in the head of the child which resembled, on the one hand an unusual
configuration in the mother--or the woman who claimed to be the
mother--and on the other a well-marked feature in her husband. And as a
result the father and mother won their case, and were proclaimed the
parents of the child because of the resemblance of these features; and,
if we think for a moment, we shall see, because also of the reliance
which the human race has come to place in the fidelity of inheritance,
of its perfect certainty, so to speak, that a duck will not come out of
a hen's egg, and the fact of this reliance on a generally received truth
remains, whatever may be said as to the legal aspect of such evidence.
Inheritance is a fact recognised by everybody, and the only reason why
we refuse to wonder at it is because, like other wonderful yet everyday
facts, such as the growth of a great tree from a tiny seed, it _is_ so
everyday that we have ceased to wonder at it. It is there: we know that.
But have we any kind of idea how it comes about? The duck does not, as a
matter of common experience, come out of a hen's egg. Why does it come
out of a duck's egg? Why doesn't it come out, if only rarely, from a
hen's egg? In other words, do we know what it is that explains
inheritance or how it is that there is such a thing as inheritance?
Well, candour obliges me to say that we do not. In spite of all the work
which has been expended upon this question we are totally ignorant of
the mechanism of heredity. Nevertheless it will be instructive to glance
at the theories which have been put forward to explain this matter.
All living things spring from a small germ, and in the vast majority of
cases this germ is the product in part of the male and in part of the
female parent. It is therefore natural that we should in the first place
turn our attention to this germ and ask ourselves whether there is
anything in its construction which will give us the key of the mystery.
There is not, at least there is nothing definite as shown by our most
powerful microscopes. To be sure there is a remarkable substance, called
chromatin because of its capacity for taking up certain dyes, which
evidently plays some profoundly important part in the processes of
development. We may suspect that this is the thing which carries the
physical characteristics from one generation to another, but we cannot
prove it; and though some authorities think that it is, others deny it.
Even if it be, it can hardly be supposed that microscopic research will
ever be able to establish the fact, and that for reasons which must now
be explained.
Let us suppose that we visit a vast botanic garden, and in the seed-time
of each of the plants therein contained select from each plant a single
ripe seed. It is clear that, if we take home that collection of seeds,
we shall have in them a miniature picture of the garden from which they
were culled, or at least we shall be in possession of the potentiality
of such a garden, for, if we sow these seeds and have the good fortune
to see them all develop, take root and grow, we shall actually possess a
replica of the garden from which they came. Not exactly, it may be
urged, for the distribution or arrangement of the seeds must have been
carefully looked to, if the gardens are to resemble each other otherwise
than in the mere possession of identical plants. I admit the truth of
this, but cannot for the moment discuss it. At any rate we should have
the same plants in both gardens.
On this analogy, many have suggested that every organ in the body--we
must go further, and say that every marked feature in every organ in the
body--is represented in the germ by a seed which can grow, under
favourable circumstances, into just such another organ or feature of an
organ. This was the theory put forward by Darwin under the name of
"pangenesis," and by others under other titles with which it is
unnecessary to burden these pages. All these theories have been summed
together under the name "micromeristic," that is small-fragmented, or
again, "particulate," since they all postulate the existence in the germ
of innumerable small fragments--seeds--which are capable of growing into
complete plants or organs under favourable circumstances. Again, this,
even if true, does not by any means exhaust the matter, for it does not
explain why the seed of the eye implants itself and grows in the right
place in the head instead of making a home for itself, let us say, in
the sole of the foot. But again we must pass over that matter.
There is nothing inherently impossible in this theory; indeed, if we
allow that the transmission of inheritable characteristics is purely
material, and it may be, there is only one other conceivable way in
which it can occur. It is true that the seeds must be almost
innumerable, but the germ, though small, is capable of accommodating an
almost innumerable number of independent factors, if the prevalent views
as to the constitution of matter are to be believed. And, as it is quite
inconceivable that we can ever have microscopes which could detect such
minute objects as the ultimate bricks of which the atom--no, not even
the atoms themselves which compose the germ--consists, it is impossible
that we should be able to say that the seed-theory is untrue. Even if we
could see these ultimate constituents it is in the last degree unlikely
that they would have any resemblance to the things which are, on this
theory to grow from them, any more than the acorn resembles the oak
which is to spring from it.
But observe! the germ on this view must contain not only seeds from the
immediate parents but from many, perhaps all, of the older generations
of the family, otherwise how are we to account for the appearance of
ancestral peculiarities which the father and mother do not show?
Moreover, since very minute things, like the inner angle of the eyebrow,
may independently vary, there must be an enormous number of seeds apart
altogether from the considerations alluded to in the last paragraph. And
many authorities who have closely considered the question have come to
the conclusion that the complexities introduced would be so great that
it is impossible to believe in any micromeristic theory.
Then, of course, we must look out for some other explanation, and some
have suggested that it is to be found in memory--the memory of the germ
of what it was once part and the anticipation of what it may once more
be. This again is an explanation not susceptible of proof along the
lines of a chemical experiment, but not necessarily, therefore, untrue.
Of course there are two ideas as to memory. If we are pure materialists
and imagine every memory in our possession as something stamped, in some
wholly incomprehensible manner, on some cell of our brain and looked at
there, by some wholly inconceivable agency, when we sit down to think of
past days, then we must look on the germ, under the "mnemic" or memory
theory as consisting of fragments each of them impressed with the
"memory" of some particular organ or feature of the body, and lo! we
find ourselves back again in micromerism. If we are to take a
non-materialistic view of memory we are plunged into a metaphysical
discussion which cannot here be pursued. A third explanation, which by
the way explains nothing, is that the whole matter is one of
"arrangement," to which we shall return at the close of this paper.
The mechanism of inheritance must either be physical[33] or it must be
non-physical; that is, immaterial. This is what emerges from our
discussion, and so far as science goes to-day it must be admitted that
neither of these explanations can be said to be accepted generally by
men of science or proved--perhaps even capable of proof--by scientific
methods. If we know little or nothing about the mechanism of
inheritance, can we and do we know anything about the laws under which
it works, or has it any laws? Or are its operations a mere
chance-medley? It is hardly necessary to ask the latter question, for
chance-medley could not lead to regular operations--operations so
regular that a court of law may act upon their evidence. Yes: we answer
to the first question very lightly but without perhaps always thinking
what that affirmative answer implies, a point to be considered in a
moment. It may at once be said that we do now know a good deal about
the laws under which inheritance works itself out, and that knowledge,
as most people are now aware, is due to the quiet and for a time
forgotten labours of Johann Gregor Mendel, once Abbot of the Augustinian
Abbey of Brünn, a prelate of that Church which loud-voiced ignoramuses
are never tired of proclaiming to have been from the beginning even down
to the present day the impassioned and deadly enemy of all scientific
progress. Mendel saw that former workers at inheritance had been
directing their attention to the _tout ensemble_ of an individual or
natural object; his idea was analytical in its nature, for he directed
his attention to individual characteristics, such as stature or colour,
or the like. And having thus directed his attention and confined his
labours mainly to plants, since the study of generations of most animals
is too lengthy a process for one man to carry out, he did in fact
discover that there are very definite laws, capable even of numerical
statement, under which inheritance acts. There is no need to explain or
discuss them here: suffice it to say that there _are_ such laws,[34] as
is now admitted by an overwhelming majority of the biologists of to-day.
Mendel's facts were hidden in a somewhat obscure journal; they lay
dormant, much to his annoyance, during his lifetime. Years after his
death his papers were unearthed, and his discoveries have been
proclaimed as being as fundamental to biology as those of Newton and
Dalton to other sciences.
There are, then, laws. That means one of two things: either that these
laws arose by chance-medley, or that some one enacted them. It seems
impossible, when one surveys the orderly operations of Nature, among
which are those conducted under the laws known by the name of their
discoverer, Mendel--it seems wholly impossible that these operations
arose by chance-medley. To me, at any rate, any such explanation is
wholly unthinkable. But if it be an impossible explanation, as I and
many thousands, not to say millions, of other persons believe, then
there is no other way out of it than that these operations must have
been planned by some one; in other words, that there must have been a
Creator and Deviser of the world.
People hide from this explanation, and one of the favourite sandbanks in
which this particular kind of human ostrich plunges its head is
"Nature." "Nature does this," and "Nature does that," forgetting
entirely the fact that "Nature" is a mere personification and means
either chance-medley or a Creator, according to the old dilemma. There
is a very curious example of this inability or unwillingness to
admit--perhaps even to understand--the force of this argument exhibited
by those to whom one would suppose that it would come home with
overpowering force: I mean, of course, the Mendelians.
The most learned of these, and one of the most open-minded of men,
hints in one place that though he does not think it necessary himself to
believe it, yet it might at least be suggested that, if in a certain
organism we find things so placed that a certain combination is bound to
emerge in a certain generation, such a state of affairs might have been
prearranged. Now, if it was prearranged, the awful fact emerges that
there must have been an arranger; in other words, a creative power. This
explanation is taboo in certain circles. But one may reasonably ask,
"What then?" Is it really suggested that these orderly sets of
occurrences may occur not once or twice only but thousands and thousands
of times, and this may all happen by chance? A very distant acquaintance
with the mathematics of probability will show that this is a wholly
untenable theory. We are generally answered by some purely verbal
explanation, like the personification of "Nature" already alluded to.
Thus, in a recent discussion on inheritance in a Presidential Address to
the British Association, to which I have already alluded, the writer
with whose explanation I have just been dealing states that he thinks it
"unlikely" that the factors of inheritance are "in any simple or literal
sense material particles," and proceeds thus: "I suspect rather that
their properties depend on some phenomenon of arrangement." Now, in the
first place, this is no explanation at all, for the mechanism of
inheritance must be either material or immaterial. If there is a
phenomenon of "arrangement" there must be something to be "arranged,"
and this something can hardly be other than material if it is to be
"arranged" at all. But let that pass. What is far more important is to
remember that if a thing is to be "arranged" there must be somebody to
"arrange" it, for chance-medley cannot "arrange" anything in an orderly
manner; or if it could do so once, cannot be supposed capable of doing
it a second time in a precisely similar manner, not to say capable of
doing it countless thousands of times.
If we go into a great museum our first idea, perhaps our last, concerns
the arrangement found therein. But it may safely be said that no sane
person ever entertained that idea without being perfectly aware that the
arrangement was made by human hands, controlled, in the last resort, by
the brain of the curator of the museum. Now, in a sense, the living body
is a museum containing specimens of different kinds of cells. There are
brain-cells, liver-cells, bone-cells, scores of different varieties of
cells, and all of them, so to speak, are arranged in their appropriate
cases.
If we go to the brain-case we can search it through and through without
finding a liver-cell, any more than we should find a typical brain-cell
embedded in the marrow of one of the bones. The different specimens all
occupy their appropriate positions. How did they get there? The future
animal, like animals of all kinds, including man, commences as a single
cell. All save a few interesting but at present negligible cases are
composed of elements drawn from male and female parents. This cell
divides up into a multitude of others. At first these are to all
appearances identical, but later they begin to differentiate, at first
into three classes and afterwards into the multitude of different cells
of which the body is composed. Further, these groups of cells become
aggregated in appropriate groups, cells of one kind uniting with cells
of the same kind and with no others. Here we have to do with
arrangement, consummately skilful arrangement, an arrangement which
practically never fails, for, leaving aside the case of monstrosity, a
consideration of which would detain us too long, not merely are the
various cells all placed in their proper positions, as we have seen, but
their aggregation, the individual, is so formed as to belong to the
proper compartment of that large museum, the world--the same compartment
as that occupied by his progenitors. Neither the particulate nor the
chemical theories help us here. The mnemic would, but it has its initial
and insuperable difficulty, pointed out in another article in this
volume, that, as you must have an experience before you can remember it,
it in no way accounts for the first operation of arrangement. As to the
material explanations, particulate or chemical, they amount to something
like this: you have half a cart-load of bricks from one yard and half a
cart-load from another, and when the bricks are dumped down in an
appropriate place they form a little house, just like those occupied by
the managers of the brickyards. So they may, but no one in his sense
supposes that they will thus arrange themselves of their own power.
Some one must arrange them. Who arranges the tiny bricks of which the
animal body consists, or what arranges them? To revert to our previous
example of the garden; suppose that we bring back from that which we
desire to copy a bag of seeds representing all the plants which it
contains. We have a plot of land of the same size as our example; we dig
it and we dung it and then we scatter our seeds perfectly haphazard over
its surface. What are the odds as to their coming up in an exactly
similar pattern to those in the other garden. Mathematicians, I suppose,
could calculate the probabilities, but they must be infinitesimally
small. Yet in the case of the animal the pattern is always observed.
It is quite useless for any one, however eminent an authority he may be,
to dismiss the matter by saying "It is a phenomenon of arrangement," for
that begs the whole question. A Martian visitor taken to Westminster
Abbey and told that its construction was a "phenomenon of arrangement"
might be expected to turn a scornful eye upon his cicerone and reply,
"Any fool can see that, but who arranged it?"
Hence, though wild horses would not drag such an admission from many, we
are irresistibly compelled to adopt the theory of a Creator and a
Maintainer also of nature and its operations--so-called--if we are to
escape from the absurdities involved in any other explanation. Thus
there are very important and fundamental matters to be deduced from the
very little which we know about inheritance, just as there are from a
hundred and one other lines of consideration related to this world and
its contents. We do not know very much--it may fairly be said we _know_
nothing as to the vehicle of inheritance. We know a little, but it is
still a very little even in comparison with what we may yet come to know
as the result of careful and long-continued experiment, about the laws
of inheritance. What we do learn from our knowledge, such as it is, is
the fact that we can give no intelligent or intelligible explanation of
the facts brought before us except on the hypothesis of a Creator and
Maintainer of all things.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: A third explanation, that the mechanism of
inheritance is of a chemical character, is now being put
forward, and some mention of this view, which is by no means
one of general acceptance, will be found in another article in
this volume.]
[Footnote 34: An account of them will be found in _A Century of
Scientific Thought_, by the present writer, published by
Messrs. Burns & Oates.]
VII. "SPECIAL CREATION"
Professor Scott, of Princeton, has recently given to the public in his
Westbrook Lectures[35] an exceedingly impartial, convincing, and lucid
statement of the evidence for the theory of evolution or transformism.
On one point of terminology a few observations may not be amiss, since
there is a certain amount of confusion still existing in the minds of
many persons which can be and ought to be cleared up. Throughout his
book Professor Scott contrasts evolution with what he calls "special
creation." In so doing he is evidently in no way anxious to deny the
fact that there is a Creator, and that evolution may fairly be regarded
as His method of creation. In one passage he expressly states that
"acceptance of the theory of evolution by no means excludes belief in a
creative plan."
And again, when dealing with the palæontological evidence in favour of
evolution, he points out that Cuvier and Agassiz, examining it as it was
known in their day, interpreted the facts as the carrying out of a
systematic creative plan, an interpretation which the author claims "is
not at all invalidated by the acceptance of the evolutionary theory." He
is not, we need hardly say, in any way singular in taking up this
attitude, since it was held by Darwin, by Wallace, by Huxley, and by
other sturdy defenders of the doctrine of evolution.
Yet, just as at the time that Darwin's views were first made public,
many thought that they were subversive of Christianity, so, even now,
some whose acquaintance with the problem and its history is of a
superficial character, are inclined when they see the word creation,
even with the qualifying adjective "special" prefixed to it, used in
contradistinction to evolution, to imagine that the theory of creation,
and of course of a Creator, must fall to the ground if evolution should
be proved to be the true explanation of living things and their
diversities.
It is more than a little difficult for us, living at the present day, to
understand this curious frame of mind; yet it certainly existed, and
existed where it might least have been expected to exist. Nor is it
quite extinct to-day, though it only lingers in the less instructed
class of persons. The misconception arose from a confusion between the
fact and the method of creation. As to the former, no Catholic, no
Christian, no theist has any kind of doubt; indeed there are those who
could not be classified under any of those categories who still would be
prepared to admit that there must be a First Cause as the explanation
of the universe. Some of them, whose reasoning is a little difficult to
follow, seem to be content with an immanent, blind god, a mere
mainspring to the clock, making it move, no doubt, but otherwise
powerless. If we neglect--in a mathematical sense--those who adopt the
agnostic attitude; content themselves with the formula _ignoramus et
ignorabimus_ of Du Bois Reymond, and confine their investigations to the
machine as a going machine without inquiring how it came to be a machine
or what set it to work, we shall, I think, find that most people who
have really thought out the question admit that the only reasonable
explanation of things as they are, is the postulation of a Free First
Cause; in other words, an Omnipotent Creator of the universe. Such, of
course, is the teaching of the Scriptures and of the Church, and it must
be admitted that neither of them carries us very much further in this
matter. In fact, whilst both are perfectly clear and definite about the
fact of creation, neither of them has much to say about the method. Yet,
as all admit, evolution concerns only the method and tells us absolutely
nothing about the cause.
Being omnipotent, it is obvious that its Maker might have created the
universe in any way which seemed good to Him--for example, all at once
out of nothing just as it stands at this moment. Such a thing would not
be impossible to Omnipotence; and, as we know, Fallopius, suddenly
confronted by the problems of fossils in the sixteenth century, did
suggest that they were created just as they were, and that they had
never been anything else. So did Philip Gosse some two and a half
centuries later.
There is nothing more sure than that the world was not created just as
it is. Reason and Scripture both teach us that, and geology makes it
quite clear that the appearance of living things upon the earth has been
successive; that groups of living things, like the giant saurians, which
were once the dominant zoological objects, had their day and have gone,
as we may suppose, for ever. A few very lowly forms, like the
lamp-shells, have persisted almost throughout the history of life on the
earth, but on the whole the picture which we see is one of appearances,
culminations, and disappearances of successive races of living things.
There was a time when Trilobites, crustaceans whose nearest living
representatives are the King-Crabs, first became features of the fauna
of the earth. Then they increased to such an extent as to become the
most prominent feature. Then they declined in importance, disappeared,
and for uncounted ages have existed only as fossils. Thus we conclude
that the creation of species was a progressive affair, just as the
creation of individuals is a successive affair, for every living thing,
coming as it does into existence by the power of the Creator, is His
creation and in a very real sense a special creation. Now we know very
well how living things come into existence to-day; can we form any idea
as to how they originated in the beginning? Milton, in his crude
description in _Paradise Lost_, pictured living things as gradually
rising out of and extricating themselves from the soil.