_differentia_ between a lecture and a sermon is, that the former, so far as
it deals with matters of fact, may be taken seriously, as meaning exactly
what it says, while a sermon may not. I have quite enough on my hands
without taking up the cudgels for the clergy, who will probably find Mr.
Gladstone's definition unflattering.
But I am diverging from my proper business, which is to say that I have
given no ground for the ascription of these opinions; and that, as a matter
of fact, I do not hold them and never have held them. It is Mr. Gladstone,
and not I, who will have it that the pentateuchal cosmogony is to be taken
as science.
My belief, on the contrary, is, and long has been, that the pentateuchal
story of the creation is simply a myth. I suppose it to be an hypothesis
respecting the origin of the universe which some ancient thinker found
himself able to reconcile with his knowledge, or what he thought was
knowledge, of the nature of things, and therefore assumed to be true. As
such, I hold it to be not merely an interesting, but a venerable, monument
of a stage in the mental progress of mankind; and I find it difficult to
suppose that any one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies of other {113}
nations--and especially with those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians,
with whom the Israelites were in such frequent and intimate
communication--should consider it to possess either more, or less,
scientific importance than may be allotted to these.
Mr. Gladstone's definition of a sermon permits me to suspect that he may
not see much difference between that form of discourse and what I call a
myth; and I hope it may be something more than the slowness of
apprehension, to which I have confessed, which leads me to imagine that a
statement which is "general" but "admits exceptions," which is "popular"
and "aims mainly at producing moral impression," "summary" and therefore
open to "criticism of detail," amounts to a myth, or perhaps less than a
myth. Put algebraically, it comes to this, _x_ = _a_ + _b_ + _c_; always
remembering that there is nothing to show the exact value of either _a_, or
_b_, or c. It is true that _a_ is commonly supposed to equal 10, but there
are exceptions, and these may reduce it to 8, or 3, or 0; _b_ also
popularly means 10, but being chiefly used by the algebraist as a "moral"
value, you cannot do much with it in the addition or subtraction of
mathematical values; _c_ also is quite "summary," and if you go into the
details of which it is made up, many of them may be wrong, and their sum
total equal to 0, or even to a minus quantity.
Mr. Gladstone appears to wish that I should (1) enter upon a sort of essay
competition with the author of the pentateuchal cosmogony; (2) that I
should make a further statement about some {114} elementary facts in the
history of Indian and Greek philosophy; and (3) that I should show cause
for my hesitation in accepting the assertion that Genesis is supported, at
any rate to the extent of the first two verses, by the nebular hypothesis.
A certain sense of humour prevents me from accepting the first invitation.
I would as soon attempt to put Hamlet's soliloquy into a more scientific
shape. But if I supposed the "Mosaic writer" to be inspired, as Mr.
Gladstone does, it would not be consistent with my notions of respect for
the Supreme Being to imagine Him unable to frame a form of words which
should accurately, or, at least, not inaccurately, express His own meaning.
It is sometimes said that, had the statements contained in the first
chapter of Genesis been scientifically true, they would have been
unintelligible to ignorant people; but how is the matter mended if, being
scientifically untrue, they must needs be rejected by instructed people?
With respect to the second suggestion, it would be presumptuous in me to
pretend to instruct Mr. Gladstone in matters which lie as much within the
province of Literature and History as in that of Science; but if any one
desirous of further knowledge will be so good as to turn to that most
excellent and by no means recondite source of information, the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, he will find, under the letter E, the word
"Evolution," and a long article on that subject. Now, I do not recommend
him to read the first half of the article; but the second half, by my {115}
friend Mr. Sully, is really very good. He will there find it said that in
some of the philosophies of ancient India, the idea of evolution is clearly
expressed: "Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent being, which,
on its material side, unfolds itself to the world by gradually condensing
itself to material objects through the gradations of ether, fire, water,
earth, and other elements." And again: "In the later system of emanation of
Sankhya there is a more marked approach to a materialistic doctrine of
evolution." What little knowledge I have of the matter--chiefly derived
from that very instructive book, _Die Religion des Buddha_, by C. F.
Koeppen, supplemented by Hardy's interesting works--leads me to think that
Mr. Sully might have spoken much more strongly as to the evolutionary
character of Indian philosophy, and especially of that of the Buddhists.
But the question is too large to be dealt with incidentally.
And, with respect to early Greek philosophy,[16] the seeker after
additional enlightenment need go no further than the same excellent
storehouse of information:--
The early Ionian physicists, including Thales, Anaximander, and
Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated out of a primordial
matter which is at the same time the universal support of things. This
substance is endowed with a generative or transmutative force by virtue
of which it passes into a {116} succession of forms. They thus resemble
modern evolutionists, since they regard the world, with its infinite
variety of forms, as issuing from a simple mode of matter.
Further on, Mr. Sully remarks that "Heraclitus deserves a prominent place
in the history of the idea of evolution," and he states, with perfect
justice, that Heraclitus has foreshadowed some of the special peculiarities
of Mr. Darwin's views. It is indeed a very strange circumstance that the
philosophy of the great Ephesian more than adumbrates the two doctrines
which have played leading parts, the one in the development of Christian
dogma, the other in that of natural science. The former is the conception
of the Word ([Greek: logos]) which took its Jewish shape in Alexandria, and
its Christian form[17] in that Gospel which is usually referred to an
Ephesian source of some five centuries later date; and the latter is that
of the struggle for existence. The saying that "strife is father and king
of all" ([Greek: polemos panton men pater esti, panton de basileus]),
ascribed to Heraclitus, would be a not inappropriate motto for the "Origin
of Species."
I have referred only to Mr. Sully's article, because his authority is quite
sufficient for my purpose. But the consultation of any of the more
elaborate histories of Greek philosophy, such as the great work of Zeller,
for example, will only bring out the same fact into still more striking
prominence. I have professed no "minute acquaintance" with either Indian or
Greek philosophy, but I have taken a great deal of pains to {117} secure
that such knowledge as I do possess shall be accurate and trustworthy.
In the third place, Mr. Gladstone appears to wish that I should discuss
with him the question whether the nebular hypothesis is, or is not,
confirmatory of the pentateuchal account of the origin of things. Mr.
Gladstone appears to be prepared to enter upon this campaign with a light
heart. I confess I am not, and my reason for this backwardness will
doubtless surprise Mr. Gladstone. It is that, rather more than a quarter of
a century ago (namely, in February 1859), when it was my duty, as President
of the Geological Society, to deliver the Anniversary Address,[18] I chose
a topic which involved a very careful study of the remarkable cosmogonical
speculation, originally promulgated by Immanuel Kant and, subsequently, by
Laplace, which is now known as the nebular hypothesis. With the help of
such little acquaintance with the principles of physics and astronomy as I
had gained, I endeavoured to obtain a clear understanding of this
speculation in all its bearings. I am not sure that I succeeded; but of
this I am certain, that the problems involved are very difficult, even for
those who possess the intellectual discipline requisite for dealing with
them. And it was this conviction that led me to express my desire to leave
the discussion of the question of the asserted harmony between Genesis and
the nebular hypothesis to experts in the appropriate branches of knowledge.
And I think my course was a {118} wise one; but as Mr. Gladstone evidently
does not understand how there can be any hesitation on my part, unless it
arises from a conviction that he is in the right, I may go so far as to set
out my difficulties.
They are of two kinds--exegetical and scientific. It appears to me that it
is vain to discuss a supposed coincidence between Genesis and science
unless we have first settled, on the one hand, what Genesis says, and, on
the other hand, what science says.
In the first place, I cannot find any consensus among Biblical scholars as
to the meaning of the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth." Some say that the Hebrew word _bara_, which is translated
"create," means "made out of nothing." I venture to object to that
rendering, not on the ground of scholarship, but of common sense.
Omnipotence itself can surely no more make something "out of" nothing than
it can make a triangular circle. What is intended by "made out of nothing"
appears to be "caused to come into existence," with the implication that
nothing of the same kind previously existed. It is further usually assumed
that "the heaven and the earth" means the material substance of the
universe. Hence the "Mosaic writer" is taken to imply that where nothing of
a material nature previously existed, this substance appeared. That is
perfectly conceivable, and therefore no one can deny that it may have
happened. But there are other very authoritative {119} critics who say that
the ancient Israelite[19] who wrote the passage was not likely to have been
capable of such abstract thinking; and that, as a matter of philology,
_bara_ is commonly used to signify the "fashioning," or "forming," of that
which already exists. Now it appears to me that the scientific investigator
is wholly incompetent to say anything at all about the first origin of the
material universe. The whole power of his organon vanishes when he has to
step beyond the chain of natural causes and effects. No form of the nebular
hypothesis, that I know of, is necessarily connected with any view of the
origination of the nebular substance. Kant's form of it expressly supposes
that the nebular material from which one stellar system starts may be
nothing but the disintegrated substance of a stellar and planetary system
which has just come to an end. Therefore, so far as I can see, one who
believes that matter has existed from all eternity has just as much right
to hold the nebular hypothesis as one who believes that matter came into
existence at a specified epoch. In other words, the nebular hypothesis and
the creation hypothesis, up to this point, neither confirm nor oppose one
another.
Next, we read in the revisers' version, in which I suppose the ultimate
results of critical scholarship to be embodied: "And the earth was waste
['without form,' in the Authorised Version] and void." Most {120} people
seem to think that this phraseology intends to imply that the matter out of
which the world was to be formed was a veritable "chaos," devoid of law and
order. If this interpretation is correct, the nebular hypothesis can have
nothing to say to it. The scientific thinker cannot admit the absence of
law and order, anywhere or anywhen, in nature. Sometimes law and order are
patent and visible to our limited vision; sometimes they are hidden. But
every particle of the matter of the most fantastic-looking nebula in the
heavens is a realm of law and order in itself; and, that it is so, is the
essential condition of the possibility of solar and planetary evolution
from the apparent chaos.[20]
"Waste" is too vague a term to be worth consideration. "Without form,"
intelligible enough as a metaphor, if taken literally, is absurd; for a
material thing existing in space must have a superficies, and if it has a
superficies it has a form. The wildest streaks of marestail clouds in the
sky, or the most irregular heavenly nebulae, have surely just as much form
as a geometrical tetrahedron; and as for "void," how can that be void which
is full of matter? As poetry, these lines are vivid and admirable; as a
scientific statement, which they must be taken to be if any one is
justified in comparing them with another scientific statement, they fail to
convey any intelligible conception to my mind.
{121}
The account proceeds: "And darkness was upon the face of the deep." So be
it; but where, then, is the likeness to the celestial nebulae, of the
existence of which we should know nothing unless they shone with a light of
their own? "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." I
have met with no form of the nebular hypothesis which involves anything
analogous to this process.
I have said enough to explain some of the difficulties which arise in my
mind, when I try to ascertain whether there is any foundation for the
contention that the statements contained in the first two verses of Genesis
are supported by the nebular hypothesis. The result does not appear to me
to be exactly favourable to that contention. The nebular hypothesis assumes
the existence of matter, having definite properties, as its foundation.
Whether such matter was created a few thousand years ago, or whether it has
existed through an eternal series of metamorphoses of which our present
universe is only the last stage, are alternatives, neither of which is
scientifically untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. But
science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in
other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in
any respect less the seat of law and order than it is now. One might as
well talk of a fresh-laid hen's egg being "without form and void," because
the chick therein is potential and not actual, as apply such terms to the
nebulous mass which contains a potential solar system. {122}
Until some further enlightenment comes to me, then, I confess myself wholly
unable to understand the way in which the nebular hypothesis is to be
converted into an ally of the "Mosaic writer."[21]
But Mr. Gladstone informs us that Professor Dana and Professor Guyot are
prepared to prove that the "first or cosmogonical portion of the Proem not
only accords with, but teaches, the nebular hypothesis." There is no one to
whose authority on geological questions I am more readily disposed to bow
than that of my eminent friend Professor Dana. But I am familiar with what
he has previously said on this topic in his well-known and standard work,
into which, strangely enough, it does not seem to have occurred to Mr.
Gladstone to look before he set out upon his present undertaking; and
unless Professor Dana's latest contribution (which I have not yet met with)
takes up altogether new ground, I am afraid I shall {123} not be able to
extricate myself, by its help, from my present difficulties.
It is a very long time since I began to think about the relations between
modern scientifically ascertained truths and the cosmogonical speculations
of the writer of Genesis; and, as I think that Mr. Gladstone might have
been able to put his case with a good deal more force if he had thought it
worth while to consult the last chapter of Professor Dana's admirable
_Manual of Geology_, so I think he might have been made aware that he was
undertaking an enterprise of which he had not counted the cost, if he had
chanced upon a discussion of the subject which I published in 1877.[22]
Finally, I should like to draw the attention of those who take interest in
these topics to the weighty words of one of the most learned and moderate
of Biblical critics:--
A propos de cette premiere page de la Bible, on a coutume de nos jours
de disserter, a perte de vue, sur l'accord du recit mosaique avec les
sciences naturelles; et comme celles-ci, tout eloignees qu'elles sont
encore de la perfection absolue, ont rendu populaires et en quelque
sorte irrefragables un certain nombre de faits generaux ou de theses
fondamentales de la cosmologie et de la geologie, c'est le texte sacre
qu'on s'evertue a torturer pour le faire concorder avec ces
donnees.[23]
In my paper on the "Interpreters of Nature and the Interpreters of
Genesis," while freely availing myself of the rights of a scientific
critic, I endeavoured to keep the expression of my views well within those
{124} bounds of courtesy which are set by self-respect and consideration
for others. I am therefore glad to be favoured with Mr. Gladstone's
acknowledgment of the success of my efforts. I only wish that I could
accept all the products of Mr. Gladstone's gracious appreciation, but there
is one about which, as a matter of honesty, I hesitate. In fact, if I had
expressed my meaning better than I seem to have done, I doubt if this
particular proffer of Mr. Gladstone's thanks would have been made.
To my mind, whatever doctrine professes to be the result of the application
of the accepted rules of inductive and deductive logic to its
subject-matter; and accepts, within the limits which it sets to itself, the
supremacy of reason, is Science. Whether the subject-matter consists of
realities or unrealities, truths or falsehoods, is quite another question.
I conceive that ordinary geometry is science, by reason of its method, and
I also believe that its axioms, definitions, and conclusions are all true.
However, there is a geometry of four dimensions, which I also believe to be
science, because its method professes to be strictly scientific. It is true
that I cannot conceive four dimensions in space, and therefore, for me, the
whole affair is unreal. But I have known men of great intellectual powers
who seemed to have no difficulty either in conceiving them, or, at any
rate, in imagining how they could conceive them; and, therefore,
four-dimensioned geometry comes under my notion of science. So I think
astrology is a science, in so far as it professes to reason logically from
principles {125} established by just inductive methods. To prevent
misunderstanding, perhaps I had better add that I do not believe one whit
in astrology; but no more do I believe in Ptolemaic astronomy, or in the
catastrophic geology of my youth, although these, in their day,
claimed--and, to my mind, rightly claimed--the name of science. If nothing
is to be called science but that which is exactly true from beginning to
end, I am afraid there is very little science in the world outside
mathematics. Among the physical sciences, I do not know that any could
claim more than that it is true within certain limits, so narrow that, for
the present at any rate, they may be neglected. If such is the case, I do
not see where the line is to be drawn between exactly true, partially true,
and mainly untrue forms of science. And what I have said about the current
theology at the end of my paper [p. 95] leaves, I think, no doubt as to the
category in which I rank it. For all that, I think it would be not only
unjust, but almost impertinent, to refuse the name of science to the
_Summa_ of St. Thomas or to the _Institutes_ of Calvin.
In conclusion, I confess that my supposed "unjaded appetite" for the sort
of controversy in which it needed not Mr. Gladstone's express declaration
to tell us he is far better practised than I am (though probably, without
another express declaration, no one would have suspected that his
controversial fires are burning low) is already satiated.
In "Elysium" we conduct scientific discussions in {126} a different medium,
and we are liable to threatenings of asphyxia in that "atmosphere of
contention" in which Mr. Gladstone has been able to live, alert and
vigorous beyond the common race of men, as if it were purest mountain air.
I trust that he may long continue to seek truth, under the difficult
conditions he has chosen for the search, with unabated energy--I had almost
said fire--
May age not wither him, nor custom stale
His infinite variety.
But Elysium suits my less robust constitution better, and I beg leave to
retire thither, not sorry for my experience of the other region--no one
should regret experience--but determined not to repeat it, at any rate in
reference to the "plea for revelation."
* * * * *
NOTE ON THE PROPER SENSE OF THE "MOSAIC" NARRATIVE OF THE CREATION.
It has been objected to my argument from Leviticus (p. 103), that the
Hebrew words translated by "creeping things" in Genesis i. 24 and
Leviticus xi. 29, are different; namely, "reh-mes" in the former,
"sheh-retz" in the latter. The obvious reply to this objection is that
the question is not one of words but of the meaning of words. To borrow
an illustration from our own language, if "crawling things" had been
used by the translators in Genesis and "creeping things" in Leviticus,
it would not have been necessarily implied that they intended to denote
different groups of animals. "Sheh-retz" is employed in a wider sense
than "reh-mes." There are "sheh-retz" of the waters, of the earth, of
the air, and of the land. Leviticus speaks of land reptiles, among
other animals, as "sheh-retz"; Genesis speaks of all creeping land
animals, among which land reptiles are necessarily included, as
"reh-mes." Our translators, therefore, {127} have given the true sense
when they render both "sheh-retz" and "reh-mes" by "creeping things."
Having taken a good deal of trouble to show what Genesis i.-ii. 4 does
not mean, in the preceding pages, perhaps it may be well that I should
briefly give my opinion as to what it does mean. I conceive that the
unknown author of this part of the Hexateuchal compilation believed,
and meant his readers to believe, that his words, as they understood
them--that is to say, in their ordinary natural sense--conveyed the
"actual historical truth." When he says that such and such things
happened, I believe him to mean that they actually occurred and not
that he imagined or dreamed them; when he says "day," I believe he uses
the word in the popular sense; when he says "made" or "created," I
believe he means that they came into being by a process analogous to
that which the people whom he addressed called "making" or "creating";
and I think that, unless we forget our present knowledge of nature,
and, putting ourselves back into the position of a Phoenician or a
Chaldaean philosopher, start from his conception of the world, we shall
fail to grasp the meaning of the Hebrew writer. We must conceive the
earth to be an immovable, more or less flattened, body, with the vault
of heaven above, the watery abyss below and around. We must imagine
sun, moon, and stars to be "set" in a "firmament" with, or in, which
they move; and above which is yet another watery mass. We must consider
"light" and "darkness" to be things, the alternation of which
constitutes day and night, independently of the existence of sun, moon,
and stars. We must further suppose that, as in the case of the story of
the deluge, the Hebrew writer was acquainted with a Gentile (probably
Chaldaean or Accadian) account of the origin of things, in which he
substantially believed, but which he stripped of all its idolatrous
associations by substituting "Elohim" for Ea, Anu, Bel, and the like.