PHYSICAL CONTRADICTIONS. 119 in the periods of revolution, which appears from the law of gravitation to be an inevitable correlate of distance. In biology the relations of organ to organ, and of organisms to one another and to external conditions, are more complicated than the relations of sun and planets, and we may expect in this department a more frequent occurrence of undesirable concomitants. If the human skin is made thin and soft, it will not repel bullets nor be impervious to swords; but if this class of dangers is guarded against by giving man the hide of a hippopotamus, there will be entailed inconveniences of another sort. "The burrowing habits of the common mole, leading to an almost exclusive use of the fore limbs, have entailed a dwindling of the hind limbs, and a concomitant dwindling of the pelvis, which, becoming too small for the passage of the young, has initiated still more anomalous modifications." Why should we see any difficulty in this? we cannot make things larger by cutting them in two, we cannot convert the same drop of water into ice and into steam at the same time, we see clearly the incompatibility of contradictions in physics as well as in mathematics, and all our difficulty arises from not applying the same rule to the Divine mind and the Divine action as to our own. Can the Creator reconcile absolute contradictions? If so, there is no such thing as truth. And if He cannot do so, then He can only work in nature on the principles man works on, and with the same liability to incidental results; for He works with the same material, which has its unalterable properties. Agassiz, having studied the formation of radiate 1 Spencer: Principles of Biology, ii. 384. animals, and found them all referable to three plans of structure, referred to a celebrated mathematician the following question:-"How to execute with the elements given, with a vertical axis around which are arranged parts of equal value, all the possible variations involved in that plan without introducing new elements?" "The mathematician appealed to was entirely ignorant of natural history, and could not, therefore, have obtained his knowledge from the animal structures; and yet he at once devised these three as the only essential plans which could be framed, upon the idea of a radiated structure around a vertical axis."1 That is to say, the mathematical necessities of the case allow variety within certain limits only, and the limits are actually filled out, but of course not transgressed. 66 The materials, if left to themselves, must of course have some form, as iron-ores have their properties and occupy a portion of space before man melts them up and runs the metal into "pigs," as well as after. The web of the universe, touched in one part, vibrates to its circumference, but has a self-adjusting power, as Mr Wallace maintains:2 not however that this accounts for arrangements" and contrivances "-it only means that unaided law would effect a balance of some sort, which would probably differ as much from the present arrangement as shapeless clays differ from a palace. "Were the particles of our planet distributed in a manner ever so chaotic and meaningless, matter and force might be, grain for grain, foot-pound for footpound, property for property, as in the existing order of things. But the mighty differences between the sup 1 Agassiz: Structure of Animal Life, p. 115. 2 Natural Selection. Chapter on Creation by Law. posed and the present condition of things could not be expressed in force or property terms."1 The writers who maintain that unguided law would produce chaos, are not wrong if chaos be explained to mean a world without collocations suggestive of contrivance and design, without structures which we feel obliged to call mechanism, though such a world might exhibit some variety and possess some accidental beauty. It is but a poet's conception that "Then each atom, Asserting its indisputable right To dance, would form a universe of dust ;"2 but we may believe that unguided forces would no more work towards an intelligent destination, than would a locomotive engine off the rails. Purpose can be effected, just because the forces of the universe are self-adjusting; for if interference at one point threw the whole into irremediable disorder, men would only bring destruction to themselves by ploughing the fields, and smelting metals, and vaporizing water in their engines. We do not see design in everything. The creation of matter out of nothing being inconceivable, and design only becoming apparent where parts are put together for a purpose, the bare existence of a grain of sand proves nothing to us. The universe being incomprehensible in its infinite extent, we can neither affirm nor deny design of it as a universe. But when Professor Huxley shows that a death-watch in a clock-case, reasoning about the purpose of the clock as a whole, would probably be wrong in his conclusions, he seems to 1 Lionel S. Beale, M.B., F.R.S. Life Theories, p. 11. 3 Academy, October 1869. forget, that had the inquiry been limited to the purpose of the pendulum or hammer, the problem would have been less difficult. Whether the universe be one structure, justifying Huxley's comparison, we do not know; but we do see that it contains many subordinate structures, about which we can reason. When we limit our view, and consider that which is comprehensible, we believe we can see design in many things, though not in all. If it existed in all, the argument would lose its force; for there would be no contrast between designed and undesigned, no relation such as now exists, no knowledge of the same kind. Mr Wallace points to the Dead Sea as "a positive evil, a blot upon the harmony and adaptation of the surface of the earth;" he points also to desert wastes, and he reminds us that the channel of a river, which looks as if made for the river, is made by it.1 We repeat, that we do not see design in everything. It may exist in some cases where we do not see it, but we scarcely think it can be absent where we do see it; and we see it in the living things of the world. Many of these are plainly comparable with machinery; and although accident may smash a machine, and dust may injure it if the mechanism is delicate, accident and dust cannot make machines. The whole of Paley's work ought to be thrown in at this point to give force to our argument; but we must assume the reader to be acquainted with it, and will only add, that if animal bodies are machines, or do contain mechanism, it is enough-the machinery may have been made by the process called evolution, but that it should be made by some process was inevitable. Nor would it be fair to call upon us to point out 1 Natural Selection, pp. 278, 281. THE ANTHROPOMORPHIC OBJECTION. 123 where the Creator may be seen standing in bodily form, like a human potter, and moulding the clay into trees and men; we do not see the human mind in any of its occupations, but only infer its existence and its intentions from the analogy of certain phenomena with results produced by ourselves. The true analogy is not that of the potter, but that suggested by Mr Darwin when he talks of artificial selection and natural selection. If the Deity has created living matter, He has done it on the principles followed by the chemist, when he sets substance to play upon substance to build up complex molecules; if He has created the human species, He has done so by causing a certain amount of variation to occur in a species that approached the human; and since variations are caused by the conditions of the environment, the action would have to be on these; and how remote their springs from human view we have no means of telling. Moreover, with regard to the mode of action of the Divine mind, at whatever stage it operates, the true analogy is not even that of the human hand touching a visible spring, but rather of the human volition which touches matter we know not where and operates we know not how, but effects its purposes nevertheless. Whether a purpose has been entertained and carried out, we must judge from the results-it is simply a question whether, with our knowledge of causes and effects, we can account for the highest results of evolution by the operation of natural causes simply; or whether, while those causes have undoubtedly operated, we feel obliged to suppose an intelligent direction of the natural forces analogous to that which man is able to give by the exercise of his mysterious will? |