The only serious opponents of the dogma of the Creation are those
who maintain that the universe, the earth, the man upon the
earth, have existed from all eternity, and, collectively, in the
state in which they now are. No one however can hold this
language, to which facts are invincibly opposed. How many ages
man has existed on the earth, is a question that has been largely
discussed, and is still under discussion. The inquiry in no way
affects the dogma of the Creation itself: it is a certain and
recognized fact, that man has not always existed on the earth,
and that the earth has for long periods undergone different
changes incompatible with man's existence. Man therefore had a
beginning: man has come upon the earth. How has he come there?
{19}
Here the opponents of the dogma of Creation are divided: some
uphold the theory of spontaneous generation; others, the
transformation of species. According to one party, matter
possesses, under certain circumstances and by the simple
development of its own proper power, the faculty of creating
animated beings. According to others, the different species of
animated beings which still exist, or have existed at various
epochs and in the different conditions of the earth, are derived
from a small number of primitive types, which have possessed,
through the lapse of millions and thousands of millions of ages,
the power of developing and perfecting themselves, so as to gain
admission, through transformation, into higher species. Hence
they conclude, with more or less hesitation, that the human race
is the result of a transformation, or a series of
transformations.
{20}
The attempt to establish the theory of spontaneous production
dates from a remote period. Science has ever baffled it: the more
its observations have been exact and profound, the more have they
refuted the hypothesis of the innate creative power of matter.
This result has been again recently established by the attentive
examination of men of eminent scientific attainments, within and
without the walls of the Academy of Sciences. But were it even
otherwise,--could the advocates of the theory of spontaneous
production refer to experiments hitherto irrefutable, these would
furnish no better explanation of the first appearance of man upon
earth, and I should retain my right to repeat here what I have
advanced elsewhere on this subject:[Footnote 3]--
[Footnote 3: L'Eglise et la Société Chrétienne en 1861,
p. 27.]
{21}
"Such a mode of generation cannot, nor ever could, produce any
but infant beings, in the first hour and in the first state of
incipient life. It has, I believe, never been asserted, nor will
any person ever affirm, that, by spontaneous generation, man--
that is to say, man and woman, the human couple--can have issued,
or that they have issued at any period, from matter, of full form
and stature, in possession of all their powers and faculties, as
Greek paganism represented Minerva issuing from the brain of
Jupiter. Yet it is only upon this supposition, that man,
appearing for the first time upon earth, could have lived there
to perpetuate his species and to found the human race. Let any
one picture to himself the first man, born in a state of the
earliest infancy, alive but inert, devoid of intelligence,
powerless, incapable of satisfying his own wants even for a
moment, trembling, sobbing, with no mother to listen to or feed
him! And yet we have in this a picture of the first man, as
presented by the system of spontaneous generation. It is
manifestly not thus that the human race first appeared upon
earth."
The system of the transformation of species is no less refuted by
science than by the instincts of common sense. It rests upon no
tangible fact, on no principle of scientific observation or
historic tradition.
{22}
All the facts ascertained, all the monuments collected in
different ages and different places, respecting the existence of
living species, disprove the hypothesis of their having undergone
any transformation, any notable and permanent change: we meet
with them a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago, the
same as they are at the present day. In the same species the
races may vary and undergo mutual changes: the species do not
change; and all attempts to transform them artificially, by
crossings with allied species, have only resulted in
modifications, which, after two or three generations, have been
struck with barrenness, as if to attest the impotence of man to
effect, by the progressive transformation of existing species, a
creation of new species. Man is not an ape transformed and
perfected by some dim imperceptible fermentation of the elements
of nature and by the operation of ages: this assumed explanation
of the origin of the human species is a mere vague hypothesis,
the fruit of an imagination ill comprehending the spectacle that
nature presents, and therefore easily seduced to form ingenious
conjectures: these their authors sow in the stream of events
unknown and of time infinite, and trust to them for the
realization of their dreams.
{23}
The principle of the fundamental diversity and the permanence of
species--firmly upheld by M. Cuvier, M. Flourens, M. Coste, M.
Quatrefages, and by all exact observers of facts--remains
dominant in science as in reality. [Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: Cuvier--Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe,
pp. 117, 120, 124 (edit. 1825); Flourens--Ontologie
Naturelle, pp. 10-87 (1861); Journal des Savants (October,
November, and December, 1863); three articles on the work of
Ch. Darwin, On the Origin of Species and the Laws of Progress
among Organised Beings; Coste--Histoire Générale et
Particulière du Développement des Corps Organisés; Discours
Préliminaire, vol. i. p. 23; Quatrefages--Metamorphoses de
l'Homme et des Animaux, p. 225 (1862); and his articles On
the Unity of the Human Species, published in the "Revue des
Deux Mondes," in 1860 and 1861, and collected in one volume
(1861).]
{24}
Besides these vain attempts to supersede God the Creator, and to
explain by the inherent and progressive power of matter, the
origin of man and of the world, the Christian dogma of Creation
has yet other adversaries. One party, to combat it, seizes its
arms from the Bible itself, alleging the account there given of
the successive facts of the creation, of which the world and man
were the result; they cite and enumerate the difficulties of
reconciling this account with the observations and the
conclusions of science. I shall weigh the force of this class of
objections in treating of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,
of their real object and true meaning; but I at once raise the
dogma of Creation above this attack,--placing it at its proper
height and isolation: it is the general fact, it is the very
principle of creation which constitutes the dogma; what ever may
be the obscurities or the scientific difficulties presented by
the biblical narrative, the principle and the general fact of the
Creation remain unaffected: God the Creator does not the less
remain in possession of His work. The Christian religion, in its
essence, asserts and demands nothing more.
{25}
But lastly, the Christian dogma of Creation is met by the general
objection raised against all the facts and all the acts which are
termed supernatural: that is to say, against the existence of God
as well as the dogma of Creation, against all religions in common
with Christianity. Such a question requires to be considered, not
with reference to any particular dogma, or with a view to defend
one side only of the edifice of Christianity. This point, then, I
shall presently examine frankly and in all its bearings.