_RECENT PHASES OF SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM._
'Wonder is the basis of worship. That progress of science which is
to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute mensuration and
numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdroeckh, much as he
otherwise venerates those two latter processes.'--_Sartor
Resartus._
I.
By the train of thought pursued in the last chapter, we were led to the
conclusion, not, indeed, that matter has no existence, but that its
nature or constitution is altogether different from what is commonly
supposed. The difference thus discovered does not, however, imply any
corresponding difference with respect to the properties--_sensible_
properties, as they are commonly called--whereby matter affects the
senses. Equally, whether matter be, in all and each of its various
species, inanimate, inert, passive substance, or a combination of
self-acting forces--equally whether it be the author or merely the
subject of whatever activity it manifests, that activity is equally
manifested in certain sequences which are as unvarying as if they were
prescribed by inexorable and irresistible laws, and which, indeed, by a
convenient, though exceedingly treacherous metaphor, are usually styled
laws--laws of Nature when spoken of collectively, laws of attraction,
repulsion, gravitation, motion, heat, light, and the like, when
separately referred to. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, however closely
we pry, into whatever depths of infinity we peer, we observe the most
perfect harmony between structure and law, law moulding structure and
structure utilising law. Afar off we descry systems upon systems, solar
and sidereal, like sand upon the sea-shore for multitude, and every
individual orb thereof rotating or revolving in strictest accordance
with inflexible mathematical principles, and evidently owing to the
previous influence of those same principles its characteristic
configuration. Near at hand we discern organic forms innumerable, each
with its own special arrangement of component parts admirably apt for
the performance in ordinary circumstances of special functions,
admirably, as circumstances change, accommodating itself by
corresponding changes for continuing the same or undertaking other and
equally appropriate functions, nor merely performing them all in despite
of the restraints imposed by law, but availing itself of those very
restraints as means and aids for their performance. Where so much
aptness is, adaptation surely must have been: where arrangement is so
plainly conducive to ends, the ends must surely have been foreseen, and
the arrangement effected by design and according to preconceived plan.
And there cannot have been design without a designer or designers: the
plan cannot but have had its author or authors: nor could the plan have
been executed without an artificer or artificers. Author or authors,
too, artificer or artificers, be the same singular or plural, must have
possessed, individually or collectively, not less of wisdom, power, and
goodness than are displayed by the finished work. Now of each of these
attributes, the amount to which the aspect of the universe bears
witness, albeit not infinite, inasmuch as the universe is not without
imperfections, is yet indefinite; as plainly without measure as the
universe is without bounds. Wherefore, not only must the universe have
had an author or authors, an artificer or artificers, but his or their
wisdom, power, and goodness, must, whether infinite or not, have been at
least illimitable.
Such is the argument from design, and such, to my thinking, the only
absolute certainties legitimately deducible from it; and although these,
in comparison with the numerous probabilities ordinarily associated with
them, may appear somewhat meagre, yet are they intrinsically of
exceeding moment. They constitute the only basis on which any rational
religion, any that appeals to the intellect as well as to the feelings,
can rest securely. Whoever accepts them, by whatever other name he
prefer to call himself, is essentially a theist. He only who denies or
ignores them can justly be stigmatised as an atheist. Yet, although an
inquiry into their soundness is thus plainly second in interest to none,
it is not that in which I propose to engage at present, unless
indirectly. My immediate concern is not with the strength of theism, but
with the weakness of atheism, and the hollowness of the latter's
dialectical pretensions. What in every form of piety is most provocative
of philosophic scorn, is its forwardness of faith, its eagerness of
acquiescence; but to this sort of reproach I expect to be able to show
that none are more obnoxious than those very philosophers by whom it is
most freely cast. That nothing is more unphilosophical than
uncompromising irreligion, nothing more credulous than its credulity, no
other beliefs more monstrous than those by which it strives to fill up
the void created by its own unbelief: this is my present thesis, and
this I propound, not unaware what formidable antagonists I am thereby
challenging, but not without something of the same confidence, and
something withal of the same ground for it, as David had when, in equal
strait, exclaiming, 'The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can
man do unto me?'
Let us at the outset consider what denial of plan in the structure of
the universe implies, and note, among other things signified, the
following. The exact conformity on matter's part to Nature's laws,
everywhere observable, and even more striking perhaps in minute details
than in grandiose generalities, is purely accidental. The laws were not
enacted in order to be obeyed; matter's various shapes were not given to
or assumed by it in order that its obedience might serve any particular
purpose. All appearances of ingenious contrivance in the collocation of
elementary particles, or in the co-operation of elementary forces, are
mere appearances. It was not designed that under the influence of the
laws of motion, chaos should resolve itself into systems, and time
divide itself into years and seasons and days and nights. It is quite
unintentionally that the countless varieties of mechanism appertaining
to different vegetable and animal fabrics have been rendered fit for
performing those special processes which, by reason in each case of some
special arrangement of parts, they actually do perform with such
marvellous precision. It is a total mistake to suppose that the eye was
meant for seeing, or the ear for hearing, or the heart for initiating
and regulating the circulation of the blood, or nervous ramifications
for receiving and disseminating sensible impressions. These various
organs have been discovered to be useful, and are used accordingly; but
they were not intended to be so used, or contrived with any such view,
or, indeed, contrived at all. The forces, whatever they be, and whether
identical with or totally distinct from itself, whereby matter, on one
supposition, acts, and, on the other, is acted upon, and by whose
operation the universe and all its contents have been fashioned and are
sustained, are in either case perfectly heedless and reckless forces,
operating always without the slightest reference to result.
Language like this was much in vogue among the French encyclopaedists of
the last century. By opposing it, even Voltaire incurred the reputation
of bigotry, and Hume probably had to listen to a good deal of it on that
memorable occasion when, dining with Baron D'Holbach, and intimating to
his host his disbelief in the existence of atheists, he was informed by
way of reply that he was actually at table with seventeen members of the
sect.[36] That in England, too, it was a good deal talked at about the
same and a somewhat later period, may be inferred from the fact that
against its teaching one of Paley's most celebrated treatises was
expressly directed. Doctrine which was once so fashionable, and which
even now cannot be said to be obsolete, was not, of course, without some
show of reason to support it, and somewhat in this wise the chief
arguments in its behalf were usually marshalled:--In order to account
for actual result, there is no need to imagine previous purpose. All
things that exist, all events that occur, must bear to each other some
relations in situation and time, which relations are not less likely to
be orderly than disorderly, or, rather, indeed, are more likely to be
the former than the latter. For necessarily the rarer rises above the
denser; the stronger compels the weaker; that which is pushed hardest
runs fastest. And even though, among organic forms, orderly and
disorderly had been, by the purely fortuitous concurrence of atoms,
originally produced in equal numbers, the former would be sure in the
course of ages to become the more numerous, and that in proportion to
the orderliness of their composition, and to their consequent
suitableness for the reception and maintenance of organic life, by which
they in turn would be maintained and multiplied, while less aptly
organised forms, succumbing in the struggle for existence, perished and
vanished away. Thus everything arranges itself--_everything_, however,
being here another name for Nature, which alone does or can exist, which
is all and does all; yet, though doing all things in general, does
whatever it does quite unintelligently, and without the least desire of
doing any one thing in particular more than another.
Though speaking of this as a show of reasoning, I would by no means be
understood to consider it as merely a show. On the contrary, I must
admit that it contains a modicum of reality sufficient, in my opinion,
to secure the position taken up from being utterly overthrown by any
direct attack not followed up by reference to a certain palpable
absurdity which we shall presently perceive to be inseparably connected
with the position. To so much of real reasoning as we have before us,
let then all due respect be shown. No doubt all existences must
necessarily dispose themselves or be disposed somehow. No doubt all
occurrences must succeed each other somehow. No doubt, either, that if
the disposing or otherwise originating forces operated quite
regardlessly of plan, no one disposition or succession would be a whit
less possible than any other--the most symmetric or evenly graduated
than the most disjointed or confused. Now although, since exertion is
utterly inconceivable without volition, and since volition is equally
inconceivable without consciousness, it must be impossible for any
forces ever to exert themselves altogether unintentionally, it is yet
perfectly possible for their exertion to have no ulterior intention
beyond that of gratifying an unprospective will. This is all that one
fidgetting about, as the phrase is, intends, when he has no special
motive for fidgetting in any particular direction more than in any
other, and similarly it may by possibility be the mere fidgettiness of
Nature that gives rise to all natural phenomena. Nature, indeed, cannot,
any more than any other force or combination of forces, be utterly
destitute of intelligence, but its intelligence may not inconceivably be
of no higher sort than that which the sensitive plant exhibits or
mimics. Nature cannot exert itself quite unconsciously, nor consequently
quite unintentionally, but its exertions, though not unintended, may
possibly not be intended for any result. It must be admitted, then,
that, so far, no reason has appeared why the force or forces by which
the universe was originally moulded, may not, as contended, have been
perfectly heedless and reckless; may not, without the least
premeditation or the slightest view to any ulterior object, have
produced certain phenomena in those particular sequences to which the
name of natural laws has been given; and may not, with the same total
absence of purpose, have adopted certain other courses of action which,
very fortunately, though quite undesignedly, have resulted in the
production of endless varieties of mechanism, most of them of
marvellously intricate and complex structure, and all and each of them
of structure marvellously suitable for performing, in co-operation with
Nature's laws, functions of an utility as varied as their structure. And
what any forces have been equal to do once, those same forces, if
remaining unimpaired, must be equal to repeat times without number.
Although, if you found your opponent at dice invariably throwing
double-sixes, you might feel confident that his dice were loaded, your
confidence, unless otherwise corroborated, would not amount to entire
certainty. With unloaded dice there would be nothing strange in
double-six being thrown once; but, if once, why not twice running? and
if twice, why not three, four, or a million times running, provided that
the thrower's strength held out so long? No one of the separate throws,
from the first to the millionth, would be attended with more difficulty
than any other. Whoever made the first might with no greater effort make
any one, and therefore every one, of the rest. In the fact of his having
commenced the series there would be proof of the possibility of his
completing it. In like manner, if it be not inconceivable that Nature's
forces may once, by a single unpremeditated exertion, have bestowed on
the universe its actual constitution, it is not inconceivable that by
continual repetition of similarly unpremeditated exertions, they may
have ever since maintained that constitution. In this supposition there
is nothing patently absurd. It is perfectly legitimate to suppose that
any event or combination of events, not demonstrably impossible, may
have occurred in the absence of complete certainty that they have not
occurred. It may not be illegitimate, therefore, to suppose that all
phenomena of the description termed physical, and all repeated sequences
of such phenomena, may have occurred, not causally, but casually--that
it may have been a fortuitous concourse of atoms which originally
established the existing economy of the universe, and an uninterrupted
succession of similar fortuitous concourses that has ever since
maintained that economy. That supposition, I repeat, involves no
absolute absurdity. What however is, if not absurd, at any rate
egregiously unscientific and most unphilosophically credulous, is to
treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances
against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality;
for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of
nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously
complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between
organic structure and natural law was not designedly established. In
considering this point, it will be convenient to take law first.
Inasmuch as, on the assumption that all phenomena of inorganic matter
are effects, purely unpremeditated, of Nature's capricious restlessness,
there would of course be no more reason why any one such phenomenon than
any other should not at any time occur, there would equally of course on
the same assumption, be no more reason why it should. An infinity of
phenomena being at all times equally possible, the chances against any
one being, on any occasion, preferred to all the rest, would be infinity
less one. Against any particular sequence of phenomena they would be as
infinity less one multiplied by the number of phenomena composing the
sequence, and against one or more repetitions of the same sequence they
would be the same multiple of virtual infinity multiplied by the number
of repetitions. Against perpetual repetition, they would, as it were, be
virtual infinity multiplied by infinity. On the assumption stated, an
apple loosened from the parent stem, might quite possibly fall to the
ground, but quite as possibly might remain suspended in mid air, or rise
straight upwards, or take any one of the innumerable directions
intervening between zenith and nadir, travelling too, unless
interrupted, in the direction selected for any period, from a single
moment to endless ages. Experience, however, teaches that an apple or
any other body of greater specific gravity than air, does invariably,
when deprived of support, fall straight downward, such downward movement
being part of one of those sequences of phenomena which are classed
under the head of gravitation. Now, to assert that this, or any other,
and consequently every other, specimen of gravitation, cannot possibly
have been unpremeditated would no doubt be unwarrantable. No doubt there
is one solitary, one infinitesimal chance that the force whose action
results in gravitation may, when producing that result, be acting with
as little choice of direction as a fidgetty man makes when moving his
arms or legs about for no better reason than that he will not take the
trouble to keep them quiet. Only, as on the supposition that the force
did not select its course, the chances against its always taking the
same course would be infinity less one indefinitely multiplied, the
probability that it does select must needs be the same indefinite
multiple of virtual infinity. Not less than this is the preponderance
of probability that the invariably recurrent sequences of phenomena
which we are in the habit of referring to gravitation, are premeditated,
and that the law of gravitation has, so to speak, been wittingly
ordained. And in this respect all invariable sequences of phenomena,
otherwise termed laws of nature, stand plainly in the same category. One
solitary and infinitesimal unit is the sole deduction to be made from
what would otherwise be infinite certainty, that the assumption we
started with is false, and that all invariable sequences are
premeditated, all the laws of nature enacted by a law-giver who intended
what he was enacting.
Intention, however, is not quite the same thing as design. It is
possible for action to be at once intentional and purposeless. If a man,
taking regularly a constitutional walk, is observed always to take the
same road, and to stop exactly at the same point, there can be no
reasonable doubt as to his intention to walk just so far and no farther;
but it does not follow that he has any object in walking which he
supposes would not be equally served by his walking a few paces more or
less. Similarly whatever be the certainty that the laws of nature have
been intentionally established, there is in that certainty no proof of
their having been established for any purpose beyond that of gratifying
some whim or humour of the lawgiver. For indications of design in the
universe we must look rather to organic than to inorganic nature, rather
to structure than to law. We shall find applying to the former the same
reasoning as to the latter, and likewise some more besides.
Inasmuch as, of the innumerable combinations of which the elements or
elementary forces are susceptible, each and every one, in the absence
of any preference for one over another on the part of the volition on
which the occurrence of all depends, would have equal chances of
occurring, the chances against the occurrence at any particular time of
any particular combination would be as the number, or rather as the
innumerosity, of all the rest to one. Such, in the absence of any
intentional action on Nature's part, would be the odds against any one
single occurrence of any one elemental combination. Against the
perpetual repetition of the same combination the odds would be the same
innumerosity innumerable times multiplied. Nevertheless there actually
is everlastingly recurring, not simply one single specimen, but an
innumerable multitude of the same elemental combinations. Whatever were
the combinations necessary for producing all the existing organisms,
vegetable and animal, with which our earth swarms, the constant
recurrence of those same or nearly the same combinations is
indispensable both for the maintenance of the organisms during life and
for the production of successors to them; and such constant recurrence
is plainly going on. The chances then against its being unintended must
be the aforesaid multiple of innumerosity. But this is not all. The
multiple in question represents the chances against perpetual repetition
of any set whatever of elemental combinations, but about the actually
recurrent set there is this peculiarity, that it produces and maintains
innumerable organisms or machines, which--inasmuch as all of them are
marvellously fit, by reason of their respective specialities of
structure, for performing different obviously useful purposes--have all
the appearance of having been expressly constructed for the performance
of those purposes. If these appearances of adaptation were fallacious,
if the apparent utility were undesigned, the chances against the
perpetual recurrence of so singularly useful, rather than of some
totally useless, set of combinations would be a multiple of innumerosity
similar to that which has clearly been shown to represent the
preponderance of probability against the constant repetition of any set
of combinations whatever, whether useful or useless. If, then, it were
permissible to use so extravagant an hyperbole to indicate an idea of
multitude to which it is not in the power of words to give adequate
expression, it might be said that while the chances against Nature's
habitual action being _unintentional_, or the result as it were of mere
fidgettiness or restlessness, are an indefinite multiple of infinity,
the chances against its being _purposeless_ and _undesigned_, without
view to end or object, is the same multiple doubled.
Still, in order to give the solitary and infinitesimal chance on the
other side its full due, let us confess it to be as yet not quite
conclusively demonstrated that the actual order of inorganic, and the
actual constitution of organic, nature are results of uninterrupted
repetition of one and the same purposeless volition, and of the same
purely fortuitous concourses of atoms. Let us admit it to be not
absolutely impossible, not utterly inconceivable, that vegetable and
animal organisms were not contrived such as they are with any view to
their becoming habitations of vegetable and animal life, but that having
been accidentally discovered to be fit to be lived in, they have been
taken possession of by life and inhabited accordingly; that, similarly,
the wondrously complex and varied mechanisms of which most organisms are
composed were not made to be used, but are used because certain uses
have been accidentally discovered for them--the eye, for instance, to
take one example out of myriads not less remarkable, not having been
meant to be seen with, but being employed for seeing because, by a happy
coincidence, the particles composing it have got to be collocated in
such wise that a picture of whatever is opposite to it is formed upon
the retina, and is thence by a nervous concatenation transmitted to the
brain. Although, if the most consummate skill, in comparison with which
that displayed in the fabrication of Mr. Newall's telescope were
downright clumsiness, had striven to devise a seeing apparatus, capable
of exact self-adjustment to all degrees of light, all gradations of
distance, all varieties of refrangibility, it could not have adopted a
contrivance more exquisitely ingenious, or evincing more minutely
accurate knowledge of the most secret laws of optics, than the mechanism
of the eye apparently betokens, let it still be admitted to be not quite
beyond the bounds of possibility, that not skill but the blindest and
densest ignorance may have presided over the whole operation. But even
though the modes of procedure involved in these admissions were not
quite impossible or inconceivable, belief in them would, I repeat, be
palpably irrational, and that almost to the last degree. The nearest
approach to a reason that can be imagined for it is the _Credo quia
incredibile est_ to which philosophers in despair have occasionally been
known to resort. _Dudum in scholis audiveram_, says Descartes, _nihil
tam absurde dici posse quod non dicatur ab aliquo Philosophorum_. In his
early college days he had heard that nothing so absurd can possibly be
said, but that some philosopher or other may say it. Such words are too
hard for me. I make as yet no charges of absurdity, contenting myself
for the moment with saying that no notion can be too unscientific to be
adopted by those scientific men who, gratuitously running counter to the
strongest possible presumption, set the science of probabilities so
utterly at naught as to adopt as reality an hypothesis the chances
against which are but one single iota short of infinite.
What, however, is unequivocally absurd, is a certain notion which I
hinted would be found to be inevitably consequent on the foregoing
premisses, and whose self-evident falsity carries with it condemnation
of the premisses. To say that the creative agency denominated Nature, or
by whatever other name known, neither had any ends in view when
originally adopting certain sequences of action, and originally
fabricating innumerable organisms exactly suitable for the performance,
in concert with those sequences, of innumerable useful functions; nor,
although ever since repeating the sequences, and maintaining or
reproducing the organisms, has so done with any reference to the
purposes which the sequences and organisms serve, is equivalent to
saying that the agency in question is not even aware that any purposes
are served. He who planted the eye doth not then see. He who fashioned
the ear doth not hear. He who teacheth man knowledge doth not, it seems,
know. Yet what, according to this, creative agency, whether God or
Nature, Creator or Creatress, can not perceive, the creature can. Even
an ass knows that thistles are good to eat, and that certain movements
of his tongue and larynx will result in a bray; while man not only daily
discovers fresh uses for things, but imagines that if he had had the
fashioning of them, he might have materially increased their utility;
King Alfonso of Castile, for instance, boasting of the valuable
cosmogonical advice he could have given had he been taken into council;
and one of Kaiser Wilhelm's predecessors on the throne of Prussia
intimating that he, in like case, would have proved conclusively that
pounded quartz and silex may easily be in excess in arable soil. The
creature, then, has intelligence of which the Creator has always been
destitute. Yet the creature can have nothing save what, either directly
or indirectly, he derives from a creator. Wherefore that, in becoming
endowed with intelligence, man must have received from the Creator that
which the Creator had not to give, is an article inseparable from the
profession of faith of those moderate Atheists who are content to regard
man as a creature.
There are, however, others of a more uncompromising temper, who do not
hesitate to pronounce creation, in the sense of formation of something
out of nothing, to be an incomprehensible myth; and it cannot be denied
to these that, however difficult it be to conceive an uncreated universe
existing from all eternity, the conception of an eternally existent
Creator is not one whit easier. Fairly enough, therefore, these may
proceed to argue that in the production of that compound, man, the share
of the agency usually styled creative must have been limited to
combining and arranging the elemental particles of his corporeal moiety.
Quite fairly, advancing still farther, they may hazard a conjecture that
it is from the union of the corporeal constituents of man that the
generation of his spiritual moiety has resulted. But for such generation
it is plainly indispensable that the corporeal constituents should have
been not inert particles but self-acting forces, and that, as such, they
must have been in possession of more or less intelligence, which
intelligence again either was or was not equal in amount to that of the
human spirit or mind generated by them. If it were not equal, then the
forces must have given to their offspring more than they had themselves
got to give--which is sheer nonsense. If it were equal, then, inasmuch
as the human mind is quite clever enough to discover uses for the
various parts of the human body and of other organisms, the forces to
which the human mind owes its origin must be at least equally clever.
The elementary forces by whose action the human and other organic bodies
have been constructed, must have been perfectly aware what they were
constructing, and what services the resulting structures would be fitted
to render. In other words, they must in their constructive operations
have worked towards specific ends, according to preconceived plan and
set design, wittingly contriving various machines for various purposes.
The advanced Atheists, with whose speculations we are here especially
concerned, are thus at liberty to choose between two horns of a dilemma,
but must not hope to escape both. Either they stand self-refuted by
assuming something to have been made out of nothing--a process which
they began by pronouncing impossible--or they must imagine intelligence,
competent to devise all organisms, to be diffused throughout the
universe, thereby showing themselves to have assumed their sectarian
appellation without sufficient warrant, and to be in reality rather
Pantheists than Atheists.
A third hypothesis indeed remains for any who are content to believe
that Nature's elementary forces having, without knowing what they were
about, constructed the human body, the human mind, until then a
houseless wanderer, lit upon it by chance, and, observing it to be a
habitation suitably swept and garnished, entered in and dwelt there.
Upon this supposition there must be, within the limits of our terrene
sphere, two distinct species of intelligence, a greater and a
lesser--the one competent to construct all sorts of marvellously complex
and marvellously serviceable machines, yet incompetent to understand
their utility, the other fully perceiving the utility of the machines,
yet utterly incompetent to fabricate them. But there are probably few
adventurers on the ocean of speculation who would not prefer total
shipwreck to the shelter of such a harbour of refuge as this.
Atheism must in fairness be acknowledged to have much mended its manners
within the last two or three generations. Its tone and language are no
longer of the rude, scoffing sort at which Voltaire may be readily
pictured as breaking into voluble protest, or Hume as contemptuously
opening his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. Though grown more civil,
however, it cannot be complimented on having grown more rational. At
most may it be credited with being more elaborately irrational than of
old. It now no longer denies, it only ignores. It does not pronounce God
non-existent. It only insists that there is not complete proof that God
exists; thereupon, however, proceeding to argue as if He did not exist,
and thereby, not simply confounding deficiency of proof on one side with
sufficiency of proof on the other, but overlooking an amount of proof
that on any other subject would, provisionally at least, be deemed
conclusive, and perversely rejecting an hypothesis which, whether
correct, or not, is at least a good working hypothesis, coinciding
exactly with most of the facts, and inconsistent with none of them, in
favour of an hypothesis which, even in the hands of a Huxley or a
Darwin, cannot be made to work at all.
II.
To my mind there is a genuine pleasure in giving expression to
admiration of any great intellectual achievement; and it is much rather
for that reason than on account of any value which I imagine my opinion
on such a subject can possess, that, having had occasion to name the
illustrious author of the 'Origin of Species,' I desire to preface my
criticism on what appears to me to be a grave defect in his theory, by
intimating my hearty concurrence in its leading principles. That
inasmuch as, owing to the exceeding fecundity of the generality of
organic beings, more individuals of almost every species are born than
can possibly survive, and that consequently a desperate struggle for
existence must take place amongst them; that in such a struggle the
smallest grain may turn the scale, the minutest advantage possessed by
some individuals over others determine which shall live and which shall
die; that, as the circumstances in which life is to be maintained
change, the character and structure of organisms must change also in
order to be accommodated thereto, but that the changes which
consequently take place in some individuals are better suited to the
altered circumstances than those which take place in other individuals;
that individual offspring, moreover, although always strongly resembling
their parents in the majority of particulars, always exhibit some slight
differences from them; that of these differences such as do not render
the offspring less fit will almost of necessity render them more fit
for coping with their rivals; and that superior fitness, however
acquired, is as likely as any other quality to be transmitted to
succeeding generations--all these are indisputable facts, and from
these, as premisses, it seems to me not so much to be legitimately
deducible that most existing species may have been produced 'by descent,
with modification, through natural selection,' or 'survival of the
fittest,' as necessarily to follow that they cannot have originated in
any other way. For _all_ species to have been created such as they now
are, is simply inconsistent with the premisses. Whatever beings may at
any remote epoch have been created, there must, according to the
conditions involved, have been amongst their descendants some better
fitted, by reason of divergence from the parent type, for engaging in
internecine strife than those, if any such there were, which adhered
closely to that type. Whether, then, among the survivors from the first
engagement in that never-ending struggle for life which must have
commenced soon after the creation, there were or were not any exact
representatives of the parent type, there must have been some exhibiting
more or less of divergence from that type. Among the descendants of
these, again, there must have been some who, together with the
structural or other advantages inherited from their immediate ancestors,
possessed, moreover, some advantages first nascent in themselves, and
who were similarly enabled thereby to prevail over their less gifted
competitors, and similarly to transmit all their advantages to a
posterity, some members of which would similarly be born with certain
new advantages in addition. By continual repetition of these processes,
and the consequent accumulation of divergencies from the original
pattern, however slight those divergencies might separately be, there
could not but eventually become formed breeds so distinct from each
other as to be to all intents and purposes distinct species, in
whichsoever of its many vague senses the term 'species' be understood.
Now these species, instead of having been created, would be the result
of divergence from their created progenitor. Whether, therefore, any
created species do or do not still exist, it is certain that among
existing species there are some that were not created, but which have
been gradually evolved, and evolved, too, through survival of the
fittest. Mr. Darwin, then, is fairly entitled to the praise of having
placed beyond dispute that a process called by himself 'Natural
Selection,' and by Mr. Herbert Spencer 'Survival of the Fittest,' has
almost from the commencement of organic life been, and still is, in
active operation; that it is a cause which must needs have originated
some species, and is quite competent to have originated all that still
exist; whereas creation, the only other suggested cause, cannot be
conceived to have done this latter unless every minutest shade of
difference between offspring and parent be regarded as the effect of a
separate creative act. Unless creation have originated every one of
those divergencies the accumulation of which constitutes a species,
clearly it cannot have originated that species. With some of the
phenomena connected with species the theory of creation cannot be
reconciled unless this novel interpretation be placed upon the word
creation, whereas there are none of the phenomena with which the
evolutionary hypothesis conflicts, and few, if any, which, when
restricted to its proper office of auxiliary, it will not help to
explain.
To what we might thus be assured of, even if we had only general
principles to guide us, all obtainable evidence unanimously testifies.
Geology distinctly proclaims that every portion of our globe's surface
has undergone vast changes, and that its organic inhabitants have
changed simultaneously and proportionately. The proof absolute, which it
furnishes, that at a period when few, if any, existing species had made
their appearance, many species now extinct already existed, is proof
equally absolute that if all species extinct and extant were created,
they cannot, at any rate, have been created at the same time. Of so much
at least we must be satisfied, unless we are prepared to accept the
ingenious conjecture of an orthodox divine, that, while our earth was
being formed out of chaos, Satan, to confound the faith of remote
generations, brought over bones of monsters from other worlds and
embedded them in the soil of ours, or that, as the same idea has been
otherwise expressed, while the earth's crust was a baking the devil had
a finger in the pie. Moreover, on the supposition that there was a break
of ages between the creations of extinct and of extant species, as
geology positively declares there must have been if both were separately
created, how passing strange is the 'grand fact that all extinct beings
can be classed with all recent beings'! The strangeness disappears,
however, when both are regarded as descendants of common progenitors.
The wonder would then be if they could not be so classed. Again, how
astonishing on the creative, how natural on the evolutionary hypothesis,
that the arrangement of bones in the hand of a man, the wing of a bat,
the fin of a porpoise, the leg of a horse, should be precisely the same;
the number of vertebrae in the neck of a giraffe, and in that of an
elephant the same; the primitive germs from which a man, a dog, a frog,
and a lobster are gradually evolved, to all appearance the same--the
same microscopic atom of homogeneous matter, undistinguishable by any
known test from an animalcule almost at the bottom of the organic scale!
Above all, that the courses by which animals of all degrees of
complexity are gradually developed from apparently equally simple germs
should, whenever traceable, be found to consist of progressive
ramifications, so that every higher animal, before arriving at maturity,
passes through several stages at the end of each of which lower animals
have stopped! How impossible, or how easy, to understand, according as
the one or the other hypothesis is adopted, is the phenomenon of what in
the one case will be treated as rudimentary, in the other as obsolete,
organs! No one need scruple to regard these as apparatus which the
creature has outgrown and allowed to fall into decay through neglect;
but whatever there is in us of real nobleness of feeling revolts against
the notion of their being apparatus which a divine Creator began to
build but was not able to finish. And yet again, how insultingly
irreconcilable with any rational estimate of Divine nature is the
possibility of any existing type of mammals having been created, seeing
that if so, it must have been created with _false_ marks of nourishment
from the womb of a mother that never existed!
These are some of the main grounds on which the Darwinian theory rests.
Of the abundance of detailed illustrations from which it may derive
additional support no adequate idea can be formed, except by careful
perusal of its author's own writings, and these fortunately may without
much exaggeration be said to be in everybody's hands. Of the arguments
that have been brought forward in opposition to it, all seem to me to
be susceptible of very complete answers, and one or two of the
strongest, of answers more complete than they have yet received. True,
there is no disputing the testimony borne by the paintings and
sculptures of Egyptian tombs, and of Ninevite palaces, that the basement
floors in Thebes and Memphis were infested by much the same sort of
beetles as those which are such nuisances in London kitchens; that
Sardanapalus, if ever he exchanged indoor for outdoor sports, may have
hunted with dogs and horses that might pass muster at an English meet,
and that the Pharaohs were served by negro slaves as like as two peas in
all externals to those who in the United States have recently and
prematurely been metamorphosed into free and independent electors. But
all this only proves that certain species which existed 4,000 years ago
are still represented by unchanged descendants. It does not prove that
other descendants and groups of descendants from the same species have
not within the same period undergone changes sufficiently great to
convert them into distinct races; neither, if it did prove thus much,
would it do more than afford a presumption, and a very deceptive one,
that 4,000 years are too short a time for the formation of a new race,
affording besides, at the same time, much stronger presumption that,
within the remotest limits to which Mosaic chronology can be pushed
back, the various races of mankind, white, black, and intermediately
tinted, can not possibly have descended from one pair of ancestors.
That domesticated animals, when suffered to run wild, always return to
the primitive wild type--this, instead of an argument against, is one of
the strongest arguments for the evolution theory, from which it is
indeed, as Mr. G. H. Lewes says, a necessary deduction. It is simply
because, as the conditions of life change, structure must, for
adaptation's sake, change likewise, that wild animals are capable of
being domesticated, of being, that is, made to undergo modifications by
being brought from the conditions of wildness to those of domesticity.
How, then, should they possibly retain those modifications, how escape
return to their previous shape and habits, when retransferred from
domesticity to wildness?
The question, Why are not new species continually produced? may be aptly
met by another. How, consistently with the theory, is it possible they
should? Natural Selection is represented as acting 'solely by
accumulating slight successive favourable variations,' as taking only
short and slow steps. By what possibility, then, can it suddenly produce
modifications sufficiently conspicuous to mark off a new species? New
species may be, and indeed are, constantly in process of formation on
all sides, under our very eyes, without our being aware; for since the
process requires ages for its accomplishment, it must needs be
imperceptible by the keenest observation. So that even when a new
species is completed, it is not recognised as new, so minute is the
difference between the perfection to which it has attained, and the
imperfect state in which we and our fathers before us had long known it.
'Why, however, since, according to the theory of Natural Selection, an
interminable number of intermediate forms must have existed, linking
together all the species in each group by gradations as fine as are our
present varieties--why do we not see these linking forms all around us?'
To this objection the very theory against which it is urged affords a
partial and almost adequate reply, the deficiencies of which are
besides to some extent supplied by embryology and geology, and to a
farther extent accounted for by the meagreness of the geological record.
Natural selection for survival necessarily implies extinction of all
that are not selected to survive, so that fossil remains are now the
only procurable evidence that any of these latter that have long been
extinct ever existed. But very many organic beings are incapable of
being preserved in a fossil condition, while of those which can be so
preserved 'the number of specimens in all our museums is absolutely as
nothing compared with the countless generations of countless species
that must have existed.' It should be recollected, too, that among still
existing forms are to be included several which result from uterine
transformation, and are never found alive except _in utero_.
Another objection, notwithstanding the great stress often laid on it,
seems to me to be altogether beside the real issue. It is the one
derived from the invariable sterility, real or supposed, of hybrids. A
fact cited by Mr. Lewes,[37] that of the fecundity of a cross called
_Leporides_, bred by M. Rouy of Angouleme, between the hare and rabbit,
of which a thousand on an average were for many years, and probably are
still, sent annually to market, would seem to be decisive against the
assumed sterility; but, however this be, matters not the least in regard
to the efficacy of Natural Selection, which, be it once again observed,
is represented as producing new species, not suddenly by the copulation
of two old and utterly distinct ones, but very gradually and slowly, by
the accumulation of minute differences occurring in successive
individuals of the same species.
The chief if not the only serious obstacles to acceptance of Darwinism
seem to me to be of the author's own creation. Now and then he appears
somewhat needlessly to overstrain his principles, as for instance when
he intimates his conviction that 'all individuals of the same species,
and all the closely allied species of most genera,' will hereafter be
discovered to 'have descended from one parent and to have migrated from
some one birthplace.' This, to my mind, is much more unlikely than his
further suggestion that 'all animals and plants are descended from some
one prototype.' Startling as this second proposition may be on first
hearing, it may not very improbably express the real fact, provided by
'some one prototype' be signified, not a single individual, but several
individuals of one and the same type. Beyond all doubt there was a time
when on and about our earth all matter was as yet inorganic, and when
whatever spirit,[38] of the sort so termed in contradistinction to
matter, either permeated the earth's substance or moved about its
surface, must have been as yet unembodied. Mr. Darwin demands whether
any one can 'really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's
history, elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into
living tissues.' I for one certainly am far from believing this. I see
no reason for believing that, whatever other phenomenon, at all similar,
may at any stage of the world's progress have occurred, it has at
innumerable subsequent stages been repeated; neither do I consider that
the phenomenon is likely to have worn the guise of a sudden flash. But I
do firmly believe, and am quite unable to substitute any equally
plausible substitute for the belief, that when the crust of the earth
had sufficiently cooled, and when other physical conditions had become
such as to admit of the manifestation of that life which we are
accustomed to distinguish by attaching to it the epithet 'organic,'
certain of those forces[39] which, in my opinion, constitute matter,
did, either of their own accord or under superior direction--not
suddenly flash, but--slowly elaborate themselves into organic structures
of some exceedingly simple type; that in the course of ages these simple
structures either developed themselves or were developed into structures
rendered by slow degrees more and more complex, until the degree of
complexity attained, being such as to fit them for being inhabited by
spirit previously unembodied, they were, by individualised portions of
such spirit, appropriated and inhabited accordingly. Beyond all doubt,
at some period or other, what had always previously been unorganised
matter must have become organised. Of two things one, then. Either this
matter must, whether under superior direction or not, have organised
itself, or it must have been organised by some other agency. Mr. Darwin,
together with all thorough-going Darwinians, inclines, I suspect, to the
opinion that matter organised itself; but if so, it cannot possibly have
been inert or lifeless, but must have been active and animate, and
capable of volition; and on that condition, there is no great stretch of
fancy in imagining it to have spontaneously adopted the series of
arrangements indicated. If, on the other hand, we are content to admit
that some external superior intelligence may have performed, or
conducted, or presided over operations, all room for wonder vanishes.
In regard to the character of the structural prototype, that, of course,
would depend in part on surrounding physical conditions, and if these
have ever been the same in all parts of the globe, there is no apparent
reason why any number of specimens of the prototype may not anywhere
have been independently elaborated. It is not possible, however, that,
since the earth began to revolve round the sun, physical conditions can
have been _simultaneously_ the same in all latitudes; while, on the
other hand, it seems probable that, although the same set of conditions
might perhaps admit of the production of only one organic type, there
might be other sets of conditions favourable to the production of other
types. On the whole, then, it seems more probable that inorganic matter
combined (or _was_ combined) in the first instance in several modes,
than in one single mode, in order to become organic. But whatever may
have been the organic form or forms it first took, to assume that only a
single individual of each form was independently elaborated, and that
all other individuals, both of the same form and of all the more complex
forms, gradually evolved from that one--are descendants from the same
first individual, the same first parent--surely very gratuitously
increases the difficulties of the subject. Especially it complicates the
problem of the distribution of the same plants and animals over
countries immemorially separated by gulfs apparently impassable by
natural means.
The obstruction which Mr. Darwin has created to the progress of his
opinions by the exaggerated shape in which some of them have been
presented is, however, as nothing in comparison with the injury he does
to his theory by obstinately rejecting certain materials indispensable
for its satisfactory completion. What an admirable theory it is so far
as it goes! How nicely it fits into all the facts it comes in contact
with, even into those which it is, of itself and unassisted, incompetent
to explain! How elevating too and ennobling, when rightly conceived! for
who can fail to rejoice in the view it presents of 'Natural selection
working solely by and for the good of each being' that it spares, and
causing 'all corporal and mental endowments to tend towards perfection'?
or who need mind suspecting himself to be descended, through an ape,
from a triton or a hydra, if he may compensate himself by hoping to have
a distant posterity of angels? How well, moreover, would it, if
permitted, chime in with any rational religion, besides being, as
already hinted, absolutely essential to that part of the Mosaic creed
which represents all the variously coloured and variously featured races
of men as springing from one single couple. By what perversity then is
it that Mr. Darwin takes such pains, if not to render his theory
irreligious, at least to exclude from it the assistance which religion
alone can afford, and which it so greatly needs, that whoever, without
that assistance, attempts to apply the theory to the complete
elucidation of phenomena, will be found inevitably committing himself to
the most astounding hypotheses? Here I picture to myself a curl on the
lip of some advanced Darwinian who, having accompanied me so far, cannot
altogether suppress his compassionate scorn at the proposed recurrence
now-a-days to a mode of thought so obsolete in the treatment of
scientific subjects as the theological. 'Positive biology,' he will
perhaps superbly exclaim, repeating the words of Mr. G. H. Lewes,
'declines theological explanations altogether.' Yes, but positive
biology is therein very unwise, for as, if the same reader will
accompany me a little further, I pledge myself to show, it is the
untheological or atheistical, not the theistical, mode of treatment
which is here utterly out of place and flagrantly unscientific. Be it,
without the slightest reserve, admitted that the formation of almost
all, and probably of quite all, existing species is due, and cannot be
otherwise than due, to survival of the fittest, the superior fitness of
these, moreover, being due to the gradual accumulation of innumerable
and, for the most part, exceedingly slight divergencies from the parent
stock. But whence and why these divergencies? It cannot be without a
cause that even one more feather than the parent possessed appears in
the offspring's wing, or a novel tint on its coat, or that the curve of
beak or talons is not precisely the same in each. What then is the
cause? Unphilosophic people will most likely call it 'all chance,'
getting sneered at for their pains, and justly too, as using words
without meaning. But are not philosophers themselves doing much the same
thing, and merely restating facts which they profess to explain, when,
like Mr. Lewes,[40] they talk of the 'specific shape' assumed by an
'organic plasma' being 'always dependent on the polarity of its
molecules,' 'or due to the operation of immanent properties;' or declare
that, in the process of organic evolution, 'each stage determines its
successor,' 'consensus of the whole impressing a peculiar direction on
the development of parts, and the law of Epigenesis necessitating a
serial development,' insomuch that, 'every part being the effect of a
pre-existing, and in turn the cause of a succeeding part,' the reason
why, when a crab loses its claw, the member is reproduced, is that the
group of cells remaining at the stump 'is the necessary condition of
the genesis' of precisely that new group which the reproductive process
imperatively requires to follow next in order, this second group equally
the necessary condition for genesis of the one required third, the third
for the fourth, and so on; and that the reason why the thorns of a
blackberry admit of somewhat close comparison with the hooks and spines
of certain crustaceae, is that portions of the integument of both plant
and crawfish '_tend_ under similar external forces to develop' into
similar forms?
I pass rapidly over one or two minor difficulties that here present
themselves. I will not stop to ask how--if reproduction of lost limbs be
due to polarity of the molecules, in other words to the direction which
in the circumstances of the case the molecules are bound to take, and if
the polarity of each particular set of molecules be impressed upon them
by the group formed immediately previously--how it is that the group
terminating the docked stump of a limb, which group is represented as
commencing the work of reproduction, imparts a different direction or
tendency to the fresh molecules of nourishment that are supplied to it,
from that which it has been accustomed to communicate to previous
molecular supplies. Hitherto it has used such molecules solely for the
repair of its own waste; now it employs a large portion of them to build
up an entirely new fabric. It seems then that molecular polarity is not
a fixed but a variable property, and, being such, cannot be inherent or
originate in the molecular nature. But I will not linger over this point
nor yet over the fact, absolutely unintelligible on the polar
hypothesis, that it is comparatively only few animals that are capable
of reproducing severed parts. Although the process required, no doubt,
is, as Mr. Lewes says, 'in all essential respects the same as that which
originally produced' the parts, the last layer of cells left at the
place of excision after a human leg or arm has been cut off, lacks the
skill to repeat an operation, which according to the hypothesis it has
once before performed. It cannot so determine the polarity of the
molecules with which it is supplied by the arteries as to constrain them
to group themselves into a new layer, instead of merely repairing an old
one. A crab or a lobster, or a polype's molecules are clever enough for
this, a man's not. Without pressing these objections, but on the
contrary, conceding for the nonce and for argument's sake, to molecular
polarity, to immanent properties, to Epigenetic evolution, all the
efficacy claimed for them, I limit myself to inquiring what causes the
various tendencies and directions which these imply. Tendency
pre-supposes impulse; direction control. What is it that here imparts
the impulse and exercises the control? Whatever else it be, it must, for
reasons stated at length on a previous page, be something possessing at
least enough of intelligence to exercise volition, and which at least
intends that the movements which it originates shall take place, whether
it further intends or not the ends which eventually result from the
movements. To myself it seems barely conceivable that even the least
marvellous of these ends should have been undesigned. Take, for
instance, half a dozen _infusoria_ of some exceedingly low type, all
individually single cells or sacs of matter perfectly transparent and
destitute of any approach to structure that can be detected with a
magnifying power of five thousand diameters. Observe how, after feeding
for a while, and increasing proportionately in size, one will divide
itself in half, each half becoming a separate and complete animalcule,
another line itself internally and clothe itself externally with
clustered cells, which, by a series of differentiations, traceable
through a number of animalcular varieties, eventually exhibit the
outlines of respiratory and circulatory systems. To me, I repeat, it
seems all but inconceivable, and altogether incredible, that the
intelligence which willed these cellular divisions, multiplications, and
differentiations to take place, did not foresee what would be their
results, and did not will them for the sake of those results. And if I
do not deem it still more incredible that there should be _natural_
selection separating the fittest for survival by accumulating upon them
slight advantages which qualify them to survive, without there being at
the same time a _nature_, or other exalted intelligence, however
designated, which selects, and which accumulates advantages upon the
objects of its selection, _in order_ that they may survive, it is only
because I consider the extremest limits of credibility to have been
already passed. But I forget. On reflection I perceive that I am doing
scant justice to the elasticity of philosophic belief. How far this is
capable of stretching on occasion, let one or two notable Darwinian
specimens show.