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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: WATTS, ROBERT TITLE: THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY PLACE: EDINBURGH DA TE : 1888 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Restrictions on Use: Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record I 122 i W34 1 Y/atts, Rev Robert 1820- . ^ Reign of causality, a vindication of the ecien- tific principle of telic causal efficiency Edin 1868 D 11 + 414 p ^^25777 o 1 TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE:_____Ja^_ REDUCTION RATIO:__ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA n2 IB IIB DATE FILMED: ^J^j:^^. INITIALS ^JcH HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT T /k c Association for Information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100. Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 5 6 iiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiii 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllluillll M mmmmmmm TTTTT Inches TTT I " ' M " 1 1.0 I.I 1.25 TTT r-' 2.8 2.5 111^ II 'X'y III" 1 "^-"^ .i!| 6 3 2.2 r 3.6 1 ' IBS 4.0 2.0 lA H ^ isiiAii. 1.8 1.4 1.6 I I I MflNUFRCTURED TO HUM SinNDRRDS BY APPLIED IMAGE, INC. -^i i-ij^a<£S«s*asiv-»g3ie«t«ay^«i^Sj^ ^ fg ^'^su»^ia»S»W»!WM*(5sSs*ft*«i^aF*i5*^^ -•^ i>*JM^ •I'^tSfr- ^'^ ^■■-%-^-r' Sv^^-^^w^'? v^'':^>,>^>' X^^' \Z1 \NZ\ Ciilitniluit llniitcvottu in the (s'tttj of pent Unvh b THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY: A VINDICATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLE OF TELIC CAUSAL EFFICIENCY. BY ROBERT WATTS, D.D., k > « PROFESSOR or SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN THE GENERAl- ASSEMBLY'S COLLEGE, BELFAST. EDINBURGH: T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 1888. PREFACE. PRINTED BY LORIME!: AND GILLIES FOK T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON, . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS AND CO DUBLIN, . . C.EORGE HERBERT. NEW YORK, . SCKIBNKR AND WELFORD a, 7l rpHE object of the discussions embraced in this volume is indicated in the title. The chief aim of the whole work is to vindicate the claims of the Scientific Principle of Telic Causality. Persuaded that the very unhappy attitude of antagonism to theology maintained by a certain class of scientists, has arisen from scientific speculations conducted in violation of this principle, the author has endeavoured, in the interests of both science and theology, to draw attention to the gravity of this error, and to make it clear that the existing antagonism is as unscientific as it is gratuitous. The ground taken is, that the Principle of Causality, revealed as a primary belief in consciousness, fairly carried out and applied in scientific investigations, leads up to an Ultimate Cause— a Causa causarum possessed of all the attributes which enter into our conception of personality. This ground, it is held, is 6 338124 F VI PREFACE. if' truly philosophic and scientific, and ought to be regarded as common ground in all controversies arising out of the scientific study of the phenomena of matter or of mind; for the foremost of those who set them- selves in array against the teleological bearings of the facts of science admit that " philosophy is the mother of the sciences." This, of course, is simply to admit that philosophy lays down the lines, the laws, and principles, on which science is to proceed. Now, the primary fundamental principle which philosophy holds forth as a lamp to light the pathway of the scientist is, that every effect must have a cause, — and by this is meant an adequate cause, a cause that will account for the production of all the phenomena under investiga- tion in the particular instance. Constituted as the human mind is, it cannot accept, as an adequate cause, anything which does not fulfil these conditions. The principle ex nihilo nihil Jit, forbids the acceptance of any solution of the problem presented in any set or series of phenomena which leaves some of the phenom- ena unaccounted for and unexplained ; for the remain- ing phenomena would, in that case, be left in the unscientific category of phenomena uncaused, and would thus be reckoned as emanations ex nihilo, with- out a reason for their emanation. PREFACE. Vll The validity of this principle, moreover, is testified to by consciousness, which must be accepted as the ultimate authority in regard to all our mental opera- tions. What our consciousness bears witness to cannot be questioned or gainsaid, and no authority can generate 'belief in anything which contradicts the findings of our consciousness. The only admissible question where consciousness is concerned is, " What is its testimony ? " In the present instance we have simply to inquire in regard to what it testifies on the subject of Causality. Does its testimony embrace, as its central essential characteristic, the idea of eflSciency or productive energy ? or is its testimony summed up, as held by Hume and his modern disciples, under the idea of a mere order of sequence ? The view one takes on this point must determine both his philosophy and his science, and must determine his attitude toward theology, if he be capable of tracing the connection between premises and their legitimate consequences. He who accepts Hume's idea of a cause must agree with him in the inference, that " anything may be the cause of anything," inasmuch as anything may precede or follow anything. When he reaches this conclusion, however, he will find, if he will but analyse the contents of his own consciousness, that this legitimate VIU PREFACE. outcome of the theory is in manifest contradiction to the verdict of that ultimate arbiter ; and he will find, moreover, if he holds by Hume's notion, and acts uj)on it, that he cannot advance a single step in the scientific investigation of the phenomena of either matter or mind. On the theory that " anything may be the cause of anything" scientific progress is impossible, and no scientist of any school ever acts upon any such unscientific conception of a cause. All scientists, wittingly or unwittingly, act upon the assumption that nothing is to be regarded as a cause which has not revealed itself as such by the forth - putting of causal, which is all one with efficient, productive, energy. It is hoped that the discussions embraced in this volume will aid in drawing attention to the unphilo- sophic conception of Causality entertained by the anti- theistic writers of the day, who are availing themselves of every channel of access to the public, to assail the foundations on which are based the immortal hopes of man. It is claimed in the following pages that the principle on which the assault upon theology proceeds, is subversive of sound philosophy and genuine science, as, in every instance, it does violence to the scientific fundamental of adequate Causality. And it is further PREFACE. IX claimed that within the sphere of the phenomena with which science has to do, adequate Causality is invariably telic. A superficial analysis may result in the discovery of nothing beyond causal efficiency, and a still more superficial analysis may discern naught save a mere • order of sequence, but it is held that a thorough analysis of all the phenomena, revealing, as it must, the adaptation of means to ends, ought to conduct the investigator back behind the phenomena and the ordered array of ends and means, to an antecedent, presiding intelligence, to whose forethought and presi- dency both the ends and the means should be ascribed. The concatenation and co-ordination of second causes, admitted by all scientists as an unquestionable fact, demand explanation, and no explanation will satisfy the human mind which does not refer them to a truly telic causal efficient. In carrying out his purpose the author has availed himself of papers and articles prepared by him and given to the public from time to time, as occasion seemed to require. The discussions embrace the chief (questions occupying the attention of the scientific and philosophic world during the last quarter-of-a-century, and especially those raised in connection with the visit of the British Association to Belfast in 1874. The X PREFACE. importance of the subjects brought under review, and the bearing of the great Principle of Telic Causality, so persistently assailed by antiteleologists,upon the progress of philosophy and science, as well as upon theology, will, it is hoped, be regarded as a sufficient justification of the issue of these discussions in this more permanent form. ROBERT WATTS. Assembly's College, Belfast, November, 1887. CONTENTS. -»o»- CHAP. • PAGE L AN IRENICUM : OR, A PLEA FOR PEACE AND CO-OPERA- TION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY, . . 1 IL ATOMISM— AN EXAMINATION OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL's OPENING ADDRESS BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIA- TION, 1874, 27 IIL AUTOMATISM — ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT ANIMALS are automata— an examination op professor Huxley's Belfast address, 58 .'o IV. SPENCER S BIOLOGICAL HYPOTHESIS, 98 V. ON SOME QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE AUTHORS OF THE "UNSEEN UNIVERSE," 149 VI. AGNOSTICISM, VII. THE HUXLEYAN KOSMOGONY, VIII. SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE, . IX. EVOLUTION AND NATURAL HISTORY, . X. NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD, XI. UTILITARIANISM, . 191 . 216 . 251 . 285 . 318 . 359 11 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. CHAPTER I AN IRENICUM : OR, A PLEA FOR PEACE AND CO-OPERATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. THE discussion of Scientific subjects by one who is not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a scientist, may seem to require a word of explana- tion. It may be asked, Why should theologians inter- meddle with such questions as claim the attention of men of science — questions which have regard to the constitution and laws of the organic and inorganic worlds ? Should not the theologian restrict himself to the sphere of the purely spiritual, and leave to science the domain of the material ? As faith pertains to the unseen, and, as some allege, begins where science ends, why should those who walk by faith intrude upon the empire of the visible, or claim to have a voice in the solution of problems arising out of the phenomena of matter ? It is scarcely necessary to say that such questions as 1 B THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. THEOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. i I ei these are sometimes put, nor is it necessary to add that such questions are among the causes which have helped to originate, and to widen a very serious breach between physical science and theology — a breach which is serviceable to neither, and which, if not healed, may prove prejudicial to both. The existence of this feeling of alienation and growing antagonism is sufl&cient apology for the attempt adventured in this chapter — viz., the contribution of a few suggestions in the form of an irenicum — suggestions which may, perhaps, serve to raise the inquiry, whether the antagonism in question be not wholly gratuitous. 1. To begin with the theological side of the conten- tion; a calm, candid review of the labours of the scientific investigators ought to satisfy the mind of any theologian, of the utter groundlessness of the notion, that these labours have placed in peril any genuine conclusion of theology. Whatever fears may have been excited while the established scientific systems were passing through their formative periods, there is now, so far as these systems are concerned, no cause for alarm. On the contrary, instead of regarding with jealousy the mighty intellects, whose labours have elicited from nature the key to her secrets, and introduced all men, who have eyes to see and ears to hear, into the magnificent halls of her enchantments to gaze upon wonders outrivalling the fondest dreams of the most gifted imagination, and to listen to harmonies evoked from an orchestra of which every atom and molecule of the universe is a recognised member — instead of regarding such labours with jealousy, the theologian has reason to join in the mighty anthem, and thauk the Keplers, and Newtons, and Daltons, and Faradays, and Tyndalls, and Andrews, for the tribute they have paid to the Eternal Power and Godhead of the Creator. Not only is there no recognised fact or established principle at variance with theology, whether natural or revealed, but, on the contrary, these sciences, without exception, are constantly appealed to by theologians as very arsenals for the equipment of theistic and Christian apologists. Whilst the working hypotheses of the giants, in whose labours these systems have had their origin, were in a state of quasi incandescence, and whilst theologians were reluctant to release themselves from the trammels of systems which they had been taught by their scientific instructors, such misgivings might be excused ; but now that these hypotheses have given place to systems whose harmony with the phenomena concerned, and with the demands of the human mind, bespeaks their truth, antagonism becomes inexcusable, and can exist only under the ascendency of an intellectual night, too dense to be penetrated by any illuminating agency known to science. The fact is, that instead of looking upon such investigators as their natural enemies, theologians should regard them as theological pioneers, and, follow- ing in their wake, should cheer them onward in their arduous, self-denying toils, and rejoice with them in every successful onset made upon the vast territory of ^ THE REIGX OF CAUSALITV. mystery which must ever encompass the tiny sphere of human knowledge. The benefits conferred upon theology by science are sufficient, not only to disarm antagonism, but to inspire the deepest gratitude. If there is any class of the citizens of Belfast who should hail with peculiar pleasure the advent of the British Association, that class is the theological. While the labours of this Association are good and profitable to all classes and conditions of men, they are especially so to theologians. The established sciences have shed a light upon the majesty of God— upon His wisdom, power, duration, beneficence, immensity— which should thrill, with the most grateful emotions, the breast of every man who names the name of God How does that night-piece of the sweet singer of Israel grow in the range of its conceptions as we read it in the light of the science of astronomy !— " When I consider Thy heavens the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou are mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him ? " Surely the astonishment of the shepherd of Bethlehem would have found no cause of abatement in those astronomical revelations which prove that the heavens, upon whose glories he gazed, constitute but the vestibule of God's house ! Will not a theologian who has studied the nicely-balanced mechanism of the heavens, as expounded by astronomy, be all the more competent to understand those passages in which the sacred writers represent the Creator as " meting out heaven with a span, comprehending the SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATIONS OF REVELATION. 5 dust of the earth in a measure, weighing the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" Is not the expositor of the Book of Job a debtor to those investi- gators of molecular physics who have discovered " the way where light dwelleth," and have revealed the secret chamber of darkness ? Is it not somethincr for which an expositor of Scripture should feel grateful, that science enables him to show that Job's interrogator seems to have been acquainted with the recently discovered fact, that light dwells in the pathway along whose viewless lines it moves, and, as the question not obscurely hints, that the same subtle pathway furnishes, at the same time, the dwelling-place of darkness? Will not the questions relating to the guidance of the constellations, have a deeper significance in the estimate of one who has learned from the revelations of the spectroscope, that Arcturus is moving with an absolute velocity of seventy-five miles per second ? Will not he who is aware that the arrest of the earth in its orbit would reduce it into vapour, or that its fall into the sun would develop an amount of heat equal to that which would be produced by the combustion of 6435 earths of solid coal, or that a change in the rela- tion of its constituent elements effecting new chemical combinations, would prove equally disastrous — will not he who knows these scientific facts read all the more intelligently, and with all the greater confidence, those passages in which the pen of inspiration tells us that there is a day coming when " the elements shall melt with fervent heat," and when " the earth and all the 6 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. i !|| 1 works that are therein shall be burned up " ? The conditions of the fulfilment of this dread prediction, science assures us, do exist, both within the bosom of the earth itself and in its kosmical relations. Let but the restraints by which these mighty agencies are held in check be removed, and the onlookers from other worlds would witness, in our own case, what onlookers from ours have imagined they have beheld more than once — the august spectacle of a world on fire, now kindling into the dazzling radiance of a sun, and anon fading away into the ashy paleness of planetary death ! Is not a theologian helped rather than hindered by such scientific disclosures? In view of these facts, there would seem to be but one alternative — viz., either that such men as the apostle Peter, an unlettered fisherman, were eighteen hundred years in advance of the philosophers of their day, or that they spoke by the inspiration of the Almighty. Surely, if the most eminent investigators of nature, unmoved by any over- ture from the theological world, feel constrained to volunteer the acknowledgment that the conditions of an event held forth with such prominence in the Scriptures — an event so apparently at variance with the phenomena — do exist in the forces of our system, theologians have no reason to fear the issue of an appeal from the Word to the works of God. Surely, with such confirmations, tendered with such chivalry, there is no cause for treating with suspicion those patient sons of science, who, with a devotion as praise- worthy as that of the immortal Livingstone, are SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF NATURE A DUTY. 7 prosecuting, often at the risk and peril of life, their search after the head waters of a river whose mystic wavelets, hitherto unseen, have all along been gladden- ing with light, and heat, and melody, the whole universe of God. Theologians may rest assured it is not from the fortresses of the established sciences, but from the temporary stockades of plausible, though yet unverified hypotheses, that scientists have come forth to assail theology. Nor is the attitude of an armed neutrality the proper attitude of the theologian towards those who are carrying their investigations into the province of the ultimate forms, and forces, and capacities of matter. Commanded of God, and challenged to the investiga- tion by the phenomena of His wondrous habitation, and impelled to the inquiry by the very constitution of his intellectual and moral nature, the theologian is under the most imperative of all obligations to trace in the visible, the invisible things of the Creator, even His eternal power and Godhead. He who rests in the phenomenal does not discharge this obligation. The contemplation of the visible which does not carry a man beyond the curtain under which the invisible is veiled, is not religious contemplation, and has no warrant either in our own nature or in the Word of God. And as the visitor who wishes to make him- self acquainted with a piece of mechanism would not be acting wisely if he were to decline the services of one who had already mastered its details, neither would that theologian be acting wisely who would II 8 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. i 1 refuse to avail himself of the proffered aid of men whose unquestionable achievements entitle them to speak with authority in their own departments. Of course this counsel is not to be understood as designed to claim for unverified hypotheses any authority what- ever. No true scientist will advance the claim, and no wise man will for a moment entertain it. 2. Passing to the other side of the contention it is not difficult to show that the antagonism towards theology, assumed by some scientific writers, is equally groundless and gratuitous, originating, to a very large extent, in misconceptions as to the principles and sphere of theology. (1.) It is assumed, without the slightest warrant, that the empire of matter is so peculiarly the heritage of science that the theologian has nothing whatever to do with it, and is to be treated as an intruder and trespasser when he crosses the boundary which, it is alleged, separates theology from science. Nor is there any warrant for the cognate assumption that science is opposed to theology as sight is opposed to faith ; or, as others put it, that faith begins where science ends. So far is the primary assumption under- lying all these dicta, and animating the antagonism they reveal, from being true, a moment's reflection ought to satisfy any candid mind that it is utterly fallacious. The sphere of science, as well as of theo- logy, is the unseen. A phenomenologist is not a scientist. Phenomena are common to all men pos- sessed of the organs of sense ; but it does not follow SCIENCE LIKE THEOLOGY DEALS WITH THK TXVISIBLK. 9 that all men thus endowed are thereby constituted philosophers, or entitled to take rank as students of science. The sphere of science lies beyond phenomena. It begins,, as theology does, where sight ends. It is just as true of the causes to which science refers phenomena as it is of the great First Cause of theo- logy, that no man hath seen them at any time. If found at all, these causes must be sought within the sphere of the unseen. This truth is recognised and illustrated with great pertinency by one whose attainments in science entitle him to speak on this jioint. In a lecture on Radia- tion, delivered before the University of Cambridge, Professor Tyndall thus expatiates on the very question here at issue. "We have been picturing atoms, and molecules, and vibrations, and waves, which eye has never seen nor ear heard, and which can only be dis- cerned by the exercise of the imagination. This, in fact, is the faculty which enables us to transcend the boundaries of sense, and connect the phenomena of our visible world with those of an invisible one. . . The outward facts of nature are insufficient to satisfy the mind. We cannot be content with knowing that the light and heat of the sun illuminate and warm the world. We are led irresistibly to inquire, What is light, and what is heat? and this question leads us at once out of the region of sense into that of the imagination. Thus pondering, and questioning, and striving to supplement that which is felt and seen, but which is incomplete, by something unfelt 10 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. SCIENCE ENTERS THE INVISIBLE BY FAITH. 11 and unseen, which is necessary to its completeness; men of genius have discerned, not only the nature of light and heat, but also, through them, the general relationship of natural phenomena" {Fragments of Science, pp. 212, 213). Here, then, is the doctrine now advocated, given out before the University of Cambridge, by one whom the British Association has honoured with the high office of President. His doctrine is ours. He holds that the felt and seen have their irXTJpeD/jba in the unseen and intangible, and that the visible impels us to seek its counterpart and complement in the invisible. It must, therefore, be manifest to all, that in what quarter soever the cause of this unhappy antagonism is to be discovered, it is not to be found in any diversity of opinion in regard to the sphere within which the causes of the things which are seen are to be sought. It is just as true of the scientist as it is of the theologian, that he cannot take a single step towards the solution of the problems presented by the phenomena of nature, without crossing the boundary by which the visible is separated from the unseen. Nor is this all. The scientist, as well as the theo- logian, crosses the boundary by faith. To the one, as well as to the other, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. By it the irpecr^vTepot of science, as well as those worthies whose fame has been rendered deathless by the pen of Inspiration, have obtained a good report. Had Kepler, or Newton, or the Herschells, or the men who have compelled nature to reveal under the irradiation of the electric light, phenomena which still point to a mystic cause unseen, been satisfied to tarry where sight ends and faith begins, their names had never been entered on the roll of fame, and the universe had presented to the scientists of Britain to-day, the very same riddle which puzzled the schools of Greek philosophy thousands of years ago. In a word, as it has been well put by Professor Tyndall {Fragments, p. 73), "besides the phenomena which address the senses, there are laws, and prin- ciples, and processes which do not address the senses at all, but which must be, and can be, spiritually discerned." Scientists themselves being the judges, then, there is no ground for antagonism towards theo- logy to be found in any difference of opinion as to the domain wherein the causes of the visible dwell and operate. (2.) Nor is the key to this antagonism to be found in the rejection, on the part of theologians, of any principle necessary to the most thorough investiga- tion of the laws and forces which are assumed to exist and operate within the sphere of the unseen. Theologians, as well as men of science, believe that out of nothing, nothing can come. They believe that every event comes forth upon the theatre of being, because of the operation of an antecedent cause ; and to the immediate and proximate elements of this cause (elements in which physical science is too prone '/^ *• 12 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. to rest), they ascribe with scientists a veritable effi- ciency. When a religious man — and the greatest scientific minds have been the most devout — enters upon any process by which he would reveal the con- necting links by which the seen is bound to the unseen, he does not feel that he is called upon to offer, as a preliminary condition, his religious prin- ciples as a sacrifice to any scientific Moloch. A man has not to become an atheist in order to become a scientist, or to surrender his faith in the unseen, in order to explore its wondrous arcana. Did Newton's faith in God give way before he entered upon that investisration which has rendered his name immortal ? When he returned from the veiled mount of com- munion bearing in his hand that tablet, on which was inscribed the law that every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force which varies directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance, did he feel constrained to abandon any principle of theology? As a matter of fact no such sacrifice was made by this prince of scientists; and as a matter of principle, no such sacrifice was neces- sary. This is true of Newton; and, so far as the question of principle is concerned, it is true of every investigator who carries his inquiries into the domain of causation. However it may be, as a matter of fact, that some students of nature have abandoned the idea of a God, it never has been shown, nor can it ever be shown, that the tremendous sacrifice was demanded by the collision of any principle of theo- NO DISPUTE ABOUT KOSMICAL UNITY. 13 logy, with any principle of legitimate scientific inves- tigation. It cannot be questioned that theology holds and insists on the scientific fundamental, that the phenomena of the universe demand for their solution the existence and operation of forces which lie within the territory of the unseen. (3.) Still further ; no cause of antagonism exists in the views entertained respectively by scientists and theologians, on the question of the correlation and unity of the phenomena of nature. Turretine and Humboldt, Hodge and Tyndall, are one on this ques- tion. It was the evidence of this unity that compelled Humboldt to expand his projected physical geography into " the Cosmos" and led him to the conclusion " that nature considered rationally — that is to say, submitted to the process of thought — is a unity in diversity of phenomena, a harmony blending together all created things, however dissimilar in form and attributes ; one great whole (to ttclv) animated by the breath of life." "To man," says Professor Tyndall, "no fact is either original or final. He cannot limit himself to the con- templation of it alone, but endeavours to ascertain its position in a series to which the constitution of his mind assures him it must belong. He regards all that he witnesses in the present as the efflux and sequence of something that has gone before, and as the source of a system of events which is to follow. The notion of spontaneity, by which, in his rude state, he accounted for natural events, is abandoned ; the idea that nature is an aggregate of independent parts \ 14 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. THE REAL CAUSE OF ANTAGONISM. 15 if also disappears, as the correlation and mutual depend- ence of physical powers becomes more and more mani- fest, until he is finally led, and that chiefly by the science of magnetism, to regard nature as an organic whole, as a body, each of whose members sympathises with the rest, changing, it is true, from age to age, but without one real break of continuity, or a single interruption of the fixed relation of cause and effect " (Fragments, pp. 373, 374). On the question of correlation and unity, these witnesses are true. The phenomena of nature, when subjected to the process of thought, point inevitably to the conclusion that nature is an organic whole. All that telescope, or microscope, or spectroscope, or the most dazzling radiance of the electric light reveals, are but parts of this all-comprehending unity. He is not a scientist who stops short of this conclusion, and neither is he a theologian. The constitution of the human mind, whether scientific or theological, will not brook the idea that any finite thing exists out of relation, or that all finite things do not constitute one harmonious system. (4.) Passing from the negative to the positive, the antagonism in question must be referred to the differ- ence which subsists between men of science and theolo- gians, in regard to the nature of the cause to which the phenomena of the universe are to be referred. The question, as already intimated, has not reference to the immediate and proximate causes of the phenomena, but to the ultimate. Scientists are satisfied with causes which theologians maintain, are not sufficient to account for all the phenomena. It is true the contrary repre- sentation is sometimes made. Theologians, it has been said, " offer us intellectual peace at the modest cost of intellectual life." This may be true of some theologians, but it is demonstrably true of some scientists. Theo- logy demands, as an essential element in tlie complex cause to which the phenomena of this universe are to be referred, the presence and operation of a Personal Intelligence, while some scientists are satisfied with the assumption of the presence and operation of powers resident in matter, acting in conformity with laws over which no ab extra intelligence has any control. The whole phenomena of the organic and inorganic worlds, it is held by this class of thinkers, may be accounted for independently of the presence or presidency, or interven- tion of mind. A crystal of salt, or sugar, the stalk or ear of com, or the wondrous organism of the human body, including the heart with its system of valves, and the eye, or the hand, with their unrivalled mechanism, are equally referable to the mysteries of molecular physics. Many scientific thinkers believe "that the formation of a crystal, a plant, or an animal is a purely mechanical problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the process involved " (Fragments^ p. 119). Those who will, may regard such speculations as specimens of advanced scientific thinking, but those who have regard to the constitution of the human mind and liMi IG THE KEIGN OF CAUSALITY. I .( the laws of thought, will look upon them in a very differ- ent light. Whatever may be said of the initial stages of such processes of thought, it is manifest that the terminus prescribed, is one in which the laws of its constitution will not permit the mind of man to rest. The rest proffered by such thinkers can be accepted only " at the modest cost " of holding in abeyance a principle essential to all scientific and philosophic pro- gress — that constitutional principle which demands, not simply a cause, but an adequate cause, for all the phenomena submitted to investigation. Here, if any- where, " we have but one-half of a dual truth," and, if the expression be allowable, the half we have is not the half Those who rest in molecular force as an adequate solution of the problem presented in the phenomena of crystallisation, vegetation, or animal life, leave out of view the very factor whose agency is, of all others, the most indispensable— that of an adequate intelligence who employs the atoms and molecules for the pro- duction of a specific effect. The merits and claims of these two methods of view- ing the phenomena of nature may be judged of, even by referring to the least complex of the three instances of constructive power just mentioned —that of crystallisa- tion. " The human mind,'' says Professor Tyndall, " is as little disposed to look unquestioning at these pyra- midal salt crystals as to look at the pyramids of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are those salt p}Tamids built up ? Guided by analogy, you may, if you like, suppose that, swarming among the con- ANALOGY BETWEEN CRYSTALS AND THE PYRAMIDS. 17 stituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible popu- lation, controlled and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one. The scientific idea is, that the molecules act upon each other without the intervention of slave labour ; that they attract each other and repel each other at certain definite points or poles, and in certain definite directions, and that the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction and repulsion. While, then, the blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to themselves, these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed in their places by the forces with which they act upon each other" (Fragments, pp. 114, 115). On this very pertinent analogy it may be remarked, that theologians would agree with Professor Tyndall in regard to the point wherein the analogy fails. They would hold with the scientific writer, that the part enacted by slave labour in the construction of the pyra- mids is, in the case of the crystals, performed by the forces with which the molecules act upon each other. In this respect it is at once conceded, the building of the crystals differs from the building of the pyramids. What was accomplished through the compulsory action of slaves in the one case is, in the other, effected with incomparable facility and exquisiteness of precision, by the mutual attractions and repulsions of matter. Theo- logians, however, do not see how the dismissal of the slaves, involves also the dismissal of their master. The c 18 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. substitution of a piece of machinery for hand labour does not involve the exclusion of mind from the work, which is more efficiently performed by the machine than by the hand; nor does the substitution of the attractions and repulsions of molecules, at certain defi- nite points or poles, for slave labour, involve the exclu- sion of intelligence from the mystic machinery by which crystals are built up. We may, for the convenience of the expression, speak of the molecular blocks being self- posited, just as we speak of the valves of the steam- engine being self-adjusting; but the self-positing of the molecules, as well as the self-adjustment of the valves, must be referred ultimately to mind. This leads to the remark, that the mind, in this comparison of the two methods of architecture, is ruled by something beyond mere analogy. As Professor Tyndall states, the human mind is as little disposed to look unquestioning at crystals as at pyramids. This is true, and implies all that any advocate of teleology need ask. It implies that the questioning is the result of our mental consti- tution. After this concession of the right and constitu- tional necessity of questioning the crystals, the only point remaining for dispute must be as to the questions to be asked. With regard to the pyramids of Egypt, all are agreed. The questions are — 1. Who planned them ? 2. What agencies did he employ in their con- struction ? 3. For what object were they designed? Now, it is admitted that the human mind cannot look at the pyramids of Egypt without asking these, or equivalent questions. How comes it to pass, then, that, THE ANALOGY ABANDONED BY MATERIALISTS. 19 as soon as it turns to the contemplation of the other pyramids, whose exquisiteness of finish outrivals all architectural competition, such questions are to be regarded as either altogether out of place, or are to be reduced to the one question. What forces and laws operated in their construction? Surely it is not unreasonable to demand a reason for this apparent arbitrary reduction of the catechism from three ques- tions to one. If, as the concession is, the very same constitution of mind which compels us to question the pyramids compels us to question the crystals, how is it that we put three questions to the pyramids and only one to the crystals? How is it that, whilst it is admitted that the final form of the pyramid expresses the thought of Cheops or Cephrenes, or of some one, it is denied that the crystal expresses the thought of any intelligence whatever? Shall we be told that the reason is to be found in the fact that the agencies by which the crystals are built, are incomparably superior to the agencies employed in the building of the pyra- mids ? This were to assume that the more exquisite the agency employed the less manifest, or reliable, are the evidences of the operation of the mind. If, as science has shown, the work is done better through the agency of forces and laws than by the labour of human beings, directed by a superintendent, the conclusion is inevitable, that behind these forces and laws there exists a devising mind, arranging the agency and deter- mining the result. This conclusion is inevitable, for it is demanded by T 20 THE EETGN OF CAUSALITY. , II I the constitution of the human mind. No mind, whether scientific or theological, can find a resting- place in the play of atoms and molecules under the operation of laws. The question must arise, how come these ultimate atoms and molecules to act so har- moniously, and— to use the language of Professor Tyndall (Fragments, p. 448)—" like disciplined squad- rons under a governing eye, arranging themselves into battalions, gathering round distinct centres, and forming themselves into solid masses," move with unerring precision towards a manifestly predetermined goal? This question, the human mind, by virtue of its constitution, and not in consequence of its experience, is compelled to ask ; nor will it be satisfied with any answer which refers it to self-constituted laws, or self-posited atoms, or self-adjusted molecules. So far is such a reference from being satisfactory, it leaves untouched the very thing to be accounted for. What the mind demands a reason for is this exquisite adjustment of the atoms and molecules, and this reason is not rendered by referring the inquirer to the operation of laws ; for, apart from and outside of matter, there are no such entities in existence as the lav^s of matter. The laws of matter are simply the modes in which matter, in virtue of its constitution, acts. Oxygen unites chemically with hydrogen, in certain proportions, under certain conditions, simply because of the qualities or attributes wherewith these two gases are invested. It is not the law which determines the combination, but the qualities which determine ULTIMATE ELEMENTS EXHIBIT MARKS OF DESIGN. 21 the law. These elements act as they act, simply because they are what they are. Science has rendered important service in discriminating these elements, and specifying their attributes ; but in doing so it inevitably and immediately raises the question, how come these elements to possess these attributes ? A man may reply, if he choose, that the cUita necessary to the answering of this question do not exist; but science has stripped him of this plea of ignorance ; for by demonstrating the fact that if these elements did not possess these qualities our world would possess no water (and, consequently, no animal or vegetable life), it has proved, beyond successful challenge, that the elements of matter, bear on their foreheads the impress of design. The significance of this fact is manifest ; for as this impress is revealed in the attributes or qualities of matter, and as these attributes are inseparable from the essence of matter — as they simply inform us what matter, in its essential nature, is — it must follow that matter, in the very inmost elements and essence of its constitution, exhibits marks of design. The chemist may imagine as he prosecutes his analysis of the organic and inorganic worlds, that when the mystic process is completed all traces of design shall have disappeared; but all such expectations are doomed to a foreordained disappointment. From the ashes of the crucible in which the gloomy incremation was attempted, more than three score witnesses arise to confound the atheism of the analyst, and to proclaim, II i II 22 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. II .1 as with cloven tongues of fire, their testimony to the existence of a design engraven on the very essence of the ultimate elements of matter. This is, of course, all one with sa3^ing that matter, in its ultimate elements, is the product of mind ; for as those attributes bespeak design, and are inseparable from the essence of matter, the conclusion is inevitable, that the designer who invested matter with such qualities must have created it. In a word, the data for answering all the questions which the human mind, in virtue of its constitution, is compelled to ask, do unquestionably exist. In its inmost constitution, matter exhibits evidence of the hand and purpose of its Author, and leaves no room for the plea of dearth of evidence, preferred by those who would have us repress the most important of all the questions which the constitution of our nature impels us to ask. From the portals of science no man need turn away with these instinctive promptings of his soul unsatisfied; and within those portals no scientist has any authority to take his stand and tell inquirers, that on the questions of authorship and purpose, the oracle is mute. The antagonism which such proclamations are fitted to engender is wholly gratuitous, and utterly unwarranted by the facts. To such conclusion do the revelations of science, even within the sphere of inorganic, logically conduct. The constitution of the mind of man is such that he must ask, respecting a solitary crystal, every question he is impelled to ask respecting an Egyptian pyramid. CHEMICAL AFFINITY AND KOSMICAL HARMONY. 23 Nor is the urgency of the questioning impulse dimin- ished when, under the light of science, he learns that the crystal does not exist in solitary isolation, but is a constituent element of a harmonious system, towards every member of which, under the proper conditions, it is ready to manifest sympathies or antipathies without which the unity and harmony of this wondrous universe could not be maintained. If the scientific mind can contemplate this modicum of matter in its universal correlations, and rest satisfied without refer- ring it to any extramundane Intelligence, it must differ in its constitution and instinctive longings, from the human mind revealed in the phenomena of conscious- ness and in the history both of science and of the race. He who can trace these correlations, as manifested by those chemical affinities whereby the several elements of matter are blended together into one beneficent whole, or as expressed in those wide, space-pervading attractions which interlace and hold in enrapturing harmony the majestic array of the starry firmament, and yet contend that the phenomena are accounted for when they are referred to invisible atoms and mole- cules vibrating in an invisible ocean of ether, or to invisible forces acting in conformity with invisible laws, which are referable to no intelligence, and which have no existence as distinct entities, and no causal efficiency, must possess a mental constitution altogether unique. Now, if the inorganic world itself, in its unquestion- able correlations, proves so manifestly the unwarrant- U\ I I 24 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. ableness of the present scientific antagonism to theology, surely the organic, with its flora and fauna, must demonstrate the utter groundlessness of the existing alienation. If the crystal, taken in its internal structure and external relations, points inevit- ably, to a designing mind, much more manifest must be the indications of design impressed upon the stalk and ear of com, or upon the wondrous organisms of the various correlated forms of animal life. As there is not time to enter upon this empire of evidence, indulgence is asked simply for one illustration borrowed from the myriad instances of correlation which subsist between the inorganic world, so-called, and the organic. The instance selected is that of the constitution of the eye, and its adaptation to the constitution of light. Science has proved that the optic nerve is insensible to the calorific rays. It has been shown by experiment that the retina of the human eye placed in the focus of the calorific rays, which invariably enter into the constitution of a beam of light, can encounter their force with impunity, whilst a sheet of platinum foil, placed in the same position, becomes red hot. To what is this diversity of effect in the two cases due ? The answer given by Professor Tyndall is, probably, the true one — viz., that while the invisible waves of the calorific rays generate synchronous vibrations among the atoms of the platinum, on which they impinge, the luminous waves alone generate synchronous vibrations in the retina of the eye. Hence it is — "that those rays, powerful as they are, and sufficient to fuse many ADAPTATION OF THE EYE TO THE CALORIFIC RAYS. 25 metals, may be permitted to enter the eye and break upon the retina, without producing the least luminous impressions " {Fragments, p. 230). Will any mind, scientific or human, conclude from these revelations that the investigations of science have "tolled the death- knell of teleology," or imposed upon theologians the necessity of abandoning the immortal argument of Paley from the marks of design presented in the organ of vision with its manifold modifications ? Science, on this point, has revealed something which Paley did not know, but the revelation it has made, is simply a contribution to Paley 's argument. It has revealed the fact that the organ of vision formed and perfected in darkness, has been so attempered and attuned in its marvellous structure as to respond to the most delicate vibration of the luminous rays, while it carefully eschews, and repudiates all alliance with their dark, destructive, kindred concomitants! The mind which can believe that such exquisite adaptations have been brought about, and such perils uniformly eschewed throughout the wide domain of vision, without the intervention of any intelligence acting with reference to a clearly defined end, must be either abnormal in its structure, or abnormal in its habits and modes of thought. And as it is in the instance just cited, so is it in every other. The only effect which the marvellous discoveries of science have had upon the teleological argument, has been to add to its force and to extend its sphere. From the ultimate atomic particles of matter, to the orderly I 4 I 26 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. array of the terrestrial and celestial masses, and from the tiniest organism of earth's flora, to the most exquisite forms of its fauna, science has disclosed noth- ing on which there is not engraven the self-authenticat- ing signature of an antecedent design. Ground for antagonism, therefore, there is none. Let theology rejoice in the marvellous disclosures which science is ever making of the manifold wisdom and power of God ; and let science recognise that intelligent agency with- out which both the phenomena of the universe and the forces they declare, must ever remain inexplicable to man. CHAPTER 11 ATOMISM— AN EXAMINATION OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL's OPENING ADDRESS BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIA- TION, 1874. rriHOSE who have read the above address will -L probably be reminded of Paul's encounter with certain philosophers of the Epicureans and Stoics at Athens. Epicureanism, as interpreted and expounded by the poet Lucretius, constitutes the warp and woof of Professor TyndalFs philosophy. His mission, like that of Epicurus, is to rid the world of the gods. Epicurus aimed at the extirpation of the gods of Greece; Dr. Tyndall aims at the extirpation of the Jehovah of the Bible. By the magic wand of an atomic deity, which it is his purpose to set upon the throne of the Universe, he expects to free the world from superstition and the fear of death. " Death only robs us of sensation. As long as we are, death is not ; and when death is, we are not. Life has no evil for him who has made up his mind that it is no evil not to live." Hear this ye suffering sons of toil, and struggle under life's heavy load no longer. The President of the British Association, by " a hint from Hamlet," indicates 27 28 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. lit ii f an easy avenue of escape from the troubles of life. As all the phenomena of the universe can be accounted for by the endless dash and whirl of atoms acting through time of immeasurable duration, there is no need of an intelligent, conscious, author of the things that are seen, or of those that are unseen, and, consequently, there is no God to fear, no hell to shun, no heaven to obtain. You may, it is true, find, as Epicurus did, that when your philosophy, or your science, has freed you from the disturbing notions arising from the doctrine of a future state and a day of reckoning, that "the ethical requirements of your nature " demand for their satisfaction, substantially, all that your master has taught you to discard. But what of that ? You can both adore the gods and maintain your status as an Epi- curean. You can be both atheistic and theistic, both godless and religious. You can cease to believe that there is any room among the molecules for supplication, and yet, mthout hypocrisy go to the house of prayer ! Such is the doctrine enunicated from the platform of the British Association ! It is not new, as the historical sketch by which it was introduced proves, nor do we need to put it in practice in order to know what are its fruits. The very name of Epicure has become a synonymn for sensualist. The system has wrought the ruin of the communities and individuals who have acted out its principles in the past ; and if the people of Belfast substitute it for the holy religion of the Son of God, and practise its degrading dogmas, the moral destiny of the metropolis of Ulster may be easily forecast. GRAVE DEFECTS IX THE HISTORICAL SKETCH. 29 Keferring to the historical section of Professor Tyndalls address, it may be remarked:—!. That as a history of the philosophy, or science if he will, of the historic ancestors of the race, it was certainly unaccount- ably defective. It was neither more or less than an indiscriminating, uncritical, summary of the usual hand- books of the philosophy of the Greeks. I do not stand alone in this estimate, as may be seen by a reference to a truly critical examination of this portion of President Tyndall's address, by Professor Smyth of Aberdeen. 2. It is worthy of observation, that notwithstand- ing the narrowness of the sketch, the lecturer took no notice whatever of one of the most significant of the items of historical information it embraced. The item referred to, is that in which he informs us, that one of the conditions of the possibility of philosophy in Greece, was the intercourse of the Greeks with the Orientals. From this fact, there was one inference which a philosopher might have drawn, and which has been drawn by others— viz., that the light by which nations have been raised from an estate of intellectual and moral darkness, has invariably come from sources without themselves. As the testimony of all history, sacred and profane, points to the East as the primeval source of this light, a calm, candid review of the subject, might have led President Tyndall to have given the Jewish Scriptures some credit in connection with the intellectual birth of Greece. 3. Nor is it less remark- able that the lecturer should have overlooked the fact, that the deliverance of Greece from the gods and demons, u 30 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. was not affected by Greek philosophers, but by Christian missionaries. When Thales, and Leucippus, and Demo- critus, and Epicurus, and Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, had done their best, Greece was still given over to the worship of gods innumerable. When the great apostle of the Gentiles visited the arena, illumi- nated by these physical and metaphysical speculators, he found the city given to idolatry. He found them, in fact, where we now find Professor Tyndall, standing before the record of their own ignorance, proclaiming to the world that to them God was unknown, or as the present head of the British Association expresses it — the question, who made the starry heavens, "still remains unanswered, and science makes no attempt to answer it " (Fragments of Science, p. 93). 4. This spirit of unfairness towards Christianity pervades the lecture. The crude notions of Augustine and Boniface, respecting the existence of antipodes, are spoken of as if they were really sanctioned by the Bible, and the scien- tific attainments of the Arabs are contrasted with the superstitions of Spain, without one hint of the atrocious cruelties, which have rendered the word Saracen a term of ignominy and reproach. In like manner, the safety of Kepler, as distinguished from that of Bruno, or of Galileo, is quietly ascribed to his German home, without the slightest intimation as to the origin of that spirit of freedom to which the safety of that home was due. The historico-scientific critic who can ignore the Refor- mation as a factor in the progress of human thought, is, ipso facto, proved incompetent to the task. 5. Nor THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND THE SCHOOLMEN. 31 should it be omitted to note that Professor Tyndall's estimate of the influence of the Schoolmen, does not come very well from one who bepraises so unsparingly the physical philosophers of Greece, who knew nothing of science, in the modem sense of the term, and whom no one, save the President of the British Association, regards as scientists. To the whole Greek school, eulo- gised by Dr. Tyndall, the scientific investigation of nature was impossible. Nor, after all, was their method so alien from that of the Schoolmen, as he himself incidentally acknowledges. If, as he tells us, their con- clusions rested on vague conjecture, and not on the investigation of facts, was not their method, after all, very closely allied to the a priori method of the Scholastics ? It may be laid down as a rule that those who are severest in their strictures upon the Schoolmen know the least of their writings ; and that some of their detractors are not slow to use their method when it may serve their purpose. 6. In harmony with this method of treating theologians, is his remark as to the qualifica- tion of Newton for expressing an opinion on theological topics. Did Professor Tyndall mean to retort on New- ton his own criticism of Halley when he told Halley that he was ready to hear him on any subject he had studied; but that, as he had not studied the Christian evidences, as he had done, he could not hear him on that subject ; If he did, it is not presumptuous to reiterate the retort, and tell the estimable President, that when he has studied the Christian evidences as Newton did, he will not be so ready to place Christianity and the mythology f 32 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. of Greece under the same category. In the name of the fadeless, peerless renown, of the greatest name known to science, we reiterate the retort, and challenge its author to show credentials such as Newton had, before he ventures to assail the religion which shed its radiance on the diadem of earth's greatest philosopher. Passing from the historical, let us examine the scientific department of this address. At the outset, he lays down, as his scientific fundamental, the principle that the human mind seeks to connect natural pheno- mena with their physical principles. " Determined by an inherent impulse, by a process of abstraction from experience, we form physical theories which lie beyond the pale of experience, but which satisfy the desire of the mind to see every natural occurrence resting on a cause." It may be presumed that by a " physical theory" Professor Tyndall means a theory respecting physical phenomena, and that by the expression " physical theories which lie beyond the pale of experi- ence " he means, not that the theories themselves lie beyond the pale of experience, but that the causes assumed in the theories lie beyond that pale. Inter- preted in the light of the address, the doctrine here laid down is defective. It is perfectly true that the human mind is so constituted that it must refer phenomena, of whatever order, whether of matter or of mind, to causes which lie behind the phenomena ; but it is not the whole of the truth to say that the mind seeks to refer physical phenomena to physical principles. This the mind, by an instinctive impulse, does ; but by MIXD DEMANDS INTELLIGENCE IN ULTIMATE CAUSE. 33 the very same impulse it is compelled to do more. Constituted as it is, it cannot rest at the boundary prescribed for it by Professor Tyndall. When the laws of Kepler are referred to the principle of gravitation, the mind is gratified, but it is not satisfied. The impulse which carries it thus far is just as urgent as ever, and will not permit it to rest until it has solved the question, Whence this principle of gravitation ? It cannot but ask the question, How comes it to pass that matter is possessed of this principle ? Nor will it be satisfied by the information that every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force vary- ing directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of the distance, because matter is what it is. The question cannot be repressed, and must arise, How comes it that matter is possessed of this marvellous quality, without which the firm foundations of the earth, and the very pillars of the universe must crumble into dust? If without this quality in matter the fabric of the heavens were an impossibility, who will dare to deny that the existence of this attribute in the material of this wondrous stellar temple, implies, of necessity, the antecedent operation of mind ? This final reference of the phenomena to mind. Professor Tyndall and his so-called scientific school] repudiate. In doing so, however, they abandon their own primary principle— viz., that we must seek within the domain of the unseen, causes which will satisfy this instinctive impulse of the human mind. If they acknowledge, as they do, their obligation to obey this. D II I < I 34 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. H: ¥\ innate longing of man's nature, why do they arrest the investigation in media via^ and refuse to prosecute the inquiry until this innate requirement is satisfied ? Surely, it comes with the cast of no ordinary inconsist- ency from these apostles of liberty, to lay an arrest on human thought. These friends are not slow to tell theologians that they ask scientists "to purchase intellectual peace at the modest cost of intellectual life." I leave it with all intelligent, candid men, to say who they are who lay this embargo on human thought. It is these professedly liberal, free, enlightened investi- gators of nature who are amenable to the charge. They refuse to go beyond the boundary of an inter- mediate station, at which no intelligent human being can rest. Whilst professing to investigate what they are compelled, by the very constitution of their own being, to pronounce a system, they refuse to rise to the conception of an intelligent Systematiser ! Kecognising the investigation as an exercise pre-eminently befitting an intelligent being, they tell us that there is not, in the whole phenomena, the slightest trace of intelli- gence ! It is well for the cause of truth that whilst the lectures of the leaders of the British Association are atheistic, their illustrations are eminently theistic. All any man need ask, as a reply to Professor Tyndall's atheism is Sir John Lubbock's lecture on the relations of plants and insects, which was read on the same occasion. That lecture won the most unqualified admira- tion. For it the lecturer merits thanks ; and especially ESSENTIAL POINTS OF THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS. 35 for this, that w^hatever his own ultimate conclu- sions may be, he had the delicacy not to insult the most cherished feelings of a Christian community. In saying all this respecting one whom to hear is to respect, I am not to be regarded as approving of his Darwinism. The essential principle of that system is in conflict with the fundamental on which we have been insisting — it dispenses with mind, save perhaps at the outset, in the economy of earth's fauna and flora. This is the Darwinian fundamental, and respecting it I have no hesitation in saying that, constituted as the human mind is, it cannot rest in any such system. As this system has been presented and expounded in Professor Tyndall's address, it will not be out of place to examine it more closely. It assumes, as we are told, several things which, it is alleged, no one can deny. It assumes that the peculiarities of parents are trans- mitted to their offspring — that the fittest survive in the struggle for existence ; and it assumes that those peculiarities which are most favourable to the plant or animal, may go on increasing from generation to generation until an entirely distinct species is pro- duced. Such is the theory. What is the evidence on which it rests? The facts positively established are those furnished by cattle-breeders and pigeon-fanciers, together with certain variations beyond the sphere of man's influence. Those occurring under the superin- tendence of man are, confessedly, the greatest which can be historically traced. What, then, is the extent of the variation ? Does it, in any case, amount to a p •ii ^1 i i I 36 THE REIGX OF CAUSAMTY. specific variation ? Does the history of the changes wrought by tlie influence of man, present a single instance of the origination of a new fertile species ? Natural history answers, not one. We admit, therefore, the law of variation, and we admit the law of heredity — which, certainly, no Calvinist would deny — but we demand the recognition of another law which sets limits to both — viz., the law of maximum variation from the original t3rpical organism. The typical ideal rules throughout ; and when the external influences, under which the abnormal variations have been induced, are withdrawn, the species reverts to the original type ; for nothing abnormal can long abide in nature. What have Darwinians to say to this ? They have nothing, save unverified hypotheses. They are com- pelled to abandon the domain of fact, and make out drafts upon aeons of duration. No marvel that Dr. Tyndall, in his address, felt compelled "to abandon," as he says, " all disguise, and confess that he prolongs the vision backward across the boundary of the experi- mental evidence, and discerns (!) in that matter, which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life." Dr. Tyndall relies much on the scientific uses of the imagination, and certainly he has laid it under tribute here. In this instance, however, he has drawn upon his imagination, not to conjure up causes to account for existing phenomena, but to DR. TYNDALL CONDEMNS A DARWINIAN CONCESSION. 37 conjure up facts from extra-experiential sources, for whose existence he has no evidence within the domain of nature, throughout the entire range of her history, as reported by eye-witnesses, or as treasured up in the strata of our globe. Darwinism, therefore, notwith- standing its pretensions, is unscientific, as it overlooks the law of maximum departure from the normal type, and as it requires for its support phenomena which have hitherto abstained from entering upon the theatre of existence, and which, in consequence of the law rciferred to, can never, on Darwin's principles, come into being at all. Finally, against this hypothesis, we may cite no less an authority than Dr. Tyndall himself. In the address now under examination, with great candour he admits that neither Mr. Darwin nor Mr. Spencer, has fully faced the problem of the origination of life. " Dimin- ishing gradually the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one * primordial form,' but he does not say, as far as I remember, how he supposes this form to have been introduced." As Mr. Darwin seems to hold that the primordial form or forms were intro- duced by creative acts, our President is ultimately compelled to confess that he does not see that much advantage is to be gained by the diminution of the number of created forms. The anthropomorphism, which it seemed the hypothesis was intended to set aside, he concedes is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms, as with the creation of a nmltitude. " Two courses, and two only," he confesses !t If >h II 1 1 38 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. " are possible. Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter." This is candid. It brings out, clearly and honestly, the ultimate question raised by this hypothesis, and the ultimate question raised by the atomic theory of the universe. If the object be, as here avowed, to get rid of anthropo- morphism, or, to speak honestly, to get rid of mind, then there is no alternative save that stated by Professor Tyndall. We must change radically our notions of matter. If we are to exorcise mind from the domain of nature, we must transfer to matter the attri- butes of mind. Having done this, we shall find that we have been engaged in the wonderfully intelligent, and exceedingly philosophical exercise, of trying to build again that which we thought to destroy. In conclusion, attention is asked to that part of the address in which the Lucretian, in the person of the President, summons to the bar of the British Association, the immortal Bishop Butler, and catechises him on the so-called doctrine of instruments. The Lucretian, reversing the process of the Bishop, begins by the removal of the brain, or by a series of pressures and relaxations of pressure, suspends and restores the faculties of perception and action, or relates his own experience under the effects of an electric shock. As in all such cases the man himself is insensible, the question is asked. Where is the man himself during the period of insensibility ? Our first reply is that given by Dr. Tyndall in the course of his dialogue with the THE ATOMIC THEORY AND PERSONAL IDENTITY. 39 Bishop. It is simply this: "Can the atomic theory account for the phenomena of sensation or thought ? " " Can you extract from physical tremors these marvel- lous phenomena?" "Can you satisfy the human understanding in its demand for logical continuity between molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness ? " " This," as the Lucretian seems inclined to confess, "is a rock on which materialism must inevitably split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of life." In the second place, we call upon the Lucretian to account for the phenomenon of the feeling of personal identity throughout life by his atomistic materialism. How is it that the President of the British Association in his address in the Ulster Hall, could confidently affirm that he was the same person as that youth into whose mind the renowned Thomson dropped, so many years ago, the germs of those stores of knowledge he now possesses ? Seeing, as all scientists will confess, that there was not a single atom or molecule of the student boy existing in the scientific president, how comes it that the president feels conscious that he is identified with the boy? Here again, we ask, can the atomistic hypothesis account for the phenomenon of human consciousness ? Well, it has tried ; and let us hear what account it gives of the matter. In his Fragments of Science y Dr. Tyndall informs us that the departing atoms and mole- cules, as they leave the human organism, whisper the secret to the new atoms and molecules as they arrive. This is science we are, of course, bound to believe, for Ijl t iMt !l 40 THK KEIGN OF CAUSALITY the gentleman who has enunciated it has since been elected to preside over the discussions of the British Association. The old worn-out atoms and molecules, which never take their departure until they are deprived of all vital energy, are, nevertheless, able to give the password to new atoms and molecules— a pass- word, let it be observed, which must embrace not simply their own history, but the history of the antecedent elements of the organism from the very dawn of memory ! Surely if the Lucretian was com- pelled to confess that the problem of the origin of consciousness, was a rock on which materialism must split, he is equally bound to concede that here is another rock, on which the severed timbers of the tiny craft must be broken into its original atoms. We speak calmly, but with all the assurance which the constitution of our nature can inspire, when we affirm that the atomistic materialism of Dr. Tyndall is not only silenced, but disproved, by the facts revealed in the inextinguishable feeling of identity. Finally, we find in the fable of the degradation of Lucretius through his wife's philter, the material of a pertinent retort. Speaking of the moral effects of disease of the brain. Doctor Tyndall alludes to this fabulous case. As, according to the fiible, the brain of Lucretius was so stimulated by base passions through his jealous wife's philter, that he abhorred and slew himself, we are asked to solve the riddle of this personal antagonism. " How could the hand of Lucretius," we are asked, " have been thus turned against himself if RETORT FROM THE FABLE OF THE FILTER. 41 the real Lucretius had remained as before?" Now we accept the challenge given through the medium of this story, and retorting upon the worthy President, we ask, " who was the Lucretius that lifted his hand to smite ? " If the brain be the man, and the brain be debased, how are we to account for the man resistin<^ the promptings of his degraded self, and choosing life rather than death before he would yield to the base suggestions ? If the brain of Lucretius was Lucretius, who was the Lucretius that rose up against that con- taminated brain, and dissolved the partnership? The materialist never walked the platform of the British Association who could answer this question on material- istic principles. It may be said that the story is but a fable, and does not merit attention. If it was worthy the attention of the august savants of the British Association, a review of it cannot be out of place by those on whose most cherished hopes, the relator of it would cast the dark shadow of an eternal nicrht — a shadow not greatly mitigated by the assurance of a future in which " you and I, like streaks of mornino- clouds, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past." It is but due to Dr. Tyndall to say, that he admits his inability to answer such questions as we have been propounding, and that he confesses, in his lecture and m his Fragments of Science, the insufficiency of the physical sciences to satisfy all the demands of man's nature. This he does; but if he has the candour to make this confession, how is it that he has not the 42 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. scientific justice to keep within the chosen sphere ? If the physical sciences are not adequate to the task of meeting the soul-longings after communion with the mind, which, as we hold, lies behind the curtain which hides the unseen, how is it that President Tyndall attempts to account for everything by the atomistic hypothesis ? Is this not trying to satisfy these immor- tal aspirations with atoms and molecules ? And turning from Dr. Tyndall to the British Association, is it too much to ask, why it is that their President and others can be permitted to discuss the very fundamental questions of theology from the side of materialism, while they refuse to admit any paper professedly on the other side ? We deny the charge so persistently preferred against our common Christianity — that it trammels and bridles thought, and lays an arrest upon scientific progress. Such a charge can be made to have an air of truth only by speaking of religion in the generic, and identifying Christianity, as Professor Tyndall has done, with systems of religion from whose hands its professors have suffered martyr- dom. Judging by the fate of anti-Christian hypotheses in the past, we can, with unfaltering confidence, face the hypotheses of the passing hour and of the whole future. When the advocates of these unverified assumptions shall have done their worst, and when not they, but their baseless anti-Christian conjectures, like streaks not of " morning," but of evening cloud, shall have melted into the infinite Erebus of an eternal oblivion, that glorious old system, which has defied the ATOMIC THEORY INDORSED BY HUMANTARIANISM. 43 whole power of earth's potentates to crush her, and put to silence the mightiest champions of infidelity the world has ever furnished, shall still shine on, its genuine adherents increasing in numbers, in knowledge, and holiness, until the whole earth shall be reclaimed from the power of darkness and introduced into the light, and life, and liberty of the sons of God. HUMANITARIANISM ACCEPTS, PROVISIONALLY, TyNDALL'S Impersonal Atomic Theory. The London Inquirer of the 5th September, 1874, a Humanitarian organ, indorses Dr. Tyndall's Atomic theory. The substance of the article is expressed in the following paragraph : — " Taking up Tyndall's thought, wc can now see that the whole progress of science has seemed to strengthen the pro- test, and to give more strength to the doctrine of Lucretius and Bruno : that * matter, by its own intrinsic force and virtue, brings these forms (of nature) forth.' Newton's Prmcipia went to show that, given in matter, the force and law of gravitation and the laws of motion, there needed no artificer now to construct the solar system. The nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace set forth that matter originally needed no artificer to mould it into worlds, if we suppose its particles scattered abroad in space endowed with repulsion and attraction. They would, of themselves, form rings, planets, satellites, and sun. Dalton's chemistry showed that 44 THE KEIGN OF CAUSALITY. it if we suppose a few kinds of primordial atoms of different magnitudes, or endowed with dififerent forces, and possessing certain laws of attractive (elective 1) affinity, no artificer is necessary to combine them into the innumerable compounds and endow them with the qualities with which we are familiar. Darwin's Origin of Species, and Descent of Man suggested that, given certain organic forms of lowly type, no artificer was needed to construct all the countless forms of organic nature ; for there were in these lowly forms, intrinsic force and virtue^ by which they develop into higher forms, and these into higher, until the ascidian becomes the man. Herbert Spencer, and now Tyndall, suggest that even in the inorganic forms of air, water, phosphorus, and a few other elements, there are intrinsic force and virtue to make them at some period or other of the world's history — Bastian says to make them now — of tluimselves combine and form organisms of low type, Avhich develop, according to Darwin's idea, ever into higher type ; therefore these inorganic atoms possess a latent life. Huxley would persuade us not only that these inorganic atoms come in organic forms to live, but that in the human brain they think, and feel, and will. Thus every line of scientific inquiry seems to have led to larger and larger belief in Bruno's intrinsic force and virtue of matter, making more and more needless the conception of a Supreme artificer." This defence, like all the attempts ever made to account for the phenomena of nature, independent of the antecedence or intervention of a Personal Intelli- gence, furnishes the material for its own refutation. 1. It recognises no such entity as mind existing apart from matter. " Matter by its own intrinsic force and virtue brings (all) the forms of nature forth." 2. The ultimate atoms from which all the phenomena of the THE THEORY ASCRIBES INTELLIGEXCE TO MATTER. 45 inorganic and organic worlds come forth, are destitute of life, or intellect, or consciousness, or will. 3. It is not until these atoms enter into the human brain that they begin to think, and feel, and will ! That is, mind does not appear upon the theatre on which is enacted this marvellous procession from formless to formed, from blind force to conscious intellect and will, until the astounding cycle is complete ! Such is the out- come of the long line of scientists, stretching from Democritus to Tyndall and Huxley ! Now of this kosmogony it may be remarked— 1. That he who can believe it should be careful not to speak of the wildest of Greek or Hindoo kosmogonies as incred- ible. 2. That there is not a single step in this march of nature from the atom to the conscious intellect and will, which is not effected "at the modest cost" of sacrificing the fundamental principle, that an effect cannot transcend its cause. The writer in the Inquirer may tell us that Tyndall's god is a great god, and that his existence, "as the all-forming and all- sustaining spirit of the universe," underlies Tyndall's materialism, but the reply is obvious. As Tyndall's god, in the antecedent inorganic world, is destitute of life, or thought, or will, how comes it that this lifeless, unconscious, unintelligent atomic deity, can form or sustain anything ? and how comes it that he acquires life, and clothes himself with the attri- butes of thought, and consciousness, and will ? These philosophers bring in these attributes at the wrong end of the progression, and can introduce them into the ,1 r ?f 46 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. (I : 4 1 1 w it. 1 1 lILu, h series only at the sacrifice of the fundamental principle of all sound philosophy, that the cause must account for all the phenomena— that there must be in the cause, that hind and degree of efficiency which will rationally account for the effect. The theory, therefore, leaves breaks in the chain for which the human mind demands connecting links- links which nothing but mind can forge. It is not unnatural to ask, What gave to matter, " the force and law of gravitation," and laid down "the laws of motion " ? Given in matter this force and these laws, these philosophers might manage to account for the mechanism of the universe ; but when they have done so, do they imagine that " the questioning impulse," on which Dr. Tyndall lays such stress, will allow them to escape the question, " How came matter to possess the requisite conditions of this orderly array ? " Granting, with Kant and Laplace, that matter endowed with repulsion aud attraction, however distributed through space, needed no artificer to mould it into an orderly array of worlds, will the constitution of the human mind permit us to repress the question, " Whence the qualities to which these antagonistic tendencies are due, and how come they to be so nicely adjusted that they eventuate in a precision of movement which is absolutely mathematical, and indispensable to the stability of the universe ? " Assuming that the various chemical compounds found in nature, are the natural outcome of "a few kinds of primordial atoms of different magnitudes, or endowed with different forces. THE LABORATORY OF NATURE REQUIRES A CHEMIST. 47 and possessing certain laius of attractive (elective?) affinity" — assuming that, with such a primordial atomic stock, "no artificer was needed to combine them into the innumerable compounds, and endow them with the qualities, with which we are familiar" — assuming all these postulates, is it possible to repress the question, "How came these primordial atoms to possess these diverse qualities?" Is there a human being in existence, unwarped by the bands of theoretic prejudices, capable of holding with these philosophers, that we have, in a sufficiently large laboratory, stocked with the requisite kinds of primordial forms, all the con- ditions requisite to the production of our inorganic world? From the womb of such alchemy there could come forth nothing save a huge meteoric stone. The mind which can believe that our own fair earth, and the present universe, with its stupendous array of suns and systems, have come forth from some three score kinds of primordial atoms shivering, dashing, whirling in the alembic of infinite space, themselves uncaused, and their combinations undirected, by any living, conscious intelligence, presents a psychological puzzle which absolutely defies solution, as its processes must be carried on in defiance of the laws of thought. If, as Professor Huxley has proved, and, to go no further, as the tons of Australian meat now imported demonstrate, no form of living thing ever comes into existence apart from, or independent of, an antecedent life-germ, how can "the indwelling" god of Dr. Tyndall and his defender, furnish the vital germ, whilst he himself is I i ! t 48 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. still destitute of life, existing in unconscious, unintelli- gent atoms ? Here, then, is another break in the chain of these speculators, and who will furnish the missing link? Darwin needs it, as the defence in the Inquirer admits, for it asks for certain organic forms of a lowly type to begin with. Given these, and an eternity for development, and the ascidiau— a headless moUusk— becomes a man ! As to the final assumption of this defence— viz., " that even in the inorganic forms of air, water, phos- phorus, and a few other elements, there are intrinsic force and virtue to make them at some period or other of the world's history, of themselves, combine and form organisms of low type, which develop, according to Darwin's idea, ever into higher type"— as to this assumption, both reason and the facts of science are against it. The Darwinian hypothesis reaches here the crucial point, where it must either admit the inter- vention of an extramundane intelligence, or find, in inorganic matter, the attributes of mind. Herbert Spencer and Professor Tyndall stand on the life side of the chasm which divides the organic from the inor- <^anic world, and, throwing into it " the inorganic forms of air, water, and phosphorus, and a few other elements," comfort Mr. Darwin with the assurance— an assurance given in the face of Professor Huxley's demonstration— that " at some period or other of the world's history " he will find, if he returns, the much- needed primordial germs! Such is the science of Herbert Spencer and Dr. Tyndall. It is but fair to THE INORGANIC AND LIVING ORGANISMS. 49 Professor Huxley, to say that it is not his. No man of science, such as Huxley confessedly is, could, without imperilling his reputation as a scientist, take his stand beside Spencer and Tyndall to await the evolution of living organisms out of that medley of elements. Let the " inorganic forms of air and water " be passed into the chasm through a filter excluding all life-germs, and if our expectations are to be regulated by the recorded facts of scientific experiments, and not by an unscientific imagination which seems to ascribe causal efficiency to the mere element of time, we must look upon the experimenters as chief mourners at the grave's mouth of their atomic god. Their science, falsely so-called, has bereft them of a Personal Intelli- gence, and genuine science has swept their " indwelling, all-forming, and all-sustaining spirit " into a sepulchre upon whose darkness the light of no resurrection morn- ing shall ever break. Rejecting Him who is the life and light of men, and setting up in His stead an impersonal kosmical life, they find themselves like the worshippers of Baal on Carmel, invoking a god which can give no response to their cries. Absurd in their theology, they are equally absurd in their religion. As an impersonal god is a god with which no intelligent communion can be carried on, and towards which no love can be cherished, their religion is reduced to a something of which the writer in the Inquirer attempts no account. The reader is solemnly besought to observe this reticence. The writer dare not, as he could not, expound the religion of this imper- E 50 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. DR. TYNDALL AND ATHEISM. 51 1) I ' ' J sonal theology. Let a man try to love, and hold com- munion with, the impersonal, atomic god of Dr. Tyndall, and his moral and intellectual nature will rise up and scatter to the winds the absurd imaginings of such vain philosophy. The spirit of man cannot rest in a religion which is not correlative to a living, conscious. Personal Intelligence. It is for the Living God the human soul fainteth and crieth out. In a lecture on " Crystalline and Molecular Forces," delivered in Manchester, Professor Tyndall has so far deferred to the religious feelings of the nation as to read what some have regarded as a quasi recantation. Referring, as he has already done in his Fragments of Science, to the architectural instincts of atoms, and rising from crystallisation to the manifestations of life in the sprouting leaves and flowers of spring, he remarked that he had often asked himself " whether there is no power, being, or thing in the universe whose knowledge of that of which I am so ignorant is greater than mine. I have asked myself, Can it be possible that man s knowledge is the greatest knowledge — that man's life is the highest life ? My friends, the profession of that Atheism with which I am sometimes so lightly charged would, in my case, be an impossible answer to this question, only slit^htly preferable to that fierce and distorted Theism which I have had lately reason to know still reigns rampant in some minds as the survival of a more ferocious age." Those who reix 333-36. t Ibid. pp. 3, 4. ASSUMPTIONS INVALIDATED BY FACTS. U belief which he here antagonises on the assumption that the probabilities are against it ? If his own principles are to be carried out in estimating this ancient, universal* belief, there will be found, as the residuum, the primary, ineffaceable truth, that ivhatever exhibit!^ marks of design must have had an intelligent author. When all the superstitions and crude notions where- with the belief in creation has been associated, have been dissipated, this conviction abides. Constituted as the human mind is, it cannot ignore the evidence of the operation of mind presented in the universe, and must reject, as unphilosophical, any system of biology which dispenses with intelligence in the struc- ture of the earth's fauna and flora. 2. That it assumes that man's primitive estate was that of a savage. As this assumption is contrary to historical facts, and has nothing to rest upon save a few remains of prehistoric man, which admit of inter- pretations differing widely from that put upon them by scientists of the school of Mr. Spencer, he need not be surprised if this, his primary assumption, be rejected as a mere begging of the question. 3. That it assumes that all the tribes of the human race, existing throughout the earth at the time the remains in question were deposited, were in the estate indicated by the remains. Granting that the remains prove the savage estate of the individual and of the tribe to which he belonged, does it follow that other tribes, inhabiting other and more congenial regions of the earth, were in the same estate ? Men of science I.. lis THE KEIGN OF CAUSALITY. have need to be reminded of wliat the doctrine of Scripture on this point is. Scripture does not teach that the human race retained its moral integrity, or that each of the families into which it was divided retained the knowledge possessed by the common ancestor. On the contrary, it tells a sad story of aix)stacy, dispersion, and degradation — a degradation retarded by special Divine interposition in the case of some, but allowed to go on in the case of others. If the morally degraded wandered away from the primitive seat of the race, and descended lower and lower in the scale the farther they receded from the parent stock and penetrated into uncongenial environments, might it not be expected that their remains would testify, as the remains in question do, to a low estate of civilisation ? But what is there in all this to warrant the sweeping i^eneralisation assumed by Mr. Spencer as a premiss from which to argue ? Do these instances, exhumed from European caves, warrant the conclusion, that the tribes resident in the Asiatic fontal centre, were, at the time indicated, in the same estate of social degradation ? Never was there a more unwarrantable inference ; and yet it is assumed by some of the most eminent scientists of the day as absolutely unchallengeable ! 4. In the next place, it may be remarked that the belief in the doctrine of a special creation can be proved, and has been proved historically, as well as by internal evidence, to have been handed down to us, not by savages, but by men whose writings demonstrate that they have no mental or moral superiors in the school of POSITION SUBVEUSIVE OF PRIMARY RELIEFS. 119 Mr. Spencer. On the score of its credibility, as well as of its harmony with scientific facts, we can afford to compare the kosmogony of Moses, or David, or Isaiah, or Paul, or Peter, with the biology of Herbert Spencer any day, notwithstanding all the advantage he has derived from the writings of Tyndall and Huxley, or the prelections of Professor Owen. 5. However little store Mr. Spencer may set by primitive beliefs, if primitive man had not been possessed of some, he would never have ascribed the phenomena of his environment to any cause whatever. And if we are to speak of the necessity of some of these beliefs as compared with others, we would specify one which is subversive of that form of the evolution hypothesis which he has set forth in his biology. The belief referred to is the intuitive, innate conviction, that a phenomenon implies the existence and operation of a cause. This primary belief is universal, and involves the principle that the phenomenon reveals the attributes of the cause concerned in its production. It is, there- fore, irreconcilable with the position, which is really the ultimate one of Mr. Spencer's biology— viz., that the ultimate cause is inscrutable. Either the principle which ascribes inscrutability to a cause is universal, or it is not. If it be universal, it must apply to immediate and proximate causes, as well as to ultimate ; and, if so, the immediate cause to which we instinctively refer the phenomenon, is to us, at the time of the reference, inscrutable, and therefore unknown ; in which case the reference is as unintelligent as it is unwarrantable. If I . ii I 1 ■t 120 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. it be alleged that it is not universal, but true only of the ultimate cause, the question arises, on what authority is this limitation of the dark attribute of inscrutability to the case of the ultimate cause made ? As already shown, there can be no reason for regarding the thing pronounced inscrutable a cause at all, which is not equally valid for denying its inscrutability. This belief is as old as humanity, and as wide as the human race; and it is fatal, not only to the specific argument which Mr. Spencer has tried to draw from the other alleged primitive beliefs with which the belief in the doctrine of a special creation is found to bo associated, but fatal to the fundamental principle of his whole system, which postulates the inscrutability of the ultimate cause. 6. Moreover, it were very easy for the advocates of the doctrine of special creation to retort this argu- Tnentuni ad invidiam. Evolutionists should be the last to reproach their opponents with holding opinions " belonging to an almost extinct family of beliefs." It is not so long ago since we were told, on the high authority of the president of the British Association, that the evolution hypothesis was as old as the Greek philosophy. Now, however, if we are to credit Mr. Spencer, " it is a conception born in times of comparative enlightenment." We are quite ready to compare the enlightenment of the age of Moses with that of the age of Democritus, or to compare the prophets of Israel with the sages of Greece. And if we were to pass in review the various evolution hypotheses EXTINCT FAMILIES OF EVOLUTION HYPOTHESES. 121 from the time of the Greek evolutionists to Mr. Spencer, we might be able to show that the one advocated by him belongs to a very large family of not only almost, but altogether, extinct hypotheses. Where now, is the hypothesis of Thales, who held that water is the original of all things, and that God is the intelligence who from water formed all beings ? or, the hypothesis of Anaximander, who substituted an absolutely indeter- minate thing called infinity for the elementary water of Thales ? or, the hypothesis of Anaximines, who traced all things to air ? or that of Anaxagoras, who referred all things to a number of primitive elements called by him homoeomeriae ? Where, now, is the hypothesis of Pythagoras, who deduced all things from a monad, embracing in its constitution both matter and spirit fused together into an absolute unity of substance ? or the same hypothesis as more fully developed into hylozoism by his followers ? What scientist would now accept, unmodified, the atomic theory of Democritus, who represented all things as proceeding from eternal atoms possessing the same qualities and specific gravity, and differing only in size; and that their general compounds, such as lead and iron, differ from each other merely in the arrangement of their atoms ? It is questionable whether even Professor Tyndall or Mr. Spencer would embark in the business of world- building with a stock of such atoms, however diverse in size, or however unlimited in number. With atoms whose qualities are generated by their own movements, and whose movements are not the offspring of their 11 I 1 i i « I 122 THE llEIGN OF CAUSALITV. previously existing qualities, it is more than probable that even our modern atomic chiefs might fail to construct even our inorganic world. And as to their entering upon the task with such material as water, or air, or the primitive elements of Anaximines, or the monad of Pythagoras, of course this were out of the question altogether. This brief review of some of the evolutionary hypo- theses is sufficient to prove that, however it may be with others, evolutionists should be the last to speak of the presumption which exists against an opinion found associated with " an almost extinct family of beliefs." If Mr. Spencer's hypothesis is to be judged upon this principle, it must be condemned ; for it is associated with a class of speculations wljich no scientist, except for the purpose of producing a temporary sensation, would entertain or endorse for a moment. Equally liable to retort is our author's next reason for rejecting the doctrine of a special creation. He alleo-es that it is not countenanced by a single fact. " No one," he says, " ever saw a special creation." " No one," he adds, *' ever found proof, of an indirect kind, that a special creation had taken place." Quoting a remark of Dr. Hooker's, he continues, " Naturalists who suppose new species to be miraculously originated, habitually suppose the origination to occur in some region remote from human observation. Wherever the order of organic nature is exposed to the view of zoologists and botanists, it expels this conception ; and the conception survives only in connection with spencer's tp:sts applied to his hypothesis. 123 imagined places, where the order of organic phenomena is unknown."* Here is an appeal to facts, and we accept the authority invoked. It is a fact that no one ever saw a new species of organism created ; but it is also a fact that no one ever saw one brought into existence by a process of evolution ; and it is a fact that no one ever found proof, of an indirect kind, that such an evolution of new species had taken place. Wherever the order of organic nature is exposed to the view of zoologists and botanists, as in the case already quoted from Professor Huxley's sermon on the origin of species, it expels the Spencerian conception of evolution without the intervention of intelligence, and supplants it by the irresistible conviction that the process of organisation is under the guidance of a skilful artist ; and the conception for which the authority of facts is claimed by Mr. Spencer survives only in connection with flights of the so-called scientific imagination, by which " the vision is prolonged backw^ards beyond the boimdary of experimental evidence." There is not a single fact presented in these two volumes which gives the slightest countenance to the hypothesis which its author advocates ; nor is there one w^hich, when fully analysed, does not add strength to the argument in support of a presiding intelligence and a special creation. After the author had reached the 351st page of his first volume, he felt constrained to make the following * Principles of Biology y vol. i. p. 336. It i\ h A W t 124 THE REIGX OF CAUSALITY. confession : — " Though the facts at present assignable in direct proof that, by progressive modifications, races of organisms that are apparently distinct may result from antecedent races are not sufficient, yet there are numerous facts of the order required." Is this not a distinct and explicit acknowledgment that no one has ever seen the evolution of a new species ? If he regards this fact as furnishing an argument against special creation, how can he refuse to admit its force as against his own evolution hypothesis ? But if he has not direct proof sufficient for the establishing of this hypothesis, he has, he informs us, "numerous facts of the order required." What are these facts ? Here they are : — " It has been shown beyond all question, that unlikenesses of structure gradually arise among descendants from the same stock. We find that there is going on a modifying process of the kind alleged as the source of specific differences — a process which, though slow in its action, does, in time, produce conspicuous changes — a process which, to all appearance, would produce in millions of years, and under the great varieties of conditions which geological records imply, any amount of change."* And yet he confesses that the pala3ontology of these records cannot be held to prove evolution, and that only some few of them yield it support ! -f" Such, then, are the facts ; what is their value in this argument ? It will be observed that, while Mr. Spencer speaks of the gradual rise of unlikenesses of * Principles of Biology^ vol. i. p. 351. f Ibid. p. 399. r. DAIUVIN S INFERENTIAL liOLDNESS. 125 structure among descendants from the same stock, he has not ventured to say that these have, in any instance, amounted to the origination of a new species, and that he confesses that palaeontology does not furnish a single instance. All he says is, that this fact is of the order required ! His hypothesis requires structural change, and here is a fact of this class. It is true the change to which it testifies is not great enough for his purpose ; but it " bears as great a ratio to the brief period in which it has been produced," as the whole change required " bears to that vast period during which living forms have existed on the earth." This is very like a confession which Mr. Darwin makes at the close of his remarks on the effects of increased or decreased use of parts. " Although man," he concludes, " may not have been much modified during the latter stages of his existence through the increased or decreased use of parts, the facts now given show that his liability in this respect has not been lost ; and we positively know that the same law holds good with the lower animals." Such is his confession ; what is his conclusion ? With an inferential boldness that brooks no barrier, he adds : — " Consequently (I) we may infer that when, at a remote epoch, the progenitors of man were in a transitional state, and were changing from (juadrupeds into bipeds, natural selection would pro- bably have been greatly aided by the inherited effects of the increased or diminished use of the different parts of the body!"* It is truly painful to observe in the * Descent of Ma7i, vol. i. p. 121. 12G THE RFIGN OF CAUSALITY. writings of these really able men, so persistent an endeavour to establish their favourite hypotheses by facts which they are compelled to admit do not furnish the evidence required. Frustrated by the facts, not only of historic and prehistoric times, but of palaeon- tology also, they overleap the boundary of experimental evidence, and assume transitions and structural changes which they have failed to prove. When the facts adduced, even as estimated by themselves, do not give the slightest indication of a specific change, they comfort themselves with the reflection that changes of the class observed must, if continued long enough, effect the change required ! Of course, a change of the right kind, however small in amount, if increased by however small an increment, must, if unchecked, at some future epoch of duration, amount to the quantum required ; but only if unchecked. Ay, there 's the rub — only on the assumption that the change shall be unchecked! What warrant is there for this assump- tion ? Certainly there is none in the phenomena of tbr observed changes of the kosmos. Speaking of the external factors of evolution, Mr. Spencer refers to the fact that our earth, in its annual motion round the sun, does not move constantly along a rigid, unvarying curve, but along a curve constant in its inconstancy — now approaching a circle, and anon an ellipse. This change is a very slow one, and the cycle which embraces its extremes has the astounding range of one or two millions of years. Now, suppose that an astronomer, who was not aware of the demonstrations of VARTATION LIMITED BY LAW. 127 La Place, were watching the movements of our globe referred to, and observed that, in a given period, the divergence towards a more eccentric curve amounted to several miles, might he not, if he reasoned with Mr. Spencer and the evolutionists, begin to apprehend an elongation of the major axis of its orbit, and a shortening of the minor, which must eventually evolve extremes of heat and cold absolutely destructive of organic life in our world ? As an evolutionist, he might thus reason ; but the scientific astronomer would inform him that his fears were groundless, and had their origin in a too nar- row induction. He would allay his alarm by assuring him that this variation in the orbit of the earth has its limits, and that when these were reached, the appa- rently errant orb would swing gradually back to the less hazardous curve. Now, we charge upon the evolutionists the perpetra- tion of a like error, in their argument from the observed structural changes which have been induced, or de- veloped, in vegetable and animal organisms. The organic variation has been shown, again and again, to have bounds set to it which it cannot pass. Even Mr. Darwin, as quoted by Mr. Spencer, remarks that " ' sports ' are extremely rare under nature, but far from rare under cultivation." And Mr. Spencer himself admits * that competent judges do not doubt that our extremely variable domestic animals have become vari- able under the changed conditions implied in domesti- cation, and holds that these animals were constant prior * Principles of Biology, vol. i. p. 262. ji 'I li 'f ' f I'i 1 111 128 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. to their subjection to man. Is this not a palpable sur- render of the very citadel of evolution ? It is neither more nor less than an acknowledgment that constancy is the rule, whilst variation is the exception ; or, as Mr. Spencer puts it, " the wild race maintains its type with great persistence," whilst " the domestic race frequenth/ produces individuals more unlike the average type than the parents are." * " The life of a species, like that of an individual," he says, *' is maintained by the unequal and ever-varying actions of incident forces on its different parts." i* This is conclusive, but it is conclusive against the evolution hypothesis. If, as Mr. Spencer has shown, variation is essential to specific life, what becomes of the notion that, by the operation of this same law of variation, new species can be originated? Can the causes which are held to be capable of transmuting one species into another be held capable of rendering such transmutation impossible? If uniformity, as "inter- breeding " demonstrates, produces specific deterioration, whilst variation, as those skilled in cattle-breeding inform us, promotes the well-being, and tends to the perfection of the species, surely it is most unwarrantable to infer that variation may eventually result in specific destruction by improving one species into another. It is no wonder, then, that these two classes of related facts led Mr. Spencer to enunciate the foregoing remark- able law of specific life. The law, as we have seen, is universal, extending to the very orbs of heaven. The * Principles of Biology, vol. i. p. 2G1. t Ihid. p. -286. DR. STRUTHERS ON VARIATION. 129 stability of the universe, as well as the stability of the species of earth's fauna and flora, is maintained by variations which are limited and bounded by an unseen power which ever acts in reference to the original type, and maintains its image, substantially, in every indivi- dual movement or organism, through the instrument- ality of the very forces which evolutionists regard as all-potent to effect its destruction. The case of a particular family, in which digital variation occurred, adduced in support of the evolution hypothesis,* will serve to illustrate this point. The case is cited from an essay by Dr. Struthers, and the conclusion drawn is quoted with approval by Mr. Spencer. After stating the history of the variation through four generations, Dr. Struthers, referring to a daughter who was born with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, says : — " In this, the most interesting sub-branch of the descent, we see digital increase, which appeared in the first generation on one hmb, appearing in the second on two limbs, the hands ; in the third on three limbs, the hands and one foot ; in the fourth on all the four limbs. There is as yet no fifth generation in uninterrupted transmission of the variety. The variety does not yet occur in any number of the fifth generation of Esther's descendants " (the female ancestor to whom the variety is traced back), " which consists as yet only of three boys and one girl, whose parents were normal, and of two boys and two girls, whose grand-parents were normal. It is not known whether, in the case of the great- grandmother, Esther P., the variety was original or inherited." * Principles of Biology^ vol. i. pp. 258-60. rt! 130 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. Such is the case ; what conclusion does it warrant ? Does it prove that variation may go on indefin- itely ? or does it prove that it is held in check by a specific law restraining it, like the motions of the planets, within unalterable limits? The case proves that the normal type rules ; for in the generations specified, only six instances of variation occur, whilst there are one hundred and two of the normal type? If Mr. Spencer can adduce nothing in favour of his hypothesis better than a woman who has acquired, through the mystic process of evolution, three digits more than her great -grand mother, he had better be a little more modest in his averments about the absence of evidence in support of the doctrine of a special creation. It would, indeed, seem as if he felt the weakness and unprofitableness of this argument; for he immediately tries to buttress it with an a "priori borrowed from his First Principles^ to the effect that an idea which cannot be presented to the mind in a definite shape or form, is a false idea, and is to be rejected. In addition to what has been said on the point here raised, when speaking of the impossibility of regarding an inscrutable thing as a cause, it may be sufficient to cite a passage from Mr. Spencer's Principles of Psychology, from which it appears that he does not always regard the unimaginableness of a thing as a sufficient reason for rejecting it. Avowing "the belief that mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing," he confesses that " we remain utterly incapable of seeing, INSTANCE OF BELIEF IN THE INCONCEIVABLE. 131 and even of imagining, how the two are related. Mind," he adds, "still continues to us a something without any kinship to the other things ; and from the science which discovers by introspection the laws of this something, there is no passage by transitional steps to the sciences which discover the laws of these other things."* Here, then, is a belief which cannot abide the crucial test of one of Mr. Spencer's first principles, and yet he holds it ! If he can hold this belief, despite its incon- ceivableness, with what show of consistency can he reject, on the ground of its inconceivableness, the belief in the doctrine of a special creation ? To quote his own words, at the close of this argument against the Scripture doctrine, if "belief, properly so-called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed ; and," as he confesses, " no such mental representation is here possible," how can he believe that there is any relation between "those thoughts and feelings which constitute consciousness," and the action of the nervous system ? In a word, then, even though the doctrine objected to were that of the creation of an organism, ex nihilo, Mr. Spencer could not consistently reject it on the ground specified. As the common and Scriptural doctrine, so far as organisms is concerned, is not that of a direct creation ex nihilo, but a mediate creation out of previously existing matter, Mr. Spencer is con- strained to frame his objection so as to meet this aspect of the question. This hypothesis, he alleges, * Principles of Psychology^ vol. i. pp. 140-56. 132 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. r • I I involves, ultimately, '*tbe creation of force; and the creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter." He asks, " The myriad atoms going to the composition of the new organism, all of them previously dispersed through the neighbouring air and earth, does each, suddenly disengaging itself from its combinations, rush to meet the rest, unite with them into the appro- priate chemical compounds, and then fall with certain others into its appointed place in the aggregate of complex tissues and organs?" This, he says, is "to assume a myriad of supernatural impulses, differing in their directions and amounts, given to as many different atoms," and is, therefore, " a multiplication of mysteries rather than a solution of a mystery. Every one of these impulses, not being the result of a force locally existing in some other form, implies the creation of force ; and the creation of force is just as inconceiv- able as the creation of matter." Now, it will be observed that Mr. Spencer has some difficulty in bringing his mental-representation principle into conflict with the doctrine of the creation of organisms out of existing matter. Not only is the doctrine, on his own showing, capable of mental presentation, but he has himself given us a sketch of the process. He has figured the atoms disengaging themselves and entering into new combinations, and taking, as if by magic, their places in the aggregate of complex tissues and organs. He has put before us a process not unlike the process of crystallisation, so beautifully described by Professor Tyndall in his MEDIATE CREATION NOT INCONCEIVAJiLE. 133 Fragments of Science, and in his late Manchester lecture on " Crystalline and Molecular Forces," and one which is actually realised in the evolution of the animal from the embryo, as described by Professor Huxley. In the following passage, Dr. Tyndall gives a very graphic sketch of the progress by which, materialists allege, the thing pronounced by Mr. Spencer to be inconceivable, may be done. " And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead mineral to a living grain of corn. When it is examined by polarised light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are observed. And why 1 Because the architecture of the grain resembles the archi- tecture of the crystal. In the grain, also, the molecules are set in definite positions, and, in accordance with their ar- rangement, they act upon the light. But what has built together the molecules of the corn? I have already said, regarding crystalline architecture, that you may, if you please, consider the atoms and molecules to be placed in position by a power external to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now. But if, in the case of crystals, you have rejected this notion of an external architect, I think you are bound to reject it now, and to conclude that the mole- cules of the corn are self-posited by the forces with which they act upon each other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external agent in the one case, and to reject it in the other. "Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices, and subjecting it to the action of polarised light, let us place it in the earth, and subject it to a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the molecules, both of the corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in that state of agitation 1 i * 134 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. which we call warmth. Under these circumstances, tho grain, and the suhstances which surround it, interact, and a definite molecular architecture is the result. A hud is formed; this hud reaches the surface, where it is exposed to the sun's rays, which are also to he regarded as a kind of vibratory motion. And as the motion of common heat with which the grain and the suhstances surrounding it were first endowed, enabled the grain and these suhstances to exercise their attractions and repulsions, and thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of the sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous vapour of the air. Tlie bud appropriates those constituents of both for which it has an elective attrac- tion, and permits the other constituent to resume its place in the air. Tlius the architecture is carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade, the matter of the earth and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn towards the root and blade, and the plant augments in size. We have in succession the bud, the stalk, the ear, tlie full corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular action being completed by the production of grains similar to that with which the process began. "Now, there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the conceptive or imagining power of the purely human mind. An intellect the same in kind as our own would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to follow tlie whole process from beginning to end. It would see every molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions and repulsions exerted between it and other molecules, the whole process and its consummation being an instance of the play of molecular force. Given the grain and its environment, the purely human intellect might, if sufficiently expanded, trace out ct ipriori every step of the process of growth, and by the application of purely mechanical principles demon- GROWTH RESOLVABLE INTO MOLECULAR FORCE. 135 strate that the cycle must end, as it is seen to end, in the production of forms like that Avith wliich it began. A similar necessity rules here to that which rules the planets in their circuits round the sun. " You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly, as at the beginning we agreed it should bo stated. But I must go still further, and affirm that in the eye of science the animal body is just as much the product of molecular force as the stalk and ear of corn, or as the crystal of salt or sugar. Many of the parts of the body are obviously me- chanical. Take the human heart, for example, with its system of valves, or take the exquisite mechanism of the eye or hand. Animal heat, moreover, is the same in kind as the heat of a fire, being produced by the same chemical process. Animal motion, too, is as directly derived from the food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck's walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it creates nothing. ' Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ? ' All that has been said, then, regarding the plant may be re-stated with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into the composition of a muscle, a nerve, or a bone, has been placed in its position by molecular force. And, unless the existence of law in these matters be denied, and the element of caprice intro- duced, we must conclude that, given the relation of any molecule of the body to its environment, its position in the body might be determined mathematically. Our difficulty is not with the quality of the problem, but with its com- plexity ; and this difficulty might be met by the simple expansion of the faculties which we now possess. Given this expansion, with the necessary molecular data, and the chick might be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the egg as the existence of Neptune from the disturbances fl 136 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. of Uranus, or as conical refraction from the undulatory theory of light." * So far, therefore, as Mr. Spencer's own crucial test is concerned, Dr. Tyndall has shown that the doctrine of creation out of existing matter can abide the ordeal. It may be said, and is said, that the hypothesis postulates "the necessary molecular data," or, as Mr. Spencer says, organic matter, to begin with ; but if vital, and chemical, and mechanical forces be, as the school of Mr. Spencer would have us believe, both quantitative and qualitative equivalents, surely one who is master of the laws of chemical and mechanical forces ought to be able to construct living organisms, without creating a new force. If vital forces be the same both in quality and quantity with chemical and mechanical forces, there can be no difficulty about producing vegetable or animal embryos. It was doubtless this fact which led him to fall back, by way of supplement, on the creation ex nihilo hypothesis, which he had, in his own opinion, already demolished. The doctrine of a creation out of existing matter, involves, ultimately, the doctrine of "the creation of force ; and the creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter." This is the fable of the wolf and the lamb over again. If you did not do it, your father or grandfather did, and you must pay the forfeit. Here, then, is a plain issue raised by Mr. Spencer, * Fragments of Science^ pp. 116-19. ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS NOT CEEATIVE. 137 and we accept it. The question at issue is simply this — Does the disintegration and reintegration of matter imply the creation of force ? The mere statement of the question is sufficient for any man competent to form an opinion on the subject in dispute. If the process referred to involves the creation of a force not " locally existing in some other form," how is it that processes of disintegration and integration can be carried on by chemists, who have confessedly no power of creating new forces ? The disengagement of atoms, and the recombination of them into new compounds, pronounced impossible except on the assumption of the creation of a new force not locally existing in some other form, take place in every instance of chemical analysis and synthesis, without any such adventitious aid. All that is needed in either case is an operator possessing the requisite knowledge of the elements concerned. If the chemist can perform such wonders in his laboratory without the help of a new force, is it incredible that the author of the elements should be able to employ them in the construction of living organisms? There is no escape here possible to an evolutionist of the school of Spencer. If vital force be the correlate of chemical and mechanical, the origina- tion of life cannot, as Mr. Spencer alleges, imply the creation of a force not previously existing. It is, there- fore, only on the assumption that vital force is not the correlate of mere material forces, that Mr. Spencer's objection can have any meaning. The thing assumed, however, is fatal to his biological hypothesis, which 138 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. t.i ill 1 ' rests, ultimately, on the convertibility of material forces into vital. Assuming that those who hold the doctrine of special creation regard the demonstration of Divine power made in the origination of species as designed solely for the benefit of mankind, Mr Spencer asks, to whom was the demonstration made ? As " the great majority of these supposed special creations took place before mankind existed, to what purpose," he asks, " were the millions of these demonstrations which took place on the earth when there were no intelligent beings to contem- plate them ? Did the Unknowable thus demonstrate His own power to Himself? Few," he remarks, "will have the hardihood to say that any such demonstration was needful. There is no choice but to regard them either as superfluous exercises of power, which is a derogatory supposition ; or as exercises of power that were^'necessary because species could not be otherwise produced, which is also a derogatory supposition."* Now, in the first place, no person properly instructed in the Scriptures would, for a moment, think of representing the entire series of creative acts as havmg for their sole end the demonstration of the power of God to man. Other ends by no means derogatory to the Creator may be assumed, such as delight in the exercise of His wisdom, and power, and bounty, and sovereignty. Mr. Spencer assumes that if His acts had not reference to man alone, they must have been designed to demonstrate His power to Himself, or were * Principles of Biology, vol. i. p. 339. WHY SHOULD SPECIAL CREATIONS PRECEDE MAN ? 139 necessary because species could not be otherwise produced — both of which suppositions, he alleges, are derogatory. As we have seen, the alternative assumed is not the only one open to the advocates of special creations. Besides the one mentioned above, the student of the Bible can specify many others. It were not a derogatory supposition that God, in those remote creations, was demonstrating His attributes to other orders of intelligences of which the Scriptures speak, and against whose existence science has no facts to urge. Or it might be said in reply, that, as the Author of the earth, with its successive orders of vegetable and animal organisms, knew that in the latter days scoffers would arise, who would call in question His existence, and endeavour to prove that all organic forms were evolved from uncreated, eternal matter, by an impersonal power resident in matter itself, or conditioned by it. He so ordered the mani- festations of life on our globe, as to show that the links of the great biological chain have been separately created, and not consecutively evolved. And lastly, it may be observed, that if this earth were to furnish a text-book for geologists, it was necessary that it should be printed before it was published or read. If our earth was to instruct men, and serve as a school for their mental and moral discipline, it was essential that, prior to their matricu- lation, it should be properly furnished. That admirable scholastic arrangements have been made, is attested by the earnest competition and enthusiasm displayed by ), ; 140 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. the ever-increasing band of scientists who crowd its halls; and few who have thoroughly investigated the problems prepared for them, have ever imagined that they were propounded by a blind, unintelligent, uncon- scious force. Mr. Spencer regards it as an objection to the doctrine of special creation, that beings endowed with capacities for wide thought and high feeling did not exist on our globe millions of years before man appeared. The answer has been given already, and is obvious. It is simply this — Our globe was not fit at an earlier stage to receive such beings. Special creation does not set aside order and adaptation ; and is perfectly consis- tent with an original incandescent state of our globe, watched over by the Creator, who, at the proper stages in its history introduced such organisms as were suited to its condition, and fitted to prepare it as a dwelling- place for man. Equally unhappy is the argument against design drawn from the structure of animals of prey, exhibiting, as such structures do, countless pain-inflicting appli- ances — appliances which have been doing their deadly work all through the geological eras. " How happens it," our author asks, " that animals were so designed as to render this bloodshed necessary ? " * For the advocate of design, he alleges, there is but the one alternative — viz., that the Creator was either unable or unwilling to make animals so as to avoid the infliction of such misery. Still greater, he thinks, is the diffi- "^ Principles of Biology, vol. i, p. 341. DOES DESIGN IMPLY BENEVOLENCE? 141 culty when we consider that branch of the arrangement in which provision is made for the support of the inferior by the sacrifice of the superior, as in the case of parasites. To these objections we reply, that they assume several things which are not conceded — 1. They assume that the design of creation, as held by teleologists, is the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness throughout the entire orders of organic, sentient life. For this assumption there is no warrant to be found either in teleology, or in nature. There is a manifest subordination running throughout the whole chain of sentient existence, from the mollusc to the man. No inferior order lives for itself or simply for its own enjoy- ment. It is a link in a series constituting one great whole, from which no member can be removed without causing universal detriment, and the final link of which lives, not for himself, but for Him to whom he owes his being. The theology of the whole may be expressed in one sentence : each inferior order not for itself, but for a higher ; all the inferior for man, and man for God. Such is the testimony of the organic worlds, and such is the doctrine of man's moral nature and of the Word of God. In this system there is suffering, but it is none the less in harmony with the facts. 2. Mr. Spencer's objections assume that if we cannot point out a beneficent design, there is no proof of design at all. Such an objection may possibly have force with one under the fascination of an hypothesis which he would fondly sustain against all comers ; but no man. l 142 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. whose mind is not warped by prejudice, can for a moment believe that benevolence is a necessary element in design. Any arrangement embracing means for the attainment of a definite end carries with it evidence of design, and is so regarded by all men as soon as the arrangement and the end are apprehended. It matters not whether the end be benevolent or malign, whether the arrangement be ingenious or clumsy, the moment the connection between the means employed and the end aimed at, is discovered, the mind instinctively infers a design and a designer. The horn of the sword-fish, the teeth of the lion, the talons of the eagle, are regarded by all men, whether evolutionists or creationists, as instruments of design ; and the philosopher who chal- lenges the evidence does but proclaim his folly, and reveal his prejudice. 3. It is obvious that Mr. Spencer s objections to the doctrine of design are drawn, not from the facts under investigation, but from certain inferences in regard to the effects of this doctrine upon our views of the char- acter of the Creator. He finds organisms not constructed so as to prevent suffering, and immediately concludes that organisms have not been designed. Why ? Because the designer must have either been unable or unwilling to design them so as to prevent suffering. This alter- native he thinks fatal to the doctrine of design, as it either casts an imputation on the Divine character or involves a limitation of the Divine power.* Now, as we have already seen, our recognition of the * Frinciphs of Biology y vol. i. p. 341. SPENCER EVADES THE QUESTION OF FACT. 143 marks of design does not depend upon the character of the end aimed at in the contrivance, but simply upon the adaptation of the means to the attainment of the end, whatever the end may be. Constituted as we are, it is absolutely impossible to discover such adaptation without immediately inferring a design and a designer. This is a first principle which the human mind cannot relinquish without doing violence to its own constitu- tion. It is, in fact, but another form of the principle that every effect must have a cause. In view of this fact, it is manifest that the only course open to the impugner of the doctrine of design, is to meet the teleologist on the question of fact, and to prove that animal and vegetable organisms bear in their structure no traces of design. If he cannot do this (and Mr. Spencer's work on Biology, by leaving it not only undone but unattempted, is sufficient proof that he cannot), he must surrender at discretion. Instead of facing the facts and divesting them of those marks of design which the human mind instinctively recognises, our author carefully avoids the real question at issue, and raises an entirely distinct one respecting the effect of the doctrine of design upon our views of the Divine character. This procedure is as unmanly as it is un philosophical and unscientific. It is unmanly not to face the facts pre- sented in the structures of the fauna and flora of our world ; and it is unphilosophical and unscientific not to follow out, to their legitimate conclusions, irrespective of imaginary ulterior consequences, the principles re- vealed by a fair analysis of the phenomena they present. 144 REIGN OF CAUSALITY. L' • With a philosopher, the question is not, " What effect will a fair interpretation of these facts have upon some other doctrine ?" but simply, "What do the facts, fairly interpreted, teach?" To borrow a manly and truly philosophical sentiment, uttered by Professor Huxley in his address before the late meeting of the British Asso- ciation, "Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men."* Theologians are not afraid of the logical consequences of the doctrine of design upon their views of the Divine character ; nor will Mr. Spencer be able to turn them aside from the question at issue, by hanging up, for the thousandth time, the old weather-beaten scarecrow of optimism, fashioned, to suit his ovm. purpose, out of the straw of a false speculative theology. Of course, if the God of the Bible be the God assumed in Mr. Spencer s critique on His works, and the end aimed at by Him be the end ascribed to Him by His reviewer, it might be difficult to reconcile the actual phenomena of the organic world with the character of such a Being. If the Creator possess but two attributes —benevolence and power— and if His design in crea- tion be the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness, it might puzzle the ablest of optimists to reconcile those pain-inflictiug contrivances which abound in the actual organic arrangement, with the character, and aim, and capacities of this optimistic Deity. But, as the God of the Bible possesses more attributes than the two specified, and set before Him * Fortnightly Bevieic, Nov. 1874, p. 577. SENTIENT HAPPINESS AN INFERIOR GOAL. 145 higher ends than the mere happiness of His creatures — as He is holy and just, as well as almighty and benevolent, and regards the interests of His moral creatures as superior to those of the mere sentient orders of animal organisms, and considers their moral culture a higher end than their happiness, yea, has linked their happiness to their moral and spiritual character, and set His own glory before them * as their highest end, and the source of their highest enjoyment — as this is the character, and these the aims, of the God of the Bible, Mr. Spencer's objections are as irrele- vant as the premises on which they are based are fals(3. As our critic cannot take in the whole issues of the mighty cycle embraced in that plan of which these phenomena strewn on the shores of time are but the initial movements, it is nothing short of arrogance to pronounce, as he has ventured to do, upon the moral character of the Author of the system. 4. Mr. Spencer's objections proceed upon the assump- tion that a theory which does not account for every class of phenomena, however remotely connected with the subject under investigation, is, ipso facto, dis- credited. For example, as in the present iu stance, if the advocate of design cannot solve the problem of the ultimate design of the various orders of animal and vegetable organisms, he is not to be permitted to speak of the immediate and proximate design of these closely correlated kingdoms of nature. If he cannot tell why, or for what ultimate end, God made great whales, and then constructed sword-fish equipped with a weapon 146 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. for their destruction, be must be told tbat be has failed to prove that either whales or sword-fish are the offspring of design ! If a teleologist cannot tell why God created acari to burrow in the skin and torture man, he has failed to prove that either man or his tormentors exhibit marks of intelligent purpose ! If he cannot take in the vast range of organic relations (embracing, as multitudinous orders do, organisms which nothing but the most powerful microscope can reveal), and grasp the scheme of creation in its entirety, he is not entitled to speak of any class of relations as evincing contrivance ! In a word, so long as anything remains unexplained, nothing is explained. Will any scientist accept this principle ? Will any astronomer venture to affirm that Kepler had explained nothing, when he enunciatc«l the law that " planets revolve in elliptic orbits about the sun, which occupies the common focus of all these orbits," because he had not then discovered the second great law, that " if a line be drawn from the centre of the sun to any planet, this line, as it is carried forward by the planet, will sweep over equal areas in equal portions of time " ? Or, is it to be held that the fore- going laws explain nothing, because Kepler had yet to ponder the relations of the members of the solar system for seventeen years before he discovered the third law, that the squares of the periodic times of the planets are to each other as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun ? Are all these laws to be repudiated, because their discoverer was not able to tell why the orbits ot EVOLUTION EXPOSED TO LIKE OBJECTIONS. 147 the planets and satellites should be ellipses rather than any other curve, or to tell, as Newton has done, what power holds these mighty masses " steady in their swift career, producing the most exquisite harmony of motion, and a uniformity of result as steady as the march of time."* Will Mr. Spencer abandon the evolution hypothesis, because, as confessed by himself, it does not explain the connection of consciousness with nervous action ? Will he give up his hypothesis because of its failure to explain this mysterious relationship ? Tele- ologists are entitled to press this question with all the confidence of an a fortiori, for they are asking evolu- tionists to give up a hypothesis for which there is no positive proof, and which fails, absolutely and con- fessedly, at the most important point in the evolutionary sequence; whilst, on the other hand, the doctrine of design is engraven on every organism within the realm of organic nature, and engraven so manifestly, that the ablest advocate of the evolution hypothesis — the philosopher of the school — has nothing to advance against it, save certain consequences which he alleges flow from it — consequences which, as we have already seen, lie only against a speculative, theological optimism which has no basis in the Word of God. In a word, then, it is only by petty criticisms, based on the assumption that the theology of the Bible is optimistic, that this prince of evolutionists can make even a show of argument against the doctrine of design in creation. His assumption is false, and his critique * Mitchell's Orhs of Heaven, p. 71. 148 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. pointless and worthless. To use his own language in his estimate of the doctrine he assails, his hypothesis must be pronounced worthless — "worthless by its derivation " from Democritus and Lucretius ; " worthless in its intrinsic incoherence/' as demanding continuity, and yet admitting the existence of impassable gulfs between the most important elements in the series; " worthless as absolutely without evidence," no evolu- tionist having as yet been able to point to the evolution of a single new fertile species from any other ; " worth- less as not supplying an intellectual need," failing, as it does, to conform to the primary belief that evidence of design implies the existence of a designer ; " worthless as not satisfying a moral want," repudiating, as it does, the very idea of the existence of a personal, moral intelligence, who sustains to us the relations of Creator, Governor, and Judge. " We must, therefore, consider it as counting for nothing, in opposition to" that Scripture doctrine of Creation which fulfils all these conditions, and meets all the intellectual and moral requirements of our nature. Constituted as man is, he cannot rest in any theory of this wondrous universe, which does not place an omnipotent moral intelligence first in the absolute order of existence, as the efficient cause of all forces, whether chemical, mechanical, vital, or mental. CHAPTER V. i ON SOME QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE AUTHORS OF THE "UNSEEN UNIVERSE. THE ground taken in this remarkable book is " that the expressions in the Scriptures regarding the future of man and the constitution of the unseen world, taken in their obvious, if not absolutely literal meaning, are not inconsistent with scientific deductions from the principle of continuity." Such is the position; and certainly no intelligent friend of the Word of God will call it in question. If the writers are to be met at all, they must be met upon the field of a fair Scriptural exegesis, and confronted with unquestionable scientific deductions. Infidels they are not ; and no one who will carefully and candidly study this, their irenicum, can avoid the conclusion that they are highly accomplished Christian men, endeavouring to the utmost of their ability to effect a reconciliation between Christianity and Science. Going still further, it may be claimed that no one seeking instruction can, if he possess the necessary subjective conditions, fail to profit by the information on scientific subjects summarised so perspi- 149 f I 150 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. \l cuously by our authors, or come away from the study of the problems discussed, without haviug his views of the Divine Majesty greatly enlarged, and his conceptions of the destiny of the Universe and of man vastly enhanced, or fail to be still more deeply impressed with the tremendous consequences of uncancelled sm. Having said thus much in favour of the object and spirit of this work, it is with great regret that we feel constrained to question some of its most important interpretations of Scripture, as well as some of its chief deductions from the principle of continuity. In the first place, the theory of creation it propouuds cannot be reconciled either with the teaching of Scripture or with that fundamental principle of all science and all philosophy, the principle of causality. The theory advanced, whilst it assumes " as absolutely self-evident, the existence of a Deity who is the Creator of all things " (p. 72), and ascribes to the Governor of the Universe the high prerogative of conditioning the beings contained therein as regards time, place, and sensation (pp. 14, 72, and 21 G), also assumes the pre- existence of an unseen universe out of which the seen has been framed, and ascribes to this antecedent uuseen, under one form or other, an absolutely eternal existence. " We are led by it (the principle of continuity) not only to regard the invisible universe as having existed before the present one, but the same principle drives us to acknowledge its existence in some form as a universe from all eternity " (p. 215). " Now, what the principle of continuity demands is an end- MATERIAL OF THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE ETERNAL. 151 less development of the conditioned. We claim it as the heritage of intelligence that there shall be an endless vista, reaching from eternity to eternity, in each link of which we shall be led from one form of the conditioned to another, never from the conditioned to the unconditioned or absolute, which would be to us no better than an impenetrable intel- lectual barrier" (p. 216). « As far as we can judge, the visible universe— the uni- verse of worlds— is not eternal ; while, however, the invisible universe, or that which we may, for iUustration, at least, associate with the ethereal medium, is necessarily eternal " (p. 239). In criticising the vortex-ring atomic hypothesis intro- duced by Sir W. Thomson, our authors object— "The act by which the atom was produced must neces- sarily, by this hypothesis, have been an act of creation in time, that is to say, an act impressed upon the universe from without, and it must therefore have denoted a breach of con- tinuity ; for, if the invisible universe be notlung but a perfect fluid, can we imagine it capable of originating such a develop- ment in virtue of its own properties, and without some external act implying a breach of continuity 1 We think most assuredly not. In the production of the atom from a perfect fluid we are driven at once to the unconditioned, to the great first cause ; it is, in fine, an act of creation, and not of development. But, from our point of view, creation be- longs to eternity, and development to time, and we are there- fore induced to modify the hypothesis so as to make it consistent with this view" (pp. 155, 15G).* It is manifest, then, that this book judges of the universe itself, and of everything respecting its nature or origin, upon the assumption of the absolute inviola- * All (xuotations are from the fifth edition. ;t f 152 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. f bility of the principle of continuity — a principle which will brook no interruption, and will admit of no PHYSICAL CONSEQUENT WHICH HAS NOT AN IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL ANTECEDENT (pp. 89, 90). The existing universe, with all that it contains, is to be referred, not to a creative act or a series of creative acts, but to a process of development out of previously existing material, and this material again from a still more refined substance, and this again from another in an eternal series. Our intelligence, we are told, " demands an endless vista " of the conditioned, and " can never be led from the conditioned to the unconditioned." Now, it must be obvious, at the first blush, that this theory assumes as its basis, not simply the principle of continuity, but, also, a philosophy of the uncon- ditioned, and that it is not the pure and simple out- come of a scientific analysis of the phenomena of the universe. He who speaks of the unconditioned, does not speak as a scientist, but as a transcendent alist, and, moreover, speaks unintelligibly to the human mind. The Being designated by the term uncon- ditioned, called also in this book, the Absolute One (p. 21G), cannot be regarded as the creator or author of anything. He is, as that philosophy teaches, with- out personality or consciousness as He is without limitation, and destitute of knowledge as He is of relation. He cannot know and He cannot be known, nor can He be a cause, as causality implies action, and action implies succession, and succession implies existence in time. All this is implied in the doctrine THEORY BASED ON PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 153 of the unconditioned, which is assumed as the basis of the hypothesis of creation taught in this book, and applied by our authors to the first person of the adorable Trinity. What transcendentalists say of the unconditioned in regard to His (or its) acting, is applied by them to God the Father (p. 224), the only persons of the thrice holy Three capable of acting on, or through the unseen substance which antedates all time, being the Son and Spirit. It is vain to allege that this is a conclusion to which one is driven through loyalty to science. Before reaching any such conclu- sion, our authors must have taken leave of the scientific fundamental involved in the principle of causality, and adopted as their primary principle an abstract a priori speculation regarding the mode of the Divine being and action. What has a scientist, as such, to do with the philosophy of the absolute — a philosophy which regards the absolute and causality as contradictory and mutually exclusive ? It is a fundamental principle both in philosophy and science, and in the latter, because of its filial relation to the former, that effects are to be referred to adequate causes, and, correlatively, that in the domain of causality, nothing is to be assumed which does not manifest itself by its effects. Instead of acting upon this principle, and seeking for the phenomena of the visible an adequate ultimate cause in the unseen, our authors (as may be seen on referring to their third edition, p. 47), have started with Herbert Spencer's incomprehensible power, and, coupling this inscrutable \ \. V- pf* V I J il 154 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. I somethiDg with the principle of continuity, have tried to construct, as he has done, a science of the universe on a philosophy of the unknowable ! In the present edition, the passage from Spencer is deleted, but the doctrine has survived the deletion. Whilst they assume that the principle of continuity is ever carrying us towards this unconditioned something, they deny that it can ever bring us into its presence. If so, what warrant have they for the assumption that any such thing exists? Such assumption can be justified, scientifically, only on the ground that along the retro- oressive march there are strewn evidences of its existence, and evidence of its existence, such as science can take cognizance of, must be neither more nor less than evidence of its operation, for the unseen cannot be " spiritually discerned," save through its manifesta- tions in the seen. This latter, however, is the very thincT our authors will not allow, for the Absolute One cannot act in time, and, in fact, cannot act so as to produce a physical effect, either in time or eternity. If so, He (or it) cannot initiate or originate any physical thing, however refined, and the ascription of creation to such a source is as misleading as it is scientifically unwarrantable. The principle which excludes the absolute from acting in time must exclude him from acting in eternity, so as to give being to the mystic unseen, out of which, by the agency of others, the seen has been evoked. This, of course, is all one with saying that neither in the seen nor in the unseen is there any scientific warrant fur the assumption that any such TRANSCENDENTAL TRINITARIANISM EXAMINED. 155 being exists at all. In a word, the hypothesis of our authors rests ultimately upon an unscientific and unphilosophic a 'priori assumption, and does violence to one of the most patent principles of scientific investi- gation—the principle of causality. If the absolute cannot be a cause, and if the Son and Spirit cannot act except through an existing medium, creation ex nihilo is, of course, excluded. It is scarcely necessary to inform any theologian, or any reader of the Bible, that the transcendental trinitarian- ism of this book is not the trinitarianism of the Word of God. Our authors identify the Unconditioned and Absolute One of the transcendental philosophy with the Father, and affirm of the Father all they have affirmed of the Absolute, claiming for the Son and Spirit, to the exclusion of the Father, all forms of activity revealed in the development of the universe. In opposition to all this, the Scriptures, whilst they reveal an order of action, ascribe both thought and action to each person of the Trinity. They reveal the Father as transacting with the Son before all worlds, as giving Him for us, laying our sins upon Him, putting Him to grief, holding personal intercourse with Him in the days of His fiesh, bearing witness to Him by word and by works, raising Him from the dead and setting Him above all princi- pality at His own right hand in the heavenly places. Similar representations are made in regard to His relations to the mission of the Holy Ghost, who pro- ceedeth from, and is sent by, the Father. If the Father be the Unconditioned Absolute One of the W i I 15G THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. ) transcendental philosophy, and of this book, how comes it that the Scriptures represent Christ as praying Him to send the Holy Ghost the Comforter? and how is it that He is spoken of as bearing witness, both at Clirist's baptism and transfiguration, by direct audible utter- ances from heaven, to our Redeemer's Sonship ? Will any reader of the New Testament brook or accept for one moment, the substitution of the Unconditioned Absolute (3ne of this book, for that Father addressed by Christ in Gethsemane, or that God appealed to on Calvary ? The utter inconsistency of this doctrine of the Father's relations with the doctrine of oiw Sonship is beyond intelligent question. Were it not for the per- suasion that its authors are Christian men, one might be tempted to regard this section of the book as an attempt to reduce the children of God to an estate of eternal orphanage. What is it short of mockery to call the Unconditioned and Absolute of this work, our Father, telling us at the same time that, between Him and us there is an interminable series of conditioned forms of existence, animate and inanimate, yea, a series of universes, which the principle of continuity will never permit us to outrun or surpass — a series which, ever leading up to God, is still an illimitable avenue (p. 9G), never leading "from the conditioned to the unconditioned or absolute " (p. 216), and which, from its very nature, can never bring us face to face with Him who has raised us by the gift and death of His Son, and by the agency of His Spirit, to the rank of children and heirs, and to the high privilege UNSCRIPTURAL VIEW OF CHRIST'S MIRACLES. 157 of ineffable fellowship with Himself? It is therefore impossible to accept the account which the Scriptures give of the Father's relations and activity, and, at the same time, to adopt the Trinitarianism of this book. From the relation of God the Father to the universe, we pass to the consideration of the relation sustained to it by His Son, Jesus Christ. The ground taken by our authors is, that Christ's work was " done not in violation of the order of things as established by God the Father, but rather in strict obedience to it" (how the Absolute One could establish this order we are not told), "and the doctrine that represents Christ's miraculous works as manifestations of His Divine nature, so changing the order of things as to denote something wrought upon the universe rather than something wrought through it, and by its means," is rejected (p. 53). It is alleged that the former, and not the latter, is the doctrine of Scripture ; and, in support of this view, appeal is made to the words of Christ Himself (John v. 30) : " I seek not Mine own will but the will of the Father who sent Me." Now, surely these words do not warrant the inference that Christ's works were all wrouorht throuofh the universe and in strict obedience to the established order of things, and in no instance wrought upon it independent of and superior to its own forces and laws, and producing results above anything which could be effected through their mediation. Surely it might be the will of the Father that some of the works which Christ was sent to accomplish should be of the latter class. There is manifestly nothing in the words l» \'' 158 THE REIGN OF CAUSALITY. . \ specified to justify the position assumed by the authors, except on the assumption of the thing to be proved— viz., that it was the mil of the Father that Christ's works should, without a single exception, be wrought in strict obedience to the established order of things. As the writers have not established this position, they have no right to assume it. In support of the same view, the language of Paul (Galatians iv. 4) is adduced, " When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of Sons." Here, the authors confound moral law with iihysical law ; the apostle is treating of the moral law and of its claims upon those whom Christ came to redeem. To meet these claims, both preceptive and penal, Christ must, of course, work in strict obedience to the established moral order which the subjects of His redemption had violated. To redeem them from the curse of the law, He must Himself be made a curse for tliem, and to entitle them to the reward of eternal life, He must, as their daysman, fulfil its precepts. To infer from a passage designed to teach this central