nations of Europe is the product of that interaction, sometimes in the way
of antagonism, sometimes in that of profitable interchange, of the Semitic
and the Aryan races, which commenced with the dawn of history, when Greek
and Phoenician came in contact, and has been continued by Carthaginian and
Roman, by Jew and Gentile, down to the present day. Our art (except,
perhaps, music) and our science are the contributions of the Aryan; but the
essence of our religion is derived from the Semite. In the eighth century
B.C., in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew
prophets put forth a conception of religion which appears to me to be as
wonderful an inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of
Aristotle.
"And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to {96} do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
If any so-called religion takes away from this great saying of Micah, I
think it wantonly mutilates, while, if it adds thereto, I think it
obscures, the perfect ideal of religion.
But what extent of knowledge, what acuteness of scientific criticism, can
touch this, if any one possessed of knowledge, or acuteness, could be
absurd enough to make the attempt? Will the progress of research prove that
justice is worthless and mercy hateful; will it ever soften the bitter
contrast between our actions and our aspirations; or show us the bounds of
the universe, and bid us say, Go to, now we comprehend the infinite? A
faculty of wrath lay in those ancient Israelites, and surely the prophet's
staff would have made swift acquaintance with the head of the scholar who
had asked Micah whether, peradventure, the Lord further required of him an
implicit belief in the accuracy of the cosmogony of Genesis!
What we are usually pleased to call religion nowadays is, for the most
part, Hellenised Judaism; and, not unfrequently, the Hellenic element
carries with it a mighty remnant of old-world paganism and a great infusion
of the worst and weakest products of Greek scientific speculation; while
fragments of Persian and Babylonian, or rather Accadian, mythology burden
the Judaic contribution to the common stock.
The antagonism of science is not to religion, but to the heathen survivals
and the bad philosophy under which religion herself is often wellnigh
crushed. {97} And, for my part, I trust that this antagonism will never
cease; but that, to the end of time, true science will continue to fulfil
one of her most beneficent functions, that of relieving men from the burden
of false science which is imposed upon them in the name of religion.
This is the work that M. Reville and men such as he are doing for us; this
is the work which his opponents are endeavouring, consciously or
unconsciously, to hinder.
* * * * *
{98}
III
MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS
In controversy, as in courtship, the good old rule to be off with the old
before one is on with the new, greatly commends itself to my sense of
expediency. And, therefore, it appears to me desirable that I should
preface such observations as I may have to offer upon the cloud of
arguments (the relevancy of which to the issue which I had ventured to
raise is not always obvious) put forth by Mr. Gladstone in the January
number of this Review,[14] by an endeavour to make clear to such of our
readers as have not had the advantage of a forensic education the present
net result of the discussion.
I am quite aware that, in undertaking this task, I run all the risks to
which the man who presumes to deal judicially with his own cause is liable.
But it is exactly because I do not shun that risk, but, rather, earnestly
desire to be judged by him who cometh after me, provided that he has the
knowledge and impartiality appropriate to a judge, that I adopt my present
course.
{99}
In the article on "The Dawn of Creation and Worship," it will be remembered
that Mr. Gladstone unreservedly commits himself to three propositions. The
first is that, according to the writer of the Pentateuch, the
"water-population," the "air-population," and the "land-population" of the
globe were created successively, in the order named. In the second place,
Mr. Gladstone authoritatively asserts that this (as part of his "fourfold
order") has been "so affirmed in our time by natural science, that it may
be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." In the third
place, Mr. Gladstone argues that the fact of this coincidence of the
pentateuchal story with the results of modern investigation makes it
"impossible to avoid the conclusion, first, that either this writer was
gifted with faculties passing all human experience, or else his knowledge
was divine." And having settled to his own satisfaction that the first
"branch of the alternative is truly nominal and unreal," Mr. Gladstone
continues, "So stands the plea for a revelation of truth from God, a plea
only to be met by questioning its possibility" (p. 697).
I am a simple-minded person, wholly devoid of subtlety of intellect, so
that I willingly admit that there may be depths of alternative meaning in
these propositions out of all soundings attainable by my poor plummet.
Still there are a good many people who suffer under a like intellectual
limitation; and, for once in my life, I feel that I have the chance of
attaining that position of a representative of average opinion which
appears to be the modern ideal of a {100} leader of men, when I make free
confession that, after turning the matter over in my mind, with all the aid
derived from a careful consideration of Mr. Gladstone's reply, I cannot get
away from my original conviction that, if Mr. Gladstone's second
proposition can be shown to be not merely inaccurate, but directly
contradictory of facts known to every one who is acquainted with the
elements of natural science, the third proposition collapses of itself.
And it was this conviction which led me to enter upon the present
discussion. I fancied that if my respected clients, the people of average
opinion and capacity, could once be got distinctly to conceive that Mr.
Gladstone's views as to the proper method of dealing with grave and
difficult scientific and religious problems had permitted him to base a
solemn "plea for a revelation of truth from God" upon an error as to a
matter of fact, from which the intelligent perusal of a manual of
palaeontology would have saved him, I need not trouble myself to occupy
their time and attention with further comments upon his contribution to
apologetic literature. It is for others to judge whether I have efficiently
carried out my project or not. It certainly does not count for much that I
should be unable to find any flaw in my own case, but I think it counts for
a good deal that Mr. Gladstone appears to have been equally unable to do
so. He does, indeed, make a great parade of authorities, and I have the
greatest respect for those authorities whom Mr. Gladstone mentions. If he
will get them to sign a joint memorial to the effect that our present {101}
palaeontological evidence proves that birds appeared before the
"land-population" of terrestrial reptiles, I shall think it my duty to
reconsider my position--but not till then.
It will be observed that I have cautiously used the word "appears" in
referring to what seems to me to be absence of any real answer to my
criticisms in Mr. Gladstone's reply. For I must honestly confess that,
notwithstanding long and painful strivings after clear insight, I am still
uncertain whether Mr. Gladstone's "Defence" means that the great "plea for
a revelation from God" is to be left to perish in the dialectic desert; or
whether it is to be withdrawn under the protection of such skirmishers as
are available for covering retreat.
In particular, the remarkable disquisition which covers pages 11 to 14 of
Mr. Gladstone's last contribution has greatly exercised my mind. Socrates
is reported to have said of the works of Heraclitus that he who attempted
to comprehend them should be a "Delian swimmer," but that, for his part,
what he could understand was so good that he was disposed to believe in the
excellence of that which he found unintelligible. In endeavouring to make
myself master of Mr. Gladstone's meaning in these pages, I have often been
overcome by a feeling analogous to that of Socrates, but not quite the
same. That which I do understand, in fact, has appeared to me so very much
the reverse of good, that I have sometimes permitted myself to doubt the
value of that which I do not understand. {102}
In this part of Mr. Gladstone's reply, in fact, I find nothing of which the
bearing upon my arguments is clear to me, except that which relates to the
question whether reptiles, so far as they are represented by tortoises and
the great majority of lizards and snakes, which are land animals, are
creeping things in the sense of the pentateuchal writer or not.
I have every respect for the singer of the Song of the Three Children
(whoever he may have been); I desire to cast no shadow of doubt upon, but,
on the contrary, marvel at, the exactness of Mr. Gladstone's information as
to the considerations which "affected the method of the Mosaic writer"; nor
do I venture to doubt that the inconvenient intrusion of these contemptible
reptiles--"a family fallen from greatness" (p. 14), a miserable decayed
aristocracy reduced to mere "skulkers about the earth" (_ibid._)--in
consequence, apparently, of difficulties about the occupation of land
arising out of the earth-hunger of their former serfs, the mammals--into an
apologetic argument, which otherwise would run quite smoothly, is in every
way to be deprecated. Still, the wretched creatures stand there,
importunately demanding notice; and, however different may be the practice
in that contentious atmosphere with which Mr. Gladstone expresses and
laments his familiarity, in the atmosphere of science it really is of no
avail whatever to shut one's eyes to facts, or to try to bury them out of
sight under a tumulus of rhetoric. That is my experience of "the Elysian
regions of Science," wherein it is a pleasure to me to think that a man of
Mr. Gladstone's {103} intimate knowledge of English life, during the last
quarter of a century, believes my philosophic existence to have been
rounded off in unbroken equanimity.
However reprehensible, and indeed contemptible, terrestrial reptiles may
be, the only question which appears to me to be relevant to my argument is
whether these creatures are or are not comprised under the denomination of
"everything that creepeth upon the ground."
Mr. Gladstone speaks of the author of the first chapter of Genesis as "the
Mosaic writer"; I suppose, therefore, that he will admit that it is equally
proper to speak of the author of Leviticus as the "Mosaic writer." Whether
such a phrase would be used by any one who had an adequate conception of
the assured results of modern Biblical criticism is another matter; but, at
any rate, it cannot be denied that Leviticus has as much claim to Mosaic
authorship as Genesis. Therefore, if one wants to know the sense of a
phrase used in Genesis, it will be well to see what Leviticus has to say on
the matter. Hence, I commend the following extract from the eleventh
chapter of Leviticus to Mr. Gladstone's serious attention:--
And these are they which are unclean unto you among the creeping things
that creep upon the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and the great
lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the
sand-lizard, and the chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you
among all that creep (v. 29-31).
The merest Sunday-school exegesis therefore suffices {104} to prove that
when the "Mosaic writer" in Genesis i. 24 speaks of "creeping things," he
means to include lizards among them.
This being so, it is agreed, on all hands, that terrestrial lizards, and
other reptiles allied to lizards, occur in the Permian strata. It is
further agreed that the Triassic strata were deposited after these.
Moreover, it is well known that, even if certain footprints are to be taken
as unquestionable evidence of the existence of birds, they are not known to
occur in rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable remains of birds
are to be met with only much later. Hence it follows that natural science
does not "affirm" the statement that birds were made on the fifth day, and
"everything that creepeth on the ground" on the sixth, on which Mr.
Gladstone rests his order; for, as is shown by Leviticus, the "Mosaic
writer" includes lizards among his "creeping things."
Perhaps I have given myself superfluous trouble in the preceding argument,
for I find that Mr. Gladstone is willing to assume (he does not say to
admit) that the statement in the text of Genesis as to reptiles cannot "in
all points be sustained" (p. 16). But my position is that it cannot be
sustained in any point, so that, after all, it has perhaps been as well to
go over the evidence again. And then Mr. Gladstone proceeds as if nothing
had happened to tell us that--
There remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First, the fact that
such a record should have been made at all.
As most peoples have their cosmogonies, this "fact" does not strike me as
having much value. {105}
Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in generalities, it has
placed itself under the severe conditions of a chronological order
reaching from the first _nisus_ of chaotic matter to the consummated
production of a fair and goodly, a furnished and a peopled world.
This "fact" can be regarded as of value only by ignoring the fact
demonstrated in my previous paper, that natural science does not confirm
the order asserted so far as living things are concerned; and by upsetting
a fact to be brought to light presently, to wit, that, in regard to the
rest of the pentateuchal cosmogony, prudent science has very little to say
one way or the other.
Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the light of the
nineteenth century, to draw more and more of countenance from the best
natural philosophy.
I have already questioned the accuracy of this statement, and I do not
observe that mere repetition adds to its value.
And, fourthly, that it has described the successive origins of the five
great categories of present life with which human experience was and is
conversant, in that order which geological authority confirms.
By comparison with a sentence on page 14, in which a fivefold order is
substituted for the "fourfold order," on which the "plea for revelation"
was originally founded, it appears that these five categories are "plants,
fishes, birds, mammals, and man," which, Mr. Gladstone affirms, "are given
to us in Genesis in the order of succession in which they are also given by
the latest geological authorities." {106}
I must venture to demur to this statement. I showed, in my previous paper,
that there is no reason to doubt that the term "great sea monster" (used in
Gen. i. 21) includes the most conspicuous of great sea animals--namely,
whales, dolphins, porpoises, manatees, and dugongs;[15] and, as these are
indubitable mammals, it is impossible to affirm that mammals come after
birds, which are said to have been created on the same day. Moreover, I
pointed out that as these Cetacea and Sirenia are certainly modified land
animals, their existence implies the antecedent existence of land mammals.
Furthermore, I have to remark that the term "fishes," as used, technically,
in zoology, by no means covers all the moving creatures that have life,
which are bidden to "fill the waters in the seas" (Gen. i. 20-22). Marine
mollusks and crustacea, echinoderms, corals, and foraminifera are not
technically fishes. But they are abundant in the palaeozoic rocks, ages upon
ages older than those in which the first evidences of true fishes appear.
And if, in a geological book, Mr. Gladstone finds the quite true statement
that plants appeared before fishes, it is only by a complete
misunderstanding that he can be led to imagine it serves his purpose. As a
matter of fact, at the present moment, it is a question whether, on the
bare evidence afforded by fossils, the marine creeping thing or the marine
plant has the seniority. {107} No cautious palaeontologist would express a
decided opinion on the matter. But, if we are to read the pentateuchal
statement as a scientific document (and, in spite of all protests to the
contrary, those who bring it into comparison with science do seek to make a
scientific document of it), then, as it is quite clear that only
terrestrial plants of high organisation are spoken of in verses 11 and 12,
no palaeontologist would hesitate to say that, at present, the records of
sea animal life are vastly older than those of any land plant describable
as "grass, herb yielding seed, or fruit-tree."
Thus, although, in Mr. Gladstone's "Defence," the "old order passeth into
new," his case is not improved. The fivefold order is no more "affirmed in
our time by natural science" to be "a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact" than the fourfold order was. Natural science appears to
me to decline to have anything to do with either; they are as wrong in
detail as they are mistaken in principle.
There is another change of position, the value of which is not so apparent
to me, as it may well seem to be to those who are unfamiliar with the
subject under discussion. Mr. Gladstone discards his three groups of
"water-population," "air-population," and "land-population," and
substitutes for them (1) fishes, (2) birds, (3) mammals, (4) man. Moreover,
it is assumed, in a note, that "the higher or ordinary mammals" alone were
known to the "Mosaic writer" (p. 6). No doubt it looks, at first, as if
something {108} were gained by this alteration; for, as I have just pointed
out, the word "fishes" can be used in two senses, one of which has a
deceptive appearance of adjustability to the "Mosaic" account. Then the
inconvenient reptiles are banished out of sight; and, finally, the question
of the exact meaning of "higher" and "ordinary" in the case of mammals
opens up the prospect of a hopeful logomachy. But what is the good of it
all in the face of Leviticus on the one hand and of palaeontology on the
other?
As, in my apprehension, there is not a shadow of justification for the
suggestion that when the pentateuchal writer says "fowl" he excludes bats
(which, as we shall see directly, are expressly included under "fowl" in
Leviticus), and as I have already shown that he demonstrably includes
reptiles, as well as mammals, among the creeping things of the land, I may
be permitted to spare my readers further discussion of the "fivefold
order." On the whole, it is seen to be rather more inconsistent with
Genesis than its fourfold predecessor.
But I have yet a fresh order to face. Mr. Gladstone (p. 11) understands
"the main statements of Genesis in successive order of time, but without
any measurement of its divisions, to be as follows:--
1. A period of land, anterior to all life (v. 9, 10).
2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal life (v. 11, 12).
3. A period of animal life, in the order of fishes (v. 20).
4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of birds.
5. Another, in the order of beasts (v. 24, 25).
6. Last of all, man (v. 26, 27)."
{109}
Mr. Gladstone then tries to find the proof of the occurrence of a similar
succession in sundry excellent works on geology.
I am really grieved to be obliged to say that this third (or is it fourth?)
modification of the foundation of the "plea for revelation" originally set
forth, satisfies me as little as any of its predecessors.
For, in the first place, I cannot accept the assertion that this order is
to be found in Genesis. With respect to No. 5, for example, I hold, as I
have already said, that "great sea monsters" includes the Cetacea, in which
case mammals (which is what, I suppose, Mr. Gladstone means by "beasts")
come in under head No. 3, and not under No. 5. Again, "fowl" are said in
Genesis to be created on the same day as fishes; therefore I cannot accept
an order which makes birds succeed fishes. Once more, as it is quite
certain that the term "fowl" includes the bats,--for in Leviticus xi. 13-19
we read, "And these shall ye have in abomination among the fowls ... the
heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat,"--it is obvious that
bats are also said to have been created at stage No. 3. And as bats are
mammals, and their existence obviously presupposes that of terrestrial
"beasts," it is quite clear that the latter could not have first appeared
as No. 5. I need not repeat my reasons for doubting whether man came "last
of all."
As the latter half of Mr. Gladstone's sixfold order thus shows itself to be
wholly unauthorised by, and inconsistent with, the plain language of the
Pentateuch, {110} I might decline to discuss the admissibility of its
former half.
But I will add one or two remarks on this point also. Does Mr. Gladstone
mean to say that in any of the works he has cited, or indeed anywhere else,
he can find scientific warranty for the assertion that there was a period
of land--by which I suppose he means dry land (for submerged land must
needs be as old as the separate existence of the sea)--"anterior to all
life"?
It may be so, or it may not be so; but where is the evidence which would
justify any one in making a positive assertion on the subject? What
competent palaeontologist will affirm, at this present moment, that he knows
anything about the period at which life originated, or will assert more
than the extreme probability that such origin was a long way antecedent to
any traces of life at present known? What physical geologist will affirm
that he knows when dry land began to exist, or will say more than that it
was probably very much earlier than any extant direct evidence of
terrestrial conditions indicates?
I think I know pretty well the answers which the authorities quoted by Mr.
Gladstone would give to these questions; but I leave it to them to give
them if they think fit.
If I ventured to speculate on the matter at all, I should say it is by no
means certain that sea is older than dry land, inasmuch as a solid
terrestrial surface may very well have existed before the earth was cool
enough to allow of the existence of fluid water. And, {111} in this case,
dry land may have existed before the sea. As to the first appearance of
life, the whole argument of analogy, whatever it may be worth in such a
case, is in favour of the absence of living beings until long after the hot
water seas had constituted themselves; and of the subsequent appearance of
aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But whether these "protoplasts"
would, if we could examine them, be reckoned among the lowest microscopic
algae, or fungi; or among those doubtful organisms which lie in the
debatable land between animals and plants, is, in my judgment, a question
on which a prudent biologist will reserve his opinion.
I think that I have now disposed of those parts of Mr. Gladstone's defence
in which I seem to discover a design to rescue his solemn "plea for
revelation." But a great deal of the "Proem to Genesis" remains which I
would gladly pass over in silence, were such a course consistent with the
respect due to so distinguished a champion of the "reconcilers."
I hope that my clients--the people of average opinions--have by this time
some confidence in me; for when I tell them that, after all, Mr. Gladstone
is of opinion that the "Mosaic record" was meant to give moral, and not
scientific, instruction to those for whom it was written, they may be
disposed to think that I must be misleading them. But let them listen
further to what Mr. Gladstone says in a compendious but not exactly correct
statement respecting my opinions:-- {112}
He holds the writer responsible for scientific precision: I look for
nothing of the kind, but assign to him a statement general, which
admits exceptions; popular, which aims mainly at producing moral
impression; summary, which cannot but be open to more or less of
criticism of detail. He thinks it is a lecture. I think it is a sermon
(p. 5).