PRIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN THEORIES AS TO HIS
ORIGIN.
The geological record, as we have been reading it, introduces us to
primitive man, but gives us no distinct information as to his origin.
Tradition and revelation have, it is true, their solutions of the
mystery, but there are, and always have been, many who will not take
these on trust, but must grope for themselves with the taper of
science or philosophy into the dark caverns whence issue the springs
of humanity. In former times it was philosophic speculation alone
which lent its dim and uncertain light to these bold inquirers; but in
our day the new and startling discoveries in physics, chemistry, and
biology have flashed up with an unexpected brilliancy, and have at
least served to dazzle the eyes and encourage the hopes of the
curious, and to lead to explorations more bold and systematic then any
previously undertaken. Thus has been born amongst us, or rather
renewed, for it is a very old thing, that evolutionist philosophy,
which has been well characterised as the "baldest of all the
philosophies which have sprung up in our world," and which solves the
question of human origin by the assumption that human nature exists
potentially in mere inorganic matter, and that a chain of spontaneous
derivation connects incandescent molecules or star-dust with the
world, and with man himself.
This evolutionist doctrine is itself one of the strangest phenomena of
humanity. It existed, and most naturally, in the oldest philosophy and
poetry, in connection with the crudest and most uncritical, attempts
of the human mind to grasp the system of nature; but that in our day a
system destitute of any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague
analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary and artificial
coherence of its own parts, should be accepted as a philosophy, and
should find able adherents to string upon its thread of hypotheses our
vast and weighty stores of knowledge, is surpassingly strange. It
seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone
altogether beyond its capacity for generalisation; and but for the
vigour which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an indication
that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility, and in its
dotage mistakes for science the imaginations which were the dreams of
its youth.
In many respects these speculations are important and worthy of the
attention of thinking men. They seek to revolutionise the religious
beliefs of the world, and if accepted would destroy most of the
existing theology and philosophy. They indicate tendencies among
scientific thinkers, which, though probably temporary, must, before
they disappear, descend to lower strata, and reproduce themselves in
grosser forms, and with most serious effects on the whole structure
of society. With one class of minds they constitute a sort of
religion, which so far satisfies the craving for truths higher then
those which relate to immediate wants and pleasures. With another and
perhaps larger class, they are accepted as affording a welcome
deliverance from all scruples of conscience and fears of a hereafter.
In the domain of science evolutionism has like tendencies. It reduces
the position of man, who becomes a descendant of inferior animals, and
a mere term in a series whose end is unknown. It removes from the
study of nature the ideas of final cause and purpose; and the
evolutionist, instead of regarding the world as a work of consummate
plan, skill, and adjustment, approaches nature as he would a chaos of
fallen rocks, which may present forms of castles and grotesque
profiles of men and animals, but they are all fortuitous and without
significance. It obliterates the fine perception of differences from
the mind of the naturalist, and resolves all the complicated relations
of living things into some simple idea of descent with modification.
It thus destroys the possibility of a philosophical classification,
reducing all things to a mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in
systematic zoology and botany, which is already very manifest among
the disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England. The effect of this
will be, if it proceeds further, in a great degree to destroy the
educational value and popular interest attaching to these sciences,
and to throw them down at the feet of a system of debased
metaphysics. As redeeming features in all this, are the careful study
of varietal forms, and the inquiries as to the limits of species,
which have sprung from these discussions, and the harvest of which
will be reaped by the true naturalists of the future.
Thus these theories as to the origin of men and animals and plants are
full of present significance, and may be studied with profit by all;
and in no part of their applications more usefully then in that which
relates to man. Let us then inquire,--1. What is implied in the idea of
evolution as applied to man? 2. What is implied in the idea of
creation? 3. How these several views accord with what we actually know
as the result of scientific investigation? The first and second of
these questions may well occupy the whole of this chapter, and we
shall be able merely to glance at their leading aspects. In doing so,
it may be well first to place before us in general terms the several
alternatives which evolutionists offer, as to the mode in which the
honour of an origin from apes or ape-like animals can be granted to
us, along with the opposite view as to the independent origin of man
which have been maintained either on scientific or scriptural grounds.
All the evolutionist theories of the origin of man depend primarily on
the possibility of his having been produced from some of the animals
more closely allied to him, by the causes now in operation which lead
to varietal forms, or by similar causes which have been in operation;
and some attach more and others less weight to certain of these
causes, or gratuitously suppose others not actually known. Of such
causes of change some are internal and others external to the
organism. With respect to the former, one school assumes an innate
tendency in every species to change in the course of time.[AV] Another
believes in exceptional births, either in the course of ordinary
generation or by the mode of parthenogenesis.[AW] Another refers to
the known facts of reproductive accelleration or retardation observed
in some humble creatures.[AX] New forms arising in any of these ways
or fortuitously, may, it is supposed, be perpetuated and increased and
further improved by favouring external circumstances and the effort of
the organism to avail itself of these,[AY] or by the struggle for
existence and the survival of the fittest.[AZ]
[AV] Parsons, Owen.
[AW] Mivart, Ferris.
[AX] Hyatt and Cope.
[AY] Lamarck, etc.
[AZ] Darwin, etc.
On the other hand, those who believe in the independent origin of man
admit the above causes as adequate only to produce mere varieties,
liable to return into the original stock. They may either hold that
man has appeared as a product of special and miraculous creation, or
that he has been created mediately by the operation of forces also
concerned in the production of other animals, but the precise nature
of which is still unknown to us; or lastly, they may hold what seems
to be the view favoured by the book of Genesis, that his bodily form
is a product of mediate creation and his spiritual nature a direct
emanation from his Creator.
The discussion of all these rival theories would occupy volumes, and
to follow them into details would require investigations which have
already bewildered many minds of some scientific culture. Further, it
is the belief of the writer that this plunging into multitudes of
details has been fruitful of error, and that it will be a better
course to endeavour to reach the root of the matter by looking at the
foundations of the general doctrine of evolution itself, and then
contrasting it with its rival.
Taking, then, this broad view of the subject, two great leading
alternatives are presented to us. Either man is an independent product
of the will of a Higher Intelligence, acting directly or through the
laws and materials of his own institution and production, or he has
been produced by an unconscious evolution from lower things. It is
true that many evolutionists, either unwilling to offend, or not
perceiving the logical consequences of their own hypothesis, endeavour
to steer a middle course, and to maintain that the Creator has
proceeded by way of evolution. But the bare, hard logic of Spencer,
the greatest English authority on evolution, leaves no place for this
compromise, and shows that the theory, carried out to its legitimate
consequences, excludes the knowledge of a Creator and the possibility
of His work. We have, therefore, to choose between evolution and
creation; bearing in mind, however, that there may be a place in
nature for evolution, properly limited, as well as for other things,
and that the idea of creation by no means excludes law and second
causes.
Limiting ourselves in the first place to theories of evolution, and to
these as explaining the origin of species of living beings, and
especially of man, we naturally first inquire as to the basis on which
they are founded. Now no one pretends that they rest on facts actually
observed, for no one has ever observed the production of even one
species. Nor do they even rest, like the deductions of theoretical
geology, on the extension into past time of causes of change now seen
to be in action. Their probability depends entirely on their capacity
to account hypothetically for certain relations of living creatures to
each other, and to the world without; and the strongest point of the
arguments of their advocates is the accumulation of cases of such
relations supposed to be accounted for. Such being the kind of
argument with which we have to deal, we may first inquire what we are
required to believe as conditions of the action of evolution, and
secondly, to what extent it actually does explain the phenomena.
In the first place, as evolutionists, we are required to assume
certain forces, or materials, or both, with which evolution shall
begin. Darwin, in his Origin of Species, went so far as to assume the
existence of a few of the simpler types of animals; but this view, of
course, was only a temporary resting-place for his theory. Others
assume a primitive protoplasm, or physical basis of life, and
arbitrarily assigning to this substance properties now divided between
organised and unorganised, and between dead and living matter, find no
difficulty in deducing all plants and animals from it. Still, even
this cannot have been the ultimate material. It must have been evolved
from something. We are thus brought back to certain molecules of
star-dust, or certain conflicting forces, which must have had
self-existence, and must have potentially included all subsequent
creatures. Otherwise, if with Spencer we hold that God is "unknowable"
and creation "unthinkable," we are left suspended on nothing over a
bottomless void, and must adopt as the initial proposition of our
philosophy, that all things were made out of nothing, and by nothing;
unless we prefer to doubt whether anything exists, and to push the
doctrine of relativity to the unscientific extreme of believing that
we can study the relations of things non-existent or unknown. So we
must allow the evolutionist some small capital to start with;
observing, however, that self-existent matter in a state of endless
evolution is something of which we cannot possibly have any definite
conception.
Being granted thus much, the evolutionist next proceeds to demand that
we shall also believe in the indefinite variability of material
things, and shall set aside all idea that there is any difference in
kind between the different substances which we know. They must all be
mutually convertible, or at least derivable from some primitive
material. It is true that this is contrary to experience. The chemist
holds that matter is of different kinds, that one element cannot be
converted into another; and he would probably smile if told that, even
in the lapse of enormous periods of time, limestone could be evolved
out of silica. He may think that this is very different from the idea
that a snail can be evolved from an oyster, or a bird from a reptile.
But the zoologist will inform him that species of animals are only
variable within certain limits, and are not transmutable, in so far as
experience and experiment are concerned. They have their allotropic
forms, but cannot be changed into one another.
But if we grant this second demand, the evolutionist has a third in
store for us. We must also admit that by some inevitable necessity the
changes of things must in the main take place in one direction, from
the more simple to the more complex, from the lower to the higher. At
first sight this seems not only to follow from the previous
assumptions, but to accord with observation. Do not all living things
rise from a simpler to a more complex state? has not the history of
the earth displayed a gradually increasing elevation and complexity?
But, on the other hand, the complex organism becoming mature, resolves
itself again into the simple germ, and finally is dissolved into its
constituent elements. The complex returns into the simple, and what we
see is not an evolution, but a revolution. In like manner, in
geological time, the tendency seems to be ever to disintegration and
decay. This we see everywhere, and find that elevation occurs only by
the introduction of new species in a way which is not obvious, and
which may rather imply the intervention of a cause from without; so
that here also we are required to admit as a general principle what is
contrary to experience.
If, however, we grant the evolutionist these postulates, we must next
allow him to take the facts of botany and zoology out of their
ordinary connection, and thread them like a string of beads, as
Herbert Spencer has done in his "Biology," on the threefold cord thus
fashioned. This done, we next find, as might have been expected,
certain gaps or breaks which require to be cunningly filled with
artificial material, in order to give an appearance of continuity to
the whole.
The first of these gaps which we notice is that between dead and
living matter. It is easy to fill this with such a term as protoplasm,
which includes matter both dead and living, and so to ignore this
distinction; but practically we do not yet know as a possible thing
the elevation of matter, without the agency of a previous living
organism, from that plane in which it is subject merely to physical
force, and is unorganised, to that where it becomes organised, and
lives. Under that strange hypothesis of the origin of life from
meteors, with which Sir William Thomson closed his address at a late
meeting of the British Association, there was concealed a cutting
sarcasm which the evolutionists felt. It reminded them that the men
who evolve all things from physical forces do not yet know how these
forces can produce the phenomena of life even in its humblest forms.
It is true that the scientific world has been again and again startled
by the announcement of the production of some of the lowest forms of
life, either from dead organic matter, or from merely mineral
substances; but in every case heretofore the effort has proved as vain
as the analogies attempted to be set up between the formation of
crystals and that of organized tissues are fallacious.
A second gap is that which separates vegetable and animal life. These
are necessarily the converse of each other, the one deoxidizes and
accumulates, the other oxidizes and expends. Only in reproduction or
decay does the plant simulate the action of the animal, and the animal
never in its simplest forms assumes the functions of the plant. Those
obscure cases in the humbler spheres of animal and vegetable life
which have been supposed to show a union of the two kingdoms,
disappear on investigation. This gap can, I believe, be filled up only
by an appeal to our ignorance. There may be, or may have been, some
simple creature unknown to us, on the extreme verge of the plant
kingdom, that was capable of passing the limit and becoming an animal.
But no proof of this exists. It is true that the primitive germs of
many kinds of humble plants and animals are so much alike, that much
confusion has arisen in tracing their development. It is also true
that some of these creatures can subsist under very dissimilar
conditions, and in very diverse states, and that under the specious
name of Biology,[BA] we sometimes find a mass of these confusions,
inaccurate observations and varietal differences made to do duty for
scientific facts. But all this does not invalidate the grand primary
distinction between the animal and the plant, which should be
thoroughly taught and illustrated to all young naturalists, as one of
the best antidotes to the fallacies of the evolutionist school.
[BA] It is doubtful whether men who deny the existence of vital force
have a right to call their science "Biology," any more then atheists
have to call their doctrine "Theology;" and it is certain that the
assumption of a science of Biology as distinct from Phytology and
Zoology, or including both, is of the nature of a "pious fraud" on the
part of the more enlightened evolutionists. The objections stated in
the text, to what have been called Archebiosis and Heterogenesis seem
perfectly applicable, in so far as I can judge from a friendly review
by Wallace, to the mass of heterogeneous material accumulated by Dr.
Bastian in his recent volumes. The conclusions of this writer, would
also, if established, involve evolution in a fatal _embarras des
richesses_, by the hourly production during all geological time, of
millions of new forms all capable of indefinite development.
A third is that between any species of animal or plant and any other
species. It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to
fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but,
notwithstanding the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns
as wide as ever, since it must be admitted that no case has been
ascertained in which an individual of one species has transgressed the
limits between it and other species. However extensive the varieties
produced by artificial breeding, the essential characters of the
species remain, and even its minor characters may be reproduced, while
the barriers established in nature between species by the laws of
their reproduction, seem to be absolute.
With regard to species, however, it must be observed that naturalists
are not agreed as to what constitutes a species. Many so-called
species are probably races, or varieties, and one benefit of these
inquiries has been to direct attention to the proper discrimination of
species from varieties among animals and plants. The loose
discrimination of species, and the tendency to multiply names, have
done much to promote evolutionist views; but the researches of the
evolutionists themselves have shown that we must abandon transmutation
of true species as a thing of the present; and if we imagine it to
have occurred, must refer it to the past.
Another gap is that between the nature of the animal and the
self-conscious, reasoning, moral nature of man. We not only have no
proof that any animal can, by any force in itself, or by any merely
physical influences from without, rise to such a condition; but the
thing is in the highest degree improbable. It is easy to affirm, with
the grosser materialists, that thought is a secretion of brain, as
bile is of the liver; but a moment's thought shows that no real
analogy obtains between the cases. We may vaguely suppose, with
Darwin, that the continual exercise of such powers as animals possess,
may have developed those of man. But our experience of animals shows
that their intelligence differs essentially from that of man, being a
closed circle ever returning into itself, while that of man is
progressive, inventive, and accumulative, and can no more be
correlated with that of the animal then the vital phenomena of the
animal with those of the plant. Nor can the gap between the higher
religious and moral sentiments of man, and the instinctive affections
of the brutes, be filled up with that miserable ape imagined by
Lubbock, which, crossed in love, or pining with cold and hunger,
conceived, for the first time in its poor addled pate, "the dread of
evil to come," and so became the father of theology. This conception,
which Darwin gravely adopts, would be most ludicrous, but for the
frightful picture which it gives of the aspect in which religion
appears to the mind of the evolutionist.
The reader will now readily perceive that the simplicity and
completeness of the evolutionist theory entirely disappear when we
consider the unproved assumptions on which it is based, and its
failure to connect with each other some of the most important facts in
nature: that, in short, it is not in any true sense a philosophy, but
merely an arbitrary arrangement of facts in accordance with a number
of unproved hypotheses. Such philosophies, "falsely so called," have
existed ever since man began to reason on nature, and this last of
them is one of the weakest and most pernicious of the whole. Let the
reader take up either of Darwin's great books, or Spencer's "Biology,"
and merely ask himself as he reads each paragraph, "What is assumed
here and what is proved?" and he will find the whole fabric melt away
like a vision. He will find, however, one difference between these
writers. Darwin always states facts carefully and accurately, and when
he comes to a difficulty tries to meet it fairly. Spencer often
exaggerates or extenuates with reference to his facts, and uses the
arts of the dialectician where argument fails.
Many naturalists who should know better are puzzled with the great
array of facts presented by evolutionists; and while their better
judgment causes them to doubt as to the possibility of the structures
which they study being produced by such blind and material processes,
are forced to admit that there must surely be something in a theory so
confidently asserted, supported by so great names, and by such an
imposing array of relations which it can explain. They would be
relieved from their weak concessions were they to study carefully a
few of the instances adduced, and to consider how easy it is by a
little ingenuity to group undoubted facts around a false theory. I
could wish to present here illustrations of this, which abound in
every part of the works I have referred to, but space will not permit.
One or two must suffice. The first may be taken from one of the
strong points often dwelt on by Spencer in his "Biology."[BB]
[BB] "Principles of Biology," § 118.
"But the experiences which most clearly illustrate to us the process
of general evolution are our experiences of special evolution,
repeated in every plant and animal. Each organism exhibits, within a
short space of time, a series of changes which, when supposed to
occupy a period indefinitely great and to go on in various ways
instead of one, may give us a tolerably clear conception of organic
evolution in general. In an individual development we have compressed
into a comparatively infinitesimal space a series of metamorphoses
equally vast with those which the hypothesis of evolution assumes to
have taken place during those unmeasurable epochs that the earth's
crust tells us of. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every
respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific
gravity, in chemical composition: differs so greatly that no visible
resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the
one changed in the course of a few years into the other; changed so
gradually that at no moment can it be said, 'Now the seed ceases to be
and the tree exists.' What can be more widely contrasted then a
newly-born child and the small gelatinous spherule constituting the
human ovum? The infant is so complex in structure that a cyclopædia
is needed to describe its constituent parts. The germinal vesicle is
so simple that it may be defined in a line.... If a single cell under
appropriate conditions becomes a man in the space of a few years,
there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under
appropriate conditions, a cell may in the course of untold millions of
years give origin to the human race."
"It is true that many minds are so unfurnished with those experiences
of nature, out of which this conception is built, that they find
difficulty in forming it.... To such the hypothesis that by any series
of changes a protozoan should ever give origin to a mammal seems
grotesque--as grotesque as did Galileo's assertion of the earth's
movement seem to the Aristoteleans; or as grotesque as the assertion
of the earth's sphericity seems now to the New Zealanders."
I quote the above as a specimen of evolutionist reasoning from the
hand of a master, and as referring to one of the corner-stones of this
strange philosophy. I may remark with respect to it, in the first
place, that it assumes those "conditions" of evolution to which I have
already referred. In the second place, it is full of inaccurate
statements of fact, all in a direction tending to favour the
hypothesis. For example, a tree does not differ "immeasurably" from a
seed, especially if the seed is of the same species of tree, for the
principal parts of the tree and its principal chemical constituents
already exist and can be detected in the seed, and unless it were so,
the development of the tree from the seed could not take place.
Besides, the seed itself is not a thing self-existent or fortuitous.
The production of a seed without a previous tree of the same kind is
quite as difficult to suppose as the production of a tree without a
previous seed containing its living embryo. In the third place, the
whole argument is one of analogy. The germ becomes a mature animal,
passing through many intermediate stages, therefore the animal may
have descended from some creature which when mature was as simple as
the germ. The value of such an analogy depends altogether on the
similarity of the "conditions" which, in such a case, are really the
efficient causes at work. The germ of a mammal becomes developed by
the nourishment supplied from the system of a parent, which itself
produced the germ, and into whose likeness the young animal is
destined to grow. These are the "appropriate conditions" of its
development. But when our author assumes from this other "appropriate
conditions," by which an organism, which on the hypothesis is not a
germ but a mature animal, shall be developed into the likeness, of
something different from its parent, he oversteps the bounds of
legitimate analogy. Further, the reproduction of the animal, as
observed, is a closed series, beginning at the embryo and returning
thither again; the evolution attempted to be established is a
progressive series going on from one stage to another. A reproductive
circle once established obeys certain definite laws, but its origin,
or how it can leave its orbit and revolve in some other, we cannot
explain without the introduction of some new efficient cause. The one
term of the analogy is a revolution, and the other is an evolution.
The revolution within the circle of the reproduction of the species
gives no evidence that at some point the body will fly off at a
tangent, and does not even inform us whether it is making progress in
space. Even if it is so making progress, its orbit of revolution may
remain the same. But it may be said the reproduction of the species is
not in a circle but in a spiral. Within the limit of experience it is
not so, since, however it may undulate, it always returns into itself.
But supposing it to be a spiral, it may ascend or descend, or expand
and contract; but this does not connect it with other similar spirals,
the separate origin of which is to be separately accounted for.
I have quoted the latter part of the passage because it is
characteristic of evolutionists to decry the intelligence of those who
differ from them. Now it is fair to admit that it requires some
intelligence and some knowledge of nature to produce or even to
understand such analogies as those of Mr. Spencer and his followers,
but it is no less true that a deeper insight into the study of nature
may not only enable us to understand these analogies, but to detect
their fallacies. I am sorry to say, however, that at present the
hypothesis of evolution is giving so strong a colouring to much of
popular and even academic teaching, more especially in the easy and
flippant conversion of the facts of embryology into instances of
evolution on the plan of the above extract, that the Spencerians may
not long have to complain of want of faith and appreciation on the
part of the improved apes whom they are kind enough to instruct as to
their lowly origin.
The mention of "appropriate conditions" in the above extract reminds
me of another fatal objection to evolution which its advocates
continually overlook. An animal or plant advancing from maturity to
the adult state is in every stage of its progress a complete and
symmetrical organism, correlated in all its parts and adapted to
surrounding conditions. Suppose it to become modified in any way, to
ever so small an extent, the whole of these relations are disturbed.
If the modification is internal and spontaneous, there is no guarantee
that it will suit the vastly numerous external agencies to which the
creature is subjected. If it is produced by agencies from without,
there is no guarantee that it will accord with the internal relations
of the parts modified. The probabilities are incalculably great
against the occurrence of many such disturbances without the breaking
up altogether of the nice adjustment of parts and conditions. This is
no doubt one reason of the extinction of so many species in geological
time, and also of the strong tendency of every species to spring back
to its normal condition when in any way artificially caused to vary.
It is also connected with the otherwise mysterious law of the constant
transmission of all the characters of the parent.
Spencer and Darwin occasionally see this difficulty, though they
habitually neglect it in their reasonings. Spencer even tries to turn
one part of it to account as follows:--
"Suppose the head of a mammal to become very much more weighty--what
must be the indirect results? The muscles of the neck are put to
greater exertions; and the vertebræ have to bear additional tensions
and pressures caused both by the increased weight of the head and the
stronger contraction of muscles that support and move the head." He
goes on to say that the processes of the vertebrae will have augmented
strains put upon them, the thoracic region and fore limbs will have to
be enlarged, and even the hind limbs may require modification to
facilitate locomotion. He concludes: "Any one who compares the outline
of the bison with that of its congener, the ox, will clearly see how
profoundly a heavier head affects the entire osseous and muscular
system."
We need not stop to mention the usual inaccuracies as to facts in this
paragraph, as, for example, the support of the head being attributed
to muscles alone, without reference to the strong elastic ligament of
the neck. We may first notice the assumption that an animal can
acquire a head "very much more weighty" then that which it had before,
a very improbable supposition, whether as a monstrous birth Dr as an
effect of external conditions after birth. But suppose this to have
occurred, and what is even less likely, that the very much heavier
head is an advantage in some way, what guarantee can evolution give
us that the number of other modifications required would take place
simultaneously with this acquisition! It would be easy to show that
this would depend on the concurrence of hundreds of other conditions
within and without the animal, all of which must co-operate to produce
the desired effect, if indeed they could produce this effect even by
their conjoint action, a power which the writer, it will be observed,
quietly assumes, as well as the probability of the initial change in
the head. Finally, the naivete with which it is assumed that the bison
and the ox are examples of such an evolution, would be refreshing in
these artificial days, if instances of it did not occur in almost
every page of the writings of evolutionists.
It would only weary the reader to follow evolution any further into
details, especially as my object in this chapter is to show that
generally, and as a theory of nature and of man, it has no good
foundation; but we should not leave the subject without noting
precisely the derivation of man according to this theory; and for this
purpose I may quote Darwin's summary of his conclusions on the
subject.[BC]
[BC] "Descent of Man," part ii., ch. 21.
"Man," says Mr. Darwin, "is descended from a hairy quadruped,
furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its
habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its
whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been
classed amongst the quadrumana, as surely as would the common, and
still more ancient, progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The
quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an
ancient marsupial animal; and this, through a long line of diversified
forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like creature,
and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the
past we can see that the early progenitor of all the vertebrata must
have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiæ, with the two
sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important
organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly
developed. This animal seems to have been more like the larvæ of our
existing marine Ascidians then any other form known."
The author of this passage, in condescension to our weakness of faith,
takes us no further back then to an Ascidian, or "sea-squirt," the
resemblance, however, of which to a vertebrate animal is merely
analogical, and, though a very curious case of analogy, altogether
temporary and belonging to the young state of the creature, without
affecting its adult state or its real affinities with other mollusks.
In order, however, to get the Ascidian itself, he must assume all the
"conditions" already referred to in the previous part of this article,
and fill most of the gaps. He has, however, in the "Origin of Species"
and "Descent of Man," attempted merely to fill one of the breaks in
the evolutionary series, that between distinct species, leaving us to
receive all the rest on mere faith. Even in respect to the question
of species, in all the long chain between the Ascidian and the man, he
has not certainly established one link; and in the very last change,
that from the ape-like ancestor, he equally fails to satisfy us as to
matters so trivial as the loss of the hair, which, on the hypothesis,
clothed the pre-human back, and on matters so weighty as the dawn of
human reason and conscience.
We thus see that evolution as an hypothesis has no basis in experience
or in scientific fact, and that its imagined series of transmutations
has breaks which cannot be filled. We have now to consider how it
stands with the belief that man has been created by a higher power.
Against this supposition the evolutionists try to create a prejudice
in two ways. First, they maintain with Herbert Spencer that the
hypothesis of creation is inconceivable, or, as they say,
"unthinkable;" an assertion which, when examined, proves to mean only
that we do not know perfectly the details of such an operation, an
objection equally fatal to the origin either of matter or life, on the
hypothesis of evolution. Secondly, they always refer to creation as if
it must be a special miracle, in the sense of a contravention of or
departure from ordinary natural laws; but this is an assumption
utterly without proof, since creation may be as much according to law
as evolution, though in either case the precise laws involved may be
very imperfectly known.
How absurd, they say, to imagine an animal created at once, fully
formed, by a special miracle, instead of supposing it to be slowly
elaborated through, countless ages of evolution. To Darwin the
doctrine of creation is but "a curious illustration of the blindness
of preconceived opinion." "These authors," he says, "seem no more
startled at a miraculous act of creation then at an ordinary birth;
but do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's
history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash
into living tissues?" Darwin, with all his philosophic fairness,
sometimes becomes almost Spencerian in his looseness of expression;
and in the above extract, the terms "miraculous," "innumerable,"
"elemental atoms," "suddenly," and "flash," all express ideas in no
respect necessary to the work of creation. Those who have no faith in
evolution as a cause of the production of species, may well ask in
return how the evolutionist can prove that creation must be
instantaneous, that it must follow no law, that it must produce an
animal fully formed, that it must be miraculous. In short, it is a
portion of the policy of evolutionists to endeavour to tie down their
opponents to a purely gratuitous and ignorant view of creation, and
then to attack them in that position.
What, then, is the actual statement of the theory of creation as it
may be held by a modern man of science? Simply this; that all things
have been produced by the Supreme Creative Will, acting either
directly or through the agency of the forces and materials of His own
production.
This theory does not necessarily affirm that creation is miraculous,
in the sense of being contrary to or subversive of law; law and order
are as applicable to creation as to any other process. It does not
contradict the idea of successive creations. There is no necessity
that the process should be instantaneous and without progression. It
does not imply that all kinds of creation are alike. There may be
higher and lower kinds. It does not exclude the idea of similarity or
dissimilarity of plan and function as to the products of creation.
Distinct products of creation may be either similar to each other in
different degrees, or dissimilar. It does not even exclude evolution
or derivation to a certain extent: anything once created may, if
sufficiently flexible and elastic, be evolved or involved in various
ways. Indeed, creation and derivation may, rightly understood, be
complementary to each other. Created things, unless absolutely
unchangeable, must be more or less modified by influences from within
and from without, and derivation or evolution may account for certain
subordinate changes of things already made. Man, for example, may be a
product of creation, yet his creation may have been in perfect harmony
with those laws of procedure which the Creator has set for His own
operations. He may have been preceded by other creations of things
more or less similar or dissimilar. He may have been created by the
same processes with some or all of these, or by different means. His
body may have been created in one way, his soul in another. He may,
nay, in all probability would be, part of a plan of which some parts
would approach very near to him in structure or functions. After his
creation, spontaneous culture and outward circumstances may have
moulded him into varieties, and given him many different kinds of
speech and of habits. These points are so obvious to common sense that
it would be quite unnecessary to insist on them, were they not
habitually overlooked or misstated by evolutionists.
The creation hypothesis is also free from some of the difficulties of
evolution. It avoids the absurdity of an eternal progression from the
less to the more complex. It provides in will, the only source of
power actually known to us by ordinary experience, an intelligible
origin of nature. It does not require us to contradict experience by
supposing that there are no differences of kind or essence in things.
It does not require us to assume, contrary to experience, an
invariable tendency to differentiate and improve. It does not exact
the bridging over of all gaps which may be found between the several
grades of beings which exist or have existed.
Why, then, are so many men of science disposed to ignore altogether
this view of the matter? Mainly, I believe, because, from the training
of many of them, they are absolutely ignorant of the subject, and from
their habits of thought have come to regard physical force and the
laws regulating it as the one power in nature, and to relegate all
spiritual powers or forces, or, as they have been taught to regard
them, "supernatural" things, to the domain of the "unknowable."
Perhaps some portion of the difficulty may be got over by abandoning
altogether the word "supernatural," which has been much misused, and
by holding nature to represent the whole cosmos, and to include both
the _physical_ and the _spiritual_, both of them in the fullest sense
subject to law, but each to the law of its own special nature. I have
read somewhere a story of some ignorant orientals who were induced to
keep a steam-engine supplied with water by the fiction that it
contained a terrible _djin_, or demon, who, if allowed to become
thirsty, would break out and destroy them all. Had they been enabled
to discard this superstition, and to understand the force of steam, we
can readily imagine that they would now suppose they knew the whole
truth, and might believe that any one who taught them that the engine
was a product of intelligent design, was only taking them back to the
old doctrine of the thirsty demon of the boiler. This is, I think, at
present, the mental condition of many scientists with reference to
creation.
Here we come to the first demand which the doctrine of creation makes
on us by way of premises. In order that there may be creation there
must be a primary Self-existent Spirit, whose will is supreme. The
evolutionist cannot refuse to admit this on as good ground as that on
which we hesitate to receive the postulates of his faith. It is no
real objection to say that a God can be known to us only partially,
and, with reference to His real essence, not at all; since, even if
we admit this, it is no more then can be said of matter and force.
I am not about here to repeat any of the ordinary arguments for the
existence of a spiritual First Cause, and Creator of all things, but
it may be proper to show that this assumption is not inconsistent with
experience, or with the facts and principles of modern science. The
statement which I would make on this point shall be in the words of a
very old writer, not so well known as he should be to many who talk
volubly enough about antagonisms between science and Christianity:
"that which is known of God is manifest in them (in men), for God
manifested it unto them. For since the creation of the world His
invisible things, even His eternal power and divinity are plainly
seen, being perceived by means of things that are made."[BD] The
statement here is very precise. Certain things relating to God are
manifest within men's minds, and are proved by the evidence of His
works; these properties of God thus manifested being specially His
power or control of all forces, and His divinity or possession of a
nature higher then ours. The argument of the writer is that all
heathens know this; and, as a matter of fact, I believe it must be
admitted even by those most sceptical on such points, that some notion
of a divinity has been derived from nature by men of all nations and
tribes, if we except, perhaps, a few enlightened positivists of this
nineteenth century whom excess of light has made blind. "If the light
that is in man be darkness, how great is that darkness." But then this
notion of a God is a very old and primitive one, and Spencer takes
care to inform us that "first thoughts are either wholly out of
harmony with things, or in very incomplete harmony with them," and
consequently that old beliefs and generally diffused notions are
presumably wrong.
[BD] Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chap i.
Is it true, however, that the modern knowledge of nature tends to rob
it of a spiritual First Cause? One can conceive such a tendency, if
all our advances in knowledge had tended more and more to identify
force with matter in its grosser forms, and to remove more and more
from our mental view those powers which are not material; but the very
reverse of this is the case. Modern discovery has tended more and more
to attach importance to certain universally diffused media which do
not seem to be subject to the laws of ordinary matter, and to prove at
once the Protean character and indestructibility of forces, the
aggregate of which, as acting in the universe, gives us our nearest
approach to the conception of physical omnipotence. This is what so
many of our evolutionists mean when they indignantly disclaim
materialism. They know that there is a boundless energy beyond mere
matter, and of which matter seems the sport and toy. Could they
conceive of this energy as the expression of a personal will, they
would become theists.
Man himself presents a microcosm of matter and force, raised to a
higher plane then that of the merely chemical and physical. In him we
find not merely that brain and nerve force which is common to him and
lower animals, and which exhibits one of the most marvellous energies
in nature, but we have the higher force of will and intellect,
enabling him to read the secrets of nature, to seize and combine and
utilize its laws like a god, and like a god to attain to the higher
discernment of good and evil. Nay, more, this power which resides
within man rules with omnipotent energy the material organism, driving
its nerve forces until cells and fibres are worn out and destroyed,
taxing muscles and tendons till they break, impelling its slave the
body even to that which will bring injury and death itself. Surely,
what we thus see in man must be the image and likeness of the Great
Spirit. We can escape from this conclusion only by one or other of two
assumptions, either of which is rather to be called a play upon words
then a scientific theory. We may, with a certain class of physicists
and physiologists, confine our attention wholly to the fire and the
steam, and overlook the engineer. We may assume that with protoplasm
and animal electricity, for example, we can dispense with life, and
not only with life but with spirit also. Yet he who regards vitality
as an unmeaning word; and yet speaks of "living protoplasm," and "dead
protoplasm," and affirms that between these two states, so different
in their phenomena, no chemical or physical difference exists, is
surely either laughing at us, or committing himself to what the Duke
of Argyll calls a philosophical bull; and he who shows us that
electrical discharges are concerned in muscular contraction, has just
as much proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the
electrician who has explained the mysteries of the telegraph has shown
that there can be no need of an operator. Or we may, turning to the
opposite extreme, trust to the metaphysical fallacy of those who
affirm that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need concern them,
for that all are merely states of consciousness in ourselves. But what
of the conscious self this self which thinks, and which is in relation
with surroundings which it did not create, and which presumably did
not create it? and what is the unknown third term which must have been
the means of setting up these relations? Here again our blind guides
involve us in an absolute self-contradiction.
Thus we are thrown back on the grand old truth that man, heathen and
savage, or Christian and scientific, opens his eyes on nature and
reads therein both the physical and the spiritual, and in connection
with both of these the power and divinity of an Almighty Creator. He
may at first have many wrong views both of God and of His works, but
as he penetrates further into the laws of matter and mind, he attains
more just conceptions of their relations to the Great Centre and
Source of all, and instead of being able to dispense with creation, he
hopes to be able at length to understand its laws and methods. If
unhappily he abandons this high ambition, and contents himself with
mere matter and physical force, he cannot rise to the highest
development either of science or philosophy.
It may, however, be said that evolution may admit all this, and still
be held as a scientific doctrine in connection with a modified belief
in creation. The work of actual creation may have been limited to a
few elementary types, and evolution may have done the rest.
Evolutionists may still be theists. We have already seen that the
doctrine, as carried out to its logical consequences, excludes
creation and theism. It may, however, be shown that even in its more
modified forms, and when held by men who maintain that they are not
atheists, it is practically atheistic, because excluding the idea of
plan and design, and resolving all things into the action of
unintelligent forces. It is necessary to observe this, because it is
the half-way evolutionism which professes to have a Creator somewhere
behind it, that is most popular; though it is, if possible, more
unphilosophical then that which professes to set out from absolute and
eternal nonentity, or from self-existent star-dust containing all the
possibilities of the universe.
Absolute atheists recognise in Darwinism, for example, a philosophy
which reduces all things to a "gradual summation of innumerable minute
and accidental material operations," and in this they are more logical
then those who seek to reconcile evolution with design. Huxley, in his
"lay sermons," referring to Paley's argument for design founded on the
structure of a watch, says that if the watch could be conceived to be
a product of a less perfect structure improved by natural selection,
it would then appear to be the "result of a method of trial and error
worked by unintelligent agents, as likely as of the direct application
of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent." This
is a bold and true assertion of the actual relation of even this
modified evolution to rational and practical theism, which requires
not merely this God "afar off," who has set the stone of nature
rolling and then turned His back upon it, but a present God, whose
will is the law of nature, now as in times past. The evolutionist is
really in a position of absolute antagonism to the idea of creation,
even when held with all due allowance for the variations of created
things within certain limits.
Perhaps Paley's old illustration of the watch, as applied by Huxley,
may serve to show this as well as any other. If the imperfect watch,
useless as a time-keeper, is the work of the contriver, and the
perfection of it is the result of unintelligent agents working
fortuitously, then it is clear that creation and design have a small
and evanescent share in the construction of the fabric of nature. But
is it really so? Can we attribute the perfection of the watch to
"accidental material operations" any more then the first effort to
produce such an instrument? Paley himself long ago met this view of
the case, but his argument may be extended by the admissions and pleas
of the evolutionists themselves. For example, the watch is altogether
a mechanical thing, and this fact by no means implies that it could
not be made by an intelligent and spiritual designer, yet this
assumption that physical laws exclude creation and design turns up in
almost every page of the evolutionists. Paley has well shown that if
the watch contained within itself machinery for making other watches,
this would not militate against his argument. It would be so if it
could be proved that a piece of metal had spontaneously produced an
imperfect watch, and this a more perfect one, and so on; but this is
precisely what evolutionists still require to prove with respect both
to the watch and to man. On the other hand it is no argument for the
evolution of the watch that there may be different kinds of watches,
some more and others less perfect, and that ruder forms may have
preceded the more perfect. This is perfectly compatible with creation
and design. Evolutionists, however, generally fail to make this
distinction. Nor would it be any proof of the evolution of the watch
to find that, as Spencer would say, it was in perfect harmony with its
environment, as, for instance, that it kept time with the revolution
of the earth, and contained contrivances to regulate its motion under
different temperatures, unless it could be shown that the earth's
motion and the changes of temperature had been efficient causes of the
motion and the adjustments of the watch; otherwise the argument would
look altogether in the direction of design. Nor would it be fair to
shut up the argument of design to the idea that the watch must have
suddenly flashed into existence fully formed and in motion. It would
be quite as much a creation if slowly and laboriously made by the hand
of the artificer, or if more rapidly struck off by machinery; and if
the latter, it would not follow that the machine which produced the
watch was at all like the watch itself. It might have been something
very different. Finally, when Spencer tries to cut at the root of the
whole of this argument, by affirming that man has no more right to
reason from himself with regard to his Maker then a watch would have
to reason from its own mechanical structure and affirm the like of its
maker, he signally fails. If the watch had such power of reasoning, it
would be more then mechanical, and would be intelligent like its
maker; and in any case, if thus reasoning it came to the conclusion
that it was a result of "accidental material operations," it would be
altogether mistaken. Nor would it be nearer the truth if it held that
it was a product of spontaneous evolution from an imperfect and
comparatively useless watch that had been made millions of years
before.
We have taken this illustration of the watch merely as given to us by
Huxley, and without in the least seeking to overlook the distinction
between a dead machine and a living organism; but the argument for
creation and design is quite as strong in the case of the latter, so
long as it cannot be proved by actual facts to be a product of
derivation from a distinct species. This has not been proved either in
the care of man or any other species; and so long as it has not, the
theory of creation and design is infinitely more rational and
scientific then that of evolution in any of its forms.
But all this does not relieve us from the question, How can species be
created?--the same question put to Paul by the sceptics of the first
century with reference to the resurrection--"How are the dead raised,
and with what bodies do they come?" I do not wish to evade this
question, whether applied to man or to a microscopic animalcule, and I
would answer it with the following statements:--
1. The advocate of creation is in this matter in no worse position
then the evolutionist. This we have already shown, and I may refer
here to the fact that Darwin himself assumes at least one primitive
form of animal and plant life, and he is confessedly just as little
able to imagine this one act of creation as any other that may be
demanded of him.
2. We are not bound to believe that all groups of individual animals,
which naturalists may call species, have been separate products of
creation. Man himself has by some naturalists been divided into
several species; but we may well be content to believe the creation of
one primitive form, and the production of existing races by variation.
Every zoologist and botanist who has studied any group of animals or
plants with care, knows that there are numerous related forms passing
into each other, which some naturalists might consider to be distinct
species, but which it is certainly not necessary to regard as
distinct products of creation. Every species is more or less
variable, and this variability may be developed by different causes.
Individuals exposed to unfavourable conditions will be stunted and
depauperated; those in more favourable circumstances may be improved
and enlarged. Important changes may thus take place without
transgressing the limits of the species, or preventing a return to its
typical forms; and the practice of confounding these more limited
changes with the wider structural and physiological differences which
separate true species is much to be deprecated. Animals which pass
through metamorphoses, or which, are developed through the
instrumentality of intermediate forms or "nurses"[BE] are not only
liable to be separated by mistake into distinct species, but they may,
tinder certain circumstances, attain to a premature maturity, or may
be fixed for a time or permanently in an immature condition. Further,
species, like individuals, probably have their infancy, maturity, and
decay in geological time, and may present differences in these several
stages. It is the remainder of true specific types left after all
these sources of error are removed, that creation has to account for;
and to arrive at this remainder, and to ascertain its nature and
amount, will require a vast expenditure of skilful and conscientious
labour.
[BE] Mr. Mungo Ponton, in his book "The Beginning," has based a theory
of derivation on this peculiarity.
3. Since animals and plants have been introduced upon our earth in
long succession throughout geologic time, and this in a somewhat
regular manner, we have a right to assume that their introduction has
been in accordance with a law or plan of creation, and that this may
have included the co-operation of many efficient causes, and may have
differed in its application to different cases. This is a very old
doctrine of theology, for it appears in the early chapters of Genesis.
There the first aquatic animals, and man, are said to have been
"created;" plants are said to have been "brought forth by the land;"
the mammalia are said to have been "made." In the more detailed
account of the introduction of man in the second chapter of the same
book, he is said to have been "formed of the dust of the ground;" and
in regard to his higher spiritual life, to have had this "breathed
into" him by God. These are very simple expressions, but they are very
precise and definite in the original, and they imply a diversity in
the creative work. Further, this is in accordance with the analogy of
modern science. How diverse are the modes of production and
development of animals and plants, though all under one general law;
and is it not likely that the modes of their first introduction on the
earth were equally diverse?
4. Our knowledge of the conditions of the origination of species, is
so imperfect that we may possibly appear for some time to recede from,
rather then to approach to, a solution of the question. In the infancy
of chemistry, it was thought that chemical elements could be
transmuted into each other. The progress of knowledge removed this
explanation of their origin, and has as yet failed to substitute any
other in its place. It may be the same with organic species. The
attempt to account for them by derivation may prove fallacious, yet it
may be some time before we turn the corner, should this be possible,
and enter the path which actually leads up to their origin.
Lastly, in these circumstances our wisest course is to take individual
species, and to inquire as to their history in time, and the probable
conditions of their introduction. Such investigations are now being
made by many quiet workers, whose labours are comparatively little
known, and many of whom are scarcely aware of the importance of what
they are doing toward a knowledge of, at least, the conditions of
creation, which is perhaps all that we can at present hope to reach.
In the next chapter we shall try to sum up what is known as to man
himself, in the conditions of his first appearance on our earth, as
made known to us by scientific investigation, and explained on the
theory of creation as opposed to evolution.