Creation or evolution? a philosophical inquiry

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CREATION OR EVOLUTION?

Preface

IX and philosophers at the present day, whose speculations do not exclude the idea of a Supreme Being, there are others whose theories are entirely inconsistent with a belief in a personal God, the Creator and Grovernor of the uniyerse. Moreoyer, although there are great differences in this respect between the different persons who accept eyolution in some form, the whole doctrine of the development of distinct species out of other species makes demands upon our credulity which are irreconcilable with the principles of belief by which we regulate, or ought to regulate, our acceptance of any new matter of belief. The principles of belief which we apply in the ordinary affairs of life are those which should be applied to scientific or philosophical theories ; and inasmuch as the judicial method of reasoning upon facts is at once the most satisfactory and the most in accordance with common sense, I haye here undertaken to apply it to the eyidence which is supposed to establish the hypothesis of animal eyolution, in contrast with the hypothesis of special creations.

I am no ecclesiastic. I advance no arguments in favor of one or another interpretation of the Scriptures about which there is controversy among Christians. While I firmly believe that God exists, and that he has made a revelation to mankind, whereby he has given us direct assurance of immortality, I do not know that this belief disqualifies me from judging, upon proper principles of evidence, of the soundness of a theory which denies that he specially created either the body or the mind of man. How far the hypothesis of eyolution, by destroying our belief that God specially created us, tends to negative any purpose for

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which we can suppose him to have made to us a revelation of our immortality, it is for the theologian to consider. For myself, I am not conscious that in examining the theory of evolution I have been influenced by my belief in what is called revealed religion. I have, at all events, studiously excluded from the argument all that has been inculcated by the Hebrew or the Christian records as authorized or inspired teachings, and have treated the Mosaic account of the creation like any other hypothesis of the origin of man and the other animals. The result of my study of the hypothesis of evolution is, that it is an ingenious but delusive mode of accounting for the existence of either the body or the mind of man ; and that it emploj^s a kind of reasoning which no person of sound judgment would apply to anything that might affect his welfare, his happiness, his estate, or his conduct in the practical affairs of life.

He who would truly know what the doctrine of evolution is, and to what it leads, must literally begin at the beginning. He must free his mind from the cant of agnosticism and from the cant of belief. He must refuse to accept dogmas on the authority of any one, be they the dogmas of the scientist, or of the theologian. He must learn that his mental nature is placed under certain laws, as surely as his corporeal structure ; and he must cheerfully obey the necessities which compel him to accept some conclusions and to reject others. Keeping his reasoning powers in a well-balanced condition, he must prove all things, holding fast to that which is in conformity with sound deduction, and to that alone. But all per-

PEEFACE. xi

sons may not be able to afford the time to pursue truth in this way, or may not have the facilities for the requisite research. It seemed to me, therefore, that an effort to do for them what they can not do for themselves would be acceptable to a great many people.

It may be objected that the imaginary philosopher whom I have introduced in some of my chapters under the name of Sophereus, or the searcher after wisdom, debating the doctrines of evolution with a supposed disciple of that school, whom I have named Kosmicos, is an impossible person. It may perhaps be said that the conception of a man absolutely free from all dogmatic religious teaching, from all bias to any kind of belief, and yet having as much knowledge of various systems of belief as I have imputed to this imaginary person, would in modern society be the conception of an unattainable character. My answer to this criticism would be that I felt myself at liberty to imagine any kind of character that would suit my purpose. How successfully I have carried out the idea of a man in mature life entirely free from all preconceived opinions, and forming his beliefs upon principles of pure reason, it is for my readers to judge. With regard to the other interlocutor in the dialogues, I hope it is not necessary for me to say that I do not impute all of his opinions or arguments to the professors of the evolution school, or to any section of it. He is a representative of the effects of some of their teachmgs, but not an individual portrait. But as, for the purposes of the antagonism, it was expedient to put into the mouth of this person whatever can be said in favor of the hypothesis of xii PREFACE.

evolution, it became necessary to make him represent the dogmatic side of the theory; and thus to make the collision and contrast between the minds of the two debaters as strong as I could. Controversial discussion in the form of debate has been used from the time of Plato. While I have adopted a method, I have not presumed to imitate its great exemplars. But for the value of that method I shall presently cite weighty testimony. It was a relief to me to resort to it after having pursued the subject in the more usual form of discussion ; and indeed it forced itself upon me as a kind of necessity, because it seemed the fairest way of presenting what could be said on both sides of the question. I hope it may have the good fortune to keep alive the interest of the reader, after he has perused the previous chapters.

One disadvantage of all positive writing or discourse is that there is no one to confute, to contradict, or to maintain the negative. At the bar, and in some public assemblies, there is an antagonist ; and truth is elicited by the collision. But in didactic writing, especially on a philosophical topic, it is best to introduce an antagonist, and to make him speak in his own person. Two of the best thinkers of our time have forcibly stated the advantage — the necessity, in short — of personal debate. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his essay on Liberty, observes that —

"The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a truth as is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to or defending it against opponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling

PREFACE. xiii

drawback from the benefits of its universal recognition. Where this advantage can not be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute for it ; some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner's consciousness as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion eager for his conversion.

*^But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a discussion of the great questions of life and philosophy, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one, who had merely adopted the commonplaces of received opinion, that he did not understand the subject — ^that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed, in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school disputations of the middle ages had a similar object. They were intended to make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of one and confute those of the other. The last-mentioned contests had, indeed, the incurable defect that the premises appealed to were taken from authority, not from reason ; and as a discipline to the mind they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which formed the intellects of the *Socratici viri.' But xiv PREFACE.

the modern mind owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit ; and the present modes of instruction contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other. ... It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic — that which points out weakness in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result, but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it can not be valued too highly ; and until people are again systematically trained to it there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one's opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him by others, or gone through of himself, the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents."

Mr. Grote, in his admirable work on "Plato and the other Companions of Socrates," has the following passage :

"Plato is usually extolled by his admirers as the champion of the Absolute — of unchangeable forms, immutable truth, objective necessity, cogent and binding on every one. He is praised for having refuted Protagoras, who can find no standard beyond the individual recognition and belief of his own mind or that of some one else. There is no doubt that Plato often talks in that strain, but the method followed in his dialogues, and the general principles of methods which he lays down here as well as

PKEFACE. XV

elsewhere, point to a directly opposite conclusion. Of this the Phgedrus is a signal instance. Instead of the extreme of generality, it proclaims the extreme of speciality. The objection which the Socrates of the Phsedrus advances against the didactic efficacy of written discourse is founded on the fact that it is the same to all readers — that it takes no cognizance of the differences of individual minds nor of the same mind at different times. Socrates claims for dialectic debate the valuable privilege that it is constant action and reaction between two individual minds — an appeal by the inherent force and actual condition of each to the like elements in the other— an ever-shifting presentation of the same topics, accommodated to the measure of intelligence and cast of emotion in the talkers and at the moment. The individuality of each mind — both questioner and respondent — is here kept in view as the governing condition of the process. ISTo two minds can be approached by the same road or by the same interrogation. The questioner can not advance a step except by the admission of the respondent. Every respondent is the measure to himself. He answers suitably to his own belief; he defends by his own suggestions ; he yields to the pressure of contradiction and inconsistency when he feels them, and not before. Each dialogist is (to use the Protagorean phrase) the measure to himself of truth and falsehood, according as he himself believes it. Assent or dissent, whichever it may be, springs only from the free working of the individual mind in its actual condition then and there. It is to the individual mind alone that appeal is made, and this is what Protagoras asks for.

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" We thus find, in Plato's philosophical character, two extreme opposite tendencies and opposite poles co-existent. We must recognize them both, but they can never be reconciled ; sometimes he obeys and follows the one, sometimes the other.

*^If it had been Plato's purpose to proclaim and impose upon every one something which he called ^ Absolute Truth,' one and the same alike imperative upon all, he would best proclaim it by preaching or writing. To modify this * Absolute,' according to the yarieties of the persons addressed, would divest it of its intrinsic attribute and excellence. If you pretend to deal with an Absolute, you must turn away your eyes from all diversity of apprehending intellects and believing subjects."

With such testimony to the value of dialectic debate, I hope that my adoption of it as a method will be regarded as something better than an affectation.

Mr. Spencer, in one of his works,* referring to and quoting from Berkeley's ^^ Dialogues of Hylas and Philolaus," observes that "imaginary conversation affords great facilities for gaining a victory. When you can put into an adversary's mouth just such replies as suit your purpose, there is little difficulty in reaching the desired conclusion." I have not written to gain a victory; and, indeed, I am quite aware that it would be impossible to gain one over those with whom I can have no common ground of reasoning. In the imaginary conversations in this work, I have taken great care not to put into the

* " Principles of Psychology," vol. i, p. 336.

PREFACE. xvii

month of the supposed representative of the doctrine of evolution anything that Avould suit my own purpose ; and, in every instance in which I have represented him as relying on the authority of Mr. Darwin or of Mr. Spencer, I have either made him quote the words or have made him state the positions as I suppose they must be understood, and have referred the reader to the proper page in the works of those writers.

And here I will render all honor to the admirable candor with which Mr. Darwin discussed objections to his theory which have been propounded by others, and suggested further difficulties himself. If I do not pay the same tribute to Mr. Spencer, the reason will be found in those portions of my work in which I have had occasion to call in question his methods of reasoning.

Some repetition of facts and arguments will be found in the following pages in the different aspects in which the subject is treated. This has been intentional. When the tribunal that is addressed is a limited and special one, and is composed of a high order of minds accustomed to deal with such a science, for example, as jurisprudence, he who undertakes to produce conviction can afford to use condensation. He seldom has to repeat what he has once said ; and often, the more compact his argument, the more likely it will be to command assent if it is clear as well as close. But this work is not addressed to such a tribunal. It is written for various classes of readers, some of whom have already a special acquaintance with the subject, some of whom have less, and some of whom have now none at all. It is designed to explain what the theory i xviii PREFACE.

of eyolution is, and to encounter it in the mode best adapted to reach, the various minds of which the mass of readers is composed. If I had written only for scientists and philosophers, I should not have repeated anything.

For similar reasons I have added to this volume both a general index and a glossary of the scientific and technical terms which I have had occasion to use.

The whole of the text of this work had been written and electrotyped before I had an opportunity to see the very interesting ^^ Life and Correspondence " of the illustrious naturalist, the late Louis Agassiz, edited by his accomplished widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, and published in October, 1885, by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston. For a long period of years, after his residence in this country began, and until my removal from Boston to New York in 1862, I enjoyed as much of his intimacy as would be likely to subsist between persons of such different pursuits. I believe that I understood his general views of creation, from his lectures and conversation. It is now made entirely certain that he never accepted the doctrine of evolution of distinct types out of preceding and diiferent types by ordinary generation ; and it has been to me an inexpressible satisfaction to find that the opinions and reasoning contained in my work, and adopted independently of any influence of his, are confirmed by what has now been given to the world. I need only refer to his letter to Prof. Sedgwick, written in June, 1845, and to his latest utterance, the paper on " Evolution and Permanence of Type," in the thirty-third volume of the *' Atlantic Monthly," published after his lamented

PREFACE. xix

death in 1873, for proof that his opinions on the Darwinian theory never changed. Of all the scientists whom I have ever known, or whose writings I have read, Agassiz always seemed to me the broadest as well as the most exact and logical reasoner.

New York, September ^ 1886.

Chapter I. Page

Nature and importance of the subject — Is there a relation of Creator and creature between God and man ? — Rules of rational belief — Is natural theology a progressive science ? 1

CHAPTER n.

The Platonic Kosmos compared with the Darwinian theory of evolution 44

PAGE

The existence, attributes, and methods of God deducible from the phenomena of Nature — Origin of the solar system .... 300

Chapter IX

Does evolution account for the phenomena of society and of nature ? — Necessity for a conception of a personal actor — Mr. Spencer's protoplasmic origin of all organic life — The Mosaic account of creation treated as a hypothesis which may be scientifically contrasted with evolution 334

Sophereus discourses on the nature and origin of the human mind . 46Y

Glossary ^547

Index 557

CREATION OR EVOLUTION?

Chapter I

Nature and importance of the subject — Is there a relation of Creator and creature between God and man ? — Rules of rational belief — Is natural theology a progressive science ?

Mak finds himself in the uniyerse a conscious and thinking being. He has to account to himself for his own existence. He is impelled to this by an irresistible propensity, which is constantly leading him to look both inward and outward for an answer to the questions : What am I ? How came I to be ? What is the limit of my existence ? Is there any other being in the uniyerse between whom and myself there exists the relation of Creator and creature ?

The whole history of the human mind, so far as we have any reliable history, is marked by this perpetual effort to find a First Cause.

Howeyer wild and fantastic may be the idea which the savage conceives of a being stronger and wiser than himself ; however groveling and sensual may be his conception of the form, or attributes, or action of that being, he is, when he strives after the comprehension of his deity, engaged in the same intellectual effort that is made by the most civilized and cultivated of mankind, when, speculating upon the origin of the human soul, or its relation to the universe, or the genesis of the material world, they reach the sublime conception of an infinite God, the creator

2 OEEATION" OR EVOLUTION?

of all other spiritual existences and of all the forms of animal life, or when they end in the theory that there is no God, or in that other theory which supposes that what we call the creation, man included, is an eyolution out of primordial matter, which has been operated upon by certain fixed laws, without any special interposition of a creating power, exerted in the production of the forms of animal life that now inhabit this earth, or ever have inhabited it. In the investigation of these contrasted theories, it is necessary to remember that the faculties of the human mind are essentially the same in all conditions of civilization or barbarism ; that they differ only in the degree of their growth, activity, and power of reasoning, and therefore that there must be a common standard to which to refer all beliefs. The sole standard to which we can refer a belief in anything is its rationality, or a comparison between that which is believed and that which is most probable, according to the power of human reason to weigh probabilities. In the untutored and uncultivated savage, this power, although it exists, is still very feeble ; partly because it is exercised upon only a few objects, and partly because the individual has comparatively but little opportunity to know all the elements which should be taken into account in determining a question of moral probabilities.

In the educated and cultivated man this power of judging probabilities, of testing beliefs by their rationality, is carried, or is capable of being carried, to the highest point of development, so as to comprehend in the calculation the full elements of the question, or at least to reduce the danger of some fatal omission to the minimum. It is, of course, true that the limited range of our faculties may prevent a full view of all the elements of any question of probability, even when our faculties have attained the highest point of development experienced by the age in which we happen to live. This renders the rationality of any hy-

FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF. 3

pothesis less than an absolutely certain test of truth. But this rationality is all that we have to apply to any question of belief ; and if we attend carefully to the fact that moral probabilities constitute the groundwork of all our beliefs, and note the mental processes by which we reach conclusions upon any question depending upon evidence, we shall find reason to regard this power of testing beliefs by a conformity between the hypotheses and that which is most probable to be the most glorious attribute of the human understanding, as it is unquestionably the safest guide to which we can trust ourselves.

It may be that, while philosophers will not object to my definition of rationality, churchmen will ask what place I propose to assign to authority in the formation of beliefs. I answer, in the first place, that I am seeking to make myself understood by plain but reflecting and reasoning people. Such persons will perceive that what I mean by the rationality of a belief in any hypothesis is its fitness to be accepted and acted upon because it has in its favor the strongest probabilities of the case, so far as we can grasp those probabilities. I know of no other foundation for a belief in anything ; for belief is the acceptance by the mind of some proposition, statement, or supposed fact, the truth of which depends upon evidence addressed to our senses, or to our intellectual perceptions, or to both. In the next place, in regard to the influence of authority over our beliefs, it is to be observed that the existence of the authority is a question to be determined by evidence, and this question, therefore, of itself involves an application of the test of rationality, or conformity with what is probable. But, assuming that the authority is satisfactorily established, it is not safe to leave all minds to the teaching of that authority, without the aid of the reasoning, which, independent of all authority, would conduct to the same conclusion. There are many minds to whom it is useless to say. You are commanded to believe. The question instantly arises, Commanded by whom, or what ? And if the answer is, By the Church, or by the Bible, and the matter is left to rest upon that statement, there is great danger of unbelief. It is apparent that a large amount of what is called infidelity, or unbelief, now prevailing in the world, is due to the fact that men are told that they are commanded to believe, as if they were to be passive recipients of what is asserted, and because so little is addressed to their understandings.

I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that there is no place for authority in matters of what is called religious belief. I am quite sensible that there may be such a thing as authority even in regard to our beliefs ; that it is quite within the range of possibilities that there should be such a relation between the human soul and an infinite Creator as to require the creature to accept by faith whatever a proved revelation requires that intelligent creature to believe. But, in view of the fact that what is specially called revealed religion is addressed to an intelligent creature, to whom the revelation itself must be proved by some evidence that will satisfy the mind, there is an evident necessity for treating the rationality of a belief in God as an independent question. In some way, by some process, we must reach a belief in the existence of a being before we can consider the claims of a message which that being is supposed to have sent to us. What we have to work with, before we can approach the teaching of what is called revealed religion, is the mind of man and the material universe. Do these furnish us with the rational basis for a belief in God ?J

And here I shall be expected to say what I mean by a belief in God. I have neither so little reverence for what I myself believe in, nor so little respect for my readers, as to offer them anything but the common conception of God. All that is necessary for me to do, in order to put

BELIEF IN GOD. 5

5ay own mind in contact with that of the reader, is to express my conception of God just as it would be expressed by any one who is accustomed to think of the being called God by the Christian, the Jew, the Mohammedan, or by some other branches of the human race. These different divisions of mankind may differ in regard to some of the attributes of the Deity, or his dealings with men, or the history or course of his goyernment of the world. But what is common to them all is a belief in God as the Supreme Being, who is self-existing and eternal, by whose will all things and all other beiiigs were created, who is infinite in power and wisdom and in goodness and beneyolence. As an intellectual conception, this idea of a Supreme Being, one only God, who never had a beginning and can have no end, and who is the creator of all other beings, excludes, of course, the polytheism of the ancient civilized nations, or that of the present barbarous tribes ; and it especially excludes the idea of what the Greeks called Destiny, which was a power that governed the gods as well as the human race, and was anterior and superior to Jove himself. The simple conception of the one God held by the Christian, the Jew, or the Mohammedan, as the First Cause of the universe and all that it embraces, creating all things and all other beings by his will, in contrast with the modern idea that they came into existence without the volition of a conscious and intelligent being making special creations, is what I present to the mind of the reader.

This idea of God as a matter of belief presents, I repeat, a question of moral probabilities. The existence of the universe has to be accounted for somehow. We can not shut out this inquiry from our thoughts. The human being who never speculates, never thinks, upon the origin of his own soul, or upon the genesis of this wondrous frame of things external to himself, or upon his relations to some superior being, is a very rare animal. If he is mucli more than an animal, he will haye some idea of these things ; and the theories by which some of the most cultivated and acute intellects of our race, from the widest range of accumulated physical facts and phenomena yet gathered, have undertaken to account for the existence of species without referring them to the^ volition of an infinite creator, are at once a proof of the universal pressure of the question of creation upon the human mind, and of the logical necessity for treating it as a question dependent upon evidence and probability.

^1 lay out of consideration, now, the longing of the human mind to find a personal God and Creator. This sentiment, this yearning for an infinite father, this feeling of loneliness in the universe without the idea of God, is certainly an important moral factor in the question of probability ;|but I omit it now from the number of proofs, because it is a sentiment, and because I wish to subject the belief in God as the Creator to the cold intellectual process by which we may discover a conformity between that hypothesis and the phenomena of Nature as a test of the probable truth. If such a conformity can be satisfactorily shown, and if the result of the process as conducted can fairly claim to be that the existence of God the Creator has by far the highest degree of probability above and beyond all other hypotheses that have been resorted to to account for our existence, the satisfaction of a moral feeling of the human heart may well become a source of happiness, a consolation in all the evils of this life, and a support in the hour of death.