OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM ORDER EXAMINED.
I.
The universe is a system which comprehends countless subordinate systems. It is full of combinations of parts which constitute wholes, and of means which conspire to ends. The natural and obvious explanation of the order and adjustments which it thus presents is that they are due to a mind or intelligence. And this is the only rational explanation of them. Mind can alone account for order and adjustment, for the co-ordination of parts into a whole, or the adaptation of means to an end. If we refer them to anything else, the reference is essentially contrary to reason, essentially irrational. It may seem at the first superficial glance as if there were a variety of hypotheses as to the origin of the order we everywhere see around us, all equally or nearly equally credible; but adequatereflection cannot fail to convince us that they must be reduced to a single alternative—to two antagonistic theories. Our only choice is between reason and unreason, between a sufficient and an insufficient cause, between, we may even say, a cause and no cause. This will be brought out by an examination of the various hypotheses which have been suggested by those who are unwilling to admit that the order of the world originated in mind. They try their best to suggest some other alternative than that which I have said is inevitable; but every suggestion they make only raises the alternative which they would avoid—mind or chance, reason or unreason, a sufficient explanation or an absurd one. Before proceeding to establish this, however, it may be necessary to remark on some direct objections which have been taken to the design argument,—objections which might be valid, although no explanation of order could be given or were even attempted.
The inference which the theist requires to draw from the existence of order in the universe is merely the existence of an intelligence who produced that order. It follows that it is an unfair objection to his argument to urge, as has often been urged, that it does not directly and of itself prove God to be the creator of the universe, but only the former of it—not the author of matter, but only of the collocations of matter. This objection, whichmen even like Hume and Kant and J. S. Mill, have thought worth employing, is simply that the argument does not prove more than it professes to prove. It does not pretend to make all other reasoning for the Divine existence superfluous. It is no condition of its validity that it should stand alone; that it should contribute nothing to other arguments and receive nothing from them. The objection is thus entirely irrelevant. It may be a wise caution to those who would trust exclusively to it, and neglect or depreciate other arguments. It is no objection to its legitimacy.
It is remarkable, too, that those who have urged this objection have never felt that before employing it they were bound to satisfy themselves and to prove to others that order is a mere surface or superficial thing—outside of matter, superimposed on it. If order be something inherently and intrinsically in matter—be of its very essence—belong to what is ultimate in it; if matter and its form be inseparable,—then the author of its order must have been also the author of itself; and all that this objection shows us is, that those who have employed it have had mistaken notions about the nature of matter. Now, as I have already had to indicate, modern science seems rapidly perfecting the proof of this. The order in the heavens, and in the most complicated animal organisms, appears to be not more wonderful than the order in the ultimateatoms of which they are composed. The balance of evidence is in favour of the view that order extends as far and penetrates as deep as matter itself does. The human intellect is daily learning that it is foolish to fancy that there is anywhere in matter a sphere in which the Divine Wisdom does not manifest itself in and through order.
There is still another remark to be made on the objection under consideration. The immediate inference from the order of the universe is to an intelligent former of the universe, not to a creator. But this does not preclude the raising of the question, Is it reasonable to believe the former of the world merely its former? Must not its former be also its creator? On the contrary, the inference that the order of the world must be the result of intelligent agency ought to suggest this question to every serious and reflective mind, and it should even contribute something to its answer. The order of the universe must have originated with intelligence. What is implied in this admission? Clearly that the order of the universe cannot have originated with matter,—that matter is unintelligent, and cannot account either for intelligence or the effects of intelligence. But if so, the intelligence which formed the universe must be an eternal intelligence. The supposition that matter is eternal must in this case be supplemented by the admission that mind is eternal. In other words,the affirmation that the former of the world is merely its former—the denial that its former is also its creator—means dualism, the belief in two distinct eternal existences,—an eternal mind and eternal matter. Whoever is not prepared to accept this hypothesis must abandon the affirmation and denial from which it necessarily follows. And who can, after due deliberation, accept it? The law of parsimony of causes absolutely forbids our assuming, for the explanation of anything, more causes than are necessary to account for it. It forbids, therefore, our belief in an eternal matter and an eternal mind, unless we can show reason for holding that one of them alone is not a sufficient cause of the universe. Now those who grant the inference from order to intelligence, themselves admit that matter is not a sufficient First Cause of the universe as it actually exists. Do they find any person admitting that mind would be an insufficient First Cause? Do they themselves see any way of showing its insufficiency? Do they not even perceive that it would be foolish and hopeless to try to show that an eternal mind could not create a material universe, and that all they could show would be, the here quite irrelevant truth, that the human mind is ignorant of the manner in which this could be done? If the answers to these questions are what I believe they must be, it must also be acknowledged that the formerof the universe can only be rationally thought of as also its creator.
I turn to the consideration of another equally futile objection to the argument from order. That argument, it is said, does not prove the Divine Intelligence to be infinite. The universe, as a system of order, is finite, and we have no right to conclude that its cause is in respect of intelligence, or in any other respect, infinite. We must attribute to the cause the wisdom necessary to produce the effect, but no more. The obvious reply is, that this is precisely what we do. The argument is not employed to prove the infinity of the Divine Intelligence, but to prove that the order and adaptations which everywhere abound in the universe must have had an intelligence capable of conceiving and producing them. It is an obvious and legitimate argument to that extent, and it is pushed no farther. The inference that the world had an intelligent author is as simple, direct, and valid, as that any statue, painting, or book had an intelligent author. When Mr Spencer, Mr Lewes, and Professor Tyndall argue that the cause of the universe cannot be known to be intelligent, because the reason of man, being finite, cannot comprehend the infinite, they overlook that the reason of man has no need to comprehend the infinite in order to apprehend such manifestations of the infinite as come before it. Just as a person reading the works of the ablemen who urge this weak objection feels certain that these books must have had their origin in minds endowed with certain intellectual powers, and cannot have been produced by chance, or blind forces, or bodies destitute of minds, and this although much in their minds is and always must be inscrutable to him; so, when he studies the books of nature and of history, he feels equally certain, and in the same way certain, that they are the compositions of a most amazing intellect; and his certainty as to this need not be lessened, clouded, or in any degree affected, by the great and indubitable, but here irrelevant, truth—that the mind of God is in itself, in its essence, inscrutable; and in its greatness, its infinity, incomprehensible.
The argument from order must further be admitted sufficient to show, if valid at all, that the wisdom of the First Cause is of the most wondrous character. The more nature and mind and history are studied by any one who sees in them evidence of design at all, the more wondrous must the wisdom displayed in them be felt to be. Whoever realises that that wisdom is at once guiding the countless hosts of heavenly bodies in all their evolutions through the boundless realms of space, and fashioning and providing for the countless hosts of microscopic creatures dwelling on the leaf of a flower or in a drop of water, everywhere accomplishing a multitude of ends by few andsimple means, or effecting single and definite purposes by the most elaborate and complex contrivances, must feel that rash beyond all expression is the short-sighted mortal who can venture to affirm that it is not infinite. If "the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, and by understanding hath established the heavens," His wisdom and His understanding are at least so great that we cannot measure them, and have no right to pronounce them limited. The adjustments and harmonies of the universe, as we know it, indicate a depth and richness of wisdom in its Author which far pass our comprehension; and the universe which we know is probably less in comparison with the universe which God has made, than the leaf on which a host of animalcules live and die is in comparison with the vastest of primeval forests, or an ant-hill with the solar system. The universe which we see and know is a noble commentary on such words of Scripture as these: "I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a compass on the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea his decree, that the watersshould not pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him." But beyond the universe which we see and know, extend illimitable fields of space and stretches of time which we do not see and do not know, but which may be even more crowded with the works of Divine Intelligence than any which are within our range of bodily or mental vision. The ingenious authors of the book entitled 'The Unseen Universe' suppose the entire visible universe to be but a local product and temporary phase of a far older and greater universe, which itself again may be only an island in the ocean of a universe still more stupendous and refined. Whatever error may be mingled with this thought in the work mentioned, there is, I doubt not, at least this much of truth also, that the entire course of nature which science reveals is but a ripple, a current, in the ocean of God's universal action. The man whose mind is duly open to the possibility of this will not venture to pronounce the intelligence of God to be finite. The man who fails to recognise its possibility is very blind, very thoughtless.
It is scarcely credible that the evidences of God's wisdom should have been argued to be proofs of His weakness. And yet this has happened. "It is not too much to say," wrote Mr J. S. Mill, "thatevery indication of design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for contrivance—the need of employing means—is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means, but an encumbrance. A man does not use machinery to move his arms. If he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition. But if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of contrivances? Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a being for whom no difficulties exist. The evidences, therefore, of natural theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under limitations."[30]
This, it seems to me, is very strange and worthless reasoning. According to it, the ability of God to form and execute a purpose is evidence not of power but of weakness. I wonder if Mr Mill imagined that the inability of God to form and carry out a purpose would have been evidence not of His weakness but of His power. Or did he suppose, perhaps, that both ability and inability were signs of weakness, and that, consequently, for once opposites were identical? Or did he not think on the subject at all, and so reasoned very much at random? I confess I cannot see how ability to contrive things is weakness, or inability to contrive them power. I hold to Bacon's maxim that "knowledge is power," and refuse to admit that wisdom is weakness. But God, if omnipotent, it is said, did not need to contrive: His mere word must have been sufficient. Yes, is the obvious answer; His mere word, His mere will, was sufficient to produce all His contrivances, and has produced them all. There is no shadow of reason for suspecting that anything was difficult to Him or for Him. No such suspicion is entertained by those who employ the design argument; and those who would rationally object to that argument must find something else to insist on than the power of God's mere will. The will of God is everywhere as efficacious as He in His omnipotence and omniscience chooses that it should be. At the sametime, if He desire certain ends, His will cannot remain mere will and dispense with the contrivance of appropriate means. If He wish to bestow happiness on human beings, He must create human beings, and contrive their bodies and minds. To speak of His will as able to "bestow the same efficacy on any means" is no less contrary to reason than it would be to speak of it as able to make the part greater than the whole. It is only in the world imagined by Mr Mill—one in which two and two might be five—that a sunbeam could serve the same purpose as a granite pillar or a steam-engine; and such a world, most people will assuredly hold, even omnipotence could not create. Infinite power and wisdom must necessarily work "under limitations" when they originate and control finite things; but the limitations are not in the infinite power and wisdom themselves—they are in their operations and effects. According to Mr Mill's argument, infinite power could not create a finite world at all: only a finite power could do so. That surely means that a finite power must be mightier than an infinite power; and that, again, is surely a plain self-contradiction, a manifest absurdity.
There is another objection which, although in itself unworthy of answer, has been urged so often and presented in so many forms, some of which are rhetorically impressive, that it cannot be whollypassed over. The design argument has been censured as "assuming that the genesis of the heavens and the earth was effected somewhat after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture"—as "converting the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting as man is seen to act"—as "transforming the First Cause into a magnified mechanist who constructs a work of art, and then sits apart from it and observes how it goes," &c. Now the heavens and the earth are to such a wonderful extent exemplifications both of mechanical laws and æsthetic principles, that no man of sense, I think, will deny that they may most justly be compared to machines or works of art, or even pronounced to be machines and works of art. They are that, although they are more than that. An animal is a machine, although an organism too. Every organism is a machine, although every machine is not an organism. Art and nature are not antagonistic and exclusive. Man and all man's arts are included in nature, and nature is the highest art. While, however, it is legitimate and even necessary to illustrate the design argument by references to human inventions, the numerous and immense differences between the works of man's art and the processes of nature must not be overlooked; and there is no excuse for saying that they havebeen overlooked. It is precisely because the universe is so above anything man has made or can make, and because vegetable and animal organisms are so different from watches and statues, that the argument in question leads us to a divine and not to a merely human intelligence. It implies that both the works of God and the works of man are products of intelligence; but it does not require that they should have anything else in common. It recognises that the most elaborate and exquisite contrivances of man fall immeasurably below "nature's most minute designs." So far from requiring, it forbids our carrying any of the limitations or peculiarities of human contrivance over to that which is divine. Besides, the belief in design is held in conjunction with the belief in creation out of nothing. The same persons who recognise that there is a divine wisdom displayed in the constitution and course of nature believe the universe to have been called into being by the mere volition of the Almighty. But among all theories of the genesis of the heavens and the earth, that is the only one which does not represent the First Cause as working like a man. Man never creates—he cannot create. To produce anything he must have something to work on—he must have materials to mould and modify.[31]
II.
Those who refuse to refer the order and adaptations in the universe to a designing intelligence are bound to account for them in some other way. Has this been done? Has any person succeeded in tracing them back to any other principle which can be reasonably regarded as their cause, or as adequate to their production? This is the question which we have now to consider.
Matter, some would have us believe, is the origin of the order of the universe. Grant it, and there is still the question—What is the origin of matter?—to be disposed of. We have seen that this is a question which we are bound to raise; we have seen that there are strong reasons for holding that matter had an origin, had a beginning in time, and none whatever for regarding it as self-existent and eternal. The very existence of order and system, of mechanical adjustments and organic adaptations in the universe, seems to prove that matter must have had a beginning. If certain collocations of matter evince design, and must have had a beginning, the adaptation of the parts to form the collocation evinces design, and implies a beginning. And if matter had a beginning, its cause can only have been mind. To say that it originated with chance or necessity is plainly absurd. Chanceand necessity are meaningless terms unless mind or matter be presupposed. There can be no accidents where neither mind nor matter exists. There can be no chance where there is no law. Chance or accident is what occurs when two or more independent series of phenomena meet, without their meeting having been premeditated and provided for. When one series of causes leads a man to pass a house at a given moment of a given day, and another series of causes, coexistent with but wholly independent of the former series, determines that a heavy body shall fall from the roof of that house at that moment of that day and kill that man, the consequence—his death—is what may be properly called an accident, or matter of chance. One who believes, indeed, in the omniscience and universal foreordination and government of God, will hold that even in such a case the accident or chance is merely apparent; but he will not deny the right of the atheist to speak of chance or accident in this way, or to explain as matters of chance whatever he can. The word chance, or accident, can have no intelligible sense, however, unless there be such independent series of phenomena—unless there be mental and material existences, mental and material laws. Chance cannot be conceived of, even by the atheist, as the origin of existence. The same may be said of necessity. Matter or mind may act necessarily, but necessity cannot act withoutmatter or mind. If it be requisite, therefore, to seek a cause for matter, mind alone can be assigned as its cause. If we are justified in seeking for the origin of matter at all, our choice of an answer lies between mind and absurdity, between a real and sufficient cause and an imaginary and inconceivable cause. Besides, how could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent and eternal? It is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a Supreme Mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the English alphabet produced the plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. These atoms might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long intervals, produce, by a chance contact, some curious collocation or compound; but never could they produce order or organisation, on an extensive scale or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate explanation. To believe that their fortuitous and undirected movements could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no consistent materialist canrefuse to accept this colossal chance-hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our present world—a special collocation among the countless millions of collocations, past and future. Throw the letters of the Greek alphabet, it has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the Iliad and all Greek books. The theory of probabilities, I need hardly say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd. Throw letters together without thought through all eternity, and you will never make them express thought. All the letters in the Iliad might have been tossed and jumbled together from morning to night by the hands of the whole human race, from the beginning of the world until now, and the first line of the Iliad would have been still to compose, had not the genius of Homer been inspired to sing the wrath of Achilles and the war around Troy. But what is the Iliad to the hymn of creation, and the drama of providence? Were these glorious works composed by the mere jumbling together of atoms, which were not even prepared beforehand to form things, as letters are to form words, and which had to shake themselves into order without thehelp of any hand? They may believe that who can. It seems to me that it ought to be much easier to believe all the Arabian Nights.
To ascribe the origination of order tolawis a manifest evasion of the real problem. Law is order. Law is the very thing to be explained. The question is—Has law a reason, or is it without a reason? The unperverted human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason. "The existence of a law connecting and governing any class of phenomena implies a presiding intelligence which has preconceived and established the law. The regulation of events by precise rules of time and space, of number and measure, is evidence of thought and mind." So says Dr Whewell; and the statement is amply justified by the fact, that all laws and rules in the universe imply that existences are related to one another in a way of which intelligent adjustment alone is the adequate and ultimate explanation. The existence of a law uniformly involves the coexistence of several conditions, and that is a phenomenon which, whenever the conditions and law are physically ultimate, and consequently physically inexplicable, clearly presupposes mind. Laws, in a word, are not the causes but the expressions of order. They are themselves the results of delicately accurate adjustments, which indicate the operation of a divine wisdom. There are chemical laws, for example,simply because there are chemical elements endowed with affinities, attractions, or forces the most diverse, yet so balanced and harmonised as to secure the welfare of the world. Besides, laws do not act of themselves. No law produces of itself any result. It is the agents which act according to the law that produce results, and the nature of the result produced depends on the number and character of the agents, and how each is situated and circumstanced. If the agents oppose each other, or are inappropriately distributed, they bring about disorder and disaster in conformity to law. There is no calamity, no evil, no scene of confusion, in the known world, which is not the result of the action of agents which operate in strictest accordance to law. The law of gravitation might rule every particle of matter, and yet conflict and confusion and death would prevail throughout the entire solar system were harmony and stability and life not secured by very special arrangements. Matter might have all its present inherent and essential laws, and yet remain for ever a chaos. Apart from a designing and superintending intelligence, the chances in favour of chaos and against cosmos, even allowing matter to have uncreated properties and laws, were incalculable. The obvious inference is that which Professor Jevons expresses in these words—"As an unlimited number of atoms can be placed in unlimitedspace in an unlimited number of modes of distribution, there must, even granting matter to have had all its laws from eternity, have been at some moment in time, out of the unlimited choices and distributions possible, that one choice and distribution which yielded the fair and orderly universe that now exists." Only out of rational choice can order have come.
The most common mode, perhaps, of evading the problem which order presents to reason, is the indication of the process by which the order has been realised. From Democritus to the latest Darwinian there have been men who supposed that they had completely explained away the evidences for design in nature when they had described the physical antecedents of the arrangements appealed to as evidences. Aristotle showed the absurdity of the supposition more than 2200 years ago. But those who deny final causes have gone on arguing in the same irrational manner down to the present time. They cannot, in fact, do otherwise. They are committed to a false position, and they dare not abandon the sophism on which it rests. Nothing else can explain how any sane mind should infer that because a thing is conditioned it cannot have been designed. The man who argues that the eye was not constructed in order to see because it has been so constructed as to be capable of seeing, is clearly either unableto reason correctly, or allows his reasoning faculty to be terribly perverted by prejudice. That a result is secured by appropriate conditions can seem to no sound and unprejudiced intellect a reason for regarding it to have been undesigned. And yet what other reason is involved in all the attempts to explain away final causes by means of the nebular, Darwinian, and other development hypotheses?
M. Comte imagines that he has shown the inference of design, from the order and stability of the solar system, to be unwarranted, when he has pointed out the physical conditions through which that order and stability are secured, and the process by which they have been obtained. He refers to the comparative smallness of the planetary masses in relation to the central mass, the feeble eccentricity of their orbits, the moderate mutual inclination of their planes, and the superior mean density of their solid over their fluid constituents, as the circumstances which render it stable and habitable, and these characteristic circumstances, as he calls them, he tells us flow naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter. When he has done this, he supposes himself to have proved that the heavens declare no other glory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, and of Newton.
Now, the assertion that the peculiarities whichmake the solar system stable and the earth habitable have flowed naturally and necessarily from the simple mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter, is one which greatly requires proof, but which has never received it. In saying this, we do not challenge the proof of the nebular theory itself. That theory may or may not be true. We are quite willing to suppose it true; to grant that it has been scientifically established. What we maintain is, that even if we admit unreservedly that the earth, and the whole system to which it belongs, once existed in a nebulous state, from which they have been gradually evolved into their present condition conformably to physical laws, we are in no degree entitled to infer from the admission the conclusion which Comte and others have drawn. The man who fancies that the nebular theory implies that the law of gravitation, or any other physical law, has of itself determined the course of cosmical evolution, so that there is no need for believing in the existence and operation of a Divine Mind, proves merely that he is not exempt from reasoning very illogically. The solar system could only have been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and constitution—if it was neither too rare nor too dense, neither too fluid nor too tenacious; if its atoms were all numbered, its elements all weighed,its constituents all disposed in due relation to each other—that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a system of order, which intelligence alone could account for, as the worlds which have been developed from it. The origin of the nebula thus presents itself to the reason as a problem which demands solution no less than the origin of the planets. All the properties and laws of the nebula require to be accounted for. What origin are we to give them? It must be either reason or unreason. We may go back as far as we please, but at every step and stage of the regress we must find ourselves confronted with the same question—the same alternative.
The argument of Comte, it is further obvious, proceeds on the arbitrary and erroneous assumption that a process is proved to have been without significance or purpose when the manner in which it has been brought about is exhibited. It is plain that on this assumption even those works of man which have cost most thought might be shown to have cost none. A house is not built without considerable reflection and continuous reference to an end contemplated and desired, but the end is only gradually realised by a process which can be traced from its origin onwards, and through the concurrence or sequence of a multitude of conditions. Would a description of the circumstances on which the security and other merits of a house depend,—ofthe peculiarities in its foundation, walls, and roof, in its configuration and materials, which render it convenient and comfortable, or of the processes by which these peculiarities were attained,—prove the house to have been unbuilt by man, to have been developed without the intervention of an intelligent architect? It would, if Comte's argument were good; if it would not, Comte's argument must be bad. But can any one fail to see that such an argument in such a case would be ridiculous? The circumstances, peculiarities, and processes referred to are themselves manifest evidences of design and intelligence. They are a part of what has to be explained, and a part of it which can only be explained on the supposition of a contriving and superintending mind. They entitle us to reject all hypotheses which would explain the construction of the house without taking into account the intelligence of its architect. The circumstances, peculiarities, and process described by Comte, as rendering the earth an orderly system and the abode of life, are no less among the evidences for the belief that intelligence has presided over the formation of the earth. They require for their rational comprehension to be thought of as the means and conditions by which ends worthy of intelligence have been secured. They require to be accounted for; and they cannot be reasonably accounted for except on the suppositionof having been designed. If we reject that view we must accept this, that the present system of things is a special instance of order which has occurred among innumerable instances of disorder, produced by the interaction of the elements or atoms of matter in infinite time. These elements or atoms we must imagine as affecting all possible combinations, and falling at length, after countless failures, into a regular and harmonious arrangement of things. Now, we can in a vague, thoughtless way imagine this, but we cannot justify our belief of it either by particular facts or general reasons. It is an act of imagination wholly divorced from intelligence. Thus to refer the origin and explanation of universal order to chance, is merely mental caprice.
If the evolution of the earth and the heavenly bodies from a nebula destroy neither the relevancy nor the force of the design argument, the development of complex organisms from simple ones, and the descent of all the plants and animals on earth from a very few living cells or forms, will not remove or lessen the necessity for supposing an intelligence to have designed all the organisms, simple and complex alike, and to have foreordained, arranged, and presided over the course of their development. Were it even proved that life and organisation had been evolved out of dead and inorganic matter, the necessity of believing insuch an intelligence would still remain. Nothing of the kind has yet been proved. On the contrary, scientific experimentation has all tended to show that life proceeds only from life. But had it been otherwise—had this break and blank in the development theory been filled up—matter would only have been proved to be more wonderful than it had been supposed to be. The scientific confirmation of the hypothesis of what is called spontaneous generation would not relieve the mind from the necessity of referring the potency of life and all else that is wonderful in matter either to design or chance, reason or unreason—it would not free it from the dilemma which had previously presented itself.[32]
The development of higher from lower organisms, of course, still less frees us from the obligation to believe that a supreme intelligence presides over the development. Development is not itself a cause, but a process,—it is a something which must have a cause; and the only kinds of development which have yet been shown to be exemplified in the organic world demand intelligence as their ultimate cause. I do not know that I can better prove that there is no opposition between development and design than by referring to an illustration which Professor Huxley made use of with a directly contrary view. To show that theargument from final causes, or what is often called the theological argument, had, as commonly stated, received its death-blow from Mr Darwin, he wrote as follows: "The theological argument runs thus—an organ or organism (A) is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B); therefore it was specially constructed to perform that purpose. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to the function or purpose of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end, on the ground that the only cause we know of competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time is a contriving intelligence, adapting the means directly to that end. Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch had not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly, and that this, again, had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on the dial, and the hands were rudimentary, and that, going back and back in time, we come at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted first from a tendency in the structure to vary indefinitely, and secondly from something in the surrounding worldwhich helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper and checked all those in other directions,—then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument would be gone. For it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end by an intelligent agent."[33]
Our great comparative physiologist would probably not write so at present. He may still not accept the design argument; but he is now well aware that it has not got its death-blow, nor even any serious wound, from the theory of evolution. He has since, on more than one occasion, shown the perfect compatibility of development with design. He might, perhaps, in defence of his earlier and less considerate utterances, maintain that no organ has been made with the precise structure which it at present possesses in order to accomplish the precise function which it at present fulfils; but he admits that the most thoroughgoing evolutionist must at least assume "a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences," and "is thereby at the mercy of the theologist, who can always defy him to disprove that thisprimordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe." Granting thus much, he is logically bound to grant more. If the entire evolution of the universe may have been intended, the several stages of its evolution may have been intended; and they may have been intended for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the collective evolution or its final result. If eyes and ears were contrived for a purpose, the eyes and ears of each species of animals may have been made with the precise structure which they exhibit for the precise purposes which they fulfil, although they may have been developed out of a different kind of eyes and ears, and will, in the lapse of ages, be developed into still other kinds. The higher theology, the general designs, which Professor Huxley admits evolution cannot touch, is in no opposition to the lower theology, the special designs, which he strangely supposes it to have definitively discarded.
Nothing can be more certain than that Dr Paley would have held the design argument to have been in no degree weakened by the theory of evolution, and that he would have been very much astonished by Professor Huxley's remarks on that argument. In referring to the mechanism of a watch as an evidence of intelligence in its maker, Dr Paley pointed out that our idea of the greatness of that intelligence would be much increased if watcheswere so constructed as to give rise to other watches like themselves. He must necessarily have admitted that the watch imagined by Professor Huxley was still more remarkable, and implied a still greater intelligence in its contrivance. The revolving barrel must have had wonderful capabilities, which only intelligence could confer. All the circumstances in which it was to be placed must have been foreseen, and all the influences which were to act upon it must have been taken into account, which could only be done by intelligence. All that helped variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper must have been brought into requisition, and all that hindered it, or favoured variations in other directions, must have been detected and checked; but no unintelligent agents can be conceived of as accomplishing such work, or as more than the means of accomplishing it employed by a providential Reason. The greater the distance between the revolving barrel and the most elaborated watch—the greater the number of mechanisms between the first and the last of these two terms, or between the commencing cause and the final result—the greater the necessity for a mind the most comprehensive and accurate, to serve as an explanation of the entire series of mechanisms and the whole process of development.
Mr Darwin, and a large number of those whoare called Darwinians, profess to prove that all the order of organic nature may have been unintentionally originated by the mechanical operation of natural forces. They think they can explain how, from a few simple living forms, or even from a single primordial cell, the entire vegetable and animal kingdoms, with all their harmonies and beauties, have arisen wholly independent of any ordaining and presiding mind, by means of the operation of the law of heredity that like produces like; of variability from the action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; of over-production, or a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for existence; of natural selection, or the survival and prevalence of the fittest, and the disappearance and extinction of what is unsuited to its circumstances and inferior to its competitors; and of sexual selection. But the remarkable originality, ingenuity, and skill which they display in endeavouring to establish, illustrate, and apply these laws, make all the more striking the absence of freshness and independence, of force or relevancy, in the reasonings by which they would attach to them an irreligious inference. The same men who have adduced so many new facts, and thrown so much new light on facts previously known, in support of the real or alleged laws indicated, have not adduced a single new reason, and scarcely even set in a more plausible light a singleold reason, for the denial of design. They assure us, copiously and vehemently, that the laws which they claim to have proved are in themselves a disproof of design; but they somehow forget that it is incumbent on them to bestow the labour requisite to make this manifest. They reason as if it were almost or wholly self-evident, whereas a little more thought would show them that all their laws imply mind and purpose.
There is a law of heredity: like produces like. But why is there such a law? Why does like produce like? Why should not all nature have been sterile? Why should there have been any provision for the propagation of life in a universe ruled by a mere blind force? And why should producer and produced be like? Why should offspring not always be as unlike their parents as tadpoles are unlike frogs? The offspring of all the higher animals pass through various embryological stages in which they are extremely unlike their parents. Why should they ever become like to them? Physical science cannot answer these questions; but that is no reason why they should not both be asked and answered. I can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to them than that there is a God of wisdom, who designed that the world should be for ages the abode of life; that the life therein should be rich and varied, yet that variation should have its limits; that thereshould be no disorder or confusion; and who, to secure this result, decreed that plants should yield seeds, and animals bring forth, after their kind. He who would disprove design must certainly not start with the great mystery of generation.
Then, the so-called law of variability is the expression of a purpose which must have Reason at its beginning, middle, and end. There is in no organism an absolutely indefinite tendency to vary. Every variation of every organism is in some measure determined by the constitution of the organism. "A whale," as Dr Huxley says, "does not tend to vary in the direction of producing feathers, nor a bird in the direction of producing whalebone." But a tendency to definite variation is an indication of purpose. If a man could make a revolving barrel with a tendency to develop into a watch, he would have to be credited with having designed both the barrel and watch, not less than if he had contrived and constructed the two separately. Further, variation has proceeded in a definite direction. Darwin admits that there is no law of necessary advancement. There is no more reason in the nature of the case for improvement than for deterioration. Apart from the internal constitution of an organism having been so planned, and its external circumstances so arranged, as to favour the one rather than the other, its variations could not have been more towards self-perfection thanself-destruction. But variation, according to the Darwinians, has taken place in one direction and not in another; it has been forward, not backward; it has been a progression, not a retrogression. Why? Only because of a continuous adjustment of organisms to circumstances tending to bring this about. Had there been no such adjustment, there might have been only unsuitable variations, or the suitable variations might have been so few and slight that no higher organisms would have been evolved. Natural selection might have had no materials, or altogether insufficient materials, to work with. Or the circumstances might have been such, that the lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle of life. If the earth were covered with water, fish would survive, and higher creatures would perish. Natural selection cannot have made the conditions of its own action—the circumstances in the midst of which it must operate. Therefore, there is more in progressive variation than it can explain: there is what only an all-regulative intelligence can explain.
Again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives rise to a struggle for existence. Well, is this law not a means to an end worthy of Divine Wisdom? In it we find the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. What is called over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means ofsubsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists merely for itself. The ratio of the production of life is probably none too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied with food and enjoyment. And the wants of all creatures are what have to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species—not the wants of man alone. If we adequately realised how vast is the number of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we would, I have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real waste of life in the world. Then, the struggle to which the rate of production gives rise is, on the showing of the Darwinians themselves, subservient to the noblest ends. Although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness—that He cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it wasalso intended to serve. Besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free and full exercise of all their faculties. It thus manifests, not only indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. They are ends which can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.
But what of the law, or so-called law, of natural selection? In itself, and so far as physical science can either prove or disprove it, it is simply an expression of the alleged fact, that in the struggle of life, any variation, however caused, which is profitable to the individuals of a species, will tend to their preservation, will have a chance of being transmitted to their offspring, and will be of use to them likewise, so that they will survive and multiply at the expense of competitors which are not so well endowed. But natural selection thus understood is obviously in no opposition to design; on the contrary, it is a way in which design may be realised. Some might even hold that design cannot be conceived of as realised in any other natural way; that if not thus realised, it could only be miraculously realised. But Mr Darwin, and many of those who call themselves his followers, tell us not only that there is natural selection, but thatblind forces and mechanical laws alone bring it about; that intention and intelligence have nothing to do with it. What proof do they give us? Alas! the painful thing is that they give us none. They point out the blind forces and the mechanical laws by which the selection is effected and its results secured; they show how they are adapted to accomplish their work: and then they assert that these forces and laws explain the whole matter; that no underlying and all-embracing reason has prepared, arranged, and used them. They see the physical agencies and the physical process by which order and beauty have been attained—they do not see intelligence and design; and because they do not see them, they conclude that they have no existence. They describe the mechanism which their senses apprehend, and affirm it to have made itself, or at least to have been unmade, and to work of itself, because the mind which contrived it and directs it is inaccessible to sense. All their reasoning resolves itself into a denial of what is spiritual because it is unseen.
The only instances of natural selection which have been adduced to show that blind forces may bring about results as remarkable, and of the same kind, as those which are accomplished by intelligent agents, are manifestly irrelevant. They are of such a nature that every teleologist must holdthem to imply what they are intended to disprove. When Professor Huxley points to the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay as carefully selecting the particles of sea-sand on the coast of Brittany, and heaping them, according to their size and weight, in different belts along the shore; to a frosty night selecting the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones; and to a hurricane transporting a sapling to a new seat in the soil,—he completely mistakes what the problem before him is. Fire and water can produce wonderful effects in a steam-engine; but the man who should infer, from there being no intelligence in the fire and water themselves, that intelligence must have had nothing to do with their effects when they were brought into contact in a steam-engine, would deserve no great credit for his reasoning. It is precisely Professor Huxley's reasoning. He looks at the fire and water separately, and completely ignores the engine. Because in a world which is a system of order and law a certain collocation and combination of physical conditions and forces will produce an orderly result, he infers that design and intelligence are not needed to produce such a result. I submit that that is illegitimate and irrelevant reasoning. It resolves itself into a denial of Divine and intelligent agency, because the senses apprehend merely physical elements and a physical process. It assumes a selectedadaptation, which presupposes intelligence in order to get rid of intelligence. It begs the whole question.
The so-called law of sexual selection, if it be a law at all, is obviously teleological in its nature. Its end is the production of beauty in form and colour. Can blind physical forces, if not subservient to intelligence, be conceived of as working towards so essentially ideal a goal as beauty?
I think enough has now been said to show that the researches and speculations of the Darwinians have left unshaken the design argument. I might have gone farther if time had permitted, and proved that they had greatly enriched the argument. The works of Mr Darwin are invaluable to the theologian, owing to the multitude of "beautiful contrivances" and "marvellous adjustments" admirably described in them. The treatises on the fertilisation of orchids and on insectivorous plants require only to have their legitimate conclusions deduced and applied in order to be transformed into treatises of natural theology. If Paley's famous work be now somewhat out of date, it is not because Mr Darwin and his followers have refuted it, but because they have brought so much to light which confirms its argument.[34]
I have challenged the theology of Mr Darwin, and those who follow his guidance in theology. Ihave no wish to dispute his science. I pass no judgment on his theories so far as they are scientific theories. It may be safely left to the progress of scientific research to determine how far they are true and how far erroneous. We ought not to assail them needlessly, or to reject the truth which is in them, under the influence of a senseless dread that they can hurt religion. In so far as they are true, they must be merely expressions of the way in which Divine intelligence has operated in the universe. Instead of excluding, they must imply belief in an all-originating, all-foreseeing, all-foreordaining, all-regulative intelligence, to determine the rise and the course and the goal of life, as of all finite things. That intelligence far transcends the comprehension of our finite minds, yet we apprehend it as true intelligence. It is no blind force, but a Reason which knows itself, and knows us, and knows all things, and in the wisdom of which we may fully confide, even when clouds and darkness hide from us the definite reasons of its operations. We can see and know enough of its wisdom to justify faith where sight and knowledge are denied to us. Let us trust and follow it, and, without doubt, it will lead us by a path which we knew not, and make darkness light before us, and crooked things straight.