the sake of completeness, and by way of transition to the final
consideration of possible objections—that Mr. Huxley would be very much
assisted in his identification of differences, were but the theories of
the molecularists, on the one hand, and of Mr. Darwin, on the other,
once for all established. The three modes of theorizing indicated,
indeed, are not without a tendency to approach one another; and it is
precisely their union that would secure a definitive triumph for the
doctrine of materialism. Mr. Huxley, as we have seen—though what he
desiderates is an auto-plastic living _matter_ that, produced by
ordinary chemical processes, is yet capable of continuing and developing
itself into new and higher forms—still begins with the egg. Now the
theory of the molecularists would, for its part, remove all the
difficulties that, for materialism, are involved in this beginning; it
would place protoplasm undeniably at length on a merely chemical level;
and would fairly enable Mr. Darwin, supplemented by such a life-stuff,
to account by natural means for everything like an idea or thought that
appears in creation. The misfortune is, however, that we must believe
the theory of the molecularists still to await the proof; while the
theory of Mr. Darwin has many difficulties peculiar to itself. This
theory, philosophically, or in ultimate analysis, is an attempt to prove
that design, or the objective idea, especially in the organic world, is
developed _in time_ by natural means. The time which Mr. Darwin demands,
it is true, is an infinite time; and he thus gains the advantage of his
processes being allowed greater _clearness_ for the understanding, in
consequence of the _obscurity_ of the infinite past in which they are
placed, and of which it is difficult in the first instance to deny any
possibility whatever. Still it remains to be asked, Are such processes
credible in any time? What Mr. Darwin has done in aid of his view is,
first, to lay before us a knowledge of facts in natural history of
surprising richness; and, second, to support this knowledge by an
inexhaustible ingenuity of hypothesis in arrangement of appearances.
Now, in both respects, whether for information or even interest, the
value of Mr. Darwin’s contribution will probably always remain
independent of the argument or arguments that might destroy his leading
proposition; and it is with this proposition that we have here alone to
do. As said, we ask only, Is it true that the objective idea, the design
which we see in the organized world, is the result in infinite time of
the necessary adaption of living structures to the peculiarities of the
conditions by which they are surrounded?
Against this theory, then, its own absolute generalization may be viewed
as our first objection. In ultimate abstraction, that is, the only
agency postulated by Mr. Darwin is time—infinite time; and as regards
actually existent beings and actually existent conditions, it is hardly
possible to deny any possibility whatever to infinitude. If told, for
example, that the elephant, if only obliged _infinitely_ to run, might
be converted into the stag, how should we be able to deny? So also, if
the lengthening of the giraffe’s neck were hypothetically attributed to
a succession of dearths in infinite time that only left the leaves of
trees for long-necked animals to live on, we should be similarly
situated as regards denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity
of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a field for the
negation than for the affirmation; and that, on the question of fact,
nothing is capable of being determined. But we can also say more than
that—we can say that any fruitful application even of _infinite time_ to
the _general problem of difference_ in the world is inconceivable. To
explain all from an absolute beginning requires us to commence with
nothing; but to this nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an
entity, a something, a difference added to the original identity: whence
or how came time? Time cannot account for its own self; how is it that
there is such a thing as time? Then no conceivable brooding even of
infinite time could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is
such a thing as space? No possible clasps of time and space, further,
could ever conceivably thicken into matter. How is it there is such a
thing as matter? Lastly, so far, no conceivable brooding, or even
gyrating, of a single matter in time and space could account for the
specification of matter—carbon, gold, iodine, etc.—as we see and know
it. Time, space, matter, and the whole inorganic world, thus remain
impassive to the action even of infinite time; all _these_ differences
remain incapable of being accounted for so.
But suppose no curiosity had ever been felt in this reference, which,
though scientifically indefensible, is quite possible, how about the
transition of the inorganic into the organic? Mr. Huxley tells us that,
for food, the plant needs nothing but its bath of smelling-salts.
Suppose this bath now—a pool of a solution of carbonate of ammonia; can
any action of sun, or air, or electricity, be conceived to develop a
cell—or even so much lump-protoplasm—in this solution? The production of
an initial cell in any such manner will not allow itself to be realized
to thought. Then we have just to think for a moment of the vast
differences into which, for the production of the present organized
world, this cell must be distributed, to shake our heads and say we
cannot well refuse anything to an infinite time, but still we must
pronounce a problem of this reach hopeless.
It is precisely in conditions, however, that Mr. Darwin claims a
solution of this problem. Conditions concern all that relates to air,
heat, light, land, water, and whatever they imply. Our second objection,
consequently, is, that conditions are quite inadequate to account for
present organized differences, from a single cell. Geological time, for
example, falls short, after all, of infinite time; or, in known
geological eras, let us calculate them as liberally as we may, there is
not time enough to account for the presently-existing varieties, from
one, or even several, primordial forms. So to speak, it is not _in_
geological time to account for the transformation of the elephant into
the stag from acceleration, or for that of the stag into the elephant
from retardation, of movement. And we may speak similarly of the growth
of the neck of the giraffe, or even of the elevation of the monkey into
man. Moreover, time apart, conditions have no such power in themselves.
It is impossible to conceive of animal or vegetable effluvia ever
creating the nerve by which they are felt, and so gradually the
Schneiderian membrane, nose, and whole olfactory apparatus. Yet these
effluvia are the conditions of smell, and, _ex hypothesi_, ought to have
created it. Did light, or did the pulsations of the air, ever by any
length of time, indent into the sensitive cell, eyes, and a pair of
eyes—ears, and a pair of ears? Light conceivably might shine for ever
without such a wonderfully complicated result as an eye. Similarly, for
delicacy and marvellous ingenuity of structure, the ear is scarcely
inferior to the eye; and surely it is possible to think of a whole
infinitude of those fitful and fortuitous air-tremblings, which we call
sound, without indentation into anything whatever of such an organ.
A third objection to Mr. Darwin’s theory is, that the play of natural
contingency in regard to the vicissitudes of conditions, has no title to
be named _selection_. Naturalists have long known and spoken of the
“influence of accidental causes;” but Mr. Darwin was the first to apply
the term _selection_ to the action of these, and thus convert accident
into design. The agency to which Mr. Darwin attributes all the changes
which he would signalize in animals is really the fortuitous contingency
of brute nature; and it is altogether fallacious to call such process,
or such non-process, by a term involving foresight and a purpose. We
have here, indeed, only a metaphor wholly misapplied. The German writer
who, many years ago, said “even the _genera_ are wholly a prey to the
changes of the external universal life,” saw precisely what Mr. Darwin
sees, but it never struck him to style contingency selection. Yet, how
dangerous, how infectious, has not this ungrounded metaphor proved! It
has become a _principle_, a _law_, and been transferred by very genuine
men into their own sciences of philology and what not. People will
wonder at all this by-and-by. But to point out the inapplicability of
such a word to the processes of nature referred to by Mr. Darwin, is to
point out also the impossibility of any such contingencies proceeding,
by graduated rise, from stage to stage, into the great symmetrical
organic system—the vast plan—the grand harmonious whole—by which we are
surrounded. This rise, this system, is really the objective idea; but it
is utterly incapable of being accounted for by any such agency as
natural contingency in geological, or infinite, or any time. But it is
this which the word selection tends to conceal.
We may say, lastly, in objection, here, that, in the fact of “reversion”
or “atavism,” Mr. Darwin acknowledges his own failure. We thus see that
the species as species is something independent, and holds its own
_insita vis naturæ_ within itself.
Probably it is not his theory, then, that gives value to Mr. Darwin’s
book; nor even his ready ingenuity, whatever interest it may lend: it is
the material information it contains. The ingenuity, namely, verges
somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural conjecture so copiously
exemplified, on occasion of a few trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that
natural conjecture is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may
be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory always to the
personally ablest and bravest, must have resulted in the improvement of
the race; or that, the weakest being always necessarily left at home,
the improvement was balanced by deterioration; or that the ablest were
necessarily the most exposed to danger, and so, etc., etc., according,
to ingenuity _usque ad infinitum_. Trustworthy conclusion is not
possible to this method, but only to the induction of facts, or to
scientific demonstration.
Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able to level out the
difference between organic and inorganic, or between genera and genera
or species and species. The differences persist despite of both; the
distributed identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, is Mr.
Darwin’s theory competent to explain the objective idea by any reference
to time and conditions. Living beings do exist in a mighty chain from
the moss to the man; but that chain, far from founding, is founded in
the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural _growth_ of this
into that. That chain is itself the most brilliant stamp, the
sign-manual, of design. On every ledge of nature, from the lowest to the
highest, there is a life that is _its_,—a creature to represent it,
reflect it—so to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest link
of this chain is man; the incarnation of thought itself, which is the
summation of this universe; man, that includes in himself all other
links and their single secret—the personified universe, the subject of
the world. Mr. Huxley makes but small reference to thought; he only
tucks it in, as it were, as a mere appendicle of course.
It may be objected, indeed—to reach the last stage in this
discussion—that, if Mr. Huxley has not disproved the conception of
thought and life “as a something which works through matter, but is
independent of it,” neither have we proved it. But it is easy for us to
reply that, if “_independent of_” means here “_unconnected with_,” we
have had no such object. We have had no object whatever, in fact, but to
resist, now the extravagant assertion that all organized tissue, from
the lichen to Leibnitz, is alike in faculty, and again the equally
extravagant assertion that life and thought are but ordinary products of
molecular chemistry. As regards the latter assertion, we have endeavored
to show that the processes of vital organization (as self-production,
etc.) belong to another sphere, higher than, and very different from,
those of mechanical juxtaposition or chemical neutralization; that life,
then, is no mere product of matter as matter; that if no life can be
pointed to independent of matter, neither is there any life-stuff
independent of life; and that life, consequently, adds a new and higher
force to chemistry, as chemistry a new and higher force to mechanics,
etc. As for thought, the endeavor was to show that it was as independent
on the one side as matter on the other, that it controlled, used,
summed, and was the reason of matter. Thought, then, is not to be
reached by any bridge from matter, that is a hybrid of both, and
explains the connection. The relation of matter to mind is not to be
explained as a transition, but as a _contrecoup_. In this relation,
however, it is not the material, but the mental side, which the whole
universe declares to be the dominant one.
As regards any objection to the arguments which we have brought against
the identity of protoplasm, again, these will lie in the phrase,
probably, “difference not of kind, but degree,” or in the word
“modification.” The “phrase” may be now passed, for generic or specific
difference must be allowed in protoplasm, if not for the overwhelming
reason that an infinitude of various kinds exist in it, each of which is
self-productive and uninterchangeable with the rest, then for Mr.
Huxley’s own reason, that plants assimilate inorganic matter and animals
only organic. As for the objection “modification,” again, the same
consideration of generic difference must prove fatal to it. This were
otherwise, indeed, could but the molecularists and Mr. Darwin succeed in
destroying generic difference; but in this, as we have seen, they have
failed. And this will be always so: who dogs identity, difference dogs
him. It is quite a justifiable endeavor, for example, to point out the
identity that obtains between veins and arteries on the one hand, as
between these and capillaries on the other; but all the time the
difference is behind us; and when we turn to look, we see, for
circulation, the valves of the veins and the elastic coats of the
arteries as opposed to one another, and, for irrigation, the permeable
walls of the capillaries as opposed to both.
Generic differences exist then, and we cannot allow the word
“modification” to efface them in the interest of the identity claimed
for protoplasm. Brain-protoplasm is not bone-protoplasm, nor the
protoplasm of the fungus the protoplasm of man. Similarly, it is very
questionable how far the word “modification” will warrant us in
regarding with Mr. Huxley the “ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the
nettle as identical with the protoplasm of its sting. Things that
originate alike may surely eventuate in others which, chemically and
vitally, far from being mere modifications, must be pronounced totally
different. Such eventuation must be held competent to what can only be
named generic or specific difference. The “child” is only “_father_ of
the man”—it is not the man; who, moreover, in the course of an ordinary
life, we are told, has totally changed himself, not once, but many
times, retaining at the last not one single particle of matter with
which he set out. Such eventuations, whether called modifications or
not, certainly involve essential difference. And so situated are the
“ducts, fibres, pollen, and ovules” of the nettle, which, whether
compared with the protoplasm of the nettle-sting, or with that in which
they originated, must be held to here assumed, by their own actions,
indisputable differences, physical, chemical, and vital, or in form,
substance, and faculty.
Much, in fact, depends on definition here; and, in reference to
modification, it may be regarded as arbitrary when identity shall be
admitted to cease and difference to begin. There are the old Greek
puzzles of the Bald Head and the Heap, for example. How many grains, or
how many hairs, may we remove before a heap of wheat is no heap, or a
head of hair bald? These concern quantity alone; but, in other cases,
bone, muscle, brain, fungus, tree, man, there is not only a
quantitative, but a qualitative difference; and in regard to such
differences, the word modification can be regarded as but a cloak, under
which identity is to be shuffled into difference, but remain identity
all the same. The brick is but modified clay, Mr. Huxley intimates, bake
it and paint it as you may; but is the difference introduced by the
baking and painting to be ignored? Is what Mr. Huxley calls the
“artifice” not to be taken into account, leave alone the “potter?” The
strong firm rope is about as exact an example of modification
proper—modification of the weak loose hemp—as can well be found; but are
we to exclude from our consideration the whole element of difference due
to the hand and brain of man? Not far from Burn’s Monument, on the
Calton Hill of Edinburgh, there lies a mass of stones which is
potentially a church, the former Trinity College Church. Were this
church again realized, would it be fair to call it a mere modification
of the previous stones? Look now to the egg and the full-feathered fowl.
Chaucer describes to us the cock, “hight chaunteclere,” that was to his
“faire Pertelotte” so dear:—
“His comb was redder than the fine corall,
Embattled, as it were a castle-wall;
His bill was black, and as the jet it shone;
Like azure were his legges and his tone (toes);
His nailes whiter than the lilie flour,
And like the burned gold was his color.”
Would it be even as fair to call this fine fellow—comb, wattles, spurs,
and all—a modified yolk, as to call the church but modified stones? If,
in the latter case, an element of difference, altogether undeniable,
seems to have intervened, is not such intervention at least quite as
well marked in the former? It requires but a slight analysis to detect
that all the stones in question are marked and numbered; but will any
analysis point out within the shell the various parts that only need
arrangement to become the fowl? Are the men that may take the stones,
and, in a re-erected Trinity College Church, realize anew the idea of
its architect, in any respect more wonderful than the unknown disposers
of the materials of the fowl? That what realizes the idea should, in the
one case, be from without, and, in the other, from within, is no reason
for seeing more modification and less wonder in the latter than the
former. There is certainly no more reason for seeing the fowl in the
egg, and as identical with the egg, than for seeing a re-built Trinity
College Church as identical with its unarranged materials. A part cannot
be taken for the whole, whether in space _or in time_. Mr. Huxley misses
this. He is so absorbed in the identity out of which, that he will not
see the difference into which, progress is made. As the idea of the
church has the stones, so the idea of the fowl has the egg, for its
commencement. But to this idea, and in both cases, the terminal
additions belong, quite as much as the initial materials. If the idea,
then, add sulphur, phosphorus, iron, and what not, it must be credited
with these not less than with the carbon, hydrogen, etc., with which it
began. It is not fair to mutter modification, as if it were a charm to
destroy all the industry of time. The protoplasm of the egg of the fowl
is no more the fowl than the stones the church; and to identify, by
juggle of a mere word, parts in time and wholes in time so different, is
but self-deception. Nay, in protoplasm, as we have so often seen,
difference is as much present at first as at last. Even in its germ,
even in its initial identity, to call it so, protoplasm is already
different, for it issues in differences infinite.
Omission of the consideration of difference, it is to be acknowledged,
is not now-a-days restricted to Mr. Huxley. In the wonder that is
usually expressed, for example, at Oken’s _identification_ of the skull
with so many vertebræ, it is forgot that there is still implicated the
wonder which we ought to feel at the unknown power that could, in the
end, so _differentiate_ them. If the cornea of the eye and the enamel of
the teeth are alike but modified protoplasm, we must be pardoned for
thinking more of the adjective than of the substantive. Our wonder is
how, for one idea, protoplasm could become one thing here, and, for
another idea, another so different thing there. We are more curious
about the modification than the protoplasm. In the difference, rather
than in the identity, it is, indeed, that the wonder lies. Here are
several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no difference
in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr. Huxley,
identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all these
several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter an
element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been impressed,
that, of them all, not one is interchangeable with another! Each seed
feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into
the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is protoplasm:
yes, but man’s protoplasm is man’s protoplasm, and the mushroom’s the
mushroom’s. In short, it is quite evident that the word modification, if
it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw, the difference; which
difference, moreover, is one of kind and not of degree.
This consideration of possible objections, then, is the last we have to
attend to; and it only remains to draw the general conclusion. All
animal and vegetable organisms are alike in power, in form, and in
substance, only if the protoplasm of which they are composed is
similarly alike; and the functions of all animal and vegetable organisms
are but properties of the molecular affections of their chemical
constituents, only if the functions of the protoplasm, of which they are
composed, are but properties of the molecular affections of _its_
chemical constituents. In disproof of the affirmative in both clauses,
there has been no object but to demonstrate, on the one hand, the
infinite non-identity of protoplasm, and, on the other, the dependence
of its functions upon other factors than its molecular constituents.
In short, the whole position of Mr. Huxley, that all organisms consist
alike of the same life-matter, which life-matter is, for its part, due
only to chemistry, must be pronounced untenable—nor less untenable the
materialism he would found on it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION_:
PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON THE
HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION:
_PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL_.
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God shall man live.” ch-hd-end There is
apparently considerable repugnance in the minds of many excellent
people to the acceptance, or even consideration, of the hypothesis
of development, or that of the gradual creation by descent, with
modification from the simplest beginnings, of the different forms of
the organic world. This objection probably results from two
considerations: first, that the human species is certainly involved,
and man’s descent from an ape asserted; and, secondly, that the
scheme in general seems to conflict with that presented by the
Mosaic account of the Creation, which is regarded as communicated to
its author by an infallible inspiration.
As the truth of the hypothesis is held to be infinitely probable by
a majority of the exponents of the natural sciences at the present
day, and is held as absolutely demonstrated by another portion, it
behooves those interested to restrain their condemnation, and on the
other hand to examine its evidences, and look any consequent
necessary modification of our metaphysical or theological views
squarely in the face.