Evolution and modern thought

Introduction

THE TITLE that is given to this book does not cover the various questions herein discussed. It is the object to present some of the different ecclesiastical and doctrinal movements that are being agitated among the better educated classes of thinking men of the present time by the lay members of the churches.

In this age of research and investigation it is becoming manifest that the old orthodox treatment of many portions of Scripture rests upon speculative presuppositions which are now entirely discredited. A critical examination of our problems may fairly be expected to render a much needed service. It is evident to the man of science, that the ministry, in matters where science has the right to pass judgment, are too sure that they are right, where the man of science doubts. The sense for truth, verity and purity of personal conviction, courage and power of disposition, these are the great consideration of the ministry in modern culture. These qualities can be developed and matured in a great many cases, by encouraging and assisting men to face the known facts even at the cost of honest pain, without any harm to our Christian faith. To make* religion a problem may be offensive to many. But thought, once awakened, must have the right to investigate everything, and only thought itself can draw the bounds to thought. He who has never discovered any problem, has naturally no reason to think, or be troubled about these questions. But such a one has no right to keep others from thinking. Whoever has any fear of having his faith weakened let him keep away. It is not so much the poor in spirit, that stand in the way, as it is the obstinate ministry who raise such a clamor, when free inquiry enters upon its rights to investigate scientific and historical truths. As will be seen, the new view of the world requires an historical treatment of all human things, which is the outcome of the widening of the horizon backward into the past history of the human race, tracing it down through evolution and development to the present.

It is this movement which has contributed to the shattering of the original inborn confidence of every kindred type of culture, and system of values, which they held to be essential to their own welfare, and should never be broken or treated with dishonor. These types have become historical objects by the side of others, between which not miracle, but only comparison, can yield criterion of their respective value. It is this picture of the whole, constructed in part by affording a general view of the whole, or of the principal part of that imagination, which is a surmise in advance of knowledge, and which has been the basis of all judgments concerning the rules and ideals, that has governed the human race during the long centuries of the past.

Therefore historical science is the basis of all thought concerning values and rules of action, the means of self-reflection on the part of mankind, as regards its nature, its origin, and its hopes. If the great masses of the people would only stop and think, and use a little common sense in their thinking, this new way of looking at things will produce effects the consequences of which would affect all future appreciations of Christianity.

Like all great movements of the human spirit, Christianity also shares this inborn confidence in its authorized standard, thought to be handed down from above. This excuse in defense of Christian religion has ever firmly knit together this confidence by the blank unmeditated opposition of Christianity to all that is non-Christian, depreciating the latter to a homogeneous mass of human error, and vice, exalting the former to immediate divine dignity, accredited as such by outer and inner miracle, as will be shown in this book. The old position held by all Christians in all ages, is that all ecclesiastical history presents absolute truth, proved to be such, because miraculously authenticated to be due to divine communication.

We are on this earth to live, in the highest sense of that term, and we are guaranteed the freedom of thought, and the right to see the truth as it appeals to us, and we grant that same privilege to others. Those who are indulging in violent attacks on persons holding views different from their own are not living up to the spirit of the time in which we live, where every one has the right to think, and speak according to the dictates of his own conscience. Church organizations do not behave as sanely as the scientists.

One thing is certain, we shall never gain anything by finding fault, or making accusations, or slander against any man who has a new truth to propound. We must, on the contrary, consider what he has to offer. We must come to the new theory with an open mind, and an attitude of justice. If we are convinced that the new proposition is better than the old, we should accept it. We must be ever ready to broaden our minds to new discovered truths if we ever make any progress. For knowledge is advanced through the utterances of new opinions, and truth is discovered by free discussion? If the utterance of truths flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. Books which are authorized by the licensers are apt to be, as Bacon said, but the language of the times, and do not contribute to progress. The examples of the countries where the censorship is severe, do not suggest that it is useful for morals. Look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional rigor that hath been executed upon books. Spain indeed could reply, We are, what is more important, more orthodox. It is interesting to notice that Milton places freedom of thought above civil liberty. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all other liberties.

It is a common saying that thought is free. A man can never be hindered from thinking whatever he chooses, so long as he conceals what he thinks. The working of his mind is limited only by the bounds of his experience and the power of his imagination. But this natural liberty of private thinking is of little value. It is unsatisfactory and even painful to the thinker himself, if he is not permitted to communicate his thoughts to others, and it is obviously of no value to his neighbors. Moreover it is extremely difficult to hide thoughts that have any power over the mind. If a man's thinking leads him to call in question ideas and customs which regulate the behavior of those about him, to reject beliefs which they hold, to see better ways of life than those they follow, it is almost impossible for him, if he is convinced of the truth of his own reasoning, not to betray by silence, chance words, or general attitude that he is different from them and does not share their opinions. Thus freedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.

At present in the most civilized countries, freedom of speech is taken as a matter of course and seems a perfectly simple thing. We are so accustomed to it that we look on it as a natural right. But this right has been acquired only in quite recent times, and the way to its attainment has lain through lakes of blood. It has taken centuries to persuade the most enlightened peoples that liberty to publish one's opinions and to discuss all questions is a good and not a bad thing. Human societies have been generally opposed to freedom of thought, or, in other words, to new ideas, and it is easy to see why. Hie average brain is naturally lazy, and tends to take the line of least resistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly attached; he is instinctively hostile to anything which would upset the established order of this familiar world. A new idea, inconsistent with some of the beliefs which he holds, means the necessity of rearranging his mind ; and this process is laborious, requiring a painful expenditure of brain energy. To him and his fellows, who form the vast majority, new ideas, and opinions which cast doubt on established beliefs and institutions, seem evil because they are disagreeable.

The repugnance due to mere mental laziness is increased by a positive feeling of fear. The conservative instinct hardens into the conservative doctrine that the foundations of society are endangered by any alterations in the structure. It is only recently that men have been abandoning the belief that the welfare of a state depends on rigid stability, and on the preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent person.

The conservative instinct, and the conservative doctrine which is its consequence, are strengthened by superstition. If the social structure, including the whole body of customs and opinions, is associated intimately with religious belief and is supposed to be under divine patronage, criticism of the social order savors of impiety, while criticism of the religious belief is a direct challenge to the wrath of supernatural powers.

The psychological motives which produce a conservative spirit hostile to new ideas are reinforced by the active opposition of a certain powerful section of the community, such as a class, a caste, or a priesthood, whose interests are bound up with the maintenance of the established order and the ideas on which it rests. A long time was needed to arrive at tta conclusion that coercion of opinion is a mistake, and only a part of the world is yet convinced. That conclusion, so far a? I can judge, is the most important ever reached by man. It was the issue of a continuous struggle between authority and reason. If you ask somebody how he knows something, ne may say, I have it on good authority, or, I read it in a book, or I learned it at school. Any of these replies means that he has accepted information from others, trusting in their knowledge, without verifying their statements or thinking the matter out for himself. And the greater part of most men's knowledge and beliefs is of this kind, taken without verification from their parents, teachers, books, and newspapers. It is obvious that every one's knowledge would be very limited indeed, if we were not justified in accepting facts on the authority of others. But we are justified only under one condition. The facts which we can safely accept must be capable of demonstration or verification.

Now, people at all times have been commanded to accept on authority alone — the authority, for instance, of public opinion, or a church, or a sacred book — doctrines which are not proved or are not capable of proof. Most beliefs about nature and man, which were not founded on scientific observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using their reason. In the Middle Ages a large field was covered by beliefs which authority claimed to impose as true, and reason was warned off the ground. But reason cannot recognize arbitrary prohibitions or barriers, without being untrue to herself. Indeed the weakest point in the strategical position of authority was that her champions, being human, could not help making use of reasoning processes, and the result was that they were divided among themselves. It may be objected that there is a legitimate domain for authority, consisting of doctrines which lie outside human experience and therefore cannot be proved or verified, but at the same time cannot be disproved. Of course, any number of propositions can be invented which cannot be disproved, and it is open to any one who possesses abundant faith to believe them ; but no one will maintain that they all deserve credence so long as their falsehood is not demonstrated. And if only some deserve credence, who, except reason, is to decide which? If the reply is, authority, we are confronted by the difficulty that many beliefs backed by authority have been finally disproved and are universally abandoned. Yet some people speak as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter.

Chapter I Origin and Evolution of Man

AS FAR back as we can trace the history of man, from the very earliest times in all the earliest nations of the earth that had made any progress in scientific research, men have endeavored to answer the question, What is man, where did he come from, and whither is he bound? He has ever busied himself by piecing together the little bits of information accessible to him in order to make up some kind of a satisfactory answer. In their day the methods that they used for this purpose seem to us to be very crude, and undoubtedly ancient philosophers bungled considerably in their effort to reach the truth. Accordingly primitive men were very wide of the mark in their views of nature. They had no conception of the size, or shape of the earth, nor of its daily rotation on its axis, nor of its annual revolution around the sun, and the cause of winter and summer. The theories they advanced were only the products of random guesswork. The most of the guesses even by the medieval philosophers would now be thrown aside as utterly unbelievable because they would not harmonize with the knowledge which has been acquired since the Middle Ages.

Once there were unlimited facilities for guessing as to how the solar system might have come into existence. Now the origin of the Sun and Planets is adequately explained when we have unfolded all that is implied in the processes which are still going on in the solar system. Formerly appeals were made to all manner of violent agencies to account for the changes which the earth's surface has undergone since our planet began its independent career; now it is seen that the same slow working of rain and tide, wind and waves and frost, which has taken place during a long period of time, the contracting of the earth's crust, and the earthquake upheavals all around the globe, which are visible today, will account for all the physical changes of the earth's crust. It is not long since it was supposed that a species of animals or plants could be swept away only by some unusual catastrophe, while for the origin of a new species a special act of creation was necessary, and as to the nature of such extraordinary events there was endless room for guesswork, but the discovery of natural selection was the discovery of a process, going on perpetually under our own eyes, which must inevitably of itself extinguish some species, and bring new ones into being.

In these and countless other ways we have learned that all the rich variety of nature is pervaded by unity of action, such as we might expect to find if nature is the manifestation of an infinite God. The very fact that man has ascended gradually from an animal level, implies that any very early traces of him which we may find, will lead to almost endless controversy. If we find remains of the being who is slowly assuming human shape, it would be quite natural that many would hesitate whether to describe the transitional form, as animal or human. If we find specimens of man's most primitive efforts to give an edge to a flint, the marks will differ from the chippings to which flints are subjected in the river beds, or on the shore of the ocean. It is not surprising, therefore, that the claims for the most primitive traces of man are much disputed.

The original records of the world's earliest history are furnished by astronomy and geology. These records are written in the construction of the solar system, and in the rock strata, and fossils of the earth. They are contemporary documents, and their testimony has unquestionable authority. The evidence that we now possess of the long period of time that has elapsed since man first made his appearance on earth is presented to us by the many fine collections of prehistoric remains of man and his implements found imbedded in the strata of rock, and in caves in nearly all parts of the world, underneath the glacial drift. These petrified remains date back to the remote past, according to some geologists, 200,- 000 years. In England, France, and Scandinavia, the science has for decades had able leaders, and ample literature. Italy, Belgium and Switzerland, are hardly behind these countries, and Spain, and Austria, have reported some remarkable discoveries in recent years. Both North and South America have their workers and literature, and the research has now been carried to some extent all over the civilized world. The advance of the science has become too large for summary in this book.

From the enormous accumulation of material which half a century of research has given us, we are now able to sketch the general outline, and fill in much detail, of the prehistoric life of humanity. Even if we had found no human remains whatever, we should have ample proof of the gradual rise of man from a lowly level to the dawn of civilization. From roughly worked stones, in which we barely recognize the artificial chipping that fitted them for primitive man's uses, we pass through slow and steady stages of improvement in workmanship, until we reach a period of f,nely polished stone axes and delicately chipped arrows and lance heads. After these we find man experimenting in copper, the first available metal that would meet his eye, and passing quickly to the use of bronze, the harder alloy which an intelligent being would soon devise. Lastly, in the full dawn of history, we meet weapons and implements of iron. But we are by no means restricted to these imperishable memorials of man's handiwork, which so fully illustrate the gradual rise of human intelligence.

We have now a very fair collection of actual human remains of the prehistoric age, and they are in entire accord with the conclusion we draw from the stone implements. Of the men of the early Stone Age we have now about ten important skulls or jaws, with many other bones. We shall see that these exhibit a human type of the very lowest level known to us ; though we shall have to consider certain bones found in Java, which recall an even lower and much earlier period. The few remains we have of the men of the later Old Stone Age show just such an increase in cranial development as our study of their handiwork would suggest, and this improvement is maintained when we rise to the New Stone Age. For the later period the remains are, of course, abundant. When we take a glance at the photographs that have been taken of these skulls, we perceive at once the ascending character of the story of mankind. The succession of stone and metal ages is now beyond cavil ; though there are often stages of mental development at the same time, in the sense that one race may remain at the earlier level while another pushes forward to a higher stage. Many of the savage tribes in the beginning of the nineteenth century were still remaining in that condition they occupied when in the very lowest levels of primitive culture. The study of savages is, in fact, a most instructive parallel to the study of prehistoric races. They are fragments of the early waves of distribution of the human family, retaining in their isolation the characters of human life as it was for all, in a remote antiquity. Some of them have still the low type of skull and the crude implements and weapons of the prehistoric man.

In geology generally, and in prehistoric science especially, all chronological schemes must be regarded with great reserve. Geologists differ in their judgment in regard to the age of the world. Some take about 55 million years as a fair average estimate of the time it took to form the stratified rocks of the earth's crust, while many eminent geologists would place the time at least 1 00 million years. So in regard to primitive man. Any estimate which falls short of 1 00,- 000 years since man appeared on the earth may be ignored, but it is difficult to go far beyond this. One of the most careful estimates (that of Mortillet) assigns 250,000 years for the whole story since the advent of man, but many eminent authors would double this. Therefore, we will necessarily conclude that we have by no means as yet discovered material required to settle the question of chronology, and will have to wait for farther discoveries, while we pause at the various phases of evolution, and ask — whence these things were. It is enough to say, with Sir John Evans, one of the most cautious authorities: "The mind is almost lost in amazement at the vista of antiquity displayed. If we can succeed in restoring the outline of some of the strange races of men who roamed our planet with strange animal companions, in the dark night of prehistory, we may leave the closer determination to a more developed science."

It has only been within the last century that we knew anything about the world's early history, except what we got from the Bible, and from some legends preserved by Greek authors. These were exclusively the only sources of the little knowledge to be obtained of the early history of the human race, but now we have a wealth of new information that has come to light through the discoveries of astronomy, geology, and archaeology, and by the study of these sciences a new meaning has been given to many statements in the Bible, and many gaps in its narrative been supplied. The long successive periods of the world's ancient history have been wonderfully enlarged by modern discoveries, in regard to the period that preceded the appearance of man on the earth. The original records of the earth's early history are furnished by geology in the different strata of rock and fossils of the earth's crust, and the testimony they bear is unquestionable. If we turn our attention to the study of geology or archaeology, we would undoubtedly be convinced of the long period of time required to form the many sedimentary rock strata that cover the foundation crust of the earth, we would not question the truth of statements made by geologists, that millions of years were necessary to produce such prodigious accumulation of material, and in some of these later formations of sedimentary rocks (say about 200,- 000 years ago), are found the fossil remains of many extinct animals and man.

As I have stated above, the Bible was supposed to contain a true record of creation as found in the first chapters of Genesis, and it has been held by Old Testament scholars until the last century that this account was handed down from Heaven to Moses, and its authority was undisputed. But we know now that this record was not committed to writing until about 500 B. C, but the oral tradition on which it was based went back to a high antiquity. This tradition cannot have originated at the time of creation, since man did not yet exist on the earth.

It has been recognized in modern times by scholars that this story has been borrowed by the Hebrews from the Babylonians, and they derived it from their Sumerian predecessors. These people were in possession of the land for thousands of years before the Semitic peoples (the race from which the Hebrews descended) arrived in the land to conquer and subdue its inhabitants. From the excavations among the ruins of these ancient cities, have been found large libraries written on tablets of clay, and among these are found tablets containing a story of creation, very similar to that found in the first chapters of Genesis. These tablets were written in the Sumerian language, an unknown language, and which has been deciphered only in recent years and is very different from the Babylonian, or Semitic. Most all the religious ideas of the Babylonians were derived from the Sumerians, and these tablets that have been exhumed from those old mounds originated as far back perhaps as 10,000 years. This story then, was in existence several thousand years before Moses was born. The idea of a creation out of a primitive watery chaos would naturally arise among the Babylonians whose land was inundated every spring by the Euphrates and Tigris. Other statements in the early chapters of Genesis, such as the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, are also clearly of Babylonian origin. The only possible theory is that the Hebrew account has been borrowed in some way from the Babylonians.

If this story of creation is of Babylonian origin, there is no reason why we should expect it to correspond with the account given by modern astronomy and geology. The ancient Babylonians knew nothing of our modern science, and there is no evidence that they had a divine illumination superior to other peoples of antiquity. The earliest written records in Babylonia and Egypt date from about 4000 B.C., but back of these, archaeology discovers a long series of remains that testify that our race was already ancient when writing was first invented, and that the people that lived along the Euphrates had arrived at a higher state of civilization before the Semitic people entered the land, than ever existed there since.

In the book of Genesis the narrative there regards man's appearance on the earth as due to a special act of creation on the part of God. He made man out of the dust of the earth at the beginning of creation, and woman was formed out of one of his ribs. Science regards man as the last link in the chain of evolution. He was developed out of a lower type of animal that resembled the apes, and this species of animal can be traced back to the beginning of life on the earth, and from this man has developed through evolution during the unknown ages of the past. In 1892 Dubois reported the discovery of a skull in the Island of Java that in its shape and capacity was intermediate between the apes and man, and others have discovered skulls that show intermediate stages of development between this Java skull and the skulls of the lowest existing races of men. The figures given in the book of Genesis place the origin of man about 4000 B.C. This is contrary to the evidence both of archaeology and geology. Archaeology shows that in 4000 B.C. civilization was already in full bloom in Babylon and

Egypt, and geology shows that the origin of man must be placed thousands of years earlier. It is quite well agreed among geologists that a being far enough evolved to be called man, existed on the earth at the beginning of the Glacial period, and the prevailing opinion is that that date cannot have been much less than 500,000 years. A long period of time must have been necessary for the accumulation of the enormous deposits of the Glacial age, for the change of climate from the Glacial to the present, for the change of animals from the extinct species that were contemporary with primitive man to the present, for the development of the different races of mankind, for the growth of the different languages, and for the progress of civilization to the high point that was already attained in Egypt and Babylon as early as 4000 B.C. In contrast to this account of science the book of Genesis represents man as possessing at the outset the civilization of the late Neolithic period, or the stone age.

According to Genesis 2:5-15 and 3:17-23, man was an agriculturist from the beginning, but science shows that he did not take up agriculture until long after the Neolithic age. In Genesis 4:2, Abel is a keeper of sheep, but domestic animals were not bred at that time ; Cain built cities. 4:17, but cities did not exist before the bronze age. In reality, the ages of bronze and iron were thousands of years later and they did not come into use until about 1 200 B.C. By eating the forbidden fruit Adam attained at once knowledge of good and evil, Gen. 3 :5-7. In reality this knowledge has been slowly acquired through the experience of many centuries. According to Gen. 3 :3-19, death was consequence of Adam's disobedience, but death has always been in the world and is involved in the very constitution of our bodies.

Man's primitive home in the Garden of Eden, with its wonderful trees that conferred life and death and knowledge by the eating of their fruit, and its animals that possessed the power of speech; evidently like many of the other stories, belongs to the realm of mythology rather than that of history.

"What bearing does evolution have on man any way?" It affirms the origin and descent of man in both body and soul from animal forms. It was this application of the theory that at first gave such a shock to religious feelings. But we need not fear or hesitate at this application of the doctrine, for it introduces no new principle or difficulty. Whether man was thus derived by evolutionary descent is a scientific question of fact to be decided by scientific methods of investigation. It does not touch the ultimate origin and nature of man as a divine creation and a child of God. The religious account of the creation of man is that God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. This statement is strongly suggestive of an evolutionary process and it stands literally true in the light of our modern science. That the human body is formed of the dust of the ground is evidenced by the fact that it can be resolved into dust and may be scattered by the wind or the running stream. Evolution does not affirm that man was created instantly, but through long process. It puts many steps between the dust of the ground and the developed human body, but these steps in no wise exclude, but at every point include God. Evolution does not in the least degree impair the spirituality and personality and responsibility, conscience and character, the supreme worth and immortality of man. It simply describes the process by which God created him as his human child and no more debases the worth of the child than evolutionary generation and growth impair the worth of our children. And as consciousness and personality, freedom and responsibility, conscience and character come out at the top of evolution in man, these powers and qualities must have been in the Cause in the beginning, and at this point evolution confirms our belief in a God.