Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

tion in a special act would be an addition to the plenum of force in the universe, and therefore a contradiction to the recently acquired scientific principle of the conservation of energy. The answer may be this. It is not at all certain that all direction given to force expends force; it is certain that, under collocations, a minute use of force (as pulling a hair-trigger or jostling a valve) may bring about immense results; and, finally, increments of force by Divine action in time, of the kind in question, if such there be, could never in the least be known to science.

The only remaining supposition that I now think of is the crude one that thought and will are functions of the body, secretions as it were of the organ through which they are manifested, "psychical modes of motion." Then, as has well been said, they must be correlated with physical modes of motion, at least in conception; but it is conceded by all sensible thinkers that thought cannot be translated into extension, nor extension into thought. Now, since the only conceivable source of physical force is supernatural power, still more must this be the only conceivable source of thought.

There is an old objection which threatens to

undermine the ground on which we infer Divine will from the analogy of human; namely, that our wills, being a part of the course of Nature and amenable to its laws, their movements, though seemingly free, are as fixed as physical sequences. Upon this insoluble problem we have nothing practical to say, except to admit that so much of choice is determined by antecedent conditions and the surroundings, by hereditary bias, by what has been made for the individual and inwrought into his nature, that, granting the will has an element of freedom, it may be in effect a small factor. I can only urge that it is not an insignificant factor. As to this, a pertinent although homely suggestion came to me in the remark of a humble but shrewd neighbor, to the effect that he found the difference between people and people he dealt with was really very little, but that what there is was very important. So facts and reasonings may shut us up to the conclusion that the will, sovereign as it seems to the user, is practically a small factor in the determination of events. But what there is makes all the difference in the world in man!

And now, as to man himself in relation to evolution. I have no time left for the discussion

[ocr errors]

98

NATURAL SCIENCE AND Religion.

of questions which naturally interest you more than any other, but which, even with time at disposal, are not easy to treat. I will not undertake to consider what your attitude should be upon a matter which connects itself with grave ulterior considerations; but I will very briefly and frankly intimate what views I think a scientific man, religiously disposed, is likely to entertain.

To pursue the illustration just ventured upon : The anatomical and physiological difference between man and the higher brutes is not great from a natural-history point of view, compared with the difference between these and lower grades of animals; but we may justly say that what corporeal difference there is is extremely important. The series of considerations which suggest evolution up to man, suggest man's evolution also. We may, indeed, fall back upon Mr. Darwin's declaration, in a case germane to this, that "analogy may be a deceitful guide." Yet here it is the only guide we have. If the alternative be the immediate origination out of nothing, or out of the soil, of the human form with all its actual marks, there can be no doubt which side a scientific man will take. Mediate creation, derivative origination will at once be accepted; and the mooted question comes to be

[ocr errors]

I

narrowed down to this: Can the corporeal differences between man and the rest of the animal kingdom be accounted for by known natural causes, or must they be attributed to unknown causes? And shall we assume these unknown causes to be natural or supernatural? As to the first question, you are aware, from my whole line of thought and argument, that I know no natural process for the transformation of a brute mammal into a man. But I am equally at a loss as respects the processes through which any one species, any one variety, gives birth to another. Yet I do not presume to limit Nature by my small knowledge of its laws and powers. know that a part of these still occult processes are in the every-day course of Nature; I am persuaded that it is so through the animal kingdom generally; I cannot deny it as respects the highest members of that kingdom. I allow, however, that the superlative importance of comparatively small corporeal differences in this comsummate case may justify any one in regarding it as exceptional. In most respects, man is an exceptional creature. If, however, I decline to regard man's origin as exceptional in the sense of directly supernatural, you will understand that it is because, under my thoroughly

theistic conception of Nature, and my belief in mediate creation, I am at a loss to know what I should mean by the exception. I do not allow myself to believe that immediate creation would make man's origin more divine. And I do not approve either the divinity or the science of those who are prompt to invoke the supernatural to cover our ignorance of natural causes, and equally so to discard its aid whenever natural causes are found sufficient.*

It is probable that the idea of mediate creation would be more readily received, except. for a prevalent misconception upon a point of genealogy. When the naturalist is asked, what and whence the origin of man, he can only answer in the words of Quatrefages and Virchow, "We do not know at all." We have traces of his existence up to and even anterior to the latest marked climatic change in our temperate zone: but he was then perfected man; and no vestige of an earlier form is known. The believer in direct or special creation is entitled to the advantage which this negative evidence gives. A totally unknown ancestry has the characteristics of nobility. The evolutionist

• See Baden Powell, On The Order of Nature, p. 163.

[ocr errors]

can give one satisfactory assurance. As the wolf in the fable was captious in his complaint that the lamb below had muddied the brook he

was drinking from, so those are mistaken who suppose that the simian race can have defiled the stream along which evolution traces human descent. Sober evolutionists do not suppose that man has descended from monkeys. The stream must have branched too early for that. The resemblances, which are the same in fact under any theory, are supposed to denote collateral relationship.

The psychological differences between man and the higher brute animals you do not expect me now to discuss. Here, too, we may say that, although gradations abridge the wide interval, the transcendent character of the super'added must count for more than a host of lower similarities and identities; for, surely, what difference there is between the man and the animal in this respect is supremely impor

tant.

If we cannot reasonably solve the problems even of inorganic nature without assuming initial causation, and if we assume for that supreme intelligence, shall we not more freely assume it, and with all the directness the case

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »