In referring to the blue tint exhibited in salt-fens by the pink-colored
flower of the _thrift_, (_Statice Armeria_,) he might have added, that
the general green of the terrestrial vegetation likewise assumes, when
subjected to those modified marine influences under which plants of
the land can continue to live, a decided tinge of blue. It is further
noticeable, that the general brown of at least the larger algæ presents,
as they creep upwards upon the beach to meet with these, a marked tinge
of yellow. The prevailing brown of the one flora approximates towards
yellow,—the prevailing green of the other towards blue; and thus,
instead of mutually merging into some neutral tint, they assume at their
line of meeting directly antagonistic hues.
But what does experience say regarding the transmutative conversion of
a marine into a terrestrial vegetation,—that experience on which the
sceptic founds so much? As I walked along the green edge of the Lake
of Stennis, selvaged by the line of detached weeds with which a recent
gale had strewed its shores, and marked that for the first few miles the
accumulation consisted of marine algæ, here and there mixed with tufts
of stunted reeds or rushes, and that as I receded from the sea it was
the algæ that became stunted and dwarfish, and that the reeds, aquatic
grasses, and rushes, grown greatly more bulky in the mass, were also
more fully developed individually, till at length the marine vegetation
altogether disappeared, and the vegetable debris of the shore became
purely lacustrine,—I asked myself whether here, if anywhere, a transition
flora between lake and sea ought not to be found? For many thousand years
ere the tall gray obelisks of Stennis, whose forms I saw this morning
reflected in the water, had been torn from the quarry, or laid down in
mystic circle on their flat promontories, had this lake admitted the
waters of the sea, and been salt in its lower reaches and fresh in its
higher. And during this protracted period had its quiet, well-shattered
bottom been exposed to no disturbing influences through which the
delicate process of transmutation could have been marred or arrested.
Here, then, if in any circumstances, ought we to have had in the broad,
permanently brackish reaches, at least indications of a vegetation
intermediate in its nature between the monocotyledons of the lake and the
algæ of the sea; and yet not a vestige of such an intermediate vegetation
could I find among the up-piled debris of the mixed floras, marine
and lacustrine. The lake possesses no such intermediate vegetation. As
the water freshens in its middle reaches, the algæ become dwarfish and
ill-developed; one species after another ceases to appear, as the habitat
becomes wholly unfavorable to it, until at length we find, instead of
the brown, rootless, flowerless fucoids and confervæ of the ocean, the
green, rooted, flower-bearing flags, rushes, and aquatic grasses of
the fresh water. Many thousands of years have failed to originate a
single intermediate plant. And such, tested by a singularly extensive
experience, is the general evidence.
There is scarce a chain-length of the shores of Britain and Ireland that
has not been a hundred and a hundred times explored by the botanist,—keen
to collect and prompt to register every rarity of the vegetable kingdom;
but has he ever yet succeeded in transferring to his herbarium a single
plant caught in the transition state? Nay, are there any of the laws
under which the vegetable kingdom exists better known than those laws
which fix certain species of the algæ to certain zones of coast, in which
each, according to the overlying depth of water and the nature of the
bottom, finds the only habitat in which it can exist? The rough-stemmed
tangle (_Laminaria digitata_) can exist no higher on the shore than
the low line of ebb during stream-tides; the smooth-stemmed tangle
(_Laminaria saccharina_) flourishes along an inner belt, partially
uncovered during the ebbs of the larger neaps; the forked and cracker
kelp-weeds (_Fucus serratus_ and _Fucus nodosus_) thrive in a zone still
less deeply covered by water, and which even the lower neaps expose. And
at least one other species of kelp-weed, the _Fucus vesiculosus_, occurs
in a zone higher still, though, as it creeps upwards on the rocky beach,
it loses its characteristic bladders, and becomes short and narrow of
frond. The thick brown tufts of _Fucus canaliculatus_, which in the lower
and middle reaches of the Lake of Stennis I found heaped up in great
abundance along the shores, also rises high on rocky beaches,—so high in
some instances, that during neap-tides it remains uncovered by the water
for days together. If, as is not uncommon, there be an escape of land
springs along the beach, there may be found, where the fresh water oozes
out through the sand and gravel, an upper terminal zone of the confervæ,
chiefly of a green color, mixed with the ribbon-like green layer, (_Ulva
latissima_,) the purplish-brown layer, (_Porphyra laciniata_,) and still
more largely with the green silky Enteromorpha, (_E. compressa_.)[37]
And then, decidedly within the line of the storm-beaches of winter,—not
unfrequently in low sheltered bays, such as the Bay of Udale or of
Nigg, where the ripple of every higher flood washes,—we may find the
vegetation of the land—represented by the sentinels and picquets of
its outposts—coming down, as if to meet with the higher-growing plants
of the sea. In salt marshes the two vegetations may be seen, if I may
so express myself, _dovetailed_ together at their edges,—at least one
species of club-rush (_Scirpus maritimus_) and the common saltwort and
glasswort (_Salsola kali_ and _Salicornia procumbens_) encroaching so far
upon the sea as to mingle with a thinly-scattered and sorely-diminished
fucus,—that bladderless variety of the _Fucus vesiculosus_ to which I
have already referred, and which may be detected in such localities,
shooting forth its minute brown fronds from the pebbles. On rocky
coasts, where springs of fresh water come trickling down along the
fissures of the precipices, the observer may see a variety of _Rhodomenia
palmata_—the fresh-water dulse of the Moray Frith—creeping upwards from
the lower limits of production, till just where the common gray balanus
ceases to grow. And there, short and thick, and of a bleached yellow
hue, _it_ ceases also; but one of the commoner marine confervæ,—the
_Conferva arcta_, blent with a dwarfed _Enteromorpha_,—commencing a
very little below where the dulse ends, and taking its place, clothes
over the runnels with its covering of green for several feet higher:
in some cases, where it is frequently washed by the upward dash of the
waves, it rises above even the flood-line; and in some crevice of the
rock beside it, often as low as its upper edge, we may detect stunted
tufts of the sea-pink or of the scurvy-grass. But while there is thus
a vegetation intermediate _in place_ between the land and the sea, we
find, as if it had been selected purposely to confound the transmutation
theory, that it is in no degree intermediate in character. For, while
it is chiefly marine weeds of the lower division of the confervæ that
creep upwards from the sea to meet the vegetation of the land, it is
chiefly terrestrial plants of the higher division of the dicotyledons
that creep downwards from the land to meet the vegetation of the sea.
The salt-worts, the glass-worts, the arenaria, the thrift, and the
scurvy-grass, are all dicotyledonous plants. Nature draws a deeply-marked
line of division where the requirements of the transmutative hypothesis
would demand the nicely graduated softness of a shaded one; and,
addressing the strongly marked floras on either hand, even more sternly
than the waves themselves, demands that to a certain definite bourne
should they come, and no farther.
But in what form, it may be asked, or with what limitations, ought the
Christian controversialist to avail himself, in this question, of the
experience argument? Much ought to depend, I reply, on the position
taken up by the opposite side. We find no direct reference made by the
author of the “Vestiges” to the anti-miracle argument, first broached
by Hume, in a purely metaphysical shape, in his well-known “Inquiry,”
and afterwards thrown into the algebraic form by La Place, in his
_Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités_. But we do not detect its
influences operative throughout the entire work. It is because of
some felt impracticability on the part of its author, of attaining
to the prevailing belief in the _miracle_ of creation, that he has
recourse, instead, to the so-called _law_ of development. The _law_ and
the _miracle_ are the alternatives placed before him; and, rejecting
the _miracle_, he closes with the _law_. Now, in such circumstances,
he can have no more cause of complaint, if, presenting him with the
experience argument of Hume and La Place, we demand that he square
the evidence regarding the existence of his _law_ strictly according
to its requirements, than the soldier of an army that charged its
field-pieces with rusty nails would have cause of complaint if he found
himself wounded by a missile of a similar kind, sent against him by
the artillery of the enemy. You cannot, it might be fairly said, in
addressing him, acquiesce in the miracle here, because, as a violation of
the laws of nature, there are certain objections, founded on invariable
experience, which bear direct against your belief in it. Well, here
are the objections, in the strongest form in which they have yet been
stated; and here is your hypothesis respecting the development of marine
algæ into terrestrial plants. We hold that against that hypothesis
the objections bear at least as directly as against any miracle
whatever,—nay, that not only is it contrary to an invariable experience,
but opposed also to all testimony. We regard it as a mere idle dream.
Maillet dreamed it,—and Lamarck dreamed it,—and Oken dreamed it; but none
of them did more than merely dream it: its existence rests on exactly the
same basis of evidence as that of Whang the miller’s “monstrous pot of
gold and diamonds,” of which he dreamed three nights in succession, but
which he never succeeded in finding. If we are in error in our estimate,
here is the argument, and here the hypothesis; give us, in support of the
hypothesis, the amount of evidence, founded on a solid experience, which
the argument demands.
But to leave the experience argument in exactly the state in which it
was left by Hume and La Place, would be doing no real justice to our
subject. It is in that state quite sufficient to establish the fact,
that there can be no real escape from belief in _acts of creation_ never
witnessed by man, to _processes of development_ never witnessed by man;
seeing that a presumed _law_ beyond the cognizance of experience must be
as certainly rejected, on the principle of the argument, as a presumed
_miracle_ beyond that cognizance. It places the presumed _law_ and the
presumed _miracle_ on exactly the same level. But there is a palpable
flaw in the anti-miracle argument. It does not prove that miracles _may
not have taken place_, but that miracles, whether they have taken place
or no, are _not to be credited_, and this simply because they _are_
miracles, _i. e._ violations of the established laws of nature. And if it
be possible for events to take place which man, on certain principles,
is imperatively required not to credit, these principles must of course
serve merely to establish a discrepancy between the actual _state_ of
things, and what is to be _believed_ regarding it. And thus, instead of
serving purposes of truth, they are made to subserve purposes of error;
for the existence of truth in the mind is neither more nor less than the
existence of certain conceptions and beliefs, adequately representative
of what actually _is_, or what really _has taken place_.
I cannot better illustrate this direct tendency of the anti-miracle
argument to destroy truth in the mind, by bringing the mental beliefs
into a state of nonconformity with the possible and actual, than by a
quotation from La Place himself: “We would not,” he says, “give credit
to a man who would affirm that he saw a hundred dice thrown into the
air, and that they all fell on the same faces. If we had ourselves been
spectators of such an event, we would not believe our own eyes till we
had scrupulously examined all the circumstances, and assured ourselves
that there was no trick or deception. After such an examination, we would
not hesitate to admit it, notwithstanding its great improbability; and no
one would have recourse to an inversion of the laws of vision in order to
account for it.” Now, here is the principle broadly laid down, that it
is impossible to communicate by the evidence of testimony, belief in an
event which _might_ happen, and which, if it happened, _ought_ on certain
conditions to be credited. No one knew better than La Place himself, that
the _possibility_ of the event which he instanced could be represented
with the utmost exactitude by figures. The probability, in throwing a
single die, that the ace will be presented on its upper face, is as one
in six,—six being the entire number of sides which the cube can possibly
present, and the side with the ace being one of these;—the probability
that in throwing a _pair_ of dice the aces of both will be at once
presented on their upper faces, is as one in thirty-six, as against the
one sixth chance of the ace being presented by the one, there are also
six chances that the ace of the other should not concur with it;—and in
throwing _three_ dice, the probability that their three aces should be at
once presented is, of course, on the same principle, as one in six times
thirty-six, or, in other words, as one in two hundred and sixteen. And
thus, in ascertaining the exact degree of probability of the hundred aces
at once turning up, we have to go on multiplying by six, for each die we
add to the number, the product of the immediately previous calculation.
Unquestionably, the number of chances _against_, thus balanced with
the single chance _for_, would be very great; but its existence as a
definite number would establish, with all the force of arithmetical
demonstration, the _possibility_ of the event; and if an eternity were
to be devoted to the throwing into the air of the hundred dice, it would
occur an _infinite number of times_. And yet the principle of Hume and La
Place forms, when adopted, an impassable gulf between this possibility
and human belief. The possibility might be embodied, as we see, in an
actual occurrence,—an occurrence witnessed by hundreds; and yet the
anti-miracle argument, as illustrated by La Place, would cut off all
communication regarding it between these hundreds of witnesses, however
unexceptionable their character as such, and the rest of mankind. The
principle, instead of giving us a right rule through which the beliefs
in the mind are to be rendered correspondent with the reality of things,
goes merely to establish a certain imperfection of transmission from one
mind to another, in consequence of which, realities in fact, if very
extraordinary ones, could not possibly be received as objects of belief,
nor the mental appreciation of things be rendered adequately concurrent
with the state in which the things really existed.
Nor is the case different when, for a _possibility_ which the
arithmetician can represent by figures, we substitute the _miracle_
proper. Neither Hume nor La Place ever attempted to show that miracles
could not take place; they merely directed their argument against a
belief in them. The wildest sceptic must admit, if in any degree a
reasonable man, that there _may_ exist a God, and that that God _may_
have given laws to nature. No _demonstration_ of the non-existence of a
Great First Cause has been ever yet attempted, nor, until the knowledge
of some sceptic extends over all space, ever _can_ be rationally
attempted. Merely to _doubt_ the fact of God’s existence, and to give
reasons for the doubt, must till then form the highest achievements of
scepticism. And the God who _may_ thus exist, and who _may_ have given
laws to nature, _may_ also have revealed himself to man, and, in order to
secure man’s reasonable belief in the reality of the revelation, _may_
have temporarily suspended in its operation some great natural law,
and have thus shown himself to be its Author and Master. Such seems to
be the philosophy of miracles; which are thus evidently not only _not_
impossibilities, but even not _improbabilities_. Even were we to permit
the sceptic himself to fix the numbers representative of those several
_mays_ in the case, which I have just repeated, the chances against
them, so to speak, would be less by many thousand times than the chances
against the hundred dice of La Place’s illustration all turning up
aces. The existence of a Great First Cause is at least as probable—the
sceptic himself being judge in the matter—as the _non_-existence of a
Great First Cause; and so the probability in this first stage of the
argument, instead of being, as in the case of the single die, only one
to six, is as one to one. Again,—in accordance with an expectation so
general among the human family as to form one of the great instincts of
our nature,—an instinct to which every form of religion, true or false,
bears evidence,—it is in no degree less probable that this God should
have revealed himself to man, than that he should _not_ have revealed
himself to man; and here the chances are again as one to one,—not, as in
the second stage of the calculation on the dice, as one to thirty-six.
Nor, in the third and last stage, is it less probable that God, in
revealing himself to man should have given miraculous evidence of the
truth of the revelation, so that man “might believe in Him for His work’s
sake,” than that He should _not_ have done so; and here yet again the
chances are as one to one,—not as one to two hundred and sixteen. No
rational sceptic could fix the chances lower; nay, no rational sceptic,
so far as the _existence_ of a Great First Cause is concerned, would be
inclined to fix them so low: and yet it is in order to annihilate all
belief in a possibility against which the chances are so few as to be
represented—scepticism itself being the actuary in the case—by three
units, that Hume and La Place have framed their argument. Miracles _may_
have taken place,—the probabilities against them, stated in their most
extreme and exaggerated form, are by no means many or strong; but we are
nevertheless not to believe that they _did_ take place, simply because
miracles they were. Now, the effect of the establishment of a principle
such as this would be simply, I repeat, the destruction of the ability
of transmitting certain beliefs, however well founded originally, from
one set or generation of men to another. These beliefs the first set
or generation might, on La Place’s own principles, be compelled to
entertain. The evidence of the senses, however wonderful the event
which they certified, is not, he himself tells us, to be resisted. But
the conviction which, on one set of principles, these men were on no
account to resist, the men that came immediately after them were, on
quite another set of principles, on no account to entertain. And thus
the anti-miracle argument, instead of leading, as all true philosophy
ought, to an exact correspondence between the realities of things and
the convictions received by the mind regarding them, palpably forms a
bar to the reception of beliefs, adequate to the possibilities of actual
occurrence or event, and so constitutes an imperfection or flaw in the
mental economy, instead of working an improvement. And, in accordance
with this view, we find that in the economy of minds of the very highest
order this imperfection or flaw has had no place. Locke studied and wrote
upon the subject of miracles proper, and exhibited in his “Discourse”
all the profundity of his extraordinary mind; and yet Locke was a
believer. Newton studied and wrote on the subject of miracles of another
kind,—those of prophecy; and he also, as shown by his “Observations on
the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse,” was a believer. Butler
studied and wrote on the subject of miracles, chiefly in connection with
“Miraculous Revelation;” and he also was a believer. Chalmers studied
and wrote on the subject of miracles in his “Evidences,” after Hume, La
Place, and Playfair had all promulgated their peculiar views regarding
it; and he also was a believer. And in none of the truly distinguished
men of the present day, though all intimately acquainted with the
anti-miracle argument, is this flaw or imperfection found to exist: on
the contrary, they all hold, as becomes the philosophic intellect and
character, that whatever is possible may occur, and that whatever occurs
ought, on the proper evidence, to be believed.
But though the experience argument is of no real force, and, as shown by
the beliefs of the higher order of minds, of no real effect, when brought
to bear against miracles supported by the proper testimony, _it is_ of
great force and effect when brought to bear, not against _miracles_,
but against some presumed _law_. It is experience, and experience only,
that determines what is or is not law, and it is law, and law only,
that constitutes the subject-matter of ordinary experience. Experience,
in determining what is really miracle, does so simply through its
positive knowledge of law: by knowing law, it knows also what would be a
violation of it. And so miracle cannot possibly form the subject-matter
of experience in the sense of Hume. For did miracle constitute the
subject-matter of experience, the law of which the miracle was a
violation _could not_: most emphatically, in this case, were there “no
law” there could be “no transgression;” and so experience would be unable
to recognize, not only the existence of the law transgressed, but also
of the miracle, in its character as such, which was a transgression of
the law. We determine from experience that there exists a certain fixed
law, known among men as the law of gravitation; and that, in consequence
of this law, if a human creature attempt standing upon the sea, he will
sink into it; or if he attempt rising from the earth into the heavens,
he will remain fixed to the spot on which the attempt is made. Such, in
these cases, would be the direct effects of this gravitation _law_; and
any presumed law antagonistic in its character could not be other than a
law contrary to that invariable experience by which the existence of the
real law in the case is determined. But certain it is—for the evidence
regarding the facts cannot be resisted, and by the greatest minds has
not been resisted—that a man _did_ once walk upon the sea without
sinking into it, and _did_ once ascend from the earth into the sky; and
these _miracles_ ought not to be tested—and by earnest inquirers after
truth really never have been tested—by any experience of the uniformity
of the law of which they were professed transgressions, seeing it was
essentially and obviously necessary that, in order to serve the great
moral purpose which God intended by them, the law which they violated
should have been a uniform law, and that they should have been palpable
violations of it. But while the experience argument is thus of no
value when directed against well-attested _miracle_, it is, as I have
said, all-potent when directed against presumed _law_. Of law we know
nothing, I repeat, except what experience tells us. A miracle contrary
to experience in the sense of Hume is simply a miracle; a presumed law
contrary to experience is no law at all. For it is from experience, and
experience only, that we know any thing of natural law. The argument
of Hume and La Place is perfect, as such, when directed against the
development visions of the Lamarckian.
THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED
FOUNDATIONS.