salutary. But have we far to look for such? Are there not on the
shelves yonder a score of immortal minstrels only waiting our bidding
to sing the sacred glories of the time? Shall we ask grave John Milton
to tune his harp for us, or gentle Father Southworth, or impassioned
Crashaw, or tender Faber? These are Waits we need not scruple to listen
to, nor fail to hear with profit.
Milton’s _Ode on the Nativity_ is, no doubt, the finest in the
language. Considering the difficulties of a subject to which, short of
inspiration, it is next to impossible to do any justice at all, it is
very fine indeed. It is not all equal, however; there are in it stanzas
which remind one that he was but twenty-one when he wrote it. Yet other
stanzas are scarcely surpassed by anything he has written.
“Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb’d in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing
Mercy will sit between,
Thron’d in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering,
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.
“But wisest Fate says, No,
It must not yet be so;
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify;
Yet first to those ychained in sleep
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder thro’ the deep,
“With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smould’ring clouds out-brake.
The aged earth, aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake;
When at the world’s last session
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
—————
“The oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathèd spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
“The lonely mountains o’er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament.
From haunted spring, and dale
Edg’d with poplar pale,
The parting genius is with sighing sent.
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thicket mourn.”
Seldom has Milton sung in loftier strains than this. What a magnificent
line is that:
“The wakeful trump of doom shall thunder through the deep.”
The poet evidently had his eye on that wonderful verse of the _Dies
Iræ_:
“Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum,
Cogit omnes ante thronum,”
but the imitation falls little short of the original. Dr. Johnson
characteristically passes this ode over in silence—perhaps because of
his opinion that sacred poetry was a contradiction in terms. His great
namesake, and in some respects curious antitype, was more generous to
another poem we shall quote—Father Southwell’s “Burning Babe.” “So he
had written it,” he told Drummond, “he would have been content to
destroy many of his.”
“As I, in hoary winter’s night, stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear,
Who, scorchéd with exceeding heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames with what his tears
were fed;
‘Alas!’ quoth he, ‘but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shames and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiléd souls;
For which, as now in fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.’
With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrank away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.”
The fire is getting low in the grate, the stars are twinkling pale, and
though the minstrels are many we should have been glad to introduce to
the reader—grand old St. Thomas of Aquin; silver-tongued Giacopone,
whose lately-discovered _Stabat Mater Speciosa_ is one of the loveliest
of the mediæval hymns; rapturous St. Bernard—they must wait a fitter
time. We can hear but another of our Christmas waits—one of the most
effective English poems on the Nativity, considered as mere poetry, it
has been our fortune to meet. The author is the hero of Browning’s
verses, “What’s become of Waring?”—Alfred H. Dommett; a poet who,
perhaps, would be better known had he been a worse poet. And with this
we must wish our readers “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a
good-night.”
“It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars;
Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.
“’Twas in the calm and silent night!
The senator of haughty Rome
Impatient urged his chariot’s flight,
From lonely revel rolling home.
Triumphal arches, gleaming, swell
His breast with thoughts of boundless sway;
What recked the Roman what befell
A paltry province far away
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago?
“Within that province far away
Went plodding home a weary boor;
A streak of light before him lay,
Fallen through a half-shut stable-door,
Across his path. He passed; for naught
Told what was going on within.
How keen the stars! his only thought;
The air how calm and cold, and thin!
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.
“O strange indifference! Low and high
Drowsed over common joys and cares;
The earth was still, but knew not why;
The world was listening unawares.
How calm a moment may precede
One that shall thrill the world for ever!
To that still moment none would heed;
Man’s doom was linked, no more to sever,
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.
“It is the calm and solemn night!
A thousand bells ring out and throw
Their joyous peals abroad, and smite
The darkness, charmed and holy now!
The night, that erst no name had worn,
To it a happy name is given;
For in that stable lay, new-born,
The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven,
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE DESCENT OF MAN.
Mr. Charles Darwin, in his _Descent of Man_, proposes to himself to
show that man is nothing more than a modified beast, and that his
remote ancestors are to be found among some tribes of brutes. A paradox
of this kind, in a work of fiction such as Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_,
would not offend an intelligent reader; but in a work which professes
to be serious and scientific it is extremely offensive, for it amounts
to a deliberate insult to all humanity in general and to every human
being in particular. Mr. Darwin’s work violates the dignity of human
nature, blots out of our souls the image and likeness of our Creator,
and totally perverts the notions most cherished by civil and Christian
society. This effort does certainly not entitle him to credit for
wisdom. A man of ordinary prudence, before he undertakes to maintain in
the face of the public a theory which conflicts with a doctrine
thoroughly established and universally received, would examine both
sides of the case, and ascertain that he is in possession of sufficient
evidence to make good his assertions and to defend them against the
arguments of the opposite side. Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, seems to
have satisfied himself that a man of his eminence in natural history
had a right to be believed, whatever he might venture to say, even
though he was to give no satisfactory evidence in support of his views,
and no answer to the objections which he ought to refute.
We do not say that Mr. Darwin did not do his best to prove his new
doctrine on man; we only say that he has signally failed in his
attempt, and that his failure is as inexcusable as it is ignominious. A
man of his ability should have seen that the origin of man was not a
problem to be solved by physiology; and he ought also to have
considered that a man of science could only stultify himself by
submitting to the test of science a historical fact of which science,
as such, is entirely incompetent to speak. Indeed, we scarcely know
which to admire most in Mr. Darwin, the serenity with which he ignores
the difficulty of his philosophic position, or the audacity with which
he affirms things which he cannot prove. What a pity that a man so
richly endowed by nature has been so entirely absorbed by the study of
material organisms as to find no time for the more important study of
philosophy, especially of psychology, without which it is impossible to
form a rational theory respecting the origin and the destiny of man!
Shall we add that a sound scientific theory cannot be the outcome of
illogical reasoning? And yet it is a plain fact, though our advanced
thinkers will deny it, that Mr. Darwin’s logic, to judge from his
_Descent of Man_, is as mischievous as most of his assumptions are
reckless.
It would be impossible within the limits of our space to enter into a
detailed examination of the logical and metaphysical blunders to which
the Darwinian theory owes its existence. We shall, therefore, at
present confine ourselves to a short criticism of the first chapter of
the work in question; for, if we are not mistaken, every impartial
reader will be able, after a sufficient analysis of this first chapter,
to judge of the kind of logic that characterizes the whole treatise.
Mr. Darwin begins thus:
“He who wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant
of some pre-existing form would probably first inquire whether
man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental
faculties; and, if so, whether the variations are transmitted
to his offspring in accordance with the laws which prevail with
the lower animals. Again, are the variations the result, as far
as our ignorance permits us to judge, of the same general
causes, and are they governed by the same general laws, as in
the case of other organisms—for instance, by correlation, the
inherited effects of use and disuse, etc.? Is man subject to
similar malconformations, the result of arrested development,
of reduplication of parts, etc., and does he display in any of
his anomalies reversion to some former and ancient type of
structure? It might also naturally be inquired whether man,
like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and
sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to races
differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful
species? How are such races distributed over the world; and
how, when crossed, do they react on each other in the first and
succeeding generations? And so with many other points.”
This preamble, which superficial readers may have considered perfectly
harmless, contains the seed of all the mischievous reasonings scattered
through the rest of the work. It comes to this: “If we find that man
varies, however slightly, according to the same laws which prevail with
the lower animals, we shall be justified in concluding that man is a
modified descendant of some pre-existing form.” Now, this assertion is
evidently nothing but clap-trap for the ignorant. In the first place,
Mr. Darwin takes for granted that mankind wishes to decide whether man
is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form. This gratuitous
supposition implies that mankind is still ignorant or doubtful of its
true origin; which is by no means the case. We have an authentic record
of the origin of man; and we know that the first man and the first
woman were not the descendants of any lower pre-existing form. The
Bible tells us very clearly that God created them to his own image and
likeness; and so long as Mr. Darwin does not demolish the Biblical
history of creation he has no right to assume that there may be the
least reasonable doubt regarding the origin of man. Mr. Darwin, it is
true, makes light of the Biblical history; but contempt is no argument.
On the other hand, philosophy and common sense, and science, if not
perverted, unanimously agree with the Mosaic record in proclaiming that
the origin of man must be traced to a special creation. Thus there has
never been, nor is there at present, among thinking men, any real doubt
as to the origin of our race; whence we infer that the question raised
by the _Descent of Man_ is a mere fiction which would deserve no answer
but a smile of pity.
In the second place, granting for the sake of argument that there may
be an honest doubt about the origin of man, and that physiology and
other kindred sciences are competent to answer it, would the inquiry
suggested by Mr. Darwin convince an honest doubter that man is the
descendant of a lower animal? Suppose that “man varies, however
slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties”; suppose that
“such variations are transmitted to his offspring in accordance with
the laws which prevail with the lower animals”; and suppose that all
the other conditions enumerated by Mr. Darwin are verified—would we
then be justified in concluding that “man is a modified descendant of
some pre-existing form”? Evidently not. The utmost that logic would
allow us to grant is that the present form of human beings, owing to
the slight variations transmitted to us by our human ancestors, may
exhibit some accidental features slightly different from those which
were possessed by the primitive men, yet without any change of the
specific form, which must always remain essentially the same. But Mr.
Darwin is not content with this. His peculiar logic allows him to
confound the accidental and unimportant variations that occur within
the limits of any single species with a gradual transition from one
species to another—a transition which science no less than philosophy
utterly rejects. Nowhere in nature do we find an instance of such a
pretended transition. Varieties are indeed very numerous, but none of
them show the least departure from the species to which they belong.
The oak emits every year thousands of leaves, of which each one differs
from every other in some accidental feature; but who has ever seen the
oak-leaves change into fir-leaves, or fig-leaves, or maple-leaves, or
any other leaves? If nature admitted such a specific change, a thousand
indications would awaken our attention to the fact. The transition,
being gradual, would leave everywhere innumerable traces of its
reality. There would be all around us a host of transitional forms from
the fish to the lizard, from the lizard to the bird, from the bird to
the ape, and from the ape to man. But where do we find such
transitional forms? Science itself proclaims that they have no
existence. Hence to affirm the transition from one species to another
is a gross scientific blunder, whatever Mr. Darwin and his eminent
associates may say to the contrary.
In the third place, even admitting that a gradual transition from one
species to another were not rejected by science, Mr. Darwin’s view
would still remain a ludicrous absurdity. In fact, the pretended
transition from a form of a lower to a form of a higher species would
be an open violation of the principle of causality; and therefore, if
any transition were to be admitted at all, it could only be a
transition from a higher to a lower species. Thus, the transition from
a human to a brutish form by continual deterioration and degradation,
though repugnant to other principles, would not conflict with the
principle of causality, inasmuch as deterioration and degradation are
negative results, which may be brought about by mere lack of
intellectual, moral, and social development. But the transition from a
brutish to a human form would be a positive effect without a positive
proportionate cause. The lower cannot generate the higher, because to
constitute the higher something is necessary which the lower cannot
impart. Just as a force = 10 cannot produce an effect = 20, so cannot
the irrational brute produce the rational man. To assume the contrary
is to assume that the less contains the greater, that emptiness begets
fulness—in a word, that nature is a standing contradiction.
A full development of this last consideration would lead us too far
from our line of argument, as it would require a psychological
treatment of the subject. We will merely remark that _rational_ and
_irrational_ differ not only in degree but in kind; that the human soul
is not produced by the forces of nature, but proceeds directly and
immediately from God’s creative action; and that Darwinism, which
ignores the soul’s spirituality and immortality, is, on this account
also, a monument of philosophical ignorance.
But let us proceed. The author considers it an important point to
ascertain “whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate as to lead
to occasional severe struggles for existence, and consequently to
beneficial variations, whether in body or in mind, being preserved, and
injurious ones eliminated.” This is another of Mr. Darwin’s delusions.
It is not in the nature of man that the stronger should murder the
weaker. Man, as a rule, is benevolent towards his kind, and even
savages respect the life of the weak; whereas it is always the stronger
that go to battle and fall in the struggle. Thus a struggle for
existence, occasioned by a too rapid increase, would deprive the race
of its best men and mar its further development. On the other hand, if
at any time or in any place there has been a struggle for existence, it
is in our large cities that we can best study the nature of its
results. Is it in London, Paris, Berlin, or Vienna that we meet the
best specimens of the race? Surely, if there is a tremendous struggle
for existence anywhere, it is in such capitals as these; and yet no one
is ignorant that such proud cities would, in a few generations, sink
into insignificance, were they not continually refurnished with new
blood from the country, where the best propagators of the race are
brought up in great numbers and without any apparent struggle for
existence. But we need not dwell any further on this point. A struggle
for existence presupposes existence; and if man existed before
struggling, the origin of man does not depend on his struggle. Hence
the so-called “important point” has really no importance whatever.
Then he asks: “Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be
applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally
become extinct?” and he answers the question in the affirmative. To
this we have no objection. We only remark that “races” and “species”
are not synonymous; hence it is surprising how a naturalist of Mr.
Darwin’s celebrity could show the least hesitation which of the two
terms he ought to apply to mankind.
He proceeds to examine “how far the bodily structure of man shows
traces, more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form,” and
he contends that the existence of such “traces” can be proved, first,
from the similarity of bodily structure in men and beasts; secondly,
from the similarity of their embryonic development; thirdly, from the
existence of rudimentary organs, which show that man and all other
vertebrate animals have been constructed on the same general model.
Bearing in mind that Mr. Darwin’s object is to prove that there are
“traces,” more or less plain, of man’s descent from some lower form, we
cannot help expressing our astonishment when we find that he has failed
to see the necessity of grounding his proofs on a secure foundation.
That the bodily structure of man has some resemblance to the structure
of other mammals; that all the bones of his skeleton can be compared
with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal; that this
comparison may be extended to his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and
internal viscera; that the brain, the most important of all organs,
follows the same law, etc., etc., are indeed well-known facts, from
which we rightly infer that man is constructed on the same _general_
type as other mammals. But can these same facts be considered as
“traces,” more or less plain, of man’s descent from any lower form? Mr.
Darwin says _Yes_; but instead of giving any conclusive reason for his
assertion, he loses his time in accumulating superfluous anatomical and
physiological details which, however instructive, have no bearing upon
the thesis he has engaged to prove.
To prove his assumption he ought to have made a syllogism somewhat like
the following:
Wherever there is similarity of bodily structure or development there
are “traces” of a common origin or descent;
But man and other mammals have similar bodily structures and a similar
development;
Therefore man and other mammals show “traces” of a common origin or
descent.
This argument would have left no escape to the most decided adversary
of the Darwinian view, if its first proposition had been susceptible of
demonstration. But Mr. Darwin, seeing the utter impossibility of
demonstrating it, and yet being unable to dispense with it, resorted to
the ordinary trick of his school, which consists in assuming latently
what they dare not openly maintain; and thus he turned the whole
attention of his reader to the second proposition, which had no need of
demonstration, as it was not questioned by instructed men. Thus the
twenty pages of physiologic lore with which Mr. Darwin in this chapter
distracts and amuses his readers may be styled, in a logical point of
view, a prolonged _ignoratio elenchi_—an effort to prove that which is
conceded instead of that which is denied—a blunder into which men of
science of the modern type are sure to fall when they presume to meddle
with matters above their reach.
There is one sense only in which it may be affirmed that the similarity
of bodily structure in men and lower animals proves their common
origin, and it is this: that men and animals have been made by the same
Creator on a similar ideal type of homogeneous organic arrangements; in
other terms, that their organic similarity proves them to be the work
of the same Maker. Man was destined to live on this earth among other
inferior animals and surrounded by like conditions. His animal life was
therefore to be dependent on similar means of support, exposed to
similar influences, and subject to similar needs. It is not surprising,
then, that he should have received from a wise Creator an organic
constitution similar to that of the inferior creatures that were placed
around him. This fully accounts for the similarity of the human
organism with that of other mammals. But to say that because the bodily
structure of man is similar to that of the ape, therefore man is the
descendant of the ape, is as nonsensical as to say that because the
bodily structure of the ape is similar to that of man, therefore the
ape is the descendant of man. How was it possible for Mr. Darwin to lay
down such an absurd principle, and not foresee how easily it might be
turned against his own conclusion?
Thus the argument drawn from the similarity of bodily structure is a
mere delusion. It avails nothing to say that man is liable to receive
from the lower animals, and to communicate to them, certain diseases,
as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, herpes, etc.
This fact, says Mr. Darwin, “proves the similarity of their tissues and
blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than
does their comparison under the best microscope or by the aid of the
best chemical analysis.” But this is a mistake; for the evidence
afforded by the microscope as to existing diversities cannot be
negatived by any guesses of ours respecting the communication of
diseases and its conditions; it being evident that what is obscure and
mysterious is not calculated to weaken the certitude of a fact which we
see with our own eyes. Nor does it matter that “medicines produce the
same effect on them [monkeys] as on us,” or that many monkeys “have a
strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors,” or even that a
certain monkey “smoked tobacco with pleasure” in Mr. Darwin’s presence.
These and other details of the same nature may be interesting, but they
are no indication of a common origin, except in the sense which we have
pointed out—viz., that they are the work of the same Maker.