Genesis of Species
The various extracts given show clearly how far “evolution” is from any necessary opposition to the most orthodox theology. The same may be said of spontaneous generation. The most recent form of it, lately advocated by Dr. H. Charlton Bastian, teaches that matter exists in two different forms, the crystalline (or statical) and the colloidal (or dynamical) conditions. It also teaches that colloidal matter, when exposed to certain conditions, presents the phenomena of life, and that it can be formed from crystalline matter, and thus that the prima materia of which these are diverse forms contains potentially all the multitudinous kinds of animal and vegetable existence. This theory moreover harmonizes well with the views here advocated, for just as crystalline matter builds itself, under suitable conditions, along certain definite lines, so analogously colloidal matter has its definite lines and directions of development. It is not collected in haphazard, accidental aggregations, but evolves according to its proper laws and special properties.
The perfect orthodoxy of these views is unquestionable. Nothing is plainer from the venerable writers quoted, as well as from a mass of other authorities, than that “the supernatural” is not to be looked for or expected in the sphere of mere nature. For this statement there is a general consensus of theological authority.
The teaching which the Author has received is, that God is indeed inscrutable and incomprehensible to us from the infinity of His attributes, so that our minds can, as it were, only take in, in a most fragmentary and indistinct manner (as through a glass darkly), dim conceptions of infinitesimal portions of His inconceivable perfection. In this way the partial glimpses obtained by us in different modes differ from each other; not that God is anything but the most perfect unity, but that apparently conflicting views arise from our inability to apprehend Him, except in this imperfect manner, i.e. by successive slight approximations along different lines of approach. Sir William Hamilton has said, “Nature conceals God, and man reveals Him.” It is not, according to the teaching spoken of, exactly thus; but rather that physical nature reveals to us one side, one aspect of the Deity, while the moral and religious worlds bring us in contact with another, and at first, to our apprehension, a very different one. The difference and discrepancy, however, which is at first felt, is soon seen to proceed not from the reason but from a want of flexibility in the imagination. This want is far from surprising. Not only may a man naturally be expected to be an adept in his own art, but at the same time to show an incapacity for a very different mode of activity. We rarely find an artist who takes much interest in jurisprudence, or a prizefighter who is an acute metaphysician. Nay, more than this, a positive distaste may grow up, which, in the intellectual order, may amount to a spontaneous and unreasoning disbelief in that which appears to be in opposition to the more familiar concept, and this at all times. It is often and truly said, “that past ages were pre-eminently credulous as compared with our own, yet the difference is not so much in the amount of the credulity, as in the direction which it takes.”
Dr. Newman observes: “Any one study, of whatever kind, exclusively pursued, deadens in the mind the interest, nay the perception of any other. Thus Cicero says, that Plato and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might have respectively excelled in each other’s province, but that each was absorbed in his own. Specimens of this peculiarity occur every day. You can hardly persuade some men to talk about anything but their own pursuit; they refer the whole world to their own centre, and measure all matters by their own rule, like the fisherman in the drama, whose eulogy on his deceased lord was ‘he was so fond of fish.’”
The same author further says: “When anything, which comes before us, is very unlike what we commonly experience, we consider it on that account untrue; not because it really shocks our reason as improbable, but because it startles our imagination as strange. Now, revelation presents to us a perfectly different aspect of the universe from that presented by the sciences. The two informations are like the distinct subjects represented by the lines of the same drawing, which, accordingly as they are read on their concave or convex side, exhibit to us now a group of trees with branches and leaves, and now human faces.” ... “While then reason and revelation are consistent in fact, they often are inconsistent in appearance; and this seeming discordance acts most keenly on the imagination, and may suddenly expose a man to the temptation, and even hurry him on to the commission of definite acts of unbelief, in which reason itself really does not come into exercise at all.”
Thus we find in fact just that distinctness between the ideas derived from physical science on the one hand and from religion on the other, which we might a priori expect if there exists that distinctness between the natural and the miraculous which theological authorities lay down.
Assuming, for argument’s sake, the truth of Christianity, it evidently has not been the intention of its Author to make the evidence for it so plain that its rejection would be the mark of intellectual incapacity. Conviction is not forced upon men in the way that the knowledge that the government of England is constitutional, or that Paris is the capital of France, is forced upon all who choose to inquire into those subjects. The Christian system is one which puts on the strain, as it were, every faculty of man’s nature, and the intellect is not (any more than we should a priori expect it to be) exempted from taking part in the probationary trial. A moral element enters into the acceptance of that system.
And so with natural religion—with those ideas of the supernatural, viz. God, Creation, and Morality, which are anterior to revelation and repose upon reason. Here again it evidently has not been the intention of the Creator to make the evidence of His existence so plain that its non-recognition would be the mark of intellectual incapacity. Conviction, as to theism, is not forced upon men as is the conviction of the existence of the sun at noon-day. A moral element enters also here, and the analogy there is in this respect between Christianity and theism speaks eloquently of their primary derivation from one common author.
Thus we might expect that it would be a vain task to seek anywhere in nature for evidence of Divine action, such that no one could sanely deny it. God will not allow Himself to be caught at the bottom of any man’s crucible, or yield Himself to the experiments of gross-minded and irreverent inquirers. The natural, like the supernatural, revelation appeals to the whole of man’s mental nature and not to the _reason alone_.
None, therefore, need feel disappointed that evidence of the direct action of the first cause in merely natural phenomena ever eludes our grasp; for assuredly those same phenomena will ever remain fundamentally inexplicable by physical science alone.
There being then nothing in either authority or reason which makes “evolution” repugnant to Christianity, is there anything in the Christian doctrine of “Creation” which is repugnant to the theory of “evolution”?
Enough has been said as to the distinction between absolute and derivative “creation.” It remains to consider the successive “evolution” (Darwinian and other) of “specific forms,” in a theological light.
As to what “evolution” is, we cannot of course hope to explain it completely, but it may be enough to define it as the manifestation to the intellect, by means of sensible impressions, of some ideal entity (power, principle, nature, or activity) which before that manifestation was in a latent, unrealized, and merely “potential” state—a state that is capable of becoming realized, actual, or manifest, the requisite conditions being supplied.
“Specific forms,” kinds or species, are (as was said in the introductory chapter) “peculiar congeries of characters or attributes, innate powers and qualities, and a certain nature realized in individuals.”
Thus, then, the “evolution of specific forms” means the actual manifestation of special powers, or natures, which before were latent, in such a successive manner that there is in some way a genetic relation between posterior manifestations and those which preceded them.
On the special Darwinian hypothesis the manifestation of these forms is determined simply by the survival of the fittest of many indefinite variations.
On the hypothesis here advocated the manifestation is controlled and helped by such survival, but depends on some unknown internal law or laws which determine variation at special times and in special directions.
Professor Agassiz objects to the evolution theory, on the ground that “species, genera, families, &c., exist as thoughts, individuals as facts,” and he offers the dilemma, “If species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation theory maintain, how can they vary? and if individuals alone exist, how can the differences which may be observed among them prove the variability of species?”
But the supporter of “evolution” need only maintain that the several “kinds” become manifested gradually by slight differences among the various individual embodiments of one specific idea. He might reply to the dilemma by saying, species do not exist as species in the sense in which they are said to vary (variation applying only to the concrete embodiments of the specific idea), and the evolution of species is demonstrated not by individuals as individuals, but as embodiments of different specific ideas.
Some persons seem to object to the term “creation” being applied to evolution, because evolution is an “exceedingly slow and gradual process.” Now even if it were demonstrated that such is really the case, it may be asked, what is “slow and gradual”? The terms are simply relative, and the evolution of a specific form in ten thousand years would be instantaneous to a being whose days were as hundreds of millions of years.
There are others again who are inclined absolutely to deny the existence of species altogether, on the ground that their evolution is so gradual that if we could see all the stages it would be impossible to say when the manifestation of the old specific form ceased and that of the new one began. But surely it is no approach to a reason against the existence of a thing that we cannot determine the exact moment of its first manifestation. When watching “dissolving views,” who can tell, whilst closely observing the gradual changes, exactly at what moment a new picture, say St. Mark’s, Venice, can be said to have commenced its manifestation, or have begun to dominate a preceding representation of “Dotheboys’ Hall”? That, however, is no reason for denying the complete difference between the two pictures and the ideas they respectively embody.
The notion of a special nature, a peculiar innate power and activity—what the scholastics called a “substantial form”—will be distasteful to many. The objection to the notion seems, however, to be a futile one, for it is absolutely impossible to altogether avoid such a conception and such an assumption. If we refuse it to the individuals which embody the species, we must admit it as regards their component parts—nay, even if we accept the hypothesis of pangenesis, we are nevertheless compelled to attribute to each gemmule that peculiar power of reproducing its own nature (its own “substantial form”), with its special activity, and that remarkable power of annexing itself to certain other well-defined gemmules whose nature it is also to plant themselves in a certain definite vicinity. So that in each individual, instead of one such peculiar power and activity dominating and controlling all the parts, you have an infinity of separate powers and activities limited to the several minute component gemmules.
It is possible that in some minds, the notion may lurk that such powers are simpler and easier to understand, because the bodies they affect are so minute! This absurdity hardly bears stating. We can easily conceive a being so small, that a gemmule would be to it as large as St. Paul’s would be to us.
Admitting then the existence of species, and of their successive evolution, is there anything in these ideas hostile to Christian belief?
Writers such as Vogt and Buchner will of course contend that there is; but naturalists, generally, assume that God acts in and by the various laws of nature. And this is equivalent to admitting the doctrine of “derivative creation.” With very few exceptions, none deny such Divine concurrence. Even “design” and “purpose” are recognized as quite compatible with evolution, and even with the special “nebular” and Darwinian forms of it. Professor Huxley well says, “It is necessary to remark that there is a wider teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution.” ... “The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not necessarily mutually exclusive; on the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely thereby is he at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe.”