It is inexplicable, on the theory of creation, why a part developed in
a very unusual manner in any one species of a genus, and therefore, as
we may naturally infer, of great importance to the species, should be
eminently liable to variation.--p. 474.
Why "inexplicable"? Such a liability to variation might most naturally
be expected in the part "unusually developed," because such unusual
development is of the nature of a monstrosity, and monsters are always
tending to relapse into likeness to the normal type. Yet this argument
is one on which he mainly relies to establish his theory, for he sums
all up in this triumphant inference:--
I cannot believe that a false theory would explain, as it seems to me
that the theory of natural selection does explain, the several large
classes of facts above specified.--p. 480.
Now, as to all this, we deny, first, that many of these difficulties are
"inexplicable on any other supposition." Of the greatest of them (128,
194) we shall have to speak before we conclude. We will here touch only
on one of those which are continually reappearing in Mr. Darwin's pages,
in order to illustrate his mode of dealing with them. He finds, then,
one of these "inexplicable difficulties" in the fact, that the young of
the blackbird, instead of resembling the adult in the colour of its
plumage, is like the young of many other birds spotted, and triumphantly
declaring that--
No one will suppose that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the
spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to these animals, or are
related to the conditions to which they are exposed.--pp. 439-40--
he draws from them one of his strongest arguments for this alleged
community of descent. Yet what is more certain to every observant
field-naturalist than that this alleged uselessness of colouring is one
of the greatest protections to the young bird, imperfect in its flight,
perching on every spray, sitting unwarily on every bush through which
the rays of sunshine dapple every bough to the colour of its own
plumage, and so give it a facility of escape which it would utterly want
if it bore the marked and prominent colours, the beauty of which the
adult bird needs to recommend him to his mate, and can safely bear with
his increased habits of vigilance and power of wing?
But, secondly, as to many of these difficulties, the alleged solving of
which is one great proof of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory, we are
compelled to join issue with him on another ground, and deny that he
gives us any solution at all. Thus, for instance, Mr. Darwin builds a
most ingenious argument on the tendency of the young of the horse, ass,
zebra, and quagga, to bear on their shoulders and on their legs certain
barred stripes. Up these bars (bars sinister, as we think, as to any
true descent of existing animals from their fancied prototype) he mounts
through his "thousands and thousands of generations," to the existence
of his "common parent, otherwise perhaps very differently constructed,
but striped like a zebra."--(p. 67.) "How inexplicable," he exclaims,
"on the theory of creation, is the occasional appearance of stripes on
the shoulder and legs of several species of the horse genus and in their
hybrids!"--(p. 473.) He tells us that to suppose that each species was
created with a tendency "like this, is to make the works of God a mere
mockery and deception"; and he satisfies himself that all difficulty is
gone when he refers the stripes to his hypothetical thousands on
thousands of years removed progenitor. But how is his difficulty really
affected? for why is the striping of one species a less real difficulty
than the striping of many?
Another instance of this mode of dealing with his subject, to which we
must call the attention of our readers, because it too often recurs, is
contained in the following question:--
Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created
as eggs, or seed, or as full grown? and, in the case of mammals, were
they created bearing the false marks of nourishment from the mother's
womb?--p. 483.
The difficulty here glanced at is extreme, but it is one for the
solution of which the transmutation-theory gives no clue. It is inherent
in the idea of the creation of beings, which are to reproduce their like
by natural succession; for, in such a world, place the first beginning
where you will, that beginning _must_ contain the apparent history of a
_past_, which existed only in the mind of the Creator. If, with Mr.
Darwin, to escape the difficulty of supposing the first man at his
creation to possess in that framework of his body "false marks of
nourishment from his mother's womb," with Mr. Darwin you consider him to
have been an improved ape, you only carry the difficulty up from the
first man to the first ape; if, with Mr. Darwin, in violation of all
observation, you break the barrier between the classes of vegetable and
animal life, and suppose every animal to be an "improved" vegetable, you
do but carry your difficulty with you into the vegetable world; for, how
could there be seeds if there had been no plants to seed them? and if
you carry up your thoughts through the vista of the Darwinian eternity
up to the primaeval fungus, still the primaeval fungus must have had a
humus, from which to draw into its venerable vessels the nourishment of
its archetypal existence, and that humus must itself be a "false mark"
of a pre-existing vegetation.
We have dwelt a little upon this, because it is by such seeming
solutions of difficulties as that which this passage supplies that the
transmutationist endeavours to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of
guess and speculation.
There are no parts of Mr. Darwin's ingenious book in which he gives the
reins more completely to his fancy than where he deals with the
improvement of instinct by his principle of natural selection. We need
but instance his assumption, without a fact on which to build it, that
the marvellous skill of the honey-bee in constructing its cells is thus
obtained, and the slave-making habits of the Formica Polyerges thus
formed. There seems to be no limit here to the exuberance of his fancy,
and we cannot but think that we detect one of those hints by which Mr.
Darwin indicates the application of his system from the lower animals to
man himself, when he dwells so pointedly upon the fact that it is always
the _black_ ant which is enslaved by his other coloured and more
fortunate brethren. "The slaves are black!" We believe that, if we had
Mr. Darwin in the witness-box, and could subject him to a moderate
cross-examination, we should find that he believed that the tendency of
the lighter-coloured races of mankind to prosecute the negro slave-trade
was really a remains, in their more favoured condition, of the
"extraordinary and odious instinct" which had possessed them before they
had been "improved by natural selection" from Formica Polyerges into
Homo. This at least is very much the way in which (p. 479) he slips in
quite incidentally the true identity of man with the horse, the bat, and
the porpoise:--
The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a
bat, fin of a porpoise, and leg of the horse, the same number of
vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant, and
innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory
of descent with slow and slight successive modifications.--p. 479.
Such assumptions as these, we once more repeat, are most dishonourable
and injurious to science; and though, out of respect to Mr. Darwin's
high character and to the tone of his work, we have felt it right to
weigh the "argument" again set by him before us in the simple scales of
logical examination, yet we must remind him that the view is not a new
one, and that it has already been treated with admirable humour when
propounded by another of his name and of his lineage. We do not think
that, with all his matchless ingenuity, Mr. Darwin has found any
instance which so well illustrates his own theory of the improved
descendant under the elevating influences of natural selection
exterminating the progenitor whose specialities he has exaggerated as he
himself affords us in this work. For if we go back two generations we
find the ingenious grandsire of the author of the _Origin of Species_
speculating on the same subject, and almost in the same manner with his
more daring descendant.
* * * * *
Our readers will not have failed to notice that we have objected to the
views with which we have been dealing solely on scientific grounds. We
have done so from our fixed conviction that it is thus that the truth or
falsehood of such arguments should be tried. We have no sympathy with
those who object to any facts or alleged facts in nature, or to any
inference logically deduced from them, because they believe them to
contradict what it appears to them is taught by Revelation. We think
that all such objections savour of a timidity which is really
inconsistent with a firm and well-instructed faith:--
"Let us for a moment," profoundly remarks Professor Sedgwick, "suppose
that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of
geology. How, then, are we to solve them? Not by making a world after
a pattern of our own--not by shifting and shuffling the solid strata
of the earth, and then dealing them out in such a way as to play the
game of an ignorant or dishonest hypothesis--not by shutting our eyes
to facts, or denying the evidence of our senses--but by patient
investigation, carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by
learning to reject every consequence not warranted by physical
evidence."[1]
He who is as sure as he is of his own existence that the God of Truth is
at once the God of Nature and the God of Revelation, cannot believe it
to be possible that His voice in either, rightly understood, can differ,
or deceive His creatures. To oppose facts in the natural world because
they seem to oppose Revelation, or to humour them so as to compel them
to speak its voice, is, he knows, but another form of the ever-ready
feebleminded dishonesty of lying for God, and trying by fraud or
falsehood to do the work of the God of truth. It is with another and a
nobler spirit that the true believer walks amongst the works of nature.
The words graven on the everlasting rocks are the words of God, and they
are graven by His hand. No more can they contradict His Word written in
His book, than could the words of the old covenant graven by His hand on
the stony tables contradict the writings of His hand in the volume of
the new dispensation. There may be to man difficulty in reconciling all
the utterances of the two voices. But what of that? He has learned
already that here he knows only in part, and that the day of reconciling
all apparent contradictions between what must agree is nigh at hand. He
rests his mind in perfect quietness on this assurance, and rejoices in
the gift of light without a misgiving as to what it may discover:--
"A man of deep thought and great practical wisdom," says Sedgwick,[2]
"one whose piety and benevolence have for many years been shining
before the world, and of whose sincerity no scoffer (of whatever
school) will dare to start a doubt, recorded his opinion in the great
assembly of the men of science who during the past year were gathered
from every corner of the Empire within the walls of this University,
'that Christianity had everything to hope and nothing to fear from the
advancement of philosophy.'"[3]
[1] "A Discourse on the Studies of the University," p. 149.
[2] Ibid., p. 153.
[3] Speech of Dr. Chalmers at the Meeting of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, June, 1833.
This is as truly the spirit of Christianity as it is that of philosophy.
Few things have more deeply injured the cause of religion than the busy
fussy energy with which men, narrow and feeble alike in faith and in
science, have bustled forth to reconcile all new discoveries in physics
with the word of inspiration. For it continually happens that some
larger collection of facts, or some wider view of the phenomena of
nature, alter the whole philosophic scheme; whilst Revelation has been
committed to declare an absolute agreement with what turns out after all
to have been a misconception or an error. We cannot, therefore, consent
to test the truth of natural science by the Word of Revelation. But this
does not make it the less important to point out on scientific grounds
scientific errors, when those errors tend to limit God's glory in
creation, or to gainsay the revealed relations of that creation to
Himself. To both these classes of error, though, we doubt not, quite
unintentionally on his part, we think that Mr. Darwin's speculations
directly tend.
Mr. Darwin writes as a Christian, and we doubt not that he is one. We do
not for a moment believe him to be one of those who retain in some
corner of their hearts a secret unbelief which they dare not vent; and
we therefore pray him to consider well the grounds on which we brand his
speculations with the charge of such a tendency. First, then, he not
obscurely declares that he applies his scheme of the action of the
principle of natural selection to MAN himself, as well as to the animals
around him. Now, we must say at once, and openly, that such a notion is
absolutely incompatible not only with single expressions in the word of
God on that subject of natural science with which it is not immediately
concerned, but, which in our judgment is of far more importance, with
the whole representation of that moral and spiritual condition of man
which is its proper subject-matter. Man's derived supremacy over the
earth; man's power of articulate speech; man's gift of reason; man's
free-will and responsibility; man's fall and man's redemption; the
incarnation of the Eternal Son; the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit,--
all are equally and utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of
the brute origin of him who was created in the image of God, and
redeemed by the Eternal Son assuming to himself his nature. Equally
inconsistent, too, not with any passing expressions, but with the whole
scheme of God's dealings with man as recorded in His word, is Mr.
Darwin's daring notion of man's further development into some unknown
extent of powers, and shape, and size, through natural selection acting
through that long vista of ages which he casts mistily over the earth
upon the most favoured individuals of his species. We care not in these
pages to push the argument further. We have done enough for our purpose
in thus succinctly intimating its course. If any of our readers doubt
what must be the result of such speculations carried to their logical
and legitimate conclusion, let them turn to the pages of _Oken_, and see
for themselves the end of that path the opening of which is decked out
in these pages with the bright hues and seemingly innocent deductions of
the transmutation-theory.
Nor can we doubt, secondly, that this view, which thus contradicts the
revealed relation of creation to its Creator, is equally inconsistent
with the fullness of His glory. It is, in truth, an ingenious theory for
diffusing throughout creation the working and so the personality of the
Creator. And thus, however unconsciously to him who holds them, such
views really tend inevitably to banish from the mind most of the
peculiar attributes of the Almighty.
How, asks Mr. Darwin, can we possibly account for the manifest plan,
order, and arrangement which pervade creation, except we allow to it
this self-developing power through modified descent?
As Milne-Edwards has well expressed it, Nature is prodigal in variety,
but niggard in innovation. Why, on the theory of creation, should this
be so? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings,
each supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in
nature, be so commonly linked together by graduated steps? Why should
not Nature have taken a leap from structure to structure?--p. 194.