which Palæontologists urge against the doctrine of evolution. According
to the view of geologists great changes have, at remote periods,
occurred in the state of the earth. Continents have been submerged and
the bottom of the sea raised above the surface of the waters.
Corresponding changes have occurred in the state of the atmosphere
surrounding the globe, and in the temperature of the earth. Accompanying
or following these revolutions new classes of plants and animals appear,
adapted to the new condition of the earth's surface. Whence do they
come? They have, as Dawson expresses it, neither fathers nor mothers.
Nothing precedes them from which they could be derived; and nothing of
the same kind follows them. They live through their appointed period;
and then, in a multitude of cases, finally disappear, and are in their
turn followed by new orders or kinds. In other words, the links or
connecting forms of this assumed regular succession or derivation are
not to be found. This fact is so patent, that Hugh Miller, when arguing
against the doctrine of evolution as proposed in the "Vestiges of
Creation," says, that the record in the rocks seems to have been written
for the very purpose of proving that such evolution is impossible.
We have the explicit testimony of Agassiz, as a Palæontologist, that the
facts of geology contradict the theory of the transmutation of species.
This testimony has been repeatedly given and in various forms. In the
last production of his pen, he says: "As a Palæontologist I have from
the beginning stood aloof from this new theory of transmutation, now so
widely admitted by the scientific world. Its doctrines, in fact,
contradict what the animal forms buried in the rocky strata of our earth
tell us of their own introduction and succession upon the surface of the
globe." "Let us look now at the earliest vertebrates, as known and
recorded in geological surveys. They should, of course, if there is any
truth in the transmutation theory, correspond with the lowest in rank or
standing. What then are the earliest known vertebrates? They are
Selachians (sharks and their allies) and Ganoids (garpikes and the
like), the highest of all living fishes, structurally speaking." He
closes the article from which these quotations are taken with the
assertion, "that there is no evidence of a direct descent of later from
earlier species in the geological succession of animals."[53] It will be
observed that Agassiz is quoted, not as to matters of theory, but as to
matters of fact. The only answer which evolutionists can make to this
argument, is the imperfection of the geological record. When asked,
Where are the immediate predecessors of these new species? they answer,
They have disappeared, or, have not yet been found. When asked, Where
are their immediate successors? the answer again is, They have
disappeared.[54] This is an objection which Mr. Darwin, with his usual
candor, virtually admits to be unanswerable. We have already seen, that
he says, "Every one will admit that the geological record is imperfect;
but very few can believe that it is so very imperfect as my theory
demands."
Such are some of the grounds on which geologists and palæontologists of
the highest rank assert that the theory of evolution has not the
slightest scientific basis; and they support their assertion with an
amount of evidence of which the above items are a miserable pittance.
Sixthly. There is another consideration of decisive importance. Strauss
says, there are three things which have been stumbling-blocks in the way
of science. First, the origin of life; second, the origin of
consciousness; third, the origin of reason. These are equivalent to the
gaps which, Principal Dawson says, exist in the theory of evolution. He
states them thus: 1. That between dead and living matter. 2. That
between vegetable and animal life. "These are necessarily the converse
of each other: the one deoxidizes and accumulates, the other oxidizes
and expends." 3. That "between any species of plant or animal, and any
other species. It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to
fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but, notwithstanding
the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever,
since it must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an
individual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and
another species." 4. "Another gap is between the nature of the animal
and the self-conscious, reasoning, and moral nature of man." (pp.
325-328)
First, as to the gap between death and life; this is what Dr. Stirling
calls the "gulf of all gulfs, which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as
powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been
suggested."[55] This gulf Mr. Darwin does not attempt to bridge over. He
admits that life owes its origin to the act of the Creator. This,
however, the most prominent of the advocates of Darwinism say, is giving
up the whole controversy. If you admit the intervention of creative
power at one point, you may as well admit it in any other. If life owes
its origin to creative power, why not species? If the stupendous miracle
of creation be admitted, there is no show of reason for denying
supernatural intervention in the operations of nature. Most Darwinians
attempt to pass this gulf on the imaginary bridge of spontaneous
generation. In other words, they say there is no gulf there. The
molecules of matter, in one combination, may as well exhibit the
phenomena of life, as in other combinations, any other kind of
phenomena. The distinguished Sir William Thomson cannot trust himself to
that bridge. "Dead matter," he says, "cannot become living matter
without coming under the influence of matter previously alive. This
seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation....
I am ready to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through all
space and through all time, that life proceeds from life, and nothing
but life."[56] He refers the origin of life on this earth to falling
meteors, which bring with them from other planets the germs of living
organisms; and from those germs all the plants and animals with which
our world is now covered have been derived. Principal Dawson thinks that
this was intended as irony. But the whole tone of the address, and
specially of the closing portion of it, in which this idea is advanced,
is far too serious to admit of such an explanation.
No one can read the address referred to without being impressed, and
even awed, by the immensity and grandeur of the field of knowledge which
falls legitimately within the domain of science. The perusal of that
discourse produces a feeling of humility analogous to the sense of
insignificance which every man experiences when he thinks of himself as
a speck on the surface of the earth, which itself is but a speck in the
immensity of the universe. And when a man of mere ordinary culture sees
Sir William Thomson surveying that field with a mastery of its details
and familiarity with all the recondite methods of its investigation, he
feels as nothing in his presence. Yet this great man, whom we cannot
help regarding with wonder, is so carried away by the spirit of his
class as to say, "Science is bound, by the everlasting law of honor, to
face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be brought before it. If
a probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can
be found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of Creative Power." And,
therefore, instead of invoking Creative Power, he accounts for the
origin of life on earth by falling meteors. How he accounts for its
origin in the places whence the meteors came, he does not say. Yet Sir
William Thomson believes in Creative Power; and in a subsequent page, we
shall quote his explicit repudiation of the atheistic element in the
Darwinian theory.
Strauss quotes Dubois-Reymond, a distinguished naturalist, as teaching
that the first of these great problems, viz. the origin of life, admits
of explanation on scientific (i. e., in his sense, materialistic)
principles; and even the third, viz. the origin of reason; but the
second, or the origin of consciousness, he says, "is perfectly
inscrutable." Dubois-Reymond holds that "the most accurate knowledge of
the essential organism reveals to us only matter in motion; but between
this material movement and my feeling pain or pleasure, experiencing a
sweet taste, seeing red, with the conclusion 'therefore I exist,' there
is a profound gulf; and it 'remains utterly and forever inconceivable
why to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, etc., it should not be a
matter of indifference how they lie or how they move; nor, can we in any
wise tell how consciousness should result from their concurrent action.'
Whether," adds Strauss, "these _Verba Magistri_ are indeed the last word
on the subject, time only can tell."[57] But if it is inconceivable, not
to say absurd, that sense-consciousness should consist in the motion of
molecules of matter, or be a function of such molecules, it can hardly
be less absurd to account for thought, conscience, and religious
feeling and belief on any such hypothesis. It may be said that Mr.
Darwin is not responsible for these extreme opinions. That is very true.
Mr. Darwin is not a Monist, for in admitting creation, he admits a
dualism as between God and the world. Neither is he a Materialist,
inasmuch as he assumes a supernatural origin for the infinitesimal
modicum of life and intelligence in the primordial animalcule, from
which without divine purpose or agency, all living things in the whole
history of our earth have descended. All the innumerable varieties of
plants, all the countless forms of animals, with all their instincts and
faculties, all the varieties of men with their intellectual endowments,
and their moral and religious nature, have, according to Darwin, been
evolved by the agency of the blind, unconscious laws of nature. This
infinitesimal spark of supernaturalism in Mr. Darwin's theory, would
inevitably have gone out of itself, had it not been rudely and
contemptuously trodden out by his bolder, and more logical successors.
The grand and fatal objection to Darwinism is this exclusion of design
in the origin of species, or the production of living organisms. By
design is meant the intelligent and voluntary selection of an end, and
the intelligent and voluntary choice, application, and control of means
appropriate to the accomplishment of that end. That design, therefore,
implies intelligence, is involved in its very nature. No man can
perceive this adaptation of means to the accomplishment of a
preconceived end, without experiencing an irresistible conviction that
it is the work of mind. No man does doubt it, and no man can doubt it.
Darwin does not deny it. Haeckel does not deny it. No Darwinian denies
it. What they do is to deny that there is any design in nature. It is
merely apparent, as when the wind of the Bay of Biscay, as Huxley says,
"selects the right kind of sand and spreads it in heaps upon the
plains." But in thus denying design in nature, these writers array
against themselves the intuitive perceptions and irresistible
convictions of all mankind,--a barrier which no man has ever been able
to surmount. Sir William Thomson, in the address already referred to,
says: "I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been
greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoölogical speculations.
Reaction against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found,
not rarely, in the notes of the learned commentators on 'Paley's Natural
Theology,' has, I believe, had a temporary effect of turning attention
from the solid irrefragable argument so well put forward in that
excellent old book. But overpowering proof of intelligence and
benevolent design lie all around us, and if ever perplexities, whether
metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come
back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through nature the
influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend
upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."
It is impossible for even Mr. Darwin, inconsistent as it is with his
whole theory, to deny all design in the constitution of nature. What is
his law of heredity? Why should like beget like? Take two germ cells,
one of a plant, another of an animal; no man by microscope or by
chemical analysis, or by the magic power of the spectroscope, can detect
the slightest difference between them, yet the one infallibly develops
into a plant and the other into an animal. Take the germ of a fish and
of a bird, and they are equally indistinguishable; yet the one always
under all conditions develops into a fish and the other into a bird.
Why is this? There is no physical force, whether light, heat,
electricity, or anything else, which makes the slightest approximation
to accounting for that fact. To say, as Stuart Mill would say, that it
is an ultimate fact, and needs no explanation, is to say that there may
be an effect without an adequate cause. The venerable R. E. Von Baer,
the first naturalist in Russia, of whom Agassiz speaks in terms of such
affectionate veneration in the "Atlantic Monthly" for January, 1874, has
written a volume dated Dorpat, 1873, and entitled "Zum Streit über den
Darwinismus." In that volume, as we learn from a German periodical, the
author says: "The Darwinians lay great stress on heredity; but what is
the law of heredity but a determination of something future? Is it not
in its nature in the highest degree teleological? Indeed, is not the
whole faculty of reproduction intended to introduce a new life-process?
When a man looks at a dissected insect and examines its strings of eggs,
and asks, Whence are they? the naturalist of our day has no answer to
give, but that they were of necessity gradually produced by the changes
in matter. When it is further asked, Why are they there? is it wrong to
say, It is _in order that_ when the eggs are mature and fertilized, new
individuals of the same form should be produced."
It is further to be considered that there are innumerable cases of
contrivance, or evidence of design in nature, to which the principle of
natural selection, or the purposeless changes effected by unconscious
force, cannot apply; as for example, the distinction of sex, with all
that is therein involved. But passing by such cases, it may be asked,
what would it avail to get rid of design in the vegetable and animal
kingdom, while the whole universe is full of it? That this ordered
Cosmos is not from necessity or chance, is almost a self-evident fact.
Not one man in a million of those who ever heard of God, either does
doubt or can doubt it. Besides how are the cosmical relations of light,
heat, electricity, to the constituent parts of the universe, and
especially, so far as this earth is concerned, to vegetable and animal
life, to be accounted for? Is this all chance work? Is it by chance that
light and heat cause plants to carry on their wonderful operations,
transmuting the inorganic into the organic, dead matter into living and
life sustaining matter? Is it without a purpose that water instead of
contracting, expands at the freezing point?--a fact to which is due that
the earth north of the tropic is habitable for man or beast. It is no
answer to this question to say that a few other substances have the same
peculiarity, when no good end, that we can see, is thereby accomplished.
No man is so foolish as to deny that his eye was intended to enable him
to see, because he cannot tell what the spleen was made for. It is,
however, useless to dwell upon this subject. If a man denies that there
is design in nature, he can with quite as good reason deny that there is
any design in any or in all the works ever executed by man.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, that the denial of design in
nature is virtually the denial of God. Mr. Darwin's theory does deny all
design in nature, therefore, his theory is virtually atheistical; his
theory, not he himself. He believes in a Creator. But when that Creator,
millions on millions of ages ago, did something,--called matter and a
living germ into existence,--and then abandoned the universe to itself
to be controlled by chance and necessity, without any purpose on his
part as to the result, or any intervention or guidance, then He is
virtually consigned, so far as we are concerned, to non-existence. It
has already been said that the most extreme of Mr. Darwin's admirers
adopt and laud his theory, for the special reason that it banishes God
from the world; that it enables them to account for design without
referring it to the purpose or agency of God. This is done expressly by
Büchner, Haeckel, Vogt, and Strauss. The opponents of Darwinism direct
their objections principally against this element of the doctrine. This,
as was stated by Rev. Dr. Peabody, was the main ground of the earnest
opposition of Agassiz to the theory. America's great botanist, Dr. Asa
Gray, avows himself an evolutionist; but he is not a Darwinian. Of that
point we have the clearest possible proof. Mr. Darwin, after explicitly
denying that the variations which have resulted in "the formation of the
most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were
intentionally and specially guided," adds: "However much we may wish it,
we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief 'that variation
has been led along certain beneficial lines' like a stream 'along
definite and useful lines of irrigation.'"[58] If Mr. Darwin does not
agree with Dr. Gray, Dr. Gray does not agree with Mr. Darwin. It is as
to the exclusion of design from the operations of nature that our
American, differs from the English, naturalist. This is the vital point.
The denial of final causes is the formative idea of Darwin's theory, and
therefore no teleologist can be a Darwinian.
Dr. Gray quotes from another writer the sentence, "It is a singular
fact, that when we can find how anything is done, our first conclusion
seems to be that God did not do it;" and then adds, "I agree with the
writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy; I will add,
deplorable. Through what faults of dogmatism on the one hand, and
skepticism on the other, it came to be so thought, we need not here
consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last;
that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of
the fixedness of the earth itself, may equally outlast the notion of the
absolute fixedness of the species which inhabit it; that in the future,
even more than in the past, faith in an _order_, which is the basis of
science, will not--as it cannot reasonably--be dissevered from faith in
an _Ordainer_, which is the basis of religion."[59] We thank God for
that sentence. It is the concluding sentence of Dr. Gray's address as
ex-President of "The American Association for the Advancement of
Science," delivered August, 1872.
Dr. Gray goes further. He says, "The proposition that the things and
events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out,
is doubtless tantamount to atheism." Again, "To us, a fortuitous Cosmos
is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.... If Mr.
Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and
the results we behold around us were undirected and undesigned; or if
the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers
phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show
that such belief is atheistic."[60]
We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?
It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin
himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his
theory is atheistic; that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr.
Gray says, tantamount to atheism.
Among the last words of Strauss were these: "We demand for our universe
the same piety which the devout man of old demanded for his God." "In
the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss
of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous
stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man,
a helpless and defenceless creature, finds himself placed, not secure
for a moment that on an imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend
him, or a hammer crush him to a powder. This sense of abandonment is at
first something awful."[61]
Among the last words of Paul were these: "I know whom I have believed,
and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed
unto Him against that day.... The time of my departure is at hand. I
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not
to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."
FOOTNOTES:
[40] _Science and Scripture not Antagonistic, because Distinct in their
Spheres of Thought_. A Lecture, by Rev. George Henslow, M. A., F. L. S.,
F. G. S. London, 1873, p. 1.
[41] _Gott und Natur_, p. 200.
[42] _Protoplasm; or, Matter and Life._ By Lionel S. Beale, M. B., F. R.
S. Third edition. London & Philadelphia, 1874, p. 345; and the whole
chapter on Design.
[43] _Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr. Darwin_, by C. R. Bree, M. D.,
F. Z. S. London, 1872, p. 290.
[44] When Professor Huxley says, as quoted above, that he does not deny
the possibility of miracles, he must use the word miracle in a sense
peculiar to himself.
[45] _Jenaer Literaturzeitung_, January 3, 1874. In this number there is
a notice by Doctor Haeckel of two books,--_Descendenzlehre und
Darwinismus_, von Oscar Schmidt, Leipzig, 1873; and _Die Fortschritte
des Darwinismus_, von J. W. Spengel, Cöln and Leipzig, 1874; in which he
says: "Erstens, um in Sachen der Descendenz-Theorie mitreden zu können,
ein gewisser Grad von tieferer biologischer (sowohl morphologischer als
physiologischer) Bildung unentbehrlich, den die meistzen von jenen
Auctoren (the opposers of the theory) nicht besitzen. Zweitens ist für
ein klares und zutreffendes Urtheil in diesem Sachen eine rücksichtslose
Hingabe an vernunftgemässe Erkenntniss und eine dadurch bedingte
Resignation auf uralte, liebgewordene und tief vererbte Vorurtheile
erforderlich, zu welcher sich die wenigsten entschliesen können."
[46] In his _Natürlische Schöpfungsgeschichte_, Haeckel is still more
exclusive. When he comes to answer the objections to the evolution, or,
as he commonly calls it, the descendence theory, he dismisses the
objections derived from religion, as unworthy of notice, with the remark
that all Glaube ist Aberglaube; all faith is superstition. The
objections from _a priori_, or intuitive truths, are disposed of in an
equally summary manner, by denying that there are any such truths, and
asserting that all our knowledge is from the senses. The objection that
so many distinguished naturalists reject the theory, he considers more
at length. First, many have grown old in another way of thinking and
cannot be expected to change. Second, many are collectors of facts,
without studying their relations, or are destitute of the genius for
generalization. No amount of material makes a building. Others, again,
are specialists. It is not enough that a man should be versed in one
department; he must be at home in all: in Botany, Zoölogy, Comparative
Anatomy, Biology, Geology, and Palæontology. He must be able to survey
the whole field. Fourthly, and mainly, naturalists are generally
lamentably deficient in philosophical culture and in a philosophical
spirit. "The immovable edifice of the true, monistic science, or what is
the same thing, natural science, can only arise through the most
intimate interaction and mutual interpenetration of philosophy and
observation (Philosophie und Empirie)." pp. 638-641. It is only a select
few, therefore, of learned and philosophical monistic materialists, who
are entitled to be heard on questions of the highest moment to every
individual man, and to human society.
[47] This short but significant sentence is omitted in the excellent
translation of Strauss's book, by Mathilde Blind, republished in New
York, by Henry Holt & Company, 1873.
[48] _The Fallacies of Darwinism_, by C. R. Bree, M. D., p. 308.