THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES
We shall not exaggerate if we say that the chief interest aroused by
these discoveries was a theological interest. Of course the men of
science were keenly concerned to understand the new facts and the new
interpretations, and among them there were divided camps and serious
contentions. Sir Richard Owen, for instance, was a vigorous opponent
of Darwin's views. But we cannot think it surprising that the men of
religion should feel that their positions were not only being attacked,
but undermined; and that issues were being raised which were more vital
for them than for any other students of the problems of existence.
When we thus speak of men of science and men of religion we do not mean
to imply that there were two distinct classes which could be sharply
divided. By no means. It was not so much that there were two camps as
that there were two positions, with much passing to and fro between
them, and the {28} keenest interest and anxiety felt on both sides as
to what the future might have to bring of widening divergence or
ultimate reconciliation.
There could be no doubt at all that most formidable questions had to be
faced and answered. These were the chief of them:--
Is it any longer necessary, or even possible, to insist upon a First
Cause for all that exists? Can the argument from Design be said to
retain its validity as a proof of the working of a controlling Mind?
If we admit the evidence for the existence of a Creator, can we know
anything about Him? Can we, in particular, still assert with any
confidence that He is good?
Let us take the questions in order and give the replies that were made
to them from the different sides. And, first of all, from the side of
negation.
The number of those who directly denied that there must have been a
First Cause were very few. But there were many who did their utmost to
discredit the idea as due to what they held to be an illegitimate
deduction from our limited human experiences. Others were disposed to
quarrel with the word "Cause" altogether, and to dispute the propriety
of its employment.
They wished to banish it altogether from the scientific vocabulary, and
to substitute for the terms {29} cause and effect, antecedent and
consequent, reducing causation to conjunction. But it was generally
admitted that, where we have to deal with an invariable antecedent
followed by an invariable consequent, nothing was to be gained by a
change in the common phraseology. John Stuart Mill refused to abandon
the word. Speaking of one who had done so, he said, "I consider him to
be entirely wrong." "The beginning of a phenomenon is what implies a
Cause."[1] There were, he allowed, "permanent causes," but, he added,
"we can give no account of the origin of the permanent causes"--which
was virtually to abandon the subject as being beyond the domain of
science.
In regard to the second question, it very soon became evident that the
old views of Design would be subjected to the most incisive criticism.
To many it appeared as if the new doctrine of evolution had supplied an
explanation which left no room for the recognition of the particular
contrivances upon which Paley had constructed his argument. No one
asserted this more strongly than Haeckel, the German biologist. To
quote his words, "The development of the universe is a monistic
mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose {30}
whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result
of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly
bodies, nor in that of the crust of our earth, do we find any trace of
controlling purpose." "Nowhere in the evolution of animals and plants
do we find any trace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of
the struggle for existence, the blind controller." "All is the result
of chance." We ought to add that he somewhat qualified this last
statement by explaining that "chance" itself must be considered as
coming under "the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law."[2]
It is not to be supposed that anyone was to be found who denied the
general intelligibility of Nature. To have done this would have been
to reduce science to an absurdity. Science is bound to proceed upon
the assumption that there are "reasons" for things. Moreover, there is
mind in man, who is part of the order of Nature. It follows that what
is in the part cannot be denied to the whole. All this could be freely
admitted. But then the question arose, Is mind the originating source
of the movements of matter, or is it not rather itself the product of
them?
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There were those who did not shrink from affirming that matter produces
thought, even as the liver secretes bile. Others preferred to take
what seemed to be an intermediate course. They were not prepared to
give priority to either mind or matter. Thus Haeckel maintained that
matter and thought are only two different aspects, or two fundamental
attributes of an underlying something which he defined as "substance."
It was to the action of this universal substance that he imagined the
"monistic mechanical process" to be due. He went so far as to state
his conviction that not even the atom is without "a rudimentary form of
sensation and will."[3]
In like manner Tyndall had claimed a two-sidedness for matter, and
traced all higher developments back to the side which held in it the
element of spirit and thought; while admitting that "the production of
consciousness by molecular action is quite as inconceivable on
mechanical principles as the production of molecular action by
consciousness."[4]
The bearing of all this upon the question of Design was plain, for, if
thought and intention are the outcome and result of the mechanical
operations of Nature, it might well seem to follow that mind {32} had
been removed from its high place as the dominant and directing power.
But these difficulties with which the theologian was thus confronted in
respect of a First Cause and the recognition of Design, were even less
formidable than those which were arrayed under the other heads that we
have enumerated. It was Huxley who invented the term Agnosticism to
describe the position of such of his contemporaries as were not
inclined to deny that there was a great Power at work behind the
phenomena of the Universe, but were not prepared to admit that this
Power could be any degree comprehensible by us. The most systematic
exponent of this view was Herbert Spencer. He allowed that we are
obliged to refer the phenomenal world and its law and order to a First
Cause. "And the First Cause," he said, "must be in every sense
perfect, complete, total--including within itself all power, and
transcending all law." But he insisted that, "it cannot in any manner
or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing."[5] Elsewhere he
suggested that it may belong to "a mode of being as much transcending
intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion." "Our only
conception of what we know as Mind in ourselves is the {33} conception
of a series of states of consciousness." "How," he asked, "is the
'originating Mind' to be thought of as having states produced by things
objective to it, as discriminating among these states, and classing
them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to
another."[6] It was by a similar line of reasoning that Romanes
reached the like conclusions.[7] "In my opinion," he said, "no
explanation of natural order can either be conceived or named other
than that of intelligence as the supreme directing cause." But "this
cause must be widely different from anything that we know of Mind in
ourselves." "If such a Mind exists, it is not conceivable as existing,
and we are precluded from assigning to it any attributes."
It was obvious that, if no satisfactory reply were forthcoming to such
a contention, the very word Theology must be discarded, since there
would be no longer any need for it, or justification of its use.
But there was yet a further criticism that was supposed by not a few to
complete the discomfiture of those who still clung to the traditional
beliefs. We can find it forcibly expressed in one of the earlier
writings of Romanes, who in this case was endorsing the verdict of
Mill. "Supposing the Deity to be {34} omnipotent, there can be no
inference more transparent than that such wholesale suffering, for
whatever ends designed, exhibits an incalculably greater deficiency of
beneficence in the divine character than that which we know in any, the
very worst, of human characters. For let us pause for one moment to
think of what suffering in Nature means. Some hundreds of millions of
years ago, some millions of millions of animals must be supposed to
have become sentient. Since that time till the present there must have
been millions and millions of generations of millions and millions of
individuals. And throughout all this period of incalculable duration,
this inconceivable host of sentient organisms have been in a state of
unceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain. Looking to the outcome, we find
that more than one-half of the species which have survived the
ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient
forms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find teeth and
talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for
torment--everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing
blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence
that dimly close in deaths of cruel torture!"[8]
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Huxley, arguing to the same effect, concluded that "since thousands of
times a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and
groans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell, the world
cannot be governed by what we call benevolence."[9]
Haeckel went so far as to propose to describe by the term
"dysteleology" that part of the science of Biology which collected the
facts that gave direct contradiction to the idea of beneficial
"purposive arrangement."
Such were the difficulties which loomed largest before the minds of
vast numbers of thinking men and women, and did much to shake the
general confidence in religion, in the years that followed the
discoveries which culminated in the Darwinian theory of evolution. It
must not be supposed that these thoughts were lightly entertained, nor
may we imagine that they gave no distress to those who sincerely
believed that they were bound to accept what seemed to be their
inevitable consequences. To quote again from the _Candid Examination_
of Romanes, we may take it that he was speaking for many others when he
said, "Forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who
affirm {36} that the twilight doctrine of the new faith is a desirable
substitute for the waning splendour of 'the old,' I am not ashamed to
confess that, with this virtual negation of God, the universe to me has
lost its soul of loveliness; and although, from henceforth the precept
'to work while it is day' will doubtless but gain an intensified force
from the terribly intensified meaning of the words 'that the night
cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at
times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of
that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as
now I find it--at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid
the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible."
[1] _Logic_, Chap. V.
[2] _The Riddle of the Universe_, Chaps. XIV, XV.
[3] Chap. XII.
[4] _Fragments of Science_, p. 222.
[5] _First Principles_, i., pp. 33-39.
[6] _Essays_, Vol. III., pp. 246, f.
[7] In an essay written before 1889.
[8] _A Candid Examination of Theism_ (1876), pp. 171, f.
[9] _Nineteenth Century_, February, 1888.
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