Mr. Darwin says that "in the Southern hemisphere, if we compare large tracts of land in Australia, South Africa, and western South America, between latitudes 25° and 35°, we shall find parts extremely similar in all their conditions, yet it would not be possible to point out three faunas and floras more utterly dissimilar. Or again we may compare the productions of South America south of lat. 35° with those north of 25°, which consequently inhabit a considerably different climate, and they will be found incomparably more closely related to each other, than they are to the productions of Australia or Africa under nearly the same climate." Still more striking are the contrasts which Mr. Darwin points out between adjacent areas that are totally cut off from each other. "No two marine faunas are more distinct, with hardly a fish, shell, or crab in common, than those of the eastern and western shores of South and Central America; yet these great faunas are separated only by the narrow, but impassable, isthmus of Panama." On opposite sides of high mountain-chains, also, there are marked differences in the organic forms—differences not so marked as where the barriers are absolutely impassable, but much more marked than are necessitated by unlikenesses of physical conditions.
Not less suggestive is the converse fact that wide geographical areas which offer decided geologic and meteorologic contrasts, are peopled by nearly-allied groups of organisms, if there are no barriers to migration. "The naturalist in travelling, for instance, from north to south never fails to be struck by the manner in which successive groups of beings, specifically distinct, yet clearly related, replace each other. He hears from closely allied, yet distinct kinds of birds, notes nearly similar, and sees their nests similarly constructed, but not quite alike, with eggs coloured in nearly the same manner. The plains near the Straits of Magellan are inhabited by one species of Rhea (American Ostrich), and northward the plains of La Plata by another species of the same genus; and not by a true ostrich or emu, like those found in Africaand Australia under the same latitude. On these same plains of La Plata, we see the agouti and bizcacha, animals having nearly the same habits as our hares and rabbits and belonging to the same order of Rodents, but they plainly display an American type of structure. We ascend the lofty peaks of the Cordillera and we find an alpine species of bizcacha; we look to the waters, and we do not find the beaver or musk-rat, but the coypu and capybara, rodents of the American type. Innumerable other instances could be given. If we look to the islands off the American shore, however much they may differ in geological structure, the inhabitants, though they may be all peculiar species, are essentially American."
What is the generalization implied by these two groups of facts? On the one hand, we have similarly-conditioned, and sometimes nearly-adjacent, areas, occupied by quite different Faunas. On the one hand, we have areas remote from one another in latitude, and contrasted in soil as well as climate, occupied by closely-allied Faunas. Clearly then, as like organisms are not universally, or even generally, found in like habitats, nor very unlike organisms in very unlike habitats, there is no manifest pre-determined adaptation of the organisms to the habitats. The organisms do no occur in such and such places solely because they are either specially fit for those places, or more fit for them than all other organisms.
The induction under which these facts come, and which unites them with various other facts, is a totally-different one. When we see that the similar areas peopled by dissimilar forms, are those between which there are impassable barriers; while the dissimilar areas peopled by similar forms, are those between which there are no such barriers; we are at once reminded of the general truth exemplified in the last section—the truth that each species of organism tends ever to expand its sphere of existence—to intrude on other areas, other modes of life, other media. And we are shown that through these perpetually-recurring attempts to thrust itself into everyaccessible habitat, each species spreads until it reaches limits which are for the time insurmountable.
§ 107. We pass now to the distribution of organic forms in Time. Geological inquiry has established the truth that during a Past of immeasurable duration, plants and animals have existed on the Earth. In all countries their buried remains are found in greater or less abundance. From comparatively small areas multitudinous different types have been exhumed. Every exploration of new areas, and every closer inspection of areas already explored, brings more types to light. And beyond question, an exhaustive examination of all exposed strata, and of all strata now covered by the sea, would disclose types immensely out-numbering those at present known. Further, geologists agree that even had we before us every kind of fossil which exists, we should still have nothing like a complete index to the past inhabitants of our globe. Many sedimentary deposits have been so altered by the heat of adjacent molten matter, as greatly to obscure the organic remains contained in them. The extensive formations once called "transition," and now re-named "metamorphic," are acknowledged to be formations of sedimentary origin, from which all traces of such fossils as they probably included have been obliterated by igneous action. And the accepted conclusion is that igneous rock has everywhere resulted from the melting-up of beds of detritus originally deposited by water. How long the reactions of the Earth's molten nucleus on its cooling crust, have been thus destroying the records of Life, it is impossible to say; but there are strong reasons for believing that the records which remain bear but a small ratio to the records which have been destroyed. Thus we have but extremely imperfect data for conclusions respecting the distribution of organic forms in Time. Some few generalizations, however, may be regarded as established.
One is that the plants and animals now existing mostly differ from the plants and animals which have existed.Though there are species common to our present Fauna and to past Faunas, yet thefaciesof our present Fauna differs, more or less, from thefaciesof each past Fauna. On carrying out the comparison, we find that past Faunas differ from one another, and that the differences between them are proportionate to their degrees of remoteness from one another in Time, as measured by their relative positions in the sedimentary series. So that if we take the assemblage of organic forms living now, and compare it with the successive assemblages of organic forms which have lived in successive geologic epochs, we find that the farther we go back into the past, the greater does the unlikeness become. The number of species and genera common to the compared assemblages, becomes smaller and smaller; and the assemblages differ more and more in their general characters. Though a species of brachiopod now extant is almost identical with a species found in Silurian strata, though between the Silurian Fauna and our own there are sundry common genera of molluscs, yet it is undeniable that there is a proportion between lapse of time and divergence of organic forms.
This divergence is comparatively slow and continuous where there is continuity in the geological formations, but is sudden, and comparatively wide, wherever there occurs a great break in the succession of strata. The contrasts which thus arise, gradually or all at once, in formations that are continuous or discontinuous, are of two kinds. Faunas of different eras are distinguished partly by the absence from the one of type's present in the other, and partly by the unlikenesses between the types common to both. Such contrasts between Faunas as are due to the appearance or disappearance of types, are of secondary significance: they possibly, or probably, do not imply anything more than migrations or extinctions. The most significant contrasts are those between successive groups of organisms of the same type. And among such, as above said, the differences are, speaking generally, small and continuous where a series of conformablestrata gives proof of continued existence of the type in the locality; while they are comparatively large and abrupt where the adjacent formations are shown to have been separated by long intervals.
Another general fact, referred to by Mr. Darwin as one which palæontology has made tolerably certain, is that forms and groups of forms which have once disappeared from the Earth, do not reappear. Passing over the few species which have continued throughout the whole period geologically recorded, it may be said that each species after arising, spreading for an era, and continuing abundant for an era, eventually declines and becomes extinct; and that similarly, each genus during a longer period increases in the number of its species, and during a longer period dwindles and at last dies out. After making its exit neither species nor genus ever re-enters. The like is true even of those larger groups called orders. Four types of reptiles which were once abundant have not been found in modern formations, and do not at present exist. Though nothing less than an exhaustive examination of all strata, can prove conclusively that a type of organization when once lost is never reproduced, yet so many facts point to this inference that its truth can scarcely be doubted.
To frame a conception of the total amount and general direction of the change in organic forms during the time measured by our sedimentary series, is at present impossible—the data are insufficient. The immense contrast between the few and low forms of the earliest-known Fauna, and the many and high forms of our existing Fauna, has been commonly supposed to prove, not only great change but great progress. Nevertheless, this appearance of progress may be, and probably is, mainly illusive. Wider knowledge has shown that remains of comparatively well-organized creatures really existed in strata long supposed to be devoid of them, and that where they are absent, the nature of the strata often explains their absence, without assuming that they did not exist when these strata were formed. It is a tenablehypothesis that the successively-higher types fossilized in our successively-later deposits, indicate nothing more than successive migrations from pre-existing continents to continents that were step by step emerging from the ocean—migrations which necessarily began with the inferior orders of organisms, and included the successively-superior orders as the new lands became more accessible to them and better fitted for them.[43]
While the evidence usually supposed to prove progression is thus untrustworthy, there is trustworthy evidence that there has been, in many cases, little or no progression. Though the orders which have existed from palæozoic and mesozoic times down to the present day, are almost universally changed, yet a comparison of ancient and modern members of these orders shows that the total amount of change is not relatively great, and that it is not manifestly towards a higher organization. Though nearly all the living forms which have prototypes in early formations differ from these prototypes specially, and in most cases generically, yet ordinal peculiarities are, in numerous cases, maintained from the earliest times geologically recorded, down to our own time; and we have no visible evidence of superiority in the existing genera of these orders. Inhis lecture "On the Persistent Types of Animal Life," Prof. Huxley enumerated many cases. On the authority of Dr. Hooker he stated "that there are Carboniferous plants which appear to be generically identical with some now living: that the cone of the OoliticAraucariais hardly distinguishable from that of an existing species; that a truePinusappears in the Purbecks and aJuglansin the chalk." Among animals he named palæozoic and mesozoic corals which are very like certain extant corals; genera of Silurian molluscs that answer to existing genera; insects and arachnids in the coal-formations that are not more than generically distinct from some of our own insects and arachnids. He instanced "the Devonian and CarboniferousPleuracanthus, which differs no more from existing sharks than these do from one another;" early mesozoic reptiles "identical in the essential characters of their organization with those now living;" and Triassic mammals which did not differ "nearly so much from some of those which now live, as these differ from one another." Continuing the argument in his "Anniversary Address to the Geological Society" in 1862, Prof. Huxley gave many cases in which the changes that have taken place, are not changes towards a more specialized or higher organization—asking "in what sense are the Liassic Chelonia inferior to those which now exist? How are the Cretaceous Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, or Pterosauria less embryonic or more differentiated species than those of the Lias?" While, however, contending that in most instances "positive evidence fails to demonstrate any sort of progressive modification towards a less embryonic or less generalized type in a great many groups of animals of long-continued geological existence," Prof. Huxley added that there are other groups, "co-existing with them under the same conditions, in which more or less distinct indications of such a process seem to be traceable." And in illustration of this, he named that better development of the vertebræ which characterizes some of the more modern fishes and reptiles, when compared with ancient fishesand reptiles of the same orders; and the "regularity and evenness of the dentition of theAnoplotheriumas contrasting with that of existing Artiodactyles."[44]
The facts thus summed up do not show that higher forms have not arisen in the course of geologic time, any more than the facts commonly cited prove that higher forms have arisen; nor are they regarded by Professor Huxley as showing this. Were those which have survived from palæozoic and mesozoic days down to our own day, the only types; and did the modifications, rarely of more than generic value, which these types have undergone, give no better evidences of increased complexity than are actually given by them; then it would be inferable that there has been no appreciable advance. But there now exist, and have existed during the more recent geologic epochs, various types which are not known to have existed in earlier epochs—some of them widely unlike these persistent types and some of them nearly allied to these persistent types. As yet, we know nothing about the origins of these new types. But it is possible that causes like those which have produced generic differences in the persistent types, have, in some or many cases, produced modifications great enough to constitute ordinal differences. If structural contrasts not exceeding certain moderate limits are held to mark only generic distinctions; and if organisms displaying larger contrasts are regarded as ordinally or typically distinct; it is obvious that the persistence of a given type through a long geologic period without apparently undergoing deviations of more than generic value, by no means disproves the occurrence of far greater deviations in other cases; sincethe forms resulting from such far greater deviations, being regarded as typically distinct forms, will not be taken as evidence of great change in an original type. That which Prof. Huxley's argument proves, and that only which he considers it to prove, is that organisms have no innate tendencies to assume higher forms; and that "any admissible hypothesis of progressive modification, must be compatible with persistence without progression through indefinite periods."
One very significant fact must be added concerning the relation between distribution in Time and distribution in Space. I quote it from Mr. Darwin:—"Mr. Clift many years ago showed that the fossil mammals from the Australian caves were closely allied to the living marsupials of that continent. In South America a similar relationship is manifest, even to an uneducated eye, in the gigantic pieces of armour like those of the armadillo, found in several parts of La Plata; and Professor Owen has shown in the most striking manner that most of the fossil mammals, buried there in such numbers, are related to the South American types. This relationship is even more clearly seen in the wonderland collection of fossil bones made by MM. Lund and Clausen in the caves of Brazil. I was so much impressed with these facts that I strongly insisted, in 1839 and 1845, on this 'law of the succession of types,'—on 'this wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living.' Professor Owen has subsequently extended the same generalization to the Mammals of the Old World. We see the same law in this author's restorations of the extinct and gigantic birds of New Zealand. We see it also in the birds of the caves of Brazil. Mr. Woodward has shown that the same law holds good with sea-shells, but from the wide distribution of most genera of molluscs, it is not well displayed by them. Other cases could be added, as the relation between the extinct and living landshells of Madeira, and between the extinct and living brackish-water shells of the Aralo-Caspian Sea."
The general results, then, are these. Our knowledge of distribution in Time, being derived wholly from the evidence afforded by fossils, is limited to that geologic time of which some records remain—cannot extend to those remoter times the records of which have been obliterated. From these remaining records, which probably form but a small fraction of the whole, the general facts deducible are these:—That such organic types as have lived through successive epochs, have almost universally undergone modifications of specific and generic values—modifications which have commonly been great in proportion as the period has been long. That besides the types which have persisted from ancient eras down to our own era, other types have from time to time made their appearance in the ascending series of strata—types of which some are lower and some higher than the types previously recorded; but whence these new types came, and whether any of them arose by divergence from the previously-recorded types, the evidence does not yet enable us to say. That in the course of long geologic epochs nearly all species, most genera, and a few orders, have become extinct; and that a species, genus, or order, which has once disappeared from the Earth never reappears. And, lastly, that the Fauna now occupying each separate area of the Earth's surface is very nearly allied to the Fauna which existed on that area during recent geologic times.
§ 108. Omitting sundry minor generalizations, the exposition of which would involve too much detail, what is to be said of these major generalizations?
The distribution in Space cannot be said to imply that organisms have been designed for their particular habitats and placed in them; since, besides the habitat in which each kind of organism is found there are commonly other habitats, as good or better for it, from which it is absent—habitats to which it is so much better fitted than organisms now occupying them, that it extrudes these organisms when allowed theopportunity. Neither can we suppose that the purpose has been to establish varieties of Floras and Faunas; since, if so, why are the Floras and Faunas but little divergent in widely-sundered areas between which migration is possible, while they are markedly divergent in adjacent areas between which migration is impossible?
Passing to distributions in Time, there arise the questions—why during nearly the whole of that vast period geologically recorded have there existed none of those highest organic forms which have now overrun the Earth?—how is it that we find no traces of a creature endowed with large capacities for knowledge and happiness? The answer that the Earth was not, in remote times, a fit habitation for such a creature, besides being unwarranted by the evidence, suggests the equally awkward question—why during untold millions of years did the Earth remain fit only for inferior creatures? What, again, is the meaning of extinction of types? To conclude that the saurian type was replaced by other types at the beginning of the tertiary period, because it was not adapted to the conditions which then arose, is to conclude that it could not be modified into fitness for the conditions; and this conclusion is at variance with the hypothesis that creative skill is shown in the multiform adaptations of one type to many ends.
What interpretations may rationally be put on these and other general facts of distribution in Space and Time, will be seen in the next division of this work.
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.
PRELIMINARY.
§ 109. In the foregoing Part, we have contemplated the most important of the generalizations to which biologists have been led by observation of organisms; as well as some others which contemplation of the facts has suggested to me. These Inductions of Biology have also been severally glanced at on their deductive sides; for the purpose of noting the harmony existing between them and those primordial truths set forth inFirst Principles. Having thus studied the leading phenomena of life separately, we are prepared for studying them as an aggregate, with the view of arriving at the most general interpretation of them.
There is anensembleof vital phenomena presented by each organism in the course of its growth, development, and decay; and there is anensembleof vital phenomena presented by the organic world as a whole. Neither of these can be properly dealt with apart from the other. But the last of them may be separately treated more conveniently than the first. What interpretation we put on the facts of structure and function in each living body, depends entirely on our conception of the mode in which living bodies in general have originated. To form some conclusion respecting this mode—a provisional if not a permanent conclusion—must therefore be our first step.
We have to choose between two hypotheses—the hypothesis of Special Creation and the hypothesis of Evolution.Either the multitudinous kinds of organisms which now exist, and the far more multitudinous kinds which have existed during past geologic eras, have been from time to time separately made; or they have arisen by insensible steps, through actions such as we see habitually going on. Both hypotheses imply a Cause. The last, certainly as much as the first, recognizes this Cause as inscrutable. The point at issue is, how this inscrutable Cause has worked in the production of living forms. This point, if it is to be decided at all, is to be decided only by examination of evidence. Let us inquire which of these antagonist hypotheses is most congruous with established facts.
GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE SPECIAL-CREATION-HYPOTHESIS.[45]
§ 110. Early ideas are not usually true ideas. Undeveloped intellect, be it that of an individual or that of the race, forms conclusions which require to be revised and re-revised, before they reach a tolerable correspondence with realities. Were it otherwise there would be no discovery, no increase of intelligence. What we call the progress of knowledge, is the bringing of Thoughts into harmony with Things; and it implies that the first Thoughts are either wholly out of harmony with Things, or in very incomplete harmony with them.
If illustrations be needed the history of every science furnishes them. The primitive notions of mankind as to the structure of the heavens were wrong; and the notions which replaced them were successively less wrong. The original belief respecting the form of the Earth was wrong; and this wrong belief survived through the first civilizations. The earliest ideas that have come down to us concerning the natures of the elements were wrong; and only in quite recent times has the composition of matter in its various forms been better understood. The interpretations of mechanical facts, of meteorological facts, of physiological facts, were at first wrong. In all these cases men set out withbeliefs which, if not absolutely false, contained but small amounts of truth disguised by immense amounts of error.
Hence the hypothesis that living beings resulted from special creations, being a primitive hypothesis, is probably an untrue hypothesis. It would be strange if, while early men failed to reach the truth in so many cases where it is comparatively conspicuous, they reached it in a case where it is comparatively hidden.
§ 111. Besides the improbability given to the belief in special creations, by its association with mistaken beliefs in general, a further improbability is given to it by its association with a special class of mistaken beliefs. It belongs to a family of beliefs which have one after another been destroyed by advancing knowledge; and is, indeed, almost the only member of the family surviving among educated people.
We all know that the savage thinks of each striking phenomenon, or group of phenomena, as caused by some separate personal agent; that out of this conception there grows up a polytheistic conception, in which these minor personalities are variously generalized into deities presiding over different divisions of nature; and that these are eventually further generalized. This progressive consolidation of causal agencies may be traced in the creeds of all races, and is far from complete in the creed of the most advanced races. The unlettered rustics who till our fields, do not let the consciousness of a supreme power wholly absorb the aboriginal conceptions of good and evil spirits, and of charms or secret potencies dwelling in particular objects. The earliest mode of thinking changes only as fast as the constant relations among phenomena are established. Scarcely less familiar is the truth, that while accumulating knowledge makes these conceptions of personal causal agents gradually more vague, as it merges them into general causes, it also destroys the habit of thinking of them as working after the methods of personal agents. We do not now, like Kepler,assume guiding spirits to keep the planets in their orbits. It is no longer the universal belief that the sea was once for all mechanically parted from the dry land; or that the mountains were placed where we see them by a sudden creative act. All but a narrow class have ceased to suppose sunshine and storm to be sent in some arbitrary succession. The majority of educated people have given up thinking of epidemics of punishments inflicted by an angry deity. Nor do even the common people regard a madman as one possessed by a demon. That is to say, we everywhere see fading away the anthropomorphic conception of Cause. In one case after another, is abandoned the ascription of phenomena to a will analogous to the human will, working by methods analogous to human methods.
If, then, of this once-numerous family of beliefs the immense majority have become extinct, we may not unreasonably expect that the few remaining members of the family will become extinct. One of these is the belief we are here considering—the belief that each species of organism was specially created. Many who in all else have abandoned the aboriginal theory of things, still hold this remnant of the aboriginal theory. Ask any well-informed man whether he accepts the cosmogony of the Indians, or the Greeks, or the Hebrews, and he will regard the question as next to an insult. Yet one element common to these cosmogonies he very likely retains: not bearing in mind its origin. For whence did he get the doctrine of special creations? Catechise him, and he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be right while all the rest is wrong, he is unable to say. May we not then expect that the relinquishment of all other parts of this story, will by and by be followed by the relinquishment of this remaining part of it?
§ 112. The belief which we find thus questionable, bothas being a primitive belief and as being a belief belonging to an almost-extinct family, is a belief not countenanced by a single fact. No one ever saw a special creation; no one ever found proof of an indirect kind that a special creation had taken place. It is significant, as Dr. Hooker remarks, that 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 connexion with imagined places, where the order of organic nature is unknown.
Besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this hypothesis of special creations cannot support itself internally—cannot be framed into a coherent thought. It is one of those illegitimate symbolic conceptions which are mistaken for legitimate symbolic conceptions (First Principles, § 9), because they remain untested. Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like a definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism, when specially created, is created out of nothing? If so, there is a supposed creation of matter; and the creation of matter is inconceivable—implies the establishment of a relation in thought between nothing and something—a relation of which one term is absent—an impossible relation. Is it supposed that the matter of which the new organism consists is not created for the occasion, but is taken out of its pre-existing forms and arranged into a new form? If so, we are met by the question—how is the re-arrangement effected? Of 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 appropriate chemical compounds, and then fall with certain others into its appointed place inthe aggregate of complex tissues and organs? Surely thus to assume a myriad supernatural impulses, differing in their directions and amounts, given to as many different atoms, is a multiplication of mysteries rather than the solution of a mystery. For 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 inconceivable as the creation of matter. It is thus with all attempted ways of representing the process. The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and moulds a new creature, as a potter moulds a vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of the special-creation doctrine. But having abandoned this crude belief, what belief is he prepared to substitute? If a new organism is not thus produced, then in what way is one produced? or rather—in what way does he conceive a new organism to be produced? We will not ask for the ascertained mode, but will be content with a mode which can be consistently imagined. No such mode, however, is assignable. Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from a divine interposition, do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. They do not really believe, but ratherbelieve they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed, and no such mental representation is here possible.
§ 113. If we imagine mankind to be contemplated by some being as short-lived as an ephemeron, but possessing intelligence like our own—if we imagine such a being studying men and women, during his few hours of life, and speculating as to the mode in which they came into existence; it is manifest that, reasoning in the usual way, he would suppose each man and woman to have been separately created. No appreciable changes of structure occurring in any of them during the time over which hisobservations extended, this being would probably infer that no changes of structure were taking place, or had taken place; and that from the outset each man and woman had possessed all the characters then visible—had been originally formed with them. The application is obvious. A human life is ephemeral compared with the life of a species; and even the period over which the records of all human lives extend, is ephemeral compared with the life of a species. There is thus a parallel contrast between the immensely-long series of changes which have occurred during the life of a species, and that small portion of the series open to our view. And there is no reason to suppose that the first conclusion drawn by mankind from this small part of the series visible to them, is any nearer the truth than would be the conclusion of the supposed ephemeral being respecting men and women.
This analogy, suggesting as it does how the hypothesis of special creations is merely a formula for our ignorance, raises the question—What reason have we to assume special creations of species but not of individuals; unless it be that in the case of individuals we directly know the process to be otherwise, but in the case of species do not directly know it to be otherwise? Have we any ground for concluding that species were specially created, except the ground that we have no immediate knowledge of their origin? And does our ignorance of the manner in which they arose warrant us in asserting that they arose by special creation?
Another question is suggested by this analogy. Those who, in the absence of immediate evidence of the way in which species arose, assert that they arose not in a natural way allied to that in which individuals arise, but in a supernatural way, think that by this supposition they honour the Unknown Cause of things; and they oppose any antagonist doctrine as amounting to an exclusion of divine power from the world. But if divine power is demonstrated by the separate creation of each species, would it not have been stillbetter demonstrated by the separate creation of each individual? Why should there exist this process of natural genesis? Why should not omnipotence have been proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour? Is it replied that the Creator was able to make individuals arise from one another in a natural succession, but not to make species thus arise? This is to assign a limit to power instead of magnifying it. Either it was possible or not possible to create species and individuals after the same general method. To say that it was not possible is suicidal in those who use this argument; and if it was possible, it is required to say what end is served by the special creation of species which would not have been better served by the special creation of individuals. Again, what is to be thought of the fact that the immense majority of these supposed special creations took place before mankind existed? Those who think that divine power is demonstrated by special creations, have to answer the question—to whom demonstrated? Tacitly or avowedly, they regard the demonstrations as being for the benefit of mankind. But if so, to what purpose were the millions of these demonstrations which took place on the Earth when there were no intelligent beings to contemplate them? Did the Unknowable thus demonstrate his power to himself? Few 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.
§ 113a. Other implications concerning the divine character must be recognized by those who contend that each species arose by divine fiat. It is hardly supposable that Infinite Power is exercised in trivial actions effecting trivial changes. Yet the organic world in its hundreds of thousands of speciesshows in each sub-division multitudinous forms which, though unlike enough to be classed as specifically distinct, diverge from one another only in small details which have no significance in relation to the life led. Sometimes the number of specific distinctions is so great that did they result from human agency we should call them whimsical.
For example, in Lake Baikal are found 115 species of an amphipod,Gammarus; and the multiplicity becomes startling on learning that this number exceeds the number of all other species of the genus: various as are the conditions to which, throughout the rest of the world, the genus is subject. Still stranger seems the superfluous exercise of power on examining the carpet of living forms at the bottom of the ocean. Not dwelling on the immense variety of creatures unlike in type which live miles below the surface in absolute darkness, it will suffice to instance thePolyzoaalone: low types of animals so small that a thousand of them would not cover a square inch, and on which, nevertheless, there has been, according to the view we are considering, an exercise of creative skill such that by small variations of structure more than 350 species have been produced!
Kindred illustrations are furnished by the fauna of caverns. Are we to suppose that numerous blind creatures—crustaceans, myriapods, spiders, insects, fishes—were specially made sightless to fit them for the Mammoth Cave? Or what shall we say of theProteus, a low amphibian with rudimentary eyes, which inhabits certain caves in Carniola, Carinthia and Dalmatia and is not found elsewhere. Must we conclude that God went out of his way to devise an animal for these places?
More puzzling still is a problem presented to the special-creationist by a batrachian inhabiting Central Australia. In a region once peopled by numerous animals but now made unfit by continuous droughts, there exists a frog which, when the pools are drying up, fills itself with water and burrowing in the mud hibernates until the next rains; which may come in a year or may be delayed for two years. What is to bethought of this creature? Were its structure and the accompanying instinct divinely planned to fit it to this particular habitat?
Many such questions might be asked which, if answered as the current theory necessitates, imply a divine nature hardly like that otherwise assumed.
§ 114. Those who espouse the aboriginal hypothesis entangle themselves in yet other theological difficulties. This assumption that each kind of organism was specially designed, carries with it the implication that the designer intended everything which results from the design. There is no escape from the admission that if organisms were severally constructed with a view to their respective ends, then the character of the constructor is indicated both by the ends themselves, and the perfection or imperfection with which the organisms are fitted to them. Observe the consequences.
Without dwelling on the question recently raised, why during untold millions of years there existed on the Earth no beings endowed with capacities for wide thought and high feeling, we may content ourselves with asking why, at present, the Earth is largely peopled by creatures which inflict on one another so much suffering? Omitting the human race, whose defects and miseries the current theology professes to account for, and limiting ourselves to the lower creation, what must we think of the countless different pain-inflicting appliances and instincts with which animals are endowed? Not only now, and not only ever since men have lived, has the Earth been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures; but palæontology shows us that from the earliest eras geologically recorded, there has been going on this universal carnage. Fossil structures, in common with the structures of existing animals, show us elaborate weapons for destroying other animals. We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. How is this tobe explained? How happens it that animals were so designed as to render this bloodshed necessary? How happens it that in almost every species the number of individuals annually born is such that the majority die by starvation or by violence before arriving at maturity? Whoever contends that each kind of animal was specially designed, must assert either that there was a deliberate intention on the part of the Creator to produce these results, or that there was an inability to prevent them. Which alternative does he prefer?—to cast an imputation on the divine character or to assert a limitation of the divine power? It is useless for him to plead that the destruction of the less powerful by the more powerful, is a means of preventing the miseries of decrepitude and incapacity, and therefore works beneficently. For even were the chief mortality among the aged instead of among the young, there would still arise the unanswerable question—why were not animals constructed in such ways as to avoid these evils? why were not their rates of multiplication, their degrees of intelligence, and their propensities, so adjusted that these sufferings might be escaped? And if decline of vigour was a necessary accompaniment of age, why was it not provided that the organic actions should end in sudden death, whenever they fell below the level required for pleasurable existence? Will any one who contends that organisms were specially designed, assert that they could not have been so designed as to prevent suffering? And if he admits that they could have been made so as to prevent suffering, will he assert that the Creator preferred making them in such ways as to inflict suffering?
Even as thus presented the difficulty is sufficiently great; but it appears immensely greater when we examine the facts more closely. So long as we contemplate only the preying of the superior on the inferior, some good appears to be extracted from the evil—a certain amount of life of a higher order, is supported by sacrificing a great deal of life of alower order. So long, too, as we leave out all mortality but that which, by carrying off the least perfect members of each species, leaves the most perfect members to survive and multiply; we see some compensating benefit reached through the suffering inflicted. But what shall we say on finding innumerable cases in which the suffering inflicted brings no compensating benefit? What shall we say when we see the inferior destroying the superior? What shall we say on finding elaborate appliances for furthering the multiplication of organisms incapable of feeling, at the expense of misery to organisms capable of happiness?
Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the species are parasites. "The number of these parasites," says Prof. Owen, "may be conceived when it is stated that almost every known animal has its peculiar species, and generally more than one, sometimes as many as, or even more kinds than, infest the human body." This parasitism begins among the most minute creatures and pervades the entire animal kingdom from the lowest to the highest. EvenProtozoa, made visible to us only by the microscope, are infested, as isParamœciumby broods ofSphærophrya; while in large and complex animals parasites are everywhere present in great variety. More than this is true. There are parasites upon parasites—an arrangement such that those which are torturing the creatures they inhabit are themselves tortured by indwelling creatures still smaller: looking like an ingenious accumulation of pains upon pains.
But passing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dignity, let us limit ourselves to the case of Man. TheBothriocephalus latusand theTænia solium, are two kinds of tape-worm, which flourish in the human intestines; producing great constitutional disturbances, sometimes ending in insanity; and from the germs of theTænia, when carried into other parts of the body, arise certain partially-developed forms known asCysticerci,Echinococci, andCœnuri, which cause disorganization more or less extensive in the brain, thelungs, the liver, the heart, the eye, &c., often ending fatally after long-continued suffering. Five other parasites, belonging to a different class, are found in the viscera of man—theTrichocephalus, theOxyuris, theStrongylus(two species), theAncylostomumand theAscaris; which, beyond that defect of nutrition which they necessarily cause, sometimes induce certain irritations that lead to complete demoralization. Of another class ofentozoa, belonging to the subdivisionTrematoda, there are five kinds found in different organs of the human body—the liver and gall-duct, the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. Then we have theTrichina spiralis, which passes through one phase of its existence imbedded in the muscles and through another phase of its existence in the intestine; and which, by the induced diseaseTrichinosis, has lately committed such ravages in Germany as to cause a panic. To these we must add the Guinea-worm, which in some part of Africa and India makes men miserable by burrowing in their legs; and the more terrible African parasite theBilharzia, which affects 30 per cent. of the natives on the east coast with bleeding of the bladder. Fromentozoa, let us pass toepizoa. There are two kinds ofAcari, one of them inhabiting the follicles of the skin and the other producing the itch. There are creatures that bury themselves beneath the skin and lay their eggs there; and there are three species of lice which infest the surface of the body. Nor is this all. Besides animal parasites there are sundry vegetal parasites, which grow and multiply at our cost. TheSarcina ventriculiinhabits the stomach, and produces gastric disturbance. TheLeptothrix buccalisis extremely general in the mouth, and may have something to do with the decay of teeth. And besides these there are microscopic fungi which produce ringworm, porrigo, pityriasis, thrush, &c. Thus the human body is the habitat of parasites, internal and external, animal and vegetal, numbering, if all are set down, between two and three dozen species; sundry of which are peculiar to Man, andmany of which produce great suffering and not unfrequently death. What interpretation is to be put on these facts by those who espouse the hypothesis of special creations? According to this hypothesis, all these parasites were designed for their respective modes of life. They were endowed with constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing nutriment from the human body; they were furnished with appliances, often of a formidable kind, enabling them to root themselves in and upon the human body; and they were made prolific in an almost incredible degree, that their germs might have a sufficient number of chances of finding their way into the human body. In short, elaborate contrivances were combined to insure the continuance of their respective races; and to make it impossible for the successive generations of men to avoid being preyed on by them. What shall we say to this arrangement? Shall we say that "the head and crown of things," was provided as a habitat for these parasites? Shall we say that these degraded creatures, incapable of thought or enjoyment, were created that they might cause human misery? One or other of these alternatives must be chosen by those who contend that every kind of organism was separately devised by the Creator. Which do they prefer? With the conception of two antagonist powers, which severally work good and evil in the world, the facts are congruous enough. But with the conception of a supreme beneficence, this gratuitous infliction of pain is absolutely incompatible.
§ 115. See then the results of our examination. The belief in special creations of organisms arose among men during the era of profoundest darkness; and it belongs to a family of beliefs which have nearly all died out as enlightenment has increased. It is without a solitary established fact on which to stand; and when the attempt is made to put it into definite shape in the mind, it turns out to be only a pseud-idea. This mere verbal hypothesis, which men idlyaccept as a real or thinkable hypothesis, is of the same nature as would be one, based on a day's observation of human life, that each man and woman was specially created—an hypothesis not suggested by evidence but by lack of evidence—an hypothesis which formulates ignorance into a semblance of knowledge. Further, we see that this hypothesis, failing to satisfy men's intellectual need of an interpretation, fails also to satisfy their moral sentiment. It is quite inconsistent with those conceptions of the divine nature which they profess to entertain. If infinite power was to be demonstrated, then, either by the special creation of every individual, or by the production of species by some method of natural genesis, it would be better demonstrated than by the use of two methods, as assumed by the hypothesis. And if infinite goodness was to be demonstrated, then, not only do the provisions of organic structure, if they are specially devised, fail to demonstrate it, but there is an enormous mass of them which imply malevolence rather than benevolence.
Thus the hypothesis of special creations turns out to be worthless by its derivation; worthless in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless as absolutely without evidence; worthless as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless as not satisfying a moral want. We must therefore consider it as counting for nothing, in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings.