Huxley, arguing to the same effect, concluded that "since thousands of times a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and groans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell, the world cannot be governed by what we call benevolence."[9]
Haeckel went so far as to propose to describe by the term "dysteleology" that part of the science of Biology which collected the facts that gave direct contradiction to the idea of beneficial "purposive arrangement."
Such were the difficulties which loomed largest before the minds of vast numbers of thinking men and women, and did much to shake the general confidence in religion, in the years that followed the discoveries which culminated in the Darwinian theory of evolution. It must not be supposed that these thoughts were lightly entertained, nor may we imagine that they gave no distress to those who sincerely believed that they were bound to accept what seemed to be their inevitable consequences. To quote again from theCandid Examinationof Romanes, we may take it that he was speaking for many others when he said, "Forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who affirmthat the twilight doctrine of the new faith is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of 'the old,' I am not ashamed to confess that, with this virtual negation of God, the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although, from henceforth the precept 'to work while it is day' will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words 'that the night cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it—at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible."
[1]Logic, Chap. V.
[2]The Riddle of the Universe, Chaps. XIV, XV.
[3] Chap. XII.
[4]Fragments of Science, p. 222.
[5]First Principles, i., pp. 33-39.
[6]Essays, Vol. III., pp. 246, f.
[7] In an essay written before 1889.
[8]A Candid Examination of Theism(1876), pp. 171, f.
[9]Nineteenth Century, February, 1888.
It must not be imagined that all the arguments were on one side. Far from it. The defenders of the old faith were many, and not the least able of them were drawn from the ranks of the men of science. The list of scientific leaders who avowedly ranged themselves on the Christian side, if it were made out, would be a long one. It would include distinguished names such as those of Faraday, Joule, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Kelvin, Stokes, Tait, Adams, Clerk Maxwell, Salmon, Cayley, and Pasteur. And others would have to be added who, after contending for a while as materialists or agnostics, ultimately changed their attitude and joined the supporters of Theism. Haeckel frankly admitted that there were such defaulters from his cause in Germany, giving the names of "two of the most famous of living scientists, R. Virchow and E. Du Bois Raymond," amongst others. On the other hand he recommended his readers to study "the profound work of Romanes,"without, it would seem, being aware of the transformation that took place in that thinker's opinions towards the end of his life.
We have now to indicate the nature of the replies that were made to the difficulties of which we spoke in our last chapter. Let us follow the order in which they were presented.
About the necessity for a First Cause not much had to be said. Even if the whole course of organic development could be proved to have been continuous without a break from the first movements of matter, through all the changes of physical life, up to the highest exhibition of human powers—and no one ventured to say that this had been proved—there would still be the necessity for an initial impulse to set the process in action. Spencer, as we have seen, declared that there must have been a First Cause, and Tyndall agreed that "the hypothesis" of Evolution "does nothing more than transport the conception of life's origin to an indefinitely distant past."[1]
Darwin himself never hesitated on this point. "The theory of evolution," he insisted, "is quite compatible with the belief in God."[2] The words which he expressly added to the conclusion of theOrigin of Speciesare well known. After describing once again the production of the innumerable forms of being as the result of natural selection, he said: "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one."
It is well also to keep on record the striking dictum of Lord Kelvin, addressed to the students of University College.[3] "Science," he told them, "positively affirmed creative power."
It will be remembered that we quoted Mill as speaking of "permanent causes." We may be grateful to him for the suggestion. We could not readily think of a better term than the great "Permanent Cause" by which to describe, in modern language, the "I AM" of the Biblical Theology.[4]
But, if on this point there was no serious conflict of opinion, it was otherwise in regard to the next. Here it did look as if the new discoveries might havechanged the whole situation. Huxley acknowledged that what struck him most forcibly on his first perusal of the Origin of Species, was that "teleology, as commonly understood, had received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands."[5] But Huxley was a born fighter, and he could turn his weapons with facility and effect against his friends when he thought they had overstated their case. It is interesting to find him, in 1867, criticising Haeckel for his repudiation of the principle of Design.
"The Doctrine of Evolution," he says, "is the most formidable opponent of the commoner and coarser forms of teleology."
"The teleology which supposes that the eye such as we see it in man, or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember 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." Then, referring to the appeal which had been made to the existence of rudimentary organs as discrediting teleology, he says in hischaracteristic way: "Either these rudiments are of no use to the animals, in which case they ought to have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are of no use as an argument against teleology."[6]
Darwin himself felt the grave difficulty in which the ordinary arguments had become involved; but he was most unwilling to abandon his belief in Design.
"The old argument from design in nature as given by Paley," he wrote, "which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man." On the other hand, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that there are "endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with,"[7] and to the further fact that "the mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is, without having been designed."[8]
A few years later, when Dr. Asa Gray had sent him from America a review in which he had written of "Mr. Darwin's great service to natural sciencein bringing back teleology," on the ground that in Darwinism usefulness and purpose come to the front again as working principles of the first order, Darwin replied, "What you say about teleology pleases me especially."[9] Later still, in 1878, Romanes sent him a copy of hisCandid Examination. Darwin in his letter of acknowledgment wrote more than half seriously, in the person as it were of an imaginary correspondent, to this effect:
"I should like to hear what you would say if a theologian addressed you as follows:
"'I grant you the attraction of gravity, persistence of force (or conservation of energy), and one kind of matter, though the latter is an immense addition, but I maintain that God must have given such attributes to this force, independently of its persistence, that under certain conditions it develops or changes into light, heat, electricity, galvanism, perhaps into life.
"'You cannot prove that force (which physicists define as that which causes motion) would invariably thus change its character under the above conditions. Again, I maintain that matter, though it may be in the future eternal, was created by God with the most marvellous affinities, leading tocomplex definite compounds, and with polarities leading to beautiful crystals, etc., etc. You cannot prove that matter would necessarily possess these attributes. Therefore you have no right to say that you have "demonstrated" that all natural laws necessarily follow from gravity, the persistence of force, and existence of matter. If you say that nebulous matter existed aboriginally and from eternity, with all its present complex powers in a potential state, you seem to me to beg the whole question.'
"Please observe it is not I, but a theologian, who has thus addressed you, but I could not answer him."[10]
The alternatives to Design,i.e., to the recognition of directive activity, would be Necessity or Chance. From both of these the deepest instincts of humanity—which in such matters are as fully to be relied on as its logical faculty—strongly recoil. No one has spoken out more strongly about the first than Huxley did.
"What is the dire necessity and 'iron' law under which you groan?" he asks. "Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an 'iron' law, it is that of gravitation; and ifthere be a physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground.... But when, as commonly happens, we changewillintomust, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematise the intruder.... The notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law; the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas."[11]
But a dogma of Necessity would be more tolerable than a doctrine of Chance. In Lord Kelvin's address, to which reference has been made, he declared his conviction that "directive power" was "an article of belief which science compelled him to accept."
There was nothing, he said, between such a belief and the acceptance of the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. And, in a letter to theTimesjustifying this assertion, he told how forty years before he had asked Liebig, when walking with him in the country, whether he believed that the grassand flowers they saw around them "grew by mere chemical forces." "No," he answered, "no more than I could believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical forces."
Discussions may continue as to whether what Huxley called "the wider teleology," or some other form of the doctrine of Design is to be preferred; but thoughtful men are likely to agree with the judgment given by Sir George Stokes—that recognised master of masters—when he said: "We meet with such overwhelming evidence of design, of purpose, especially in the study of living things, that we are compelled to think of mind as being involved in the constitution of the universe."[12]
[1]Fragments of Science, p. 166.
[2]Life and Letters, I., p. 307.
[3] May 2nd, 1903.
[4] The debate as to the accuracy of the Mosaic account of Creation does not come directly within the scope of our survey; but, nevertheless, it may be worth while to recall the following statement in view of the very confident assertions that have often been made, by no less an authority than Romanes. "The order in which the flora and fauna are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared upon the earth corresponds with that which the theory of evolution requires and the evidence of geology proves."—(Nature, August 11th, 1881.)
[5]Lay Sermons.
[6]Critiques and Addresses, pp. 305, 308.
[7]Life and Letters, I., p. 309.
[8] I., p. 314.
[9]Life and Letters, III., p. 189.
[10]Life and Lettersof Romanes, pp. 88.
[11] Essay on "The Physical Basis of Life" (1868).
[12]Gifford Lectures(1891), p. 196.
But though Materialism had to go, there was a time when it seemed to many by no means unlikely that Agnosticism might have to be accepted as its substitute. And if that had been so the case would have been scarcely less desperate. We might have been left with a philosophy of a kind, but we should have been deprived of any object which could evoke within our hearts the trust and affection that are needed to sustain a religion. However, as it proved, there was no great cause for fear. Agnosticism was subjected in its turn to the ordeal of criticism, and the result proved that it had not in it the substance and force that could give it any permanent hold upon the best intelligence of the age.
If Agnosticism could have been content to confine itself to positive assertions, there might have been less cause to find fault with it. But its name stood for negation, and its temper was in accord with its name. The exponents of Agnosticism were notsatisfied with affirming that the Power behind phenomena is beyond all thought mysterious. They insisted that it is unknowable, and that not merely in the sense that it is incomprehensible, not to be fully grasped, but unknowable in the sense that nothing at all can be known about it. And then, having laid down this as their fundamental principle, they proceeded at once, with a strange inconsistency, to assert that we can know what it isnot. This above all else, they said, it is not: it is not personal. True, Herbert Spencer maintained that it is as far raised above personality as personality is raised above unconsciousness; but the stress was laid not upon the affirmation of super-personality, but upon the denial and rejection of anything like personality as we understand it.
The position was really untenable. Possibly, if we could detect no more in Nature than power, we might be content, intellectually, to stop at the affirmation of inscrutable force. But if there is also design, then we are bound to go a step further. Bishop Harvey Goodwin expressed this exactly when he said: "Purpose means person." No doubt personality in the Creator must be something far higher and fuller than personality in the creature. The German philosopher Lotze was speaking the truth when he declared that "to all finite mindsthere is allotted but a pale copy" of personality; "the finiteness of the finite," being "not a producing condition of personality," as has often been maintained, "but a limit and hindrance of its development." "Perfect personality," he said, "is in God alone."[1]
To most of us it may sound paradoxical to urge that the full Christian doctrine of the Three Persons in the Godhead is really less difficult intellectually than the doctrine that the Divine Being consists of an isolated unit.
This was the contention of the Greek Fathers of the Church, whose acute and subtle minds anticipated not a few of the objections which we have had to encounter in our days. We cannot elaborate the statement here,[2] but it is to the point to observe that the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity removes from the Christian believer that which to Spencer was one of the greatest obstacles in the way of the acceptance of the idea of a Divine Personality; for it relieves him from the necessity of imagining a subject without an object, since in the Christian view the highest life in the universe is a social life,in which thought is for ever communicated with unbroken harmony of feeling and will.
But the inadequacy of Agnosticism was to be seen not only on the intellectual side. Its practical effects were necessarily determined by its negations. Since we could know nothing of the ultimate power, it was plainly our wisdom to turn our attention elsewhere. It followed that, if morality was to be upheld, it must be based upon other than the familiar sanctions. For awhile it was enthusiastically promised that this could and should be done. But the event proved otherwise. Towards the end of his life, Herbert Spencer was constrained to admit this. "Now that ... I have succeeded in completing the second volume ofThe Principles of Ethics... my satisfaction is somewhat dashed by the thought that these new parts fall short of expectation. The doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent that I had hoped."[3]
And this moral failure of the system pointed yet deeper to its essential weakness. It deliberately ignored the profoundest needs and capacities of our nature. The need is the need for God, and for One who, though greatly above us, is yet within our reach, and ready to give us His friendship. "Thouhast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee." That cry of St. Augustine has found its echo in unnumbered souls, and our humanity will never be satisfied while it is offered no more than an impalpable abstraction for the contentment of its craving.
Allusion has been made to the fact that Romanes in his latter days was led to abandon the negative attitude which he had taken in his earlier life. The story of the change is to be found as told by himself in the volume ofLife and Lettersedited by his widow, and in theNoteswhich he left behind him. These he had written in preparation for a book which was to have been entitled:A Candid Examination of Religion.[4] It is evident that no consideration weighed more with him than this witness of the deeper needs of the soul. We have seen with what sorrow he had accepted as a young man the conclusions to which he had found himself driven when Theism seemed no longer a possible belief. After his change he admitted that he had failed to recognise an important element in his treatment of the problem. "When I wrote the preceding treatise Idid not sufficiently appreciate the immense importance ofhumannature in any enquiry touching Theism. But since then I have seriously studied anthropology (including the science of comparative religions), psychology, and metaphysics, with the result of clearly seeing that human nature is the most important part of nature as a whole whereby to investigate the theory of Theism."[5]
The outcome of his study was to convince him of two things. The first was that, "if the religious instincts of the human race point to no reality as their object, they are out of analogy with all other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly."[6] And this first conviction was only the preparation for a second. Speaking again of hisCandid Examination of Theism, he says: "In that treatise I have since come to see that I was wrong touching what I constituted the basal argument for my negative conclusion ... Reason is not the only attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually employs for the ascertainment of truth. Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in their respective spheres, even of everyday life; faith, trust, taste, etc., areas needful in ascertaining truth as to character, beauty, etc., as is reason."[7]
He put the same thing with even more of the note of personal experience when he wrote to Dean Paget of Christ Church within three months of his death: "Strangely enough for my time of life, I have begun to discover the truth of what you once wrote about logical processes not being the only means of research in regions transcendental."[8] In all this he was following, as he knew, in the steps of Pascal, who had devoted the whole of the first part of his treatise to the argument from the condition of man's nature without God, and then had appealed to that nature for its positive testimony to the reality of the spiritual. "The heart has its reasons that the reason does not know."
Agnosticism appeared dressed in the garb of an exceeding reverence, but, on closer acquaintance, it became evident that its acceptance would mean the cheapening of life by banishing from it the Divine personality, and robbing the human of the qualities that give it its greatest worth. Happily the disaster has been averted, and there are not many now who would seriously undertake its defence.
[1]Microcosmus(E.T.), II., p. 688.
[2] Those who may desire to see the matter clearly and ably handled would do well to read the Essay on "The Being of God," inLux Mundi, by Aubrey Moore.
[3] Preface, Vol. II. (1893).
[4] These notes were sent by Mr. Romanes' desire after his death, in 1894, to Bishop Gore, and have been published by him in a sixpenny volume under the title ofThoughts on Religion.
[5] P. 154.
[6] P. 82.
[7] Pp. 111, f.
[8] Life and Letters, p. 375.
We have still to see how the last of the difficulties of which we have spoken was treated. It was a difficulty which could not be regarded with indifference. For what would it avail to shew that men had a right to cherish the belief in Power, and Purpose, and Personality, unless they could also be assured that the Orderer of the world is good? Nay, might they not feel, if there were no such assurance, that it would be better to be altogether without His presence and influence? On a matter so vital to happiness and well-being the mere possibility of a doubt was torment enough. What was there to be said to bring relief to the mind and heart when charges were made against the benevolence and beneficence of Nature's ways? What satisfactory account could be given of the waste and cruelty which were seen to abound on every hand? The more clear the certainty that there is design in the Universe, the more urgent becamethe question as to the character of that design, and of the motives that prompt it.
So long as the difficulty remained unrelieved, the thoughts of many of the most sensitive minds in regard to Theism were held in suspense. The shadow of misgiving was felt to be creeping over the mind of the age, like the gloom of an approaching eclipse, even before the arrival of the Darwinian hypothesis. In words too well known to need repeating, Tennyson had given utterance to the half-realised anxiety of his contemporaries in the stanzas of hisIn Memoriam, published in 1850.
What the finer spirits were already beginning to feel was soon to be proclaimed, in terms which could not fail to be understood by the multitude, as an inevitable truth brought to light by scientific enquiry. We have seen how it was stated with the passion of eloquence by Huxley and Romanes. And Darwin, with all his detachment and philosophic calm, was at times deeply affected by the seriousness of the problem which he had done so much to bring into prominence. It is plain that he did his very utmost to retain the hopeful view, and to put the most consoling interpretation he could upon the disquieting facts.
He had no difficulty in shewing that the wholesale destruction of living organisms was imperativelynecessary. "There is no exception to the rule," he said, "that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair."[1]
The truth of this has been demonstrated again and again. A pair of rabbits, for example, would in the most favourable circumstances increase in four or five years to a million. The roe of a cod may contain eight or nine millions of eggs. More appalling still, the female of the common flesh fly will at one time deposit 20,000 eggs. At this rate of increase it has been calculated that, in less than a year, a single pair would produce enough flies, if these were not devoured by their natural foes, to cover the whole surface of the globe to the depth of a mile and a quarter! But all this does not, of course, make it clear why in a beneficently ordered world such a necessity of slaughter should ever have been allowed to arise.
Darwin, as we have said, tried hard to take the most favourable view of the whole process. He thus concluded his chapter on the struggle for existence; "When we reflect on the struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief thatthe war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply." And these are the words with which he concluded theOrigin of Species: "Thus from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows."
But a year or two later he shewed that his mind was by no means at rest on the matter, by writing in this strain to his friend Asa Gray:
"I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.... I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notionat allsatisfies me.... Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical."[2]
Happily there were others who were able to see their way somewhat further than this. Romanes, in a paper which he read before the Aristotelian Society in 1889, shewed that he was reconsidering his position. He questioned whether the assertion, made by a speaker in a previous discussion, that "the fair order of Nature is only acquired by a wholesale waste and sacrifice," could be accepted as strictly true, for "how can it be said that, in point of fact, therehasbeen a waste, orhasbeen a sacrifice? Clearly such things can only be said when our point of view is restricted to the means (i.e., the wholesale destruction of the less fit); not when we extend our view to what, even within the limits of human observation, is unquestionably theend(i.e., the causal result in an ever improving world of types)."[3]
He had intended to write more fully on the subject, but did not live to do so. We only know that on the Sunday before his death he did express to Bishop Gore his entire agreement with a statement that had been made a short time before by Professor Knight, in hisAspects of Theism, to the effect that "A larger good is evolved through the winnowing process by which physical nature casts its weaker productsaside, etc."[4] We cannot suppose that, if he had lived, he would have been content to have left the argument thus. That the end justifies the means, is scarcely a doctrine which can be accepted as the last word of an ethical defence of the constitution of the world.
No doubt there were further pleas to be put in, and we shall do well to give them their full value. There is the contention that the pleasures of life as a whole outweigh the sum of its evils. This was maintained, and we need not hesitate to say successfully maintained, by Lord Avebury, and not by him alone. Indeed Darwin had emphatically said, "According to my judgment happiness decidedly prevails."[5] Then there has always been urged the undoubted fact that pain, if an evil, is yet the minister of good. Browning's optimism may have carried him too far when he laid it down that "when pain ends gain ends," but it is not to be questioned that men have profited by sufferings, and that they have had to thank their pains, if only because these have served to protect them from yet greater misfortunes. There is a true wisdom in the moral of the old fable of the blacksmith, who prayed to heaven that the fire might not burn his fingers, to discover that asa result it had charred his hand to the bone. Medical science has had much to say with regard to the salutary office of pain. It has gone so far as to assert that, "the symptoms of disease are marked by purpose, and the purpose is beneficent." Nay more, "the processes of disease aim not at the destruction of life, but at the saving of it."[6] None the less, with what might seem a splendid inconsistency, the medical profession devotes itself untiringly to the alleviation of the symptoms and to the eradication of disease.
Again, we may be thankful to be assured that, whatever be the case with man, the lower organisms feel pain less than he does, and much less than he is often wont to imagine that they feel it. This has been argued again and again by the veteran naturalist Wallace, whose right to speak on the subject no one is likely to dispute. In his recently published book,The World of Life, he has devoted a whole chapter to answering the question, "Is Nature cruel?" and it is due to him, as well as to the importance of the problem, that we should carefully note what he has said. The following quotations may be taken as sufficiently indicating his position.
"The widespread idea of the cruelty of Nature isalmost wholly imaginary."[7] "Our whole tendency to transferoursensations of pain to the other animals is grossly misleading."[8]
"No other animalneedsthe pain-sensations that we need; it is therefore absolutely certain—on principles of evolution—that no other possesses such sensations in more than a fractional degree of ours."[9]
"In the category of painless or almost painless animals, I think we may place almost all aquatic animals up to fishes, all the vast hordes of insects, probably all mollusca and worms; thus reducing the sphere of pain to a minimum throughout all the earlier geological ages, and very largely even now."[10]
"The purpose and use of all parasitic diseases is to seize upon the less adapted and less healthy individuals—those which are slowly dying and no longer of value in the preservation of the species, and therefore to a certain extent injurious to the race by requiring food and occupying space needed by the more fit."[11]
Speaking of "the vicious-looking teeth and claws of the cat tribe, the hooked beak and prehensile talons of birds of prey, the poison fangs of serpents, the stings of wasps and many others," Dr. Wallacewrites; "The idea that all these weapons exist for thepurposeof shedding blood or giving pain is wholly illusory. As a matter of fact, their effect is wholly beneficent even to the sufferers, inasmuch as they tend to the diminution of pain. Their actual purpose is always to prevent the escape of captured food—of a wounded animal, which would then, indeed, sufferuselesspain, since it would certainly very soon be captured again and be devoured." "All conclusions derived from the house-fed cat and mouse are fallacious."[12] Finally he concludes by inveighing against "the ludicrously exaggerated view adopted by men of such eminence and usually of such calm judgment as Huxley—a view almost as far removed from fact or science as the purely imaginary and humanitarian dogma of the poet:
'The poor beetle, that we tread upon,In corporal sufferance finds a pang as greatAs when a giant dies.'