It is a truly wonderful fact--the wonder of which we are apt to
overlook from familiarity--that all animals and plants throughout all
time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to
group, in the manner which we everywhere behold, namely, varieties of
the same species most closely related together, species of the same
genus less closely and unequally related together, forming sections
and sub-genera, species of distinct genera much less closely related,
and genera related in different degrees, forming sub-families,
families, orders, sub-classes, and classes.--pp. 128-9.
How can we account for all this? By the simplest and yet the most
comprehensive answer. By declaring the stupendous fact that all creation
is the transcript in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of
the Most High--that order in the utmost perfectness of its relation
pervades His works, because it exists as in its centre and highest
fountain-head in Him the Lord of all. Here is the true account of the
fact which has so utterly misled shallow observers, that Man himself,
the Prince and Head of this creation, passes in the earlier stages of
his being through phases of existence closely analogous, so far as his
earthly tabernacle is concerned, to those in which the lower animals
ever remain. At that point of being the development of the protozoa is
arrested. Through it the embryo of their chief passes to the perfection
of his earthly frame. But the types of those lower forms of being must
be found in the animals which never advance beyond them--not in man for
whom they are but the foundation for an after-development; whilst he
too, Creation's crown and perfection, thus bears witness in his own
frame to the law of order which pervades the universe.
In like manner could we answer every other question as to which Mr.
Darwin thinks all oracles are dumb unless they speak his speculation. He
is, for instance, more than once troubled by what he considers
imperfections in Nature's work. "If," he says, "our reason leads us to
admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature,
this same reason tells us that some other contrivances are less
perfect."
Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as
far as we can judge, absolutely perfect; and if some of them be
abhorrent to our idea of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of
the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such
vast numbers for one single act, and with the great majority
slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of
pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee
for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding within the
live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The wonder
indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the
want of absolute perfection have not been observed.--p. 472.
We think that the real temper of this whole speculation as to nature
itself may be read in these few lines. It is a dishonouring view of
nature.
That reverence for the work of God's hands with which a true belief in
the All-wise Worker fills the believer's heart is at the root of all
great physical discovery; it is the basis of philosophy. He who would
see the venerable features of Nature must not seek with the rudeness of
a licensed roysterer violently to unmask her countenance; but must wait
as a learner for her willing unveiling. There was more of the true
temper of philosophy in the poetic fiction of the Pan-ic shriek, than in
the atheistic speculations of Lucretius. But this temper must beset
those who do in effect banish God from nature. And so Mr. Darwin not
only finds in it these bungling contrivances which his own greater skill
could amend, but he stands aghast before its mightier phenomena. The
presence of death and famine seems to him inconceivable on the ordinary
idea of creation; and he looks almost aghast at them until reconciled to
their presence by his own theory that "a ratio of increase so high as to
lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection
entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less improved
forms, is decidedly followed by the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals" (p.
490). But we can give him a simpler solution still for the presence of
these strange forms of imperfection and suffering amongst the works of
God.
We can tell him of the strong shudder which ran through all this world
when its head and ruler fell. When he asks concerning the infinite
variety of these multiplied works which are set in such an orderly
unity, and run up into man as their reasonable head, we can tell him of
the exuberance of God's goodness and remind him of the deep philosophy
which lies in those simple words--"All thy works praise Thee, O God, and
thy saints give thanks unto Thee." For it is one office of redeemed man
to collect the inarticulate praises of the material creation, and pay
them with conscious homage into the treasury of the supreme Lord.
* * * * *
It is by putting restraint upon fancy that science is made the true
trainer of our intellect:--
"A study of the Newtonian philosophy," says Sedgwick, "as affecting
our moral powers and capacities, does not terminate in mere negations.
It teaches us to see the finger of God in all things animate and
inaminate [Transcriber's note: sic], and gives us an exalted
conception of His attributes, placing before us the clearest proof of
their reality; and so prepares, or ought to prepare, the mind for the
reception of that higher illumination which brings the rebellious
faculties into obedience to the Divine will."--_Studies of the
University_, p. 14.
It is by our deep conviction of the truth and importance of this view
for the scientific mind of England that we have been led to treat at so
much length Mr. Darwin's speculation. The contrast between the sober,
patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy, and the writings
of Lamarck and his followers and predecessors, of MM. Demaillet, Bory de
Saint Vincent, Virey, and Oken,[1] is indeed most wonderful; and it is
greatly owing to the noble tone which has been given by those great men
whose words we have quoted to the school of British science. That Mr.
Darwin should have wandered from this broad highway of nature's works
into the jungle of fanciful assumption is no small evil. We trust that
he is mistaken in believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his
converts. We know indeed the strength of the temptations which he can
bring to bear upon his geological brother. The Lyellian hypothesis,
itself not free from some of Mr. Darwin's faults, stands eminently in
need for its own support of some such new scheme of physical life as
that propounded here. Yet no man has been more distinct and more logical
in the denial of the transmutation of species than Sir C. Lyell, and
that not in the infancy of his scientific life, but in its full vigour
and maturity.
[1] It may be worth while to exhibit to our readers a few of Dr. Oken's
postulates or arguments as specimens of his views:--
I wrote the first edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration.
4. Spirit is the motion of mathematical ideas.
10. Physio-philosphy [Transcriber's note: sic] has to ... pourtray
the first period of the world's development from nothing; how the
elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by
self-evolution into higher and manifold forms they separated into
minerals, became finally organic, and in man attained
self-consciousness.
42. The mathematical monad is eternal.
43. The eternal is one and the same with the zero of mathematics.
Sir C. Lyell devotes the 33rd to the 36th chapter of his "Principles of
Geology" to an examination of this question. He gives a clear account of
the mode in which Lamarck supported his belief of the transmutation of
species; he interrupts the author's argument to observe that "no
positive fact is cited to exemplify the substitution of some _entirely
new_ sense, faculty, or organ--because no examples were to be found";
and remarks that when Lamarck talks of "the effects of internal
sentiment," etc., as causes whereby animals and plants may acquire _new
organs_, he substitutes names for things, and with a disregard to the
strict rules of induction, resorts to fictions.
He shows the fallacy of Lamarck's reasoning, and by anticipation
confutes the whole theory of Mr. Darwin, when gathering clearly up into
a few heads the recapitulation of the whole argument in favour of the
reality of species in nature. He urges:--[Transcriber's note: numbering
in original]
1. That there is a capacity in all species to accommodate themselves to
a certain extent to a change of external circumstances.
4. The entire variation from the original type ... may usually be
effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can
be obtained.
5. The intermixing distinct species is guarded against by the sterility
of the mule offspring.
6. It appears that species have a real existence in nature, and that
each was endowed at the time of its creation with the attributes and
organization by which it is now distinguished.[1]
[1] "Principles of Geology," edit. 1853.
We trust that Sir C. Lyell abides still by these truly philosophical
principles; and that with his help and with that of his brethren this
flimsy speculation may be as completely put down as was what in spite of
all denials we must venture to call its twin though less-instructed
brother, the "Vestiges of Creation." In so doing they will assuredly
provide for the strength and continually growing progress of British
science.
Indeed, not only do all laws for the study of nature vanish when the
great principle of order pervading and regulating all her processes is
given up, but all that imparts the deepest interest in the investigation
of her wonders will have departed too. Under such influences a man soon
goes back to the marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs and
hippogriffs of fancy, or if he is of a philosophic turn, he comes like
Oken to write a scheme of creation under "a sort of inspiration"; but it
is the frenzied inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The whole
world of nature is laid for such a man under a fantastic law of glamour,
and he becomes capable of believing anything: to him it is just as
probable that Dr. Livingstone will find the next tribe of negroes with
their heads growing under their arms as fixed on the summit of the
cervical vertebrae; and he is able, with a continually growing neglect
of all the facts around him, with equal confidence and equal delusion,
to look back to any past and to look on to any future.