Part 5

"No doubt the minute infusoria, which seem to have their development arrested at the first or nearest stage from the primitive cell formation, offer close and striking analogies to the primitive cells out of which the higher animals and all their tissues are developed; but the very [first] step which the infusoria take beyond the primitive cell stage invests them with a specific character as independent and distinct in its nature as that of the highest and most complicated organisms. No mere organic cell, destined for ulterior changes in a living organization, has a mouth armed with teeth, or provided with long tentacula; I will not lay stress on the alimentary canal and appended stomachs, which many still regard as 'sub judice'; but the endowment of distinct organs of generation, for propagating their kind by fertile ova, raises the polygastric infusoria much above the mere organic cell."--pp. 25, 26.

"In comparing the several stages in the very interesting development of the _cyanaea aurita_ to the infusoria and polypes, it must be understood that such comparisons are warranted only by a similarity of outward form, and of the instruments of locomotion and prehension. The essential internal organization of the persistent lower forms of the _zooephyta_ is entirely wanting in the transitory states of the higher ones. A progress through the inferior groups is sketched out, but no actual transmutation of species is effected. The young medusa, before it attains its destined condition of maturity, successively resembles, but never becomes, a polygastrian, a rotifer, and a bryozoon."--p. 112.

"Thus every animal in the course of its development typifies or represents some of the permanent forms of animals inferior to itself; but it does not represent all the inferior forms, nor acquire the organization of any of the forms which it transitorily represents. Had the animal kingdom formed, as was once supposed, a single and continuous chain of being, progressively ascending from the monad to the man, unity of organization might then have been demonstrated to the extent in which the theory has been maintained by the disciples of the Geoffroyan school."--p. 370.

If these similarities of structure in the germ had any bearing on the subject, they would indicate the possibility only of retrogression in the scale. Of course, the immature ovum, arrested in its development, could not form a more perfect being than its parent. There is no pretence that the embryo, at any stage of its progress, images an animal of a higher grade than its own family. Then what aid do these similarities of structure afford to the theory, that all the higher organisms have been evolved by successive steps out of the lowest monad? At the best, you have only shown, that a _retreat_ is possible; you have still to point out any likelihood, even the remotest, of an _advance_ in the scale of being. There is no fact whatever to confirm the supposition, that birth may possibly be delayed till the animal be developed into one of a higher species; and the law of immature births seems to be, that, if the offspring escapes at all--for there is great risk consequent on such an accident,--it becomes as perfect as its progenitors. Nature seems to guard the distinctions between the several races with peculiar care; so far as we know, monsters either do not survive their birth, or are incapable of continuing their kind, or in the course of a single generation are reunited to the original family.

To say that these laws, distinct and invariable as far as the observation of man has extended, may possibly have been superseded in the lapse of ages by a higher principle, manifesting itself only at long intervals, is again to have recourse to a blank hypothesis, incapable alike of proof or disproof, and unsupported by the faintest intimations from the world of experience. To build up a theory in this way is not to account for the work of creation by the natural agencies and inherent qualities of matter, _as at present observable_, but to fly off to the wild supposition, that matter and life were more richly endowed ages ago than they are in our own day. You affirm, that this higher principle of development did not override the inferior laws at the earlier periods in time's history, because, in the infancy of the universe, the conditions were wanting which are requisite for its manifestation,--because the earth was not ready, the atmosphere was not purified, for the nobler races of being. Very well; but these conditions are answered _now_. All things are ready at the present day for the innate energies of matter to put forth their utmost strength. Why do not fishes generate reptiles, and birds produce mammifers, _now_? Ah! but "the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great abundance, we could only expect to find the life-originating power at work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances." It seems, then, that these inherent qualities of matter, once supposed to be blind, absolute, and invariable in their operation, are really very judicious and reasonable; they suit the supply to the demand, and actually cease working when the market is likely to be overstocked. The results of such "_natural_ agencies" as these are very like the effects produced by the volitions of a wise and thinking being.

It happens that we are not obliged to grant to our author an indefinite lapse of ages for the sake of bringing all his higher principles into action. One of the latest events in the geological history of the earth was a great submersion of the land, by which "terrestrial animal life was extensively, if not universally, destroyed"; so that the creation of the species now in being--at least, all the higher species--was "a comparatively recent event, and one posterior, generally speaking, to all the great natural transactions chronicled by geology." Science does not contradict, it rather confirms, that voice of revelation or tradition, which assigns about six thousand years as the period of man's residence upon the earth. The action of the drama, then, is restricted within moderate limits as to time, and the "natural agencies" and "higher principles" must work fast in order to accomplish their task within the prescribed period. One condition for the creation of a new and permanent species, belonging to any of the higher orders, seems to have escaped our author's notice; at least two individuals, a male and a female, must have been evolved out of the next lower race, before the new species could continue its kind. Apply these considerations to the creation of man, who, according to our author's Scripture, was born of a monkey. To suppose, that, at the first trial, an Adam and an Eve were born near each other, so that they might have a chance of meeting in the course of their lives, would look too much like the operation of intelligence and design. On the theory of an organic creation by law, as the monkey race is spread over large regions of the globe, we must suppose that many of each sex were produced, and died childless, before any Adam was happy enough to find an Eve. Then, at no very distant period, within a few thousand years, the birth of a man from an animal of a lower type was no very strange event. Probably it occurred so often, that the monkeys themselves ceased to be astonished at it. And yet, this tribe of animals, with all the benefit of large experience, with increased numbers, and with all the requisite conditions fulfilled at least as perfectly as they were at the earlier period of their history, have not succeeded, in the three or four thousand years during which they have been subject to the observation of intelligent beings, in producing even a decent semblance of a man.

With the exposure of this crowning absurdity, we must close our direct examination of this "History of Creation." We have not room to consider some of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. But they have already been refuted so often and so conclusively, that any revival of them at the present day is hardly deserving of notice. If we should stop here, then, it may fairly be left to the judgment of our readers, whether we have not fulfilled the pledge given at the outset, by showing that this theory is faulty at every point, even when viewed from the author's own ground. The proposal of it is no new thing. In one or another form, varying in particulars, but agreeing in substance, it has been before the world ever since the days of Democritus, and more especially of his follower, Epicurus. Lucretius clothed it in sonorous and majestic verse, for it is a theme fitted above all others to excite the fancy, and to receive the richest embellishments from the imagination. Modern authors have promulgated it again and again, with little other change than what was requisite to adapt it to recent improvements in science, and to engraft upon it some of their own favorite hypotheses and fancies. The version of it by the French naturalist Lamarck was the latest and the most in vogue, till the appearance of the present volume. So frequently has it been confuted, that the revival of it at this late period seems little more than a harmless exercise of ingenuity, a poetical and scientific dream, and one need hardly take the pains to expose its assumptions and fallacies. The violent suppositions which it involves only remind one of the remark quoted from Pascal on a former page, that "unbelievers are the most credulous persons in the world." If set forth only as a novel and pleasing fancy, it may be classed with other ingenious fictions, that are published without a thought of deception. But if seriously proposed, it can be fitly characterized only by borrowing the homely but energetic language of Dr. Bentley.

"And now that I have finished all the parts which I proposed to discourse of, I will conclude all with a short application to the atheists. And I would advise them, as a friend, to leave off this dabbling and smattering in philosophy, this shuffling and cutting with atoms. It never succeeded well with them, and they always come off with the loss. Their old master, Epicurus, seems to have had his brains so muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever kept in the right way; though the main maxim of his philosophy was to trust to his senses, and follow his nose. I will not take notice of his doting conceit, that the sun and moon are no bigger than they appear to the eye, a foot or half a yard over; and that the stars are no larger than so many glow-worms. But let us see how he manages his atoms, those almighty tools that do every thing of themselves, without the help of a workman. When the atoms, says he, _descend_ in infinite space (very ingeniously spoken, to make high and low in infinity), they do not fall plumb down, but decline a little from the perpendicular, either obliquely or in a curve; and this declination, says he, from the direct line is the cause of our liberty of will. But, I say, this declination of atoms in their descent was itself either necessary or voluntary. If it was necessary, how then could that necessity ever beget liberty? If it was voluntary, then atoms had that power of volition before; and what becomes then of the Epicurean doctrine of the fortuitous productions of worlds? The whole business is contradiction and ridiculous nonsense."--_Bentley's Works_, Vol. III., pp. 47, 48.

Custom and convenience lead us to speak of the "laws" of nature, and of the "powers and forces" of brute matter; and few persons, in adopting these phrases, are aware that they are using a figure of speech. Yet nothing is more certain than that all the researches of science have not been able to point out with certainty a single active cause apart from the operation of mind. We discern nothing but regularity and similarity of sequences; and the attribution of these effects to some occult qualities in the atoms or molecules in which they are manifested is wholly hypothetical, and even, when closely examined, is inconceivable. For this reason we affirm, that the theory of our author, professing to account for the whole work of creation "by the operation of law," is not only unsound and baseless in its particulars, but, when scrutinized as a whole, is absolutely unintelligible. _He attempts to account for a string of hypothetical effects, such as spontaneous generation and the transmutation of species, by a series of hypothetical and inconceivable causes, such as the energies of lifeless matter._ Let any one conceive, if he can, of any _power_, _energy_, or _force_ inherent in a lump of matter,--a stone, for instance,--except this merely negative one, that it always and necessarily remains in its present state, whether this be of rest or motion. Let him point out, if he can, the _nexus_ between what are usually denominated cause and effect in matter,--as when two bodies are drawn towards each other, if they are in opposite states of electricity. When he says that it is the _nature_, or _law_, of bodies thus electrified to attract each other, he offers no explanation of the phenomenon; he only refers it to a class of other results, of a similar character, previously observed. It is not pretended, that all or any of these results, formerly known, are more intelligible or explicable than the one in question. But the latter is classed with them, because, from their general similarity, from their taking place under the same outward circumstances, it is reasonably supposed that _one_ cause, whatever it may be, is common to them all. And this is the whole business of the student of nature, to place together results which are so similar, that we may attribute them to a common cause, without assuming to know what that cause is. The sole office of science is the theory, not of causation, but of classification. It is all reducible to natural history, the essence of which consists in arrangement.

We are not attempting to perplex a plain matter of science by introducing into its discussion a metaphysical subtilty. The principle here contended for is one of the first dictates of the inductive philosophy, and as such it has been frankly acknowledged and acted upon by all the great improvers of science in modern days. When Newton discovered that the planets circle round the sun in the same manner in which a stone thrown by the hand describes a curve before reaching the earth, he may be said to have _explained_ the former phenomenon by bringing it into the same class with certain results which have long been familiar to us. But the explanation was only relative, not absolute. The latter phenomenon is, in reality, no more explicable than the former; he did not pretend to know the _cause_ of the stone's falling to the ground, any more than of the revolution of the planets. It was something to be able to arrange these apparently heterogeneous results in the same class, and gravity was a convenient name to apply to the whole. But the supposition, that gravity was an occult cause, inherent in matter, he earnestly repelled, and declared that it was "inconceivable."[2] Franklin showed, that a thunder-cloud and the charged conductor of an electrical machine manifested the same phenomena, and might therefore be classed together; sparks were obtained from both, Leyden jars were charged from them, other bodies were attracted and repelled in a similar way, so that it was reasonable to believe that the same agency was acting in both cases. What this agency was he did not even guess. The _cause_ of electric action, whether in the excited cloud, or the excited tube, was just as obscure as ever. Chemists observed, that different substances, when brought into close contact, sometimes remained distinct, and sometimes united with each other in various but regular proportions; and these capacities of coalescing with one class of bodies, and of remaining unaffected by another, are called chemical "affinities." This is a convenient generalization, and has properly received a specific name; though the common appellation throws no light on the _cause_ of the phenomena, which remains an impenetrable secret. To say that certain action is _caused_ by the operation of chemical affinities is only to arrange it with a large class of other observed appearances, equally obscure as to their origin and essential character.

Let us go a step further, and suppose that the progress of discovery has made known certain facts lying behind the phenomena in question, to which they may all be referred. Let us suppose, that all bodies which gravitate towards each other are found to be embosomed in a subtile, ambient fluid, which connects them, as it were, into one system; that the positive and negative states of electricity are resolvable into the presence of two fluids standing in certain relations to each other; and that substances show chemical affinity for each other only when they are in opposite electrical conditions. Still, we have only advanced a step in the generalization, and the real, efficient _cause_ of the appearances is still hidden from us by an impenetrable veil. Gravitation is now referred to the communication of motion by impulse; electricity, to the combination and separation of different fluids; affinity, to the attraction or repulsion of these fluids. The latter classes of phenomena are more general, but not a whit more explicable, than the former. We have now fewer causes to seek for, but not one of these few has been discovered. When we have resolved electricity or gravitation into the presence of an elastic medium, it is a mere figure of speech to say, that we have discovered the _cause_ of the electric phenomena or of gravity. That is just as far off as ever; for we have yet to discover the principle whence flow _necessarily_ all the phenomena observable in fluids. It is the sole end and the highest ambition of science to discover as many as possible of the relationships which bind facts together, and thus to carry the generalization to the farthest point. Its office is not to discover causes, but to generalize effects. The investigation of real causes is quite given up, as a hopeless undertaking.

Observe, now, how all the phraseology employed in speaking of these successive generalizations of science is borrowed from the action of mind. The word _action_ itself has no real significance, except when applied to the _doings_ of an intelligent agent; we cannot speak of the doings of matter, as we could if the word _action_ were applicable to it in any other than a figurative sense. Again, in speaking of the similarity of facts and the regularity of sequences, we refer them to a _law_ of nature, just as if they were sentient beings acting under the will of a sovereign. Parts of pure matter--the chemical elements, for instance--do not _act_ at all; being brute and inert, it is only by a strong metaphor that they are said to be subject to law. Again, we attribute _force_, _power_, &c., to the primitive particles of matter, and speak of their natural _agencies_. Just so, we talk of _tone_ in coloring, and of a _heavy_ or _light_ sound; though, of course, in their proper significance, tone belongs only to sound, and heaviness to gravitating bodies. These modes of speech are proper enough, if their figurative character be kept in view; but it is a little too bad, when a whole scientific theory is made to rest upon a metaphor as its sole support. _Agency_ is the employment of one intelligent being to act for another; _force_ and _power_ are applicable only to will; they are characteristic of volition. It is a violent trope to apply either of these words to senseless matter. Chemical _affinities_ are spoken of, as if material elements were united by family ties, and manifested choice, and affection or aversion.

An obvious corollary from these remarks is, that all _causation_ is an exertion of mind, and is only figuratively applied to matter. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. An efficient cause--we are not speaking now of a mere antecedent--is that which is necessarily followed by the effect, so that, if it were known, the effect might be predicted antecedently to all experience. Cicero describes it with philosophical accuracy. "_Causa ea est, quae id efficit, cujus est causa._ _Non sic causa intelligi debet, ut quod cuique antecedat, id ei causa sit; sed quod cuique_ EFFICIENTER _antecedat. Causis enim efficientibus quamque rem cognitis, posse denique sciri quid futurum esset._" Now, in the world of matter, we discover nothing but antecedents and consequents; the former are the mere signs, not the causes, of the latter; no necessary connection--no connection at all, except sequence in time--can be discerned between them. Consequently, from an examination of the former, we could not determine _a priori_, that they must be followed by the latter, or by any other result whatever. Our knowledge here, if knowledge it can be called, is wholly empirical, or founded on experience. As we have seen, it is absurd to say, that one atom of matter literally _acts_ on another. On the other hand, in the world of mind, we are directly conscious of action, and even of causation. All mental exertion is true action; every determination of the will implies _effort_, or the direction and use of power. The result to be accomplished is preconsidered, or meditated, and therefore is known _a priori_, or before experience; the volition succeeds, which is a true effort, or a power in action; and this, _if the power be sufficient_, is _necessarily_ followed by the effect. Volition is a true cause; but in a finite mind it is not always an _adequate_ cause. If I will to shut my eyes, the effect immediately follows as a necessary consequence. But if I will to stop the beating of my heart, or to move a paralyzed limb, the effect does not follow, because the power exerted is inadequate to the end proposed. The action of the will is still _causative_, but it is _insufficient_.

It was from overlooking the distinction here made, that Hume, Kant, and other metaphysicians were led to deny all knowledge of causation even in the action of mind. They confounded sufficiency with efficiency, and supposed, because the power did not always accomplish the end proposed, that it did not tend towards it, or exert any effect upon it. As the sufficiency of the volition can only be known _a posteriori_, or after experience, they imagined that there could be no cause but that which is infinite, or one which is invariably followed by the whole effect contemplated. They overlooked the fact, that, in the consciousness of _effort_,--as in the attempt to control the action of mind, to command the attention, &c.,--we have direct and full evidence of _power in action_, which is necessarily causal in its nature. The mental _nisus_ is true force, exerted with a foreknowledge of the effect to be produced, and necessarily followed by a result,--a partial one it may be,--but one which is a true effect, whether it answers the whole intention, or not. Here, then, we discern that necessary connection between two events, that absolute efficient agency, which was vainly sought in the world of matter.