IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION
§ 1. Preliminary Remarks.
THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.
General views of the development or evolution of the visible order
of nature have been entertained by philosophers from the earliest
historical times. There were pioneers of Evolution from Thales to
Lucretius (600 B.C.-50 A.D.). The inquiry was then arrested for nearly
sixteen hundred years--that is, until the renascence of Science. As
knowledge, in spite of ecclesiastical discouragement, again slowly
advanced, the science of biology gained in strength, and the work of
Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others, paved the way
for that modern theory of Evolution which Darwin, Wallace, Spencer,
Huxley, and Haeckel have demonstrated to us. This doctrine of Evolution
is no longer a mere speculative theory, possibly or probably true,
but an established fact accepted by the whole scientific world with
hardly a single dissentient voice. We know that everything as it
now exists is the product of Evolution--the solar system, the earth,
all lower forms of life, and lastly man, together with his languages,
arts, sciences, theology, social habits, instincts, and, according to
many high authorities, morals, conscience, and consciousness. Yes,
"man, perfect as he may appear to us, is still not a being apart in
nature, but by his whole organisation is continuous with the other
zoological species." "Anthropology, properly so-called, is, in fact,
merely a chapter of zoology." "The homological structure of man, his
embryological development, and the rudiments which he still retains,
all declare in the plainest possible manner that he is descended
from some lower form." He "derives his moral sense from the social
feelings which are instinctive or innate in the lower animals." [134]
It is in the special sense of explaining how living things came into
being, and how they have acquired their present characters, that the
teaching of Evolution appears to be most in conflict with that of the
Churches and the Bible. It is, therefore, this aspect of Evolution
with which we are here chiefly concerned, and we may remember that,
since Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859) and
Descent of Man (1871), his main conclusions have been confirmed by
every branch of anthropological research--by palæontology, zoology,
comparative anatomy, physiology, pathology, teratology, psychology,
and more especially by embryology, a science in which there has been
a remarkable progress during the past thirty years. Professor Haeckel
points out on page 24 of his important work, The Evolution of Man
(translated by Joseph McCabe), that "even when human anatomy began
to stir itself once more in the sixteenth century, and independent
research into the structure of the developed body was resumed,
anatomists did not dare to extend their inquiries to the unformed
body, the embryo, and its development. There were many reasons
for the prevailing horror of such studies. It is natural enough,
when we remember that a Bull of Boniface VIII. excommunicated every
man who ventured to dissect a human corpse. If the dissection of
a developed body were a crime to be thus punished, how much more
dreadful must it have seemed to deal with the embryonic body still
enclosed in the womb, which the Creator Himself had decently veiled
from the curiosity of the scientist." Palæontology is another very
young science that has contributed greatly towards the evidence of
our origin. Professor Huxley informs us, in his essay on "The Rise
and Progress of Palæontology," that the first adequate investigation
of the fossil remains of any large group of vertebrated animals
dates from 1822, and that in the last fifty years the number of
known fossil remains of invertebrated animals has been trebled or
quadrupled. Fossils were at one time believed to have been sown by
the devil, whose fell purpose was to throw discredit upon the Bible
story of Creation. Perhaps this pious opinion may have had something
to do with the slow progress of palæontology?
DARWINISM.
To prevent the chance of any misunderstanding, some explanation may be
necessary for the benefit of those who are not in touch with scientific
thought, and who hear that "Darwinism" is out of date. They should
understand that, although the doctrine of Evolution as applied to
organic life used to be widely spoken of by the term "Darwinism,"
the latter is now only used by scientists in a special sense, to
designate the belief in the gradual origin of species by natural
selection. There are some who deem this hypothesis to be untenable. But
there is no dispute whatever concerning the doctrine of the derivation
or descent, with modification, of all existing species, genera, orders,
classes, etc., of animals and plants, from a few simple forms of life,
if not from one. Modern evolutionary theories, however, are more
particularly concerned with the question of the ways and means by
which living organisms have assumed their actual characters or forms,
and on these points there are many shades of individual opinion.
Ignorance of the gist of the Darwinian theory, "natural selection,"
[135] has been fruitful in misunderstandings and objections regarding
it, so that it is advisable to mention here that the author of the
theory states explicitly that it does not account for the origin of
variations in individuals, still less in species; but that, given the
origination and existence of variations, it shows that some of these
are preserved, while others are not--that favourable variations tend
to be perpetuated, and unfavourable variations to become extinct; that
those variations which best adapt an organisation to its environment
are most favourable to its preservation, and, consequently, that the
theory of natural selection is adequate to explain the observed fact
of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. "Natural
selection ... implies that the individuals which are best fitted for
the complex and changing conditions to which, in the course of ages,
they are exposed, generally survive and procreate their kind." [136]
Natural selection does not, it may be added, imply conscious
selection. It would be equally true to call it natural murder, or
natural weeding-out. But, whether Darwin and Weismann be right or wrong
in attributing so much to natural selection, what I wish particularly
to point out is that the hypothesis of Evolution is nowise invalidated
because, out of the various causes at work, we are not quite sure as
yet which is the most efficient. It is necessary to make this clear,
for, hearing that "Darwinism" is under dispute, the uninitiated might
come to the conclusion that the animal origin of man is discredited.
THE AVERAGE PERSON'S IDEAS ON THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
With but very few exceptions, every biological student admits
our animal origin. The ideas of most people, however, on this
subject are hazy in the extreme, and no wonder, when the study of
Evolution has never been included in their school curriculum. Men
(and in very rare cases women) pick up a few crumbs of knowledge
concerning the scientific theory of their origin, and then, from
want of leisure or from religious motives, or from various causes,
they drop the subject. Often they are put off by the dry details
of the evidence and the technical phrases before they have obtained
a real grip of the subject. They do not even know some of the more
simple and obvious proofs which alone would have sufficed to convince
them. One finds that men's views concerning Evolution are coloured
by the opinion prevailing at the time when they themselves were once
faintly interested in the subject; and thus there is, at present,
an inertia of ignorance, due to the misconceptions and prejudices of
older generations. The opinions of our elders, being formed on a riper
experience, very properly enlist our respect; but, unfortunately,
in this instance they are based upon false premises, and so lead us
astray. People who remember when Darwin first propounded his theory,
and the violent, not to say virulent, opposition with which it was
received by the Church, only too often remain in blissful ignorance of
all that has since transpired. It is quite enough for them that they
are erect, tailless, speaking, reflecting bipeds. With attributes such
as these, they fondly imagine that they are separated from the beast
by a gulf that neither Evolution nor any other theory could possibly
bridge. Whatever the reasons may be--and there are many--the vast
majority of Christians not only remain woefully ignorant of Evolution,
but have no desire to learn anything more about it. They know it is
opposed to Bible teaching. They prefer, as it has been well said,
to consider themselves fallen angels rather than elevated apes.
We are not, however, concerned here with likes and dislikes, but only
with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. Moreover,
if it be objected that we can take no pride in an animal ancestry,
surely we may say the same of our savage ancestry. "He who has seen
a savage in his native land will not feel much shame if forced to
acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his
veins. For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic
little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the
life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the
mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies,
offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse,
treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by
the grossest superstitions." [137] "We must acknowledge, as it seems
to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which
feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only
to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like
intellect, which has penetrated into the movement and constitution
of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--man still bears
in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." [138]
THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH.
Now let us consider the opinions of our spiritual guides. At the
Shrewsbury Church Conference, in 1896, Archbishop Temple said that,
"in his opinion, the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution
would prove a great help to Christian thought and Christian life." In
his book, The Relations between Religion and Science, he states that
"the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent and
beneficent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was
before." A decade has passed, and still how few Christians know of
this "help," of this "stronger argument"! In the course of his address
at the Weymouth Church Conference in 1905, the Bishop of Gloucester
admitted that "Darwin's teaching on evolution and development" had
"revolutionised our ideas of God's action in nature." If this be
so, how comes it that such a vast number of the pious still adhere
to the old ideas? Is it not the duty of the pastor to educate his
flock? What "ideas of God's action in nature" are missionaries even
now putting into the heads of their converts? If we inquired of the
average religionist, should we find that his or her ideas had been
revolutionised? Not only are worshippers in the House of God kept in
ignorance, but theological students are distinctly warned against the
full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution. For instance, Dr. Orr,
a professor of apologetics, delivered a course of lectures before the
professors and students of the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1903,
the object of which was to show the dangers that must accrue to the
Faith if the theories of Darwin were accepted in their entirety. He
stoutly denied that man and woman were an evolution by slow stages
from creatures that had gone before, and asserted that the first
man came into being, as did the first woman, by a special act of
creation. Unfortunately for the validity of his assertion he labours
under the delusion that science concedes that man, or anything like
man, cannot be traced further back than the post-glacial period,
and that the brain capacity and physical characteristics of primeval
man stood on as high a level as the average man of to-day! [139]
In a recently-published letter, [140] written by Charles Kingsley to
a correspondent, we read: "My own belief in the general truth of my
friend Darwin's views--which deepen day by day as I verify them--has
only given me wider and deeper and nobler notions of God's works in the
material universe." He then proceeds to illustrate his own thoughts
by a charming little story of a certain old heathen Khan, who was
delighted with the idea of a God so wise that he made all things make
themselves. This old Khan and Charles Kingsley overlook an objection
which to myself, and to many others, seems quite insuperable--namely,
that a God so wise and merciful would have seen his way to prevent
that frightful wastefulness and cruelty which is part and parcel of
the evolutionary process. But more of this difficulty anon.
To give another example of a clerical evolutionist: the
Rev. G. S. Streatfield, vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, on May
22nd, 1901, read a paper at the Southport Conference on "Questions
that Must be Faced," in which he conceded that "the fact of Evolution
is now hardly questioned in the scientific world--one might almost say
in the world of thought." He, too, is charmed with the new theory, for
he says: "It is, I suppose, generally agreed that the evolutionist has
worthier, more rational, more truly philosophical views of the Divine
Will and Action than those who hold the traditional theory." Clerics
of his stamp and school are now becoming more outspoken, and admit
their convictions in public instead of in writings that are likely
to be seen only by a select few. Only lately the Dean of Westminster,
addressing a large gathering of Sunday-school teachers, told them that
the idea that the human species was separately created was given up,
and the fact of man's descent from lower organisms accepted. While
admiring his candour, one cannot help calling to mind that in 1860
Professor Huxley was utterly ridiculed by erudite scholars of the
Church for making a precisely similar statement.
Between those who accept and those who entirely reject Evolution there
are various shades of opinion. There are those who accept everything
short of the evolution of certain mental faculties; although students
of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties
of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their
essence. There are those like the Rev. John Urquhart, author of a
brochure called Roger's Reasons, who seek to reconcile the Bible
story of creation with the Evolution theory, although any such
interpretation was put out of court long ago by Professor Huxley's
reply to Mr. Gladstone. [141] There are those who, like Dr. Torrey,
[142] persist in altogether denying our animal origin, although
there is hardly a single scientist, hardly a single thoughtful man,
who has studied the subject without bias, who believes anything else.
The number of clergymen who openly admit the truth of Evolution is as
yet comparatively small. The few who do express their opinion openly,
profess to be delighted with the new light that has now been shed upon
God's methods. The question arises, How is it, then, that we hear so
little about Evolution from the pulpit, and that, consequently, the
faithful are kept in ignorance of this fresh revelation? The answer
is obvious: It is because the advanced divines have yet to educate
their congregations up to their way of thinking, and the process has,
for many reasons, to be conducted with extreme caution. They know full
well that they have a difficult and dangerous task before them; that
those who accept Evolution, but are unable to accept their opinions
concerning its spiritual helpfulness, will lapse into agnosticism. They
also know that their views are not popular with conservative believers.
The chief reason, perhaps, for pulpit reticence is that the
enormous majority in the Church still remain hostile to this new
doctrine. They consider it to be dangerous, and likely to unsettle
people's minds. Possibly in their inmost souls, if they have studied
Evolution at all, they agree with a certain distinguished essayist
who says: "A God who could have been deliberately guilty of them (the
Evolutionary processes) would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too
mad to be credible." [143] The cruelty of the law of prey and struggle
for existence, and the wastefulness of Nature's arrangements for the
reproduction of life (plant and animal alike), do, indeed, appear
sufficient warrant for some such painful impression; while, as if this
were not enough, there is for the Christian the additional difficulty
of reconciling Evolution with the Bible story of the Creation and Fall
of man. These various difficulties must now be carefully investigated.
§ 2. "Nature Red in Tooth and Claw."
Darwin tells us that "there is no exception to the rule that every
organic being naturally increases at such a high rate that, if not
destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single
pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and
at this rate in less than a thousand years there would literally not
be standing room for his progeny." [144] [I commend this passage to
the notice of President Roosevelt and others who are so anxious that
we should obey God's command to Noah, and "be fruitful and multiply,
and replenish the earth."] "If all the offspring of the elephant,
the slowest breeder known, survived, there would be, in seven hundred
and fifty years, nearly nineteen million elephants, descended from
the first pair. If the eight or nine million eggs which the roe of
a cod is said to contain, developed into adult codfishes, the sea
would quickly become a solid mass of them. It is the same with the
plants. The lower organisms multiply with an astonishing rapidity, some
minute fungi increasing a billion-fold in a few hours. But we need not
give further examples of this fecundity whereby Nature, 'so careless
of the single life,' secures the race against extinction. The result
is obvious--a ceaseless struggle for food and place. In that struggle
the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong; the weaker,
be it in brain or body, going to the wall; the vast majority never
reaching maturity, or, if they do, attaining it only to be starved or
slain. As among men competition is sharper between those of the same
trade, so throughout the organic world the struggle is less severe
between different species than between members of the same species,
because these compete more fiercely for their common needs--plants
for the same soil, carnivora for the same prey." [145]
The problem of evil has exercised the mind of man from all time, and
has never yet been solved. In our own time the solution by theology
seems farther off than ever, now that the existence of the Devil is
denied, while the law of prey and struggle for existence is admitted
to be the Creator's own handiwork--to be His Divine plan for the
evolution of all living things. Surely we must admit the inherent
cruelty of the process? Professor Huxley, in an article on the
"Struggle for Existence," concludes that, "since thousands of times
a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and groans
of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell [not to mention
what we should not hear--the anguish and terror borne in silence],
the world cannot be governed by what we call benevolence." [146]
Winwood Reade, in his striking book, The Martyrdom of Man, says:
"But it is when we open the Book of Nature, that book inscribed in
blood and tears; it is when we study the laws regulating life, the
laws productive of development, that we see plainly how illusive
is this theory that God is Love. In all things there is cruel,
profligate, and abandoned waste. Of all the animals that are born a
few only can survive; and it is owing to this law that development
takes place. The law of murder is the law of growth. Life is one long
tragedy; creation is one great crime. Is it the law of a kind Creator
that no animal shall rise to excellence except by being fatal to the
life of others? It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence,
that massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad should be
the raw material of good? Pain is not less pain because it is useful;
murder is not less murder because it is conducive to development. There
is blood upon the hand still, and all the perfumes of Arabia will
not sweeten it." [147]
Robert Blatchford (Nunquam), in his book, God and My Neighbour,
which has caused no little stir of late in certain quarters, speaks
to the same effect: "On land and in sea the animal creation chase and
maim and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the
wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying fish,
like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of
the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the
ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays eggs under the skin of the
caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's
blood. They produce a brood of larvæ which devour the caterpillar
alive.... A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child,
its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls
land-ward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned or crushed
to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption, and the beautiful
city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled
corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love and has power to save,
makes no sign.... Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries
to save."
"But," it may be said, "you are giving only the one side--the
freethinker's side--of the question. What are the Christian
evolutionist's replies to these terrible attacks upon our Heavenly
Father?" You shall hear them, and judge for yourself whether they
are likely to convince the multitude.
In the second chapter of his book on Darwinism, Dr. Alfred Russel
Wallace lays himself out to say all that can be said, and a
great deal that cannot reasonably be said, in extenuation of God's
plan. He owns that, "to many persons, Nature appears calm, orderly,
and peaceful. They see the birds singing in the trees, the insects
hovering over the flowers, and all living things in the possession
of health and in the enjoyment of a sunny existence. But they do
not see, and hardly ever think of, the means by which this beauty
and harmony and enjoyment is brought about. They do not see the
constant and daily search after food, the failure to obtain which
means weakness or death; the constant effort to escape enemies;
the ever-recurring struggle against the forces of Nature. This daily
and hourly struggle, this incessant warfare, is, nevertheless, the
very means by which much of the beauty and harmony and enjoyment
in Nature is produced, and also affords one of the most important
elements in bringing about the origin of the species." After showing
that the struggle for existence has proved a stumbling-block in the
way of those who would fain believe in the all-wise and benevolent
Ruler of the universe, he goes on to say that "all this is greatly
exaggerated"; that "the supposed torments and miseries of animals
have little real existence, but are the reflection of the imagined
sensations of cultivated men and women under similar circumstances";
and that "the amount of actual suffering caused by the struggle for
existence among animals is altogether insignificant." Space, and
a consideration for a possibly impatient reader, prevent my wading
through the paltry reasons he proceeds to bring forward in order to
try to prove that pain is not pain, and that the less degree of pain
suffered by an animal or a savage is an excuse for its infliction.
The Rev. Professor Flint's book on Theism [148] is much patronised by
the Church as an apologetic book of the highest order. The Professor
tries to show (p. 204) that, although the process of development
involves privation, pain, and conflict, it is subservient to the
noblest end, because the final result is, as he alleges, order and
beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are, he owns, due to
this painful process. "Through it the lion has gained its strength,
the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The suffering which the
conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for
some higher end than happiness--that He cares for animals' perfection
as well as for animals' enjoyment. The ends are eminently worthy of a
Divine intelligence." The Professor does not explain why, to paraphrase
one of Mr. Lowes Dickenson's sage remarks, the less perfectly evolved
generations should be sacrificed in order that future generations may
be heirs of an unearned increment. Myself, I fail to see that even
the ends, whatever they may happen to be--and they appear distinctly
nebulous--can ever justify the cruel means; and I feel sure that our
dumb fellow-creatures, the principal parties concerned, would agree
with me, had they the power of reflection and speech. How can they,
how can we, profess to approve of a plan that brings only unhappiness
in its train? Suppose it were necessary in order to give more happiness
in an after-life, the creature might meekly wonder why he or she had
first to suffer pain, but could imagine, as the pious imagine, that
it must be for some good purpose. Does Dr. Flint mean to say that
there is an after-life for all living things? The learned Professor
tries to explain pain away by describing its preservative use. He
says (p. 246): "Were animals insusceptible of pain, they would be
in continual peril." That would certainly spoil the evolutionary
Creator's plans; but it hardly excuses His methods. Professor Flint,
however, argues that, though pain is not an end in itself, it is a
means to an end, and "its end is a benevolent one." How, I ask does it
profit the creature itself to become ever so graceful in appearance,
ever so perfect in mind and body, if it is only to gratify its Maker,
who has an end in view with which it is in no wise itself concerned,
and to attain which infinite pain has to be endured? Which would you
or I rather be--lovely and unhappy, or ugly and happy?
There is another of these attempts to relieve doubt which I should
like to bring to notice. The little book entitled In Relief of Doubt,
by the Rev. E. Welsh, highly recommended by the Bishop of London,
and one of the books selected by the Christian Evidence Society for
their examination in March, 1907, is quoted from by Dr. Warschauer
[149] when refuting Mr. Blatchford's remarks on the cruelty of
Nature. Dr. Warschauer selects the passage where Mr. Welsh says
(p. 103): "We probably overstate the actual anguish of the lower
creatures, imagining that they are bundles of sensitive nerves
and quick brains like our own, and that they therefore have our
sensibility to pain. A trodden worm writhes, and we credit it with
all the pain that the foot of a Brobdingnag would inflict on a
delicate child under his heel." Now, I am quite sure we credit no
such thing. If we did, we, and especially the Isaak Waltons among us,
would be perfect monsters of cruelty. Mark, too, how Messrs. Welsh and
Warschauer carefully select for their illustration a worm--one of the
lowly organised invertebrates! I may mention that Dr. Warschauer's
book was particularly recommended to me by a well-read cleric,
who thought that it was an admirable and complete refutation of
Mr. Blatchford's arguments. Dr. Warschauer will hardly advance his
cause by transparently omitting all mention of the higher animals,
or of that bundle of nerves called man.
Nor will the average man agree with Professor Wallace that "it is
difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of
happiness could have been secured." Was it, for example, impossible for
God to have decreed that sentient life should feed only on non-sentient
life? Could He not have brought about development without all this
terrible struggle? One would think that Messrs. Warschauer and Wallace
must not only have had a particularly good time themselves in this
world, but must have purposely shut their eyes to the misery all round
them. If they had to change places with a wounded Russian or Japanese
writhing in agony on the battlefield, I wonder whether their optimism
would stand the test? The bravest of us shudder at the idea of being
buried alive, and yet this was just the very fate of many a poor fellow
in that truly terrible war. Not that man did not do his utmost. "One
by one the dead and injured were carefully and tenderly taken out,"
relates an eye-witness, "and many a tear was shed by strong men at
the terrible sights we had to witness. The worst part of our work was
to have to endure the agonising cries of the men who were suffering
terrible torture; but everyone helped so willingly that we felt that
we were not doing enough." Please note, on the one hand, the cruel
torture, and, on the other, the sympathy of man.
I will not weary or distress you further, gentle reader, with harrowing
details of the pain that is endured alike by man and beast. It is
all so well known. I shall only ask you to listen to a little story
from the leaves of a naturalist's note-book, and to put to yourself
a few questions. "A sparrow-hawk suddenly dashed under the branches
of a hedgerow oak, and seized a linnet. But the bird of prey had not
calculated upon the missel-thrush whose nest was in the oak, and who
made it his business to have no suspicious strangers loitering in
the neighbourhood. With an angry 'jarr,' and a swoop that would have
done credit to the hawk himself, the plucky missel-thrush was upon
the marauder almost at the same instant that the linnet was seized;
a feather--a hawk's feather--floated in the air, and the astonished
bird of prey flung himself sideways, and spread his talons to meet
the next assault. This action released the linnet, who sped away into
the next parish like a bullet, while the missel-thrush, perched in
the oak tree again, noisily threatened to repeat the attack. So the
sparrow-hawk departed in the opposite direction to the linnet, and
in two minutes all birddom was twittering and squabbling as before
on the site of what was so very nearly a sudden tragedy." Is not your
sympathy, humane reader, all with the linnet and its gallant rescuer,
although the hawk was but carrying out the behests of its Maker! Does
it not give us a thrill of pleasure when the lion is baulked of his
prey--when the pet lamb is rescued from the butcher? Are we, then,
more merciful than God? Was it Jesus or was it the gentle Gautama
that marked
"How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him,
And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed
The fish-tiger of that which it had seized;
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did hunt
The jewelled butterflies; till everywhere
Each slew a slayer, and in turn was slain,
Life living upon death. So the fair show,
Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy
Of mutual murder, from the worm to man,
Who himself kills his fellow"? [150]
§ 3. The Bible Account of Creation Irreconcilable with Science in
Each and Every Respect.
The hypothesis respecting the past history of Nature, which was
formerly, and is still very largely, accepted by Christians, is
the doctrine fully and clearly stated in the immortal poem of John
Milton--the English Divina Commedia--Paradise Lost. There is the best
of reasons for the popularity of this doctrine. It agrees literally
with the plain words of the Bible. The hypothesis is briefly this:
"That this visible universe of ours came into existence at no great
distance of time from the present, and that the parts of which it is
composed made their appearance, in a certain definite order, in the
space of six natural days, in such a manner that on the first of these
days light appeared; that on the second the firmament or sky separated
the waters above from the waters beneath the firmament; that on the
third day the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon it a varied
vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its appearance;
that the fourth day was signalised by the apparition of the sun, the
stars, the moon, and the planets; that on the fifth day aquatic animals
originated within the waters; that on the sixth day the earth gave
rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all variations of
terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding
day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence
of the universe from chaos was finished." [151] This interpretation
is that which has been instilled into most of us in our childhood;
but, "if we are to listen to many expositors of no mean authority,
we must believe that what seems so clearly defined in Genesis--as if
very great pains had been taken that there should be no possibility of
mistake--is not the meaning of the text at all. The account is divided
into periods that we may make just as long or as short as convenience
requires. We are also to understand that it is consistent with the
original text to believe that the most complex plants and animals
may have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions of
years, out of structureless rudiments. A person who is not a Hebrew
scholar can only stand aside and admire the marvellous flexibility
of a language which admits of such diverse interpretations." [152]
Furthermore, we are to understand that there is no disagreement
between theology and science in the sequence of the six acts of
creation. Here at least we are not asked to twist words round so that
one may mean a million. We have a definite statement which science
either supports or it does not. The reader who knows that the verdict
of science is negative may ask: "What is the use of wasting my time
over a Christian argument which has long since been exploded?" I
crave his pardon and patience; but, however true it may be that
Mr. Gladstone's position was shown to be untenable, it is equally
true that an enormous number of persons still persist in maintaining
that there is a remarkable coincidence of the Pentateuchal story with
the result of modern investigation, and that science supports them in
this conclusion. The Very Rev. Henry Wace, D.D., Dean of Canterbury,
in his address before the Christian Association of University College,
London, on May 7th, 1903, reminded his hearers that a President of the
British Association (Sir William Dawson) had stated that "it would
not be easy even now to construct a statement of the development
of the world in popular terms so concise and so accurate" as the
first chapter of Genesis. And Dr. Wace asks: "From whence could have
come this marvellous approximation, to say the least, to the facts
which science has been slowly revealing but from the Divine wisdom
which alone was cognizant of them, and could alone make them known
to mankind?"
A short time ago a lady very kindly sent me a little pamphlet,
entitled Roger's Reasons; or, The Bible and Science, written by the
Rev. John Urquhart. In this there is a resurrection pie of the old,
old arguments, dished up again in such a guise as to take in the
unwary and ill-informed, who would have no suspicion that the food
thus given them for their refection was not only stale, but had
been condemned as unfit for mental consumption by the whole of the
scientific faculty. The lady above mentioned considered the reasoning
perfectly convincing, and so possibly would ninety-nine Christian
ladies out of a hundred. Mr. Urquhart is now much in evidence as a
Christian apologist, and his pamphlet is being distributed broadcast
(81,000 have already been issued), so that it does seem worth while
taking some notice of the attempts that are still being made to treat
the Creation myth as a Divine revelation. That modern science does
not support either the interpretation put upon the Bible story of the
Creation by Mr. Urquhart or by Mr. Gladstone, or any interpretation
which is compatible with the general sense of the narrative, can
be ascertained by anyone who will read Professor Huxley's essays,
"The Interpreters of Genesis" and "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis." A few
quotations from these essays may enable the reader to form a slight
idea of the decisive manner in which the assertion that modern science
supports the Bible narrative is controverted by science herself.
Speaking of Mr. Gladstone's contention that the statements in the
first two verses of Genesis are supported by the nebular hypothesis,
Professor Huxley remarks: "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."
In a note at the end of the second essay, "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis,"
there is an excellent exposition of the "Proper Sense of the 'Mosaic'
Narrative of the Creation." Among other points, Huxley, of course,
notices how the stars are, as it were, thrown in--"He made the stars
also." These words have always struck me as making it peculiarly clear
that the "Mosaic" narrative originated from man, and not from God. The
unknown authors of the Hexateuchal compilation were almost as ignorant
of the nature of the stars and of their unthinkable distance away
from us as a camel-driver in Sind, who gravely informed a friend of
mine that the stars were once quite close to the earth, until one fine
day a certain woman (it is always the woman who causes the mischief)
grabbed hold of one and used it for cleaning her child, whereupon
the gods, much annoyed at such presumption on the part of mankind,
moved them far enough off to be safe from further desecration.
That the order of Creation as given in the Bible cannot be maintained
will be clearly seen if we take the particular case of the birds and
creeping things. Science does not affirm that the birds were made
before "everything that creepeth upon the earth." Mr. Gladstone
tries to get over the difficulty by excluding reptiles, lizards,
etc., from the category of creeping things. This will appear in the
course of the following quotations from Professor Huxley's essay on
"Mr. Gladstone and Genesis":--
"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 palæontology would have saved him.... 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 palæontological
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.... 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,' a miserable,
decayed aristocracy reduced to mere 'skulkers about the earth,'
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 would otherwise 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 and bury them out of sight under a tumulus
of rhetoric.... 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.'... 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 to prove that,
when the Mosaic writer in Genesis 1. 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
not to be met with till 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." [153]
The crust of the earth is a book having for its pages strata that have,
fortunately, been upturned for our perusal, and the story it tells
must be true. The series of fossiliferous deposits which contain the
remains of the animals which have lived on the earth in past ages
of its history afford the evidence required concerning the order of
appearance of the different species. As Professor Huxley says elsewhere
[154]: "When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely
futile are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between
the story told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us
and the story which Milton tells." Still, the story which Milton tells
is in accord with the story which the Bible tells to those who are
not given to playing conjuring tricks with the plain meaning of words.
Finally, we must remember that "hundreds of thousands of animal
species, as distinct as those which now compose our water, land, and
air populations, have come into existence and died out again." "If the
species of animals have all been separately created, then it follows
that hundreds of thousands of acts of creative energy have occurred,
at intervals throughout the whole time recorded by the fossiliferous
rocks; and, during the greater part of that time, the 'creation' of
the members of the water, land, and air populations must have gone
on contemporaneously." [155]
The common-sense view of the Creation story, and one that is now widely
accepted even by orthodox Christians, is that it is a myth. Many
of us will, therefore, agree with Professor Huxley when he says:
"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 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." [156]
It may not be inappropriate to conclude this section with Milton's
conception of the last act of creation, so charmingly simple and so
strictly according to the Bible and what Christ Himself believed,
and yet so completely untrue:--
The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With ev'ning harps and matin, when God said,
Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind:
Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth,
Each in their kind. The earth obey'd, and straight
Op'ning her fertile womb teem'd at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limb'd and full grown....
There waited yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but indu'd
With sanctity of reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self knowing:...
... Therefore the omnipotent
Eternal Father--for where is not he
Present?--thus to his Son audibly spake:
Let us make now man in our image, man
In our similitude, and let them rule
Over the fish and fowl of sea and air,
Beast of the field, and over all the earth,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.
Thus said, he form'd thee, Adam, thee, O man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath'd
The breath of life: in his own image he
Created thee, in the image of God
Express, and thou becam'st a living soul.
--Paradise Lost, Book VII., 449-456, 505-510, 516-528.
§ 4. Proofs of Our Animal Origin.
The third and last of the Evolution stumbling-blocks is that connected
with the dogma of the Fall and Atonement. Before considering this, it
will be better, I think, to summarise as briefly and simply as possible
some of the chief proofs of our animal origin. The well-informed can
skip this section, which is intended for the benefit of that vast
majority--the ill-informed. Space will not permit me to do much more
than allude to the proofs; but anyone really desirous of convincing
himself or herself of the truth of the doctrine, and at the same
time wishing to avoid details that might possibly prove wearisome,
will find it popularly treated in Huxley's work on Man's Place in
Nature (Macmillan); in Dennis Hird's An Easy Outline of Evolution
(Watts & Co.; 2s. 6d.); in Edward Clodd's The Story of Creation
(Watts & Co.; 6d.); in S. Laing's Modern Science and Modern Thought
(Watts & Co.; 6d.); in Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe (Watts & Co.;
6d.), though this can hardly, perhaps, be described as popular; and in
Metchnikoff's The Nature of Man (Heinemann, 1903; 12s. 6d.). The most
complete work on the subject is Haeckel's The Evolution of Man (Watts
& Co., 1905; 42s.; abridged edition, 2s.). This is in two volumes,
copiously illustrated, of which the first is entirely devoted to human
embryology or ontogeny, a branch of science which furnishes the most
overwhelming evidence.
The proofs may, roughly speaking, be grouped under three heads--the
extraordinary affinity of bodily structure, the revelations of
embryology, and the tale told by the useless rudimentary organs. We
will commence with
THE EXTRAORDINARY AFFINITY OF BODILY STRUCTURE.
"It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type
or model with other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be
compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it
is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and viscera. The brain,
the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shown
by Huxley and other anatomists." [157] Man's nearest animal relations
are the tailless anthropoid or man-like apes--namely, the gorilla,
the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gibbon. "Now that all the details
of the human organisation have been studied, and the anatomical
structures of man and large monkeys without tails have been compared,
bone with bone, and muscle with muscle, a truly astonishing analogy
between these organisms is made manifest--an analogy apparent in every
detail." [158] The following are some of the points more particularly
calling for notice:--
Dentition.--In the natural history of mammals the teeth play
an important part as a means of determining differences and
relationships. "Everyone knows the milk teeth and the permanent
teeth of man. The anthropoid apes bear in this respect an astonishing
likeness to man. The number (thirty-two in the adult), the form and
general arrangement of the crown, are identical in man and anthropoid
apes. The differences are to be found only in minor details." [159]
"But the fact must not be lost sight of that all these differences
are less pronounced than those which exist between the dentition of
anthropoid apes and that of all other monkeys." [160]
The Foot.--Anti-evolutionists have laid great stress on the difference
between the foot of a man and that of an anthropoid ape. But it is
clearly shown by Huxley that in all essential respects the hinder
limb of the gorilla terminates in as true a foot as that of man,
[161] and "that, be the differences between the hand and foot of man
and those of the gorilla what they may, the differences between those
of the gorilla and those of the lower apes are much greater." [162]
The Sacrum.--"In monkeys, as a whole, the sacrum is composed of
three, or rarely four, vertebræ, while in anthropoid apes it contains
five--that is to say, just as many as in man." [163]
The Skull.--Here the differences are more marked; but again we must
remind ourselves that, as regards the osteology, Professor Huxley tells
us that "for the skull, no less than for the skeleton in general,
the proposition holds good that the differences between man and the
gorilla are of smaller value than those between the gorilla and some
other apes." [164]
The Brain.--Several distinguished zoologists at one time insisted on
the absence in all monkeys of certain parts of the brain peculiarly
characteristic of man, but now it is unanimously accepted that
the parts of the brain in question are "precisely those structures
which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the
apes. They are among the most distinctly simian peculiarities which
the human organism exhibits." [165]
The difference between the brain of the orang and that of man is a mere
difference of degree, and not of kind; and most students of comparative
psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ
from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. Replying to
his opponents, Professor Huxley compares the brain of man and that
of ape with two watches, one of which will, and the other will not,
keep accurate time. He exclaims: "A hair in the balance-wheel, a little
rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so
slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it,
may be the source of all the difference." [166]
The late Sir Charles Lyell mentions in his Antiquity of Man how
Dr. Sumner, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, brought out in strong
relief fifty years ago, in his Records of Creation, one essential
character separating man from the brute. As the same argument is still
being "brought out," and is, on the face of it, exceedingly plausible,
and as the answer to it has to do with the brain, it cannot be passed
over. Dr. Sumner said: "It has been sometimes alleged, and may be
founded on fact, that there is less difference between the highest
brute animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and the
most improved man. But, in order to warrant the pretended analogy,
it ought to be also true that this lowest savage is no more capable
of improvement than the chimpanzee or orang-outang." This objection
is met by some such consideration as the following:--When you examine
the enormous difference in the formation of the skull in man and ape
(look, for instance, at plate xvii., vol. ii. of Haeckel's Evolution
of Man), and when you remember that this sets hard at an early date,
you surely have a good reason for limited improvability. Further, the
brain of even the lowest savage represents a development of some half
a million years above the ape along the line of intelligence. How,
then, can we dream of making this up in one or a few generations by
artificial training of the ape? Lastly, we have the enormous leverage
of language, the inherited wealth of thousands of speaking generations,
and an incalculable aid to thought. How much is the intelligence of
the Microcephalæ, the clucking "small heads" lately on show at the
Hippodrome, capable of rapid improvement? Our experiments do not show
that the ape is not improvable, but only that we cannot, in a single
generation, lift it over a gulf representing 500,000 years of human
development. How can we expect it?
The Blood.--In the last few years an astonishing confirmation of our
relationship to the anthropoid ape has been discovered. We are blood
relations. Elie Metchnikoff, Professor at the Pasteur Institute, shows
this clearly in his book, The Nature of Man. [167] Until quite recently
it was not known how to distinguish human blood from that of other
mammals. A method giving conclusive results has now been discovered,
and is used in forensic medicine. The same method has been employed in
comparing the blood of man and the anthropoid apes, resulting in the
discovery [168] that, in their case, there is practically no blood
difference whatever!
THE REVELATIONS OF EMBRYOLOGY.
The opponents of Evolution used to appeal to the special features of
human embryology, which were supposed to distinguish man from all
the other mammals; but in 1890 Emil Selenka proved that the same
features are found in anthropoid apes, especially in the orang,
while the lower apes are without them.
"When Huxley wrote, the embryological history of anthropoid apes was
practically unknown. Darwin, Vogt, and Haeckel, in their attempts to
support the theory of the animal origin of man, had not sufficient
knowledge of the embryology of monkeys. It is only recently that
important work on this subject has been published.... The placenta
often gives information of great importance in the classification of
mammals. It is sufficient to glance at the zonary placenta of dogs and
seals to be convinced of the relationship of these two species which at
first sight seem so different. Now, the placentas of all the anthropoid
apes examined up to the present are of the same discoid type as that of
man. The arrangement of the umbilical cord of man, which was formerly
considered as quite peculiar to him, is found in anthropoid apes,
as has been established by Deniker and Selenka. It is striking that
the anthropoids resemble man rather than the lower monkeys in the
relation of the foetus to the foetal membranes. With regard to the
embryos themselves, the similarity between those of monkeys and man
is very great.... The youngest stages of human development that have
been obtained can hardly be distinguished from those of the lower
monkeys either in position or shape. More advanced stages exhibit
greater differentiation, and the later embryos of man resemble those
of anthropoids much more closely than those of the lower monkeys. The
resemblance between the nearly mature foetus of anthropoids and human
embryos of about the sixth month is evident enough." [169]
We are thus bound, in all honesty, to own up to our ape-like
progenitors. But this is only a small portion of the wonderful tale
told by Embryology. "Man is developed from an ovule about 125th of an
inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other
animals," [170] and, marvellous to relate, from that stage upwards the
embryo is one continuous epitome of the history of man's evolution from
lower forms of life. [171] Up to a certain point the germs, not only
of all mammals, but of all vertebrate animals, fishes, reptiles, and
birds, are scarcely distinguishable. A sceptic may convince himself
by studying the plates given in Haeckel's The Evolution of Man, and
especially plates ix. to xiv., where the embryos of various animals
are compared. At the more advanced stage, where the embryo has already
passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable time the
line of development remains the same as that of other mammalia. The
resemblance, for example, after the first four weeks' growth,
between the embryo of a man and that of a dog is such that it is
scarcely possible to distinguish the one from the other. Even at the
age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail, hardly
to be distinguished from an embryo puppy. [172] After this period
the embryo emerges from the general mammalian type into the special
order of primates to which man belongs. Thus does the growth of the
egg from which man springs compress into a few weeks the results of
millions of years, and set before us the history of his development
from fish-like and reptilian forms (which, as we have seen, p. 211,
Mr. Gladstone deemed so contemptible and "fallen from greatness"),
and of his more immediate descent from a hairy, tailed quadruped,
the extinct common ancestor of man and monkey. As evolution proceeds
the embryo rises up to man, and the differences specialising the
human infant at its birth, such as the largeness and more complex
convolutions of the brain, become more and more accentuated as its
growth proceeds.
Regarding the question of "gaps," we have to bear in mind that it is
part of the evolutionary theory that the active processes of evolution
have very largely ceased, that existing forms are but a surviving
remnant with enormous gaps, and that the survivors are so fitted at
present to their surroundings that evolutionary forces are causative
of equilibrium rather than change. We have already seen, too, that
in the struggle for existence it is among the closely-allied species
that the contest is more strenuous, and that the weakest, or least
fitted to survive, has to go to the wall--to be wiped out. Thus it
is that there is a tendency for species to become extinct, and for
the gaps to be widened. The extraordinary thing is not that we have
so little direct evidence of descent, but that we have so much. That
there are not more links missing is due principally to the discovery
of fossil remains. When an animal dies, the probabilities are, of
course, enormously against geological preservation of its bones, yet
the gaps are continually being filled up by geological finds, and,
though the remaining gaps may be great, they are not unaccountable.
I must now pass on to the remaining set of proofs of our origin.
THE TALE TOLD BY THE USELESS RUDIMENTARY ORGANS.
Perhaps nothing furnishes a more conclusive proof of our animal origin
than the study of rudimentary structures--muscles, sense-organs,
hair, bones, reproductive organs, etc. There are some which are
"either absolutely useless, such as the mammæ of the male quadrupeds
or the incisor teeth of ruminants which never cut through the gums;
or they are of such slight service to their present possessors that
we cannot suppose that they were developed under the conditions which
now exist." [173] Of useless rudimentary organs, or parts of organs,
there are not less than one hundred and seven in man. [174] To this
category belong the coccyx--the vestige of a tail--the muscles of
the ear, the vermiform appendage, etc.
"The os coccyx in man, though functionless as a tail, plainly
represents this part in other vertebrate animals. At an early embryonic
period it is free, and, as we have seen, projects beyond the lower
extremities." [175] It sometimes happens that we find external relics
of a tail. Professor Haeckel, in Fig. 195, vol. i. of The Evolution
of Man (library edition), shows the tail of a six months' old boy,
which Granville Harrison removed by operation. The anthropoid ape,
like man, has only the rudiment of a tail.
The ear muscles are rudimentary in man. "It is well known how readily
domestic animals--horses, cows, dogs, hares, etc.--point their
ears and move them in different directions. Most of the apes do the
same, and our earlier ape ancestors were also able to do it. But our
later simian ancestors, which we have in common with the anthropoid
apes, abandoned the use of these muscles, and they gradually became
rudimentary and useless. However, we possess them still. In fact,
some men can still move their ears a little backward and forward by
means of the drawing and withdrawing muscles; and with practice this
faculty can be much improved. But no man can now lift up his ears by
the raising muscle, or change the shape of them by the small inner
muscles. These muscles were very useful to our ancestors, but are of
no consequence to us. This applies to most of the anthropoid apes as
well." [176]
The vermiform appendage of the coecum is not only practically useless,
but the source of that extremely dangerous complaint, appendicitis. It
is remarkable that this organ is practically identical with the
vermiform appendage of anthropoid apes, yet none of the other
monkeys present any such resemblance with men. Professor Haeckel,
speaking of the vermiform appendage, says: "The only significance
of it in man is that not infrequently a cherry-stone or some other
hard and indigestible matter penetrates into its narrow cavity,
and by setting up inflammation and suppuration causes the death
of otherwise sound men. Teleology has great difficulty in giving a
rational explanation of, and attributing to a beneficent Providence,
this dreaded appendicitis. In our plant-eating ancestors this
rudimentary organ was much larger, and had a useful function." [177]
"In order to understand the existence of rudimentary organs, we
have only to suppose that a former progenitor possessed the parts
in question in a perfect state, and that under changed habits of
life they became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse or
through the natural selection of those individuals which were least
encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the other means previously
indicated." [178]
Whatever the precise explanation may be, can we bring ourselves
to suppose that God created us with a number of useless organs, or
that He placed them there as a snare to entrap our judgment? Again,
"rudimentary organs, for the most part, display a congenital lack of
the power of resistance, and, as Darwin suggested, for this reason
they are frequently the seats of disease." [179] Can anyone imagine
his Maker arranging all this on purpose? I can not. We are assured
by pious apologists that God has instituted pain in order to save us
from injuring ourselves; how can He, then, have specially provided
us with organs whose only function is to be a source of danger?
Many other examples might be given bearing on this line of argument;
but enough has been said, I hope, to convince the reader that in
these rudimentary organs there is overpowering evidence against
separate acts of creation, and in favour of an animal origin of the
human race. Besides this, we have also the evidence derived from the
study of our bodily structure and embryonic development. The bearing
of these three great classes of fact is, as Charles Darwin remarks,
unmistakeable. "It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance
which made our own forefathers declare that they were descended from
demi-gods, which lead us to demur to this conclusion." [180]
§ 5. The Overthrow of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION.
No Biblical standpoint is more directly opposed to modern evolutionary
views than the doctrine of the Fall and Atonement. We have seen, in
the chapters on the Higher Criticism and on Comparative Mythology,
that the Bible story of Creation is nothing but a borrowed legend;
and we have now seen that it could not in any case be true. If it
were, Evolution would be untrue. Now, the account of the fall of man
is an exceedingly important portion of the Bible, the whole fabric of
the Christian faith being constructed upon it; and there is no doubt
whatever that the average Christian realises this, and continues to
believe in the "Fall." He may accept the doctrine of the evolution of
the physical nature of man; but he flatly denies that his intellect and
moral attributes were a part of the process, although such authorities
as Darwin, Huxley, and Romanes clearly point out that man's intellect
and moral sense have arisen from lower stages of the same faculties
in his primate ancestors.
The conservative Christian believes that man was originally endowed
with a lofty moral nature; that he succumbed to temptation; that he
became a degraded being; that he has been working out his punishment
ever since; and that his hope of escape from the curse laid upon all
mankind lies in the atonement made by Jesus Christ. Even if inclined to
have views less strictly in accord with the Christian teaching of the
past eighteen hundred years, he still believes that all this is true in
some sort of allegorical sense which cannot be exactly defined. Lastly,
there is an ever-swelling host of perplexed Christians who, in their
heart of hearts, feel much as Mr. Blatchford does when he says:
"God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resist
Eve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the serpent. He
need not have made the serpent at all. God is all-knowing. Therefore,
when He made Adam and Eve and the serpent He knew that Adam and Eve
must fall. And if God knew they must fall, how could Adam help falling,
and how could he justly be blamed for doing what he must do? God made
a bridge--built it Himself, of His own materials, to His own design,
and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was. If, then, God
put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearing strain,
how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?" [181]
The average divine, whatever his denomination, is usually in no
hurry to accept Evolutionist theories of the Fall, or, if he does,
he keeps it to himself. Dean Wace thinks the tale of Eden and the
Fall is partly historical, partly allegorical, and, in any case,
true to Christian experience; and Cardinal Newman considered that the
whole orthodox Christian scheme stood or fell with a belief in some
great "aboriginal catastrophe." Progressive divines teach, on the
contrary, that the narrative of the Fall is not to be understood as
literal history, any more than the visions of the Apocalypse are to
be understood as a literal description of heaven. "For us," they say,
"the underlying truth, and not the outward form in which that truth is
clothed, is the essential thing." [As our first parents are represented
as being in a state of guileless simplicity, and subsequently falling
in with the tempting serpent, who, in obvious contrast with their
untried innocence, is described as a being of special subtilty, the
"underlying truth" appears to be that, with God's cognisance, man
is continually being taken advantage of by a crafty spirit of evil;
or, to keep more closely to the religious evolutionist's idea, man's
better nature, implanted by God, is being continually got the better
of by animal instincts implanted by ----?] These enlightened clerics
are in a somewhat delicate position, and none probably recognise this
more than they do themselves, as testified lately by the fact of over
a hundred of their number distributing a manifesto to all the clergy
of the Church of England, in which they express a desire to receive
authoritative encouragement to face critical problems with entire
candour. [182]
AN INSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.
The gravity of the situation and the divergence of the new from the old
teaching are summed up by the Church Times in the following pertinent
remarks:--"It is impossible for Christians to affect nonchalance as to
the result of the controversy between anthropologists like Lubbock,
Lyell, Huxley, Haeckel, and Fiske, who assert the human race to have
continuously (with whatever relapses) progressed out of brutish and
squalid barbarism, and those who, like the late Duke of Argyll, Lang,
Tylor, Hartmann, [183] Renouf, and most missionaries, maintain that
savagery is a declension from higher things, and that 'man's natural
state is civilisation'--not, of course, the civilisation of Paris and
London, of trousers and half-penny papers, nor yet Rousseau's anarchic
golden age, but creation in God's image after His likeness. It is said
that we need believe no more about our first parents than that they
were innocent--i.e., had not yet made trial of good and evil; that the
'former Adam,' even after he had ceased to be a pithecoid hanging
by his tail from boughs, and long after his mollusc [184] stage of
existence, was still as primus homo, a demi-witted creature, burrowing
in holes, gnawing roots, grunting, grimacing, snarling, shuddering; not
even a noble savage, but bestial and grovelling. As moral consciousness
slowly woke in him, he misused his powers; but such a 'fall' was really
an advance. Such is the latest version of Paradise lost--of that great
disinheritance, that moral and spiritual catastrophe, which, St. Paul
avers, was the entrance of death into the world by one man, and which,
he seems to say, dragged down the lower creation when the son of God,
'paragon of animals, noble in reason, infinite in faculty,' fell in
Eden. We do not urge that the two teachings cannot be reconciled;
but it is clear that the immense difficulty is not to be dismissed
by saying that the Bible is a mosaic, not Mosaic, or that it does
not profess to instruct us in anthropology." [185]
There is a downrightness and lucidity about this criticism of advanced
theology which one cannot but admire, although one may not be able to
share its optimism as to the chance of the two teachings ever becoming
reconciled. How can they? Consider the unsatisfactory nature of the
following speculations by means of which the clerical evolutionist
hopes to surmount the stumbling-block of the Fall.
THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER'S THEORY.
Dr. Gore, Bishop of Worcester, now of Birmingham, who is an adherent
of Evolution, speaks mysteriously of a "fall from without." [186] As
the question is of enormous importance to the truth of Christianity,
I propose to examine Dr. Gore's thesis at some length. He grants
that the idea of special creation is inconceivable, and that our race
has an animal ancestry, and then gives us the following description
of primeval man, which (shades of our forefathers!) he assures
us is according to the Bible and the enlightened ideas of early
Christianity: "Man began at the bottom, immature, in the fullest
sense of immaturity, totally undeveloped, but with a capacity for
development." A correspondent of Dr. Gore's, anxious possibly to be
let down gently in the matter of his ancestor, suggested "immature,
but not deformed." This Dr. Gore accepted as a good phrase. Most
of us would think that when our ancestor was at the stage, say, of
the ape-like man he would be deformed according to existing notions
of the human form divine, while, if only at the protoplasm stage,
the question of form would hardly matter.
It has been explained to me by a clerical biologist that the Bishop
meant that the Fall was not a fall from a completely developed form to
one less developed, but that there was perversion of the development,
so that a rudimentary life which might have been developed one way
has developed along a less favourable path--a common occurrence in
ontogeny. However that may be, and whatever the physical or mental
state of this creature at the time he "fell," was his previous state
one of beautiful innocence and purity? What about those inherited
animal instincts? Dr. Gore goes on to say that "humanity might have,
with infinitely more rapidity, developed upward; it has been delayed,
retarded by sin." Granted; but at what stage of development did this
poor wretch ever get a proper chance? The Christian faith inculcates
that there is no chance for him without belief. What belief did this
immature man have to guide him?
However, let us see what more Dr. Gore may have to tell us on the Fall
and Atonement. The words already quoted are from his second lecture
to the Birmingham working men. In his third and last lecture he says:
"He (God) appointed that man alone of creatures should have a twofold
nature--that he should have fellowship with physical nature, but
also that he should have fellowship with God. He (man) fell through
a suggestion from without, and preferred wilfulness to obedience;
he thus fell into sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death. Note that, if sin is said to have caused death, Christ is
said to have abolished death. 'He that believeth on Me shall never
die.' It is death as men have known it, the end of their hopes,
that sin introduced and Christ abolished."
Here, then, is the Bishop's answer regarding the "Fall" question. There
has been a "fall through a suggestion from without," whatever that
may happen to mean. I should have thought that, if there was a fall
at all, it was through a suggestion from within, much as Canon Wilson
puts it. [187] Bishop Gore, however, probably feels that it has to
be from without to agree with the Bible story of the temptation. We
are told nothing further about this mysterious "without," and I ask:
"Could anything be more vague and unsatisfactory than this explanation
of the Fall?"
Assuming that determinists are wrong, and that the Creator is not
responsible for the shortcomings of His creatures, the only fault for
which primeval man could possibly be held to be answerable is that
of not controlling his animal instincts so soon as he commenced to be
conscious and could no longer claim the excuse of innocence. Probably
he did his best, and began to improve himself ever so little. In that
case, as the Church Times sapiently remarks, there was no Fall, but an
advance. Or, adopting a compromise suggested by an American divine,
he fell upward! If he did not strive as much as he might have done,
there was, at all events, no sudden leap over a precipice; for the gift
of increased consciousness, such as the human being now possesses,
must have evolved very gradually. However, the creation of the world
and all that therein is was also exceedingly gradual, and yet the pious
find themselves able to consider the Bible account to be an accurate
though allegorical representation of the process; so there is really
nothing to prevent them from considering the account of a remarkable
incident in a certain garden during a hot summer's day, shortly after
man put in his appearance on this globe, to be a true representation
of the perverse conduct of their ancestors through countless ages.
For this so-called "Fall" we are to be visited with a death which will
be the end of our hopes if we do not believe in Christ. This, then,
is the new threat held over the unbeliever: he will forfeit his right
to immortality. As it is in place of the old-fashioned consignment
to hell, we may hope, for the sake of the human race as a whole, past
and present, that the new Christian dogma is nearer the truth than the
old. Most of us, however, will, I think, come to the conclusion that
there has never been a "Fall" at all in any sense. Dr. Gore in one
breath asks us to think man so much above the ape that his spiritual
powers cannot have been evolved; yet, when science points out that
they were evolved--that man rose so much above his relations--he
still speaks of a fall! It is an outrage to our common sense. And,
if there were a Fall, may we not say with the Persian poet?--
Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Path I was to travel in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin.
THE ARCHDEACON OF MANCHESTER'S THEORY.
Archdeacon J. M. Wilson tells us [188] that "We are taking our
part in the long struggle of good against evil. This has been often
pictured to us as the struggle of God against some Personal Power
of Evil which we call Satan, the fact of struggle suggesting two
rival powers. But the evolutionary way of regarding it presents the
struggle as one of the divine element in man struggling to overcome
the purely animal inheritance of lust and passion inherited from a
far by-gone stage." Dr. Wilson, therefore, believes, as every thorough
evolutionist must believe, that we have to look to an animal and not
a human ancestor for the ultimate origin of what we call sin. But
we want to know where the "Fall" comes in, and this he has explained
elsewhere, [189] in what seems to me to be the only possible way open
to an evolutionist. He says: "Man fell, according to science, when
he first became conscious of the conflict of freedom and conscience;
and each individual man falls as his ancestor fell." Dr. Wilson does
not attempt to make out that there was any particular "fall" at any
particular period in man's history, such as Dr. Gore apparently still
clings to; but he plainly tells us: "I do not mean to say that there is
a particular moment at which men fell: it is not so. It is a continuous
struggle of good and evil." He continues: "I see in this nothing to
conflict with a legitimate interpretation of the story of the Fall
in the third chapter of Genesis. Such a narrative is not an illusion,
still less a mere fiction; it is, as all teaching of spiritual truth
must be, a temporary and figurative mode of expression." In other
words, Dr. Wilson considers these early chapters of Genesis, and
probably a great deal more of the Old Testament and some of the New,
to be only an allegory. With regard to the Atonement difficulty,
Dr. Wilson's argument is simply that "We need only to look at the
world as it is to see the struggle of the two-fold nature in man;
to see that it has need of a Redemption, of a Saviour." Few, I
fear, will accept this latest explanation by a learned and earnest
believer. Theologians, in Dr. Wilson's opinion, have made a grievous
mistake when they say: "If the story of the Fall is not literally true,
then it is literally false, and with it goes the need of a Redemption,
of a Saviour." Yet most people--and these will include the whole
body both of the old-fashioned orthodox and of the unbelievers--will
certainly side with those "grievously mistaken" theologians.
THE RATIONALIST'S THEORY.
To many of us there seems no need whatever to have recourse to the
supernatural in order to account for the origin of sin. It is not
one of the mysteries of life. When we know who our ancestors were,
and hence why we possess certain instincts, it is quite unnecessary
to predicate a "Fall." Details of the Rationalist's view of sin
(and of the reasons for morality) will be found in the last chapter
of this book.
CONCLUSIONS.
These, then, are the difficulties created by the doctrine of
Evolution. They are difficulties which appear completely to impugn
the very nature of God, the veracity of the Bible, and the dogmas of
sin and its atonement. We have already seen, by our study of Bible
criticism and comparative mythology, how grave are the grounds for
distrusting the Faith, and Evolution seems to be just the finishing
stroke that was required for confirming our suspicions. We must now
see whether there are any other arguments for belief of sufficient
weight to warrant us in over-stepping the boundaries of reason by an
act of faith.
THEISM