Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860. No. XXXVI. - Various
As to the other illustration, is the reviewer so complete an optimist
as to insist that the arrangement and the weapon are wholly perfect
(_quoad_ the insect) the normal use of which often causes the animal
fatally to injure or to disembowel itself? Either way it seems to us
that the argument here, as well as the insect, performs _hari-kari_.
The "Examiner" adds:--"We should in like manner object to the word
_favorable_, as implying that some species are placed by the Creator
under _unfavorable_ circumstances, at least under such as might be
advantageously modified." But are not many individuals and some races
of men placed by the Creator "under unfavorable circumstances, at
least under such as might be advantageously modified"? Surely these
reviewers must be living in an ideal world, surrounded by "the
faultless monsters which _our_ world ne'er saw," in some elysium where
imperfection and distress were never heard of! Such arguments resemble
some which we often hear against the Bible, holding that book
responsible as if it originated certain facts on the shady side of
human nature or the apparently darker lines of Providential dealing,
though the facts are facts of common observation and have to be
confronted upon any theory.
The "North American" reviewer also has a world of his own,--just such
a one as an idealizing philosopher would be apt to devise,--that is,
full of sharp and absolute distinctions: such, for instance, as the
"absolute invariableness of instinct"; an absolute want of
intelligence in any brute animal; and a complete monopoly of instinct
by the brute animals, so that this "instinct is a great matter" for
them only, since it sharply and perfectly distinguishes this portion
of organic Nature from the vegetable kingdom on the one hand and from
man on the other: most convenient views for argumentative purposes,
but we suppose not borne out in fact.
In their scientific objections the two reviewers take somewhat
different lines; but their philosophical and theological arguments
strikingly coincide. They agree in emphatically asserting that
Darwin's hypothesis of the origination of species through variation
and natural selection "repudiates the whole doctrine of final causes,"
and "all indication of design or purpose in the organic world,"--"is
neither more nor less than a formal denial of any agency beyond that
of a blind chance in the developing or perfecting of the organs or
instincts of created beings." "It is in vain that the apologists of
this hypothesis might say that it merely attributes a different mode
and time to the Divine agency,--that all the qualities subsequently
appearing in their descendants must have been implanted, and remained
latent in the original pair." Such a view, the Examiner declares, "is
nowhere stated in this book, and would be, we are sure, disclaimed by
the author." We should like to be informed of the grounds of this
sureness. The marked rejection of spontaneous generation,--the
statement of a belief that all animals have descended from four or
five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, or,
perhaps, if constrained to it by analogy, "from some one primordial
form into which life was first breathed."--coupled with the
expression, "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the
laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and
extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should
have been due to secondary causes," than "that each species has been
independently created,"--those and similar expressions lead us to
suppose that the author probably does accept the kind of view which
the "Examiner" is sure he would disclaim. At least, we see nothing in
his scientific theory to hinder his adoption of Lord Bacon's
Confession of Faith in this regard,--"that, notwithstanding God hath
rested and ceased from creating, [in the sense of supernatural
origination,] yet, nevertheless, He doth accomplish and fulfil His
divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, as
fully and exactly by providence as He could by miracle and new
creation, though His working be not immediate and direct, but by
compass; not violating Nature, which is His own law upon the
creature."
However that may be, it is undeniable that Mr. Darwin has purposely
been silent upon the philosophical and theological applications of his
theory. This reticence, under the circumstances, argues design, and
raises inquiry as to the final cause or reason why. Here, as in higher
instances, confident as we are that there is a final cause, we must
not be overconfident that we can infer the particular or true one.
Perhaps the author is more familiar with natural-historical than with
philosophical inquiries, and, not having decided which particular
theory about efficient cause is best founded, he meanwhile argues the
scientific questions concerned--all that relates to secondary
causes--upon purely scientific grounds, as he must do in any case.
Perhaps, confident, as he evidently is, that his view will finally be
adopted, he may enjoy a sort of satisfaction in hearing it denounced
as sheer atheism by the inconsiderate, and afterwards, when it takes
its place with the nebular hypothesis and the like, see this judgment
reversed, as we suppose it would be in such event.
Whatever Mr. Darwin's philosophy may be, or whether he has any, is a
matter of no consequence at all, compared with the important
questions, whether a theory to account for the origination and
diversification of animal and vegetable forms through the operation of
secondary causes does or does not exclude design; and whether the
establishment by adequate evidence of Darwin's particular theory of
diversification through variation and natural selection would
essentially alter the present scientific and philosophical grounds for
theistic views of Nature. The unqualified affirmative judgment
rendered by the two Boston reviewers--evidently able and practised
reasoners--"must give us pause." We hesitate to advance our
conclusions in opposition to theirs. But, after full and serious
consideration, we are constrained to say, that, in our opinion, the
adoption of a derivative hypothesis, and of Darwin's particular
hypothesis, if we understand it, would leave the doctrines of final
causes, utility, and special design just where they were before. We do
not pretend that the subject is not environed with difficulties. Every
view is so environed; and every shifting of the view is likely, if it
removes some difficulties, to bring others into prominence. But we
cannot perceive that Darwin's theory brings in any new kind of
scientific difficulty, that is, any with which philosophical
naturalists were not already familiar.
Since natural science deals only with secondary or natural causes, the
scientific terms of a theory of derivation of species--no less than of
a theory of dynamics--must needs be the same to the theist as to the
atheist. The difference appears only when the inquiry is carried up to
the question of primary cause--a question which belongs to philosophy.
Wherefore, Darwin's reticence about efficient cause does not disturb
us. He considers only the scientific questions. As already stated, we
think that a theistic view of Nature is implied in his book, and we
must charitably refrain from suggesting the contrary until the
contrary is logically deduced from his positions. If, however, he
anywhere maintains that the natural causes through which species are
diversified operate without an ordaining and directing intelligence,
and that the orderly arrangements and admirable adaptations we see all
around us are fortuitous or blind, undesigned results,--that the eye,
though it came to see, was not designed for seeing, nor the hand for
handling,--then, we suppose, he is justly chargeable with denying, and
very needlessly denying, all design in organic Nature; otherwise we
suppose not. Why, if Darwin's well-known passage about the
eye[3]--equivocal or unfortunate though some of the language be--does
not imply ordaining and directing intelligence, then he refutes his
own theory as effectually as any of his opponents are likely to do. He
asks,--
"May we not believe that"--under variation proceeding long enough,
generation multiplying the better variations times enough, and
natural selection securing the improvements--"a living optical
instrument might be thus formed as superior to one of glass as the
works of the Creator are to those of man?"
This must mean one of two things: either that the living instrument
was made and perfected under (which is the same thing as by) an
intelligent First Cause, or that it was not. If it was, then theism is
asserted; and as to the mode of operation, how do we know, and why
must we believe, that, fitting precedent forms being in existence, a
living instrument (so different from a lifeless manufacture) would be
originated and perfected in any other way, or that this is not the
fitting way? If it means that it was not, if he so misuses words that
by the Creator he intends an unintelligent power, undirected force, or
necessity, then he has put his case so as to invite disbelief in it.
For then blind forces have produced not only manifest adaptations of
means to specific ends,--which is absurd enough,--but better adjusted
and more perfect instruments or machines than intellect (that is,
human intellect) can contrive and human skill execute,--which no sane
person will believe.
On the other hand, if Darwin even admits--we will not say adopts--the
theistic view, he may save himself much needless trouble in the
endeavor to account for the absence of every sort of intermediate
form. Those in the line between one species and another supposed to be
derived from it he may be bound to provide; but as to "an infinite
number of other varieties not intermediate, gross, rude, and
purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born
only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his
theory,--rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative,--the theistic
view rids him at once of this "scum of creation." For, as species do
not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor
produce crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason
for supposing that they ever did. Good-for-nothing monstrosities,
failures of purpose rather than purposeless, indeed sometimes occur;
but these are just as anomalous and unlikely upon Darwin's theory as
upon any other. For his particular theory is based, and even
over-strictly insists, upon the most universal of physiological laws,
namely, that successive generations shall differ only slightly, if at
all, from their parents; and this effectively excludes crude and
impotent forms. Wherefore, if we believe that the species were
designed, and that natural propagation was designed, how can we say
that the actual varieties of the species were not equally designed?
Have we not similar grounds for inferring design in the supposed
varieties of a species, that we have in the case of the supposed
species of a genus? When a naturalist comes to regard as three
closely-related species what he before took to be so many varieties of
one species, how has he thereby strengthened our conviction that the
three forms were designed to have the differences which they actually
exhibit? Wherefore, so long as gradated, orderly, and adapted forms in
Nature argue design, and at least while the physical cause of
variation is utterly unknown and mysterious, we should advise Mr.
Darwin to assume, in the philosophy of his hypothesis, that variation
has been led along certain beneficial lines. Streams flowing over a
sloping plain by gravitation (here the counterpart of natural
selection) may have worn their actual channels as they flowed; yet
their particular courses may have been assigned; and where we see them
forming definite and useful lines of irrigation, after a manner
unaccountable on the laws of gravitation and dynamics, we should
believe that the distribution was designed.
To insist, therefore, that the new hypothesis of the derivative origin
of the actual species is incompatible with final causes and design is
to take a position which we must consider philosophically untenable.
We must also regard it as unwise or dangerous, in the present state
and present prospects of physical and physiological science. We should
expect the philosophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground; also,
until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical believer; but
we should think that the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take
the other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural
events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can admit,--seems
also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ordinary arguments
for design in Nature. This misconception is shared both by the
reviewers and the reviewed. At least, Mr. Darwin uses expressions
which seem to imply that the natural forms which surround us, because
they have a history or natural sequence, could have been only
generally, but not particularly designed,--a view at once superficial
and contradictory; whereas his true line should be, that his
hypothesis concerns the order and not the cause, the _how_ and not the
_why_ of the phenomena, and so leaves the question of design just
where it was before.
To illustrate this first from the theist's point of view. Transfer the
question for a moment from the origination of species to the
origination of individuals, which occurs, as we say, naturally.
Because natural, that is, "stated, fixed, or settled," is it any the
less designed on that account? We acknowledge that God is our
maker,--not merely the originator of the race, but _our_ maker as
individuals,--and none the less so because it pleased Him to make us
in the way of ordinary generation. If any of us were born unlike our
parents and grandparents, in a slight degree, or in whatever degree,
would the case be altered in this regard? The whole argument in
natural theology proceeds upon the ground that the inference for a
final cause of the structure of the hand and of the valves in the
veins is just as valid now, in individuals produced through natural
generation, as it would have been in the case of the first man,
supernaturally created. Why not, then, just as good even on the
supposition of the descent of men from Chimpanzees and Gorillas, since
those animals possess these same contrivances? Or, to take a more
supposable case: If the argument from structure to design is
convincing when drawn from a particular animal, say a Newfoundland
dog, and is not weakened by the knowledge that this dog came from
similar parents, would it be at all weakened, if, in tracing his
genealogy, it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the
mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other breeds came
(as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for
design in the structure of our particular dog affected by the
supposition that his wolfish progenitor came from a post-tertiary
wolf, perhaps less unlike an existing one than the dog in question is
from some other of the numerous existing races of dogs, and that this
post-tertiary came from an equally or more different tertiary wolf?
And if the argument from structure to design is not invalidated by our
present knowledge that our individual dog was developed from a single
organic cell, how is it invalidated by the supposition of an analogous
natural descent, through a long line of connected forms, from such a
cell, or from some simple animal, existing ages before there were any
dogs? Again, suppose we have two well-known and very decidedly
different animals or plants, A and D, both presenting, in their
structure and in their adaptations to the conditions of existence, as
valid and clear evidence of design as any animal or plant ever
presented: suppose we have now discovered two intermediate species, B
and C, which make up a series with equable differences from A to D. Is
the proof of design or final cause in A and D, whatever it amounted
to, at all weakened by the discovered intermediate forms? Rather does
not the proof extend to the intermediate species, and go to show that
all four were equally designed? Suppose, now, the number of
intermediate forms to be much increased, and therefore the gradations
to be closer yet, as close as those between the various sorts of dogs,
or races of men, or of horned cattle: would the evidence of design, as
shown in the structure of any of the members of the series, be any
weaker than it was in the case of A and D? Whoever contends that it
would be should likewise maintain that the origination of individuals
by generation is incompatible with design, and so take a consistent
atheistical view of Nature. Perhaps we might all have confidently
thought so, antecedently to experience of the fact of reproduction.
Let our experience teach us wisdom.
These illustrations make it clear that the evidence of design from
structure and adaptation is furnished complete by the individual
animal or plant itself, and that our knowledge or our ignorance of the
history of its formation or mode of production adds nothing to it and
takes nothing away. We infer design from certain arrangements and
results; and we have no other way of ascertaining it. Testimony,
unless infallible, cannot prove it, and is out of the question here.
Testimony is not the appropriate proof of design: adaptation to
purpose is. Some arrangements in Nature appear to be contrivances, but
may leave us in doubt. Many others, of which the eye and the hand are
notable examples, compel belief with a force not appreciably short of
demonstration. Clearly to settle that these must have been designed
goes far towards proving that other organs and other seemingly less
explicit adaptations in Nature must also have been designed, and
clinches our belief, from manifold considerations, that all Nature is
a preconcerted arrangement, a manifested design. A strange
contradiction would it be to insist that the shape and markings of
certain rude pieces of flint, lately found in drift deposits, prove
design, but that nicer and thousand-fold more complex adaptations to
use in animals and vegetables do not _a fortiori_ argue design.
We could not affirm that the arguments for design in Nature are
conclusive to all minds. But we may insist, upon grounds already
intimated, that whatever they were good for before Darwin's book
appeared, they are good for now. To our minds the argument from design
always appeared conclusive of the being and continued operation of an
intelligent First Cause, the Ordainer of Nature; and we do not see
that the grounds of such belief would be disturbed or shifted by the
adoption of Darwin's hypothesis. We are not blind to the philosophical
difficulties which the thorough-going implication of design in Nature
has to encounter, nor is it our vocation to obviate them. It suffices
us to know that they are not new nor peculiar difficulties,--that, as
Darwin's theory and our reasonings upon it did not raise these
perturbing spirits, they are not bound to lay them. Meanwhile, that
the doctrine of design encounters the very same difficulties in the
material that it does in the moral world is just what ought to be
expected.
So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one,
long ago argued out,--namely, whether organic Nature is a result of
design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third
alternative; they concern only the question, How the results, whether
fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature
abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and,
being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carried the
implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, chance
carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a
consistent system; but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or
beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all
computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The
alternative is a designed Cosmos.
It is very easy to assume, that, because events in Nature are in one
sense accidental, and the operative forces which bring them to pass
are themselves blind and unintelligent, (all forces are,) therefore
they are undirected, or that he who describes these events as the
results of such forces thereby assumes that they are undirected. This
is the assumption of the Boston reviewers, and of Mr. Agassiz, who
insists that the only alternative to the doctrine, that all organized
beings were supernaturally created as they are, is, that they have
arisen _spontaneously_ through the _omnipotence of matter_.[4]
As to all this, nothing is easier than to bring out in the conclusion
what you introduce in the premises. If you import atheism into your
conception of variation and natural selection, you can readily exhibit
it in the result. If you do not put it in, perhaps there need be none
to come out. While the mechanician is considering a steamboat or
locomotive engine as a material organism, and contemplating the fuel,
water, and steam, the source of the mechanical forces and how they
operate, he may not have occasion to mention the engineer. But, the
orderly and special results accomplished, the _why_ the movement is in
this or that particular direction, etc., are inexplicable without him.
If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have
occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or
if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers
phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show
that such belief is atheism. But the admission of the phenomena and of
these natural processes and forces does not necessitate any such
belief, nor even render it one whit less improbable than before.
Surely, too, the accidental element may play its part in Nature
without negativing design in the theist's view. He believes that the
earth's surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the
existing animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series
of generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may
support its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored
up for man's benefit. Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the
consequence of physical agencies, than the accumulation of vegetable
matter in a peat-bog, and its transformation into coal? No scientific
person at this day doubts that our solar system is a progressive
development, whether in his conception he begins with molten masses,
or aeriform or nebulous masses, or with a fluid revolving mass of vast
extent, from which the specific existing worlds have been developed
one by one. What theist doubts that the actual results of the
development in the inorganic worlds are not merely compatible with
design, but are in the truest sense designed results? Not Mr. Agassiz,
certainly, who adopts a remarkable illustration of design directly
founded on the nebular hypothesis, drawing from the position and times
of revolution of the worlds so originated "direct evidence that the
physical world has been ordained in conformity with laws which obtain
also among living beings." But the reader of the interesting
exposition [5] will notice that the designed result has been brought
to pass through what, speaking after the manner of men, might be
called a chapter of accidents. A natural corollary of this
demonstration would seem to be, that a material connection between a
series of created things--such as the development of one of them from
another, or of all from a common stock--is highly compatible with
their intellectual connection, namely, with their being designed and
directed by one mind. Yet, upon some ground, which is not explained,
and which we are unable to conjecture, Mr. Agassiz concludes to the
contrary in the organic kingdoms, and insists, that, because the
members of such a series have an intellectual connection, "they cannot
be the result of a material differentiation of the objects
themselves,"[6] that is, they cannot have had a genealogical
connection. But is there not as much intellectual connection between
successive generations of any species as there is between the several
species of a genus or the several genera of an order? As the
intellectual connection here is realized through the material
connection, why may it not be so in the case of species and genera? On
all sides, therefore, the implication seems to be quite the other way.
Returning to the accidental element, it is evident that the strongest
point against the compatibility of Darwin's hypothesis with design in
Nature is made when natural selection is referred to as picking out
those variations which are improvements from a vast number which are
not improvements, but perhaps the contrary, and therefore useless or
purposeless, and born to perish. But even here the difficulty is not
peculiar; for Nature abounds with analogous instances. Some of our
race are useless, or worse, as regards the improvement of mankind; yet
the race may be designed to improve, and may be actually improving.
The whole animate life of a country depends absolutely upon the
vegetation; the vegetation upon the rain. The moisture is furnished by
the ocean, is raised by the sun's heat from the ocean's surface, and
is wafted inland by the winds. But what multitudes of rain-drops fall
back into the ocean, are as much without a final cause as the
incipient varieties which come to nothing! Does it, therefore, follow
that the rains which are bestowed upon the soil with such rule and
average regularity were not designed to support vegetable and animal
life? Consider, likewise, the vast proportion of seeds and pollen, of
ova and young,--a thousand or more to one,--which come to nothing, and
are therefore purposeless in the same sense, and only in the same
sense, as are Darwin's unimproved and unused slight variations. The
world is full of such cases; and these must answer the argument,--for
we cannot, except by thus showing that it proves too much.