and of regal Rome to the level of fables; when the unity of authorship of
the _Iliad_ was successfully assailed by scientific literary criticism;
when scientific physical criticism, after exploding the geocentric theory
of the universe, and reducing the solar system itself to one of millions of
groups of like cosmic specks, circling, at unimaginable distances from one
another, through infinite space, showed the supernaturalistic theories of
the duration of the earth and of life upon it, to be as inadequate as those
of its relative dimensions and importance had been; it needed no prophetic
gift to see that, sooner or later, the Jewish and the early Christian
records would be treated in the same manner; that the authorship of the
Hexateuch and of the Gospels would be as severely tested; and that the
evidence in favour of the veracity of many of the statements found in the
Scriptures would have to be strong indeed, if they were to be opposed to
the conclusions of physical science. In point of fact, so far as I can
discover, no one competent to judge of the evidential strength of these
conclusions, ventures now to say that the biblical accounts of the creation
and of the deluge are true in the natural sense of the words of the
narratives. The most the modern Reconciler ventures upon is to affirm, that
some quite different sense may be put upon the words; and that this
non-natural sense may, with a little trouble, be manipulated {31} into some
sort of non-contradiction of scientific truth.
My purpose, in the essay (XVI.) which treats of the narrative of the
Deluge, was to prove, by physical criticism, that no such event as that
described ever took place; to exhibit the untrustworthy character of the
narrative demonstrated by literary criticism; and, finally, to account for
its origin, by producing a form of those ancient legends of pagan Chaldaea,
from which the biblical compilation is manifestly derived. I have yet to
learn that the main propositions of this essay can be seriously challenged.
In the essays (II., III.) on the narrative of the Creation, I have
endeavoured to controvert the assertion that modern science supports,
either the interpretation put upon it by Mr. Gladstone, or any
interpretation which is compatible with the general sense of the narrative,
quite apart from particular details. The first chapter of Genesis teaches
the supernatural creation of the present forms of life; modern science
teaches that they have come about by evolution. The first chapter of
Genesis teaches the successive origin--firstly, of all the plants,
secondly, of all the aquatic and aerial animals, thirdly, of all the
terrestrial animals, which now exist--during distinct intervals of time;
modern science teaches that, throughout all the duration of an immensely
long past, so far as we have any adequate knowledge of it (that is as far
back as the Silurian epoch), plants, aquatic, aerial, and terrestrial
animals have {32} co-existed; that the earliest known are unlike those
which at present exist; and that the modern species have come into
existence as the last terms of a series, the members of which have appeared
one after another. Thus, far from confirming the account in Genesis, the
results of modern science, so far as they go, are in principle, as in
detail, hopelessly discordant with it.
Yet, if the pretensions to infallibility set up, not by the ancient Hebrew
writings themselves, but by the ecclesiastical champions and friends from
whom they may well pray to be delivered, thus shatter themselves against
the rock of natural knowledge, in respect of the two most important of all
events, the origin of things and the palingenesis of terrestrial life, what
historical credit dare any serious thinker attach to the narratives of the
fabrication of Eve, of the Fall, of the commerce between the _Bene Elohim_
and the daughters of men, which lie between the creational and the diluvial
legends? And, if these are to lose all historical worth, what becomes of
the infallibility of those who, according to the later scriptures, have
accepted them, argued from them, and staked far-reaching dogmatic
conclusions upon their historical accuracy?
It is the merest ostrich policy for contemporary ecclesiasticism to try to
hide its Hexateuchal head--in the hope that the inseparable connection of
its body with pre-Abrahamic legends may be overlooked. The question will
still be asked, if the first nine chapters of the Pentateuch are
unhistorical, how is {33} the historical accuracy of the remainder to be
guaranteed? What more intrinsic claim has the story of the Exodus than that
of the Deluge, to belief? If God did not walk in the Garden of Eden, how
can we be assured that he spoke from Sinai?
In some other of the following essays (IX., X., XI., XII., XIV., XV.) I
have endeavoured to show that sober and well-founded physical and literary
criticism plays no less havoc with the doctrine that the canonical
scriptures of the New Testament "declare incontrovertibly the actual
historical truth in all records." We are told that the Gospels contain a
true revelation of the spiritual world--a proposition which, in one sense
of the word "spiritual," I should not think it necessary to dispute. But,
when it is taken to signify that everything we are told about the world of
spirits in these books is infallibly true; that we are bound to accept the
demonology which constitutes an inseparable part of their teaching; and to
profess belief in a Supernaturalism as gross as that of any primitive
people--it is at any rate permissible to ask why? Science may be unable to
define the limits of possibility, but it cannot escape from the moral
obligation to weigh the evidence in favour of any alleged wonderful
occurrence; and I have endeavoured to show that the evidence for the
Gadarene miracle is altogether worthless. We have simply three, partially
discrepant, versions of a story, about the primitive form, the origin, and
the authority for which we know absolutely nothing. But the {34} evidence
in favour of the Gadarene miracle is as good as that for any other.
Elsewhere, I have pointed out that it is utterly beside the mark to declaim
against these conclusions on the ground of their asserted tendency to
deprive mankind of the consolations of the Christian faith, and to destroy
the foundations of morality; still less to brand them with the
question-begging vituperative appellation of "infidelity." The point is not
whether they are wicked; but, whether, from the point of view of scientific
method, they are irrefragably true. If they are, they will be accepted in
time, whether they are wicked, or not wicked. Nature, so far as we have
been able to attain to any insight into her ways, recks little about
consolation and makes for righteousness by very round-about paths. And, at
any rate, whatever may be possible for other people, it is becoming less
and less possible for the man who puts his faith in scientific methods of
ascertaining truth, and is accustomed to have that faith justified by daily
experience, to be consciously false to his principle in any matter. But the
number of such men, driven into the use of scientific methods of inquiry
and taught to trust them, by their education, their daily professional and
business needs, is increasing and will continually increase. The
phraseology of Supernaturalism may remain on men's lips, but in practice
they are Naturalists. The magistrate who listens with devout attention to
the precept "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" on Sunday, on Monday,
dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge {35} of bewitching a cow
brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a lunatic asylum who
substituted exorcism for rational modes of treatment would have but a short
tenure of office; even parish clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain,
so long as the wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends
men, not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers for the
success of our arms and _Te Deums_ for victory, our real faith is in big
battalions and keeping our powder dry; in knowledge of the science of
warfare; in energy, courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other
practical affairs, we act on the aphorism "_Laborare est orare_"; we admit
that intelligent work is the only acceptable worship; and that, whether
there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature.
It is important to note that the principle of the scientific Naturalism of
the latter half of the nineteenth century, in which the intellectual
movement of the Renascence has culminated, and which was first clearly
formulated by Descartes, leads not to the denial of the existence of any
Supernature;[5] but simply to the denial of the validity of the evidence
adduced in favour of this, or of that, extant form of Supernaturalism.
{36}
Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the
assumption that, amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through endless
space, there can be no intelligence, as much greater than man's as his is
greater than a blackbeetle's; no being endowed with powers of influencing
the course of nature as much greater than his, as his is greater than a
snail's, seems to me not merely baseless, but impertinent. Without stepping
beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos
with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically
indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. If our
intelligence can, in some matters, surely reproduce the past of thousands
of years ago and anticipate the future, thousands of years hence, it is
clearly within the limits of possibility that some greater intellect, even
of the same order, may be able to mirror the whole past and the whole
future; if the universe is penetrated by a medium of such a nature that a
magnetic needle on the earth answers to a commotion in the sun, an
omnipresent agent is also conceivable; if our insignificant knowledge gives
us some influence over events, practical omniscience may confer indefinably
greater power. Finally, if evidence that a thing may be, were equivalent to
proof that it is, analogy might justify the construction of a naturalistic
theology and demonology not less wonderful than the current supernatural;
just as it might justify the peopling of Mars, or of Jupiter, with living
forms to which terrestrial biology offers no {37} parallel. Until human
life is longer and the duties of the present press less heavily, I do not
think that wise men will occupy themselves with Jovian, or Martian, natural
history; and they will probably agree to a verdict of "not proven" in
respect of naturalistic theology; taking refuge in that agnostic
confession, which appears to me to be the only position for people who
object to say that they know what they are quite aware they do not know. As
to the interests of morality, I am disposed to think that if mankind could
be got to act up to this last principle in every relation of life, a
reformation would be effected such as the world has not yet seen; an
approximation to the millennium, such as no supernaturalistic religion has
ever yet succeeded, or seems likely ever to succeed, in effecting.
I have hitherto dwelt upon scientific Naturalism chiefly in its critical
and destructive aspect. But the present incarnation of the spirit of the
Renascence differs from its predecessor in the eighteenth century, in that
it builds up, as well as pulls down.
That of which it has laid the foundation, of which it is already raising
the superstructure, is the doctrine of evolution. But so many strange
misconceptions are current about this doctrine--it is attacked on such
false grounds by its enemies, and made to cover so much that is disputable
by some of its friends, that I think it well to define as clearly as I can,
what I do not and what I do understand by the doctrine. {38}
I have nothing to say to any "Philosophy of Evolution." Attempts to
construct such a philosophy may be as useful, nay, even as admirable, as
was the attempt of Descartes to get at a theory of the universe by the same
_a priori_ road; but, in my judgment, they are as premature. Nor, for this
purpose, have I to do with any theory of the "Origin of Species," much as I
value that which is known as the Darwinian theory. That the doctrine of
natural selection presupposes evolution is quite true; but it is not true
that evolution necessarily implies natural selection. In fact, evolution
might conceivably have taken place, without the development of groups
possessing the characters of species.
For me, the doctrine of evolution is no speculation, but a generalisation
of certain facts, which may be observed by any one who will take the
necessary trouble. These facts are those which are classed by biologists
under the heads of Embryology and of Palaeontology. Embryology proves that
every higher form of individual life becomes what it is by a process of
gradual differentiation from an extremely low form; palaeontology proves, in
some cases, and renders probable in all, that the oldest types of a group
are the lowest; and that they have been followed by a gradual succession of
more and more differentiated forms. It is simply a fact, that evolution of
the individual animal and plant is taking place, as a natural process, in
millions and millions of cases every day; it is a fact, that the species
which have succeeded one another in the past, do, in many {39} cases,
present just those morphological relations, which they must possess, if
they had proceeded, one from the other, by an analogous process of
evolution.
The alternative presented, therefore, is: either the forms of one and the
same type--say, _e.g._, that of the Horse tribe[6]--arose successively, but
independently of one another, at intervals, during myriads of years; or,
the later forms are modified descendants of the earlier. And the latter
supposition is so vastly more probable than the former, that rational men
will adopt it, unless satisfactory evidence to the contrary can be
produced. The objection sometimes put forward, that no one yet professes to
have seen one species pass into another, comes oddly from those who believe
that mankind are all descended from Adam. Has any one then yet seen the
production of negroes from a white stock, or _vice versa_? Moreover, is it
absolutely necessary to have watched every step of the progress of a
planet, to be justified in concluding that it really does go round the sun?
If so, astronomy is in a bad way.
I do not, for a moment, presume to suggest that some one, far better
acquainted than I am with astronomy and physics; or that a master of the
new chemistry, with its extraordinary revelations; or that a student of the
development of human society, of language, and of religions, may not find a
sufficient foundation for the doctrine of evolution in these several
regions. {40} On the contrary, I rejoice to see that scientific
investigation, in all directions, is tending to the same result. And it may
well be, that it is only my long occupation with biological matters that
leads me to feel safer among them than anywhere else. Be that as it may, I
take my stand on the facts of embryology and of palaeontology; and I hold
that our present knowledge of these facts is sufficiently thorough and
extensive to justify the assertion that all future philosophical and
theological speculations will have to accommodate themselves to some such
common body of established truths as the following:--
1. Plants and animals have existed on our planet for many hundred thousand,
probably millions of years. During this time, their forms, or species, have
undergone a succession of changes, which eventually gave rise to the
species which constitute the present living population of the earth. There
is no evidence, nor any reason to suspect, that this secular process of
evolution is other than a part of the ordinary course of nature; there is
no more ground for imagining the occurrence of supernatural intervention,
at any moment in the development of species in the past, than there is for
supposing such intervention to take place, at any moment in the development
of an individual animal or plant, at the present day.
2. At present, every individual animal or plant commences its existence as
an organism of extremely simple anatomical structure; and it acquires all
the complexity it ultimately possesses by gradual {41} differentiation into
parts of various structure and function. When a series of specific forms of
the same type, extending over a long period of past time, is examined, the
relation between the earlier and the later forms is analogous to that
between earlier and later stages of individual development. Therefore, it
is a probable conclusion that, if we could follow living beings back to
their earliest states, we should find them to present forms similar to
those of the individual germ, or, what comes to the same thing, of those
lowest known organisms which stand upon the boundary line between plants
and animals. At present, our knowledge of the ancient living world stops
very far short of this point.
3. It is generally agreed, and there is certainly no evidence to the
contrary, that all plants are devoid of consciousness; that they neither
feel, desire, nor think. It is conceivable that the evolution of the
primordial living substance should have taken place only along the plant
line. In that case, the result might have been a wealth of vegetable life,
as great, perhaps as varied, as at present, though certainly widely
different from the present flora, in the evolution of which animals have
played so great a part. But the living world thus constituted would be
simply an admirable piece of unconscious machinery, the working out of
which lay potentially in its primitive composition; pleasure and pain would
have no place in it; it would be a veritable Garden of Eden without any
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The question of the moral
government of such a world {42} could no more be asked, than we could
reasonably seek for a moral purpose in a kaleidoscope.
4. How far down the scale of animal life the phenomena of consciousness are
manifested, it is impossible to say. No one doubts their presence in his
fellow-men; and, unless any strict Cartesians are left, no one doubts that
mammals and birds are to be reckoned creatures that have feelings analogous
to our smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch, pleasure, and pain. For my own
part, I should be disposed to extend this analogical judgment a good deal
further. On the other hand, if the lowest forms of plants are to be denied
consciousness, I do not see on what ground it is to be ascribed to the
lowest animals. I find it hard to believe that an infusory animalcule, a
foraminifer, or a fresh-water polype is capable of feeling; and, in spite
of Shakspere, I have doubts about the great sensitiveness of the "poor
beetle that we tread upon." The question is equally perplexing when we turn
to the stages of development of the individual. Granted a fowl feels; that
the chick just hatched feels; that the chick when it chirps within the egg
may possibly feel; what is to be said of it, on the fifth day, when the
bird is there, but with all its tissues nascent? Still more, on the first
day, when it is nothing but a flat cellular disk? I certainly cannot bring
myself to believe that this disk feels. Yet if it does not, there must be
some time in the three weeks, between the first day and the day of
hatching, when, as a concomitant, or a consequence, of the attainment by
the brain of {43} the chick of a certain stage of structural evolution,
consciousness makes its appearance. I have frequently expressed my
incapacity to understand the nature of the relation between consciousness
and a certain anatomical tissue, which is thus established by observation.
But the fact remains that, so far as observation and experiment go, they
teach us that the psychical phenomena are dependent on the physical.
In like manner, if fishes, insects, scorpions, and such animals as the
pearly nautilus, possess feeling, then undoubtedly consciousness was
present in the world as far back as the Silurian epoch. But, if the
earliest animals were similar to our rhizopods and monads, there must have
been some time, between the much earlier epoch in which they constituted
the whole animal population and the Silurian, in which feeling dawned, in
consequence of the organism having reached the stage of evolution on which
it depends.
5. Consciousness has various forms, which may be manifested independently
of one another. The feelings of light and colour, of sound, of touch,
though so often associated with those of pleasure and pain, are, by nature,
as entirely independent of them as is thinking. An animal devoid of the
feelings of pleasure and of pain, may nevertheless exhibit all the effects
of sensation and purposive action. Therefore, it would be a justifiable
hypothesis that, long after organic evolution had attained to
consciousness, pleasure and pain were still absent. Such a world {44} would
be without either happiness or misery; no act could be punished and none
could be rewarded; and it could have no moral purpose.
6. Suppose, for argument's sake, that all mammals and birds are subjects of
pleasure and pain. Then we may be certain that these forms of consciousness
were in existence at the beginning of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time
forth, pleasure has been distributed without reference to merit, and pain
inflicted without reference to demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction
of the higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the severity of the pain,
no less than the variety and acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with
every advance in the scale of evolution. As suffering came into the world,
not in consequence of a fall, but of a rise, in the scale of being, so
every further rise has brought more suffering. As the evidence stands, it
would appear that the sort of brain which characterises the highest mammals
and which, so far as we know, is the indispensable condition of the highest
sensibility, did not come into existence before the Tertiary epoch. The
primordial anthropoid was probably, in this respect, on much the same
footing as his pithecoid kin. Like them he stood upon his "natural rights,"
gratified all his desires to the best of his ability, and was as incapable
of either right or wrong doing as they. It would be as absurd as in their
case, to regard his pleasures, any more than theirs, as moral rewards, and
his pains, any more than theirs, as moral punishments. {45}
7. From the remotest ages of which we have any cognizance, death has been
the natural and, apparently, the necessary concomitant of life. In our
hypothetical world (3), inhabited by nothing but plants, death must have
very early resulted from the struggle for existence: many of the crowd must
have jostled one another out of the conditions on which life depends. The
occurrence of death, as far back as we have any fossil record of life,
however, needs not to be proved by such arguments; for, if there had been
no death there would have been no fossil remains, such as the great
majority of those we meet with. Not only was there death in the world, as
far as the record of life takes us; but, ever since mammals and birds have
been preyed upon by carnivorous animals, there has been painful death,
inflicted by mechanisms specially adapted for inflicting it.
8. Those who are acquainted with the closeness of the structural relations
between the human organisation and that of the mammals which come nearest
to him, on the one hand; and with the palaeontological history of such
animals as horses and dogs, on the other; will not be disposed to question
the origin of man from forms which stand in the same sort of relation to
_Homo sapiens_, as _Hipparion_ does to _Equus_. I think it a conclusion,
fully justified by analogy, that, sooner or later, we shall discover the
remains of our less specialised primatic ancestors in the strata which have
yielded the less specialised equine and canine quadrupeds. At present,
fossil remains of men do not take us back further than the later {46} part
of the Quaternary epoch; and, as was to be expected, they do not differ
more from existing men, than Quaternary horses differ from existing horses.
Still earlier we find traces of man, in implements, such as are used by the
ruder savages at the present day. Later, the remains of the palaeolithic and
neolithic conditions take us gradually from the savage state to the
civilisations of Egypt and of Mycenae; though the true chronological order
of the remains actually discovered may be uncertain.