The Churches and Modern Thought

DARWINISM

To prevent the chance of any misunderstanding, some explanation may be necessary for the benefit of those who are not in touch with scientific thought, and who hear that “Darwinism” is out of date. They should understand that, although the doctrine of Evolution as applied to organic life used to be widely spoken of by the term “Darwinism,” the latter is now only used by scientists in a special sense, to designate the belief in the gradual origin of species by natural selection. There are some who deem this hypothesis to be untenable. But there is no dispute whatever concerning the doctrine of the derivation or descent, with modification, of all existing species, genera, orders, classes, etc., of animals and plants, from a few simple forms of life, if not from one. Modern evolutionary theories, however, are more particularly concerned with the question of the ways and means by which living organisms have assumed their actual characters or forms, and on these points there are many shades of individual opinion.

Ignorance of the gist of the Darwinian theory, “natural selection,”136 has been fruitful in misunderstandings and objections regarding it, so that it is advisable to mention here that the author of the theory states explicitly that it does not account for the origin of variations in individuals, still less in species; but that, given the origination and existence of variations, it shows that some of these are preserved, while others are not—that favourable variations tend to be perpetuated, and unfavourable variations to become extinct; that those variations which best adapt an organisation to its environment are most favourable to its preservation, and, consequently, that the theory of natural selection is adequate to explain the observed fact of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. “Natural selection … implies that the individuals which are best fitted for the complex and changing conditions to which, in the course of ages, they are exposed, generally survive and procreate their kind.”137 Natural selection does not, it may be added, imply conscious selection. It would be equally true to call it natural murder, or natural weeding-out. But, whether Darwin and Weismann be right or wrong in attributing so much to natural selection, what I wish particularly to point out is that the hypothesis of Evolution is nowise invalidated because, out of the various causes at work, we are not quite sure as yet which is the most efficient. It is necessary to make this clear, for, hearing that “Darwinism” is under dispute, the uninitiated might come to the conclusion that the animal origin of man is discredited.

THE AVERAGE PERSON’S IDEAS ON THE EVOLUTION OF MAN

With but very few exceptions, every biological student admits our animal origin. The ideas of most people, however, on this subject are hazy in the extreme, and no wonder, when the study of Evolution has never been included in their school curriculum. Men (and in very rare cases women) pick up a few crumbs of knowledge concerning the scientific theory of their origin, and then, from want of leisure or from religious motives, or from various causes, they drop the subject. Often they are put off by the dry details of the evidence and the technical phrases before they have obtained a real grip of the subject. They do not even know some of the more simple and obvious proofs which alone would have sufficed to convince them. One finds that men’s views concerning Evolution are coloured by the opinion prevailing at the time when they themselves were once faintly interested in the subject; and thus there is, at present, an inertia of ignorance, due to the misconceptions and prejudices of older generations. The opinions of our elders, being formed on a riper experience, very properly enlist our respect; but, unfortunately, in this instance they are based upon false premises, and so lead us astray. People who remember when Darwin first propounded his theory, and the violent, not to say virulent, opposition with which it was received by the Church, only too often remain in blissful ignorance of all that has since transpired. It is quite enough for them that they are erect, tailless, speaking, reflecting bipeds. With attributes such as these, they fondly imagine that they are separated from the beast by a gulf that neither Evolution nor any other theory could possibly bridge. Whatever the reasons may be—and there are many—the vast majority of Christians not only remain woefully ignorant of Evolution, but have no desire to learn anything more about it. They know it is opposed to Bible teaching. They prefer, as it has been well said, to consider themselves fallen angels rather than elevated apes.

We are not, however, concerned here with likes and dislikes, but only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. Moreover, if it be objected that we can take no pride in an animal ancestry, surely we may say the same of our savage ancestry. “He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.”138 “We must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movement and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”139

THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH

Now let us consider the opinions of our spiritual guides. At the Shrewsbury Church Conference, in 1896, Archbishop Temple said that, “in his opinion, the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution would prove a great help to Christian thought and Christian life.” In his book, The Relations between Religion and Science, he states that “the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent and beneficent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before.” A decade has passed, and still how few Christians know of this “help,” of this “stronger argument”! In the course of his address at the Weymouth Church Conference in 1905, the Bishop of Gloucester admitted that “Darwin’s teaching on evolution and development” had “revolutionised our ideas of God’s action in nature.” If this be so, how comes it that such a vast number of the pious still adhere to the old ideas? Is it not the duty of the pastor to educate his flock? What “ideas of God’s action in nature” are missionaries even now putting into the heads of their converts? If we inquired of the average religionist, should we find that his or her ideas had been revolutionised? Not only are worshippers in the House of God kept in ignorance, but theological students are distinctly warned against the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution. For instance, Dr. Orr, a professor of apologetics, delivered a course of lectures before the professors and students of the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1903, the object of which was to show the dangers that must accrue to the Faith if the theories of Darwin were accepted in their entirety. He stoutly denied that man and woman were an evolution by slow stages from creatures that had gone before, and asserted that the first man came into being, as did the first woman, by a special act of creation. Unfortunately for the validity of his assertion he labours under the delusion that science concedes that man, or anything like man, cannot be traced further back than the post-glacial period, and that the brain capacity and physical characteristics of primeval man stood on as high a level as the average man of to-day!140

In a recently-published letter,141 written by Charles Kingsley to a correspondent, we read: “My own belief in the general truth of my friend Darwin’s views—which deepen day by day as I verify them—has only given me wider and deeper and nobler notions of God’s works in the material universe.” He then proceeds to illustrate his own thoughts by a charming little story of a certain old heathen Khan, who was delighted with the idea of a God so wise that he made all things make themselves. This old Khan and Charles Kingsley overlook an objection which to myself, and to many others, seems quite insuperable—namely, that a God so wise and merciful would have seen his way to prevent that frightful wastefulness and cruelty which is part and parcel of the evolutionary process. But more of this difficulty anon.

To give another example of a clerical evolutionist: the Rev. G. S. Streatfield, vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, on May 22nd, 1901, read a paper at the Southport Conference on “Questions that Must be Faced,” in which he conceded that “the fact of Evolution is now hardly questioned in the scientific world—one might almost say in the world of thought.” He, too, is charmed with the new theory, for he says: “It is, I suppose, generally agreed that the evolutionist has worthier, more rational, more truly philosophical views of the Divine Will and Action than those who hold the traditional theory.” Clerics of his stamp and school are now becoming more outspoken, and admit their convictions in public instead of in writings that are likely to be seen only by a select few. Only lately the Dean of Westminster, addressing a large gathering of Sunday-school teachers, told them that the idea that the human species was separately created was given up, and the fact of man’s descent from lower organisms accepted. While admiring his candour, one cannot help calling to mind that in 1860 Professor Huxley was utterly ridiculed by erudite scholars of the Church for making a precisely similar statement.

Between those who accept and those who entirely reject Evolution there are various shades of opinion. There are those who accept everything short of the evolution of certain mental faculties; although students of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. There are those like the Rev. John Urquhart, author of a brochure called Roger’s Reasons, who seek to reconcile the Bible story of creation with the Evolution theory, although any such interpretation was put out of court long ago by Professor Huxley’s reply to Mr. Gladstone.142 There are those who, like Dr. Torrey,143 persist in altogether denying our animal origin, although there is hardly a single scientist, hardly a single thoughtful man, who has studied the subject without bias, who believes anything else.

The number of clergymen who openly admit the truth of Evolution is as yet comparatively small. The few who do express their opinion openly, profess to be delighted with the new light that has now been shed upon God’s methods. The question arises, How is it, then, that we hear so little about Evolution from the pulpit, and that, consequently, the faithful are kept in ignorance of this fresh revelation? The answer is obvious: It is because the advanced divines have yet to educate their congregations up to their way of thinking, and the process has, for many reasons, to be conducted with extreme caution. They know full well that they have a difficult and dangerous task before them; that those who accept Evolution, but are unable to accept their opinions concerning its spiritual helpfulness, will lapse into agnosticism. They also know that their views are not popular with conservative believers.

The chief reason, perhaps, for pulpit reticence is that the enormous majority in the Church still remain hostile to this new doctrine. They consider it to be dangerous, and likely to unsettle people’s minds. Possibly in their inmost souls, if they have studied Evolution at all, they agree with a certain distinguished essayist who says: “A God who could have been deliberately guilty of them (the Evolutionary processes) would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.”144 The cruelty of the law of prey and struggle for existence, and the wastefulness of Nature’s arrangements for the reproduction of life (plant and animal alike), do, indeed, appear sufficient warrant for some such painful impression; while, as if this were not enough, there is for the Christian the additional difficulty of reconciling Evolution with the Bible story of the Creation and Fall of man. These various difficulties must now be carefully investigated.

§ 2. “Nature Red in Tooth and Claw.”

Darwin tells us that “there is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at such a high rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing room for his progeny.”145 [I commend this passage to the notice of President Roosevelt and others who are so anxious that we should obey God’s command to Noah, and “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.”] “If all the offspring of the elephant, the slowest breeder known, survived, there would be, in seven hundred and fifty years, nearly nineteen million elephants, descended from the first pair. If the eight or nine million eggs which the roe of a cod is said to contain, developed into adult codfishes, the sea would quickly become a solid mass of them. It is the same with the plants. The lower organisms multiply with an astonishing rapidity, some minute fungi increasing a billion-fold in a few hours. But we need not give further examples of this fecundity whereby Nature, ‘so careless of the single life,’ secures the race against extinction. The result is obvious—a ceaseless struggle for food and place. In that struggle the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong; the weaker, be it in brain or body, going to the wall; the vast majority never reaching maturity, or, if they do, attaining it only to be starved or slain. As among men competition is sharper between those of the same trade, so throughout the organic world the struggle is less severe between different species than between members of the same species, because these compete more fiercely for their common needs—plants for the same soil, carnivora for the same prey.”146

The problem of evil has exercised the mind of man from all time, and has never yet been solved. In our own time the solution by theology seems farther off than ever, now that the existence of the Devil is denied, while the law of prey and struggle for existence is admitted to be the Creator’s own handiwork—to be His Divine plan for the evolution of all living things. Surely we must admit the inherent cruelty of the process? Professor Huxley, in an article on the “Struggle for Existence,” concludes that, “since thousands of times a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and groans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell [not to mention what we should not hear—the anguish and terror borne in silence], the world cannot be governed by what we call benevolence.”147

Winwood Reade, in his striking book, The Martyrdom of Man, says: “But it is when we open the Book of Nature, that book inscribed in blood and tears; it is when we study the laws regulating life, the laws productive of development, that we see plainly how illusive is this theory that God is Love. In all things there is cruel, profligate, and abandoned waste. Of all the animals that are born a few only can survive; and it is owing to this law that development takes place. The law of murder is the law of growth. Life is one long tragedy; creation is one great crime. Is it the law of a kind Creator that no animal shall rise to excellence except by being fatal to the life of others? It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence, that massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad should be the raw material of good? Pain is not less pain because it is useful; murder is not less murder because it is conducive to development. There is blood upon the hand still, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it.”148

Robert Blatchford (Nunquam), in his book, God and My Neighbour, which has caused no little stir of late in certain quarters, speaks to the same effect: “On land and in sea the animal creation chase and maim and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar’s blood. They produce a brood of larvæ which devour the caterpillar alive.... A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother’s darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls land-ward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption, and the beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love and has power to save, makes no sign.... Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries to save.”

“But,” it may be said, “you are giving only the one side—the freethinker’s side—of the question. What are the Christian evolutionist’s replies to these terrible attacks upon our Heavenly Father?” You shall hear them, and judge for yourself whether they are likely to convince the multitude.

In the second chapter of his book on Darwinism, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace lays himself out to say all that can be said, and a great deal that cannot reasonably be said, in extenuation of God’s plan. He owns that, “to many persons, Nature appears calm, orderly, and peaceful. They see the birds singing in the trees, the insects hovering over the flowers, and all living things in the possession of health and in the enjoyment of a sunny existence. But they do not see, and hardly ever think of, the means by which this beauty and harmony and enjoyment is brought about. They do not see the constant and daily search after food, the failure to obtain which means weakness or death; the constant effort to escape enemies; the ever-recurring struggle against the forces of Nature. This daily and hourly struggle, this incessant warfare, is, nevertheless, the very means by which much of the beauty and harmony and enjoyment in Nature is produced, and also affords one of the most important elements in bringing about the origin of the species.” After showing that the struggle for existence has proved a stumbling-block in the way of those who would fain believe in the all-wise and benevolent Ruler of the universe, he goes on to say that “all this is greatly exaggerated”; that “the supposed torments and miseries of animals have little real existence, but are the reflection of the imagined sensations of cultivated men and women under similar circumstances”; and that “the amount of actual suffering caused by the struggle for existence among animals is altogether insignificant.” Space, and a consideration for a possibly impatient reader, prevent my wading through the paltry reasons he proceeds to bring forward in order to try to prove that pain is not pain, and that the less degree of pain suffered by an animal or a savage is an excuse for its infliction.

The Rev. Professor Flint’s book on Theism149 is much patronised by the Church as an apologetic book of the highest order. The Professor tries to show (p. 204) that, although the process of development involves privation, pain, and conflict, it is subservient to the noblest end, because the final result is, as he alleges, order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are, he owns, due to this painful process. “Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness—that He cares for animals’ perfection as well as for animals’ enjoyment. The ends are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.” The Professor does not explain why, to paraphrase one of Mr. Lowes Dickenson’s sage remarks, the less perfectly evolved generations should be sacrificed in order that future generations may be heirs of an unearned increment. Myself, I fail to see that even the ends, whatever they may happen to be—and they appear distinctly nebulous—can ever justify the cruel means; and I feel sure that our dumb fellow-creatures, the principal parties concerned, would agree with me, had they the power of reflection and speech. How can they, how can we, profess to approve of a plan that brings only unhappiness in its train? Suppose it were necessary in order to give more happiness in an after-life, the creature might meekly wonder why he or she had first to suffer pain, but could imagine, as the pious imagine, that it must be for some good purpose. Does Dr. Flint mean to say that there is an after-life for all living things? The learned Professor tries to explain pain away by describing its preservative use. He says (p. 246): “Were animals insusceptible of pain, they would be in continual peril.” That would certainly spoil the evolutionary Creator’s plans; but it hardly excuses His methods. Professor Flint, however, argues that, though pain is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end, and “its end is a benevolent one.” How, I ask does it profit the creature itself to become ever so graceful in appearance, ever so perfect in mind and body, if it is only to gratify its Maker, who has an end in view with which it is in no wise itself concerned, and to attain which infinite pain has to be endured? Which would you or I rather be—lovely and unhappy, or ugly and happy?

There is another of these attempts to relieve doubt which I should like to bring to notice. The little book entitled In Relief of Doubt, by the Rev. E. Welsh, highly recommended by the Bishop of London, and one of the books selected by the Christian Evidence Society for their examination in March, 1907, is quoted from by Dr. Warschauer150 when refuting Mr. Blatchford’s remarks on the cruelty of Nature. Dr. Warschauer selects the passage where Mr. Welsh says (p. 103): “We probably overstate the actual anguish of the lower creatures, imagining that they are bundles of sensitive nerves and quick brains like our own, and that they therefore have our sensibility to pain. A trodden worm writhes, and we credit it with all the pain that the foot of a Brobdingnag would inflict on a delicate child under his heel.” Now, I am quite sure we credit no such thing. If we did, we, and especially the Isaak Waltons among us, would be perfect monsters of cruelty. Mark, too, how Messrs. Welsh and Warschauer carefully select for their illustration a worm—one of the lowly organised invertebrates! I may mention that Dr. Warschauer’s book was particularly recommended to me by a well-read cleric, who thought that it was an admirable and complete refutation of Mr. Blatchford’s arguments. Dr. Warschauer will hardly advance his cause by transparently omitting all mention of the higher animals, or of that bundle of nerves called man.

Nor will the average man agree with Professor Wallace that “it is difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of happiness could have been secured.” Was it, for example, impossible for God to have decreed that sentient life should feed only on non-sentient life? Could He not have brought about development without all this terrible struggle? One would think that Messrs. Warschauer and Wallace must not only have had a particularly good time themselves in this world, but must have purposely shut their eyes to the misery all round them. If they had to change places with a wounded Russian or Japanese writhing in agony on the battlefield, I wonder whether their optimism would stand the test? The bravest of us shudder at the idea of being buried alive, and yet this was just the very fate of many a poor fellow in that truly terrible war. Not that man did not do his utmost. “One by one the dead and injured were carefully and tenderly taken out,” relates an eye-witness, “and many a tear was shed by strong men at the terrible sights we had to witness. The worst part of our work was to have to endure the agonising cries of the men who were suffering terrible torture; but everyone helped so willingly that we felt that we were not doing enough.” Please note, on the one hand, the cruel torture, and, on the other, the sympathy of man.