The object of this paper is first to point out certain elements of the
Darwinian influence upon Religious thought, and then to show reason
for the conclusion that it has been, from a Christian point of view,
satisfactory. I shall not proceed further to urge that the Christian
apologetic in relation to biology has been successful. A variety of
opinions may be held on this question, without disturbing the conclusion
that the movements of readjustment have been beneficial to those who
remain Christians, and this by making them more Christian and not only
more liberal. The theologians may sometimes have retreated, but there
has been an advance of theology. I know that this account incurs
the charge of optimism. It is not the worst that could be made. The
influence has been limited in personal range, unequal, even divergent,
in operation, and accompanied by the appearance of waste and mischievous
products. The estimate which follows requires for due balance a full
development of many qualifying considerations. For this I lack space,
but I must at least distinguish my view from the popular one that our
difficulties about religion and natural science have come to an end.
Concerning the older questions about origins--the origin of the world,
of species, of man, of reason, conscience, religion--a large measure of
understanding has been reached by some thoughtful men. But meanwhile
new questions have arisen, questions about conduct, regarding both
the reality of morals and the rule of right action for individuals and
societies. And these problems, still far from solution, may also be
traced to the influence of Darwin. For they arise from the renewed
attention to heredity, brought about by the search for the causes of
variation, without which the study of the selection of variations has no
sufficient basis.
Even the existing understanding about origins is very far from
universal. On these points there were always thoughtful men who denied
the necessity of conflict, and there are still thoughtful men who deny
the possibility of a truce.
It must further be remembered that the earlier discussion now, as I hope
to show, producing favourable results, created also for a time grave
damage, not only in the disturbance of faith and the loss of men--a
loss not repaired by a change in the currents of debate--but in what I
believe to be a still more serious respect. I mean the introduction of
a habit of facile and untested hypothesis in religious as in other
departments of thought.
Darwin is not responsible for this, but he is in part the cause of
it. Great ideas are dangerous guests in narrow minds; and thus it has
happened that Darwin--the most patient of scientific workers, in whom
hypothesis waited upon research, or if it provisionally outstepped it
did so only with the most scrupulously careful acknowledgment--has led
smaller and less conscientious men in natural science, in history, and
in theology to an over-eager confidence in probable conjecture and a
loose grip upon the facts of experience. It is not too much to say that
in many quarters the age of materialism was the least matter-of-fact age
conceivable, and the age of science the age which showed least of the
patient temper of inquiry.
I have indicated, as shortly as I could, some losses and dangers which
in a balanced account of Darwin's influence would be discussed at
length.
One other loss must be mentioned. It is a defect in our thought which,
in some quarters, has by itself almost cancelled all the advantages
secured. I mean the exaggerated emphasis on uniformity or continuity;
the unwillingness to rest any part of faith or of our practical
expectation upon anything that from any point of view can be called
exceptional. The high degree of success reached by naturalists in
tracing, or reasonably conjecturing, the small beginnings of great
differences, has led the inconsiderate to believe that anything may in
time become anything else.
It is true that this exaggeration of the belief in uniformity has
produced in turn its own perilous reaction. From refusing to believe
whatever can be called exceptional, some have come to believe whatever
can be called wonderful.
But, on the whole, the discontinuous or highly various character of
experience received for many years too little deliberate attention. The
conception of uniformity which is a necessity of scientific description
has been taken for the substance of history. We have accepted a
postulate of scientific method as if it were a conclusion of scientific
demonstration. In the name of a generalisation which, however just on
the lines of a particular method, is the prize of a difficult exploit of
reflexion, we have discarded the direct impressions of experience;
or, perhaps it is more true to say, we have used for the criticism of
alleged experiences a doctrine of uniformity which is only valid in the
region of abstract science. For every science depends for its advance
upon limitation of attention, upon the selection out of the whole
content of consciousness of that part or aspect which is measurable by
the method of the science. Accordingly there is a science of life which
rightly displays the unity underlying all its manifestations. But there
is another view of life, equally valid, and practically sometimes more
important, which recognises the immediate and lasting effect of
crisis, difference, and revolution. Our ardour for the demonstration
of uniformity of process and of minute continuous change needs to be
balanced by a recognition of the catastrophic element in experience, and
also by a recognition of the exceptional significance for us of events
which may be perfectly regular from an impersonal point of view.
An exorbitant jealousy of miracle, revelation, and ultimate moral
distinctions has been imported from evolutionary science into religious
thought. And it has been a damaging influence, because it has taken
men's attention from facts, and fixed them upon theories.