GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE SPECIAL-CREATION-HYPOTHESIS.[45]
§ 110. Early ideas are not usually true ideas. Undeveloped intellect, be it
that of an individual or that of the race, forms conclusions which require
to be revised and re-revised, before they reach a tolerable correspondence
with realities. Were it otherwise there would be no discovery, no increase
of intelligence. What we call the progress of knowledge, is the bringing of
Thoughts into harmony with Things; and it implies that the first Thoughts
are either wholly out of harmony with Things, or in very incomplete harmony
with them.
If illustrations be needed the history of every science furnishes them. The
primitive notions of mankind as to the structure of the heavens were wrong;
and the notions which replaced them were successively less wrong. The
original belief respecting the form of the Earth was wrong; and this wrong
belief survived through the first civilizations. The earliest ideas that
have come down to us concerning the natures of the elements were wrong; and
only in quite recent times has the composition of matter in its various
forms been better understood. The interpretations of mechanical facts, of
meteorological facts, of physiological facts, were at first wrong. In all
these cases men set out with beliefs which, if not absolutely false,
contained but small amounts of truth disguised by immense amounts of error.
Hence the hypothesis that living beings resulted from special creations,
being a primitive hypothesis, is probably an untrue hypothesis. It would be
strange if, while early men failed to reach the truth in so many cases
where it is comparatively conspicuous, they reached it in a case where it
is comparatively hidden.
§ 111. Besides the improbability given to the belief in special creations,
by its association with mistaken beliefs in general, a further
improbability is given to it by its association with a special class of
mistaken beliefs. It belongs to a family of beliefs which have one after
another been destroyed by advancing knowledge; and is, indeed, almost the
only member of the family surviving among educated people.
We all know that the savage thinks of each striking phenomenon, or group of
phenomena, as caused by some separate personal agent; that out of this
conception there grows up a polytheistic conception, in which these minor
personalities are variously generalized into deities presiding over
different divisions of nature; and that these are eventually further
generalized. This progressive consolidation of causal agencies may be
traced in the creeds of all races, and is far from complete in the creed of
the most advanced races. The unlettered rustics who till our fields, do not
let the consciousness of a supreme power wholly absorb the aboriginal
conceptions of good and evil spirits, and of charms or secret potencies
dwelling in particular objects. The earliest mode of thinking changes only
as fast as the constant relations among phenomena are established. Scarcely
less familiar is the truth, that while accumulating knowledge makes these
conceptions of personal causal agents gradually more vague, as it merges
them into general causes, it also destroys the habit of thinking of them as
working after the methods of personal agents. We do not now, like Kepler,
assume guiding spirits to keep the planets in their orbits. It is no longer
the universal belief that the sea was once for all mechanically parted from
the dry land; or that the mountains were placed where we see them by a
sudden creative act. All but a narrow class have ceased to suppose sunshine
and storm to be sent in some arbitrary succession. The majority of educated
people have given up thinking of epidemics of punishments inflicted by an
angry deity. Nor do even the common people regard a madman as one possessed
by a demon. That is to say, we everywhere see fading away the
anthropomorphic conception of Cause. In one case after another, is
abandoned the ascription of phenomena to a will analogous to the human
will, working by methods analogous to human methods.
If, then, of this once-numerous family of beliefs the immense majority have
become extinct, we may not unreasonably expect that the few remaining
members of the family will become extinct. One of these is the belief we
are here considering--the belief that each species of organism was
specially created. Many who in all else have abandoned the aboriginal
theory of things, still hold this remnant of the aboriginal theory. Ask any
well-informed man whether he accepts the cosmogony of the Indians, or the
Greeks, or the Hebrews, and he will regard the question as next to an
insult. Yet one element common to these cosmogonies he very likely retains:
not bearing in mind its origin. For whence did he get the doctrine of
special creations? Catechise him, and he is forced to confess that it was
put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a
whole, he has long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be right
while all the rest is wrong, he is unable to say. May we not then expect
that the relinquishment of all other parts of this story, will by and by be
followed by the relinquishment of this remaining part of it?
§ 112. The belief which we find thus questionable, both as being a
primitive belief and as being a belief belonging to an almost-extinct
family, is a belief not countenanced by a single fact. No one ever saw a
special creation; no one ever found proof of an indirect kind that a
special creation had taken place. It is significant, as Dr. Hooker remarks,
that naturalists who suppose new species to be miraculously originated,
habitually suppose the origination to occur in some region remote from
human observation. Wherever the order of organic nature is exposed to the
view of zoologists and botanists, it expels this conception; and the
conception survives only in connexion with imagined places, where the order
of organic nature is unknown.
Besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this
hypothesis of special creations cannot support itself internally--cannot be
framed into a coherent thought. It is one of those illegitimate symbolic
conceptions which are mistaken for legitimate symbolic conceptions (_First
Principles_, § 9), because they remain untested. Immediately an attempt is
made to elaborate the idea into anything like a definite shape, it proves
to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a
new organism, when specially created, is created out of nothing? If so,
there is a supposed creation of matter; and the creation of matter is
inconceivable--implies the establishment of a relation in thought between
nothing and something--a relation of which one term is absent--an
impossible relation. Is it supposed that the matter of which the new
organism consists is not created for the occasion, but is taken out of its
pre-existing forms and arranged into a new form? If so, we are met by the
question--how is the re-arrangement effected? Of the myriad atoms going to
the composition of the new organism, all of them previously dispersed
through the neighbouring air and earth, does each, suddenly disengaging
itself from its combinations, rush to meet the rest, unite with them into
the appropriate chemical compounds, and then fall with certain others into
its appointed place in the aggregate of complex tissues and organs? Surely
thus to assume a myriad supernatural impulses, differing in their
directions and amounts, given to as many different atoms, is a
multiplication of mysteries rather than the solution of a mystery. For
every one of these impulses, not being the result of a force locally
existing in some other form, implies the creation of force; and the
creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter. It is
thus with all attempted ways of representing the process. The old Hebrew
idea that God takes clay and moulds a new creature, as a potter moulds a
vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any
modern defender of the special-creation doctrine. But having abandoned this
crude belief, what belief is he prepared to substitute? If a new organism
is not thus produced, then in what way is one produced? or rather--in what
way does he conceive a new organism to be produced? We will not ask for the
ascertained mode, but will be content with a mode which can be consistently
imagined. No such mode, however, is assignable. Those who entertain the
proposition that each kind of organism results from a divine interposition,
do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. They do
not really believe, but rather _believe they believe_. For belief, properly
so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed, and no
such mental representation is here possible.
§ 113. If we imagine mankind to be contemplated by some being as
short-lived as an ephemeron, but possessing intelligence like our own--if
we imagine such a being studying men and women, during his few hours of
life, and speculating as to the mode in which they came into existence; it
is manifest that, reasoning in the usual way, he would suppose each man and
woman to have been separately created. No appreciable changes of structure
occurring in any of them during the time over which his observations
extended, this being would probably infer that no changes of structure were
taking place, or had taken place; and that from the outset each man and
woman had possessed all the characters then visible--had been originally
formed with them. The application is obvious. A human life is ephemeral
compared with the life of a species; and even the period over which the
records of all human lives extend, is ephemeral compared with the life of a
species. There is thus a parallel contrast between the immensely-long
series of changes which have occurred during the life of a species, and
that small portion of the series open to our view. And there is no reason
to suppose that the first conclusion drawn by mankind from this small part
of the series visible to them, is any nearer the truth than would be the
conclusion of the supposed ephemeral being respecting men and women.
This analogy, suggesting as it does how the hypothesis of special creations
is merely a formula for our ignorance, raises the question--What reason
have we to assume special creations of species but not of individuals;
unless it be that in the case of individuals we directly know the process
to be otherwise, but in the case of species do not directly know it to be
otherwise? Have we any ground for concluding that species were specially
created, except the ground that we have no immediate knowledge of their
origin? And does our ignorance of the manner in which they arose warrant us
in asserting that they arose by special creation?
Another question is suggested by this analogy. Those who, in the absence of
immediate evidence of the way in which species arose, assert that they
arose not in a natural way allied to that in which individuals arise, but
in a supernatural way, think that by this supposition they honour the
Unknown Cause of things; and they oppose any antagonist doctrine as
amounting to an exclusion of divine power from the world. But if divine
power is demonstrated by the separate creation of each species, would it
not have been still better demonstrated by the separate creation of each
individual? Why should there exist this process of natural genesis? Why
should not omnipotence have been proved by the supernatural production of
plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour? Is it
replied that the Creator was able to make individuals arise from one
another in a natural succession, but not to make species thus arise? This
is to assign a limit to power instead of magnifying it. Either it was
possible or not possible to create species and individuals after the same
general method. To say that it was not possible is suicidal in those who
use this argument; and if it was possible, it is required to say what end
is served by the special creation of species which would not have been
better served by the special creation of individuals. Again, what is to be
thought of the fact that the immense majority of these supposed special
creations took place before mankind existed? Those who think that divine
power is demonstrated by special creations, have to answer the question--to
whom demonstrated? Tacitly or avowedly, they regard the demonstrations as
being for the benefit of mankind. But if so, to what purpose were the
millions of these demonstrations which took place on the Earth when there
were no intelligent beings to contemplate them? Did the Unknowable thus
demonstrate his power to himself? Few will have the hardihood to say that
any such demonstration was needful. There is no choice but to regard them,
either as superfluous exercises of power, which is a derogatory
supposition, or as exercises of power that were necessary because species
could not be otherwise produced, which is also a derogatory supposition.
§ 113a. Other implications concerning the divine character must be
recognized by those who contend that each species arose by divine fiat. It
is hardly supposable that Infinite Power is exercised in trivial actions
effecting trivial changes. Yet the organic world in its hundreds of
thousands of species shows in each sub-division multitudinous forms which,
though unlike enough to be classed as specifically distinct, diverge from
one another only in small details which have no significance in relation to
the life led. Sometimes the number of specific distinctions is so great
that did they result from human agency we should call them whimsical.
For example, in Lake Baikal are found 115 species of an amphipod,
_Gammarus_; and the multiplicity becomes startling on learning that this
number exceeds the number of all other species of the genus: various as are
the conditions to which, throughout the rest of the world, the genus is
subject. Still stranger seems the superfluous exercise of power on
examining the carpet of living forms at the bottom of the ocean. Not
dwelling on the immense variety of creatures unlike in type which live
miles below the surface in absolute darkness, it will suffice to instance
the _Polyzoa_ alone: low types of animals so small that a thousand of them
would not cover a square inch, and on which, nevertheless, there has been,
according to the view we are considering, an exercise of creative skill
such that by small variations of structure more than 350 species have been
produced!
Kindred illustrations are furnished by the fauna of caverns. Are we to
suppose that numerous blind creatures--crustaceans, myriapods, spiders,
insects, fishes--were specially made sightless to fit them for the Mammoth
Cave? Or what shall we say of the _Proteus_, a low amphibian with
rudimentary eyes, which inhabits certain caves in Carniola, Carinthia and
Dalmatia and is not found elsewhere. Must we conclude that God went out of
his way to devise an animal for these places?
More puzzling still is a problem presented to the special-creationist by a
batrachian inhabiting Central Australia. In a region once peopled by
numerous animals but now made unfit by continuous droughts, there exists a
frog which, when the pools are drying up, fills itself with water and
burrowing in the mud hibernates until the next rains; which may come in a
year or may be delayed for two years. What is to be thought of this
creature? Were its structure and the accompanying instinct divinely planned
to fit it to this particular habitat?
Many such questions might be asked which, if answered as the current theory
necessitates, imply a divine nature hardly like that otherwise assumed.
§ 114. Those who espouse the aboriginal hypothesis entangle themselves in
yet other theological difficulties. This assumption that each kind of
organism was specially designed, carries with it the implication that the
designer intended everything which results from the design. There is no
escape from the admission that if organisms were severally constructed with
a view to their respective ends, then the character of the constructor is
indicated both by the ends themselves, and the perfection or imperfection
with which the organisms are fitted to them. Observe the consequences.
Without dwelling on the question recently raised, why during untold
millions of years there existed on the Earth no beings endowed with
capacities for wide thought and high feeling, we may content ourselves with
asking why, at present, the Earth is largely peopled by creatures which
inflict on one another so much suffering? Omitting the human race, whose
defects and miseries the current theology professes to account for, and
limiting ourselves to the lower creation, what must we think of the
countless different pain-inflicting appliances and instincts with which
animals are endowed? Not only now, and not only ever since men have lived,
has the Earth been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures; but
palæontology shows us that from the earliest eras geologically recorded,
there has been going on this universal carnage. Fossil structures, in
common with the structures of existing animals, show us elaborate weapons
for destroying other animals. We have unmistakable proof that throughout
all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the
strong. How is this to be explained? How happens it that animals were so
designed as to render this bloodshed necessary? How happens it that in
almost every species the number of individuals annually born is such that
the majority die by starvation or by violence before arriving at maturity?
Whoever contends that each kind of animal was specially designed, must
assert either that there was a deliberate intention on the part of the
Creator to produce these results, or that there was an inability to prevent
them. Which alternative does he prefer?--to cast an imputation on the
divine character or to assert a limitation of the divine power? It is
useless for him to plead that the destruction of the less powerful by the
more powerful, is a means of preventing the miseries of decrepitude and
incapacity, and therefore works beneficently. For even were the chief
mortality among the aged instead of among the young, there would still
arise the unanswerable question--why were not animals constructed in such
ways as to avoid these evils? why were not their rates of multiplication,
their degrees of intelligence, and their propensities, so adjusted that
these sufferings might be escaped? And if decline of vigour was a necessary
accompaniment of age, why was it not provided that the organic actions
should end in sudden death, whenever they fell below the level required for
pleasurable existence? Will any one who contends that organisms were
specially designed, assert that they could not have been so designed as to
prevent suffering? And if he admits that they could have been made so as to
prevent suffering, will he assert that the Creator preferred making them in
such ways as to inflict suffering?
Even as thus presented the difficulty is sufficiently great; but it appears
immensely greater when we examine the facts more closely. So long as we
contemplate only the preying of the superior on the inferior, some good
appears to be extracted from the evil--a certain amount of life of a higher
order, is supported by sacrificing a great deal of life of a lower order.
So long, too, as we leave out all mortality but that which, by carrying off
the least perfect members of each species, leaves the most perfect members
to survive and multiply; we see some compensating benefit reached through
the suffering inflicted. But what shall we say on finding innumerable cases
in which the suffering inflicted brings no compensating benefit? What shall
we say when we see the inferior destroying the superior? What shall we say
on finding elaborate appliances for furthering the multiplication of
organisms incapable of feeling, at the expense of misery to organisms
capable of happiness?
Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the species are parasites.
"The number of these parasites," says Prof. Owen, "may be conceived when it
is stated that almost every known animal has its peculiar species, and
generally more than one, sometimes as many as, or even more kinds than,
infest the human body." This parasitism begins among the most minute
creatures and pervades the entire animal kingdom from the lowest to the
highest. Even _Protozoa_, made visible to us only by the microscope, are
infested, as is _Paramoecium_ by broods of _Sphærophrya_; while in large
and complex animals parasites are everywhere present in great variety. More
than this is true. There are parasites upon parasites--an arrangement such
that those which are torturing the creatures they inhabit are themselves
tortured by indwelling creatures still smaller: looking like an ingenious
accumulation of pains upon pains.
But passing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dignity,
let us limit ourselves to the case of Man. The _Bothriocephalus latus_ and
the _Tænia solium_, are two kinds of tape-worm, which flourish in the human
intestines; producing great constitutional disturbances, sometimes ending
in insanity; and from the germs of the _Tænia_, when carried into other
parts of the body, arise certain partially-developed forms known as
_Cysticerci_, _Echinococci_, and _Coenuri_, which cause disorganization
more or less extensive in the brain, the lungs, the liver, the heart, the
eye, &c., often ending fatally after long-continued suffering. Five other
parasites, belonging to a different class, are found in the viscera of
man--the _Trichocephalus_, the _Oxyuris_, the _Strongylus_ (two species),
the _Ancylostomum_ and the _Ascaris_; which, beyond that defect of
nutrition which they necessarily cause, sometimes induce certain
irritations that lead to complete demoralization. Of another class of
_entozoa_, belonging to the subdivision _Trematoda_, there are five kinds
found in different organs of the human body--the liver and gall-duct, the
portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. Then we have the
_Trichina spiralis_, which passes through one phase of its existence
imbedded in the muscles and through another phase of its existence in the
intestine; and which, by the induced disease _Trichinosis_, has lately
committed such ravages in Germany as to cause a panic. To these we must add
the Guinea-worm, which in some part of Africa and India makes men miserable
by burrowing in their legs; and the more terrible African parasite the
_Bilharzia_, which affects 30 per cent. of the natives on the east coast
with bleeding of the bladder. From _entozoa_, let us pass to _epizoa_.
There are two kinds of _Acari_, one of them inhabiting the follicles of the
skin and the other producing the itch. There are creatures that bury
themselves beneath the skin and lay their eggs there; and there are three
species of lice which infest the surface of the body. Nor is this all.
Besides animal parasites there are sundry vegetal parasites, which grow and
multiply at our cost. The _Sarcina ventriculi_ inhabits the stomach, and
produces gastric disturbance. The _Leptothrix buccalis_ is extremely
general in the mouth, and may have something to do with the decay of teeth.
And besides these there are microscopic fungi which produce ringworm,
porrigo, pityriasis, thrush, &c. Thus the human body is the habitat of
parasites, internal and external, animal and vegetal, numbering, if all are
set down, between two and three dozen species; sundry of which are peculiar
to Man, and many of which produce great suffering and not unfrequently
death. What interpretation is to be put on these facts by those who espouse
the hypothesis of special creations? According to this hypothesis, all
these parasites were designed for their respective modes of life. They were
endowed with constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing nutriment from
the human body; they were furnished with appliances, often of a formidable
kind, enabling them to root themselves in and upon the human body; and they
were made prolific in an almost incredible degree, that their germs might
have a sufficient number of chances of finding their way into the human
body. In short, elaborate contrivances were combined to insure the
continuance of their respective races; and to make it impossible for the
successive generations of men to avoid being preyed on by them. What shall
we say to this arrangement? Shall we say that "the head and crown of
things," was provided as a habitat for these parasites? Shall we say that
these degraded creatures, incapable of thought or enjoyment, were created
that they might cause human misery? One or other of these alternatives must
be chosen by those who contend that every kind of organism was separately
devised by the Creator. Which do they prefer? With the conception of two
antagonist powers, which severally work good and evil in the world, the
facts are congruous enough. But with the conception of a supreme
beneficence, this gratuitous infliction of pain is absolutely incompatible.
§ 115. See then the results of our examination. The belief in special
creations of organisms arose among men during the era of profoundest
darkness; and it belongs to a family of beliefs which have nearly all died
out as enlightenment has increased. It is without a solitary established
fact on which to stand; and when the attempt is made to put it into
definite shape in the mind, it turns out to be only a pseud-idea. This
mere verbal hypothesis, which men idly accept as a real or thinkable
hypothesis, is of the same nature as would be one, based on a day's
observation of human life, that each man and woman was specially
created--an hypothesis not suggested by evidence but by lack of
evidence--an hypothesis which formulates ignorance into a semblance of
knowledge. Further, we see that this hypothesis, failing to satisfy men's
intellectual need of an interpretation, fails also to satisfy their moral
sentiment. It is quite inconsistent with those conceptions of the divine
nature which they profess to entertain. If infinite power was to be
demonstrated, then, either by the special creation of every individual, or
by the production of species by some method of natural genesis, it would be
better demonstrated than by the use of two methods, as assumed by the
hypothesis. And if infinite goodness was to be demonstrated, then, not only
do the provisions of organic structure, if they are specially devised, fail
to demonstrate it, but there is an enormous mass of them which imply
malevolence rather than benevolence.
Thus the hypothesis of special creations turns out to be worthless by its
derivation; worthless in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless as absolutely
without evidence; worthless as not supplying an intellectual need;
worthless as not satisfying a moral want. We must therefore consider it as
counting for nothing, in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the
origin of organic beings.