Through Nature to God Part 7

Our account of the rise and progress of the general belief in an Unseen World is, however, not yet complete. No mention has been made of an element which apparently has always been present in the belief. I mean the ethical element. The savage's primeval ghost-world is always mixed up with his childlike notions of what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. The native of Tierra del Fuego, who foreboded a snowstorm because one of Mr. Darwin's party killed some birds for specimens, furnishes an excellent ill.u.s.tration. In a tribe living always on the brink of starvation, any wanton sacrifice of meat must awaken the wrath of the tutelar ancestral ghost-deities who control the weather. Notions of a similar sort are connected with the direful host of omens that dog the savage's footsteps through the world. Whatever conduct the necessities of clan or tribe have prohibited soon comes to wear the aspect of sacrilege.

Thus inextricably intertwined from the moment of their first dim dawning upon the consciousness of nascent Humanity, have been the notion of Deity, the notion of an Unseen World, and the notions of Right and Wrong. In their beginnings theology and ethics were inseparable; in all the vast historic development of religion they have remained inseparable. The grotesque conceptions of primitive men have given place to conceptions framed after wider and deeper experience, but the union of ethics with theology remains undisturbed even in that most refined religious philosophy which ventures no opinion concerning the happiness or misery of a future life, except that the seed sown here will naturally determine the fruit to be gathered hereafter. All the a.n.a.logies that modern knowledge can bring to bear upon the theory of a future life point to the opinion that the breach of physical continuity is not accompanied by any breach of ethical continuity. Such an opinion relating to matters beyond experience cannot of course be called scientific, but whether it be justifiable or not, my point is that neither in the crude fancies of primitive men nor in the most refined modern philosophy can theology divorce itself from ethics. Take away the ethical significance from our conceptions of the Unseen World and the quasi-human G.o.d, and no element of significance remains. All that was vital in theism is gone.

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VII

_Is the Substance of Religion a Phantom, or an Eternal Reality?_

We are now prepared to see what is involved in the Reality of Religion.

Speaking historically, it may be said that Religion has always had two sides: on the one side it has consisted of a theory, more or less elaborate, and on the other side it has consisted of a group of sentiments conformable to the theory. Now in all ages and in every form of Religion, the theory has comprised three essential elements: first, belief in Deity, as quasi-human; secondly, belief in an Unseen World in which human beings continue to exist after death; thirdly, recognition of the ethical aspects of human life as related in a special and intimate sense to this Unseen World. These three elements are alike indispensable. If any one of the three be taken away, the remnant cannot properly be called Religion. Is then the subject-matter of Religion something real and substantial, or is it a mere figment of the imagination? Has Religion through all these weary centuries been dealing with an eternal verity, or has it been blindly groping after a phantom?

Can that history of the universe which we call the Doctrine of Evolution be made to furnish any lesson that will prove helpful in answering this question? We shall find, I think, that it does furnish such a lesson.

But first let us remember that along with the three indispensable elements here specified, every historic Religion has also contained a quant.i.ty of cosmological speculations, metaphysical doctrines, priestly rites and ceremonies and injunctions, and a very considerable part of this structure has been demolished by modern criticism. The destruction of beliefs has been so great that we can hardly think it strange if some critics have taken it into their heads that nothing can be rescued. But let us see what the doctrine of evolution has to say. Our inquiry may seem to take us very far afield, but that we need not mind if we find the answer by and by directing us homeward.

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VIII

_The Fundamental Aspect of Life_

I often think, when working over my plants, of what Linnaeus once said of the unfolding of a blossom: "I saw G.o.d in His glory pa.s.sing near me, and bowed my head in worship," The scientific aspect of the same thought has been put into words by Tennyson:--

"Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower,--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what G.o.d and man is."

No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet. For in this world of plants, which with its magician chlorophyll conjuring with sunbeams is ceaselessly at work bringing life out of death,--in this quiet vegetable world we may find the elementary principles of all life in almost visible operation. It is one of these elementary principles--a very simple and broad one--that here concerns us.

One of the greatest contributions ever made to scientific knowledge is Herbert Spencer's profound and luminous exposition of Life as the continuous adjustment of inner relations to outer relations. The extreme simplicity of the subject in its earliest ill.u.s.trations is such that the student at first hardly suspects the wealth of knowledge toward which it is pointing the way. The most fundamental characteristic of living things is their response to external stimuli. If you come upon a dog lying by the roadside and are in doubt whether he is alive or dead, you poke him with a stick; if you get no response you presently conclude that it is a dead dog. So if the tree fails to put forth leaves in response to the rising vernal temperature, it is an indication of death.

Pour water on a drooping plant, and it shows its life by rearing its head. The growth of a plant is in its ultimate a.n.a.lysis a group of motions put forth in adjustment to a group of physical and chemical conditions in the soil and atmosphere. A fine ill.u.s.tration is the spiral distribution of leaves about the stem, at different angular intervals in different kinds of plants, but always so arranged as to ensure the most complete exposure of the chlorophyll to the sunbeams. Every feature of the plant is explicable on similar principles. It is the result of a continuous adjustment of relations within the plant to relations existing outside of it. It is important that we should form a clear conception of this, and a contrasted instance will help us. Take one of those storm-gla.s.ses in which the approach of atmospheric disturbance sets up a feathery crystallization that changes in shape and distribution as the state of the air outside changes. Here is something that simulates vegetable life, but there is a profound difference. In every one of these changes the liquid in the storm-gla.s.s is pa.s.sive; it is changed and waits until it is changed again. But in the case of a tree, when the increased supply of solar radiance in spring causes those internal motions which result in the putting forth of leaves, it is quite another affair. Here the external change sets up an internal change which leads to a second internal change that antic.i.p.ates a second external change. It is this active response that is the mark of life.

All life upon the globe, whether physical or psychical, represents the continuous adjustment of inner to outer relations. The degree of life is low or high, according as the correspondence between internal and external relations is simple or complex, limited or extensive, partial or complete, perfect or imperfect. The relations established within a plant answer only to the presence or absence of a certain quant.i.ty of light and heat, and to sundry chemical and physical relations in atmosphere and soil. In a polyp, besides general relations similar to these, certain more special relations are established in correspondence with the eternal existence of mechanical irritants; as when its tentacles contract on being touched. The increase of extension acquired by the correspondences as we ascend the animal scale may be seen by contrasting the polyp, which can simply distinguish between soluble and insoluble matter, or between opacity and translucence in its environment, with the keen-scented bloodhound and the far-sighted vulture. And the increase of complexity may be appreciated by comparing the motions respectively gone through by the polyp on the one hand, and by the dog and vulture on the other, while securing and disposing of their prey. The more specific and accurate, the more complex and extensive, is the response to environing relations, the higher and richer, we say, is the life.

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IX

_How the Evolution of Senses expands the World_

The whole progression of life upon the globe, in so far as it has been achieved through natural selection, has consisted in the preservation and the propagation of those living creatures in whom the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations is most successful. This is only a more detailed and descriptive way of saying that natural selection is equivalent to survival of the fittest. The shapes of animals, as well as their capacities, have been evolved through almost infinitely slow increments of adjustment upon adjustment. In this way, for instance, has been evolved the vertebrate skeleton, through a process of which Spencer's wonderful a.n.a.lysis is as thrilling as a poem. Or consider the development of the special organs of sense. Among the most startling disclosures of embryology are those which relate to this subject. The most perfect organs of touch are the _vibrissae_ whiskers of the cat, which act as long levers in communicating impulses to the nerve-fibres that terminate in cl.u.s.ters about the dermal sacs in which they are inserted. These cat-whiskers are merely specialized forms of such hairs as those which cover the bodies of most mammals, and which remain in evanescent shape upon the human skin imbedded in minute sacs. Now in their origin the eye and ear are identical with _vibrissae_. In the early stages of vertebrate life, while the differentiations of dermal tissue went mostly to the production of hairs or feathers or scales, sundry special differentiations went to the production of ears and eyes.

Embryology shows that in mammals the bulb of the eye and the auditory chamber are extremely metamorphosed hair-sacs, the crystalline lens is a differentiated hair, and the aqueous and vitreous humours are liquefied dermal tissue! The implication of these wonderful facts is that sight and hearing were slowly differentiated from the sense of touch. One can seem to discern how in the history of the eye there was at first a concentration of pigment grains in a particular dermal sac, making that spot exceptionally sensitive to light; then came by slow degrees the heightened translucence, the convexity of surface, the refracting humours, and the multiplication of nerve-vesicles arranging themselves as retinal rods. And what was the result of all this for the creature in whom organs of vision were thus developed? There was an immense extension of the range, complexity, and definiteness of the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations; in other words, there was an immense increase of life. There came into existence, moreover, for those with eyes to see it, a mighty visible world that for sightless creatures had been virtually non-existent.

With the further progress of organic life, the high development of the senses was attended or followed by increase of brain development and the correlative intelligence, immeasurably enlarging the scope of the correspondences between the living creature and the outer world. In the case of Man, the adjustments by which we meet the exigencies of life from day to day are largely psychical, achieved by the aid of ideal representations of environing circ.u.mstances. Our actions are guided by our theory of the situation, and it needs no ill.u.s.tration to show us that a true theory is an adjustment of one's ideas to the external facts, and that such adjustments are helps to successful living. The whole worth of education is directed toward cultivating the capacity of framing a.s.sociations of ideas that conform to objective facts. It is thus that life is guided.

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X

_Nature's Eternal Lesson is the Everlasting Reality of Religion_

So as we look back over the marvellous life-history of our planet, even from the dull time when there was no life more exalted than that of conferva sc.u.m on the surface of a pool, through ages innumerable until the present time when Man is learning how to decipher Nature's secrets, we look back over an infinitely slow series of minute adjustments, gradually and laboriously increasing the points of contact between the inner Life and the World environing. Step by step in the upward advance toward Humanity the environment has enlarged. The world of the fresh-water alga was its tiny pool during its brief term of existence; the world of civilized man comprehends the stellar universe during countless aeons of time. Every stage of enlargement has had reference to actual existences outside. The eye was developed in response to the outward existence of radiant light, the ear in response to the outward existence of acoustic vibrations, the mother's love came in response to the infant's needs, fidelity and honour were slowly developed as the nascent social life required them; everywhere the internal adjustment has been brought about so as to harmonize with some actually existing external fact. Such has been Nature's method, such is the deepest law of life that science has been able to detect.

Now there was a critical moment in the history of our planet, when love was beginning to play a part hitherto unknown, when notions of right and wrong were germinating in the nascent Human Soul, when the family was coming into existence, when social ties were beginning to be knit, when winged words first took their flight through the air. It was the moment when the process of evolution was being shifted to a higher plane, when civilization was to be superadded to organic evolution, when the last and highest of creatures was coming upon the scene, when the dramatic purpose of creation was approaching fulfilment. At that critical moment we see the nascent Human Soul vaguely reaching forth toward something akin to itself not in the realm of fleeting phenomena but in the Eternal Presence beyond. An internal adjustment of ideas was achieved in correspondence with an Unseen World. That the ideas were very crude and childlike, that they were put together with all manner of grotesqueness, is what might be expected. The cardinal fact is that the crude childlike mind was groping to put itself into relation with an ethical world not visible to the senses. And one aspect of this fact, not to be lightly pa.s.sed over, is the fact that Religion, thus ushered upon the scene coeval with the birth of Humanity, has played such a dominant part in the subsequent evolution of human society that what history would be without it is quite beyond imagination. As to the dimensions of this cardinal fact there can thus be no question. None can deny that it is the largest and most ubiquitous fact connected with the existence of mankind upon the earth.

Now if the relation thus established in the morning twilight of Man's existence between the Human Soul and a world invisible and immaterial is a relation of which only the subjective term is real and the objective term is non-existent, then, I say, it is something utterly without precedent in the whole history of creation. All the a.n.a.logies of Evolution, so far as we have yet been able to decipher it, are overwhelming against any such supposition. To suppose that during countless ages, from the seaweed up to Man, the progress of life was achieved through adjustments to external realities, but that then the method was all at once changed and throughout a vast province of evolution the end was secured through adjustments to external non-realities, is to do sheer violence to logic and to common sense. Or, to vary the form of statement, since every adjustment whereby any creature sustains life may be called a true step, and every maladjustment whereby life is wrecked may be called a false step; if we are asked to believe that Nature, after having throughout the whole round of her inferior products achieved results through the acc.u.mulation of all true steps and pitiless rejection of all false steps, suddenly changed her method and in the case of her highest product began achieving results through the acc.u.mulation of false steps; I say we are ent.i.tled to resent such a suggestion as an insult to our understandings.

All the a.n.a.logies of Nature fairly shout against the a.s.sumption of such a breach of continuity between the evolution of Man and all previous evolution. So far as our knowledge of Nature goes the whole momentum of it carries us onward to the conclusion that the Unseen World, as the objective term in a relation of fundamental importance that has coexisted with the whole career of Mankind, has a real existence; and it is but following out the a.n.a.logy to regard that Unseen World as the theatre where the ethical process is destined to reach its full consummation. The lesson of evolution is that through all these weary ages the Human Soul has not been cherishing in Religion a delusive phantom, but in spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling it has been rising to the recognition of its essential kinship with the ever-living G.o.d. Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to Man, I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which a.s.serts the Everlasting Reality of Religion.

So far as I am aware, the foregoing argument is here advanced for the first time. It does not pretend to meet the requirements of scientific demonstration. One must not look for scientific demonstration in problems that contain so many factors transcending our direct experience. But as an appeal to our common sense, the argument here brought forward surely has tremendous weight. It seems to me far more convincing than any chain of subtle metaphysical reasoning can ever be; for such chains, however, invincible in appearance, are no stronger than the weakest of their links, and in metaphysics one is always uneasily suspecting some undetected flaw. My argument represents the impression that is irresistibly forced upon one by a broad general familiarity with Nature's processes and methods; it therefore belongs to the cla.s.s of arguments that survive.

Observe, too, that it is far from being a modified repet.i.tion of the old argument that beliefs universally accepted must be true. Upon the view here presented, every specific opinion ever entertained by man respecting religious things may be wrong, and in all probability is exceedingly crude, and yet the Everlasting Reality of Religion, in its three indispensable elements as here set forth, remains una.s.sailable.

Our common-sense argument puts the scientific presumption entirely and decisively on the side of religion and against all atheistic and materialistic explanations of the universe. It establishes harmony between our highest knowledge and our highest aspirations by showing that the latter no less than the former are a normal result of the universal cosmic process. It has nothing to fear from the advance of scientific discovery, for as these things come to be better understood, it is going to be realized that the days of the antagonism between Science and Religion must by and by come to an end. That antagonism has been chiefly due to the fact that religious ideas were until lately allied with the doctrine of special creations. They have therefore needed to be remodelled and considered from new points of view. But we have at length reached a stage where it is becoming daily more and more apparent that with the deeper study of Nature the old strife between faith and knowledge is drawing to a close; and disentangled at last from that ancient slough of despond the Human Mind will breathe a freer air and enjoy a vastly extended horizon.

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L'ENVOI