The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer

XVIII

TO SUM UP

IT is time to return to the point from which we started our whole enquiry, and to ask what has been gathered in the course of it towards a solution of the question with which we began. That the Cosmos in which we dwell, the world of law, order, and life, has not existed for ever, we saw to be a truth enforced by the researches of physical Science, no less than by the clear teaching of reason. It certainly had a beginning, and there must be a cause to which that beginning was due, – a cause capable of producing all which we find to have been actually produced. The material Universe and the mechanism of the heavens, – organic life with all its infinite marvels and varieties – animal sensation – human intelligence – canons of beauty, the law of good and evil – all these must have existed potentially in the First Cause, as in the Source whence alone they could be derived.

The Nature of this Cause was the object of our quest. In particular we set ourselves to examine the assertion now so loudly made that Science has found a full explanation in the forces of the Universe itself as they come within her cognizance, that is to say, the material forces which she can directly observe, and upon which she can experiment. In particular we have studied the Law of Evolution, in its various significations, and other laws subsidiary to it, in order to determine, from the point of view of reason and Science alone, whether it can be said that the prime factor of which we are in search is thus supplied.

The result has been to make it evident that while modern discovery has immensely multiplied and magnified the marvels which have to be accounted for, it has disclosed nothing which can be supposed to account for them in a manner to satisfy our reason. So far as the forces of Nature are concerned, the mysteries that lie beyond are even darker than they were. The origin and nature of matter and force, the source of motion, of life, of sensation and consciousness, of rational intelligence and language, of Free-will, of the reign of law and order to which all Nature testifies, – all these are for Science utterly unsolved problems, which, as some amongst her teachers tell us, must remain for ever insoluble. Even less prospect, if possible, can there be that any mechanical forces will ever account for perception of the sublime and beautiful, – and above all – of the distinction between right and wrong.

Here, then, Science stops, – confessing that she can be our guide no farther, and lending no colour whatever to the unscientific pretensions which are so noisily advanced by some persons in her name. Her domain is the world of sense, and it is evident that nothing existing within that realm can possibly furnish an explanation which will satisfy our intellectual need for causality.

Are we therefore to say that we can know nothing concerning the First Cause to which the phenomena of the Universe are due? Such is the Agnostic's position. What we have no means of knowing, he says, we must not pretend to know. It were irrational and dishonest to do so. When Science fails us, the true wisdom is to profess ignorance, – thus only can our position still be scientific.

But is such a principle itself scientific? Is it not a gratuitous and monstrous assumption that we can know nothing but that of which our senses directly tell us? That the Universe has a cause is no less certain than that the Universe exists, for of that cause it is the monument. And, as of the whole, so of every part or element which it contains, it is absolutely certain that there must be a cause, and one adequate to the production of what has actually been produced; for as the proverb says, "Nothing is to be got out of a sack but what is in it." From such conclusions there is no escape; – and since it is impossible to find the cause required within the world of material forces and sensible phenomena, it becomes no less obvious that it must lie beyond, across the frontier which nothing material can pass.

Therefore, also, we know something concerning that Cause, – very little, perhaps, in comparison with what we cannot know, – but still something very substantial. We know that such a Cause exists. We know that it must possess every excellence which we discover in Nature, – all that she has, and more; since what she derives from it, the Cause of Nature has of itself. In it must be all power, for except as flowing from it there is no power possible. Finally, as a capable Cause of law and order in Nature, and of Intellect and Will in man, the First Cause must be supereminently endowed with Understanding, and Freedom in the exercise of its might, – or it would be inferior to its own works.

Since there must have been something from eternity, [says Bolingbroke]321 because there is something now, the eternal Being must be an intelligent Being, because there is intelligence now; for no man will venture to assert that non-entity can produce entity, or non-intelligence, intelligence. And such a Being must exist necessarily, whether things have been always as they are, or whether they have been made in time: because it is no more easy to conceive an infinite than a finite progression of effects without a cause.

It is therefore not easy to understand how we can avoid the conclusion of the distinguished men of Science whom we have heard declare that they assume "as absolutely self-evident" the existence of a Deity who is the Creator and Upholder of all things.

It will probably be answered that this is mere Anthropomorphism; which formidable term appears by many to be considered sufficient to close the whole question, and to rule the idea of a personal God out of court. Did not Voltaire remark that if in the beginning God made man to His own image and likeness, man has well repaid Him ever since? And what can be more conclusive than that?

But what – after all – does "Anthropomorphism" mean in this connexion? Simply, that being men we have to speak in human terms, even of what is superhuman. By no possibility can we do anything else. Limited as we are by the conditions of our nature, we can find no mode of expression except such as is based upon sensible experience; and although we can convince ourselves by rational inference of the existence, and to some extent of the character, of what is beyond sense, we can frame no description of it, nor even a phantasm or image by means of imagination, except so far as we are able to draw upon the phenomena of the external world. Thus it is that artists who endeavour to represent an immaterial being, as an angel, a djinn or a sprite, though the essence of the object they would depict is that it has no body, have perforce to give it one, though they make it as little gross as possible, for otherwise they could not portray it at all. But however such images may be refined and etherealized they are intended to be understood only as conventional figures to suggest to the mind its own concept, which is as different from them as the notes produced by a singer are from those on the score from which he sings. No one imagines that the genius of Music is a young woman holding a shell to her ear, or that the Cherubim are heads and wings and nothing more. So it is with statements of the Theistic belief concerning the First Cause, or God. To put this into words we are compelled to use the only materials within our reach, and to borrow our phraseology from that which, within our experience is the highest and noblest element found in the Universe, – namely our own intelligence and will. These beyond question must be transcendentally possessed by the Cause on which they depend. So far Anthropomorphism is sound sense; that is to say, so long as it attributes all possible excellence to the source of all. It is foolish and unscientific only when it attributes to the Absolute and Unconditioned the limitations of an inferior order of being. We may truly say that a penny is contained in a pound, – but it does not follow that a sovereign must be of copper. According to the scientific doctrine that all our familiar forms of energy are ultimately derived from the Sun, it might well be argued from observation of a farthing rushlight that Solar Energy includes heat and light; but not that it is fed on tallow. This appears to be plain and obvious enough, often as it is forgotten or ignored. As Sir Oliver Lodge has lately put the matter:322

Shall we possess these things and God not possess them? Let no worthy human attribute be denied to the Deity. There are many errors, but there is one truth in Anthropomorphism. Whatever worthy attribute belongs to man, be it personality or any other, its existence in the universe is thereby admitted; we can deny it no more.

Or as Professor Baden Powell expresses the same argument:323

That which requires thought and reason to understand must be itself thought and reason. That which mind alone can investigate or express must be itself mind. And if the highest conception attained be but partial, then the mind and reason studied is greater than the mind and reason of the student. If the more it be studied the more vast and complex is the necessary connexion in reason disclosed, then the more evident is the vast extent and compass of the intelligence thus partially manifested, and its reality, as existing in the immutably connected order of objects examined, independently of the mind of the investigator.

The reluctance frequently manifested by scientific men to admit the force of so plain an argument, appears to be generally due to a fundamental misconception. It is constantly assumed that to introduce the element of purpose in Nature is to deny the continuity of Natural law, and that to speak of design in regard of a process or a structure, is equivalent to saying that a non-natural agent intervenes at that particular point and takes the work out of Nature's hands. This, it may be supposed, was Professor Huxley's idea when he spoke of "the commoner and coarser forms of teleology," giving as an instance the supposition that eyes were constructed for the purpose of enabling their possessors to see. It might indeed be replied that, at any rate, it is less difficult to suppose this, than that eyes were constructed without any purpose of seeing, or knowledge of the laws of optics; – but evidently it is taken for granted that Theists imagine every purposive item in nature to be violently introduced from without, like the forms of lions or peacocks into which topiarian gardeners clip their shrubs. But, as has been said, the laws of Nature are the expression of the mind of God: it is through them that He accomplishes His design. As Professor Romanes came to see at the close of his life, it is strange what jealousy there is of admitting the Creator into Creation. "It is still assumed on both sides," he wrote,324 "that there must be something inexplicable or miraculous about a phenomenon in order to its being divine," – and although we must utterly demur to such a description of the position of Theists, it undoubtedly is true of their adversaries. Their objections on this head can only signify that it is with the laws of Nature as with a railway locomotive from which the driver, having got up steam and set it going, jumps off, leaving it entirely to its own devices. But, as a legislator, if rightly interpreted, speaks by the mouth of every judge who administers the law in practice, and applies it to concrete cases, – so the Author of Nature, whose laws cannot be perverted, provides through them for all that is to be operated by the forces He has instituted.

So it is that, as Professors Stewart and Tait have told us, we must conceive of Him as not the Creator only, but likewise the Upholder of all things, while Lord Kelvin declares325 we are unmistakably shown through Nature that she depends upon one "ever-acting Creator and Ruler." It is in this omnipresence of Divine influence that Monism finds the modicum of plausibility which serves it for a foundation. It runs, indeed, into the absurdity of endeavouring to explain such Omnipresence by identifying the finite with the Infinite, and attributing to matter qualities which all experience, and very specially all scientific experience, contradicts; but, for all that, it scores a distinct point as against mere materialism, which Comte declares to be "the most illogical form of metaphysics," and the late Sir Leslie Stephen, "not so much error as sheer nonsense." Theism avoids the error of either extreme. While it teaches the essential and fundamental distinction between the Absolute and the contingent, between the Creator and His creatures, it teaches likewise that He is ever present in His works, and that in their every operation He is manifested.

And so, in the words of Rivarol, God is the explanation of the world, and the world is the demonstration of God. The acceptance of a Self-existent, All-powerful, and intelligent Being can alone serve as a basis for any system of Cosmogony which satisfies our intellectual need of causation; while, on the other hand, the nature of this Being, as necessarily beyond the scope of our senses, can be known to us only indirectly through the effects of which He is the cause.

By no one has this conclusion been more clearly stated than by Lamarck, the real father of Organic Evolutionism, whom many would therefore represent as an atheist. His words are so much to the point that with them we may conclude.326

Of the Supreme Being, in a word of God, to whom all infinitude is seen to belong, man has thus conceived an idea, which, though indirect, is sound, and which necessarily follows from what he observes. In the same manner, he has formed another idea, equally solid, namely of the boundless power of this Being, suggested by the consideration of His works…

Nature not being intelligent, nor even a being, but an order of things constituting a power subject to law, cannot therefore be God. She is the wondrous product of His Almighty will: and for us, of all created things she is the grandest and most admirable. Thus the will of God is everywhere expressed by the laws of Nature, since these laws originate from Him.

APPENDIX

A SINGULARLY instructive field for the study of the mutability or stability of species should be afforded by the lower forms of life, in which organization is reduced to a minimum, they being mere masses of protoplasm without even a containing envelope, while their nourishment is of the simplest. It would therefore appear that environment should be all-potent to modify them and produce specific modifications, while the extreme rapidity with which they propagate their kind, and that unisexually, ought to require no vast extent of time to make such transmutations apparent.

It is found, however, on the contrary, that nowhere in organic nature does the type remain more rigidly persistent. Professor Macbride, for example, tells us,327

"The Myxomycetæ may be regarded as the organic group in which the forces of heredity, – whatever these forces may be – are at their maximum: they have responded as little as possible to the influence of their environment."

To the same effect speaks Professor Paulesco of Bucharest, of other elementary organisms.328

What is still more remarkable, these same organisms are extremely sensitive to altered conditions of environment, which have a direct and immediate influence, gravely modifying their morphological and physiological characters, changes in respect of light, minute alterations of temperature, or the introduction of a new chemical substance, even in infinitesimal quantity, frequently causing them to assume forms very different from the specific type, and profoundly modifying their nutritive processes.

Here, it was at first thought, when Pasteur revealed their history, is clear evidence of specific transformation. But he presently convinced himself and others that it is not so, for although liable to assume such polymorphic forms according to the conditions in which they find themselves, there is no alteration of specific nature, and if the original circumstances be restored, the original forms reappear – "une élasticité functionelle de la cellule lui permettant de se plier à des conditions variées d'existence sans changer d'être." (Pasteur.)

As M. Duclaux adds:329

"La notion d'espèce ne disparait pas pour cela. La variabilité est un caractère comme un autre, bien que plus difficile à inscrire dans la classification, et une espèce est aussi bien définie par les sensibilités diverses qu'elle manifeste que par la petite liste des mots et de propriétés dans laquelle on croyait pouvoir autrefois enfermer toute son histoire… La lien de l'espèce c'est la loi qui préside à ces changements, et la variété des formes et des fonctions n'est pas du tout en contradiction avec l'unité de l'espèce."

Since the foregoing pages have been in type there has come to hand the New York Literary Digest of January 23, 1904, containing the following article (p. 119).

The recent death of Herbert Spencer lends special timeliness to the above topic, which is being actively debated just now in German theological circles. The immediate cause of the revival of interest in the present status of the Darwinian theory is found in a lengthy article by the veteran philosopher, Edward von Hartmann, which appears in Oswald's Annalen der Naturphilosophie (vol. ii. 1903), under the title 'Der Niedergang der Darwinismus' ('The Passing of Darwinism'). That the famous 'philosopher of the unconscious' is not prejudiced in favour of biblical views has been more than clear since the publication of his Selbstzersetzung der Christentums ('Disintegration of Christianity') in 1874. Hartmann in his new article has this to say —

'In the sixties of the past century the opposition of the older group of savants to the Darwinian hypothesis was still supreme. In the seventies, the new idea began to gain ground rapidly in all cultured countries. In the eighties, Darwin's influence was at its height, and exercised an almost absolute control over technical research. In the nineties, for the first time, a few timid expressions of doubt and opposition were heard, and these gradually swelled into a great chorus of voices, aiming at the overthrow of the Darwinian theory. In the first decade of the twentieth century it has become apparent that the days of Darwinism are numbered. Among its latest opponents are such savants as Eimer, Gustav Wolf, De Vries, Hoocke, von Wellstein, Fleischmann, Reinke, and many others.'

These facts, according to Hartmann's view, while they do not indicate that the Darwinian theory is doomed, undermine its most radical features:

'The theory of descent is safe, but Darwinism has been weighed and found wanting. Selection can in general not achieve any positive results, but only negative effects; the origin of species by minimal changes is possible, but has not been demonstrated. The pretensions of Darwinism as a pure mechanical explanation of results that show purpose are totally groundless.'

Other scholars think that Hartmann does not do full justice to the reaction that has set in, particularly in Germany, against Darwinism. This sentiment is voiced by Professor Zoeckler, of the University of Greifswald, in the Beweis des Glaubens (No. xi.), a journal which recently published a collection of anti-Darwinian views from German naturalists. He calls the article of Hartmann 'the tombstone-inscription [Grabschrift] for Darwinism,' and goes on to say:

'The claim that the hypothesis of descent is secured scientifically must most decidedly be denied. Neither Hartmann's exposition nor the authorities he cites have the force of moral conviction for the claim for purely mechanical descent. The descent of organisms is not a scientifically demonstrated proposition, although descent in an ideal sense can be made to harmonize with the biblical account of creation.'

Views of a similar kind are voiced in many quarters. The Hamburg savant, Edward Hoppe, has written a brochure, Ist mit der Descendenz-Theorie eine religiöse Vorstellung vereinbar? [Is the Theory of Evolution reconcilable with the Religious Idea?] in which he takes issue, in the name of religion, with the purely naturalistic type of Darwinian thought. The most pronounced convert to anti-Darwinian views is Professor Fleischmann, of Erlangen, who has not only discarded the mechanical conception of the origin of being, but the whole Darwinian theory. He recently delivered a course of lectures, entitled 'Die Darwin'sche Theorie,' which have appeared in book form in Leipsic. He comes to this conclusion: 'The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination.'

From another article in the same journal (p. 116), entitled 'A Study of Creation,' the following paragraphs may be cited:

"The French have never been enthusiastic Darwinians. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, to find a French geologist, M. Stanislas Meunier, arguing in the Revue Scientifique (December 19) against all schools of transformism and stoutly maintaining what is practically a doctrine of special creation. He admits that living beings form a connected series; but the connexion, he believes, is not one of physical descent, but inheres in something outside of and pre-existent to the earth. He does not name it, but he would probably not object to the inference that it is the mind of a creator.

"M. Meunier gives at some length his reasons for rejecting Darwin's, Lamarck's, and all other theories of transformism. All we can be sure of, he thinks, is that, as in the case of the various kinds of pottery, we have to do with an orderly development, although he thinks it is not a development by descent. He closes, thus:

"'Doubtless we cannot usefully risk any hypothesis on the mechanism of the production of living things; but it is, perhaps, a step in advance only to come to the conclusion that the cause of life and its manifestations on the earth is exterior to the earth; that it is anterior to our world, just as are doubtless the laws of physics and chemistry, which govern the relations of matter and force throughout space.

"'The philosophy of science can lose nothing by the admission of points of view that, far from narrowing our subjects of study, enlarge them beyond all limits; and this is, perhaps, the occasion to show once more to persons who are turning toward metaphysics in their thirst for mystery, that they will find in pure science that wherewith they may satisfy their legitimate aspirations.'"

Recent investigations have led to the remarkable discovery that many fern-like plants of the Carboniferous rocks, hitherto classed as Cryptogams, were in reality seed-bearers, and thus intermediate between Cryptogams and Cycads, the most primitive of existing seed-plants. They have accordingly been placed in a special group "Cycadofilices," or "Fern-Cycads," and regarded as transitional types, the view that they are the remains of a natural bridge connecting the Ferns with the Gymnosperms having received wide support,330 and at first sight this conclusion would appear natural and obvious. But here, as in other cases, the difficulty is that the seeds which have been found are all fully developed; there are none in the intermediate stages between true spores and true seeds; we have the finished article, but no trace of seeds in the making; which upon any theory of evolution must have been exceedingly numerous. Hence Dr. Scott tells us:331

"The important discoveries of the seeds of the Pteridosperms scarcely touch the question of descent, for these organs are of too advanced a type to throw light on the probable derivation of the group."

In this instance, therefore, as in others, it remains true that in no case is any trace found of rudimentary character in the earliest fossil specimens of any class.

It is undoubtedly a further puzzle that some of the Carboniferous cryptogams which did not bear real seeds, yet simulated them, a habit not easily explained on evolutionary principles.