What is Darwinism? Part 2

FOOTNOTES:

[8] _Gott und die Natur_. Von D. Hermann Ulrici. Zweite Auflage.

Leipzig, 1866, p. 394.

[9] _The Theory of Evolution of Living Things and the Application of the Principles of Evolution to Religion_. By Rev. George Henslow, M. A., F.

L. S., F. G. S. London, 1873, pp. 27, 28.

[10] _Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Inst.i.tute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain_. Vol. iv. London, 1870, p. 278.

[11] _Evolution and Religion_, p. 29.

_Darwinism excludes Teleology._

It is however neither evolution nor natural selection, which give Darwinism its peculiar character and importance. It is that Darwin rejects all teleology, or the doctrine of final causes. He denies design in any of the organisms in the vegetable or animal world. He teaches that the eye was formed without any purpose of producing an organ of vision.

Although evidence on this point has already been adduced, yet as it is often overlooked, at least in this country, so that many men speak favorably of Mr. Darwin's theory, who are no more Darwinians than they are Mussulmans; and as it is this feature of his system which brings it into conflict not only with Christianity, but with the fundamental principles of natural religion, it should be clearly established. The sources of proof on this point are,--1st. Mr. Darwin's own writings. 2d.

The expositions of his theory given by its advocates. 3d. The character of the objections urged by its opponents.

The point to be proved is that it is the distinctive doctrine of Mr.

Darwin, that species owe their origin, not to the original intention of the divine mind; not to special acts of creation calling new forms into existence at certain epochs; not to the constant and everywhere operative efficiency of G.o.d, guiding physical causes in the production of intended effects; but to the gradual acc.u.mulation of unintended variations of structure and instinct, securing some advantage to their subjects.

_Darwin's own Testimony._

That such is Mr. Darwin's doctrine we prove from his own writings. And the first proof from that source is found in express declarations. When an idea pervades a book and const.i.tutes its character, detached pa.s.sages const.i.tute a very small part of the evidence of its being inculcated. In the present case, however, such pa.s.sages are sufficient to satisfy even those who have not had occasion to read Mr. Darwin's books. In referring to the similarity of structure in animals of the same cla.s.s, he says, "Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same cla.s.s, by utility or the doctrine of final causes."[12]

On the last page of his work, he says: "It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being growth with reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and extinction of less improved forms. Thus from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, the production of the higher animals directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." (p. 579)

In another of his works, he asks, "Did He (G.o.d) ordain that crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary, in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fan-tail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary, in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull, for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case; if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be a.s.signed for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the results of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray, in his belief 'that variations have been led along certain beneficial lines, as a stream is led along useful lines of irrigation.'"[13]

Variations, which by their gradual acc.u.mulation give rise to new species, genera, families, and orders, are themselves, step by step, accidental. Mr. Darwin sometimes says they happen by chance; sometimes he says they happen of necessity; at others he says, "We are profoundly ignorant of their causes." These are only different ways of saying that they are not intentional. When a man lets anything fall from his hands, and says it was accidental, he does not mean that it was causeless, he only means that it was not intentional. And that is precisely what Darwin means when he says that species arise out of accidental variations. His whole book is an argument against teleology. The whole question is, How are we to account for the innumerable varieties, kinds, and genera of plants and animals, including man? Were they intended? or, Did they arise from the gradual acc.u.mulations of unintentional variations? His answer to these questions is plain. On page 245, he says: "Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected not by means superior to, though a.n.a.logous with, human reason, but by innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.

Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination[14]

insuperably great, cannot be considered real, if we admit the following propositions, namely, that all parts of the organizations and instincts offer, at least, individual differences; that there is a struggle for existence, which leads to the preservation of profitable deviations of structure or instinct; and, lastly, that gradations in the state of perfection of each organ may have existed, each good of its kind." He says, over and over, that if beauty or any variation of structure can be shown to be intended, it would "annihilate his theory." His doctrine is that such unintended variations, which happen to be useful in the struggle for life, are preserved, on the principle of the survival of the fittest. He urges the usual objections to teleology derived from undeveloped or useless organs, as web-feet in the upland goose and frigate-bird, which never swim.

What, however, perhaps more than anything, makes clear his rejection of design is the manner in which he deals with the complicated organs of plants and animals. Why don't he say, they are the product of the divine intelligence? If G.o.d made them, it makes no difference, so far as the question of design is concerned, how He made them: whether at once or by a process of evolution. But instead of referring them to the purpose of G.o.d, he laboriously endeavors to prove that they may be accounted for without any design or purpose whatever.

"To suppose," he says, "that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different degrees of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." (p.

222) Nevertheless he attempts to explain the process. "It is scarcely possible," he says, "to avoid comparing the eye with the telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long continued efforts of the highest of human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat a.n.a.logous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to a.s.sume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with s.p.a.ces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further, we must suppose that there is a power represented by natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers, and carefully preserving each, which, under varied circ.u.mstances, tends to produce a distinct image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better is produced, and the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variations will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement."[15] (p. 226) "Let this process,"

he says, "go on for millions of years," and we shall at last have a perfect eye.

It would be absurd to say anything disrespectful of such a man as Mr.

Darwin, and scarcely less absurd to indulge in any mere extravagance of language; yet we are expressing our own experience, when we say that we regard Mr. Darwin's books the best refutation of Mr. Darwin's theory. He constantly shuts us up to the alternative of believing that the eye is a work of design or the product of the unintended action of blind physical causes. To any ordinarily const.i.tuted mind, it is absolutely impossible to believe that it is not a work of design. Darwin himself, it is evident, dear as his theory is, can hardly believe it. "It is indispensable," he says, "to arrive at a just conclusion as to the formation of the eye, that the reason should conquer the imagination; but I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to so startling an extent." (p. 225)

It will be observed that every step in his account of the formation of the eye is an arbitrary a.s.sumption. We must first a.s.sume a thick layer of tissue; then that the tissue is transparent; then that it has cavities filled with fluid; that beneath the tissue is a nerve sensitive to light; then that the fluid is constantly varying in density and thickness; that its surfaces are constantly changing their contour; that its different portions are ever shifting their relative distances; that every favorable change is seized upon and rendered permanent,--thus after millions of years we may get an eye as perfect as that of an eagle. In like manner we may suppose a man to sit down to account for the origin and contents of the Bible, a.s.suming as his "working hypothesis," that it is not the product of mind either human or divine, but that it was made by a type-setting machine worked by steam, and picking out type hap-hazard. In this way in a thousand years one sentence might be produced, in another thousand a second, and in ten thousand more, the two might get together in the right position. Thus in the course of "millions of years" the Bible might have been produced, with all its historical details, all its elevated truths, all its devout and sublime poetry, and above all with the delineation of the character of Christ, the [Greek: idea ton ideon], the ideal of majesty and loveliness, before which the whole world, believing and unbelieving, perforce bows down in reverence. And when reason has sufficiently subdued the imagination to admit all this, then by the same theory we may account for all the books in all languages in all the libraries in the world. Thus we should have Darwinism applied in the sphere of literature. This is the theory which we are told is to sweep away Christianity and the Church!

Mr. Darwin gives the same unsatisfactory account of the marvellous "contrivances" in the vegetable world. In one species of Orchids, the labellum or lower lip is hollowed into a great bucket continually filled with water, secreted from two horns which stand above it; when the bucket is sufficiently filled, the water flows out through a pipe or spout on one side. The bees, which crowd into the flower for sake of the nectar, jostle each other, so that some fall into the water; and their wings becoming wet they are unable to fly, and are obliged to crawl through the spout. In doing this they come in contact with the pollen, which, adhering to their backs, is carried off to other flowers. This complicated contrivance by which the female plants are fertilized has, according to the theory, been brought about by the slow process of natural selection or survival of the fittest.

Still more wonderful is the arrangement in another species of Orchids.

When the bee begins to gnaw the labellum, he unavoidably touches a tapering projection, which, when touched, transmits a vibration which ruptures a membrane, which sets free a spring by which a ma.s.s of pollen is shot, with unerring aim, over the back of the bee, who then departs on his errand of fertilization.

A very large cla.s.s of plants are fertilized by means of insects. These flowers are beautiful, not for the sake of beauty,--for that Mr. Darwin says would annihilate his theory,--but those which happen to be beautiful attract insects, and thus become fertilized and perpetuated, while the plainer ones are neglected and perish. So with regard to birds. The females are generally plain, because those of bright colors are so exposed during the period of incubation that they are destroyed by their enemies. In like manner male birds are usually adorned with brilliant plumage. This is accounted for on the ground that they are more attractive, and thus they propagate their race, while the plainer ones have few or no descendants. Thus all design is studiously and laboriously excluded from every department of nature.

The preceding pages contain only a small part of the evidence furnished by Mr. Darwin's own writings, that his doctrine involves the denial of all final causes. The whole drift of his books is to prove that all the organs of plants and animals, all their instincts and mental endowments, may be accounted for by the blind operation of natural causes, without any intention, purpose, or cooperation of G.o.d. This is what Professor Huxley and others call "the creative idea," to which the widespread influence of his writings is to be referred.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] _Origin of Species_, p. 517.

[13] _The Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication._ By Charles Darwin, F. R. S., etc. New York, 1868, vol. ii. pp. 515, 516.

[14] What can the word "imagination" mean in this sentence, if it does not mean "Common Sense?"

[15] Mr. Darwin's habit of personifying nature has given, as his friend Mr. Wallace says, his readers a good deal of trouble. He defines nature to be the aggregate of physical forces; and in the single pa.s.sage quoted, he speaks of Natural Selection "as intently watching" "picking out with unerring skill," and "carefully preserving." It is true, he tells us this is all to be understood metaphorically.

_Testimony of the Advocates of the Theory._

It is time to turn to the exposition of Darwinism by its avowed advocates, in proof of the a.s.sertion that it excludes all teleology.

The first of these witnesses is Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, himself a distinguished naturalist. Mr. Darwin informs his readers that as early as 1844, he had collected his material and worked out his theory, but had not published it to the world, although it had been communicated to some of his friends. In 1858 he received a memoir from Mr. Wallace, who was then studying the natural history of the Malay Archipelago. From that memoir he learnt that Mr. Wallace had "arrived at almost exactly the same conclusions as I (he himself) have on the origin of species."

This led to the publishing his book on that subject contemporaneously with Mr. Wallace's memoir. There has been no jealousy or rivalry between these gentlemen. Mr. Wallace gracefully acknowledges the priority of Mr.

Darwin's claim, and attributes to him the credit of having elaborated and sustained it in a way to secure for it universal attention. These facts are mentioned in order to show the competency of Mr. Wallace as a witness as to the true character of Darwinism.

Mr. Wallace, in "The Theory of Natural Selection," devotes a chapter to the consideration of the objections urged by the Duke of Argyll, in his work on the "Reign of Law," against that theory. Those objections are princ.i.p.ally two: first, that design necessarily implies an intelligent designer; and second, that beauty not being an advantage to its possessor in the struggle for life, cannot be accounted for on the principle of the survival of the fittest. The Duke, he says, maintains that contrivance and beauty indicate "the constant supervision and interference of the Creator, and cannot possibly be explained by the una.s.sisted action of any combination of laws. Now, Mr. Darwin's work,"

he adds, "has for its main object to show that all the phenomena of living things--all their wonderful organs and complicated structures, their infinite variety of form, size, and color, their intricate and involved relations to each other--may have been produced by the action of a few general laws of the simplest kind, laws which are in most cases mere statements of admitted facts." (p. 265) Those laws are those with which we are familiar: Heredity, Variations, Over Production, Struggle for Life, Survival of the Fittest. "It is probable," he says, "that these primary facts or laws are but results of the very nature of life, and of the essential properties of organized and unorganized matter. Mr.

Herbert Spencer, in his 'First Principles' and in his 'Biology,' has, I think, made us able to understand how this may be; but at present we may accept these simple laws, without going further back, and the question then is, Whether the variety, the harmony, the contrivance, and the beauty we perceive, can have been produced by the action of these laws alone, or whether we are required to believe in the incessant interference and direct action of the mind and will of the Creator." (p.

267)[16] Mr. Wallace says, that the Duke of Argyll maintains that G.o.d "has personally applied general laws to produce effects which those laws are not in themselves capable of producing; that the universe alone with all its laws intact, would be a sort of chaos, without variety, without harmony, without design, without beauty; that there is not (and therefore we may presume that there could not be) any self-developing power in the universe. I believe, on the contrary, that the universe is so const.i.tuted as to be self-regulating; that as long it contains life, the forms under which that life is manifested have an inherent power of adjustment to each other and to their surroundings; and that this adjustment necessarily leads to the greatest amount of variety and beauty and enjoyment, because it does depend on general laws, and not on a continual supervision and rearrangement of details." (p. 268) "The strange springs and traps and pitfalls found in the flowers of Orchids, cannot," he says, "be necessary _per se_, since exactly the same end is gained in ten thousand other flowers which do not possess them. Is it not then an extraordinary idea, to imagine the Creator of the universe contriving the various complicated parts of these flowers, as a mechanic might contrive an ingenious toy or a difficult puzzle? Is it not a more worthy conception, that they are the results of those general laws which were so coordinated at the first introduction of life upon the earth as to result necessarily in the utmost possible development of varied forms." (p. 270) "I for one," he says, "cannot believe that the world would come to chaos if left to law alone.... If any modification of structure could be the result of law, why not all? If some self-adaptations should arise, why not others? If any varieties of color, why not all the varieties we see? No attempt is made to explain this except by reference to the fact that 'purpose' and 'contrivance'

are everywhere visible, and by an illogical deduction they could only have arisen by the direct action of some mind, because the direct action of our minds produce similar 'contrivances;' but it is forgotten that adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance of design." (p.

280)[17] After referring to the fact that florists and breeders can produce varieties in plants and animals, so that, "whether they wanted a bull-dog to torture another animal, a greyhound to catch a hare, or a bloodhound to hunt down their oppressed fellow-creatures, the required variations have always appeared," he adds: "To be consistent, our opponents must maintain that every one of the variations that have rendered possible the changes produced by man, have been determined at the right time and place by the Creator. Every race produced by the florist or breeder, the dog or the pigeon fancier, the rat-catcher, the sporting man, or the slave-hunter, must have been provided for by varieties occurring when wanted; and as these variations were never withheld, it would prove that the sanction of an all-wise and all powerful Being has been given to that which the highest human minds consider to be trivial, mean, or debasing." (p. 290)[18]

The Nebular Hypothesis, as propounded by La Place, proposed to account for the origin of the universe, by a process of evolution under the control of mere physical forces. That hypothesis has, so far as evolution is concerned, been adopted by men who sincerely believe in G.o.d and in the Bible. But they hold not only that G.o.d created matter and endowed it with its properties, but that He designed the universe, and so controlled the operation of physical laws that they accomplished his purpose. So there are Christian men who believe in the evolution of one kind of plants and animals out of earlier and simpler forms; but they believe that everything was designed by G.o.d, and that it is due to his purpose and power that all the forms of vegetable and animal life are what they are. But this is not the question. What Darwin and the advocates of his theory deny, is all design. The organs, even the most complicated and wonderful, were not intended. They are said to be due to the undirected and unintended operation of physical laws. This is Mr.

Wallace's argument. He endeavors to show that it is unworthy of G.o.d that He should be supposed to have contrived the mechanism of the orchids, as a mechanist contrives a curious puzzle.

We recently heard Prof. Joseph Henry, in a brief address, say substantially: "If I take bra.s.s, gla.s.s, and other materials, and fuse them, the product is a slag. This is what physical laws do. If I take those same materials, and form them into a telescope, that is what mind does." This is the whole question in a nutsh.e.l.l. That design implies an intelligent designer, is a self evident truth. Every man believes it; and no man can practically disbelieve it. Even those naturalists who theoretically deny it, if they find in a cave so simple a thing as a flint arrow-head, are as sure that it was made by a man as they are of their own existence. And yet they want us to believe that an eagle's eye is the product of blind natural causes. No combination of physical forces ever made a ship or a locomotive. It may, indeed, be said that they are dead matter, whereas plants and animals live. But what is life but one form of the organizing efficiency of G.o.d?

Mr. Wallace does not go as far as Mr. Darwin. He recoils from regarding man either as to body or soul as the product of mere natural causes. He insists that "a superior intelligence is necessary to account for man."

(p. 359) This of course implies that the agency of no such higher intelligence is admitted in the production of plants or of animals lower than man.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] The question is not, as Mr. Wallace says, "How has the Creator worked?" but it is, as he himself states, whether the essential properties of matter have alone worked out all the wonders of creation; or, whether they are to be referred to the mind and will of G.o.d. It is worthy of remark how Messrs. Darwin and Wallace refer to Mr. Spencer as their philosopher. We have seen what Spencer's philosophy is.

[17] It is, therefore, clear that design is what Mr. Darwin and Mr.

Wallace repudiate.

[18] That G.o.d permits men in the use of the laws of nature to distil alcohol and brew poisons, does not prove that He approves of drunkenness or murder.