THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS
It must not be imagined that all the arguments were on one side. Far
from it. The defenders of the old faith were many, and not the least
able of them were drawn from the ranks of the men of science. The list
of scientific leaders who avowedly ranged themselves on the Christian
side, if it were made out, would be a long one. It would include
distinguished names such as those of Faraday, Joule, the Duke of
Argyll, Lord Kelvin, Stokes, Tait, Adams, Clerk Maxwell, Salmon,
Cayley, and Pasteur. And others would have to be added who, after
contending for a while as materialists or agnostics, ultimately changed
their attitude and joined the supporters of Theism. Haeckel frankly
admitted that there were such defaulters from his cause in Germany,
giving the names of "two of the most famous of living scientists, R.
Virchow and E. Du Bois Raymond," amongst others. On the other hand he
recommended his readers to study "the profound work of Romanes," {38}
without, it would seem, being aware of the transformation that took
place in that thinker's opinions towards the end of his life.
We have now to indicate the nature of the replies that were made to the
difficulties of which we spoke in our last chapter. Let us follow the
order in which they were presented.
About the necessity for a First Cause not much had to be said. Even if
the whole course of organic development could be proved to have been
continuous without a break from the first movements of matter, through
all the changes of physical life, up to the highest exhibition of human
powers--and no one ventured to say that this had been proved--there
would still be the necessity for an initial impulse to set the process
in action. Spencer, as we have seen, declared that there must have
been a First Cause, and Tyndall agreed that "the hypothesis" of
Evolution "does nothing more than transport the conception of life's
origin to an indefinitely distant past."[1]
Darwin himself never hesitated on this point. "The theory of
evolution," he insisted, "is quite compatible with the belief in
God."[2] The words which he expressly added to the conclusion of the
{39} _Origin of Species_ are well known. After describing once again
the production of the innumerable forms of being as the result of
natural selection, he said: "There is a grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator
into a few forms or into one."
It is well also to keep on record the striking dictum of Lord Kelvin,
addressed to the students of University College.[3] "Science," he told
them, "positively affirmed creative power."
It will be remembered that we quoted Mill as speaking of "permanent
causes." We may be grateful to him for the suggestion. We could not
readily think of a better term than the great "Permanent Cause" by
which to describe, in modern language, the "I AM" of the Biblical
Theology.[4]
But, if on this point there was no serious conflict of opinion, it was
otherwise in regard to the next. Here it did look as if the new
discoveries might have {40} changed the whole situation. Huxley
acknowledged that what struck him most forcibly on his first perusal of
the Origin of Species, was that "teleology, as commonly understood, had
received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands."[5] But Huxley was a
born fighter, and he could turn his weapons with facility and effect
against his friends when he thought they had overstated their case. It
is interesting to find him, in 1867, criticising Haeckel for his
repudiation of the principle of Design.
"The Doctrine of Evolution," he says, "is the most formidable opponent
of the commoner and coarser forms of teleology."
"The teleology which supposes that the eye such as we see it in man, or
one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure it
exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to
see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless, it is
necessary to remember that there is a wider teleology which is not
touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the
fundamental proposition of evolution." Then, referring to the appeal
which had been made to the existence of rudimentary organs as
discrediting teleology, he says in his {41} characteristic way: "Either
these rudiments are of no use to the animals, in which case they ought
to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which
case they are of no use as an argument against teleology."[6]
Darwin himself felt the grave difficulty in which the ordinary
arguments had become involved; but he was most unwilling to abandon his
belief in Design.
"The old argument from design in nature as given by Paley," he wrote,
"which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of
natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that,
for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been
made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man." On
the other hand, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that there are
"endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with,"[7] and
to the further fact that "the mind refuses to look at this universe,
being what it is, without having been designed."[8]
A few years later, when Dr. Asa Gray had sent him from America a review
in which he had written of "Mr. Darwin's great service to natural
science {42} in bringing back teleology," on the ground that in
Darwinism usefulness and purpose come to the front again as working
principles of the first order, Darwin replied, "What you say about
teleology pleases me especially."[9] Later still, in 1878, Romanes
sent him a copy of his _Candid Examination_. Darwin in his letter of
acknowledgment wrote more than half seriously, in the person as it were
of an imaginary correspondent, to this effect:
"I should like to hear what you would say if a theologian addressed you
as follows:
"'I grant you the attraction of gravity, persistence of force (or
conservation of energy), and one kind of matter, though the latter is
an immense addition, but I maintain that God must have given such
attributes to this force, independently of its persistence, that under
certain conditions it develops or changes into light, heat,
electricity, galvanism, perhaps into life.
"'You cannot prove that force (which physicists define as that which
causes motion) would invariably thus change its character under the
above conditions. Again, I maintain that matter, though it may be in
the future eternal, was created by God with the most marvellous
affinities, leading to {43} complex definite compounds, and with
polarities leading to beautiful crystals, etc., etc. You cannot prove
that matter would necessarily possess these attributes. Therefore you
have no right to say that you have "demonstrated" that all natural laws
necessarily follow from gravity, the persistence of force, and
existence of matter. If you say that nebulous matter existed
aboriginally and from eternity, with all its present complex powers in
a potential state, you seem to me to beg the whole question.'
"Please observe it is not I, but a theologian, who has thus addressed
you, but I could not answer him."[10]
The alternatives to Design, _i.e._, to the recognition of directive
activity, would be Necessity or Chance. From both of these the deepest
instincts of humanity--which in such matters are as fully to be relied
on as its logical faculty--strongly recoil. No one has spoken out more
strongly about the first than Huxley did.
"What is the dire necessity and 'iron' law under which you groan?" he
asks. "Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there
be an 'iron' law, it is that of gravitation; and if {44} there be a
physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the
ground.... But when, as commonly happens, we change _will_ into
_must_, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not
lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover.
For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematise the intruder.... The
notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the
perfectly legitimate conception of law; the materialistic position that
there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as
utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological
dogmas."[11]
But a dogma of Necessity would be more tolerable than a doctrine of
Chance. In Lord Kelvin's address, to which reference has been made, he
declared his conviction that "directive power" was "an article of
belief which science compelled him to accept."
There was nothing, he said, between such a belief and the acceptance of
the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. And, in a letter to the
_Times_ justifying this assertion, he told how forty years before he
had asked Liebig, when walking with him in the country, whether he
believed that the grass {45} and flowers they saw around them "grew by
mere chemical forces." "No," he answered, "no more than I could
believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere
chemical forces."
Discussions may continue as to whether what Huxley called "the wider
teleology," or some other form of the doctrine of Design is to be
preferred; but thoughtful men are likely to agree with the judgment
given by Sir George Stokes--that recognised master of masters--when he
said: "We meet with such overwhelming evidence of design, of purpose,
especially in the study of living things, that we are compelled to
think of mind as being involved in the constitution of the
universe."[12]
[1] _Fragments of Science_, p. 166.
[2] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 307.
[3] May 2nd, 1903.
[4] The debate as to the accuracy of the Mosaic account of Creation
does not come directly within the scope of our survey; but,
nevertheless, it may be worth while to recall the following statement
in view of the very confident assertions that have often been made, by
no less an authority than Romanes. "The order in which the flora and
fauna are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared upon the earth
corresponds with that which the theory of evolution requires and the
evidence of geology proves."--(_Nature_, August 11th, 1881.)
[5] _Lay Sermons_.
[6] _Critiques and Addresses_, pp. 305, 308.
[7] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 309.
[8] I., p. 314.
[9] _Life and Letters_, III., p. 189.
[10] _Life and Letters_ of Romanes, pp. 88.
[11] Essay on "The Physical Basis of Life" (1868).
[12] _Gifford Lectures_ (1891), p. 196.
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