and erroneous assumption that a process is proved to have been without
significance or purpose when the manner in which it has been brought
about is exhibited. It is plain that on this assumption even those
works of man which have cost most thought might be shown to have
cost none. A house is not built without considerable reflection and
continuous reference to an end contemplated and desired, but the end
is only gradually realised by a process which can be traced from its
origin onwards, and through the concurrence or sequence of a multitude
of conditions. Would a description of the circumstances on which the
security and other merits of a house depend,--of the peculiarities in
its foundation, walls, and roof, in its configuration and materials,
which render it convenient and comfortable, or of the processes by
which these peculiarities were attained,--prove the house to have
been unbuilt by man, to have been developed without the intervention
of an intelligent architect? It would, if Comte's argument were good;
if it would not, Comte's argument must be bad. But can any one fail
to see that such an argument in such a case would be ridiculous? The
circumstances, peculiarities, and processes referred to are themselves
manifest evidences of design and intelligence. They are a part of what
has to be explained, and a part of it which can only be explained on
the supposition of a contriving and superintending mind. They entitle
us to reject all hypotheses which would explain the construction
of the house without taking into account the intelligence of its
architect. The circumstances, peculiarities, and process described
by Comte, as rendering the earth an orderly system and the abode of
life, are no less among the evidences for the belief that intelligence
has presided over the formation of the earth. They require for their
rational comprehension to be thought of as the means and conditions by
which ends worthy of intelligence have been secured. They require to
be accounted for; and they cannot be reasonably accounted for except
on the supposition of having been designed. If we reject that view
we must accept this, that the present system of things is a special
instance of order which has occurred among innumerable instances of
disorder, produced by the interaction of the elements or atoms of
matter in infinite time. These elements or atoms we must imagine as
affecting all possible combinations, and falling at length, after
countless failures, into a regular and harmonious arrangement of
things. Now, we can in a vague, thoughtless way imagine this, but we
cannot justify our belief of it either by particular facts or general
reasons. It is an act of imagination wholly divorced from intelligence.
Thus to refer the origin and explanation of universal order to chance,
is merely mental caprice.
If the evolution of the earth and the heavenly bodies from a nebula
destroy neither the relevancy nor the force of the design argument,
the development of complex organisms from simple ones, and the descent
of all the plants and animals on earth from a very few living cells
or forms, will not remove or lessen the necessity for supposing an
intelligence to have designed all the organisms, simple and complex
alike, and to have foreordained, arranged, and presided over the course
of their development. Were it even proved that life and organisation
had been evolved out of dead and inorganic matter, the necessity of
believing in such an intelligence would still remain. Nothing of the
kind has yet been proved. On the contrary, scientific experimentation
has all tended to show that life proceeds only from life. But had it
been otherwise--had this break and blank in the development theory been
filled up--matter would only have been proved to be more wonderful
than it had been supposed to be. The scientific confirmation of the
hypothesis of what is called spontaneous generation would not relieve
the mind from the necessity of referring the potency of life and all
else that is wonderful in matter either to design or chance, reason or
unreason--it would not free it from the dilemma which had previously
presented itself.[32]
[32] See Appendix XXIII.
The development of higher from lower organisms, of course, still less
frees us from the obligation to believe that a supreme intelligence
presides over the development. Development is not itself a cause, but
a process,--it is a something which must have a cause; and the only
kinds of development which have yet been shown to be exemplified in
the organic world demand intelligence as their ultimate cause. I do
not know that I can better prove that there is no opposition between
development and design than by referring to an illustration which
Professor Huxley made use of with a directly contrary view. To show
that the argument from final causes, or what is often called the
theological argument, had, as commonly stated, received its death-blow
from Mr Darwin, he wrote as follows: "The theological argument runs
thus--an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a
function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to
perform that purpose. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of
all the parts of the 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.
Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch
had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result
of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and
that this, again, had proceeded from a structure which could hardly
be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial,
and the hands were rudimentary, and that, going back and back in
time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable
rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible
to show that all these changes had resulted first from a tendency in
the structure to vary indefinitely, and secondly from something in the
surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an
accurate time-keeper and checked all those in other directions,--then
it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it
would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a
particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error
worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of
the means appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent."[33]
[33] Lay Sermons, pp. 330, 331.
Our great comparative physiologist would probably not write so at
present. He may still not accept the design argument; but he is now
well aware that it has not got its death-blow, nor even any serious
wound, from the theory of evolution. He has since, on more than one
occasion, shown the perfect compatibility of development with design.
He might, perhaps, in defence of his earlier and less considerate
utterances, maintain that no organ has been made with the precise
structure which it at present possesses in order to accomplish the
precise function which it at present fulfils; but he admits that the
most thoroughgoing evolutionist must at least assume "a primordial
molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are
the consequences," and "is thereby at the mercy of the theologist,
who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular
arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."
Granting thus much, he is logically bound to grant more. If the entire
evolution of the universe may have been intended, the several stages of
its evolution may have been intended; and they may have been intended
for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the collective evolution
or its final result. If eyes and ears were contrived for a purpose, the
eyes and ears of each species of animals may have been made with the
precise structure which they exhibit for the precise purposes which
they fulfil, although they may have been developed out of a different
kind of eyes and ears, and will, in the lapse of ages, be developed
into still other kinds. The higher theology, the general designs, which
Professor Huxley admits evolution cannot touch, is in no opposition to
the lower theology, the special designs, which he strangely supposes it
to have definitively discarded.
Nothing can be more certain than that Dr Paley would have held the
design argument to have been in no degree weakened by the theory
of evolution, and that he would have been very much astonished by
Professor Huxley's remarks on that argument. In referring to the
mechanism of a watch as an evidence of intelligence in its maker, Dr
Paley pointed out that our idea of the greatness of that intelligence
would be much increased if watches were so constructed as to give rise
to other watches like themselves. He must necessarily have admitted
that the watch imagined by Professor Huxley was still more remarkable,
and implied a still greater intelligence in its contrivance. The
revolving barrel must have had wonderful capabilities, which only
intelligence could confer. All the circumstances in which it was to
be placed must have been foreseen, and all the influences which were
to act upon it must have been taken into account, which could only
be done by intelligence. All that helped variations in the direction
of an accurate time-keeper must have been brought into requisition,
and all that hindered it, or favoured variations in other directions,
must have been detected and checked; but no unintelligent agents can
be conceived of as accomplishing such work, or as more than the means
of accomplishing it employed by a providential Reason. The greater
the distance between the revolving barrel and the most elaborated
watch--the greater the number of mechanisms between the first and the
last of these two terms, or between the commencing cause and the final
result--the greater the necessity for a mind the most comprehensive and
accurate, to serve as an explanation of the entire series of mechanisms
and the whole process of development.
Mr Darwin, and a large number of those who are called Darwinians,
profess to prove that all the order of organic nature may have been
unintentionally originated by the mechanical operation of natural
forces. They think they can explain how, from a few simple living
forms, or even from a single primordial cell, the entire vegetable and
animal kingdoms, with all their harmonies and beauties, have arisen
wholly independent of any ordaining and presiding mind, by means of
the operation of the law of heredity that like produces like; of
variability from the action of the conditions of life, and from use and
disuse; of over-production, or a ratio of increase so high as to lead
to a struggle for existence; of natural selection, or the survival and
prevalence of the fittest, and the disappearance and extinction of what
is unsuited to its circumstances and inferior to its competitors; and
of sexual selection. But the remarkable originality, ingenuity, and
skill which they display in endeavouring to establish, illustrate, and
apply these laws, make all the more striking the absence of freshness
and independence, of force or relevancy, in the reasonings by which
they would attach to them an irreligious inference. The same men who
have adduced so many new facts, and thrown so much new light on facts
previously known, in support of the real or alleged laws indicated,
have not adduced a single new reason, and scarcely even set in a more
plausible light a single old reason, for the denial of design. They
assure us, copiously and vehemently, that the laws which they claim to
have proved are in themselves a disproof of design; but they somehow
forget that it is incumbent on them to bestow the labour requisite
to make this manifest. They reason as if it were almost or wholly
self-evident, whereas a little more thought would show them that all
their laws imply mind and purpose.
There is a law of heredity: like produces like. But why is there such
a law? Why does like produce like? Why should not all nature have been
sterile? Why should there have been any provision for the propagation
of life in a universe ruled by a mere blind force? And why should
producer and produced be like? Why should offspring not always be as
unlike their parents as tadpoles are unlike frogs? The offspring of
all the higher animals pass through various embryological stages in
which they are extremely unlike their parents. Why should they ever
become like to them? Physical science cannot answer these questions;
but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered.
I can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than
that there is a God of wisdom, who designed that the world should be
for ages the abode of life; that the life therein should be rich and
varied, yet that variation should have its limits; that there should
be no disorder or confusion; and who, to secure this result, decreed
that plants should yield seeds, and animals bring forth, after their
kind. He who would disprove design must certainly not start with the
great mystery of generation.
Then, the so-called law of variability is the expression of a purpose
which must have Reason at its beginning, middle, and end. There is in
no organism an absolutely indefinite tendency to vary. Every variation
of every organism is in some measure determined by the constitution
of the organism. "A whale," as Dr Huxley says, "does not tend to vary
in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction
of producing whalebone." But a tendency to definite variation is an
indication of purpose. If a man could make a revolving barrel with a
tendency to develop into a watch, he would have to be credited with
having designed both the barrel and watch, not less than if he had
contrived and constructed the two separately. Further, variation has
proceeded in a definite direction. Darwin admits that there is no law
of necessary advancement. There is no more reason in the nature of the
case for improvement than for deterioration. Apart from the internal
constitution of an organism having been so planned, and its external
circumstances so arranged, as to favour the one rather than the other,
its variations could not have been more towards self-perfection than
self-destruction. But variation, according to the Darwinians, has
taken place in one direction and not in another; it has been forward,
not backward; it has been a progression, not a retrogression. Why?
Only because of a continuous adjustment of organisms to circumstances
tending to bring this about. Had there been no such adjustment, there
might have been only unsuitable variations, or the suitable variations
might have been so few and slight that no higher organisms would
have been evolved. Natural selection might have had no materials, or
altogether insufficient materials, to work with. Or the circumstances
might have been such, that the lowest organisms were the best endowed
for the struggle of life. If the earth were covered with water, fish
would survive, and higher creatures would perish. Natural selection
cannot have made the conditions of its own action--the circumstances
in the midst of which it must operate. Therefore, there is more in
progressive variation than it can explain: there is what only an
all-regulative intelligence can explain.
Again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives
rise to a struggle for existence. Well, is this law not a means to an
end worthy of Divine Wisdom? In it we find the reason why the world is
so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. What is called
over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means of
subsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists
merely for itself. The ratio of the production of life is probably none
too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied
with food and enjoyment. And the wants of all creatures are what have
to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species--not the
wants of man alone. If we adequately realised how vast is the number
of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we
would, I have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real
waste of life in the world. Then, the struggle to which the rate of
production gives rise is, on the showing of the Darwinians themselves,
subservient to the noblest ends. Although involving privation, pain,
and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections
of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion
has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The
inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be
attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake
of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering
which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals
for some higher end than happiness--that He cares for animal perfection
as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying
that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it was also intended
to serve. Besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare
existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the
largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free
and full exercise of all their faculties. It thus manifests, not only
indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. They are ends which
can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an
intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.
But what of the law, or so-called law, of natural selection? In itself,
and so far as physical science can either prove or disprove it, it is
simply an expression of the alleged fact, that in the struggle of life,
any variation, however caused, which is profitable to the individuals
of a species, will tend to their preservation, will have a chance
of being transmitted to their offspring, and will be of use to them
likewise, so that they will survive and multiply at the expense of
competitors which are not so well endowed. But natural selection thus
understood is obviously in no opposition to design; on the contrary,
it is a way in which design may be realised. Some might even hold that
design cannot be conceived of as realised in any other natural way;
that if not thus realised, it could only be miraculously realised.
But Mr Darwin, and many of those who call themselves his followers,
tell us not only that there is natural selection, but that blind
forces and mechanical laws alone bring it about; that intention and
intelligence have nothing to do with it. What proof do they give us?
Alas! the painful thing is that they give us none. They point out the
blind forces and the mechanical laws by which the selection is effected
and its results secured; they show how they are adapted to accomplish
their work: and then they assert that these forces and laws explain
the whole matter; that no underlying and all-embracing reason has
prepared, arranged, and used them. They see the physical agencies and
the physical process by which order and beauty have been attained--they
do not see intelligence and design; and because they do not see them,
they conclude that they have no existence. They describe the mechanism
which their senses apprehend, and affirm it to have made itself, or
at least to have been unmade, and to work of itself, because the mind
which contrived it and directs it is inaccessible to sense. All their
reasoning resolves itself into a denial of what is spiritual because it
is unseen.
The only instances of natural selection which have been adduced to show
that blind forces may bring about results as remarkable, and of the
same kind, as those which are accomplished by intelligent agents, are
manifestly irrelevant. They are of such a nature that every teleologist
must hold them to imply what they are intended to disprove. When
Professor Huxley points to the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay
as carefully selecting the particles of sea-sand on the coast of
Brittany, and heaping them, according to their size and weight, in
different belts along the shore; to a frosty night selecting the hardy
plants in a plantation from among the tender ones; and to a hurricane
transporting a sapling to a new seat in the soil,--he completely
mistakes what the problem before him is. Fire and water can produce
wonderful effects in a steam-engine; but the man who should infer, from
there being no intelligence in the fire and water themselves, that
intelligence must have had nothing to do with their effects when they
were brought into contact in a steam-engine, would deserve no great
credit for his reasoning. It is precisely Professor Huxley's reasoning.
He looks at the fire and water separately, and completely ignores the
engine. Because in a world which is a system of order and law a certain
collocation and combination of physical conditions and forces will
produce an orderly result, he infers that design and intelligence are
not needed to produce such a result. I submit that that is illegitimate
and irrelevant reasoning. It resolves itself into a denial of Divine
and intelligent agency, because the senses apprehend merely physical
elements and a physical process. It assumes a selected adaptation,
which presupposes intelligence in order to get rid of intelligence. It
begs the whole question.
The so-called law of sexual selection, if it be a law at all, is
obviously teleological in its nature. Its end is the production
of beauty in form and colour. Can blind physical forces, if not
subservient to intelligence, be conceived of as working towards so
essentially ideal a goal as beauty?
I think enough has now been said to show that the researches and
speculations of the Darwinians have left unshaken the design argument.
I might have gone farther if time had permitted, and proved that
they had greatly enriched the argument. The works of Mr Darwin are
invaluable to the theologian, owing to the multitude of "beautiful
contrivances" and "marvellous adjustments" admirably described in them.
The treatises on the fertilisation of orchids and on insectivorous
plants require only to have their legitimate conclusions deduced and
applied in order to be transformed into treatises of natural theology.
If Paley's famous work be now somewhat out of date, it is not because
Mr Darwin and his followers have refuted it, but because they have
brought so much to light which confirms its argument.[34]
[34] See Appendix XXIV.
I have challenged the theology of Mr Darwin, and those who follow his
guidance in theology. I have no wish to dispute his science. I pass
no judgment on his theories so far as they are scientific theories. It
may be safely left to the progress of scientific research to determine
how far they are true and how far erroneous. We ought not to assail
them needlessly, or to reject the truth which is in them, under the
influence of a senseless dread that they can hurt religion. In so far
as they are true, they must be merely expressions of the way in which
Divine intelligence has operated in the universe. Instead of excluding,
they must imply belief in an all-originating, all-foreseeing,
all-foreordaining, all-regulative intelligence, to determine the rise
and the course and the goal of life, as of all finite things. That
intelligence far transcends the comprehension of our finite minds,
yet we apprehend it as true intelligence. It is no blind force, but a
Reason which knows itself, and knows us, and knows all things, and in
the wisdom of which we may fully confide, even when clouds and darkness
hide from us the definite reasons of its operations. We can see and
know enough of its wisdom to justify faith where sight and knowledge
are denied to us. Let us trust and follow it, and, without doubt, it
will lead us by a path which we knew not, and make darkness light
before us, and crooked things straight.
LECTURE VII.
MORAL ARGUMENT--TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE AND HISTORY.
I.