Darwin, and scarcely less absurd to indulge in any mere extravagance of
language; yet we are expressing our own experience, when we say that we
regard Mr. Darwin's books the best refutation of Mr. Darwin's theory. He
constantly shuts us up to the alternative of believing that the eye is a
work of design or the product of the unintended action of blind physical
causes. To any ordinarily constituted mind, it is absolutely impossible
to believe that it is not a work of design. Darwin himself, it is
evident, dear as his theory is, can hardly believe it. "It is
indispensable," he says, "to arrive at a just conclusion as to the
formation of the eye, that the reason should conquer the imagination;
but I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any
degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to
so startling an extent." (p. 225)
It will be observed that every step in his account of the formation of
the eye is an arbitrary assumption. We must first assume a thick layer
of tissue; then that the tissue is transparent; then that it has
cavities filled with fluid; that beneath the tissue is a nerve sensitive
to light; then that the fluid is constantly varying in density and
thickness; that its surfaces are constantly changing their contour; that
its different portions are ever shifting their relative distances; that
every favorable change is seized upon and rendered permanent,--thus
after millions of years we may get an eye as perfect as that of an
eagle. In like manner we may suppose a man to sit down to account for
the origin and contents of the Bible, assuming as his "working
hypothesis," that it is not the product of mind either human or divine,
but that it was made by a type-setting machine worked by steam, and
picking out type hap-hazard. In this way in a thousand years one
sentence might be produced, in another thousand a second, and in ten
thousand more, the two might get together in the right position. Thus in
the course of "millions of years" the Bible might have been produced,
with all its historical details, all its elevated truths, all its
devout and sublime poetry, and above all with the delineation of the
character of Christ, the [Greek: idea tôn ideôn], the ideal of majesty
and loveliness, before which the whole world, believing and unbelieving,
perforce bows down in reverence. And when reason has sufficiently
subdued the imagination to admit all this, then by the same theory we
may account for all the books in all languages in all the libraries in
the world. Thus we should have Darwinism applied in the sphere of
literature. This is the theory which we are told is to sweep away
Christianity and the Church!
Mr. Darwin gives the same unsatisfactory account of the marvellous
"contrivances" in the vegetable world. In one species of Orchids, the
labellum or lower lip is hollowed into a great bucket continually filled
with water, secreted from two horns which stand above it; when the
bucket is sufficiently filled, the water flows out through a pipe or
spout on one side. The bees, which crowd into the flower for sake of the
nectar, jostle each other, so that some fall into the water; and their
wings becoming wet they are unable to fly, and are obliged to crawl
through the spout. In doing this they come in contact with the pollen,
which, adhering to their backs, is carried off to other flowers. This
complicated contrivance by which the female plants are fertilized has,
according to the theory, been brought about by the slow process of
natural selection or survival of the fittest.
Still more wonderful is the arrangement in another species of Orchids.
When the bee begins to gnaw the labellum, he unavoidably touches a
tapering projection, which, when touched, transmits a vibration which
ruptures a membrane, which sets free a spring by which a mass of pollen
is shot, with unerring aim, over the back of the bee, who then departs
on his errand of fertilization.
A very large class of plants are fertilized by means of insects. These
flowers are beautiful, not for the sake of beauty,--for that Mr. Darwin
says would annihilate his theory,--but those which happen to be
beautiful attract insects, and thus become fertilized and perpetuated,
while the plainer ones are neglected and perish. So with regard to
birds. The females are generally plain, because those of bright colors
are so exposed during the period of incubation that they are destroyed
by their enemies. In like manner male birds are usually adorned with
brilliant plumage. This is accounted for on the ground that they are
more attractive, and thus they propagate their race, while the plainer
ones have few or no descendants. Thus all design is studiously and
laboriously excluded from every department of nature.
The preceding pages contain only a small part of the evidence furnished
by Mr. Darwin's own writings, that his doctrine involves the denial of
all final causes. The whole drift of his books is to prove that all the
organs of plants and animals, all their instincts and mental endowments,
may be accounted for by the blind operation of natural causes, without
any intention, purpose, or coöperation of God. This is what Professor
Huxley and others call "the creative idea," to which the widespread
influence of his writings is to be referred.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] _Origin of Species_, p. 517.
[13] _The Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication._ By
Charles Darwin, F. R. S., etc. New York, 1868, vol. ii. pp. 515, 516.
[14] What can the word "imagination" mean in this sentence, if it does
not mean "Common Sense?"
[15] Mr. Darwin's habit of personifying nature has given, as his friend
Mr. Wallace says, his readers a good deal of trouble. He defines nature
to be the aggregate of physical forces; and in the single passage
quoted, he speaks of Natural Selection "as intently watching" "picking
out with unerring skill," and "carefully preserving." It is true, he
tells us this is all to be understood metaphorically.
_Testimony of the Advocates of the Theory._
It is time to turn to the exposition of Darwinism by its avowed
advocates, in proof of the assertion that it excludes all teleology.
The first of these witnesses is Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, himself a
distinguished naturalist. Mr. Darwin informs his readers that as early
as 1844, he had collected his material and worked out his theory, but
had not published it to the world, although it had been communicated to
some of his friends. In 1858 he received a memoir from Mr. Wallace, who
was then studying the natural history of the Malay Archipelago. From
that memoir he learnt that Mr. Wallace had "arrived at almost exactly
the same conclusions as I (he himself) have on the origin of species."
This led to the publishing his book on that subject contemporaneously
with Mr. Wallace's memoir. There has been no jealousy or rivalry between
these gentlemen. Mr. Wallace gracefully acknowledges the priority of Mr.
Darwin's claim, and attributes to him the credit of having elaborated
and sustained it in a way to secure for it universal attention. These
facts are mentioned in order to show the competency of Mr. Wallace as a
witness as to the true character of Darwinism.
Mr. Wallace, in "The Theory of Natural Selection," devotes a chapter to
the consideration of the objections urged by the Duke of Argyll, in his
work on the "Reign of Law," against that theory. Those objections are
principally two: first, that design necessarily implies an intelligent
designer; and second, that beauty not being an advantage to its
possessor in the struggle for life, cannot be accounted for on the
principle of the survival of the fittest. The Duke, he says, maintains
that contrivance and beauty indicate "the constant supervision and
interference of the Creator, and cannot possibly be explained by the
unassisted action of any combination of laws. Now, Mr. Darwin's work,"
he adds, "has for its main object to show that all the phenomena of
living things--all their wonderful organs and complicated structures,
their infinite variety of form, size, and color, their intricate and
involved relations to each other--may have been produced by the action
of a few general laws of the simplest kind, laws which are in most cases
mere statements of admitted facts." (p. 265) Those laws are those with
which we are familiar: Heredity, Variations, Over Production, Struggle
for Life, Survival of the Fittest. "It is probable," he says, "that
these primary facts or laws are but results of the very nature of life,
and of the essential properties of organized and unorganized matter. Mr.
Herbert Spencer, in his 'First Principles' and in his 'Biology,' has, I
think, made us able to understand how this may be; but at present we
may accept these simple laws, without going further back, and the
question then is, Whether the variety, the harmony, the contrivance, and
the beauty we perceive, can have been produced by the action of these
laws alone, or whether we are required to believe in the incessant
interference and direct action of the mind and will of the Creator." (p.
267)[16] Mr. Wallace says, that the Duke of Argyll maintains that God
"has personally applied general laws to produce effects which those laws
are not in themselves capable of producing; that the universe alone with
all its laws intact, would be a sort of chaos, without variety, without
harmony, without design, without beauty; that there is not (and
therefore we may presume that there could not be) any self-developing
power in the universe. I believe, on the contrary, that the universe is
so constituted as to be self-regulating; that as long it contains life,
the forms under which that life is manifested have an inherent power of
adjustment to each other and to their surroundings; and that this
adjustment necessarily leads to the greatest amount of variety and
beauty and enjoyment, because it does depend on general laws, and not on
a continual supervision and rearrangement of details." (p. 268) "The
strange springs and traps and pitfalls found in the flowers of Orchids,
cannot," he says, "be necessary _per se_, since exactly the same end is
gained in ten thousand other flowers which do not possess them. Is it
not then an extraordinary idea, to imagine the Creator of the universe
contriving the various complicated parts of these flowers, as a mechanic
might contrive an ingenious toy or a difficult puzzle? Is it not a more
worthy conception, that they are the results of those general laws which
were so coördinated at the first introduction of life upon the earth as
to result necessarily in the utmost possible development of varied
forms." (p. 270) "I for one," he says, "cannot believe that the world
would come to chaos if left to law alone.... If any modification of
structure could be the result of law, why not all? If some
self-adaptations should arise, why not others? If any varieties of
color, why not all the varieties we see? No attempt is made to explain
this except by reference to the fact that 'purpose' and 'contrivance'
are everywhere visible, and by an illogical deduction they could only
have arisen by the direct action of some mind, because the direct action
of our minds produce similar 'contrivances;' but it is forgotten that
adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance of design." (p.
280)[17] After referring to the fact that florists and breeders can
produce varieties in plants and animals, so that, "whether they wanted a
bull-dog to torture another animal, a greyhound to catch a hare, or a
bloodhound to hunt down their oppressed fellow-creatures, the required
variations have always appeared," he adds: "To be consistent, our
opponents must maintain that every one of the variations that have
rendered possible the changes produced by man, have been determined at
the right time and place by the Creator. Every race produced by the
florist or breeder, the dog or the pigeon fancier, the rat-catcher, the
sporting man, or the slave-hunter, must have been provided for by
varieties occurring when wanted; and as these variations were never
withheld, it would prove that the sanction of an all-wise and all
powerful Being has been given to that which the highest human minds
consider to be trivial, mean, or debasing." (p. 290)[18]
The Nebular Hypothesis, as propounded by La Place, proposed to account
for the origin of the universe, by a process of evolution under the
control of mere physical forces. That hypothesis has, so far as
evolution is concerned, been adopted by men who sincerely believe in God
and in the Bible. But they hold not only that God created matter and
endowed it with its properties, but that He designed the universe, and
so controlled the operation of physical laws that they accomplished his
purpose. So there are Christian men who believe in the evolution of one
kind of plants and animals out of earlier and simpler forms; but they
believe that everything was designed by God, and that it is due to his
purpose and power that all the forms of vegetable and animal life are
what they are. But this is not the question. What Darwin and the
advocates of his theory deny, is all design. The organs, even the most
complicated and wonderful, were not intended. They are said to be due to
the undirected and unintended operation of physical laws. This is Mr.
Wallace's argument. He endeavors to show that it is unworthy of God that
He should be supposed to have contrived the mechanism of the orchids, as
a mechanist contrives a curious puzzle.
We recently heard Prof. Joseph Henry, in a brief address, say
substantially: "If I take brass, glass, and other materials, and fuse
them, the product is a slag. This is what physical laws do. If I take
those same materials, and form them into a telescope, that is what mind
does." This is the whole question in a nutshell. That design implies an
intelligent designer, is a self evident truth. Every man believes it;
and no man can practically disbelieve it. Even those naturalists who
theoretically deny it, if they find in a cave so simple a thing as a
flint arrow-head, are as sure that it was made by a man as they are of
their own existence. And yet they want us to believe that an eagle's eye
is the product of blind natural causes. No combination of physical
forces ever made a ship or a locomotive. It may, indeed, be said that
they are dead matter, whereas plants and animals live. But what is life
but one form of the organizing efficiency of God?
Mr. Wallace does not go as far as Mr. Darwin. He recoils from regarding
man either as to body or soul as the product of mere natural causes. He
insists that "a superior intelligence is necessary to account for man."
(p. 359) This of course implies that the agency of no such higher
intelligence is admitted in the production of plants or of animals lower
than man.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] The question is not, as Mr. Wallace says, "How has the Creator
worked?" but it is, as he himself states, whether the essential
properties of matter have alone worked out all the wonders of creation;
or, whether they are to be referred to the mind and will of God. It is
worthy of remark how Messrs. Darwin and Wallace refer to Mr. Spencer as
their philosopher. We have seen what Spencer's philosophy is.
[17] It is, therefore, clear that design is what Mr. Darwin and Mr.
Wallace repudiate.
[18] That God permits men in the use of the laws of nature to distil
alcohol and brew poisons, does not prove that He approves of drunkenness
or murder.
_Professor Huxley._
The second witness as to the character of Mr. Darwin's theory is
Professor Huxley. We have some hesitation in including the name of this
distinguished naturalist among the advocates of Darwinism.[19] On the
one hand, in his Essay on the Origin of Species, printed in the
"Westminster Review," in 1860, and reprinted in his "Lay Sermons,"
etc., in 1870, he says: "There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's
method, but it is another thing whether he has fulfilled all the
conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved that
species may[20] be originated by selection? that none of the phenomena
exhibited by species are inconsistent with the origin of species in this
way? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin's
view steps out of the rank of hypotheses into that of theories; but so
long as the evidence at present adduced falls short of enforcing that
affirmative, so long, to our minds, the new doctrine must be content to
remain among the former,--an extremely valuable, and in the highest
degree probable, doctrine; indeed, the only extant hypothesis which is
worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still a hypothesis,
and not yet a theory of species. After much consideration," he adds,
"and assuredly with no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear
conviction that, as the evidence now stands, it is not absolutely proven
that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species
in Nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or
natural."[21]
Again, in his work on "Man's Place in Nature," he expresses himself much
to the same effect: "A true physical cause is admitted to be such only
on one condition, that it shall account for all the phenomena which come
within the range of its operation. If it is inconsistent with any one
phenomenon it must be rejected; if it fails to explain any one
phenomenon it is so far to be suspected, though it may have a perfect
right to provisional acceptance.... Our acceptance, therefore, of the
Darwinian hypothesis must be provisional so long as one link in the
chain of evidence is wanting; and so long as all the animals and plants
certainly produced by selective breeding from a common stock are
fertile, and their progeny are fertile one with another, that link will
be wanting. For so long selective breeding will not be proved to be
competent to all that is required if it produce natural species."[22] In
immediate connection with the above passage, there is another which
throws a clear light on Professor Huxley's cosmical views. "The whole
analogy of natural operations furnish so complete and crushing an
argument against the intervention of any but what are called secondary
causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in
view of the intimate relations of man and the rest of the living world,
and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can
see no reason for doubting that all are coördinate terms of nature's
great progression, from formless to formed, from the inorganic to the
organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will."[23]
Ought not this to settle the matter? Are we to give up the Bible and all
our hopes for the sake of an hypothesis that all living things,
including man, on the face of the earth, are descended from a primordial
animalcule, by natural selection, when such a man as Huxley, who (as
Voltaire said of the prophet Habbakuk) is _capable de tout_, says that
it has not been proved that any one species has thus originated?
But on the other hand, while he honestly admits that Darwin's doctrine
is a mere hypothesis and not a theory, he has nevertheless written at
least three essays or reviews in its exposition and vindication. He is
freely referred to on the continent of Europe, at least, as an ardent
advocate of the doctrine; and he quotes without protest such
designations of himself. At any rate, as he assures his readers that he
has no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, as he has devoted much time and
attention to the subject, and as he is one of the most prominent
naturalists of the age, there can be no question as to his competency as
a witness as to what Darwinism is.
His testimony that Mr. Darwin's doctrine excludes all teleology, or
final causes, is explicit. In his review of the "Criticisms on the
Origin of Species," he says, "that when he first read Mr. Darwin's book,
that which struck him most forcibly was the conviction that teleology,
as commonly understood, had received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's
hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: An organ is precisely
fitted to perform a function or purpose; therefore, it was specially
constructed to perform that function. In Paley's famous illustration,
the adaptation of all the parts of a watch to the function or purpose of
showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially
contrived to that end; on the ground that the only cause we know of
competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is
a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end."[24]
This, Mr. Huxley tells us, is precisely what Darwin denies with
reference to the organs of plants and animals. The eye was not formed
for the purpose of seeing, or the ear for hearing. It so happened that a
nerve became sensitive to light; then in course of time, it happened
that a transparent tissue came over it; and thus in "millions of years"
an eye, as we have seen above, happened to be formed. No such organ was
ever intended or designed by God or man. "An apparatus," says Professor
Huxley, "thoroughly adapted to a particular purpose, might be the result
of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well
as by the application of means appropriate to the end by an intelligent
agent." "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is
and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the
conception of something, which may fairly be termed a method of trial
and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet
with surrounding conditions which suit them, and thrive; the many are
unsuited, and become extinguished." "For the teleologist an organism
exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it is found; for
the Darwinian an organism exists, because, out of many of its kind, it
is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in
which it is found." "If we apprehend," Huxley further says, "the spirit
of the 'Origin of Species' rightly, then, nothing can be more entirely
and absolutely opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than
the Darwinian theory." (p. 303)
It has already been stated that Mr. Wallace does not apply the doctrine
of evolution to man; neither does Mr. Mivart, a distinguished
naturalist, who is a member of the Latin Church. The manner in which
Professor Huxley speaks of these gentlemen shows how thoroughly, in his
judgment, Mr. Darwin banishes God from his works: "Mr. Wallace and Mr.
Mivart are as stout evolutionists as Mr. Darwin himself; but Mr. Wallace
denies that man can have been evolved from a lower animal by that
process of natural selection, which he, with Mr. Darwin, holds to be
sufficient for the evolution of all animals below man; while Mr. Mivart,
admitting that natural selection has been one of the conditions of the
animals below man, maintains that natural selection must, even in their
case, have been supplemented by some other cause,--of the nature of
which, unfortunately, he does not give us any idea. Thus Mr. Mivart is
less of a Darwinian than Mr. Wallace, for he has faith in the power of
natural selection. But he is more of an evolutionist than Mr. Wallace,
because Mr. Wallace thinks it necessary to call in an intelligent agent,
a sort of supernatural Sir John Sebright, to produce even the animal
frame of man; while Mr. Mivart requires no Divine assistance till he
comes to man's soul."[25]
In the "Academy" for October, 1869, there is a review by Professor
Huxley of Dr. Haeckel's "Natürlische Schöpfungsgeschichte," in which he
says: "Professor Haeckel enlarges on the service which the 'Origin of
Species' has done in favoring what he terms 'the causal or mechanical'
view of living nature as opposed to the 'teleological or vitalistic'
view. And no doubt it is quite true the doctrine of evolution is the
most formidable of all the commoner and coarser forms of teleology.
Perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology
rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and
Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his view
offers.