assist the process of adjustment and
combination, must all have had an origin, or a cause. If we can get
along without that origin, without any cause, without any actor
laying the foundations of the world, we can make a theory. But that
theory can not sustain itself by such a negation if all experience,
observation, and reflection amount to anything; for these all point in
one direction. They all tend to show that every existing thing must
have had a cause, that every product must have had an origin, and, if
we place that origin in the operation of certain laws of matter and
motion upon and among the primal molecules of matter, we still have to
look for the origin of those laws and of the molecules on which they
have operated. If we say that these things had no origin, that they
existed without having been caused to exist, we end in a negation at
which reason at once rebels. If, on the other hand, we reject, as we
must reject, this negation, then the same power which could establish
the laws of matter and motion, and give origin to the molecules and
the favoring conditions by which their aggregated higher forms are
supposed to have been developed, was alike capable of the direct
production of species, the creation of the sexes, and the establishment
of the laws of procreation and gestation. So that it becomes a question
of probability, of the weight of evidence, as to whether we can explain
the phenomena of species, of the sexual division and the sexual
union, with all that they involve, without the hypothesis of direct
intervention, design, and formative skill of a boundless character. I
have seen no explanation of the origin of species and of the sexual
distinction, with its concomitant methods of reproduction, that does
not end in an utter blank, whenever it undertakes to dispense with
that kind of direct design to which is derisively given the name of
"miraculous interposition," but which in truth implies no miracle at
all.
KOSMICOS. I have to be perpetually recalling you to the first
principles of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. You seem to think it enough
to point to the existence of species and the sexual division, as if
his philosophy did not afford the means of accounting for them by the
operation of natural causes. Let me put to you, then, this question: If
natural causes have produced a crystal, by successive new combinations
of molecules of matter through gradations rising successively into
higher forms, why should not natural causes, acting upon other
molecules in a corresponding way, have produced organic life, or
animated organisms? If natural causes have evolved out of certain
molecules the substance known as organizable protein, why should not
the continued operation of the same or similar causes have modified
organizable protein into some distinct and recognizable animated
organism? If you admit this as a possible or highly probable result,
why should not natural causes have produced, in the course of millions
of years, the division of the sexes and the methods of procreation and
multiplication?
SOPHEREUS. I will assign the reasons for not adopting the
conclusions to which you expect me to arrive, in a certain order. In
the first place, the capacity of certain molecules to result in the
formation of a crystal, under the operation of what you call natural
causes, requires that the molecules, their capacity, and the natural
causes should all have had an origin, call it known or unknown. The
cause was of equal potency to produce the crystal directly, or anything
else that exists in Nature. The same thing is true of certain other
molecules which, under the operation of the so-called natural causes,
have resulted in organizable protein. There must have been an origin
to the molecules, to their capacity, and to the laws which effect
their combinations; and this cause could equally fashion an organism
and fashion it in the related forms of male and female by direct
intervention, for to such a power there is no assignable limit. In the
next place, the distinction between inanimate and animated matter,
between beings endowed and beings not endowed with animal life, is a
distinction that can not be overlooked; for, although we find this
distinction to be a fact that has resulted after the operation of
whatever causes may have produced it, we must still note that there is
a distinction, and a very important one. It may be that the dividing
line is very difficult of detection; that it is impossible to determine
in all cases just where organizable matter passes from dead matter into
a living organism. But that at some point there has arisen a living
organism, however produced, is certain. Now, suppose that what you
call natural causes have operated to bring organizable matter up to
this dividing line, the question is, whether we can conclude that they
have had the potency to pass that line, and to lead of themselves to
all the varying and manifold results of species, the division of the
sexes, and all that follows that division. Certain great facts seem to
me to negative this conclusion. The first is, that we have species,
which differ absolutely from each other as organisms, in their modes
of life, and their destinies, however strong may be the resemblances
which obtain among them in certain respects. The second fact is, that
each of the true species is divided into the related forms of male and
female, and is placed under a law of procreation, by the sexual union,
for the multiplication of individuals of that species. The third fact
is, that no crosses take place in Nature between different species
of animals--between the true species--resulting in a third species,
or a third animal. It is true that multiplication of individuals of
some of the lowest organisms takes place without the bisexual process
of procreation, as where, in the severance of a part of an organism
the severed part grows, under favorable conditions, into a perfect
organism of the same kind, as in the analogous phenomenon of a plant
propagated by a branch or a slip from the parent stem. But this
occurrence does not take place among the animals which are placed
for their multiplication under the law of the sexual union and the
sexual procreation. The sexual division, therefore, the law of sexual
procreation, and all that they involve, have to be accounted for.
Can they be accounted for by the theory of evolution? Wherever you
place their first occurrence, you have to find a process adequate to
their production. What, then, entitles you to say that the hypothesis
of their production, by the capacity and tendency of organizable
substances, when they have reached certain combinations, is superior
to the hypothesis of a direct interposition and a formative will? At
the outset, you must begin with some interposition and some formative
will; you must account for the existence of the very capacities of
matter to become organized under the laws of the redistribution of
matter and motion, or you will end nowhere whatever. If you assume, as
you must, that, in laying "the foundations of the world," there was
exercised some interposition and some formative will, you have a power
which was just as adequate to the production of species, and their
sexual division, as it was to the endowment of matter with certain
properties and capacities, and the establishment of any laws for the
redistribution of matter and motion. If you deny the existence and
potency of the original power in the one production you must deny them
in the other. If you concede them in the one case, you must concede
them in the other. Now, although the original power was equal to the
endowment of organizable matter with its capacities for and tendencies
to organization, and may be theoretically assumed to have made that
endowment, the question is, whether these capacities and tendencies,
without special formative interposition, and by the mere force of what
you call natural causes, were equal to the production of such phenomena
as the division of the sexes and all that follows that division. Can
it with any truth he said that the so-called natural causes have
produced any phenomena which can be compared, on the question of
special design, to the phenomena of the sexual division, the law of
sexual procreation, and the whole system of the multiplication of
individuals of distinct and true species? When I can see any facts
which will warrant the belief that the origin of the sexes is to be
attributed to the capacity of organizable protein to form itself into
new compounds, to the capacity of these new compounds to become living
organisms, and to the capacity of these living organisms, without the
intervention of any formative will specially designing the result, to
divide themselves into related forms of male and female, to establish
for themselves the law of procreation, and to limit that procreation
to the same species, I shall, perhaps, begin to see some ground for
the superior claims of the evolution hypothesis. I should like,
by-the-by, to see a system of classification of animal organisms, based
exclusively on the distinction between the bisexual and the unisexual,
or the non-sexual, methods of reproduction, and without running it out
into the analogies of the vegetable world. I fancy that it would be
found extremely difficult to account for the bisexual division without
reaching the conclusion that it required and was effected by a special
interposition. At all events, I should like to see it explained how the
asexual and the unisexual construction passed into the bisexual by the
mere operation of what you call natural causes.
KOSMICOS. You said, a while ago, that you had never learned
any nursery-stories. Yet, all along, you seem to me to have been under
the influence of the Mosaic account of the creation. Of course you
have read it, and, although you did not learn anything about it in
childhood, and now try to treat it solely as a hypothesis, without any
regard to its claims as a divinely inspired narrative, it is certainly
worth your while to see how completely it becomes an idle tale of the
nursery when scientific tests are applied to it. Hear what Spencer says
about the creation of man, as given by Moses: "The old Hebrew idea
that God takes clay and molds a new creature, as a potter might mold a
vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any
modern defender of special creations."
SOPHEREUS. Let us see about this. Let us discard all idea
of the source from which Moses received his information of the
occurrences which he relates, and put his account upon the same level
with Plato's description of the origin of animals, and with the
Darwinian or Spencerian theory of that origin; regarding all three
of them, that is to say, as mere hypotheses. Whatever may be the
supposed conflict between the Mosaic account of the creation and the
conclusions of geologists concerning the periods during which the
earth may have become formed as we now find it, the question is, on
the one hand, whether the Hebrew historian's account of the process
of creation is a conception substantially the same as that at which
we should have arrived from a study of Nature if we had never had
that account transmitted to us from a period when the traditions of
mankind were taking the shapes in which they have reached us from
different sources; or whether, on the other hand, it is so "grossly
anthropomorphic" and absurd that it is not worthy of any consideration
as an occurrence that it will bear the slightest test of scientific
scrutiny. Let any one take the Mosaic narrative, and, divesting himself
of all influence of supposed inspiration or divine authority speaking
through the chosen servant of God, and disregarding the meaning of
those obscure statements which divide the stages of the work into
the first and the second "day," etc., let him follow out the order
in which the Creator is said by Moses to have acted. He will find in
the narrative an immense condensation, highly figurative expressions,
and many elliptical passages. But he will also find that the Creator
is described as proceeding in the exertion of his omnipotent power
in a manner which we should be very likely to deduce from a study of
his works without this narrative. We have, first, the reduction of
the earth from its chaotic condition--"without form and void"--to the
separation of its elemental substances; then the creation of light;
the separation of earth and water; the productive capacity of the
dry land; the establishment of the vegetable kingdom, each product
"after its kind"; the formation of the heavenly bodies as lights in
the firmament, to make the division of day and night, seasons and
years. It is obviously immaterial, so far as this order of the work is
concerned, down to the stage when the formation of the first animals
took place, in what length of time this first stage of the work was
accomplished; whether it was done by an Omnipotence that could speak
things into existence by a word, or whether the process was carried on
through periods of time of which we can have no measure, and by the
operation of infinitely slow-moving agencies selected and employed for
the accomplishment of a certain result. Confining our attention to the
first stage of the work as we find it described, we have the formation
of the earth, light, air, the heavenly bodies, alternations of day
and night, seasons and years, and the vegetable kingdom, before any
animal creation. We then come to the formation of animals which are to
inhabit this convenient abode, and which are described as taking place
in the following order: first the water animals, the fowls of the air,
and the beasts of the field, "each after its kind"; then, and finally,
the creation of man. Respecting his creation, we are told that it was
the purpose of the Almighty to make a being after a very different
"image" from that of any other creature on the earth; and whatever may
be the true interpretation of the language employed, whether man was
created literally "in our image, after our likeness," or according
to an image and a likeness of which his Creator had conceived, there
can be no doubt that what Moses described as the purpose of God was
to make a being differing absolutely from all the other animals by
a broad line of demarkation which is perfectly discoverable through
all the resemblances that obtain between him and all the other living
creatures. To this new being there was given, we are told, dominion
over all the other animals, and the fruits of the earth were assigned
to him for food; he was formed out of the dust of the earth, the breath
of life was breathed into his nostrils, and he became "a living soul."
Let us now see if this statement of the creation of man is so "grossly
anthropomorphic" as is supposed. You are aware that Buffon, who was
certainly no mean naturalist or philosopher, and who was uninfluenced
by the idea that the book of Genesis was an inspired production,
reached the conclusion that a study of nature renders the order of
man's creation as described by Moses a substantially true hypothesis.
"We are persuaded," said Buffon, "independently of the authority of
the sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to
wield the scepter of the earth when that earth was found worthy of
his sway."[112] You evolutionists will say that this may be very true
upon your hypothesis of his gradual development out of other animals,
through untold periods of time. But now let us see whether Moses was
so grossly unscientific, upon the supposition that God created man
as he describes. If man was created, or molded, by the Deity, he was
formed, in his physical structure, out of matter; and all matter may
be figuratively and even scientifically described as "the dust of the
earth," or as "clay," or by any other term that will give an idea of a
substance that was not spirit. If Moses had said that man's body was
formed out of the constituent elements of matter, or some of them, he
would have said nothing that a modern believer in special creations
need shrink from, for he would have stated an indisputable fact. He
stated in one form of expression the very same fact that a modern
scientist would have to state in another form, whatever might have been
the mode, or the power, or the time in or by which the constituent
elements were brought together and molded into the human body. So that
the derisive figure of God taking clay and molding it into the human
form, as a potter would mold a vessel, does not strike me as presenting
any proof that the account given by Moses is so destitute of scientific
accuracy, or as rendering his statements a ridiculous hypothesis.
KOSMICOS. Well, then, it comes at last to this: that you
consider the substance of the Mosaic account of the creation,
independent of its authority as an inspired statement, to be entitled
to stand as a hypothesis against the explanations given to us by the
scientists of the great modern school of evolution, notwithstanding
those explanations are in one form or another now accepted by the most
advanced scientific thinkers and explorers?
SOPHEREUS. I certainly do. But understand me explicitly.
As, after my study of the probable origin of the solar system, and
our discussion of that subject, I expressed my conclusion that the
phenomena called for and manifested the exercise of a formative will
by some acts of special creation, so now, in reference to the animal
kingdom, I have reached the same conclusion, for reasons which I have
endeavored to assign. I can see that the operation of the process which
you call evolution may have caused certain limited modifications in
the structure and habits of life of different animals; or rather, that
limited modifications of structure and habits of life have occurred,
and hence you deduce what you call the process of evolution. But
to me this entirely fails to account for, or to suggest a rational
explanation of, the distinct existence of species, their division into
male and female, and the establishment of the laws of procreation by
which individuals of a species are multiplied--a process which does not
admit of the production of individuals of an essentially different type
from the parents, and which, so far as we have any means of knowledge,
has never commenced in one species and ended in another, in any length
of time that can be imagined, or through any series of modifications.
KOSMICOS. Let us postpone the farther discussion of the origin
of species to some future time, when I will endeavor to convince you
that both Darwin and Spencer have satisfactorily accounted for them.
SOPHEREUS. Very well; I shall be glad to be enlightened.
THE SINGLE-CELL HYPOTHESIS.
NOTE.--It will readily occur to the reader that Sophereus
might most pertinently have asked: Whence did the primal cell
originate? It is conceived of as the ultimate unit of organizable
matter; invisible to the naked eye, perhaps incapable of being
reached by the microscope, but consisting of an infinitesimally small
portion of matter, more or less organized in itself, and possessing a
capacity to unite with itself other minute particles of matter, and
so to form larger aggregates of molecules. The hypothesis is, that
this single cell has given origin to all animated organisms, and,
through an indefinite series of such organisms, to the human race.
The single cell, then, having this capacity and this extraordinary
destiny, was either the first and only one of its kind, or it was one
of many of the same kind. If we select any supposed point of time
in the far antecedent history of matter, the question may be asked
whether there existed at first but one such cell, or many. If there
were many of such cells, how came they to exist? If one only was
selected out of many, for this extraordinary destiny of giving origin
to all the animated organisms, who or what made the selection for
this transcendent office of the one cell? If there never was but one
such cell, how did it come to exist? As these questions are clearly
pertinent, the effort to answer them inevitably conducts us to the
idea of creation, or else to the conclusion that the numerous cells
and the selected one had no origin; that the selection was not made,
but was accidental; or that the one cell, if there never was but one,
was not a created thing. Human reason can not accept this conclusion.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] "Biology," i, p. 482.
[107] "Biology," i, Appendix, pp. 483, 484.
[108] "Biology," i, p. 408.
[109] "Biology," i, pp. 409, 410.
[110] "Biology," i, p. 482.
[111] Now contained in "Biology," i, Appendix.
[112] Quoted by M. Guizot in his "History of France," vol. vi, p.
328. Guizot observes that Buffon was "absolutely unshackled by any
religious prejudice," and that he "involuntarily recurred to the
account given in Genesis."