I *^^ .OLOQ/ W-^O rv^' L ''^' I I ^ ■■ • c ,^ CM O CM -H 4 1 -H a% O -./ ' 1 ^ CO > 00 (d w t ' ■ « CM J-4 -H .J > ^ «- . V' PQ M O e- t ' #^ ■ ' ^ if y the Rev. Prebendary Ruw, ]\I.A., D.D. An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. By the Rev. Prof. B. B. Warfield, D.D. A Hebrew Grammar. By the Rev. W. H. Lowe, M.A. A Manual of Church History. J]y the Rev. A. C. Jennings, M.A. Vol. I. From the First to the Tenth Century. Vol. II. From the Tenth to the Nineteenth Century. An Exposition of the Apostles' Creed. By the Rev. J. E. Yonge, M.A. The Prayer Book. By the Rev, Prof. Charles Hole, B.A. An Introduction to the New Testament. By Prof. Marcus Dods, D.D. The Language of the New Testament. By the Rev. W. H. Slmcox, M.A. The Writers of the New Testament : Their Style and Characteristics. By the same Author. An Introduction to the Old Testament. By the Rev. C. H. H. Wright, D.D. Outlines of Christian Doctrine. By the Rev. H. C. G. Moule, M.A. The Theology of the Old Testament. By the Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennett, M.A. The Theology of the New Testament. By the Rev. Prof W. F. AnEXKv, M.A. Christianity and Evolution. By the Rev. Prof. Iverach, D.D. CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION JAMES IVERACH, M.A, D.D. PROFESSOR OF APOLOGETICS AND EXEGESIS OF THE GOSPELS IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, ABERDEEN Author of " Is Cod Knowable ?" " Life of St. Paul;' etc. "Things are also Thoughts, and have a reference to the Thought that set them there, and to the Thought that finds them there." NEW YORK THOMAS WHITTAKER 2 AND 3, BIBLE HOUSE 1894 ^ CONTENTS CHAPTER I. EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS.' Evolution the woi'king hypothesis of scientific men — Evolution as a dogmatic faith — Truth of evolution-^ The primitive nebulosity — Spectrum analysis — Star systems — Professor Karl Pearson on lifeless chaotic mass — Chaos unthinkable — Homogeneousness — Evo- lution must commence somewhere — Its commence- ment a relative unity 1 CHAPTER II. EVOLUTION AND LAW. Nature is w^hat is fixed, stated, settled — Law and hypo- thesis — The nebular theory — Its plausibilities and its difficulties — The nebular theory and evolution — It involves a rational system — The theistic argument — Continuity — Evolution a real process — "Instability of the homogeneous" — Multiplication of effects — " Is the effect more complex than the cause ? " — Criticism of this statement . ' . . . . .17 CHAPTER III. NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY. -4. ^ V-^ Additional factors — Transition from physics to chemistry — Chemical elements — Their character, relations, adap- -^ tations, periodicity — Rational character of these rela- tions — Nature is intelligible, and therefore related to intelligence — Attempts at explanation — The chemical elements exist in the unity of one system . . .33 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER IV. THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE. Is the issue raised by evolution new or old ?— Scope of evolution — Is evolution self-explanatory ? — Fiske on teleology, against and for— Order and purpose- Efficient and final causes — Caprice — Spinoza on final causes — Mathematics — Purposiveness — The same facts and laws appear from the point of view of cause and of purpose — Chance or purpose . . . .50 CHAPTEPt Y. EVOLUTION AND CREATION. History of the earth — Evolution as seen in geologic eras — Continuity of the process — Succession — Advance and preparation for advance — Physics and geology — Some unsettled questions — Professor Caird on evolu- tion from two points of view — At the beginning or at the end, which 1 — Is the issue arbitrary arrange- ment versus evolution ?— No : creation by slow process is creation — Illustrations — Mechanics and purpose once more GO CHAPTEPt VI. ORGANIC EVOLUTION. Statement by Professor Ray Lankester — New sets of terms used in biology — Why are there new terms? — Dr. Burden Sanderson — Darwinism — Variation, struggle for existence, natural selection, transmission — Anthropomorphic character of the process — Malthu- sianism — Utilitarianism — What is natural selection 1 — Comparision with the process of denudation in geology by Mr. J. T. Cunningham— Darwin on the eye — Professor Huxley's reproduction of chance — Organic evolution likely true, but its factors not yet discovered 88 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER VII. ORGANIC EVOLUTION {continued). Biology before and after Darwin — Physical continuity of life — Laws and conditions of life — Adequacy or inadequacy of natural selection '/—Inter-relations of life — Professor Geddes on anthropomorphism of the nineteenth century and of the eighteenth — Weismann — Natural selection is elimination of the unfit — Oscillation between natural selection as negative and as positive — Poulton, " that selection is examina- tion" — Teleology run mad — Mimicry — Search after utility — Mutual benefit of species in co-operation — Illustration — Struggle for existence thus modified- - Eesults 110 CHAPTER VIII. SUPER-OEGANIC EVOLUTION. Controversy regarding heredity — Spencer and Weis- mann — Machinery of evolution defective— Limits of organic evolution — Man does not modify himself, but modifies his environment — Survival of the fittest explained by Huxley and by Spencer — Evolution does not account for advance — Illustration of man's power of modifying his environment — Results . .182 CHAPTER IX. EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY. Human and animal intelligence — Rational self-con- sciousness — Habit — Feelings, emotions, appetites in rational beings and in irrational — Differences in kind and in degree — Romanes and Spencer — Can feelings make a consciousness? — The self — Genesis of self according to Romanes and Spencer — Unity of human nature — Russel Wallace's dcistic view — Creation is continuous — Results .... 154 viii COXTENTS CHAPTEK X. y EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. Ethics o£ evolution — Professor Huxley's ethical ideal — Whence derived ?— Not from cosmic iDrocess, not from Greek or Roman ethics, nor from ordinary human ethics — Ethical life : what it is — Struggle for existence partial in cosmos : at its fiercest in human life — Spheres of human conduct non- moralised — floral ideals — Moral obligation — Tlic Christian ethical ideal — Its acknowledged supre- macy — Its character — Pccognition of it — Not derived from evolution — Christian ethics both test and goal of ethical evolution 178 CHAPTER XL EVOLUTION AND RELIGION. The Christian religion — The Christian goal of life — Fellowship with Cod — Christian religious ideal real- ised in Jesus Christ — Immanence of God — Christ not evolved — Evolution holds for all others — The ghost theory of religion— Spencer's reconciliation of science and religion —Criticism — Worship for an- cestors distinguished from worship of ancestors— Involved conduct and evolved belief — Universality of religion— Manifestations of religion— Correspond- ence with reality — Eternal element in religious emotion— Christianity and evolution — Analogy be- tween evolution in all spheres and the evolution of Christian life 20-1 CHAPTER I EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS Evolution the working hypothesis of scientific men— Evolu- tion as a dogmatic faith — Truth of evolution — The primitive nebulosity — Spectrum analysis— Star systems — Professor Karl Pearson on lifeless chaotic mass — Chaos unthinkable — Homogeneousness— Evolution must com- mence somewhere — Its commencement a relative unity. EVOLUTION is the working hypothesis of most scientific men at the present time. In no branch of science is it without influence, and in the sciences which deal with life it is dominant. We cannot escape from it. Its technical phrases have become parts of current common speech ; and such words as " natural selection," the " struggle for existence," and " the survival of the fittest " are on the lips of every one. It does not matter to what sphere of human work we turn, for in all alike we meet with the same mental atmosphere. Are we students of physics or chemistry, we have no sooner mastered the elements of the science than we are plunged into questions which deal with the " evolu- tion " of the " atom " or the " molecule " from, simpler forms of matter. Do we study mechanics, then we are brought into a sphere where men talk of the evolution of the steam engine or of some other 1 2 ailRtSTIANITY AXD EVOLUTION macbine which has slowly grown from less to more till it has reached its present state. Are we students , of man, then w^e become accustomed to inquiries into the evolution of the family, of marriage, of the com- munity, of the state. Morality is evolved, religion also. On all hands men are busy tracing out the lines of evolution from the general to the particular, from the simple to the complex, until it is aifirmed ** that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the powers possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed" (Huxley, Life of Darwin^ vol. ii., p. 210). It is evident enough that, in these views of Professor Huxley, evolution has passed beyond the stage of a working hypothesis, and has become both a philo- 'sophy and a dogmatic faith. 'We are restricted to molecules, their powers, and the interactions of their powers for the explanation of the universe ; when the molecules are given in their primitive nebulosity, the whole result follows. There can be no incre- ment from without, no guidance from above, nor any leading along a definite line to a predetermined end. The molecules and their interactions must be com- petent to produce all that has come out in the process. We need not say how great is the issue involved in this claim, nor how strenuously it is to be resisted. It is sometliing gained, however, to have the claims of evolution considered as a dogmatic faith stated so clearly, and to know with what w^ have to deal. ^ Manifestly evolution as a working hypothesis and evolution as a dogmatic faith mean very different EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS 3 things. Even if we grcint tluit it is more than a working hypothesis — let us grant that it is the highest scientific generalisation to which the human mind has yet attained ; that in it we have a law of the widest working which is operative in all the realm of nature, animate and inanimate — yet this concession falls far short of the immeasurable demand which Professor Huxley makes in the name of evolution. Let us suppose it proved as a scientific generalisation, and we may still say, with Professor Eraser, " evolu- tion itself, if proved, would be only an expression of physical causation — of phenomenal significance and interpretability — though it may yet turn out to be the most comprehensive of all merely phenomenal laws, and the liighest expression of the sense symbolism, a physical causation, which Berkeley has so emphatically contrasted with spiritual and transcendent causality " {Eraser on Berkeley^ p. 227). But the advocates of evolution are not content with the concession that it is the most comprehensive of all phenomenal laws ; they demand absolute submission. Evolution must reign without a rival ; everything must bend to its sway. The imperious demands which Professor Huxley, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and others make in the name of evolution must not be allowed, however, to frighten us away from the name, or to blind us to the truth which is contained in it. , Extravagant | claims must not be allowed to discredit legitimate de- 1 mands,. In fact, the real work done by evolution, the i truth set forth by it, the grandeur of its generalisation, 1 and its consistency with scientific truth genei-ally, 1 4 CHRISTIANITY AXD EVOLUTION make one sorry when the theory is pushed to an extreme which makes it untrue and inadequate. We are not surprised when the expounders of this theory of the universe are filled with cosmic emotion at the greatness and grandeur of the process they describe ; nor do we wonder that they are carried away with the rapture into which they are thrown : for no reader can withhold his sympathy and admira- tion. It is grand and ennobling to sweep back in thought across the hundred million years or so which separate us from the time when our earth was only vapour, and to be led on from that point of time, through all the intervening ages, as one science after another guides our footsteps, until we arrive at the complex, differentiated, integrated world of the present time, with its life, intelligence, ethics, religion, science, art, and to have some unclerstaneling of the process whereby this has come out of that. But we may still have the rapture and the admiration : we may admire and so far revere and be thankful for the work done in the service of evolution, and yet withhold that fi.nal sacrifice demanded in her name. Almost every book on evolution and every magazine article devoted to the subject tries to hark back to the '' primitive nebulosity." Not many of them, however, commit themselves to any definite theory on the question of the nebular view. Some, ineleed, with a courage which we cannot sufliciently adojire, speak as if Kant or Laplace had left nothing for their followers to do. Mr. Fiske is quite sure on the matter. " In the slow concentration of the matter constituting this solar nelnda," he says, "as both Kant and EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS 5 Laplace have elaborately prove 1, the most prominent peculiarities of the solar system find their complete explanation" {Cosmic Philosophy^ vol. i., p. 360). We shall have something to say of this later on. At present we may observe that Professor Huxley's statement does not limit itself to the solar system ; it extends to the universe. The progress of science has made it much more probable that some form of the nebular theory is true. While this is so, any tenable view of the nebular hypothesis, or any view consistent with facts, has presented that hypothesis in a form which is not available for the purposes of evolution. Professor Huxley assiimes " a primitive nebulosity of the universe." If this has any meaning, we must try to imagine all the matter of the universe dispersed equally through space, and in a uniform physical condition. If we were to trace the process backwards from the present hour, and try to follow the various steps by which the star systems came to their present condition, we should finally arrive at the primitive nebulosity. But then we should have to explain the fact that there are so many systems that have not yet emerged from their first estate. Spectrum analysis has made us acquainted with the physical condition of many kinds of stars. If w study such works as Schellen's S'pectrum Analysis^ or Miss Gierke's System of the Stars, we shall become acquainted with worlds at all stages of their history. "We can indeed hesitate to admit neither the fundamental identity of the material elements of the universe, nor the nebulous origin of stars. The 6 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION transition from one to the other of the two great families of the sidereal kingdom is so gradual as to afford a rational conviction that what we see con- temporaneously in different objects has been exhibited successively in the same objects. Planetary nebulae pass into gaseous stars on one side, into nebulous stars on the other, the greater nebulse into clusters. The present state of the Pleiades refers us ine\dtably to an antecedent condition closely resembling that of the Orion nebula ; the Andromeda nebula may repre- sent the nfi scent stage of a splendid collection of suns. But even though stars without exception havej sprung from nebulae, it does not follow that nebuljel without exception grow into stars. The requisite conditions need not invariably have been present. Other ends than that of star production are perhaps subserved by the chief part of the present nebulous contents of the heavens. The contrast between stellar and nebular distribution is intelligible only as expressing a definitive separation of the life-histories of the two classes — a divei'gence destined to be perpetual along their lines of growth." {Sijstem of the Stars, p. 396.) Thus we see how naturally astronomy uses the language of evolution, and how the new astronomy with the aid of the mighty instrument of spectrum analysis has added to our knowledge and increased our wonder. A cross section seems to give us also the line of the life- history of a star or a system of stars. And the theory of Kant with regard to the solar system seems to have reference also to the sidereal system. May we by an act of faith go back to the primitive EVOLUriON AND BEGINNINGS 7 nebulosity of the universe, and, assuming a primitive , nebulosity, with known qualities and laws, seek thus I to account for the universe ? We_inust start some- 1 where, and perhaps for some purposes a primitive nebulosity is as good a starting-place as we can have. But we should observe how many things we have assumed, and how much we have taken for granted. We have assumed " molecules possessed of definite| powers," that these powers work according tq^defimtel Jaws, and that out of their mutual interaction a J definite world of order will arise. Now these are large assumptions, and if granted have raised many important questions. What has been assumed is something definite, and yet the attempt is constantly made to make it indefinite. There is nothing more common than to call the " primitive nebulosity " chaos. " Suppose," says Professor Karl Pearson, "the highly developed reason of some future man to start, say, with clear conceptions of the lifeless chaotic .masa_of 60,000,000 years ago, which now forms our planetary system, then from these conceptions alone he will be able to think out the 60,000,000 years' history of the world with every finite phase which it had passed through ; each will have its necessary place, its necessary course in this thought system. And this total history he has thought out ? It will be identical with the actual history of the w^orld ; for that history has evolved in the sole way conceivable." [The Ethics of Freethought, p. 29.) Apart from the other issues raised by this statement, we concentrate attention on one aspect of it. This we do mainly because Professor Karl Pearson is 8 CHRISTIAXITY AND EVOLUTION here a representative writer. Many other people, of less ability than he, speak of a primeval chaos out of which somehow order must emerge. But may we ask how we are to have "clear conceptions of a life- less chaotic mass," whether we consider it as existing a number of years ago or at the present hour 1 We can only conceive of it just in proportion as we think the chaos awa}^ A mass means something ; it has a certain bulk, a certain shape, a certain kind of con- sistency ; and if it has these, to speak of it as chaotic is mere rhetoric. A clear conception is possible only if theie is something clear to be apprehended ; and to speak of a clear conception of a chaos implies something chaotic in the mind which speaks. The_primitive nebulosity, if it ever existed, was as definite, as much subject to law, as clearly marked b}- definite qualities, as the universe which is supposed to have evolved out of it. At all events, it existed in a definite material state ; it occupied space ; molecules or atoms, or the material which afterwards aggregated into atoms or molecules, were there. There were definite laws at work, and there were mutual inter- actions; and just in proportion as these existed, clear conceptions of the so-called " lifeless chaotic " mass are or were possible. If the primitive nebulosity had any qualities what- soever, then all the advantages which were gained by calling it chaotic are lost. Somehow, I do not know how, but there seems to be a hazy idea in the minds of many, that if a start can be made in chaos, and afterwards a cosmos appears, a solution of the problem of creation has been obtained. Given a .is I EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS 9 chaotic primitive nebulosity, and given clear concep- tions of it, then the universe must arise : such is the problem and its solution. But we have no account of the transition, nor any rational attempt to show why and how chaos should cease and cosmos begin. Thi difficulty besets the mechanical theory of the universe as it besets every other theory. How to get our| starting-point is the perplexity. We cannot begin* with chaos ; and if w^e begin with anything definite, where have we got it % We may place the elephant on the back of the tortoise, but what will support the tortoise ? It is amazing that those who assume the primitive nebulosity do not see that it raises precisely those questions concerning order, its source, method, and law, which aie raised by the universe as at present constituted. It raises these questions also in a form more difficult of solution. We may not ask how this nebulous mass came to be ; if we did ask, we should at once be told that we must not inquire regarding origins. Leaving origins, then, we may ask whether the mass is constituted so and so, and in such a manner as to make a certain result inevitable. If, as Professor Karl Pearson says, '' the universe is what it is because that is the only conceivable fashion in which it could be — in which it could be thought " — we may conclude that thought has gone to the making of it. If thought has come out of the universe, if the universe is a universe which can be thought, then thought has had something to do with it from the outset. There is thought in the primitive nebulosity, and thought of the most marvellous kind. 10 CHBISTIAXITY AND F^VOLUTTON But we can scarcely ascribe the thought to the molecules, Wh( nee has it come ? We humbly submit that at this stage we require more thought to make clear what we mean. If instead of Professor Karl Pearson's chaotic mass! we take the indefinite, incoherent homogeneity of I Mr. Herbert Spencer, we have not made any advance. I Suppose we grant the possibility of such a homo- geneity, we cannot get it to act. Mr. Spencer him- self recognises this : "One stable homogeneity only is hvpothetically possible. If centres of force, absolutely uniform in their powers, were diffused with absolute uniformity through unlimited space, they would remain in equilibrium. This, however, though a verbally intelligible supposition, is one which cannot be repre- sented in thought, since unlimited space is incon- ceivable. But all finite forms of the homogeneous, all forms of it which we can know or conceive, must inevitably lapse into heterogeneity." (First Princijyles, p. 429.) The homogeneity which his system demands is dismissed as inconceivable, "since unlimited space is inconceivable." And then he proceeds to speak of " all finite forms of the homogeneous " ; and by so doing cuts down tlie only branch on which he can sit. A finite form of the homogeneous is really destructive of his hypothesis. For the finiteness of the form postulates a difference between the homo- geneous and its environment ; and as that difference is both continuous and active, it will not allow the homogeneous to exist. The very notion of a finite homogeneity is self-destructive. Another result follows. The objection which is\ EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS 11 brought against absolute homogeneity implies that the absohite or the ultimate reality can manifest itself only in finite forms. Any other than a finite mani- festation, " though a ve rball y intelligible proposition, is one that cannot be represented in thought, since the unlimited is inconceivable." How contradictory this is of mo.ny of Mr. Spencer's propositions we need not here determine. But the remark that " unlimited space is inconceivable " does not hinder him from saying on the same page, " The absolutely homogeneous must lose its equilibrium," and yet "they would remain in equilibrium." Hence we have this dilemma : If the homogeneous is absolute, it will remain in equilibrium ; if the equilibrium is disturbed, then the homogeneity \ is not absolute. How does evolution commence according to Mr. Spencer? " All finite powers of the homogeneous — all forms of it which we can know or conceive — must inevitably lapse into heterogeneity. In three several ways does the persistence of force necessitate this. Setting external agencies aside, each unit of a homogeneous whole must be differently affected from any of the rest by the action of the rest on it. The resultant force exercised by the aggregate on each unit, being in no two cases alike in both amount and direction, and usually not in either, any incident force, even if uniform in amount and direction, cannot produce like effects on the units. And the various positions of the parts in relation to any incident force preventing them from receiving them in uniform amounts and directions, a further difference in the effects wrought on them is inevitably produced." 12 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION {First Princijyles, p. 429.) Let any one try to think out these propositions. " Each unit of a homogeneous whole must be differently affected from any of the rest by the aggregate action of the rest on it." Why ? The necessity is not apparent. If a whole be homogeneous, then it would result that each unit must be similarly affected by the aggregate action of the rest on it. If it be differently affected, whence the difference ? If the difference be one in position, then homogeneity has vanished and hetero- geneity has begun. Every attempt made by Mr. Spencer to make a commencement postulates differ- ence, and any difference is destructive of the homo- geneity.^, At the beginning of all evolution he has to bring in somehow actual differences, real adjust- ments, and relations, and yet he endeavours to evolve these out of an original simplicity. Evolution has to begin, not from a minimum simplicity, but from what looks like a rational, intelligible adjustment of means to ends, and of qualities and properties in relation ; and this is exactly the theistic position. / The primitive nebulosity of Professor Huxley, the /lifeless chaotic mass of Professor Karl Pearson, the J absolutely homogeneous of Mr. Spencer, and, we may f add, similar postulates of other writers, do not serve the purpose of those who have introduced them to our notice. They do not help us to pass from the indeter- minate to the determinate, and they do not help us to get intelligence o\Tt of what is not intelligent. Every problem presented by the present complex universe is presented also by the primitive nebulosity. It is an attempt to get what is adjusted out of EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS 13 what is not adjusted, relations out of what has none, and differences out of that which has no difference. Every step proceeds on what has been formally denied, and the result is mere .confusion of thought ; for evolution can commence only wheni change begins, and the absolutely homogeneous, if left to itself, cannot even begin to change. Thus we are at the outset constrained to postulate some force outside of the homogeneous in order that changejmay begin ; or if the beginning of change is due to some- thing within the homogeneous, then we have difference to start with. There is no way of escape from the thought of prearranged activities within the mass which Professor Karl Pearson calls chaotic. Prearranged activities, however, is the very sup- position of which the writers in question seek to get rid. They value the primitive nebulosity just in proportion as it enables them to make a beginning, and to get the work of intelligence without the help of intelligence. It is just the old attempt of trying to get something out of nothing. We are not to ask any question about the primitive nebulosity. We are not to ask how it happened to be there, nor inquire into its previous history, if it had a history. We are to be willing to take it for granted. At a certain time, many millions of years ago, there existed a primitive nebulosity, an undiffeientiated chaotic mass of matter, in an extremely att enuat ed_ form j equally balanced in all directions, and each part of it indistinguish- able from every other part. It is homogeneous throughout. Let us suppose also that the mass is in what may be called the pre -chemical state of matter. 14 CHBISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION What is now known as atoms and molecules has not yet come to be. The different chemical elements have not yet aggregated together. There is one stuff, and only one, and each part of it is identical with every other part. Let us grant the supposition. It is possible that such stuff has existed. The experiments and reasonings of Mr. Norman Lockyer have made it at least possible. The chemical elements may be vaiious combinations of one uniform stuff. There may have been a time when matter was abso- lutely homogeneous. But the supposition does not help us. For somehow change has to begin and change has to continue, and has to continue in one direction. As soon as change has begun the undifferentiated stuff becomes differentiated, the in- determinate becomes determinate, and the chemical elements appear. When once they are made they are never unmade. It is not necessary for our purpose to inquire as to whether science can trace the genesis of the molecule ; for all the kinds of matter we know are gathered up into various limited sorts, and each of these sorts is practically indestructible. " Though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built, the foundation-stones of the material universe, remain unbroken and unworn." So speaks Professor Clerk Maxwell. Again he says : " There are im- mense numbers of atoms of the same kind, and the constituents of each of these atoms are incapable of adjustment by any powers now in action. Each is EVOLUTION AND BEGINNINGS ]5 physically independent of all the others. Whether or not the conception of a multitude of beings existing from all eternity is in itself self-contradictory, the conception becomes palpably absurd when we attribute a x^elation of q^uantitative equality to all these beings. We are then forced to look beyond them to some common cause or common origin to explain why this singular relation of equality exists, rather than any of the infinite number of possible relations of inequality. Science is incompetent to reason on the creation of the world out of nothing.' We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that, becaus^jnatter cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been/ created." i^Encyc. Brit., vol. iii., art. "Atom," p. 49, 9th ed.) We should like to ask whether the primitive nebulosity is composed of definite atoms and molecules or not. If it is in the pre-atomic stage pictured by Mr. Norman Lockyer, then clearly its first work is to become atomic. If it has become atomic, then we have no longer to deal with a homogeneous kind of stuff, but with a stuff that has got itself packed, into sixty or seventy different kinds — kinds which persist, which no power can change, and no use can wear out. The problem thus becomes infinitely more complicated. It is not now a case of the absolutely homogeneous losing its equilibrium, and thus in- stituting a series of changes; but it becomes a problem of how to obtain a unity out of sixty or seventy different sets of things, each set of which is different from all the others, and of each set there is an incalculable number. The problem is not how to 16 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION obtain otherness out of unity, but to gather the differences into a unity. An abstract unity will not suffice. It is not enough to abstract from the difference of each separate set of molecules, and generalise them all under the common name of matter ; nor to abstract from the various energies at work in the universe, and generalise them under the common name of force : what is needed is a kind of unity which shall keep the differences, and recognise the special nature of each kind. And this is a unity made up of relations. Thus at the very basis of the. material system there is evidence of rationality of| the very highest order. Given sixty or seventy different kinds of stuff, each with its own proper qualities and attributes, to make out of them a stable and progressive univei-se — that is the problem ; and it is one evidently of a higher kind than that presented to us by Mr. Spencer. Thus we have the theistic problem and answer! before evolution can be said to have begun. Whetheij these molecules have had a previous history or not, at all events they have passed now out of any sphere which can be influenced by the struggle for existence. A molecule of hydrogen continues to be a molecule of hydrogen wheresoever it may be, in whatsoever combination it may exist, and whatsoever work it may be doing. If it ever had to struggle for exist- ence, it has long ago got past that stage. It exists, it cannot be changed, it does work, and about it evolution has nothing to say. And yet the problem of its existence and its qualities and its relations is as irreat as those which evolution is called on to solve. CHAPTER II EVOLUTION AND LAW Nature is what is fixed, stated, settled — Law and hypothesis — The nebular theory — Its plausibilities and its diffi- culties — The nebular theory and evolution — It involves a rational system — The theistic argument — Continuity — Evolution a real process — " Instability of the homogene- ous " — Multiplicatiou of effects — " Is the effect more com- plex than the cause ? " — Criticism of this statement. THE unity of the primitive nebulosity must have been, as we have seen, a unity of elements in relation to one another. It is not undifferentiated stuff, but definite molecules existing in definite relations. It is not chaotic, but orderly, and existing in relations which can be thought. Thus the unity of the primitive nebulosity is already rational and intelligible. If this is possible at the outset, then the process of evolution will also be rational and intelligible, and the outcome will also be rational. It is not for us to contend against the existence of aj primitive nebulosity either of the solar system or of/ the sidereal. Nor have we any interest in contending/ against the discovery of method, order, law in nature. We are glad to sit at the feet of those who can show us the widening bounds of order and law, who can teach us to know the dominion of order and law 17 2 18 CHRISTIAXITY AND EVOLUTION where we were once unable to discover it. We gladly follow Mr. Herbert Spencer as he leads us on from stage to stage of existence and of knowledge, and shows us how every stage is under law, and that even the very discovery of law is itself subject to law. We may not agree with him either in the general or in the particular, but we are grateful for the wide outlook he has cast over the universe, and for a possible interpretation of the order of nature. We had learned from Bishop Butler that the meaning of nature is what is fixed, settled, determined, and that what is fixed and settled has had reference to some cause which made it so. Thus we were prepared in the interests of theology | to welcome every conquest of science and every fresh I proof of the universal reign of law. The Bishop had taught us to look for the traces of the Divine footsteps, not in what appears to be lawless and capricious and arbitrary, but in that which was fixed, steadfast, determined. Thus, on the principles of Bishop Butler, — which are also the principles of a true theology, — we are to wait for the instructions of our masters in science. They are the true inter- preters of nature, as they are also the discoverers of its laws. They have proved that the law according to which a stone falls to the ground is the law accordmg to which the planets describe their orbits and the stars maintain their places. And if they tell us that the earliest known form of the solar system is that of a gaseous nebula, and if they can prove this to be the fact — well, then we accept the fact, and act accordingly. If they tell us that the EVOLUTION AND LAW 19 widest law known to them is that of evohition, that by the way of evolution the universe has come to be what it is— well, if it is so, we see no more reason why we should be disturbed by evolution than we have been by gravitation. Neither_gravitation nor evolution is ultimate, and when science has done its work something remains to be said. Let us therefore without hesitation follow our scientific teachers, with the sure belief that they do us service whenever they can disclose to us order and method and law in nature. They also will no doubtl tell us what has been proven^ and what is oniyl probable. They will observe, we hope, this distinction, and will give us due notice when they leave the firm ground of proof and take to speculation. And we have a right to expecit that they will keep hypothesis separate from ascertained law. For the most part, we have no reason to complain. We get sublime speculation, but we also get profound calculation ; and as a rule these are kept separate. With reference to the matter before us, the primitive nebulosity and the nebular theory, for the most part competent men '^ deal with it as a speculation, and not as a certainty. ' Laplace himself did so. He placed the nebular ' hypothesis on a different footing from his statement about the stability of the solar system. This was a proof that all the changes of the solar system were periodic, that if it is disturbed a little it will oscillate and return to its old state. This demonstration proceeded on the assumption that the planets were rigid bodies, and on that assumption the demonstration is complete. Corrections have to be made because 20 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION the planets are not rigid bodies ; but these do not concern us here. The point is that Laplace himself threw out his suggestion of the nebular theory simply as a speculation. The theory of the stability of the solar system followed with inevitable certainty from the theory of gravitation. But the nebular theory could not be deduced from the theory of gravitation, and must continue to rank only as a hypothesis. It has its difficulties, and it has its probabilities ; but as yet science does not affirm its truth. Its. probabilities are, to use the language of Sir Robert S. Ball : " Many of the features in the solar system harmonise with the supposition that the origin of the system has been that suggested by the nebular theory. We have already had occasion in an earlier chajDter to allude to the fact that all the planets perform theii- revolution around the sun in the same direction. It is also to be observed that the rotation of the planets on their axes, as well as the movements of the satellites around their primaries, are following the same law, with one slight exception in the case of the Uranian system. A coincidence so remarkable naturally suggests the necessity for some physical explanation. Such an explanation is offered by the nr-bular theory. Suppose that countless ages ago a mighty nebula was slowl y rotati ng and slowly_con- tracting. In the process of contracting portions of the condensed matter would be left behind. These portions would still revolve round the central mass, and each portion would rotate on its axis in the same direction. As the process of contraction proceeded it would follow from dynamical principles that the EVOLUTION AND LAW 21 velocity of rotation would increase ; and thus at length these portions would consoHdate into masses, while the central mass would gradually contract to form the sun. By a similar process on a smaller scale the systems of satellites were evolved from the contracting primary. These satellites would also revolve in the same direction, and thus the characteristic features of the solar system could be accounted for." {Story of the Heavens, p. 501.) The language is exceedingly cautious. It is said " many of the features in the solar system harmonise with the supposition." " Thus the features of the solar system^could^e accounted for." Sir Kobert Ball does not say, " They are accounted for." This is very dif- ferent from the statement already quoted about the primitive nebulosity, and very different from what is required by the part which the nebular theory is made to play in the theory of evolution. What was the state of the nebula ? Was it hot or cold ? We must think of the matter of it as in some state. Are we to think of the matter of the nebula as consisting of the same kinds of atoms as those we know to-day % Were these atoms arranged according to their specific gravities ? If they were, the heaviest would gravitate to the centre and the lighter would gather at the circumference ; but the whole business must somehow arrange itself so that the earth, for example, may start fair and have capital enough for all its ex- penditure. A nebula abandoned to the influence of gravity, and left to shape itself as it might, is yet to be so conceived as to provide a suitable endow- ment for each member of the family. It looks at 22 CHPdSTIANITY AND EVOLUTION this stage as if the nebular hy^jothesis needed to be supplemented. '^ Suppose that countless ages ago a mighty nebula was slowly rotating and slowly contracting." It is easy to make the supposition, and yet exceedingly difficult to realise what is involved in it. The matter of the nebula is exceecUngly rare, so attenuated that the matter of the solar system stretched beyond the bounds of the orbit of the most distant planet. Mr. Proctor declai'es that in such a system rotation is impossible ; and it is indeed difficult to conceive a continuous rotation of such an attenuated body. It is an essential part of the theory, in the use made of it by evolution, that no help can be brought to the nebula from without. It is a self-contained system, and all its energy is contained within itself, and its quantity of energy cannot be increased or diminished. Unless, however, we postulate action of a force beyond the system, it is difficult to see how there should be any rings cast off from the whirling mass. As the mass contracts the gravitation in- creases, and at the same time the rate of rotation grows more rapid. The possibility of forming a ring, or of detaching it from the main body, depends on the relation between the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The application of the theory to the present solar system depends on the ability of the theory to demonstrate that at the various orbits of the planets the centrifugal forces increased by precisely so much as to necessitate the breaking off of just such masses and no more as make up the various planets from Neptune to Mercuiy. Again, the theory would seem EVOLUTION AND LAW 23 to lequire that the orbits of the planets would bear some relation to the orbit traced by the equator of the cei^tral body where each particular planet has broken off. But there is really no relation between the two. The nebular hyj^othesis has as yet afforded no explanation of the distribution of matter tlii'oughout the solar system, nor of the size of the planets, nor of their relative density ; as a mechanical explanation it has so far failed, and if we are to have an explanation of the solar system, we shall need something more than can be given us by the primitive nebulosity. '• A mighty nebula slowly rotating and slowly con- tracting" does not exj^lain much. It will not explain, for instance, the number of chemical elements in the earth. Take, for example, what we know of the constitution of the nebula in Orion. " We see that it consists in part of stars, making up perhaps in number for their deficiency in size. These stars are bathed in and surrounded by a stupendous mass of glowing gas, partly consisting of that gas which enters so largely into the composition of our ocean, namely, hydrogen. The wide distribution of this substance, the lightest of all the known elements, is one of the most striking facts in the material con- stitution of the universe." {Story of the Heavens, p. 462.) May not the reason why hydrogen is so conspicuous in the spectrum of the nebula in Orion simply be because it is the lightest of all the known elements, and is thus farthest removed from the centre of attraction'^ Might we not expect^ then, that the farthest distant of the planets would also be the lightest? But the density cf Saturn is less than 24 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION the density of Uranus, and the density of Yeniis is less than that of the Earth. Be that as it may, our I present contention is, that the nebular hypothesis is I not of a kind to bear the weight laid on it by the) theory of universal evolution. The nebular hypothesis is a very fascinating one, and we need not be surprised that in the hands of Mr. Fiske, for example, it is made to do large service to his cosmic philosophy. Nor are we concerned to deny whatsoever truth may be in it. We know that there are nebulae in the universe, and that, for example, the great nebula in Andromeda " is in a state of extensive and majestic whirl " ; we may also have some conception of the relative distribution of stars and nebulae : but as for a theory of the life -history of a star or of a system of stars, science at present has none. Our astronomy is so advanced just because we know so little about the planets or the stars. That is to say, we have had to do with planets in the mass, and have dealt only with their masses, orbits, rotation, and other matters of the same sort. But such mechanical knowledge is altogether insufficient for the purpose for which it is sometimes used. That purpose is mainly to show that the mechanism of the heavens is self-explanatory. The solar system is so far self-explanatory, if we are allowed to postulate the stability of the system as an end in view, and the various positions, sizes, and relations of the planets as subservient to that end. Apart from that end the various adjustments are unintelligible and incalculable. I The nebular theory does not explain even the mechanics of the system, far less does it explain the EVOLUTION AND LAW 25 life-hifetory of it. By its vague and general terms, | and its wide and grand sweep, it has seemed to accomplish much, and it falls in so well with the general tendency, that we are not surprised to find it bulk so largely in current literature. It advances from the simple to the complex in so charming a way, it seems to assume so little and accomplish so much, that people are quite delighted with it. But when the theory is adjusted to the facts, its simplicity is gone, and what it has accomplished is not so great after all. Thus, with regard to the nebular theory, we are brought back to a position similar to that which confronted us before. The unity we have to start with is not simple, but complex. It is again a unity of related elements, and thus a unity which is not merely material ; it is also rational. It is not as if we could get a simplicity to which we may add complexities, or out of which we could evolve complexities, but something different. If we have a naked simplicity, it will not work. But the primitive nebulosity has many elements in it. It has at least matter in a certain state ; what that state is we cannot well say. It has a certain rotation, slow it may be, but with a certain momentum, which must be equal to the sum of all the separate momenta exist- ing in the solar system at the present hour. It has a certain bent and direction, and the union of these elements and tendencies has to be accounted for. As with the elements of matter, so with the solar system, the unity we have to start with is an ideal, a rational unity, and the mere mechanics of the system gives no rational explanation of the system. The interest we have in the primitive nebulosity is 26 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION simply a scientific one. For the purpose of our argu- ment it would make no difference if the theory were as complete as the theory of the tides. Every one knows, more or less, what has been done by Professor G. H. Darwin with regard to the theory of the tides. It is not our purpose to describe his theory of tidal evolution, nor to sketch the history of investigation with regard to the tides from the time of Newton onwards. It is a fascinating story ; but the point in view at present is this, that when you have completed the mechanical theory of anything the explanation! is not ultimate. We are not of those who are con- stantly looking about for imperfections in a mechani- cal or other theory in order to find a chink through which the theistic argument may enter. Such a process would be a hopeless task. If that were our position, the argument for theism would soon be a fugitive and vagabond on the face of the earth ; each advance of science, each discovery of law w^ould simply drive the theistic argument to seek a new refuge. On { the contrary, our position is that each new discovery is I a fresh testimony to theism, and each new law found I in phenomena is only a fresh argument for God, — f oi* fv^ intelligence as the source of order and the only ground \ of law\ Our argument so far has been to the effect that the simplicity assumed by evolutionists as the starting-point of evolution will not work. What is required, even on their own theory, is the .^-implicity of many elements in a related whole, and such a unity is rational. It is to be remembered also that the task of evolu- tion is to deal with the process of evolution as a real EVOLUTION AND LAW 27 process, to describe real changes which take place, or have taken place, or will take place in a real world. There are some sciences in which no error need be introduced by our beginning with abstractions. It does no harm in geometry to assume points which have position and not magnitude, lines which have length and no breadth, and other abstractions which have no place in a concrete world ; for in applying our mathematical deductions to a real world we make allowances and supply the additional concrete condi- tions which our abstractions formerly neglected. Nor does it entail any serious consequences when in mechanics we assume a perfectly rigid body, a perfectly rigid lever, a perfect gas, or any other assumption of the same kind ; for we know all the time that there are no such bodies to be found. If we were compelled to take account of every movement of a crowbar, no calculus at our command is sufficient for the purpose. We recognise that our physical and dynamical theories ' are only of limited application, and we do not try to deduce the phenomena of a real world from them. We recognise that, though the orbits of the planets ap- proximate to an ellipse, there are many perturbations. For the sake of simplicity in our mathematical and mechanical science we neglect many elements, but when we apply our science to actual concrete condi- tions we have to bring back the elements we formerly neglected. In physics we neglect chemical conditions, and in chemistry we neglect vital conditions ; but no problem is merely physical or mathematical. But for a complete explanation we have to take all condi- tions into account. 28 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION But this method is one which the evohitionist may not use. He has a larger work than that of the physicist, or the chemist, or the physiologist, or that of the worker in any special department. He has undertaken to explain everything, and to show how change began, and how change went on from stage to stage, necessarily and inevitably. From one stage to another the process must be such as to admit of no alternative. Chance must be eliminated, and the result must be necessary. It will not do to use the method which has been found so useful in mathematics and physics. For we do not try to deduce the pro- perties of matter from mathematical laws. From the law of gravitation we do not try to deduce the particu- lar states of the matter under gravitation. It may be solid, liquid, gaseous ; but in whatever state it may be, it is under the law which prescribes that the attraction varies directly as the masses and inversely as the square of the distance. But from this law we can infer nothing as to the state of matter in any place or at any time. It is different, however, with evolution. It can neglect nothing, leave nothing out of account ; for it has to explain everything. Its primitive nebu- losity must be more strictly defined, its absolute homogeneity must have some other attributes in addition to that absolute sameness if changes are to flow from it. As described by the leading advocates of evolution, the condition of things from which they star t is simply an abst raction, to be compared with the points of geometry and the rigid bodies of mechanics. These no doubt are useful things in their way, but their usefulness has only a limited scope. EVOLUTION AND LAW 29 Similarly the pejs|stence of force is a barren notion until it is transformed into the particular enerc^ies of the concrete world in which we live. The difficulty is to make the transition, and certainly Mr. Herbert Spencer has not made it. He labours as in the very fire to bring his abstraction into relation with the concrete world. He cannot deduce differences without assuming the differences he seeks to deduce. His law of the " InstabiHty of the H omogenaotts" is self- contradictory ; for the two terms of the so-called conception will not unite. If the homogeneous is homogeneous it is stable, and if it is unstable it is not homogeneous. Also when we read his chapter on the " Multiplication of Effects," we see it might as well have the name of the multiplication of causes. '' When a uniform aggregate is subject to a uniform force we have seen that its constituents, being differ- ently conditioned, are differently modified. But while we have contemplated the various parts of the aggregate as thus undergoing unlike changes, we have not yet contemplated the unlike changes simul- taneously produced on the various parts of the incident force. These must be as numerous and important as the others. Action and reaction being equal and opposite, it follows that in differentiating the parts on which it falls in unlike ways the incidental force must itself be correspondingly difierentiated. Instead of being as before a uniform force, it must thereafter be a multiform force— a group of dissimilar>rces." (First Princijdes, p. 431.) Mr. Spencer proceeds to illustrate his principle We take one of his illustrations : '' When one body 30 CHRISTIANITY ^AND EVOLUTION is struck against another, that which we usually regard as the effect is a change of position or motion in one or both bodies. But a moment's thought shows that this is a very incomplete view of the matter. Beside the visible mechanical result sound is pro- duced ; or, to speak accurately, a vibration in one or more bodies, and in the surrounding air. Moreover, the air has not simply been made to vibrate, but has had currents raised in it by the transit of the bodies. Further, if there is not that great structural change which we call fracture, there is a disarrangement of the particles of the two bodies around their point of collision; amounting in some cases to a visible condensation. Yet more, this condensation is accom- panied by disengagement of heat. In some cases a spark — that is, light — results from the incan- descence of a portion struck off; and consequently this incandescence is associated with chemical com- bination. Thus by the original mechanical force expended in the collision, at least five, and often more, different kinds of forces have been produced " (pp. 432, 433). Out of one original uniform force we seem to get a multitude of effects, and the law of the multiplication of effects seems established. Is it really so ? Can all these effects be considered as the result of one cause ? It is Mr. Spencer's manner to try to get first a simplicity, and then to get a complexity out of it. What is the simplicity here ? He has first assumed- two bodies and a collision between them. Then he fixes our thought on the bare collision, and will allow us to think of nothinsr else. But the collision cannot be considered EVOLUTION AND LAW 31 alone in such a case. It is a problem of two bodies, not of a single uniform force. Then he assumes the constitution of the atmosphei-e ; other assumptions follow, with their results. The changes he describes ' are not and cannot be truly described as the result ' of one force. They are the resultant of many forces, and the action of each of them has to be taken into account in order to explain the resultant. He first makes an artificial abstraction of the force expended in the collision, and then tries to trace out its effects. The fact is, that each effect described is simply the combination of the one uniform force assumed, and the other forces he has left out of sight. " Universally, then, the effect is more complex than "^ the cause." Thus he states his conclusion — a very useful conclusion for his purpose, but one which does*^ not seem to have a logical justification. It does not seem to consist with the law of causation. An adequate cause is one which can completely account for the effect. One of the gravest charges which Mr. Spencer brings against certain thinkers is that they have not a due regard to causation. But what of himself ? If the effect is more complex than the cause, whence has the complexity come ? Can we account for it ? Certainly the illustrations drawn from a collision and from a lighted candle do not justify his universal law. The complexity is only apparent. For in order to produce the complexity he is compelled to set forth the collis i on , as tak ing place in a co mplex of relations, and it is through these relations alone that the complexity is made possible. With regard to the lighted candle, he is ''I 32 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION compelled to place it in the midst of various surround- ings, and the process of burning is in relation with each of these. Take away the surroundings, and the changes cannot take place. But surely, in any possible view of a cause, we must take into account all the conditions necessary for the production of the effect. If we take these into account, we shall be constrained to say the cause is as complex as the 1( effect. It is not logical first to place the cause in ' isolated abstraction, and to set the effect in concrete relations, and on the basis of this illogical procedure gravely to set forth a universal law to the effect that universally the effect is more complex than the cause. It is well to call attention to this so-called law, for I' it meets us everywhere in the course of the argument for evolution. It lies at the basis of Mr. Spencer's view of the persistence of force. It gives strength, the only strength it has, to the curious statements about the primitive nebulosity so widely current nowadays. It meets us in chemistry ; it is present / in biology ; it is current in the application of evolution / to psychology, ethics, and religion. It is well to face . it frankly, and to estimate its value. For it seems to me to be an attempt to get something out of nothing, and in essence to be equivalent to the crudest notion of creation ever present in the minds of men. The cause of evolution must be at least as complex as the result which has emerged. The principles of cosmical multiplicity must lie in the power from which all things have proceeded. CHAPTER III NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY Additional factors— Transition from physics to chemistry — Chemical elements — Their character, relations, adapta- tions, periodicity — Rational character of these relations — Nature is intelligible, and therefore related to intelligence —Attempts at explanation — The chemical elements exist in the unity of one system. THE maxim that the effect is more complex than I the cause may be briefly described as the method I of Mr. Spencer. At all the transition stages of his' great system it has impelled him to search for a new- starting period of suflicient simplicity out of which he can evolve a complex effect. When he begins to deal with biology, it leads him to accept the structureless homogeneous cell as the beginning of organic life, and out of it he obtains all the complexities of animated being. The unit of consciousness consists or begins with a sudden nerve shock. ''Mind is certainly in some cases, and probably in all, re- solvable into nervous shocks " {Psychology, i., sect. 62) ; ^ and out of a simple nerve shock he tries to build up mind. The primal simplicity of the phenomena of religion he finds in ancestor worship. He has a way, too, of manufacturing intuitions as he needs them. We come to expect, as we turn from one of his treatises 33 3 34 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION to another, that at the opeiimg of each we shall find a simple cause and a number of complex effects. We an- ticipate what is coming. The only surprise that awaits us is the precise kind of simplicity which Mr. Spencer will postulate. Some kind he is sure to have, but whether it is an available kind is another question. We may have to look at some of those simplicities of his further on. Meanwhile let us try his method at an early stage. How does his homogeneous stand related to the chemical elements? We learn from Clerk Maxwell that these chemical elements are indestructible, and cannot be made to decay. They are as they were. We can call them all by the name of matter, because they have properties in common ; but each one of them has its own peculiarities, and also its peculiar relation to all the others. Dealing with the classification of the sciences, Mr. Spencer speaks thus : " Theoretically all the concrete sciences are adjoining tracts of one science, which has for its subject-matter the continuous transformation which the universe undergoes. Practically, however, they are distinguishable as successively more specialised parts of the total science — parts further specialised by the introduction of additional factors " {Psychology^ vol. i., p. 137). " The new factor which difTerentiates chemistry from molecular physics is the heterogeneity of the molecules with whose redistributions it deals " (p. 140). The description may be accepted as so far true as regards the distinctions between these two sciences. But does Mr. Spencer also make a dis- tinction in nature corresponding to the distinction between physics and chemistry ? " Physics," he tells NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY 35 US truly, " deals with changes in the distribution of matter and motion considered apart from unlikeness of quality in the matter." But this may be inter- preted in two ways. It may mean that we neglect or do not take into account any unlikeness of quality in the matter, while all the time we know that the unlikeness is there. It may also mean that we deny any unlikeness of quality, and proceed as if it were altogether uniform. We have not been able to gather from Mr. Spencer's writings which of these is meant by him. Sometimes he seems to mean tlie one, some- times the other. From his doctrine of homogeneity he seems to postulate a matter without any unlike- ness of quality, in which unlikeness would by-and-by appear. That is, however, an assumption Avhich has not yet been proved, which chemists say has been disproved. " We might perhaps be inclined to conceive a chemical process in the following manner : substances consist of indifferent matter, which during any chemical process simply becomes invested with different properties from those which it originally possessed, without, however, itself undergoing any real alteration. This conception was, as a matter of fact, for a long time prevalent ; but the following laws empirically discovered are in discordance with it : if one substance is transformed into another, then the masses of these two substances always bear a fixed ratio to each other ; such a transformation of one substance into another of different mass can only take place according to the first law when a second substance participates in the reaction. The following law, therefore, is in intimate connection with that 36 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION given above : if several substances react together, then these masses, as well as those of the new, bodies formed, always bear fixed proportions to each other." {Outlines of General Chemistry, by Wilhelm Ostwald, English translation, p. 4.) Physics knows, however, that it has to deal with elements of unlike qualities, though it lays stress mainly on qualities which they have in common. It knows that within limits all gases obey Boyle's law, and curves have been con- structed showing the paths of deviation from that law taken by each particular gas. It recognises also, according to Avogadro's law, that "in equal volumes of different gases there is under the same conditions the same number of molecules." It recognises also different substances, and endeavours to register the different temperatures at which each particular body passes from the gaseous into the liquid state. But on the whole, and generally, physics abstracts from the particular unlikenesses of quality between the different bodies, and leaves that to be dealt with by its own particular science. But the distinction between the sciences is simply a matter of convenience. It does not represent a division in the nature of things. The new factor in chemistry is simply that factor which physics found it convenient to neglect; but each atom of matter dealt with in physics had also its chemical characters and relations. We find, indeed, that Mr. Spencer did make an attempt to deal with the question from this point of view. In the first edition of the First Frinciples there was a chapter on " The Conditions Essential to Evolution," which docKS NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY 37 not appear in the subsequent editions of the work. In it he said : "If it be assumed that what we call chemical elements are absolutely simple (which is, however, a hypothesis having no better warrant than the opposite one), then it must be admitted that in respect of the number of kinds of matter contained in it the earth is not more heterogeneous than it was at first — that in this respect it would be as heterogeneous were all its undecomposable parts uniformly mixed, as it is now, when they are arranged and combined in countless different ways. But the increase of heterogeneity with which we have to deal, and of which alone our own senses can take cognisance, is that produced from unity of distribution to variety of distribution. Given an aggregate consisting of several orders of primitive units that were unchange- able, then these units may be so uniformly dispersed among each other that any portion of the mass shall be like any other portion in its sensible properties ; or they may be so segregated, simply and in endless combinations, that the various portions of the mass shall not be like each other in their sensitive proper- ties." (First edition, pp. 335, 336.) We do not mean to dwell on this statement. We quote it merely for its historic interest, and for the proof it gives that Mr. Spencer had once present to his mind the problem of the existence of a homogeneity made up of a number of different kinds of units. Whether he has found it would not work we cannot say ; but we ought to take his final statement as in his view the only adequate one, and to deal with it. We shall therefore not deal with that discarded 38 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION chapter, thoiigli the difficulty remains. We shall look at the chemical aspects of the case, and see what a wondrous world chemistry opens to our view — what a rational world of order, adjustments, adaptations it is. "There are difterent elements," says Faraday, "with the most manifold powers and the most opposite tendencies. Some are so lazy and inert that a superficial observer would take them for nothing in the grand resultant of powers; and others, on the contrary, possess such violent properties that they seem to threaten the stability of the universe. But on a deeper examination of the rule which they play, one finds that they agree with one another in a great ' scheme of harmonic adaptation. The power of no single element could be changed without at once '^" (I&troymg'the liarmonious balance, and plunging the whole into ruin." (Quoted by Professor Bowne, in The Philosojylty of Herbert Sj^encer, pp. 225, 22r3. Phillips & Hunt : New York.) There are two possible ways of dealing with this scheme of harmonious adaptation. We may accept it as a fact, and deal with it as ultimate ; or we may ask for an explanation of it. In the former event we may proceed to deal with the various elements, seek to ascertain their properties, and their relations to one another and to the whole, and ask no ultimate questions about them. This is precisely what the science of chemistry has done, and is doing. Tt takes the different elements, and it finds that they resist further decomposition. It enumerates these elements. It has found that the total mass of the substances taking part in any chemical process remains constant, and that the NATURE AiVD INTELLIGIBILITY 39 substances consist of very small particles of difierent kinds, which alter their arrangement and not their nature during any chemical process. It is driven to assume that the atoms of every pure substance are all alike among themselves. If every atom of any given substance is like every other atom, then all the relations of mass in chemical compounds must be regulated by the masses of the several atoms. " All substances consist of discrete particles of finite but very small size — of atoms. Undecomposable substances or elements contain atoms of the same nature, form, mass. If chemical combination takes place between several elements, the atoms of these so arrange them- selves that a definite and usually small number of atoms of the combining element form a compound atom which we call a molecule. Every molecule of a definite chemical compound (chemical species) contains the same number of elementary atoms arranged in the !riori according to a principle." (Kant, Kritik of Judgment, Bernard's translation, p. 205.) Thus the question is, How are we related to reality ? Mathe- matics regards only what is possible ; and after we have elaborated it, the further question arises. How far does reality conform to mathematics ? We have still to ask, How far do things empirically given conform to our way of looking at them 1 If concrete things, real things in a real world, behave as our ideal points behave when they describe the triangles, circles, conic . sections of our mathematics, then may we not say / that an intelligence is at work in the world akin to Ij the intelligence which was at work in the construction \ of our mathematics ? If our intuition and our logic are realised in nature, and if nature works out our mathematics in a grander, more thorough way than we can, then surely the inference is quite plain. THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE 61 Nature is the work of an intelligence that knows /( mathematics. Is teleology, then, hostile to science ? Let us see what the scientific interest is. The scientific interest is in any given subject to find out not only what it is, bu t why it is so and so. This interest is satisfied when we can point out the causes through which it has become. Science does not inquire into the origin of causes, nor into the ground of their uniyersal worth : it is satisfied when the applicability oFlihe given causes to produce this particular result is shown. What science presupposes is a given manifoldness of things, substances, atoms, forces, etc., which have definite and defined qualities, and these sO related to one another as to make the result necessary. When two masses in space are at a particular distance from one another, their movements necessarily follow from their mass and their distance. When two bodies strike against one another, the resulting movement is determined by their weight, their velocity, their elasticity. Causes therefore, according to science, are things with their properties and forces, and these are given. When these are given, results necessarily follow; and necessity in nature corresponds to that inner necessity with which we are acquainted, the necessity by which a conclusion follows from given premises. The necessity of nature is also an intel- lectual necessity. It is to be observed also that the point of departure in science is always a defined group of things which vrork and are worked on. Out of a thing considered in itself no change can come ; forces are the expression 62 CHRISTIAXITY AND EVOLUTIOX of the changes of related substances ; all causes for science are external causes. Work done presupposes a manifoldness of things in defined relations. From the given condition at this moment we work back to its condition some time before, and then comes a point at which we must stop. Science has found its limit. Our intuitions, our logical necessities have their counterpart in nature. May not our way of looking at things as means and ends have its counterpart in nature just as our way of looking at things as cause and consequence has 1 May not purpose also be a liner and more unique kind of necessity ? I The idea of purpose no doubt arises out of our i yplunt ary and practical activity.. Our conscious Vctivity is determined by the thought of the future. This thought influences our will, our will determines our activity, which is directed towards the realisation of our thought, and a course of conduct arises. This relation to a future event to be realised in conduct is the distinctive characteristic of purpose. Purpose is, however, not merely subjective ; it is not a mere wish which does not issue in action : it sets itself to lind means to realise itself ; it quickens the intelli- irence, and sets itself to make use of real, efficient causes, and so arrange them as to bring about the foreseen result. Purpose remains mere wish until it can link itself to the real working causes of the world, and make use of or make a mechanism to give it effect. Purpose, first a thought in the muid, becomes active, and sets the mind and will to work ; it sets the mechanism of the body to work, and so finally the mechanism of the mind is controlled, and THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE G3 made to act in order to bring- about a i-esult whicli mechanism could never of itself have produced. Pur- pose, tlien, has a real place as far at least as human action is i-egarded. Everywhere we see a purpose impressed on systems of efficient causes. We see machines, ships, steam engines, telephones, telegraphs, everywdiere at work, and they are possible because s}'stenis of efficient causes are receptive of purpose. Thei-e are two w^ays of considering a steam engine. We may look at it as a system of efficientcaus£§tJknd investigate the properties and relations of the various elements contained in it, and try to understand the mechanical theory of the steam engine. We work synthetically from the causes to the result. But we may legitimately work fi-om another point of view, and take the result as our point of departure. We may ask through which combination of causes was this result produced ; and from this point of view the result appeai-s as pui-pose, and the working causes ajipear as means by w^iich the purpose w^as realised. We may look at the solar system, and regard the stability of the system as the result of the move- ments of the j^lanets in the same direction, and so on ; but it is also a legitimate way to look at the stability of the system first, and at all the co-ordinated movements as means which serve to realise that end. Are w^e told that the postulating of such a purpose is hypothetical ? But w^e cannot get rid of the hypothetical element. One coui-se of procedure says, if such and such causes are given, then the result must be so and so ; and the other course says, if this result has come, then the causes must be so 64 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION and so. The same laws and causes come into observation from both points of view. If we look at an event as a realised purpose, we bring also into view the system of causes which was used to realise the end, and the system of causes is the same as that which brings about the event considered merely as an event apart from purpose. Were our knowledge more thorough, were it only complete, we might read the order of the universe backw^ards and forwards — backwards to a system of efficient causes, and for- wards to a defined and predetermined end. But our knowledge is far from complete, and therefore we object to an arbitrary decision on the part of many, a decision which shuts us out from a fruitful way of looking at the universe, merely because we do not know enough to carry out that view in its application to all the details of the universe. We may not be able to say what is the purpose of an eclipse ; w^e may rest content with the knowledge that in certain relations of the movements of the earth, the moon, and the sun, eclipses of the moon or the sun will happen periodically. That is merely to say that our knowledge is not great enough for us to set all the events of the universe in the light of purpose. It might be possible for us to deny efficient causation on the same ground, because there are many spheres in which we have not yet been able to say what the causation really is. But the denial of purpose in nature is simply an appeal to ignorance ; or if our adversaries wish to be scornful, they "call it anthropomorphism. And they ask us, Are we to conceive the power which rules the universe working THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE 65 after the fashion of a man ? We have dealt with anthropomoq^hism elsewhere {Is God Knowahle ? chap, iii.), and we shall not repeat here what we have formerly written. Is not the mathematical thinking of the universe done after the fasbion of a man 1 Are not the ellipses, the parabolas of the Greek geometers patterns according to which the planets move ? Is not the necessity of nature paralleled by the necessity of logic ? Both in nature and in logic what is absurd is impossible. The system of efficient causes which we find at work in the world is just as anthropomorphic as the system of final causes is. The spectacle of a human intelligence w^orking for a foreseen end, finding out what causes can be disposed and in what way for the accomplishment of that end, is as real, as grand, as much related to nature and reality as is the same intelligence working out its geometry, its algebra, its calculus by the laws of logic, deducing its great propositions from a few elementary axioms. If we accept the logical necessity of the universe, even though it be anthropomorphic, why on that ground deny its purposiveness 1 Given a certain state of matters, how may we explain it ? Given a human work, be it a machine, a song, a book, a theory of gravitation or of evolution, and we can explain it by a reference to the author, his intelligence, and his purpose. We may take into account the material of which the machine is com- posed, as we take into account the paper, type, ink, etc., of which the book is composed ; we may inquire into the qualities and laws of the given material ; but in the end we say the explanation of the product is 5 (jQ CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION the author. In evolution the matter to be explained is the universe. Is it best explained by purpose or by mechanism ? As we have seen, mechanism cannot explain it. Most certainly the primitive nebulosity cannot explain it; for the nebulists are confronted with the following dilemma : either the nebula was originally more than a nebula, or it has been added to, in the course of its development, from a source beyond itself. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. If the primitive nebulosity has become the ordered cosmos with all its inhabitants, art, science, philosophy, morality, religions must all have been either in the nebula at first, or added to it from without by a power adequate to the result. Power, either within the nebula or from without, there must have been, and power of a kind fitted to bring about the end. Let it be observed that the chain of ordered causes and results is the same, whether we contemplate it from the point of view of physical causation or from the point of view of purpose. In the one case we contemplate it as bare result, in the other case we look at it as intended, and the ordered causes are grouped together with a view to accomplish the end. In the last event we have a cause sufiicient to bring about the result ; in the former case we have no account whatever of the order, adaptation, and method of the universe. We must go back to the fortuitous concourse of atoms, and trust to chance — to chance, now, be it remembered, not as a name for a cause the operation and nature of which we do not know now, but may hope to know by-and-by, but to chance looked,at as a real cause. It may be allowed THE STRIFE AGAINST PURPOSE 67 to speak of chance as an element in a calculation of probabilities simply to express ignorance ; but i t is not allowable to spe_ak_of chance as a sub stitu te Tor V causation, and to this we are brought if we denyh purpose in the universe. But we give the universe over to confusion when I we deny purpose. " You would not see evidence of I purpose, we are told, much less of higher wisdom or transcendent cleverness, in the conduct of a man who, | to kill a hare, fired a million pistols in all directions over a vast meadow j or who, to enter a locked room, . brought ten thousand random keys, and made trial of them all ; or who, to have a house, built a city, and turned the superfluous houses over to the mercy of wind and weather." And to this we are brought by our antagonism to what Mr. Spencer calls the Carpenter theory. Notwithstanding the description of Lange just given, Mr. Spencer writes : " There is an antagonistic hypothesis which does not propose to honour the unknown Power manifested in the universe by such titles as ' the Master Builder,' or ' the great Artificer ' ; but which regards this un- known Power as probably working after a method quite difierent from that of human mechanics. And the genealogy of this hypothesis is as high as that of the other is low. It is begotten by that ever- enlarging and ever-strengthening belief in the presence of law which accumulated experiences have gradually produced in the human mind. From generation to generation science has been proving uniformities of relation among phenomena which were before thought either fortuitous or supernatural in their origin — has e 68 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION ' been showing an established order and a constant causation where ignorance had assumed irregularity and arbitrariness. Each farther discovery of law has increased the presumption that law is everywhere conformed to." {Essays, vol. i., p. 240.) Lange and Professor Huxley would overthrow design by likening the survival of the fittest to the chance shot which out of a million happened to kill the hare. Mr. Spencer would overthrow it by showing that law- everywhere / prevails. But the idea o f law and uniformity is \ j also quite consistent with the idea of purpose. In \ fact, purpose excludes arbitrariness and irregularity, | .and any assertion to the contrary is simply itself capricious. CHAPTER V EVOLUTION AND CREATION Histoiy of the earth — Evolution as seen in geologic eras — Continuity of the process — Succession — Advance and preparation for advance — Physics and geology— Some unsettled questions — Professor Caird on evolution from two points of view — At the beginning or at the end, which ? — Is the issue arbitrary arrangement versus evolu- tion ? — No : creation by slow process is creation — Illustra- tions — Mechanics and purpose once more. THAT teleology is not hostile to efficient causes we have already seen reason to believe. Still less does it conflict with efficient causes combined in a system. In fact, as we advance along the line of march which science has taken, the idea of teleology becomes more and more luminous, until in ethics and theology it becomes indispensable. We quite admit that the idea is anthropomorphic, that it does not quite enable us to view all things sub specie eternitatis. We admit that we are unable to rise to the great height of one who is present at all the operations of the world, for whom beginning and end are not, to whom all time is a nunc stans. But, then, that objection applies to every one who is compelled to think under the con- ditions of space and time, and applies equally to those who affirm causation of any kind. Efficient causes ?0 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION also come under the condition of before and after; and if to think of efficient causation is valid and legitimate, final causation is also valid and legitimate. We might therefore start with the state of the earth as it now is, and might ask what are the conditions under which rational life can exist at the present time. We might analyse these conditions, and the analysis would give us at least the various sciences in the order in which they now exist. The present condition would give us the previous conditions, biological, geological, chemical, physical, ranged in order and complexity, as each was analysed into simpler and simpler elements, and not one of the laws of nature would need to be altered in order to make the arrangement. Nothing is changed save the point of view. The difference is that we do not start with the nebula, and endeavour, by successive dif- ferentiations and integrations, to get out of it more than is in it. We start with the present state of the world as an intended result, and look on all the successive stages of the life-history of the earth as means for the accomplishment of the end. True, we are at a disadvantage here ; for the world is not finally made yet. It is only making, and we can only dimly guess at the final outcome. But, then, all schemes of thought are open to the same objection. Evolution itself, in the hands of Mr. Spencer, can only faintly guess at the final end for which evolution works. And Hegel's theory of evolution seemed to regard the Prussian of the nineteenth century as the final outcome of the toil of the Idea. We may hold, therefore, although we EVOLUTION AND CREATION 71 do not know the final outcome of things, that the power which has brought the nebula to the stage where life with its thought, its morality, and religion exists in the earth, will continue to work in such a way as to bring it to further issues yet, and to an end worth all the cost. Apart from the thought of an end, we really get ! no sufficient account of the various stages of the life- ' history of the earth. The path which the course of things has taken seems really indeterminate. It does not seem natural to say that it must have taken the course it did, otherwise force would not have per- sisted. The persistence of force does not explain the direction in which it persisted. Force persists quite as much in the moon as on the earth, as much in the Sahara as in the city of London, as much in the sand on the sea-shore as in Westminster Abbey. At every point of transition the difficulty arises. Why should the force take this particular path ? and apart from intelligent direction and selection we get no answer. If the nebula theory as a whole finds it difficult to pass from the indeterminate to the determinate, that part of it which applies to our own planet has ex- perienced equal perplexity. We have no agreement among scientists about the time when the earth broke off from the central mass, nor when the earth began to cool, nor when life became possible on its surface. The question is of importance for evolution; for evolution needs time, and a good deal of it. Apart, however, from these difficulties, which we may look at again, we may say geology makes out a magnificent case for evolution. Starting from the earth as a rz CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION molten mass with a cei;tain motion in its orbit and a certain rotation around its axis, we look at it as cooling according to the rules under which bodies still lose their heat. It is subject to the usual stresses which take place in a body which grows solid as it cools. A crust is formed, and an atmosphere surrounds it, and the older rocks are made. " We can imagine a scum or crust forming at the surface ; and from what we know of the earth's interior, nothing is more likely to have constituted that slaggy crust than the material of our old gneisses. As to its bedded character, this may have arisen in part from the addition of cooler layers below, in part from the action of heated water above, and in part from pressure or tension ; while wherever it cracked or became broken its interstices would be injected with molten matter from beneath. All this may be conjectured, but it is based on known facts, and it is the only probable conjecture. If correct, it would account for the fact that the gneissic rocks are the lowest and oldest that we reach in any part of the earth." {Salient Points in the Science of the Earth, pp. 17, 18, by Sir J. William Dawson.) Geology takes up the study of the earth, and/ traces for us its evolution. It reveals to us a period] of its history when there was no life on its surface \ it shows the earth gradually cooling down, becoming more and more differentiated and integrated under physical laws the working of which is known ; it traces the formation of rocks, the sepai-ation of land and water, the formation of an atmosphere, and the gradual formation of these conditions which make life possible. It reveals to us how complex EVOLUTION AND CREATION 73 are these conditions, how exquisite are the correhi- tions, how manifold the relations which were needed that this end might be accomplished. The slightest difference in these correlations would make life for ever impossible. Then it shows us the beginnings of life. Life begins in the simplest possible form. It goes on from more to more. Some forms, indeed, remain unchanged almost from the beginning until now. We have still M'ith us the alg^, the mosses, crustaceans, niplluscs, and coi-als of the palaeozoic period ; and types which correspond to those forms of life which characterise the mesozoic and the tertiary periods. Under the guidance of science we see life pressing out in all directions, forming new combinations, new types, until the possibility of organic modifications seems exhausted, and a form of being appears who develops a new power of adaptation and does not need to modify himself organically in order to adapt himself to the changing environment. Were we present at all the stages of the process, we should surely see that all the changes were gradual, that the process was slow and con- tinuous. Very likely there was nothing abrupt, nothing catastrophic; everything was prepared for, and every change introduced without violence. We take the story of geology from our scientific masters, and accept it as they give it. We follow them with no misgiving as they unfold for us the magnificent evolution of the earth's progress through- out geologic time. We know of the difficulties and dis- agi^eements between the physicists and the geologists. We know that the uniformitarian in geology denjands 74 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION that the forces acting on the surface of the globe have been in all times the same, both in kind and degree, with those now in operation; and we know that if this is so, a larger amount of time is needed than tlie physicist can grant. Geologists, however, while agreed as to the kind of forces in operation, are not all uniformitarian with regard to the amount and rate of work which these forces exerted in former times ; for if the theory of tidal evolution be true, then the tides once exerted a force on the earth which was immeasurably greater than they exert now. If the earth was ever a molten mass, then the process of cooling, with all the consequent stresses and strains, must have caused effects greater by far than have been experienced since man was upon the earth. The assumption, then, that the forces operative now were operative throughout all time in the same degree must be departed from, and with it also will go the vast periods of time which Lyall and Darwin demanded as the primary condition of their theory. We are not careful, however, to insist on these difficulties. We leave the diiferences between physicist and geologist to be settled between them and by them. We refer to them here for the sake of uttering a^ caveat against the dogmatism of science. The uniformitarian dogma in geology and the partial theories of physicists have been used, not by the masters themselves, but by some others, for the purpose of making attacks on theology and ethics, and it is therefore well to point out that these attacks are premature. There are unsettled questions about the rigidity of the earth, the rate of geologic change, and the date of EVOLUTION AND CREATION 75 the introduction of man on the earth; and we arev often brought face to face with apparently irre- l/Jx^\j|2,^ concilable opinions, held dogmatically by physicists 11 on the one hand and by geologists on the other, and i yet the controversi al tyr o uses these irreconcilable / views as if they were in agreement with each other, and thinks he has shown that theology is absurd and religion irrational. (JOn the contrary, we say that theology is prepared toreceive whatever science has been able to prQy§. ; 9,nd if evolution is the law of life, theology wiH accept evolution as it has accepted gravitation. We accept the fact that physical laws are permanent, but we ask our scientific masters to show us what were the conditions under which the laws were exhibited ; and if the conditions change, then the effects will also change. For the purposes of my argument it is not necessary, however, to make much of these irreconcilable views. Let us accept the general course of the evolution of the earth's history as known. Let us assume that the order was, as is outlined to us by physics and geology so far as they are agreed, first a world without life, next aj5£orld_withJ[ife, then life more and more '^ developed, until we come to the complex life of the present hour ; then the question arises, — the only question that has really any significance in the present argument, — How are we to interpret this order ? Are we to take our point of view from the beginning or from the end ? Are we to say with Professor Caird 1 — " A principle of development necessarily manifests itself most clearly in the most mature form of that ; (JSv.^^ which develops ; as we take our definition of man. 76 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION not from the embryo or the infant, but from the grown man, who first shows what was hidden in both. . . . When, indeed, we turn back from the developed organism to the embryo, from the man to the child, we find that a study of the process of genesis casts no little light upon the nature of the being which is its result. The man becomes in a higher sense intel- ligible when we trace him back to the child. But primarily, and in the first instance, it is the developed organism that explains the germ from which it grew ; and without having seen the former, we could have made nothing of the latter. No examination of the child could enable us to prophesy the man, if we had not previously had some experience of mature man- hood ; still less would an examination of the seed in the embryo reveal to us the distinct lineaments of the developed plant, or animal, or man. Nor would our insight be greatly helped by a knowledge of the environ- ment in which the process of development was to take place. . . . Development is not simply the recurience of the same effects in similar circumstances, not simply the maintenance of an identity under a variation determined by external conditions. Hence it is impos- sible, from the phenomena of one stage of a developing being, to derive laws which will adequately explain the whole course of its existence. The secret of the peculiar nature of such a being lies just in the way of regular transition in which, by constant interaction with external influences, it widens the compass of its Hfe, unfolding continually new powers and capacities — powers and capacities- latent in it from the first, but not capable of being foreseen by one who had seen EVOLUTION AND CREATION 11 only the beginning. It follows that, in the fii-st instance at least, we must read development backward and wot forward, we must find the key to the meaning of the first stage in the last ; though it is quite true that, afterwards, we are enabled to throw new light upon the nature of the last, to analyse and appreciate | it in a new way, by carrying it back to the first." | {Evolutio7i of Religion, vol. i., pp. 43-5.) Thus we see there are two ways of interpreting I evolution. Limiting our view at piesent to the globe on which we live, and looking at the history of the | earth as now read by science, are we to take our stand at the present time, or are we to go back to the primeval molten globe ? Taking our stand at the beginning, we shall be under the necessity of bringing out of the globe all that [has since evolved. We shall need an explanation of the tendency and direction which its history really took. It will not suffice to show that such and such events have happened. We have taken on ourselves the burden of showing from the nature of the globe that they could not have happened otherwise. We must be prepared to show that every stage of the process from the beginning until now admits of no alternative. That, however, is a burden too heavy for science to bear. The general laws of matter will never account for particular effects; and the particular arrangements are just the things which need to be explained. Causes and consequences have to be translated into a system of means and ends, if we are to have any intelligible luiderstanding of the process. The issue is often put thus : Arbitrary arrangement 78 CHRISriAXITY AXD EVOLrTION j versus evolution. But we do not accept the issue in these terms, for there is no connection between arbi- trariness and design. Speaking of the solar system, Mr. Spencer says: " When gra\itation came to dispense with these celestial steersmen, there w^as begotten a belief, less gross than its parent, but partaking of the same essential nature, that the planets were launched in their orbits from the Creator's hand" {Essays,!., p. 240). Dr. Romanes puts the issue thus: "Now it would be proof positive of intelligent design if it could be shown that all species of planets and animals were created — that is, suddenly introduced into the complex conditions of their life ; for it is quite inconceivable that any cause other than intelligence could be competent to adapt an organism to its environment suddenly. On the other hand, it would be proof presumptive of natural selection if it could be shown that one species became slowly transmuted into another — i.e., that one set of adaptations may be gradually transformed into another set of adapta- tions according as changing circumstances require. This would be proof presumptive of natural selection, because it w^ould then become amply probable that natural selection might have brought about many, or most, of the cases of adaptations which we see ; and if so, the law of parsimony excludes the rival hypothesis of intelligent design. Thus the whole question as between natural selection and supernatural I design resolves itself into this : Were all the species of I plants and animals se parately created, or were they Vgl owly evol ved ? For if they were specially created, the evidence of supernatural design remains irrefuted and EVOLUTION AND CREATION 79 irrefutable ; whereas, if they were slowly evolved, that evidence has been utterly and for ever destroyed." {The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, pp. 12, 13.) Reserving at present the question of the adequacy of natural selection, we ask, Is the issue fairly put by Dr. Eomanes? Why should supernatural design be regarded as possible only if it works suddenly and witib_ a stroke? or why should super- natural design be limited only to Sj^ial creationsj Supposing natural selection true, what is it but another, way of indicating design ? We are not concerned at present with the ways in which the design argument was "once put. It may have been stated inadequately or erroneously, according to the knowledge and ways of thinking at the time. Science has ever claimed the right of restating its theories, the right of making them more general and more consistent with fact. Why should theology be debarred from the same privilege ? Science has often stated her case foolishly, and theology may have done so also ; and were we to play at the game of resuscitating past ineptitudes, it is hard to say whether science or theology has most to answer for. Let us admit the doctrine of organic evolution, and we say that Dr. Eomanes has supplied us with an argument for design much more magnificent than that based on special creation, the evidence for which he says has been utterly and for ever destroyed. He simply says that the evidence for design is destroyed by that which shows the presence of a vaster design ; for design is{. all the greater and the more intelligent just in pro-1 portion to the comj^lexity of the means and the length 1 1 of time it takes to bring it about. Professor Huxley ^AJ^ 80 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION puts it thus : " Suppose that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made dh^ectly by any person, but that it was the result of the modifica- tion of another watch which kept time but poorly, and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudi- mentary, and that, going back and back in time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric ; and imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted from a tendency in the structure to vary indefinitely, and, secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions : then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument is gone." {Origin of Species, Appendix.) On the contrary, it would appear all the greater, in proportion as a rudimentary watch, which by constant modification could produce other watches, is incom- parably more wonderful than any watch made directly by a person. Our friends seem to think that they deny design when they show that the design is greater and more wonderful than human designs ever are. As we ponder on Professor Huxley's illustration, it grows more wonderful under our vision. We have in the rudimentary watch a^tendency to vary indefinitely, but that tendency is kept in one direction only by something in the outward world. And Professor Huxley cannot help bringing in teleology, even when he strives with all his might to exclude it. The tendency EVOLCTIOX ANJJ CREATION 81 within c'oiiliolled l)y the tendency without, co- oidinated with a view towards the production of '' an accurate time-keeper " ! Well, a watchmaker constructed the complicated system of wheels, levers, escapement for the same useful end. Thus Professor I Huxley could not even state the proposition which denies teleology without the use of language which implied it. All that he has proved is that the in- telligence which was needed to produce a w\atch which evolved other watches was immeasurably greater than that of Paley's watchmaker. Of many other illustrations I shall refer only to one ; and I take it from Professor Lloyd Morgan, whose works on evolution are so valuable and suggestive. " Compare the engines of a modern ocean steamer with even the highest achievement of the age of Watt. Professor Shaw, in his paper on this subject, gives a table to show the number of parts in the engines of a first-class Atlantic hner. In that table we see that no less than twenty-three auxiliary engines minister to the efficiency of the main engine, all being definitely connected together into one complex system. There are no less than thirty-seven, separate levers, and a hundred and forty-seven dis-1 tinct valves, and the total number of parts in the main and auxiliary engines, including nuts, jnns, bolts, studs, and so forth, all of them necessary for efficiency, durability, and security, is something like a hundred thousand. . . . Evolution is not the multiplication of similar structures, but the pro- duction of one more complex structure which shall do the work of many. Increase of efficiency, increase 6 82 CHRISTIAXITY AND EVOLUTION of complexity, and increase of economy of space, fuel, ar.d material have all gone hand in hand." {Springs of Conduct, pp. 159, 160.) The whole section is written with clearness and method, and is graphic and full of interest. We seem to see the evolving of machines. We trace the steam engine step by step, from Watt's somewhat rudimentary engine, till we come to the engine of the Atlantic liner. We are glad to have this illustration of evo- lution, and we might put it alongside that of Professor Huxley's watch, which was supposed to be able to produce other watches. It is just possible for us to confine our attention to the series of engines which is brought befoi-e us by Professor Lloyd Morgan. We may fix our thought on engine after engine, and admire the successive modifications and their great fitness for the end in view, just as in nature we may fix onr thought on the successive modifications of living things from the algse up to man. We may be so interested in these as to ask no further question, or may look at them as self-explanatory. We may give an explanation of every improvement in the steam engine from the point of view of the engine itself. We may show how each change helped to make it more effective, and we may also show its mechanical fitness. With all this we may leave out of sight the one sufiicient explanation of the steam engine. The cause of the engine is the intelligence of the engineer ; every step in the evolution was the work of intelligence, working by means and method, and for a foreseen end. All the mechanics of an engine EVOLUTION AND CREATION 83 are means to an end, and the engine itself is a means for a still further end, namely, swift and safe communication between people and people, and this end is for yet another end. We have to thank Professor Lloyd Morgan for his illustration. To a system of evolution which involves the same kind of causes, methods, ends as are manifested in the evo- lution of the steam engine we can have no possible objection. It is just the very kind of evolution we are in search of — an evolution that has reference to* a mind that can think and plan and foresee, devise ends, and take means to accomplish the ends in view. There is no human work which may not be looked at merely in the light of efficient causes as Professor Lloyd Morgan has looked at machines. It is wonder- ful how much we may explain, without even referring to an inventor or an author. A treatise on a steam engine may not mention the name of Watt from first to last ; it may describe the elastic properties of steam, and the laws of expansion and condensation, may deal with the properties of metals, and the forms of cranks, pistons, etc., and speak of all these things just as we speak of the law of gravitation ; every part of the engine may thus be explained on mechanical principles, and the work which the engine can do may be calculated exactly to a foot-pound : but we know that the engine had an intelligence as its maker, and a final cause as its end. In the same way we may study a dialogue of Plato or a play of Shakespeare. Take any working edition of a play of Shakespeare, and we may scarcely have in it a reference to the author. We find notes on -^. 84 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION philology, which deal in an impersonal way with the history of words and their meaning ; we lind gram- matical expositions, which deal mainly with the laws of grammar ; we may find all the resources of human thought and ingenuity tasked to ascertain the mean- ing of the play. In all these things we are dealing with efficient causes, and we may give a sufficient account of the play from certain points of view without one reference to the author. We may take it as it stands, and seek to understand the law of its becoming, the conditions linguistic, ethical, social which helped to make it what it is; and we may, by an enlightened criticism, ascertain its meaning, and contend plausibly that we have really exhausted the whole matter of the play. Still, there does arise the further question as to the revelation of the author which is in the play, and the fact that the meaning we find in the play was first put into it by a mind like our own. We might run the parallel still more closely. We might point out that each word in the play has its own character and its own particular history determined by law, that each grammatical form of sentence is ruled by logic, and that the connection of part and part may also be closely woven together according to laws which may be formulated; and w^e may entangle the whole matter in such a complex of laws and necessities as to find no need for a reference to Shakespeare at all. Now this is exactly parallel to the procedure of those who limit our view of the world to the mei'e working of efficient causes. We welcome their earnest EVOLUTION AND CREATION 85 toil, and we sit at their feet while they unfold for us the wondrous tale of science ; we are grateful to them as we are grateful to an expositor of Plato. But when we have learned all that an expositor has to tell us of the laws of grammar, of philology, of thought, we still have the knowledge that these were plastic in the hands of Plato, and in the end the work is his and his alone. In the same way we may say to our masters in science, after they have taught us all they know about the sequences of things and the laws which govern them : Is this all ? Is this web of life and its laws all you have to tell us ? Have you given us any satisfactory account of the meaning which you have found in the world? You have explained to us the evolution of the steam engine ; will you allow us to postulate the same kind of cause for the universe and the same kind of purpose as we know had to do with the evolution of the steam engine ? If not, why not ? Is it because the universe is so much greater than the engine, because the final end is not yet in sight ? Well, the answer to that is, to postulate an intelligence equal to the task. The order and adaptation of the universe are as patent as those of the engine ; but if the order and adaptation of the engine are due to intelligence, why make the order and adaptation of the universe a reasoD for denying that intelligence had to do with the making of it ? Consistency demands that we should assert that the engine evolved itself. These questions do not arise in connection with the separate sciences. They have enough to do if they deal adequately with their own problems, just as a 86 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION student will have enough to do if he is to master the principles of construction of the steam engine and the laws and properties of the material employed in its construction. But we should make short work of the contention of that student who asserted that the construction of the engine is altogether due to mechanical causes. The convergence of all these into a system has to be explained. Our conten- tion here is that those who wish to explain the universe from mechanical causes alone are just as rational as the supposed student of the steam engine would be. The evidence of intelligence is so much greater that our opponents categorically deny it altogether. They may, like Mr. Spencer, say that they deny intelligence in the interests of something greater than intelligence, and then strive as he does, through all the pages of the volumes of the Synthetic Philosophy, to explain the higher in terms of the lower ; they may take the order of the universe as an ultimate fact, regarding which no question is to be asked ; or they may couch their denial in other terms, and urge it for other reasons. But ultimately the argument seems to come to this : there aie so many evidences of intelligence in the universe, that we must therefore infer the absence of a guiding mind. In truth, the argument from order to intelligence is much more cogent than it was in Paley's time. No one ever strengthened the argument as Darwin has done. Evolution has widened it bej^ond measure, and the universe, its history and its order, are seen to be \vorthy of a presiding, guiding intelligence, even of EVOLUTION AND CREATION ft7 an infinite order. Let us hope that now, when the rapture and the intoxication of the first discovery of evohition have passed away, and sober reflection lias come back, that the denial of intelligence to the source and ground of the universe will not be persisted in. CHAPTER VI ORGANIC EVOLUTION Statement by Professor Eay Lankester— New sets of terms used in biology — Why are there new terms ?— Dr. Bnrdon Sanderson — Darwinism — A>,riation, struggle for existence, natural selection, transmission— Anthropomorphic char- acter of the process — Malthusianism — Utilitarianism — What is natural selection ?— Comparison with the process of denudation in geology by Mr. J. T. Cunningham- Darwin on the eye — Professor Huxley's reproduction of chance — Organic evolution likely true, but its factors not , yet discovered. THE task Avhich evolution has set itself may be described in the words of Professor E. Ray Lankester : " It is the aim or business of those occu- pied with biology to assign living things, in all their variety of form and activity, to the one set of forces recognised by the physicist and chemist. Just as the astronomer accounts for the heavenly bodies and their movements by the laws of motion and the property of attraction, as the geologist explains the present state of the earth's crust by the long-continued action of the same forces which at this moment are studied and treated in the form of ' laws ' by physicists and chemists ; so the biologist seeks to explain in all its details the long process of the evolution of the in- numerable forms of life now existing, or which have ORGANIC EVOLUTION 89 existed in the past, as a necessary outcome, an auto- matic product, of these same forces." {Encyc. Brit., voL xxiv., p. 799«.) Again : *• It was reserved for Charles Darwin, in the year 1859, to place the whole theory of organic evolution on a new footing, and by his discovery of a mechanical cause actually existing and demonstrable by w^hich organic evolution must be brought about to entirely change the attitude in regard to it of even the most rigid exponents of the scientific method" (p. 8016). "The history of zoology as a science is therefore the history of the great doctrine of living things by the natural selection of varieties in the struggle for existence, since that doctrine is the one medium whereby all the phenomena of life, whether of form or function, are rendered capable of explanation by the law^s of physics and chemistry, and so made the subject-matter of a true science or study of causes " (p. 799a). Professor Lankester has not explained why in biology he and those who agree with him have introduced a new set of terms — terms which are not used in physics or chemistry. In physics and in chemistry men do not speak of "advantage," of "utility," of "interest." But in the article quoted Professor Lankester says : " Darwin's theory had as one of its results the refor- mation and the rehabilitation of teleology. According to that theory, every organ, every part, colour, and peculiarity of an organism, must either be of benefit to the organism itself, or have been so to its ancestors ; no peculiarity of structure or general conformation, no habit or instinct in any organism, can be supposed to exist for the benefit or amusement of another 90 CHRISTIANITY AXD EVOLUTION oro-anism, not even for the delectation of man himself. Necessarily, according to the theory of natural selec- tion, structures either are present because they are selected as useful, or because they were still inherited from ancestors to whom they were useful, though no longer useful to the existing representatives of these ancestors." (P. 8025.) We know that men, even of the mental stature of Professor Pay Lankester, sometimes do not co-ordinate their notions, or ask whether one part even of a short article is quite consistent with another. If the phenomena of biology have been "rendered capable of explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry," whence this new set of terms unused and unre- cognised by these sciences 1 We do not say in chemistry that any combination must be of benefit either to the molecule or its atoms ; nor in mechanics do we speak of ''interest," "advantage," "benefit." Do the terms used by Professor Lankester correspond to facts presented by biology 1 Can the theory of Darwin be even stated without the use of language, which introduces new conceptions not needed by physics or chemistry? Of course every physical body must be consistent with chemical and physical laws ; but it is not necessary for us to say that organisms must be capable of explanation by them. If the phenomena of life are to be explained by chemical and physical laws, clearly we are shut out from the use of language implying conceptions which liave no place in these sciences. Would it not be well to recognise this, and either refrain from the use of lanffuaire fitted to mislead, or to admit that there is ORGANIC EVOLUTION 91 something in life not to be explained by physical and chemical laws ? If we reduce the phenomena of life to physical and chemical laws, they have vanished ; if we recognise their distinctive characteristics, then they are no longer explicable by chemical and physical laws. In his address to the British Association Dr. Burdon Sanderson said : " The methods of investi- gation being themselves physical or chemical, the organism itself naturally came to be regarded as a complex of such processes and nothing more. In particular the idea of adaptation, which, as I have endeavoured to show, is not a consequence of organism, but its essence, was in a great measure lost sight of." Again : " The specific energy of a part or organ ... is simply the special action which it normally presents, its norma or rule of action being in each instance the interest of the organism as a whole, of which it forms a part." Could any statement be further removed from the language of physics or chemistry? "The interest of the organism " as a whole gives the norma or rule to each organ ; and yet even Dr. Burdon Sanderson says in the same address : " The leading- notion was that, however complicated the conditions under which vital energies manifest themselves, they can be split into processes which are identical in nature with those of the non-living world ; and as a corollary to this, that the analysing of a vital process into its physical and chemical constituents, so as to bring these constituents into measurable relations with physical or chemical standards, is the only mode of investicratinof them which can lead to satisfactorv 92 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION results." The statement is historical, but from the general tenor of the address it would seem to be the view which Dr. Sanderson himself holds. If this be the only method which can lead to satisfactory results, then the task of investigation might well end; for when vital energies are split into processes like those of the non-living world the essential nature of the matter in hand is lost in the splitting. While the organism in itself does not create energy or matter, yet the transformation of energy and matter in living organisms is quite difterent from that which takes place in inanimate matter, and to endeavour to explain the one by the other is to lose sight of the initial difference. " The difference between the vital - istic and mechanical schools might indeed be regarded as one of words ; it is, however, one of ideas. As one of the speakers said, the tendency of the official physio- logy of the text-book and the laboratory, the lecture- room and the examination-hall, has been to narrow its field to the investigation that requires the precise instruments of physics and chemistry, and to ignore the fruitful field now successfully tilled by the zoologist and the botanist, whose results are expressible only in the terminology of intelligent speech, not in grains, centimeters, seconds, or degrees. This is the cause of the aridity of so much modern physiology, almost divorced from the study of protoplasmic life, of ex- perimental embryology, and of heredity." (Marcus Hartog, in Speaker, Sept. 3rd, 1893.) The truth of the charge brought by Mr. Hartog is very evident, and this comparative barrenness is due to the belief lield liy many, and formulated by Professor Eay OnaANIC EVOLUTION 93 Laiike.ster, that the laws of chemistry and ph^'sics are capable of explaining the phenomena of life. But when the ideas of struggle, of advantage, of vitality, and other ideas of the same order enter in, we have passed from mechanics, and have entered a sphere wherein new phenomena reign, and these phenomena have laws peculiar to themselves. They may use the powers of chemistry and physics, but they use them in their own way and for new ends and purposes. But we may try to obtain a real view of what Mr. Darwin has done, and seek to understand what natural | selection is, and does, and can do. It is not necessary i for us to trace the history of this great conception, or to dwell on the fact that there were evolutionists before Darwin. Such histories there are in abundance : for example, in the articles on " Evolution " by Professor Huxley and Professor Sully, in the latest edition of the Encydoimdia Britannica. Darwin and Wallace^ however, turned an abstract speculation into a work- ing hypothesis. They were able to show how evolution might be brought about. They were able to point to causes actually at work in the play of organic life around us, and that if similar causes were at work for a long period back then the web of life might be understood and explained. As stated by Mr. A. E. Wallace the great principles of Darwinism are these. Two main classes of facts are apparent to us when we look at life and its manifestations. The first is the enormous increase of organisms. They tencFto in- crease in geometrical ^progression, while their means of subsistence tend to increase in arithmetical progression. Hence there must be a struggle for_ 94 CIIIUSTIANITY AND EVOLUTION existenfig,. for the number of the offspring greatly exceeds the number of the parents. They compete with each other, they are destroyed also by cold and heat, rain and snow, floods and storm. " There is thus a perpetual struggle among them which shall live and which shall die ; and this struggle is tremen- dously severe, because so few can possibly remain alive" {Darwinism, p. 11). Along with the struggle there is a second class of facts, which is summed up under the names of variation and ti-ansmission. There are variations, for all individuals of a species are not alike ; if they were alike, there would b3 no grounds for the survival of one rather than another. But individuals do vary, and vary in many ways. Some may be stronger, swifter, more healthy, more cunning, may have a colour which gives them a better chance of hiding, may have keener sight, and any beneficial variation will help the individual in the struggle, and the fittest willjbe sure to survive. Beneficial variations will be transmit ted from one generation to another, and the eftect will be ,f cumulative. Natural ^election will secure that I the variation best suited to its environment will V survive ; and as the action of natural selection is constant, new variations will be selected ; and thus, in each generation, the fittest will survive, and so long as the variations are beneficial they will go on and will accumulate. Natural selection, acting on varia- tions which somehow arise, accumidating the variations and transmitting them from generation to generation, is held to account for the origin and survival of all tlie organic species now in existence on the earth. ORGANIC EVOLUTIOy 95 Now it Avoiild be idle to deny the great merit ol" Darwin's work, or the reality of the process which he describes. Organisms are produced in such abundance that it is impossible they can all survive. Some of the plants and animals which are constantly being produced must perish, and those perish which are least adapted and those survive which are best adapted to the conditions of existence. N atu ral selection is just the process 1jy which the fittest are picked out and the least fit are left to perish. So far all is clear and intelligible. But it is interesting to notice how much of ourselves and our nature we have thus read into nature. We have indeed, under the guidance of Darwin and Wallace, explained nature in terms of human natuie. We do not object ; for man is always the middle term in oar interpretation of the world. We expect nature to be rational, to respond to our intelligence and to our methods, and we find the correspondence does exist and is real. We do, however, object to the constant denunciation of anthropomorphism by men who are the most anthropomorphic of any. The term natural selection is in Darwin's own words : " This preservation of favourable differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called natural selection, or the survival of the fittest." The term itself is borrowed from that progressive selection practised by man in the rearing of domesticated animals and cultivated plants. Slight differences may be accumulated in one dii-ection during many generations until what looks like a new species is produced. ''The key,'* says Darwin, "is man's )4i0A/ 96 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION power of accumulative selection ; nature gives succes- sive variations ; man adds them up in certain directions useful to him." This kind of language is readily understood, and every one may at once see what is meant. It seems that the variations are already giyen, and man selects those varieties which tend in a certain direction, and leaves them free to breed together. The breeder takes advantage of the ten- dency to variation, and also of the tendency to the accumulation of variations ; but he is unable to explain the variation or the accumulation. It is to be observed also that, so far as the action of the breeder is concerned, we have had recourse to a selecting agency beyond the organism itself. The purpose is in the mind of the breeder, and not in the organism or the environment. What the breeder eftects by conscious selection, the struggle for existence is supposed to effect in organic beings iu a state of nature. Man selects what is useful to man ; Nature selects what is for the good of the individual or the species, in the competition with rivals. It is difficult to pass from man's conscious selection to natural selection ; if we do, however, let us observe in passing how anthropo- morphic we are. We may acknowdedge that the process is similar in both cases. Looking away for the moment from man's selecting care, we observe that the process consists in leaving those forms which have certain peculiarities free to breed to- gether. Other forms are removed by the agency of the breeder. But there is also a selective breeding due to the kilhng out of competing forms by the J \ 'Y-^./^A^n^ u wjw 1A^» y |^ ' -^^^-v,^ y V^v-' N/v- ORGANIC EVOLUTION 97 struggle for existence. " As man," says Darwin, "can produce a great result with his domestic animals and plants by adding up in any given direction individual differences, so could natural selection, but far more easily from having incomparably longer time for action." We note in passing the likening I of nature's work to man's, and we also note that results are ascribed both to nature's work and to man's, which they are not competent to produce. Darw^in admits that man " can neither originate varieties nor prevent their occurrence." " He can only preserve and accumulate such as do occur." He assumes that man can accumulate, and proceeds to assume that natural selection can also accumulate. " It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising throughout the world the slightest variations, rejecting those that are bad and adding up all that is good." Yes ; hut in the sequel we pass from the metaphor, and we are made to believe that we have referred the origin of species to purely natural causation. When we examine, the metaphor somewhat closely, we find that all we have got from Mr. Darwdn is this : beings with the most ' serviceable variations survive in the struggle for existence. Professor Huxley, in his animated and interesting paper contributed to the Life of Darwin, says : " The suggestion that new species may result from the selective action of external conditions upon the varia- tions from their specific type which individuals present — and which we call ' spontaneous ' because we are ignorant of their causation — is as wholly unknown to 7 98 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION tlie historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological specialists before 1858. But that suggestion is the central idea of the Origin of Sjyecies, and contains the quintessence of Darwinism." (Vol. ii., p. 195.) "That which we were looking for and could not find was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at w^ork. We wanted not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts, and have their validity tested. The Origin provided us with the working hypothesis we wanted. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma. Refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else had. A year later we reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the Origin, was ' How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.' . . . The facts of variabihty, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions were notorious enough ; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the Origin guided the benighted." (P. 197.) The Professor is enthusiastic, and we do not wonder. He had " got hold of clear and definite conceptions ORGANIC EVOLUTION- 99 which coiihl be brought face to face with facts." The conceptions, as we have seen, are not quite clear. The appropriate machinery was largely metaphorical ; the struggle for existence was exaggerated. If we want to have any principle of science or philosophy pushed to an extreme, we always have recourse to Mr. Grant Allen. "The baker does not fear the competition of the butcher in the struggle for life ; it is the competition of other bakers that sometimes inexorably crushes him out of existence. ... In this way the great enemies of the individual herbivores are not the carnivores, but the other herbivores. . . . It is not so much the battle between the tiger and the antelope, between the wolf and the bison, between the snake and the bird, that ultimately results in natuial selection or survival of the fittest, as the struggle between tiger and tiger, between bison and bison, between snake and snake, between antelope and antelope." (Quoted in The Study of Animal Life, by J. Arthur Thomson, p. 38.) Thus Mr. Grant Allen, in his anthropomorphic way, takes the struggle between baker and baker, and makes it the typical struggle of the universe. And the same may be said of natural selection. So also we might see the extension of the human analogy in the large part which " utility " has played in the Darwinian theory. " Any being, if it vary, however slightly, in any manner proiitable to itself, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected." Every structiu-e either now is or was formerly of some direct or indirect use to its possessor. In fact, natural selection rests on)' " utility," and this is nothing else than the extension / 100 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION to the organic world of the national utilitarian ethics. Ma lthusian ism and utilijtai-ianism are main ele- ments in the theory of Darwin. The principle of utiKty, however, does not seem to have any relation to the origin of species. The selection of the useful in the struggle for existence does not explain the origin of new characters. Utility is after all only a relative conception, and it cannot possibly he the funda- mental principle of the organic world. Utility is an attribute of what is; a character or quality must first exist before it can be useful. It has no utility btfore it existed, and it can have none during the period of its foi'mation. Utility leaves untouched the question of the means by which it has been brought into existence. " Selection, whether natural or artificial, is perfectly analogous to the process of denudation in geology. It explains the extinction of innumerable forms, and the consequent gaps and intervals which separate species, families, orders, etc. ; just as denudation explains the want of continuity in the stratified rocks. But geologists have never been blind enough to suppose that the evolution of the structure of a given rock was due to denudation ; they have always believed that the structure of each rock was due to the efiects of the forces which have acted upon it since its formation, and they have devoted their energies to tracing by observation and experiment the effects of the various forces." (Preface to Eimer's Organic Evolution, by J. T. Cunningham, p. xxi.) With this view of the action of natural selection Mr. Darwin seems himself to agree : " Several writers ORG A ma EVOLUTION' 101 have misapprehended or objected to th- term ^ natural selection ' ; some have even imagined that natural selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life" {Origin of Sjyecies, p. 110). But does Mr. Darwin himself always use the words in this sense 1 On the contrary, we find that he constantly speaks of natural selection as able to " produce structures." Take his description of the evolution of the eye : " When we reflect on these facts, here given much too briefly, with respect to the wide, diversified, and graduated range of structure in the eyes of the lower animals ; and when we bear in mind how small the number of all liviuir o forms must be in comparison 'with those which have become extinct, the difliculty ceases to be very great in believing that natural selection may have converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane into an optical instrument as perfect as possessed by any member of the Articulate Class" (sect. 275). Further on there is a marvellous passage : " If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of trans- parent tissue, w4th spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surface of each layer slowly changing in form. Further, we must suppose that there is a power, represented by 102 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration in the trans- parent layers ; and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way, or in any degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multi- plied by the million, each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years, and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds ; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed, as superior to one of glass as the works of the Creator are to those of man ? " (Sect. 277.) " Reason tells me that, if numerous gradations, from a simpler and impei'fect eye to one complex and perfect, can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case ; if, further, the eye ever varies, and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to the animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a peifect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable to our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory" (sect. 271). •' Formed by natural selection," " natural selection always intently watching each slight alteration," "natural selection will pick out with unerring skill ORGANIC EVOLUTION 103 each improvement." Truly the functions performed by Natural Selection are great ! At one time it watches, then it picks out, then it accumulates, and lastly it has a " productive " power. At one time Darwin claims nothing for it but the power of eliminating the least advantageous eyes, and suddenly this claim changes into a claim to produce advantageous eyes. But'j though natural selection may explain how a particular eye came to be preserved, it tells us nothing of the/ formation of any eye. We are not concerned to deny the theory of organic . evolution, nor even to say that Darwin's account of the evolution of the eye is improbable. What we are concerned with is the bearing of his theory on teleology. And we see that his view is not in- compatible with design. He cannot dispense withv' superintendence, nor with an agency w^hicli watches, picks out, accumulates, and forms. The question is, To whom or to what shall we ascribe this selecting power ? To foresight, to forethought, or to what ] One does not care to ascribe to learned and thoughtful men views which they have earnestly repudiated. They have denied most emphatically that they believe in " chance " as a cause. They use the word because they do not know the causes of variation. Still, they use the word, and they use it not only as a name for the action of causes which they do not know, but they use it as if it produced something. Variation is fortuitous. A'^ariatioris are in all directions, and those which happened to hit on a stable combination survived- But this is chance. Variations, however, are not indefinite. If variations are in definite directions, if 104 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION \" a whale does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of pro- ducing whalebone," then manifestly natural selection is lot incompatible with design. May we not say that latural selection is design ? It may, indeed, be said ihat, though variation now proceeds in definite hues, or in certain fixed directions, it was not always so. There may have been a time when Hfe proceeded indefinitely in all directions, and reached* positions of temporary stable equilibrium only after a series of ti'ials and errors. But that is a mere speculation, and is not worthy of the name of science. Life has had a certain bent from the beginning of life; it has proceeded along certain lines, and has grown in certain directions, and the bent and set are just the very things to be accounted for. t The issue to-day is, we repeat, not between " evo- lution " and what our friends are pleased to call " special creation." It is between evolution under the 1 guidance of intelligence and purpose, and evolution as a fortuitous result. " According to teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark ; according to Darwin organisms are like grape shot, of which one hits something and the rest fall wide. For the teleologist an organism exists for the con- ditions in which it was found ; for the Darwinian an organism exists, because out of many of its kind it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which it was found." (Huxley, On the Origin of Species, Appendix.) We do not accept this account of teleology ; nor do we know whence Professor Huxley derived the notion. At all events, ORGANIC EVOLUTION 105 what teleology demands is that we do recognise those adaptations to purpose which are so manifest in the universe, of which also the works of Darwin are so full. It is not necessary to teleology to suppose that '' each organism is fired straight at a mark." What is necessary is that the organism hits the mark. If the hitting of the mark is accomplished by a persistent process prolonged throughout the centuries, implying completeness of arrangement and adjustment of means to ends in a complicated series, then the result is not against teleology ; on the contrary, it simply heightens our view of the skill of the teleologist. ' If we can in a measure understand the steps of the process and the magnitude of the opera- tion, as Darwin and Huxley enable us to do, then our wonder is made all the greater, and we fall prostrate before the unutterable w^isdom of the intelligence which made the world. Such a teleology is not opposed to evolution; but it is opposed to Professor Huxley's " grape-shot " view of the universe. Yet in his article in the Life of Darwin Professor Huxley is indignant with those who " charge Mr. Darwin with having attempted to reinstate the old pagan goddess Chance"; and he adds : " Probably the best answer to those who talk of Darwinism meaning the reign of ' Chance ' is to ask them what t!iey themselves mean by ' chance.' Do they believe that anything in this universe happens without reason and without a cause ? ;^ Do they really conceive that any event has no cause, or could not have been predicted by any one who had a sufficient insight into the oi^der of nature?" ) {Life of Darvnn, 106 CHPJSTIAXITY AXD EVOLUTIOX pp. 200, 201.) ReallvJ*rofesso2jHiixieVj_by his descrip- tion of Darwinism as a •• meth od of tr^^^] nriH pi-rov " and of organisms as being Hke •• grape shot of which one I hits something and the rest fall wide." has done more than anybody else to fasten the charge on Mr. Darwin of having attempted to reinstate the old pagan goddess Chance. He should restrain his indignation. How does his grape-shot illustration agree with " the one act of faith in the conyert to science." namely, '• the confession of the nniversality of order, and of the absolute validity in all times and under all cir- cumstances of the law of causation "' ? Where is the causation in the organism which hits and the oro-anisms which fall wide I Could any one, however ^eat his insight into the order of nature, have pre- dicted which one would hit and which would fall wide ? Why should any organism hit anything in the circumstances \ Need we wonder that any one, having read Professor Huxley on the origin of species, should come to the conclusion that the essence of Darwinism was jtist this appeal to chance ? The appeal to '' lucky accidents " is made so often by Mr. Darwin and his followers that one can hardly help thinking of the '• lucky accident '" as ha\-ing a part to play in the constitution of things. Leaving chance and accident out of account on both sides, our contention is that teleology' gives us the only tenable explanation of the history of life on the earth. The evidence of organic evolution is so vast, so varied, that most people nowadays must accept the conclusion to which it points. Naturalists are convinced that the plants and animals of to-day w ORGAXIC EVOLUTION 107 are descended from others of a simpler sort, and that 1 [ these are descended from othei^ yet more simple, / / and thus '^e may conceivably go back to the first beginnings of life. The arguments of Darwin are based on the distribution of animals in space, their successive appearance in time, on actual variations in domestication, cultivation, and in nature, on facts of structure, and on embryology. The evidence seems irresistible. Most scientific men accept it : and they have their right s, and are bound to uphold, vindicate, and expound what they believe to be true. If organic evolution, then, be accepted as true, where do_we stand ? Have we any interest in what is caUed "special creations"? ' If we believe in in- I tellige nce a>s the cause of order, t hen we should ) expect that all organic forms have arisen in eon- ( formity -^dth uniform laws, and not_through breaches of uniform law. We no longer beheve — whatever men (hd once believe — that plants and animals were suddenly thrust into the 'complex conditions of their Jife ; that the complex of inner relations was suddenly and in a moment adjusted to the complex of outer relations ; or that the actual concrete Life of a plant or an animal was thus originated and perpetuated. |j But creation by evolution is still creation . 1 Evolution is opposed only to a particular jtheory of ^ creation, and that theory was as rnudi" scientrfic as religious. There is a theory of special creation which i can be no longer held. The view was that each species j i or kind was dii-ectly created by God at the beginning ' I of the world, and has gone on reproducing itself after its kind. The clearest statement of this view Ls to be {\Wi 108 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION found in the great botanist Linnreus, who held that " there are just so many species as there are different forms created by the infinite Being ; and these different forms, according to the laws of reproduction imposed on them, produced others, but always forms like themselves." We have something like the same view in Milton's Paradise Lost : lions, tigers, stags, all ready-made, working their way out of the earth, — " The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts," etc. At the beginning of this century the belief was universal, both among religious and scientific men, that species were fixed and never passed into each other. I Now all this is altered, and most scientific men hold a i doctrine of descent, or evolution. It is clear that the doctrine of special creation as I set forth, say, by Linnaeus, is inconsistent with the doctrine of Darwin. And if organic evolution is true, we have to ask. Are we committed to the doctrine of special creation? or rather. Is the doctrine of special creation as above defined an essential part of theism or Christianity ? There was a time when men earnestly contended for the immutability of species, and thought that important consecpiences would follow from the denial of it. But that time is past, and the immutability of species happily forms no part of the creed of Christendom, nor of the (teaching of Scripture ; for the creeds of Christendom simply aflSrm that God is the Maker of the world and all that is in it, and does not say anything about the way and manner in which He made them. The ORGANIC EVOLUTION 109 Scriptui-6 says that " Pie maketh the grass to grow on the mountains " ; but says nothing about whether He caused it to grow suddenly or otherwise, directly or indirectly. The Scriptures teach a doctrine of descent, and have no hesitation in saying that all the races of men are descended from one father, and '' God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth." If all the races of men are modified descendants of one primeval man, and if descent with modification can account for all of them, where is the objection on Scriptural and theological grounds to accepting a theory which simply extends to the whole world of organic life a principle which theology has always contended for as true with respect to man ? Theology has had its difiiculties with regard to Traducianism and Creationism ; and the same difiiculties, and no greater, appear with respect to evolution and special creation. What is essential is that we maintain and ^ vindicate the continued dependence of all creation on its Maker, and that if things are made so as to make themselves, God is their Maker after all ; and if evolution can tell us anything of the method of creation and the order in which the different forms of life appeared, then we ought to rejoice in it. ^ CHAPTER VII ORGANIC EVOLUTION (Confimicd) Biology before and after Darwin — Phj^sical continuity of life — Laws and conditions of life — Adequacy or inadequacy of Natural Selection ?— Inter-relations of life— Professor Geddes on anthropomorpLism of the nineteenth century and of the eighteenth — Weismann — Natural selection is elimination of the unfit — Oscillation between natural selection as negative and as positive — Poulton, " that selection is examination" — Teleology run mad— Mimicry — Search after utility — Mutual benefit of species in co-operation — Illustration — Struggle for existence thus modified — Results. THE contrast between works on biology which were written before the appearance of Darwin's Origin of ^Sj^ecies and those which have appeared since that great work is most striking. There can be no doubt that biologists have got hold of a most fruitful hypothesis, and the conceptions introduced by Darwin have shed a great light on the sciences which deal with life. Things which seemed to be far apart and isolated from one another have suddenly been seen to be closely connected, and structures and organisms are seen to be related to one another, and to be parts of an intelligible whole. The full and adequate appreciation of the worth of the facts and of the laws can be grasped completely only by 110 ORGANIC EVOLUTION HI those wlio are specially qualified ; but one who is not a specialist may apprehend the breadth and grandeur of the conception which enables him to think of all life as a unity and to trace the innumerable living forms to slow variation from a single stock. This conception leaves the mystery of life where it found it: origins lie beyond the action of this conception. Science tells us that life comes from life, and it is* j^^^' powerless to explain the origin of life. Let life be given, I and science says it can ti-ace its path of progress, and \ understand some of the laws which have guided its ' development. Clearly, then, we must give heed to the' statements of science, and endeavour to apprehend their meaning. If all living forms are to be traced back to some simple organism, and if there is a physical continuity of life, what attitude are we to assume with regard to this claim ? What is its theological significance ? Has it any more significance for theology than the claim which theology was wont to make, and which science sometimes seemed to deny, namely, that all the varieties of the human family are descended from one pair ? If we can say that mankind is one without falling into theological ineptitude, why may we not admit that all life is one, and has grown from the one simple form to the varied forms which now teem upon the earth? If the Negro and the Englishman are varieties of one stock, why not also the vertebrate and the inverte- brate ? It is diificult indeed to imagine the course of de- velopment, and diflicult also to imagine the forces which brought it about. Still, those who know the 112 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLVTION subject and have studied it most thoroughly tell us, with growing confidence, that the growth of species by a process of slow development is an established fact. They are entitled to speak ; and the evidence they produce is of the highest order, and we may rest assured that questions of biology will be settled by biology, on scientific grounds, and on these alone. It seems a reasonable claim so far. It claims not that it can show how life originated, but that, given life, it has developed according to certain laws, and that these laws have so far been discovered. There does not seem to be anything here to which we can object. That life has proceeded according to law is as reasonable as is the supposition that the solar system is ruled by law. The recognition of any law in nature implies that law rules everywhere. While there is agreement among the masters as to the general doctrine of evolution that all the forms of life have been evolved from some simpler form of life, there is a wide difference of opinion as to what the factors of evolution are. All are agreed as to the weaving of the web of life, but by no means are they agreed as to the factors or the agents by which the web is woven. Some, of whom Russel Wallace may be taken as the chief and the greatest, believe in the adequacy of natural selection, and would shut out all other agencies whatever. Sexual selection, physiological selection he explains by means of natural selection. On the other hand, Herbert Spencer writes on the " Inadeijuacy of Natural Selection," and lays great stress on other " factors of evolution." Darwin himself said in 1876: "In my ORGAXIC EVOLUTION 113 opinion the greatest error which I have committed has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e., food, climate, etc, independently of natural selection " {Life, vol. iii., p. 159). And Mr. Spencer has always laid great stress on the direct action of the environment. Almost all are agreed as to the fact of evolution ; , but there is a wide difference as to the factors in the process. It is still an open question what are] the primary factors in evolution ; but whether stress is laid on the organism itself, or on its function, or on the envii'onment, there need be no hesitation in saying how great is the process, and how wide an outlook it has given us over the whole field of life. It is no longer possible for us to think of things and of life in the old fixed static way. The adaptations, the inter-relations, the incessant movement of life revealed to us under the guidance of biologists are simply marvellous. We may not yet know fully how these adaptations and inter-relations are brought about, but the fact of their existence is undoubted. The world is much more wonderful than we know. What can be more wonderful than the relation of the insect to the flower, or the successive steps by which they have wrought out their mutual form and destiny % What more wonderful than the part which is played in the world of nature by these invisible germs, which at some times are destructive of the more developed life, and at other times are indispens- able to its continuance ? It would appear that with- out the help of bacteria wheat could not be grown. All the forms of life seem, indeed, to be related to each 8 114 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION other by innumerable ties, and the inter-relations are simply more marvellous than up to the present time have been suspected by man. At the same time, we are not quite sure that we have yet got into the sphere of pure science when we have substituted Darwin for Paley. We have got into a larger world, a world of more complex relations ; but are we not still in the world of anthropomor- phism ? To quote P rofessor Geddes., one of the most profound thinkers of our time, and one whose scientific work is of the highest value : "Taking a larger instance, the substitution of Darwin for Paley as the chief interpreter of the order of nature is currently regarded as the displacement of an anthropomorphic view for a purely scientific one. A little reflection will show that what has actually happened has been merely the replacement of the anthropomorphism of the eighteenth century for the anthropomorphism of the nineteenth. For the place vacated by the logical and metaphysical explanation has simply been occupied by that suggested to Darwin and Wallace by Malthus in terms of the prevalent severity of industrial com- petition, and those phenomena of struggle for exist- ence which the light of contemporary economic theory has enabled us to discern, have thus come to be temporarily exalted into a complete explanation of the organic process." {Chambers Encyclopcedia, art. " Biology.") Professor Geddes beheves in evolution, but does not believe in the struggle for existence and natural selection as primary factors of the process. For] myself I have tried to read with an open mind what has been written on natural selection, and I have not ORGANIC EVOLUTION 115 been able to see that the writers in question ha\e succeeded in using tlie plirase in a consistent manner. Darwin and Wallace have, in fact, left the problem of the origin of variation alone, and have given their strength to the establishing of the theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection. It is obvious, however, that we have not even approached the question of the origin of species until we have some definite notion of the causes of variation. In- definite variation affords no solution, and the action of natural selection can, as has frequently been observed, produce nothing. Perhaps the best illustration of the way in which evolutionists pass unconsciously from the destructive and eliminative action of natural selection to some- thing which may be looked at as positive, constructive, and productive may be found in the language of Weismann : " To state my meaning more clearly, Charles Darwin and Alfred Kussel Wallace have taught us to understand by ' natural selection ' that process of elimination eftected by nature itself without the aid of man. Inasmuch as far more individuals are born than can possibly live, only the best are fitted to survive, the best being those which are so formed as to be the ' fittest,' as we say, for the conditions of life in which they are placed. As in each generation only the fittest survive and propa- gate the species, their qualities only are transmitted, while the less useful qualities of the weaker individuals die out. Each successive generation will therefore consist of individuals better organised than those of the preceding one, and thus useful characters will be 116 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION gradually intensified from generation to generation, until the greatest possible degree of perfection is reached. Probably this theory is far from new to many of my readeis. It has been so often explained in various well-known works and periodicals that any further elucidation is unnecessary. What holds good for the individual as a whole, also holds good for each separate organ, inasmuch as the ability of an animal to perform its allotted function depends on the efliciency of each particular organ : hence by means of the perpetual elimination of the unfit every organ is brought to the highest perfection. On this hypothesis, and on this only, is it possible to explain the wonderful adaptability of the minutest details of structure in animals and plants and the development of the organic world through the operation of natural forces. If this view be the true one, if adaptation in all the parts of living forms be truly the result of natural selection, then the same process which pro- duced these adaptations will tend to preserve them, and they will disappear directly natural selection ceases to act." (Weismann on Heredity, vol. ii., p. 16, English translation.) Weismann has formerly defined natural selection as a "process of elimination"; that is to say, a process which is destructive and negative. Immediately it changes in his hands into a process which is construc- tive and positive. Let us substitute the definition of natural selection in the last sentence for natural selec- tion itself, and see how it reads. " If adaptation in all its parts be the result of a ' process of elimination,' then the same process which produced these results ORGANIC EVOLUTION 117 will tend to preserve them, and they will disappear directly the ' process of elimination ' has ceased to work." It now reads like nonsense. There is surely something fallacious in a process of reasoning which defines a term and then changes the definition in the course of a single paragraph. Nor is this procedure peculiar to Weismann. It is constantly being used by Russel Wallace, and by the pure Darwinians of every shade. "Natural selection has already pronounced a satisfactory verdict upon the vast majority of animals which have reached matu- rity. The male which has only just passed this test, and is nevertheless accepted because of some superior attraction, will soon succumb, and will leave far less offspring than one of equal or perhaps inferior at- tractions which is fitted to live for the natural term of his life. Natural Selection is a qualifying examina- tion, which must be passed by all candidates for honours ; Sexual Selection is an honours examination, in which many who have passed the previous exami- nation will be rejected." {The Colour of Animals, by Edward Bagnall Poulton, p. 308.) We accept Mr. Poulton's metaphor, and we wish that he had used natural selection in this sense throughout. To examine, however, is a different function from pro- duction, and throughout his book he speaks of natural selection not as examining but as preparing candidates for examination. But we believe that neither in Oxford nor in nature need the examiner and the trainer be the same person. The examination reveals the fitness, it does not make it ; and yet Mr. Poulton continually speaks as if the examination had prepared and made 118 GHRISriANlTY AND EVOLUTIOX the candidate who succeeds in passing it. There are universities which do not teach, they only examine ; they simply test the knowledge of candidates, and leave them to obtain that knowledge where they like. But they have no claim to have made the fitness; they simply say that the candidate is fit. It would be well if the phrase " natural selection " were used in a consistent manner, and w^ere limited to the process of elimination of the " unfit." As it is used it simply misleads, and causes us to think that we have a true productive cause when as a matter of fact we have none. This double meaning of the phrase has also other consequences theoretical and practical. For one thing, it has set men to seek for possible advantages which may accrue to the organism by any slight organic modification. The literature of Darwinism abounds with such processes of search and discovery. It looks sometimes as if here we ha d a tel eology run mad. No Bridge water treatise is so teleologrcal''as'lihnost| any Darwinian book we may happen to open. One* enthusiastic disciple of the older teleology is said to have remarked that it was striking that all the large rivers ran near large cities, and on the assumption that the large towns were there first made many wise reflections. The modern teleology has many remarks quite as wise and as relevant. We have, for example, the following from Mr. Poulton : " A very beautiful and familiar illustration (of recognition markings in animals) is given by Mr. Wallace — the white, upturned tail of the rabbit, by which the young and inexperienced or the least wary individuals are shown the way to the burrow. . . . The tail of the rabbit ORGANIC EVOLUTION 119 only becomes conspicuous when it is needed by other individuals of the same species, and when the animal is already alarmed and in full retreat for a place of security." {Colour of Animals, p. 212.) Another inter- pretation quite as plausible, though lacking in the conspicuous element of utility to the rabbit, is that the tail of the rabbit is of great advantage to the dog who pursues it, for it directs his path straight to the mark ; or to the sportsman, who knows at once where to shoot. In these instances the possession of a white tail is of disadvantage to the rabbit. As we turn over the pages of Mr. Poulton's most interesting book, we are filled with admiration of the wisdom, insight, and foresight of the creatures whose colouring he describes. " I know," he says, " of no more inspiring subject than the colour of birds' eggs. The most superficial glance over a collection of eggs reveals hosts of interesting problems which require solution. I look forward to the time when any description of colour and marking will be considered incomplete unless supplemented by an account of their meaning and importance in the life of the species." (Pp. 66, 67.) The assumption is that every shade of colour and every form of marking have a meaning, and are of importance towards the life of the species. Oil this assumption Mr. Wallace and Mr. Poulton have proceeded, and have made their illustrations. T^ius colours are of direct physiological value, or they give protective or aggressive resemblance, or they have protective and aggressive mimicry, or they give warn- ing, or they have a significance of beauty in courtship. 120 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION Thus the colours of animals are always significant, whatever that significance may be. Speaking of mimicry, Mr. Poulton says : "It not only supjDorted the doctrine of evolution, but it afibrded strong con- firmation of the theory of natural selection, by which Darwin explained how it was that evolution took place. Every step in the gradually increasing change of the mimicking in the direction of specially protected form would have an advantage in the struggle for existence, while the elements out of which the re- semblance was built exist in the individual variability of the species, a variability which is hereditary." (P. 220.) Here is the Darwinian theory in a nut- shell, with all its plausibility and with all its difiiculty. The causes which produced the gradual mimicking are not in the organism, nor in the environment, nor even in the relations between or- ganism ^and environment. Mr. Poulton quotes the following from Mr. Skertchly, and describes it as extraordinary. This theory "presupposes («) that danger is universal ; (6) that some butterflies escape danger by secreting a nauseous fluid ; (c) that other butterflies noticed this immunity ; {d) that they copied it." His own view is that " the mimicry alluded to in these pages is of course unconscious, and has been gradually produced by the operation of natural selection." What is it, then, which pro- duces mimicry ? We can learn from Mr. Poulton that mimicry is useful when it has been produced. He himself says that the volition of an animal could not account for all the details of mimetic re- semblance. Still, Mr. Poulton sometimes speaks as if ORGANIC EVOLUTION 121 the volition of the animal meant something in the process : " Such caterpillars terrify their enemies by the suggestion of a cobra-like serpent ; for the head of a snake is not large, while its eyes are small and not specially conspicuous. The cobra, however, inspires alarm by the large eye-like ' spectacles ' upon the dilated hood, and thus offers an appropriate model for the swollen anterior end of the caterpillar with its terrifying markings." (P. 259.) The mode of speech is pecuUar. May we venture to ask about the '' model " and its " appropriateness " ? To whom or to what does the model sit, and by what means is it imitated 1 If w^e shut out the voHtion of the animal, what have we left ? It may be answered that the language used is metaphorical, descriptive, pictorial. But the answer is that we have already had too much of the meta- phorical in this department of science, and the theory of natural selection has taken full advantage of what is merely metaphorical. It has grown to be a kind of deus ex machina, which seems to preside over all changes of organisms, and which, belonging neither to the organism nor its environment, but being in a manner above both, gives to the evolutionist all the advantages of a presiding intelligence without its dis- advantages. Natural selection is itself described as a metaphor ; but as soon as we begin to work with it its metaphorical character disappears, and it becomes intensely real, and is quite capable of doing anything. It has the character constantly ascribed to it both of a directing agency and of a presiding intelhgence ; and it does seem as if both were needed if evolution is to be an intelligible process. " May not," asks 122 CHRISTIANITY A SB EVOLUTION Mr. Arthur Thomson, " the similar surroundings and habits of mimickers and mimicked have sometimes something to do with their resemblance ? may it not be that the presence of the mimicked has had a direct, but of course very subtile, influence on the mimickers ? is it altogether absurd to suppose that there may be an element of consciousness in the resemblance between oriole and friar-bird ? " {The Study of Animal Life, p. 61.) Evidently to explain the colours of animals we need something more than the action of natural selection upon casual changes. Mr. Poulton describes well the number of ways in which the puss moth defends itself. It resembles the leaves of the willow and poplar, on w^hich it feeds. When disturbed it assumes a terrifying attitude mimetic of a vertebrate appearance. The effect is heightened by two pink whips which are swiftly protruded from the prongs of the fork in which the body terminates ; it can also eject an irritant fluid. And yet, with all these combined means of defence, it fails to defend itself. '' Any improvement in the means of defence has been met by the greater in- genuity or boldness of foes ; and so it has come about that many of the best-protected larvae are often those which die in the largest numbers from the attacks of enemies. The exceptional standai-d of defence has been reached only by the pressure of an exceptional need." {Colour of Animals, pp. 277, 278.) The last sentence is unexpected. If the well-protected larv.'e are often those which die in the largest numbers from the attacks of enemies, we should have expected Mr. Poulton to have congratulated the victor on the OUGANIC EVOLUTION 123 success of the attack, and not the vanquished on the faihire of its attempts at protection. The conflict here depicted reminds one of the race betweeii the builders of armoured vessels and the manufacturers of guns. The heavier armour was met by the production of larger, more powerful guns j and it is now found that any armour that a ship can carry may be penetrated by an Armstrong or a Krupp gun. The limit of defence has been found on that line. The conflict between defence and attack receives an illustration from the work of Professor Stahl on the conflict between snails and plants. He shows that plants save themselves from being eaten by snails in fifteen different kinds of ways, and he interprets these various kinds of protection as if tliey had been produced in order to protect the plants from snails. Plants which w^ere sweet were eaten, aud a plant that happened to be sour escaped. Natural selection preserved the sour plant and pro- pagated it ; and, as Professor Geddes says, vegetation tends to grow sourer to all eternity. " To give snails credit for evolving plants with crystals, sourness, and poison, to make cattle and the like responsible for tiie thorns on plants, is like giving snakes the credit of evolving boots which protect our heels. In all these cases alike the possibility of some defensive utility is undenied, nor even of some improvement through selective agency. What is contended for is, however, a change in our evolutionary perspective, laying increased importance upon the definiteness and cumulativeness of the internal variation, and consequently a diminished stress upon the external 124 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION selection which plays on this." {Clufpters in Modern Botany, pp. 125, 126.) The theory that makes natural selection all-sufficient has thus bound itself to discover utilities everywhere. It assumes that every modification has been of advan- tage to the species. Dr. Romanes has gone so far as to say for that species alone : " Amid all the millions of mechanisms and iustincts in the animal kingdom there is no instance of a mechanism or instinct occur- ring in the species for the exclusive benefit of another species, although there are a few cases in which a mechanism or instinct that is of benefit to its possessor has come also to be utilised by other species. . . . How magnificent a display of Divine beneficence would organic nature have afforded if all, or even some, species had been so inter-related as to minister to each other's necessities ! " {Tlie Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, p. 75.) " Every species," he adds, " is for itself, and for itself alone — an outcome of the always and everywhere fiercely raging struggle for life." This was written a dozen years ago, and we do not know whether Dr. E-omanes would write the same words now ; for a good deal has happened since then. Many instances have been since discovered of beings so inter-related as to minister to each other's necessities. There is the discovery of " the intimate partnership known as symbiosis, illustrated by the union of algoid and fungoid elements to form a lichen, by the occurrence of minute Algse as constant internal associates and helpful partners of Eadiolarians and some Coelenterates." The beautiful chapter in Professor Geddes' little book Chapters in Modern Botany in ORGANIC EVOLUTIOX 125 which he describes the " web of life " contains many examples of this mutual co-operation, and of the mutual benefit resulting from it. The partnership is of benefit to both parties, and each is for the other. Professor Geddes quotes the following from De Bary : " As the result of my researches, all these growths (lichens) are not simple plants, not individuals in the ordinary sense of the word ; they are rather colonies consisting of hundreds and thousands of individuals, among which, however, one predominates, while the rest in perpetual captivity prepare the nutriment for themselves and their masters. The master is a fungus, a parasite which is accustomed to live upon others' work ; its slaves are green algae, which it has sought out, or indeed caught hold of, and compelled into its service. It surrounds them, as a spider its prey, with a fibrous net of narrow meshes, which is gradu- ally converted into an impenetrable covering ; but w^hile the spider sucks its prey and leaves it dead, the fungus incites the algre found in its net to more rapid activity, indeed to more vigorous increase." [Chapter's in Modern Botany, p. 115.) This is one instance of what Dr. Romanes desired, of beings so inter-related as to minister to each other's necessities. Do not the w^orks of Darwin abound with instances of the same kind ? If insects have made flowers, and flowers have made insects, have we not another instance of the same kind % \ As a matter of fact, animal life is dependent on vegetable life, and vegetable has to lift the food of animals to a higher chemical level, or animal life could not exist. This, however, may be an instance of what Dr. liomanes 126 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION calls " being utilised by another species." But it could not have been utilised unless there was a fitness for use. But the same thing cannot be said of the co-operation between the bull's horn Acacia and the ants which tenant it. There is a partnei ship between the ants and the tree : the tree provides food and shelter for the ants, and the ants defend it from its enemies. Instead of the fiercely raging struggle for existence of which Dr. Eomanes speaks, and of the mere individualism and selfishness of species which he describes as characteristic of every species, another view is gaining ground — viz., that which looks on nature as a gigantic system of mutual co-ojDerationj each thing and species not for it- self, but for others as well. The individual for the species and the species for the genus is a view which seems to be making way, as men are getting better acquainted with the intricate inter-relations of the web of life. Co-operation demonstrably abounds ; and if it can be shown to be true, we might again find that Dr. Komanes has been brought over to the side of beneficent design as a verifiable hypothesis. " The tendency of the day is to recognise that most plants require the aid of some lower organisms for assimilating nitrogen. Thus B. Frank, who has been working for years in that direction, has proved that the beech can thrive only when a mantle of Mycorhiza -fungi develops over its roots, and that these fungi are not parasites living upon the substance of the roots, but real feeders of the beech. They obtain their food from the soil, and while so doing they yield a part of it to the roots of the tree. Further experiments of the same botanist have now shown that the same is true for the pine, ORGANIC EVOLUTION 127 which can only tlirive in a soil already containing germs of the little fungi, and when its roots become covered with the mantle of fungi, while it leads but a precarious existence in the opposite case. "All these are but separate instances of a much more general fact, which only recently became known under the general name of ^_ symbiosis/ a nd appears to have an immense significance in nature. Higher plants depend upon lower fungi and bacteria for the supply of that important part of their tissues, nitrogen. Lower fungi associate with unicellular algae to form that great division of the vegetable world, the lichens. More than a hundred different species of algae are already known to live in the tissues of other plants, and even in the tissues and cells of animals, and to render each other mutual services. And so on. Associations of high or low organisms are discovered every day ; and when the conditions of life are more closely examined, the whole cycle of life changes its aspect and acquires a much deeper signification." (Prince Krapotkin in Nineteenth Century^ August 1893.) It is to be hoped, as political economy is changing its aspect in these latter days, and is learn- ing to attach less importance to competition and more to co-operation, that those conceptions which biology has derived from political economy will also change. As products may increase in a greater degree than the people that produce them, so it may be in nature also ; and the struggle for existence may neither be so keen nor so fierce as we have supposed it to be. We see in many casts that species, mstead of striving for itself, may find its advantage in mutual co-operation. 128 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION I do not intend to say much on variation. It would appear that the idea of indefinite variation is becoming antiquated, and that of definite variation coming more and more to the front. But there will apparently be some time ere the laws of definite variation can be formulated. Professor Huxley says : " The importance of natural selection will not be im- paired, even if further inquiries should prove that variability is definite, and is determined in certain directions rather than in others by conditions inherent in that which varies" {Darwiniana, p. 223). If the inherent tendencies to variation be discovered, we shall get rid of those appeals to fortuitous variation which cause such perplexity. These laws of variation will also help us to a new conception of order and stability, and give a new meaning to design. It was in the interests of order, design, and purpose that the doctrine of special creation was prized. But a variation determined in certain directions will restore more than the denial of special creations has taken away. It leads us on to see the working out of the wonderful unity of plan in the millions of diverse living constructions, and the modifications of similar apparatus to serve diverse ends. Such a unity of plan certainly suggests the existence of thought behind the unity and manifested in it. f Professor Huxley has shown that mechanism and I I teleology are not mutually exclusive. He has said ^ that a primordial molecular arrangement may have been intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe. May we not go further, and say that the existence of a plan implies not only a primordial arrangement by ORGANIC EVOLUTION 129 which the plan can be realised, but also that the Power to which the plan is due is never absent from the working out of it ? A power present in the world, who works according to a plan, and by which the plan can become real, gives us something which we can understand, which also delivers us from the tyranny of chance. The process of realising the plan \ embodied in nature has been slow, and step by step ; \ but, then, the end has so far been accomplished. And \ it is a curious result to which many have come, that when we have discovered so far the means by which the plan has been wrought out, we have therefore denied, v not that there is a plan, but that there is a mind, a reason which made the plan and carried it out. It LS as if we denied the existence of the architect after we had seen the stones and the timber, the mason, the hodman, and the joiner at work. Or is it that we deny the planning intelligence because the build- ing has not sprung suddenly into existence? The wise Bishop has depicted that state of mind in his own inimitable way : " Men are impatient, and for precipitating things; but the Author of nature appears V deliberate throughout His operations, accomplishing His natural ends by slow successive ^^^^^^^^(^Iwa^o^y, Part II., chap. iv.). Our fiiends and teachers have shown us innumer- able adaptations; they have shown us that the creatures work towards an end — an end not foreseen by the indi\dduals or the species concerned ; we therefore hold that it must have been foreseen by some one, if causation is to have its due place. We are constrained, on the other hypothesis, to 9 130 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION ask how unintelligent laws can work out intelligible and intelligent results. We can never get an answer to that question; for the postulation of a Supreme i Intelligence cannot be tested by experiment, because | it is assumed by all experiments. Every experiment assumes that we are in a rational universe, a universe the working of which corresponds to the working of an intelligence in ourselves. If the laws of nature work out intelligent and rational results, then reason is at work in them. We have not put the intelligi- bility into the world ; we find it there, and we strive to understand and to express the working of the world in rational terms, — an attempt which would be for ever vain, if the intelligence at work in the world were not of the same kind as the intelhgence which i is at work in ourselves. 1 It may be true that the intelligence at work in the world has not wrought in the fashion we had supposed. Does that intelligence work by the way of evolution, and not in the particular mode we thought of 1 — for a change of conception may not be the destruction of the conception. The earth is a part of the solar system — men once thought it the centre of things ; we no longer think of personal spirits as guides and rulers of the stars — we think of i matter under gravitation ; we have been taught that | species did not arise through special acts of creation, but were developed one after the other. Well, we bow our heads in reverence, and say that God's ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts are not as our thoughts; but they are ways and thoughts of God notwithstanding. If we trace the highest ORGANIC EVOLUTION 131 results of the world to the humblest and most simple beginnings, we do not destroy the value and interest of anything when we know how it came about. The more we learn of the methods of the world's develop- ment, the more is our feeling of wonder enhanced, and the larger does our conception grow of the Divine method; for at every stage of the process we find powers at work which were not at work in the lower stage. From the mechanical we arrive at the chemical, from the chemical to the organic, and from the organic we reach the conscious stage of existence. We confessedly cannot explain the chemical by the physical, nor the organic by the chemical and the mechanical, nor the conscious by what is unconscious. If, then, we have arrived at the goal of conscious, moral, social, religious life, we have come to a stage I in which a philosophy, a science, a moral system, a I creed ought to be possible. CHAPTER YIII SUPER. OR GANIC EVOL UTION Controversy regarding heredity — Spencer and Weismann — Machinery of Evolution defective — Limits of Organic Evohition — Man does not modify himself, but modifies his Environment — Survival of the Fittest explained by Huxley and by Spencer — Evolution does not account for advance — Illustration of man's power of modifying his environment— Piesults. IT is with some timidity that one ventures at the present time to write the word ** heredity." It is one of the three great names which occur in connection with evohition. " VariabiUty/' " natural selection," transmission or " heredity," are words which occur in every statement of the theory of evolution, and both the meaning and causes of each are keenly contested. At present the contest is keenly waged as to the nature and the meaning and the factors of heredity. The problem is, no doubt, a most complex one, and there are great biological authorities who widely differ as to what is transmitted and the means of transmission. Are acquired qualities — that is, qualities acquired in the lifetime of an individual — transmitted to his offspring ? Weismann and Lankester deny the transmissibility of acquired qualities, and contend that only inborn, germinal, 132 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 133 or constitutional variations are transmissible ; while Mr. Herbert Spencer emphatically says that " either there has been inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no evolution " {Contemiiorary Revieio, March 1893, p. 446). And again he says: "A right answer to the question whether acquired characters are or are not inherited underlies right behefs, not only in biology and ps3'chology, but also in education, ethics, and pohtics " (May 1893, p. 730). The ques- tion, like many other questions, was raised by Darwin, whose theory of pangenesis had the supreme merit, not of solving the problem, but of showing how great, complex, and intricate was the problem that needed to be solved. Not many have believed in pangenesis, but pan- genesis has set men to inquire into the nature and character of inheritance. What is the relation between successive generations ? What is the character of the organic continuity which all alike recognise as a fact ? Have the experience, character, and aquirements of individuals any chance of being transmitted to their offspring ? It seems best to me to wait for an answer. If a man of the scientific attainments of Dr. Romanes can say, " Professor Weismann is not quite correct in saying that I adhere to the doctrine of the trans- mission of acquired characters. My position mth regard to this question is one of suspended judgment," one less expert may well be excused for remaining in suspense. We may watch the evolution of the con- troversy with interest. We may read the writings of Professor Weismann as these are printed from year to year ; and whether his main contention is made out or 134 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION not, we always gain some knowledge from him. We may listen with sympathy to the complaints of Mr. J. T. Cunningham when he states that he has been boycotted by Nature. " Nature,'' he says, " has em- braced the principles of Weismann's Neo-Darwinism ; and while willing to devote plenty of space to favour- able reviews of Weismann's essays written by under- graduates, suppresses without a word of explanation or apology contributions which argue against the fashionable creed " (Translator's preface to Elmer's Organic Evolution, p. xxii.). And we ask ourselves, Has the odium theologicum been sviddenly transferred to science 1 Or we may read the mild and reason- able and able summary of the whole question in Mr. Arthur Thomson's book The Study of Animal Life, which is so clear and lucid that a non-specialist may readily understand the issue. We may read the controversy between Herbert Spencer and Professor Weismann, their statements and replies and rejoinders in the Contemporary Review of 1893, and mark the keenness of the conflict and the fierceness of the attack and defence, and be thankful that we can stand aside and take no part in it. We may wait until the controversy is settled, and apparently the issue may be decided in the next century. Happily for our purpose it is not necessary to wait for the cessation of the controversy. It is enough for us that there is a relation of organic unity between the generations, and it is not necessary for us to decide for bur purpose as to the precise machinery by which the organic continuity is maintained. Mr. Spencer is bound to fight hard for the transmission of SUPER-ORGAXIC EVOLUTION 135 acquired characters ; for it is on that supposition that he has formulated his system of psychology and ethics, and has propounded his scheme of reconcilia- tion between a priori and a posteriori forms of know- ledge. We need not here controvert his theory of inheritance ; for on our view, even if granted, it does not prove his case. No doubt Weismann also, if he ever reaches the study of psychology and ethics, would have his explanation from his own point of view. Meanwhile, while the machinery of evolution is so far defective, and men are not agreed as to what heredity is, we may at least assume as true that the results won by organic modification have somehow been preserved. Things have really made progress. Species have been produced, and once produced they beget others in their own likeness. Life may have gone on irrespective of the experience of the individual, as Weismann says ; or the experience and acquirements of the individual have played a respectable part in evolutionary progress, as Mr. Spencer says ; still, life has gone on, and has got itself sorted into certain kinds. Organic modification is, however, an expensive pro- cess, and cannot go on for ever ; for life to continue to inscribe its experience in cells, be these cells and their functions as varied and diversified as we please, is a process which has a limit. ( We know not, and scarcely any one can guess, what power and potency may be in a living cell, j It may carry within it the potency of a Shakespeare or of a Newton. But our aim at present is to show that the process of organic change has become less and less as life has become 136 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION more and more complicated. Organically the difference between unicellular and multicellular beings seems to be greater than any subsequent organic change. Nor l have biologists yet been able to account for the traDS- 1 mission from simple to -complex organisms. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to justify the kind of language with which biologists describe certain beings. Accord- ing to the Darwinian theory it is the fittest which always survive. The unfit can never survive on that view. But we constantly read of '' degeneration," and sometimes the hermit-crab receives a good deal of abuse because it has ceased to produce its own shell. Then parasites receive a good deal of abuse. On the Darwinian theory all this is quite unjustifiable. The survival of degraded forms, as they are called, and the shift for a living which leads to parasitism are also instances of the survival of the fittest. On the one hand, the principle of Darwinism would seem to shut us out from the use of words like de- generation ; and on the other hand, it should also cause us to avoid the use of " progress," and w^ords of a similar meaning. Our judgment on organisms must be ex- pressed in terms of the theory ; but on these terms a good deal of DarwiDian literature would require to be re-written. For the idea of progress w^e need some other criterion than is given us by the " survival of the fittest " ; for many lower organisms survive. The scorpion has been in evidence ever since the coal measures have been laid down ; and others also survive. Have we any explanation in the principle of the sur- vival of the fittest of the appearance of the higher races, as we call them? for the survival proves the SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 137 fitness, and it proves nothing more. Professor Huxley is plain on this matter, and Mr. Herbert Spencer is also equally plain. Professor Huxley says: " 'Fittest ' has a connotation of ' best ' ; and about ' best ' there hangs a moral flavour. In cosmic nature, however, what is fittest depends upon the conditions. Long since I ventured to point out that if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival of the fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, a population of more and more stunted and humbler and humbler organisms, until the fittest that survived might be nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which give red snow its colour j while, if it became hotter, the pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They, as the fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, might survive." {The Romanes Lecture, 1893, p. 32.) Mr. Spencer says : " Mr. Martineau speaks of the ' survivorship of the better,' as though that were the statement of the law, and then adds that the alleged result cannot be inferred ' except on the assumption that whatever is better is stronger too.' But the words he here uses aie his own words, not the words of those he opposes. The law is the survival of the fittest. Probably, in substituting ' better ' for fittest, Mr. Martineau did not suppose that he was changing the meaning ; though I dare say he perceived that the meaning of the word fittest did not suit his argument so well. Had he examined the facts he would have found that the law is not the survival of the ' better ' 138 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION or the ' stronger,' if we give to those words anything like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed ; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, whether in size, strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of diminished fertility ; and when the life led by a species does not demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of them and accompany- ing increase of fertility. This is the reason why there occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis — this is the reason why parasites, internal or exter- nal, are so commonly degraded forms of higher types. Survival of the ' better ' does not cover these cases, though survival of the ' fittest ' does." (Essays, vol. iii., pp. 241, 242.) Many things might be said on these two extracts. One thing to be noticed is the use of language not derived from evolution. What is the ground of judgment which warrants Professor Huxley in speaking of "humbler and humbler organisms," and Mr. Spencer in speaking of a " retrograde meta- morphosis" and of "inferiority"? In the "survival of the fittest " we have the only criterion by which we can judge, and to use other terms is to bring back surreptitiously principles which we have discarded. There is something else to be said which is more relevant. On the theory as stated by Professor Huxley and Mr. Spencer, there is no provision for progress, nor any machinery provided which even can seem to lead to that advance which life has made from the protozoa up to man. The protozoa have SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 139 survived because they are the fittest. Why, tlien, has life advanced to other forras ? Surely a principle the working of which is consistent with the survival of all that have survived cannot explain why some forms have survived unchanged and others have changed ! The same principle is inadequate for the explanation of both. What, then, is the principle which has secured advance 1 Variability in all directions cannot account for it, for the likelihood is that changes Avill cancel one another. Heredity will not account for it, since changes must be of a kind to survive before they can be perpetuated and accumulated. Shall we not be driven back, by the very principle of the sur\dval of the fittest, to pos- tulate some other principle which wdll ensure advance ? Can w^e get that principle within the organism itself, in laws of growth, in the nature of life itself, in the interactions of life with the environment, or any other of the means postulated by the biologist? At all events, the principle has not yet been discovered, and we may wait for its discovery with some patience. It does not appear that for a rational understanding of the progress which life has made we can yet dispense with the hypothesis of Energising Reason that foresees the end and goal, know\s what it would be at, and takes adequate means to secure its end. Energising Reason is also one of the causes which can be seen at -work in the universe at present, and we may ask our scientific friends to recognise its reality. It is one of the causes now at work in the universe ; and may we not say that it has always been at work, since we find ourselves in a rational universe ? V \ set , 1 of 140 CIIIUSTIANITY AND EVOLUTION On any view, however, man is the crown and goal of the organic w^orld, and in him the organic world has come to know itself. At present we shall not \ seek to look at the question of his descent, or rather „- his ascent, from the organic world to self-conscioiis- ' ness. We shall look at him first in his relation to and his contrast with the world beneath him ; for since man has been on the earth he has been dis- tinctively man. " When we study this fossil man of the quaternary period, w^ho must, of course, have stood comparatively near to our primitive ancestors in the order of descent or ascent, we always find a Man, just such as men are now" (Yirchow, The Freedom of Science, p. 60). As far back as we can trace him man is man, and wherever we find him we find that the method of advance by mere organic modification has been distinctly limited; for the organic differences between varieties of the human family are insignificant in comparison with the number of elements in which they are one. The differences are only superficial and external, and a savage may in the course of a single lifetime become a civilised man. Physically, therefore, and also in many other respects, man is one. Physically, notwithstanding the great general like- ness between man and the higher animals, there Iis a distinct difference; for man has the power of modifying his environment, and only in a slight degree does he need to modify himself. He does not need to develop defensive armour against the attacks of wild beasts, does not require to don scales against his enemy as the crocodile does, nor grow sharp teeth SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 141 and claws as the tiger does, nor to mimic offensive and nauseous qualities as the butterflies seem to do. He does not need to be so strong, or so swift, or so cunning as other animals. He has found ways less expensive than organic modification, and he has acted on them. He does not need to lengthen or to strengthen his arm in order to be able to lift heavy weights ; he has in effect done both by discovering and utilising the lever. His eye is not so keen as the eye of the eagle ; but with an eye less keen he can see farther, for he has discovered the telescope. His eye may not be so fitted for microscopic vision as that of a fly ; but he can see things so small as to be invisible to the eye of any other creature. He cannot spring so far as a tiger can ; but he has discovered that a rifle bullet is swifter than a tiger's leap and stronger than a tiger's muscles. In short, he has ceased to modify his physical organism, ha\ing found out that he can succeed as well by modifying tools and weapons and making them serve his purpose. ' In winter many animals have to modify themselves to protect themselves from cold. They put on a thicker fleece of fur, and many of them change their colour. Who can say what is the physiological cost of the heavier fur ? or the amount of energy expended in the organic change ? But man simply puts on a thicker overcoat, which he can easily slip off when warmer weather comes — a process which involves no physiological cost. Not many animals can modify their environment. They build their nests, they seek out dens and caves of the earth, or they may use other means of a simpler sort to protect themselves. 142 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION But man has learnt to build houses, to warm them with fire, to supply himself with light when the sun goes clown, and in a hundred other ways to make a climate at his pleasure. He can cook his food, and save a large part of the physiological labour of digestion. He can also provide for the future — sow seed in the spring, gather it in harvest, and store it up for future use. In this he has no doubt been anticipated by the ants, but almost all other animals live from day to day. Not only has he ceased to modify himself, and modifies his environment instead ; he has pressed the organic modifications of other animals into his service. He has directed the modifications of certain grasses until he has produced wheat. He has taken animals and moulded them into a form which makes them of greater use to him. He makes use of the swiftness of the horse, and of the qualities of other animals which he has tamed and made submissive to his wishes. He has chained the lightning, he has harnessed steam to his carriage, and there is hardly any limit to the use he has made and is still making of the agents and powers of the world, These things he has done because he has been able to rise above the necessity of organic modification Other creatures are under the necessity of modifying themselves to meet the changing conditions of life ; and if the modification succeeds, they transmit it to the species. The whole process is organic, and unless the modification becomes so organic as to be trans- mitted it is lost. Memory with them seems also to be organic. The experience of the individual does SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 143 not seem to count for much ; what counts is that habit that has got itself inwrought into their nature and has become instinctive. While there are still habit and instinct in man, they do not play so great a part as in the lower stages of life. At all events, the powers which animals have of recording their ex- perience, profiting by it, and transmitting it are very limited. As with tools and weapons and houses and garments, so also with the power of recording and transmitting experience, man has found a more excel- lent and a more economic way. He does not inscribe his experience in the convolutions of the brain ; he writes them in a book, and books are less expensive than brains, and the supply of book -material is much more ample and more easily procurable than brain-matter. It is also more lasting; for brains vanish with the individual, and books last for all time. Hereditary transmission is precarious, and may not, indeed cannot, hand down the largest and greatest of human possessions. The greatest and most valuable of human experiences may have belonged to a man who had no offspring, and thus would inevitably have been lost had man not found out a way of recording it. Organic memory would not lead to much, and along with other organic modifications tends to decrease in man. But this new way of recording experience has obvious advantages. Homer's song has lasted ; but it would have perished had organic memory been the only link between the generations. The thoughts of Plato and of Aristotle, the song of Dante, the Prin- cijna of Newton are with us still, because man has speech, and intelligence, and ways of recording and 144 CHRISTIANITY AXD EVOLUTION tiansmitting that experience, apart from a series of organic changes in the individual and in the species. It is not needful to write more at length on this point ; for we have our art, our science, our litera- ture, our architecture, our philosophy, our poetry, our theology, each one of which, and much more all of them together, tell us and prove to us that here in man there is a new kind of life — a life that has not changed with the changing environment, but has so far altered the environment to suit its own ends. We have simply looked at man as a being who has his place among other beings on this earth. We have not denied his similarity to other animals. ¥/e have not looked for structural, or physiological, or other differences between him and other animated beings. We have raised no question as to his origin, or his relation to the world of life which preceded him. We have simply looked at him and at them, in themselves, in their actions, and in their results; and we have found ourselves burdened with a load of distinctions and differences, and we ask for an explanation of them. We have found much instruction in the works of Darwin on the Descent of Man and on the Ex'pfes- sion of the Emotions. And we have read Dr. Romanes, with profit as he toils and struggles at an impossible! task, namely, to trace the evolution of intelligence! through animals up to man without a break. Dr.' Tylor's work also is full of interest as he strives to trace for us the origin and growth of language, and the rise and progress of the arts of life. But there is a marked difference between this kind of evolution SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 145 and that kind with which we are famiUar in the organic world. Here it is not the physical organism that is evolved ; it is something else. No one will say that there is a growth of the human brain oi' the nervous system which proceeds j^ojH ikissu with the evolution of tools, of languages, of civilisa- tioi^. Yirchow's statement already quoted is de-| structive of that supposition. If in all physical characteristics man is man from the time when he first appears on the earth, then the evohition of arts, science, civilisation has not been accompanied by corresponding organic changes. It would be well to recognise this, and for mental progress to devise a formula of evolution not now expressed in terms of matter and motion, but in terms of mind and reason. Not that w^e can dispense with mind and reason in the case of physical and organic development, for in it are discovered all the principles of a rational order \ but in the latter kind of evolution both the order and the method of it and the thing which is developed can be expressed in terms of mind alone. The essential note of difference appears at the point j where a being appears who can adapt himself to the/ environment, not by changing himself, but by chang- ing the environment. The beginning of the change may be very small ; but the main point to observe is that a change has been begun. The lower animals indeed have *' rudiments of the implement-using faculty. Orangs in the Durian trees furiously pelt passers-by with the thorny fruit. The chimpanzee 'm. the forests is said to crack nuts witli a stone." And the first tools which man uses are likely those which 10 146 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION are ready-made or which can be finished for use. But no animal, as far as we know, ever gives just the finish, slight or great, which the tool requires to fit it for use. When man first carried a pebble about with him as a weapon of ofience, when he used a sharp stone to cut or scrape with, or shaped the branch of a tree for use as a club, he made a new departure. We may, if we like, trace the growing use of tools and weapons, as Dr. Tylor does in his Anthropology^ and see how man learned to use better and better material for his tools and weapons, and to make better and better implements. We may trace the improvements in the hne of offence and defence, until we pass from the stone weapon to an Armstrong gun; or we may trace the development of industrial implements from the first i-ude implement with which man scratched the earth, until we come to the steam plough and the reaping machine ; or trace the evolution of dwellings from the cave and the shelter under a tree to the homes of the present day, with their comfort, refinement, beauty ; and we may also trace otlier lines of development : but we ought always to remember that this is a peculiar line of develop- ment. It is the first step that counts, and the first step was taken with the first tool which man fashioned, with the first garment he wore, with the first shelter he made for himself. For the lower animals, as for man, the wealth of the world existed, if they could use it. And they did use it after their fashion ; but they had to use their environment as it was, and adapt themselves to it. Their weapons of ofience and defence were organic, and they could adapt themselves SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 147 to the conditions of life only with exceeding slowness. This holds true even if we accept all that is told us of the exceeding cunning of animals, and of the manifold- ness of the shifts they have to make for a living. Accept all that Mr. Poulton tells us about the colours of animals, and his explanation of mimicry and its advantages, and the remark yet holds good that mimicry has succeeded just because it was so far organic. The mimickers had to make the changes which procured them an advantage by some modifica- tion of shape, of colour, or of attitude, or in some way they were physically modified. It may be true also that the change was slight and did not become structural ; but the change was effected by a modifica- tion of its own substance, and not by the use of something else. There are many instances, indeed, which look like an anticipation of the unique power of man to modify his environment. Mr. Poulton quotes from Mr. Bateson as follows : " The crab takes a piece of weed in his two chelae, and, neither scratching nor biting it, de- liberately tears it across, as a man tears paper with his hands. He then puts one end of it into his mouth, and after chewing it up, presumably to soften it, takes it out in the chelai and rubs it firmly on his head or legs until it is caught by the pecuHar curved hairs which cover them. If the piece of weed is not caught by the hairs, the crab puts it back in its mouth and chews it up again. The whole proceeding is most human and purposeful." {Colour of Animals ^ pp. 78, 79.) There are other instances also of what Mr. Ai'thur Thomson calls " maskini?," in which use 148 CHRISTIANITY AXD EVOLUTION is made of external things for purposes of concealment and protection ; and there may be other instances in which animals may, without organic modification, succeed in concealing and protecting themselves. However these may be explained, it is broadly true that one distinction between human life and other life is this power of which we have spoken — the power of making other things serve the purpose of life. And this power has grown from more to more, until we can really set no limit to the process of change due to the action of man. There may come a time when man may prepare his food directly from inorganic elements, and may dispense with the agency of plants and animals needed at present, in order that his food may be raised to the chemical level at which he is able to use it. Speaking broadly, therefore, the power of modifying his environment, and particularly the power of doing it progressively and with ever-increasing success, belongs to man alone of all the forms of life on the earth. As there are limits set to the power of organic modification, so also are there limits to the nature of heredity in relation to man. Of the accumulated intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual treasures of humanity, not much is due to the cumulative power of hereditary action. Parents do not transmit to their children the knowledge which they have them- selves obtained. Children have by slow and painful methods to learn even to walk and to run, and much more have they to learn grammar, arithmetic, mathe- matics, the arts and sciences, ethics, and philosophy. Nor can it be said that even special aptitudes are SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 149 transmitted ; for a mathematician may have sons who are far from being mathematical. It would seemi/ that, in the advance of humanity, education counts ' for more than heredity. Besides. on the new line ; of advance which man has discovered, we find a new distinction between man and the lower animals. Their hereditary transmissions are limited to what has become organic, and to what has come to them by the particular line of their own ancestry. An ape has no way of receiving the transmitted organised experience of all apes; he obtains only what has been handed down by his own direct predecessors. There may be varieties of attainment among the family of apes. One may be wiser, stronger, more courageous than others ; but, supposing that these can be transmitted, they can be transmitted only to his immediate and direct progeny. But with man, and with the new means of transmission he has discovered, nothing need be lost. What has been won by one man may become the inheritance of the race; for the race of man is one in a sense which can belong to no other species. And the achievement of one race may become the common property of all the races of man. Whatever finer feel ings o r deeper cunning may have belo nged^ to j^n exceptional animal perishes^ with him ; but the^services rendered_to_ humanity by ^ " the dead'^but sceptred sovi^ans who still rule our | spirits from their urns " are recorded and are living and powerful to-day. Individual men differ from one another in many respects, but all humanity is in every man. Some may fall below the average, but others rise high above it, and may reveal to us how 150 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION great humanity is. The great men of humanity have given to it possessions which man will not wittingly let die. They have lifted us up to the heights of knowledge, of feeling, of volition. The truth and beauty they have seen they have also recorded, and succeeding men may live on what they have handed down. Organic modification seems to have no way of preserving these exceptional experiences, and there- fore the lower animals must be still subject to that complex of conditions which serves to produce organic changes. But these laws of variability, natural selec- tion, and heredity have, in man, given place to other and higher laws of development. How the thought of one man may help to enable other men to be adapted to environment let the history of civilisation testify. One man thinks the steam engine, and suddenly the conditions of modern life are changed for all men. One might speak here of the poets and their gift of song to the race, of the painters who have revealed to their fellow-men the Divine quality of beauty in the world, of the scientific leaders of the generations w^ho have wrested from nature the laws of her movements both in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, of the thinkers of philosophy who have aspired to think in human thought and express in human language the thought which is embodied in the universe and in all its movements. Take the great men of the world, who have been the mightiest benefactors of their race, and we may say of them, and then' influence that their exceptional might and! power and insight would have perished with them-'' SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 151 selves had the evolution of man been limited to the natural selection, heredity, and adaptation which seem to rule in the organic world. Happily, however, in the evolution of mental life higher laws have been found and wider results have been won than were possible on the old lines of development. For the exceptional men of the world of humanity have served the race, but their service has been of the spiritual sort, and the transmission of their thought and emotion was by means which were not of an organic and mechanical kind. Nor can it be said of them that the struggle for existence had much part in the production of their capacity, or in the expression of their thought. 'I These singers sang because they could not do otherwise. These men of science worked and toiled because they were urged on by some mental_ desire to know the secret of the action of nature in the particular sphere of their observation, and so of the others. "'■ For they were urged on by their love of beauty, their passion for truth, theii' desire it may be to better their fellow-men. It may be safely said that not one or hardly any of those great men whose thoughts and works have helped to develop the higher side of our nature, the intelligence, the social and moral senti- ments, have ever been pressed on to this kind of work by the struggle for existence. They spoke and toiled because a finer necessity was laid on them. Having seen the vision they must speak it ; and they spoke, and lifted men towards the heights on which they dwelt. They revealed to others the depth and height and possibility of human nature, and encouraged 152 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION ordinary human people to seek the heights where such visions could be seen. It is evident, therefore, that the study of man must be directed differently and must recognise larger princijDles than we find at work in other spheres of knowledge. We do not at present raise the question of the origin of man, or ask how we are to explain the difference between him' and the lower creation. All we now" do is to insist on the difference, and to have some idea of what it is. The difference is there, in whatever way we account for it. We may trace the supposed path of progress from the lower organic world to man, and add one infinitesimal difference to another, and then suppose we have explained the matter. Suppose we have traced the slow steps of development, as we have not, yet the process does not_ explain the outcome of the proci^. What has to be explained, or simply accepted, is the change of method when we pass from the lower world to man. Physically the change is seen in the limitation of these laws of organic life by laws which have a larger meaning and a wider sweep. The laws of life seem to press the laws of physics and chemistry into their service, and control them for higher issues ; so also the laws of mental life seem to grasp all the complexes of laws of physics, chemistry, organic life, and give them a new transformation, and direct them to ends unexi3ected and unfoireseen, until the higher form of mental life appeared. The laws of the lower sphere are not abrogated, and do not cease to operate, nor are the properties and qualities of the lower spheres changed ; but they obtain a new significance, and the SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 153 unity of the universe gets a wider meaning, when all its forces are seen to be serviceable, or at least in the service of the mental life, which can see them, think them anew, understand them, and transform them with a more glorious significance. Thus we do not endeavour to explain the higher by the lower, or the effect by the cause. On the contrary, the lower can never be rightly seen until it is set in the light of what is higher ; and the cause is never seen in its breadth, and length, and depth, and height until we see what it can do, and that we see only in the effect. CHAPTER IX EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY Human and animal intelligence — Kational Self -consciousness — Habit — Feelings, Emotions, Appetites in rational beings and irrational — Differences in Kind and in Degree — Romanes and Spencer — Can feelings make a conscious- ness ? — The Self -Genesis of self according to Eomanes and Spencer — Unity of human nature — Eussel Wallace's Deistic view — Creation is continuous — Eesults. WHAT we have seen with regard to the action o£ man in modifying his environment ajD- pears even more plainl}'- when we consider his mental life. From the consideration of his mental life we shall gather that he is a unique being, with notes and characteristics which are only foreshadowed in the lower world of animals. That there are such fore- shadowings it would be idle to deny. There are in the lower creation adaptations which seem to be un- conscious, such as the colours of animals, and many others which cannot be ascribed to the purpose and will of the animals concerned. But there are other actions and adaptations of which the only explanation is that they were purposely intended by the animals who did them. Whoever reads such works as those of Dr. Komanes on Animal Intelligence will at once admit that the question is beyond dispute. Animals are intelligent; but their intelligence is of a rudimen- 15-i EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 155 tary kind. The only question which is of interest here is, Can we explain human intelligence as if it were the same in kind as the intelligence we see in the ant and the elephant, and in other animals ? Can we substitute for the higher nature the laws and processes of the narrower non -human world, and explain the higher by the lower ? We may say that the higher is evolved from the lower. Suppose we do. It is just the evolution that has to be explained ; for when we come to human nature we come to a nature which is consciously i^ional. And when conscious reason has appeared, there is a difference between the attitudes and relations of the conscious being and those which seem to be like them in the being which is not rational. While the stimulus which gives rise to sensation and the sensation itself may be i alike in the animal and the man, yet the reaction against the stimulus is very different. The fact that man is a rational and self-conscious being makes every feeling, every emotion, every volition of a different order. In the lower organisms the reaction on stimulus is simple and uniform, and the appro- priate action follows almost immediately. As organisms advance in complexity, and as the nervous system becomes more elaborate, the reaction gets to be more slow and full of purpose, until we come to the actions of the ant, or of the other more intelli- gent animals ; for every single being is a unity, and capable of reaction to stimulus. When we come to speak of a rational self-conscious being, the reaction partakes of the whole nature of the being ; and an element of rationality enters 156 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION into every response which the rational being makes to its environment. The stimuhis is referred to the self-conscious being, and the response is that of the self-conscious being. This is true even when the response has become automatic ; for automatic action seems for man to be a secondary product. Actions learned with effort by continued and repeated and conscious action of attention grow easier by repetition, and are at length performed without any attention at all. A large part of man's habitual action is thus handed over, as it were, to mechanism, and stimulus and reaction become so co-ordinated that we can do our work without constant superintend- ence. We are thus set free for further attainment. Reason and attention have made the habit, and can now proceed to something else. It would take too much space to lead a detailed/ proof of the statement that the feelings, the emotions, even the appetites of a rational being, have taken into themselves new elements which differentiate them from the experiences of the animals which have not risen to a consciousness of self. Take the appetites them- selves, and a little reflection will show that even here a new element has entered in. Man can control his appetites, can accustom himself to new kinds of food, can make an element of reason enter into the prepara- tion of his food. He can make it, or at least can so modify it as to make it serve his purpose better. The stimulus of hunger and of thirst physiologically considered may be one in man, and in an animal the response to it is diflTerent by all the breadth which separates the rational nature from that which is EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 157 not rational. And if appetite becomes a new thing with rational beings, much more is this true of the emotions. Take the table prefixed by Dr. Romanes to his works on Mental Evolution in Animals and Mental Evolution in Man, and let us assume that these emotions are manifested by animals. He claims that animals can manifest surprise, fear, parental affection, jealousy, affection, sympathy, emulation, grief, revenge, shame, and remorse; and he affirms that they resemble, or that they are the same in kind, as those emotions which are called by the same name in man. His proof consists in an interpretation of the sign of an emotion which appears when the animals are in the state which seems to correspond to it. Thus he interprets the sign of anger as he would interpret it in man. Well, we are not to urge the difficulty of interpreting these signs, inasmuch as we are not mere animals, and cannot enter into the consciousness of animals. Dr. Romanes knows this preliminary difti- culty, and has taken care to keep his interpretation within the mark. Let us suppose that the signs of fear, surprise, and all the other emotions are the same in animals and in man, and also that the feelings as mere feelings are identical; yet in the case, of man the feelings are taken up into the web of conscious rational experience, and are shot through! with that quality that reason gives, while the experi- ence of the other remains irrational. Let us remember that feelings are a relation between the stimuli and the being which has the feeling. A feeling is not something in itself, unrelated, unrecognised ; it is the response of the living being to the stimulus. And the 158 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION relation between different feelings is just the relation which each has to the subject of them. The emotion of surprise, to take the one lowest on Dr. Romanes' list, is one thing with the lower animals and another thing wdth man. What it is will depend on the experience and wisdom of the being who experiences it. In fact, the emotion of surprise differs in man according to the culture, knowledge, and experience of the man. We are not surprised at tiie existence of railways, telegraphs, telephones ; our fathers would have felt the utmost surprise if they had seen them. The ancients felt no surprise at the notion of a hippocentaur ; we should feel the utmost surprise if we saw one. It is evident, therefore, that the emotion of . surprise has with man now a deeper character, a more rational element than it had in former ages. Where it does exist it has a wider meaning, and has gathered into itself the wider knowledge, the deeper experience of the rational man. If emotions in the human family can thus be built up of more complex elements as the ages pass on, shall we not ialso say that the emotions of man are also more complex than those of the irrational creatures 1 We cannot isolate the emotions, and think of them as if they took place in a vacuum. The simplest feelings partake of the complexity of the whole being. It appears to me, therefore, that much of the writing of Darwin in The Descent of Ma7i and in The Ex- j^ression of the Emotions is irrelevant to the purpose he has in hand. He first would have to show that the emotions in the lower animals are identical with those in man. He has assumed without inquii^ing that, when EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 159 he has got the same muscular contraction, say, of the forehead in the monkey and in man, he has also got the same subjective state. But this is incapable of proof ; it seems, indeed, to be capable of disproof. The outward signs may seem to be identical, but the inward feeling may be as wide as the poles asunder. That which is what it is in relation to a whole is to be judged in relation to the whole of which it is a part. And an emotion is to be judged in relation to the being in whose experience it is a factor ; and thus the emotion partakes of the character of that being, and will increase in complexity in proportion as the experience consists of more or less elements in relation to the whole. Thus the emotion of a being who has not attained, and who never will attain, to self-con- sciousness can scarcely, to any profit, be compared] with the emotions of a being who is potentially at least self-conscious from the beginning. If it is so with the emotions, a fortiori it is so with the cognitions and the volitions of man. Comparative I psychology can make little progress for this very reason, because the being who makes the comparison is rational, and is apt to read his own rationality into what he observes. I t appears to us that Dr. R op^anes has not been able to avoid this caus e of uncertai nty. In his able and interesting books already mentioned he has done more than any other man in the attempt to prove that the intelhgence of animals is the same in kind as the intelligence in man, thou^h^he admits a difference in deg^ ree. It is not easy to make out what Dr. Komanes means by a difference in kind, or rather it is difficult to say whether Dr. Komanes 160 CHRISTIAXITY AND EVOLUTION would admit that any difierence is a difference in kind. We have the following note from him : " It is perhaps desirable to explain from the first that by the words ' difference of kind,' as used in the above paragraph and elsewhere throughout this treatise, I mean differ- ence of origin. This is the only real distinction that can be drawn between the terms ' difference of kind ' and ' difference of degree,' and I should have scarcely have deemed it worth while to give the definition, had it not been for the confused manner in which the terms are used by some writers — e.g., Professor Sayce, who says, while speaking of languages from a common source, ' differences of degree become in time differences of kind.' " {Mental Evolution in Man, p. 3 note.) Can there be on Dr. Romanes' terms a difference of kind 1 On his own view, the view of evolution, any distinction between species and species can never be a distinction of kind, for it can never be a " difference of origin." All the forms of animals have been modi- fied to their present shape by slow changes — that is, according to the teaching of Dr. Romanes. They have one origin. Are we to say, then, that there is no difference of kind between the vertebrate and the invertebrate, between a salmon and an elephant, between an ape and a man 1 Are we to set down the difference between species and species as a difference in degree 1 If not, then Professor Sayce is right in saying that a difference in degree may become a difier- ence in kind. It is also difficult to understand what Dr. Romanes means by a diffei-ence of origin. We thought that evolution had given up the search after origins, and had discovered that it must begin with EVOLUTIOJSr AND PSYCHOLOGY 161 something. According to the theory of Mr. Spencer, we begin with an Unknowable Power, and the first form of its manifestation lay in the primitive nebu- losity. If we take the more modest form of the Darwinian hypothesis, we still begin with life, and all life has only one origin according to him. If with Haeckel we seek to unite the living with the non- living and to bridge the chasm between the two, we still begin somewhere, and according to the theory of evolution there is one origin for everything. It is also the view of theology. Theologians also have only one, know of only one origin for the universe, and for all that is in it. They say in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. They believe, in the words of a book which they revere and honour and seek to obey, that " by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." They do not distinguish between man and the lower animals by a difFerence of origin ; for all derived existence must, they believe, trace its origin to God. If the Scripture says, " God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female created He them " ; if it says, furthermore, " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul," it also says, '' Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the ground." Thus, as far as the question of origin is concerned, there is for the theologian no question of difference of kind, all things owe their origin to the creative power of God, and all things are sustained by Him. 11 / r { 162 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION Nor for the evolutionist can there be, on Dr. Eomanes' teaching, any difference of kind; for all things are from the primal source of being whatever that may be, and all things are what they are by the same kind of process. If difference of kind means difference of I origin, then there can be no difference of kind ; and f we must get for ourselves some new kind of classifica- tion just to satisfy the caprice of Dr. Romanes. What may amount to a difference in kind falls therefore to be determined by a consideration, not of the origin and history of a being, but by a considera- tion of its present nature, character, and action. I f__ \ve~can say that there is a specific differenc e betwee n one class of animals and another, weTiave in other words established'aTdifference of kind. Biologists do not, as far as I can gather, refuse to recognise a difference of kind between one species and another ; they do not deny a difference of species ; the main ques- tion for them has been. How came there to be a species 1 The problem of organic evolution is, given life, to show how it has come to be sorted into different kinds. Will Dr. Romanes help us to language which will enable us to distinguish between one species and another ? We shall not quarrel with him about phrases. If he will give us a word which will express the difference between species and species, we shall take it ; but till then we shall say with Professor Sayce and most other people that a difference in degree may become so great as ultimately to amount to a difference in kind. It is somewhat perilous to disagree with Dr. Romanes, for every now and then we come across phrases like the folio-wing : " This is admitted l)y all my opponents | EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 163 who understand the psychology of the subject." Of course the assumption is, that if we do not admit his view we are of those who do not understand the psychology of the subject. Recognising the peril, we still venture to doubt and to demur to many of his psychological assumptions. We admit that Dr. Romanes is in the succession of English psychologists. He follows in the wake of Locke, Priestley, Hume, the Mills, Bain, and he seems to think that it is the only possible psychology. Mr. Herbert Spencer is also in the same succession with a difference peculiar to himself. It is a psychology which builds largely on physiology, which explores the nervous system for physical concomitants of psychological events, which is great in the cross-examination of babies, and of late years has dealt largely with the possible experiences of the primitive man. It is great in the natural history of man, especially in the growing period of babyhood, youth, and early manhood. Lit is always of opinion that a process of becoming explains the result, ^j Many other wonderful things might be said of it. Alliance with evolution has not improved it, but the alliance has enabled it to do more wonderful things than ever. It has enabled Mr. Spencer to suppose that he can manufacture intuitions, and produce necessary principles as they are needed, and to explain how what is a priori to the individual may be a 2'>osteriori to the race. As if repetition, custom, habit could ever generate a belief in principles that are universal and necessary ! Prolong human experience or life-experience as much as you please, it is still a particular experience of the particular, 164 CIIIUSTIANITY AND EYOLUTIOX and it can never enable us to affirm a proposition as universal and necessary. But perhaps the greatest feat ever performed in psychology is performed by Mr. Spencer when he affirms : " Not only do^ feelings constitute the inferior tracts of consciousness, but feelings are in all cases the materials out of which, in the superior tracts of consciousness, intellect is evolved by structural combination" {Faijchology, vol. i., p. 192). That is something worth knowing ! , Consciousness, Mr. , I Spencer repeatedly says, is_built;_ up of individual S ^sensations and emotions.') The simplest element \k.\ -W'.'^ of consciousness is compared to a_ nervous shock. ' s '^•'^ i!'' Given a nervous shock, or repeated nervous shocks, and by combining and recombining these in endless ways consciousness is built up; for Mr. Spencer sensation and feeling are equivalent expressions. I But, may we ask, what is it that is aware of the nervous shock % Make feeling as simple as we may, before it becomes feeling, or when it becomes feel- ing there is a something which is aware of it. The lowest organism is one ; it has a unitary centre somewhere, which reacts against the stimulus and the sensation. But Mr. Spencer deals with feelings as if they existed apart from a creature whose feelings they are. By a process of combining and recombining them he endeavours to build up a consciousness ; but the consciousness is the condition of their existence. / Feeling presupposes consciousness, and yet it is 'I assumed that feeling makes consciousness. Mr. Spencer speaks constantly of " relations between feelings," and he has not explained how this is possible. EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 165 Feeling is itself a relation between the object and the subject, and relations between feelings are just relations between the several objects and the one subject. With this understanding of the meaning of the relations between feelings, we can follow Mr. Spencer's exposition of the subject with interest and instruction. He has cast much light on the process of the coalescence of feelings into larger wholes ; but he has not approached the goal he professedly has in view — that of enabling us to understand how conscious- ness is built up : " Clusters of clusters of feelings held together by relations of an extremely involved kind." Yes ; but the bond which holds them together is that they are referred to the conscious subject which holds them together injtlie unity of one self -consciousness. But the one thing which English psychologists have ever sought to avoid is just this unity of self- consciousness^ We get from them quite a number of useful observations. We get endless disquisitions on mind and body, on the nervous system and its psychological accompaniments, on the laws of associa- tion, on mental faculties, on the emotions and the will, and on a thousand other topics ; but they have so dealt with all of them as to make us forget that the', feelings, emotions, volitions, associations jbelong to all self, ar e those of a self-conscious rational being. The ^ self is lost amid tlie feelings,' cb"ghrtions, "and volitions ; and psychology proceeds as if these feelings, cognitions, and volitions were separate and independent realities. One might suppose that Professor Green, in his drastic and dramatic Introduction to Hume, had made an end of that kind of thing. But no : English ps^xhology 166 CURLyriANITY AND EVOLUTION seems, like the BourLons, to have learnt nothing and to have forgotten nothing. It is still alive, and has been recently reinforced from abroad, both from Erance and from Germany; and those who have recently dealt with the matter, Ribot and Miinsterberg, have reduced consciousness to a mere accompaniment of physiological changes. Notwithstanehng this persistent view of psychology, and the reinforcement brought to it from beyond the sea, there is this to be said, that the presupposition of all possible psychology is the possibility of self -con- sciousness, to which all feelings, cognitions, volitions are to be referred. You may make of it what you please, but this much will remain, that it is the central unity to which all possible experience is to be referred. The self-conscious being stands over against all possible objects of experience, and refuses to be included among them. It is the self to which they are related, and in w^iich the experience finds its unity. It was necessary to say so much, in view of the attempt which is made to construct a natural history of the self. We have to admit that Dr. Romanes is aware of the problem, and that he says that in the work before us it is not the problem he has in hand. His is a problem of psychogenesis, and his aim is to prove that the intelligence of the man is not different in kind from that of the brute. We think he has failed; but his has-been the most serious attempt that has been made, and the most valuable even to those who disagree with him. He has not made the attempt of building up mind from feelings as if they were independent realities. He knows that EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 167 the organism is one connected whole, and that all the parts of an organism are mutually related in the unity of individual sensibility. " Every stimulus supplied from without, every movement originating from within, carries with it the character of belong- ing to that which feels or moves" (p. 197). Thus feelings are referred to their unifying centre ; and he maintains also that thus the foundations of self- consciousness are largely laid in the fact that an organism is one connected whole. I do not myself see how this is consistent with the psychological pre- suppositions he derives from Locke. Dr. Romanes seems to assume that the only possible psychology is that of the empirical school. He is no doubt aware that the method and the conclusions of the empirical school are keenly contested. We now point only to Green's Introduction to Hume in witness of the fact. Dr. Romanes — for we must be brief — defines " idea " as follows : " The word ' idea ' I will use in the sense defined in my previous work — namely, as a generic term to signify indifferently any product of imagina- tion, from the mere memory of a sensuous impression up to the result of the most abstruse generalisation." Then he describes what he means by " simple idea," " complex idea," and " general idea." Then the differ- ent stages of idea tio n, are given. Simple ideas he calls perc_epts, general ideas are coiicepts, and for the class which is between percepts and concepts he uses the word *'recepts "; and he thinks that every one is likely to accept his classification. He thinks that in '• perception " and in " reception " the mind is passive, while in " conceptual " thought it is active. V/e are 168 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION not quite sure what to say about "recepts." They must either be particular, or they must be general. If they are more than particular, they must be repre- sentative j and if they are representative they are useless, and simply serve to perplex. But the question of the passivity of the mind until it reaches to general ideas is the most perplexing. It is this v^hich we cannot reconcile with the statement of Dr. Romanes : '" Every stimulus supplied from without, every move- ment originating from within, carries with it the character of belonging to that which feels and moves." If this be true, as we believe it is, then even in the lowest organism there is activity in i-esponse to stimulus. Much more is it true when a higher organism responds to stimulus. The activity may manifest itself even in feeling, and perception is activity. But this is not the only inconsistency into which Dr. Romanes has fallen. "I take it, then, as established that true or conceptual self-consciousness consists in paying the same kind of attention to inward psychical consciousness as is habitually paid to outward psychical processes ; that in the mind of animals and infants there is a world of images stand- ing as signs of outward objects, although we may concede that for the most part they only admit of being revived by sensuous association ; that at this stage of mental evolution the logic of recepts com- prises an ejective as well as an objective world ; and that here we also have the recognition of individuality, so far as this is dependent on what has been termed an outward self-consciousness, or the consciousness of self as a feeling and an active agent, without the EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 169 cousciousness of self as an object of thought, and therefore a subject " (p. 200). This is really a wonderful passage. We have read it again and again, and have read the passages which lead up to it, and those which immediately follow it, and with a wonder which grew and grew. What is the meaning of it ? I take note of the passage : " Receptual or outward self- consciousness is the prac- tical recognition of self as an active and a feeling agent; while conceptual or inward self -consciousness is the introspective recognition of self as an object of know- ledge, and therefore as a subject. Hence the one form of self-consciousness differs from the other in that it is only objective and never subjective." But that state- ment does not make the matter easier to understand. Does the higher self -consciousness never exist until it attains to the " recognition of itself as an object of knowledge " ? But the recognition of it does not make it. It is already there and active. Besides, Dr. Romanes would need to explain how the subject can become an object, how that for which all objects are, and to which all objects are presented, can be an object. That certain states of the subject can be an object can be readily understood, but not that the subject can be an object to itself. If the subject can be an object, how does it differ from other objects ? and what becomes of the distinction between the different forms of self -consciousness when the subject becomes an object ? Then, again, what has the power or stage of con- ceptualism to do with the inward self-consciousness ? Have we no power to recognise ourselves as thinking. 170 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION active, feeling beings until we have attained the stage of making concepts ? or how do concepts help us to recognise ourselves ? Is it that we must obtain the power of making and using general conceptions before we can recognise our own power of thinking ? Is it that we can recognise the self as an object of know- ledge only when w^e look at it under a general notion or idea ? We submit in this case that the object of knowledge is not the self, but the general notion. This may perhaps be the meaning of Dr. Romanes, as it falls in with his psychological position generally. If it is, then psychology has again to pass through the period and the stages of controversy which have already been passed from Locke and Berkeley to Hume and his successors; and we shall have to discuss the question as to whether ideas are the only objects of knowledge. But that is a task which we may w^ell decline. At all events, Dr. Romanes has not made clear what he means by conceptual self -consciousness. Nor has he made good the distinction between outward and inner self -consciousness; for after one attains to conceptual self-consciousness, he may live all his life and do all his work without ever turning his mind inward to contemplate itself. Dr. Romanes has him- self the highest self-consciousness when he is occupied so completely with the study of external objects as to forget the inner self-consciousness altogether. Shall we say that Newton and Darwin and other great men, who hardly ever looked inward, but always outward, have not attained to the higher self-con- sciousness? That might be a plausible way of ex- EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 171 plaining some of the remarks of Darwin, and might help to explain why he thought of himself mainly as an object among other objects. But even that ad- vantage will not tempt us to admit the precarious distinction which Dr. Romanes has drawn between outer and inner self-consciousness. The emergence of self-consciousness does not coincide with the emer- gence of the power of forming general concepts. Nor can we separate action and feeling from conception in that sharp and abrupt way. Activity and feeling are not separated from intelligence, and even the feeling of a self-conscious being is touched with rationality. Now the interest of Dr. Romanes in this distinction arose from the fact that here for him is the dividing line between brutes and men. Following Locke, he makes the power of forming abstract ideas to belong only to man. ''Therefore I think," says Locke, " beasts compare not their ideas further than some sensible circumstances annexed to the objects them- selves. The other power of comparing, which may be observed in man, belonging to general ideas, and useful only in abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture brutes have not." This is certainly a marked distinction between man and brutes, and Dr. Romanes has set it forth with admirable clear- ness. But is it psychologically the only distinction ? Does not the distinction between conscious and self- consciousness begin at an earlier stage? Is it not manifested whenever the self is recognised as a feeling, acting, thinking agent 1 Is not the self consciously there, even before the stage of introspection begins 1 172 CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION To deny this is to deny self-consciousness to all who are not in the way of practising introspection, and this would involve the grotesque supposition that all our scientific men — our physicists, chemists, biologists, whose main work is to study facts and laws in their objective order, without reference to themselves as sub- jects — are destitute of the higher self -consciousness. Apart, however, from any controversy about the •'^ stage when self-consciousness begins to manifest itself, let us accept Dr. Eomanes' view that there is such a thing as self-consciousness. However we may under- stand the word, yet the fact that self-consciousness makes a distinction between man and brute is im- portant. It serves to mark the position of man as unique. The recognition of self as an active, feeling, or, as Dr. Romanes says, as a thinking agent separates man from the whole lower world. Can we call this a distinction in kind ? or is it only in degree 1 We shall not quarrel about the phrase, if we get the thing. We say it is a great distinction, call it as we please. It does not seem possible to explain it by anything but itself. We may say that " the foundations are laid in the fact that the organism is one connected whole " ; but so we might say that the foundations of water are laid in oxygen and hydrogen, and the foundations of life are laid in the chemical properties of matter, but water and life have properties which cannot be explained by the characteristics of the foundations. So it appears to be with self-consciousness. It is unique ; there is nothing like it in the world beneath ; and as far as evolution is concerned, it is just bound to accept it, and to accept it without explanation. EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 173 Whatever the explanation may be, it must fulfil certain conditions. It must be such as will not break up the unity of human nature, and assign the origin of his body to one set of causes and his mind to another ; and it must not bring in a cause here which ■ operates only at this point or at a few other points in the whole history of the earth. This is, however, what Mr. Russel Wallace has done, and the result is that he has advocated a certain kind of deism, as, in fact, Mr. Darwin has also. But deism is a super- annuated form of thought which cannot be resuscitated at the present hour. (Mr. Wallace tells us that " there are at least_three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily come into action. The _first, stage is the change from^organic to inorganic, when the first vegetable cell, or the living protoplasm out of which it arose, first appeared. . . . The next stage is still more marvellous, still more completely beyond all possibility of explanation by matter, its laws, and forces. It is the introduction^ sensation or conscious- ness, constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. . . . The third stage is, as we have seen, the existence in man ; of a number of his most characteristic and noblest ' faculties, those which raise him furthest above the brutes, and open up possibilities of almost indefinite advancement. These faculties could not possibly have been developed by means of the same laws which 1 have determined the progressive development of the / organic world in general, and also of man's physical organism. These three distinct stages of progress 174 OHRISTIAXITY AND EVOLVTION / from the inorganic world of niatter np to man point I clearly to an unseen universe, to a world of spii'it, to .- which the world of matter is altogether subordinate." \^ (Darwinism, pp. 274-6.) These are the positions, this is the attitude of mind which we call deistic, and which, on gi-ounds of science, philosophy, and theology, we cannot accept. Are we to hold that only at these three stages can we find anything that points to a world of spirit ? Are we to bring in the world of spirit only where our favourite theory fails ? If there are breaks like these in the theory of evolution, is it not time to revise our theory 1 For if it cannot explain these points of new departure, it cannot really explain anything ? It Ls curious to notice how the deistic view has got itself wrought into the very structure of Mr. Wallace's mind. " The theory of ' continual interference ' is a limitation of the Creator's power. It assumes that he could not work by pure law in the organic as he has done in the inorganic world ; it assumes that he could not foresee the consequences of the laws of matter and mind combined — that results would continually arise which are contrary to what is best, and that he has to change what would otherwise be the order of nature, in order to produce that beauty and variety and harmony which even we, with our limited intel- lects, can conceive to be the result of self -adjustment in a universe governed by unvarying law." (Natural Selection, p. 240.) Ls there no way of conceiving the action of the Divine presence and power in the world save that of continual interference ? Why should we with Mr. Wallace postulate the absence of God from EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 175 the world save only at these critical points where the self-adjusting forces had failed and were unequal to the new departure ? Having made the new departure Mr. Wallace thinks that, having got such a start, the world could again be left to self-adjusting, self-acting laws. Might it not help Mr. Wallace if he were to read Butler, and learn from him that the laws of nature are just the uniform action of God ? It is not possible to think that God is ever absent from His creation, or we must think that He is always absent. Theology cannot accept a mere deus ex machina. Nor can we accept that view of Mr. Wallace which asserts one origin for man's physical organism and another for his spiritual nature. Such a view destroys the unity of man, and simply makes him a highly organised animal to which somehow a spiritual nature has been superadded. It is surrounded with difficulties. Man proceeds by ordinary generation ; how has this superadded spiritual nature been trans- mitted? Man has a true body and a reasonable soul ; is each reasonable soul superadded to each in- dividual as he comes into existence ? Is it not more reasonable, as it is certainly more Scriptural, to trace the origin of man, body, soul, spirit, as a unity, to the creative power of God ? Certainly the Scripture teaches that in the future, in another life, man in his complete state will be an organic man, with a spiritual body adequate to express his spiritual nature. Are we, then, to deny even in the case of man " special creation " ? Yes and no, as we under- stand the meaning of the term. To_me creation is contin uous. To me everything is as it is through the 176 ':efistiaxitt AXJj etolutiox iContiiiuoTis power of God: every law. every being, every I relation of being are determined by Him. and^ He is I the Power bv wluch all things e^ist. I beUeve in the L':.ii::_r:i:r of God in the wo rld, and I do not belie r :L : lie comes forth merely at a crisi?, as Mr. Wallace supposes. Apart from the Divine action man woidd not have been, or have an existence ; but apart from the Divine action nothing else would have an existence. We have seen, with the help of Dr. Eomanes. that the seK-cotiseioiis man is a unique being in the world, that there is none Uke him. Are we to think also that this is a lonely kind of existence in this universe or above this universe % He is a being who can look be- fore and after, who can thintr- and conceive the order and method and evolution of the tmiverse ; and he can gather np the wealth of his experience into the unity of his self -consciousness. Is there any other being like him, a Being in whose image he is, who can speak to bim^ and to whom he can speak ? Man has been able to look back on a world which was once without life. But even in that world he was able to recognise power, r^nlated power, which proceeded rationally in a manner which c-an be understcKvl by man : power in the systems of the stars, flower in the solar system, power in the early history of the lifele^ earth : not a random power, but a power that work^ Jbv law, byjnethod, and in order. He saw that the power he recognised proceeded stage by stage until a world was made with conditions fit for hfe. Is he wrong if he thinks that the power manifested in the living world was a power to which life was EVOLCTIOX AXL P.