THE HISTORY OF CREATION ACCORDING TO CUVIER AND AGASSIZ.
General Theoretical Meaning of the Idea of
Species.—Distinction between the Theoretical and
Practical Definition of the Idea of Species.—Cuvier’s
Definition of Species.—Merits of Cuvier as the Founder
of Comparative Anatomy.—Distinction of the Four
Principal Forms (types or branches) of the Animal
Kingdom, by Cuvier and Bär.—Cuvier’s Services to
Palæontology.—His Hypothesis of the Revolutions of our
Globe, and the Epochs of Creation separated by
them.—Unknown Supernatural Causes of the Revolutions,
and the subsequent New Creations.—Agassiz’s Teleological
System of Nature.—His Conception of the Plan of
Creation, and its six Categories (groups in
classification).—Agassiz’s Views of the Creation of
Species.—Rude Conception of the Creator as a man-like
being in Agassiz’s Hypothesis of Creation.—Its internal
Inconsistency and Contradictions with the important
Palæontological Laws discovered by Agassiz.
The real matter of dissension in the contest carried on by naturalists
as to the origin of organisms, their creation and development, lies in
the conceptions which are entertained about the _nature of species_.
Naturalists either agree with Linnæus, and look upon the different
species as distinct forms of creation, independent of one another, or
they assume with Darwin their blood-relationship. If we share Linnæus’
view (which was discussed in our last chapter), that the different
organic species came into existence independently—that they have no
blood-relationship—we are forced to admit that they were created
independently, and we must either suppose that every single organic
individual was a special act of creation (to which surely no naturalist
will agree), or we must derive all individuals of every species from a
single individual, or from a single pair, which did not arise in a
natural manner, but was called into being by command of a Creator. In so
doing, however, we turn aside from the safe domain of a rational
knowledge of nature, and take refuge in the mythological belief in
miracles.
If, on the other hand, with Darwin, we refer the similarity of form of
the different species to real blood-relationship, we must consider all
the different species of animals and plants as the altered descendants
of one or a few most simple original forms. Viewed in this way, the
Natural System of organisms (that is, their tree-like and branching
arrangement and division into classes, orders, families, genera, and
species) acquires the significance of a real genealogical tree, whose
root is formed by those original archaic forms which have long since
disappeared. But a truly natural and consistent view of organisms can
assume no supernatural act of creation for even those simplest original
forms, but only a coming into existence by _spontaneous generation_[2]
(archigony, or generatio spontanea). From Darwin’s view of the nature of
species, we arrive therefore at a _natural theory of development_; but
from Linnæus’ conception of the idea of species, we must assume a
_supernatural dogma of creation_.
Most naturalists after Linnæus, whose great services in
systematic and descriptive natural history won for him such high
authority, followed in his footsteps, and without further inquiry into
the origin of organization, they assumed, in the sense of Linnæus, an
independent creation of individual species, in conformity with the
Mosaic account of creation. The foundation of their conception was based
upon Linnæus’ words: “There are as many different species as there were
different forms created in the beginning by the Infinite Being.” We must
here remark at once, without going further into the definition of
species, that all zoologists and botanists in their classificatory
systems, in the practical distinction and designation of species of
animals and plants, never troubled, or even could trouble, themselves in
the slightest degree about this assumed creation of the parent forms. In
reference to this, one of our first zoologists, the ingenious Fritz
Müller, makes the following striking observation: “Just as in Christian
countries there is a catechism of morals, which every one knows by
heart, but which no one considers it his duty to follow, or expects to
see followed by others,—so zoology also has its dogmas, which are just
as generally professed as they are denied in practice.” (Für Darwin, p.
71.)(16)
Linnæus’ venerated dogma of species is just such an irrational dogma,
and for that very reason it is powerful. Although most naturalists
blindly submitted to it, yet they were, of course, never in a position
to demonstrate the descent of individuals belonging to one species from
the common, originally created, primitive form. Zoologists and
botanists, in their systems of nomenclature, confined themselves
entirely to the similarity of forms, in order to distinguish and name
the different species. They placed in one species all organic
individuals which were very similar, or almost identical in form, and
which could only be distinguished from one another by very unimportant
differences. On the other hand, they considered as different species
those individuals which presented more essential or more striking
differences in the formation of their bodies. But of course this opened
the flood-gates to the most arbitrary proceedings in the systematic
distinctions of species. For as all the individuals of one species are
never completely alike in all their parts, but as every species varies
more or less, no one could point out which degree of variation
constituted a really “good species,” or which degree indicated a “mere
variety.”
This dogmatic conception of the idea of species, and the arbitrary
proceedings connected with it, necessarily led to the most perplexing
contradictions, and to the most untenable suppositions. This is clearly
demonstrable in the case of the celebrated Cuvier (born in 1769), who
next to Linnæus has exercised the greatest influence on the study of
zoology. In his conception and definition of the idea of species, he
agreed on the whole with Linnæus, and shared also his belief in an
independent creation of individual species. Cuvier considered their
immutability of such importance that he was led to the foolish
assertion—“The immutability of species is a necessary condition of the
existence of scientific natural history.” As Linnæus’ definition of
species did not satisfy him, he made an attempt to give a more exact
and, for systematic practice, a more useful definition, in the following
words: “All those individual animals and plants belong to one species
which can be proved to be either descended from one another, or from
common ancestors, or which are as similar to these as the latter are
among themselves.”
In dealing with this matter, Cuvier reasoned in the following
manner:—“In those organic individuals, of which we know that they are
descended from one and the same common form of ancestors—in which,
therefore, their common ancestry is empirically proved—there can be no
doubt that they belong to one species, whether they differ much or
little from one another, or whether they are almost alike or very
unlike. Moreover, all those individuals also belong to this species
which differ no more from the latter (those proved to be derived from a
common stock) than these differ from one another.” In a closer
examination of this definition of species given by Cuvier, it becomes at
once evident that it is neither theoretically satisfactory nor
practically applicable. Cuvier, with this definition, began to move in
the same circle in which almost all subsequent definitions of species
have moved, through the assumption of their immutability.
Considering the extraordinary authority which George Cuvier has gained
in the science of organic nature, and in consequence of the almost
unlimited supremacy which his views exercised in zoology, during the
first half of our century, it seems appropriate here to examine his
influence a little more closely. This is all the more necessary as we
have to combat, in Cuvier, the most formidable opponent to the Theory of
Descent and the monistic conception of nature.
One of the many and great merits of Cuvier is that he stands forth as
the founder of Comparative Anatomy. While Linnæus established the
distinction of species, genera, orders, and classes mostly upon external
characters, and upon separate and easily discoverable signs in the
number, size, place, and form of individual organic parts of the body,
Cuvier penetrated much more deeply into the essence of organization. He
demonstrated great and wide differences in the inner structure of
animals, as the real foundation of a scientific knowledge and
classification of them. He distinguished natural families in the classes
of animals, and established his natural system of the animal kingdom on
their comparative anatomy.
The progress from Linnæus’ artificial system to Cuvier’s natural system
was exceedingly important. Linnæus had arranged all animals in a single
series, which he divided into six classes, two classes of Invertebrate,
and four classes of Vertebrate animals. He distinguished these
artificially, according to the nature of their blood and heart. Cuvier,
on the other hand, showed that in the animal kingdom there were four
great natural divisions to be distinguished, which he termed Principal
Forms, or General Plans, or Branches of the animal kingdom
(Embranchments), namely—1. The Vertebrate animals (Vertebrata); 2. The
Articulate animals (Articulata); 3. The Molluscous animals (Mollusca);
and 4. The Radiate animals (Radiata). He further demonstrated that in
each of these four branches a peculiar plan of structure or type was
discernible, distinguishing each branch from the three others. In the
Vertebrate animals it is distinctly expressed by the form of the
skeleton, or bony framework, as also by the structure and position of
the dorsal nerve-chord, apart from many other peculiarities. The
Articulate animals are characterized by their ventral nerve-chord and
their dorsal heart. In Molluscs the sack-shaped and non-articulate body
is the distinguishing feature. The Radiate animals, finally, differ
from the three other principal forms by their body being the combination
of four or more main sections united in the form of radii (antimera).
The distinction of these four principal forms of animals, which has
become extremely productive in the development of zoology, is commonly
ascribed entirely to Cuvier. However, the same thought was expressed
almost simultaneously, and independently of Cuvier, by Bär, one of the
greatest naturalists, and still living, who did the most eminent service
in the study of animal development. Bär showed that in the development
of animals, also, four different main forms (or types) must be
distinguished.(20) These correspond with the four plans of structure in
animals, which Cuvier distinguished on the ground of comparative
anatomy. Thus, for example, the individual development of all Vertebrate
animals agrees, from the commencement, so much in its fundamental
features that the germs or embryos of different Vertebrate animals (for
example, of reptiles, birds, and mammals) in their earlier stages cannot
be distinguished at all. It is only at a late stage of development that
there gradually appear the more marked differences of form which
separate those different classes and orders from one another. The plan
of structure, which shows itself in the individual development of
Articulate animals (insects, spiders, crabs), is from the beginning
essentially the same in all Articulate animals, but different from that
of all Vertebrate animals. The same holds good, with certain
limitations, in Molluscous and Radiated animals.
Neither Bär, who arrived at the distinction of the four animal types or
principal forms through the history of the individual development
(Embryology), nor Cuvier, who arrived at the same conclusion by means
of comparative anatomy, recognized the true cause of this difference.
This is disclosed to us by the Theory of Descent. The wonderful and
astonishing similarity in the inner organization and in the anatomical
relations of structure, and the still more remarkable agreement in the
embryonic development of all animals belonging to one and the same type
(for example, to the branch of the Vertebrate animals), is explained in
the simplest manner by the supposition of their common descent from a
single primary original form. If this view is not accepted, then the
complete agreement of the most different Vertebrate animals, in their
inner structure and their manner of development, remains perfectly
inexplicable. In fact it can only be explained by the law of
_inheritance_.
Next to the comparative anatomy of animals and the systematic zoology
founded anew by it, it was specially to the science of petrifactions, or
Palæontology, that Cuvier rendered great service. We must draw special
attention to this, because these very palæontological views, and the
geological ideas connected with them, were held almost universally in
the highest esteem during the first half of the present century, and
caused the greatest hindrance to the working out of a truly natural
history of creation.
Petrifactions, the scientific study of which Cuvier promoted at the
beginning of our century in a most extensive manner, and established
quite anew for the Vertebrate animals, play one of the most important
parts in the “non-miraculous history of creation.” For these remains and
impressions of extinct animals and plants, preserved to us in a
petrified condition, are the true “monuments of the creation,” the
infallible and indisputable records which fix the correct history of
organisms upon an irrefragable foundation. All petrified or fossil
remains and impressions tell us of the forms and structure of such
animals and plants as are either the progenitors and ancestors of the
present living organisms, or they are the representatives of extinct
collateral lines, which, together with the present living organisms,
branched off from a common stem.
These inestimable records of the history of creation throughout a long
period played a subordinate part in science. Their true nature was
indeed correctly understood, even more than five hundred years before
Christ, by the great Greek philosopher, Xenophanes of Colophon, the same
who founded the so-called Eleatic philosophy, and who was the first to
demonstrate with convincing precision that all conceptions of personal
gods result in more or less rude anthropomorphism.
Xenophanes for the first time, asserted that the fossil impressions of
animals and plants were real remains of formerly living creatures, and
that the mountains in whose rocks they were found must at an earlier
date have stood under water. But although other great philosophers of
antiquity, and among them Aristotle, also possessed this true knowledge,
yet throughout the illiterate Middle Ages, and even with some
naturalists of the last century, the idea prevailed that petrifactions
were so-called freaks of nature (lusus naturæ), or products of an
unknown formative power or instinct of nature (nisus formativus, vis
plastica). Respecting the nature of this mysterious and mystic creative
power, the strangest ideas were formed. Some believed that this
constructive power—the same to which they also ascribed the coming
into existence of the present species of animals and plants—had made
numerous attempts to create organisms of different forms, but that these
attempts had only partially succeeded, had often failed, and that
petrifactions were nothing more than such unsuccessful attempts.
According to others, petrifactions originated from the influence of the
stars upon the interior of the earth.
Others, again, had the still cruder notion that the Creator had first
made models (out of mineral substances—for example, of gypsum or clay)
of those forms of animals and plants which he afterwards executed in
organic substances, and into which he breathed his living breath;
petrifactions were accordingly such rude inorganic models. Even as late
as the last century these crude ideas prevailed, and it was assumed, for
example, that there existed a special “seminal air,” which was said to
penetrate into the earth with the water, and by fructifying the stones
formed petrifactions or “stony flesh” (caro fossilis).
It took a very long time before the simple and natural view was
accepted, namely, that petrifactions are in reality nothing but what
they appear to simple observation—the indestructible remains of extinct
organisms. It is true the celebrated painter, Leonardo da Vinci, in the
15th century, ventured to assert that the mud which was constantly
deposited by water was the cause of petrifactions, as it surrounded the
indestructible shells of mussels and snails which lay at the bottom of
the waters, and gradually turned them into solid stone. The same idea
was maintained in the 16th century by a Parisian potter, Palissy by
name, who became celebrated on account of his invention of china.
However, the so-called “professional men” were very far from paying any
regard to these correct assertions of a simple and healthy human
understanding; it was not till the end of the last century that it was
generally accepted, in consequence of the foundation of the Neptunian
geology by Werner.
The foundation of a more strictly scientific palæontology, however,
belongs to the beginning of our century, when Cuvier published his
classic researches on petrified Vertebrate animals, and when his great
opponent, Lamarck, made known his remarkable investigations on fossil
Invertebrate animals, especially on petrified snails and clams. In
Cuvier’s celebrated work “On the Fossil Bones” of Vertebrate
animals—principally of mammals and reptiles—we see that he had already
arrived at the knowledge of some very important and general
palæontological laws, which are of great consequence to the history of
creation. Foremost among them stands the assertion that the extinct
species of animals, whose remains we find petrified in the different
strata of the earth’s crust, lying one above another, differ all the
more strikingly from the still living kindred species of animals the
deeper those strata lie—in other words, the earlier the animals lived
in past ages. In fact, in every perpendicular section of the stratified
crust of the earth we find that the different strata, deposited by the
water in a certain historical succession, are characterized by different
petrifactions, and that these extinct organisms become more like those
of the present day the higher the strata lie; in other words, the more
recent the period in the earth’s history in which they lived, died, and
became encrusted by the deposited and hardened strata of mud.
However important this general observation of Cuvier’s was in one
sense, yet in another it became to him the source of a very serious
error. For as he considered the characteristic petrifactions of each
individual group of strata (which had been deposited during one main
period of the earth’s history) to be entirely different from those of
the strata lying above or below, and as he erroneously believed that one
and the same species of animal was never found in two succeeding groups
of strata, he arrived at the false idea, which was accepted as a law by
most subsequent naturalists, that a series of quite distinct periods of
creation had succeeded one another. Each period was supposed to have had
its special animal and vegetable world, each its peculiar specific Fauna
and Flora.
Cuvier imagined that the whole history of the earth’s crust, since the
time when living creatures had first appeared on the surface, must be
divided into a number of perfectly distinct periods, or divisions of
time, and that the individual periods must have been separated from one
another by peculiar revolutions of an unknown nature (cataclysms, or
catastrophes). Each revolution was followed by the utter annihilation of
the till then existing animals and plants, and after its termination a
completely new creation of organic forms took place. A new world of
animals and plants, absolutely and specifically distinct from those of
the preceding historical periods, was called into existence at once, and
now again peopled the globe for thousands of years, till it again
perished suddenly in the crash of a new revolution.
About the nature and causes of these revolutions, Cuvier expressly said
that no idea could be formed, and that the present active forces in
nature were not sufficient for their explanation. Cuvier points out four
active causes as the natural forces, or mechanical agents, at present
constantly but slowly at work in changing the earth’s surface: first,
_rain_, which washes down the steep mountain slopes and heaps up débris
at their foot; secondly, _flowing waters_, which carry away this débris
and deposit it as mud in stagnant waters; thirdly, the sea, whose
breakers gnaw at the steep _sea_ coasts, and throw up “dunes” on the
flat sea margins; finally and fourthly, _volcanos_, which break through
and heave up the strata of the earth’s hardened crust, and pile up and
scatter about the products of their eruptions. Whilst Cuvier recognizes
the constant slow transformation of the present surface of the earth by
these four mighty causes, he asserts at the same time that they would
not have sufficed to effect the revolutions of the remote ages, and that
the anatomical structure of the earth’s surface cannot be explained by
the necessary action of those mechanical agents: the great and
marvellous revolutions of the whole earth’s surface must, according to
him, have been rather the effects of very peculiar causes, completely
unknown to us; the usual thread of development was broken by them, and
the course of nature altered.
These views Cuvier explained in a special work “On the Revolutions of
the Earth’s Surface, and the Changes which they have wrought in the
Animal World.” They were maintained, and generally accepted for a long
time, and became the greatest obstacle to the development of a natural
history of the creation. For if such all-destructive revolutions had
actually occurred, of course a continuity of the development of species,
a connecting thread in the organic history of the earth, could not be
admitted at all, and we should be obliged to have recourse to the
action of supernatural forces; that is, to the interference of miracles
in the natural course of things. It is only through miracles that these
revolutions of the earth could have been brought about, and it is only
through miracles that, after their cessation and at the commencement of
each new period, a new animal and vegetable kingdom could have been
created. But science has no room for miracles, for by miracles we
understand an interference of supernatural forces in the natural course
of development of matter.
Just as the great authority which Linnæus gained by his system of
distinguishing and naming organic species led his successors to a
complete ossification, as it were, of the dogmatic idea of species and
to a real abuse of the systematic distinction implied by it, so the
great services which Cuvier had rendered to the knowledge and
distinction of extinct species became the cause of a general adoption of
his theory of revolutions and catastrophes, and of the false views of
creation connected therewith. The consequence of this was that, during
the first half of our century, most zoologists and botanists clung to
the opinion that a series of independent periods in the organic history
of the earth had existed; that each period was distinguished by distinct
and peculiar kinds of animal and vegetable species; that these were
annihilated at the termination of the period by a general revolution;
and that, after the cessation of the latter, a new world of different
species of animals and plants was created.
It is true some independent thinkers, above all the great physical
philosopher, Lamarck, even at an early period, set forth a series of
weighty reasons which refuted Cuvier’s theory of cataclysms, and
pointed to a perfectly continuous and uninterrupted developmental
history of all the organic inhabitants of the earth through all ages.
They maintained that the animal and vegetable species of each period
were derived from those of the preceding period, and were only the
altered descendants of the former. This true conception, however, being
opposed to Cuvier’s great authority, was then unable to make way. Nay,
even after Cuvier’s theory of catastrophes had been completely cast out
from the domain of geology by Lyell’s classic Principles of Geology,
which appeared in 1830, still his idea of the specific distinctness of a
series of organic creations maintained its influence, in many ways, in
the science of Palæontology. (Gen. Morph. ii. 312.)
By a curious coincidence, thirteen years ago, almost at the same time
that Cuvier’s History of Creation received its death-blow by Darwin’s
book, another celebrated naturalist made an attempt to re-establish it,
and to adopt it in the roughest manner, as a part of a
teleologico-theological system of nature. This was the Swiss geologist,
Louis Agassiz, who attained a great reputation by his theory of glaciers
and the ice-period, borrowed from Schimper and Charpentier, and who has
been living in North America for many years. He commenced in 1858 to
publish a work planned on a very large scale, which bears the title of
“Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of North
America.” The first volume of this work, although large and costly,
owing to the patriotism of the Americans, had an unprecedented sale; its
title is, “An Essay on Classification.”(5)
In this essay Agassiz not only discusses the natural series of
organisms, and the different attempts of naturalists at classification,
but also all the general biological phenomena which have reference to
it. The history of the development of organisms, both the embryonal and
the palæontological, comparative anatomy, the general economy of nature,
the geographical and topographical distribution of animals and
plants—in short, almost all the general phenomena of organic nature are
discussed in Agassiz’s Essay on Classification, and are explained in a
sense and from a point of view which is thoroughly opposed to that of
Darwin. While Darwin’s chief merit lies in the fact that he demonstrates
natural causes for the coming into existence of animal and vegetable
species, and thereby establishes the mechanical or monistic view of the
universe as regards this most difficult branch of the history of
creation, Agassiz, on the contrary, strives to exclude every mechanical
hypothesis from the subject, and to put the supernatural interference of
a personal Creator in the place of the natural forces of matter;
consequently, to establish a thoroughly teleological or dualistic view
of the universe. It will not be out of place if I examine a little more
closely Agassiz’s biological views, and especially his ideas of
creation, because no other work of our opponents treats the important
fundamental questions with equal minuteness, and because the utter
untenableness of the dualistic conception of nature becomes very evident
from the failure of this attempt.
The organic _species_, the various conceptions of which we have above
designated as the real centre of dispute in the opposed views of
creation, is looked upon by Agassiz, as by Cuvier and Linnæus, as a form
unchangeable in all its essential characteristics. The species may
indeed change and vary within certain narrow limits; never in essential
qualities, but only in unessential points. No new species could ever
proceed from the changes or varieties of a species. Not one of all
organic species, therefore, is ever derived from another, but each
individual species has been separately created by God. Each individual
species, as Agassiz expresses it, is “an embodied creative thought” of
God.
In direct opposition to the fact established by palæontological
experience, that the duration of the individual organic species is most
unequal, and that many species continue unchanged through several
successive periods of the earth’s history, while others only existed
during a small portion of such a period, Agassiz maintains that one and
the same species never occurs in two different periods, but that each
individual period is characterized by species of animals and plants
which are quite peculiar, and belong to it exclusively. He further
shares Cuvier’s opinion that the whole of these inhabitants were
annihilated by the great and universal revolutions of the earth’s
surface, which divide two successive periods, and that after its
destruction a new and specifically different assemblage of organisms was
created. This new creation Agassiz supposes to have taken place in this
manner: viz., that at each creation all the inhabitants of the earth, in
their full average number of individuals, and in the peculiar relations
corresponding to the economy of nature, were, as a whole, suddenly
placed upon the earth by the Creator. In saying this he puts himself in
opposition to one of the most firmly established and most important laws
of animal and vegetable geography—namely, to the law that each species
has a single original locality of origin, or a so-called “centre of
creation,” from which it has gradually spread over the rest of the
earth. Instead of this, Agassiz assumes each species to have been
created at several points of the earth’s surface, and that in each case
a large number of individuals was created.
The “natural system” of organisms, the different groups and categories
of which arranged above one another—namely, the branches, classes,
orders, families, genera, and species—we consider, in accordance with
the Theory of Descent, as different branches and twigs of the organic
family-tree, is, according to Agassiz, the direct expression of the
divine plan of creation, and the naturalist, while investigating the
natural system, repeats the creative thoughts of God. In this Agassiz
finds the strongest proof that man is the image and child of God. The
different stages of groups or categories of the natural system
correspond with the different stages of development which the divine
plan of creation had attained. The Creator, in projecting and carrying
out this plan, starting from the most general ideas of creation, plunged
more and more into specialities. For instance, when creating the animal
kingdom, God had in the first place four totally distinct ideas of
animal bodies, which he embodied in the different structures of the four
great, principal forms, types, or branches of the animal kingdom;
namely, vertebrate animals, articulate animals, molluscous animals, and
radiate animals. The Creator then, having reflected in what manner he
might vary these four different plans of structure, next created within
each of the four principal forms, several different classes—for
example, in the vertebrate animal form, the classes of mammals, birds,
reptiles, amphibious animals, and fishes. Then God further reflected
upon the individual classes, and by various modifications in the
structure of each class, he produced the individual orders. By further
variation in the order, he created natural families. As the Creator
further varied the peculiarities of structure of individual parts in
each family, genera arose. In further meditation on his plan of
creation, he entered so much into detail that individual species came
into existence, which, consequently, are embodied creative thoughts of
the most special kind. It is only to be regretted that the Creator
expressed these most special and most deeply considered “creative
thoughts” in so very indistinct and loose a manner, and that he
imprinted so vague a stamp upon them, and permitted them to vary so
freely that not one naturalist is able to distinguish the “good” from
the “bad species,” or a genuine species from varieties, races, etc.
(Gen. Morph. ii. 373.)
We see, then, according to Agassiz’s conception, that the Creator, in
producing organic forms, goes to work exactly as a human architect, who
has taken upon himself the task of devising and producing as many
different buildings as possible, for the most manifold purposes, in the
most different styles, in various degrees of simplicity, splendour,
greatness, and perfection. This architect would perhaps at first choose
four different styles for all these buildings, say the Gothic,
Byzantine, Chinese, and Rococo styles. In each of these styles he would
build a number of churches, palaces, garrisons, prisons, and
dwelling-houses. Each of these different buildings he would execute in
ruder and more perfect, in greater and smaller, in simpler and grander
fashion, etc. However, the human architect would perhaps, in this
respect, be better off than the divine Creator, as he would have perfect
liberty in the number of graduated subordinate groups. The Creator,
however, according to Agassiz, can only move within six groups or
categories: the species, genus, family, order, class, and type. More
than these six categories do not exist for him.
When we read Agassiz’s book on classification, and see how he carries
out and establishes these strange ideas, we can scarcely understand how,
with all the appearance of scientific earnestness, he can persevere in
his idea of the divine Creator as a man-like being (anthropomorphism),
for by his explanation of details he produces a picture of the most
absurd nonsense. In the whole series of these suppositions the Creator
is nothing but an all-mighty man, who, plagued with _ennui_, amuses
himself with planning and constructing most varied toys in the shape of
organic species. After having diverted himself with these for thousands
of years, they become tiresome to him, he destroys them by a general
revolution of the earth’s surface, and thus throws the whole of the
useless toys in heaps together; then, in order to while away his time
with something new and better, he calls a new and more perfect animal
and vegetable world into existence. But in order not to have the trouble
of beginning the work of creation over again, he keeps, in the main, to
his original plan of creation, and creates merely new species, or at
most only new genera, and much more rarely new families, new orders, or
classes. He never succeeds in producing a new style or type, and always
keeps strictly within the six categories or graduated groups.
When, according to Agassiz, the Creator has thus amused himself for
thousands of millions of years with constructing and destroying a series
of different creations, at last (but very late) he is struck with the
happy thought of creating something like himself, and so makes man in
his own image. The end of all the history of creation is thus arrived at
and the series of revolutions of the earth is closed. Man, the child and
image of God, gives him so much to do, causes him so much pleasure and
trouble, that he is wearied no longer, and therefore need not undertake
a new creation. It is clear that if, according to Agassiz, we once
assign to the Creator entirely human attributes and qualities, and
regard his work of creation as entirely analogous to human creative
activity, we are necessarily obliged to admit such utterly absurd
inferences as those just stated.
The many intrinsic contradictions and perversities in Agassiz’s view of
creation—a view which necessarily led him to the most decided
opposition to the Theory of Descent—must excite our astonishment all
the more because, in his earlier scientific works, he had in many
respects actually paved the way for Darwin, especially by his researches
in Palæontology. Among the numerous investigations which created general
interest in the then young science of Palæontology, those of Agassiz,
especially his celebrated work on “Fossil Fish,” rank next in importance
to Cuvier’s work, which formed the foundation of the science. The
petrified fish, with which Agassiz has made us acquainted, have not only
an extremely great importance for the understanding of all groups of
Vertebrate animals, and their historical development, but we have
arrived through them at a sure knowledge of important general laws of
development, some of which were first discovered by Agassiz. He it was
who drew special attention to the remarkable parallelism between the
embryonal and the palæontological development—between ontogeny and
phylogeny, which I have already (p. 10) claimed as one of the strongest
pillars of the Theory of Descent. No one before had so distinctly stated
as Agassiz did, that, of the Vertebrate animals, fishes alone existed,
at first, that amphibious animals came later, and that birds and mammals
appeared only at a much later period, further, that among mammals, as
among fishes, imperfect and lower orders had appeared first, but more
perfect and higher orders at a later period. Agassiz, therefore, showed
that the palæontological development of the whole Vertebrate group was
not only parallel with the embryonic, but also with the systematic
development, that is, with the graduated series which we see everywhere
in the system, ascending from the lower to the higher classes, orders,
etc.
In the earth’s history lower forms appeared first, the higher forms
later. This important fact, as well as the agreement of the embryonic
and palæontological development, is explained quite simply and naturally
by the Doctrine of Descent, and without it is perfectly inexplicable.
This cause holds good also in the great law of _progressive
development_, that is, of the historical progress of organization, which
is traceable, broadly and as a whole, in the historical succession of
all organisms, as well as in the special perfecting of individual parts
of animal bodies. Thus, for example, the skeleton of Vertebrate animals
acquired at first slowly, and by degrees, that high degree of perfection
which it now possesses in man and the other higher Vertebrate animals.
This progress, acknowledged in point of fact by Agassiz, necessarily
follows from Darwin’s Doctrine of Descent, which demonstrates its active
causes. If this doctrine is correct, the perfecting and diversification
of animal and vegetable species must of necessity have gradually
increased in the course of the organic history of the earth, and could
only attain its highest perfection in most recent times.
The above-mentioned laws of development, together with some other
general ones, which have been expressly admitted and justly emphasized
by Agassiz, and some of which have first been set forth by him, are, as
we shall see later, only explicable by the Theory of Descent, and
without it remain perfectly incomprehensible. The conjoint action of
Inheritance and Adaptation, as explained by Darwin, can alone be their
true cause. But they all stand in sharp and irreconcilable opposition to
the hypothesis of creation maintained by Agassiz, as well as to the idea
of a personal Creator who acts for a definite purpose. If we seriously
wish to explain those remarkable phenomena and their inter-connection by
Agassiz’s theory, then we are necessarily driven to the curious
supposition that the Creator himself has developed, together with the
organic nature which he created and modelled. We can, in that case, no
longer rid ourselves of the idea that the Creator himself, like a human
being, designed, improved, and finally, with many alterations, carried
out his plans. “Man grows as higher grow his aims,” and the same
supposition, so unworthy of a God, must be applied to him. Although,
from the reverence with which, in every page, Agassiz speaks of the
Creator, it might appear that, on his theory, we attain to the sublimest
conception of the divine activity in nature, yet the contrary is in
truth the case. The divine Creator is degraded to the level of an
idealized man, of an organism progressing in development!
Considering the wide popularity and great authority which Agassiz’s work
has gained, and which is perhaps justified on account of earlier
scientific services rendered by the author, I have thought it my duty
here to show the utter untenableness of his general conceptions. So far
as this work pretends to be a scientific history of creation, it is
undoubtedly a complete failure. But still it has great value, being the
only detailed attempt, adorned with scientific arguments, which an
eminent naturalist of our day has made to found a teleological or
dualistic history of creation. The utter impossibility of such a history
has thus been made obvious to every one. No opponent of Agassiz could
have refuted the dualistic conception of organic nature and its origin
more strikingly than he himself has done by the intrinsic contradictions
which present themselves everywhere in his theory.
The opponents of the monistic or mechanical conception of the world have
welcomed Agassiz’s work with delight, and find in it a perfect proof of
the direct creative action of a personal God. But they overlook the fact
that this personal Creator is only an idealized organism, endowed with
human attributes. This low dualistic conception of God corresponds with
a low animal stage of development of the human organism. The more
developed man of the present day is capable of, and justified in,
conceiving that infinitely nobler and sublimer idea of God which alone
is compatible with the monistic conception of the universe, and which
recognizes God’s spirit and power in all phenomena without exception.
This monistic idea of God, which belongs to the future, has already been
expressed by Giordano Bruno in the following words:—“A spirit exists in
all things, and no body is so small but contains a part of the divine
substance within itself, by which it is animated.” It is of this noble
idea of God that Goethe says:—“Certainly there does not exist a more
beautiful worship of God than that which needs no image, but which
arises in our heart from converse with Nature.” By it we arrive at the
sublime idea of the Unity of God and Nature.