Part 23

The author of the “Vestiges” is evidently a practised and tasteful writer, and his work abounds in ingenious combinations of thought; but those powers of abstract reflection on whose vigorous exercise the origination of argument depends, nature seems to have denied him. There are two things in especial which his work wants,—_original observation_ and _abstract thought_,—the power of _seeing_ for himself and of _reasoning_ for himself; and what we find instead is simply a vivid appreciation of the _images_ of things, as these images exist in other minds, and a vigorous perception of the various shades of resemblance which obtain among them. There is a large amount of analogical power exhibited; but that basis of truth which correct observation can alone furnish, and that ability of nicely distinguishing differences by which the faculty of discerning similarity must be forever regulated and governed, are wanting, in what, in a mind of fine general texture and quality, must be regarded as an extraordinary degree. And hence an ingenious but very unsolid work,—full of images transferred, not from the scientific field, but from the field of _scientific mind_, and charged with glittering but vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of fancy; which, were they to be used as mere counters in some light literary game of story-telling or character-sketching, would be in no respect out of place, but which, when passed current as the proper coin of philosophic argument, are really frauds on the popular understanding. There are, however, not a few instances in the “Vestiges” and its “Sequel,” in which that defect of reflective power to which I refer rather enhances than diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting to the controversialist mere intangible clouds with which to grapple; that yet, through the existence of a certain superstition in the popular mind, as predisposed to accept as true whatever takes the form of science, as its predecessor the old superstition was inclined a century ago to reject science itself, are at least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of difficulty, the following passage, in which the author of the work cashiers the Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a mere animal-manufacturing piece of clock-work, which bears the name of natural law,[38] furnishes us with a remarkable instance.

“Admitting,” he remarks, “that we see not now any such fact as the production of new species, we at least know, that while such facts were occurring upon earth, there were associated phenomena in progress of a character perfectly ordinary. For example, when the earth received its first fishes, sandstone and limestone were forming in the manner exemplified a few years ago in the ingenious experiments of Sir James Hall; basaltic columns rose for the future wonder of man, according to the principle which Dr. Gregory Watt showed in operation before the eyes of our fathers; and hollows in the igneous rocks were filled with crystals, precisely as they could now be by virtue of electric action, as shown within the last few years by Crosse and Becquerel. The seas obeyed the impulse of gentle breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms, as seas of the present day are doing; the trees grew as now, by favor of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in bad: this while the animals above fishes were yet to be created. The movements of the sea, the meteorological agencies, the disposition which we see in the generality of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most abundant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters of simply natural order, throughout the whole of the ages which saw reptiles enter in their various forms upon the sea and land. It was about the time of the first mammals that the forest of the Dirt-Bed was sinking in natural ruin amidst the sea sludge, as forests of the Plantagenets have been doing for several centuries upon the coast of England. In short _all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them_; while the supposed extraordinary causes were in requisition for the development of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There surely hence arises a strong presumption against any such causes. It becomes much more likely that the latter phenomena were evolved in the manner of law also, and that we only dream of extraordinary causes here, as men once dreamt of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season, merely because they did not know the laws by which the events in question were evolved.”

How, let us suppose, would David Hume—the greatest thinker of which infidelity can boast—have greeted the auxiliary who could have brought him such an _argument_ as a contribution to the cause? “Your objection, so far as you have stated it,” the philosopher might have said, “amounts simply to this:—Creation by direct act is a miracle; whereas all that exists is _propagated_ and _maintained_ by natural law. Natural laws—to vary the illustration—were in full operation at the period when the Author of the Christian religion was, it is said, engaged in working his miracles. When, according to our opponents, he walked upon the surface of the sea, Peter, through the operation of the natural law of gravitation, was sinking into it; when he withered, by a word, the barren fig-tree, there were other trees on the Mount thriving in conformity with the vegetative laws, under the influence of sun and shower; when he raised the dead Lazarus, there were corpses in the neighboring tombs passing, through the natural putrefactive fermentation, into a state of utter decomposition. In fine, at the time when he was engaged, as Reid and Campbell believe, in working miracles in violation of law, the laws of which these were a violation actually existed, and were every where actively operative; or, to employ your own words, when the New Testament miracles were, it is alleged, in the act of being wrought, ‘all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them.’ Such is the portion of your statement already made; what next?” “It is surely very unlikely,” replies the auxiliary, “that in such a complex mass of phenomena there should have been two totally distinct modes of the exercise of the Divine power,—the mode by miracle and the mode by law.” “Unlikely!” rejoins the philosopher; “on what grounds?” “O, just _unlikely_,” says the auxiliary;—“unlikely that God should be at once operating on matter through the agency of natural laws, of which _man knows much_, and through the agency of miraculous acts, of the nature of which _man knows nothing_. But I have not thought out the subject any further: you have, in the statement already made, my entire _argument_.” “Ay, I see,” the author of the “Essay on Miracles” would probably have remarked; “you deem it unlikely that Deity should not only work in part, as he has always done, by means of which _men_,—clever fellows like you and me—think they know a great deal but that he should also work in part, _as he has always done_, by means of which they know nothing at all. Admirably reasoned out! You are, I make no doubt, a sound, zealous unbeliever in your private capacity, and your argument may have great weight with your own mind, and be, in consequence, worthy of encouragement in a small way; but allow me to suggest that, for the sake of the general cause, it should be kept out of reach of the enemy. There are in the Churches Militant on both sides of the Tweed shrewd combatants, who have nearly as much wit as ourselves.” I think I understand the reference of the author of the “Vestiges” to the _dream_ “of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season.” Taken with what immediately goes before, it means something considerably different from those fancies of the “untutored Indian,” who, according to the poet,

“Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.”

There is a school of infidelity, tolerably well known in the capital of Scotland as by far the most superficial which our country has yet seen, that measures mind with a tape-line and the callipers, and, albeit not Christian, laudably exemplifies, in a loudly expressed regard for science, the Christian grace of loving its enemy. And the belief in a special Providence, who watches over and orders all things, and without whose permission there falleth not even a “sparrow to the ground,” the apostles of this school set wholly aside, substituting, instead, a belief in the indiscriminating operation of natural laws; as if, with the broad fact before them that even man can work out his will merely by knowing and directing these laws, the God by whom they were instituted should lack either the power or the wisdom to make them the pliant ministers of _his_. It is, I fear, to the distinctive tenet in the creed of this hapless school that the author of the “Vestiges” refers. Nor is it in the least surprising, that a writer who labors through two carefully written volumes,[39] to destroy the existing belief in “God’s works of Creation,” should affect to hold that the belief in his “works of Providence” had been destroyed already. But faith in a special superintendence of Deity is not yet dead: nay, more, He who created the human mind took especial care, in its construction, that, save in a few defective specimens of the race, the belief should never die.

The author of the “Vestiges” complains of the illiberality with which he has been treated. “It has appeared to various critics,” we find him saying, “that very sacred principles are threatened by a doctrine of universal law. A natural origin of life, and a natural basis in organization for the operations of the human mind, speak to them of fatalism and materialism. And, strange to say, those who every day give views of _physical cosmogony_ altogether discrepant in appearance with that of Moses, apply hard names to my book for suggesting an _organic cosmogony_ in the same way, liable to inconsiderate odium. I must firmly protest against this mode of meeting speculations regarding nature. The object of my book, whatever may be said of the manner in which it is treated, is purely scientific. The views which I give of the history of organization stand exactly on the same ground upon which the geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. I am merely endeavoring to read aright another chapter of the mystic book which God has placed under the attention of his creatures.... The absence of all liberality in my reviewers is striking, and especially so in those whose geological doctrines have exposed them to similar misconstruction. If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown upon Newton’s theory of the planetary motions had rushed forward to turn that odium upon the patrons of the dawning science of Geology, they would have been prefiguring the conduct of several of my critics, themselves hardly escaped from the rude hands of the narrow-minded, yet eager to join that rabble against a new and equally unfriended stranger, as if such were the best means of purchasing impunity for themselves. _I trust that a little time will enable the public to penetrate this policy._”

Now, there is one very important point to which the author of this complaint does not seem to have adverted. The astronomer founded his belief in the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun, not on a mere dream-like hypothesis, founded on nothing, but on a wide and solid base of pure induction. Galileo was no mere dreamer;—he was a discoverer of great truths, and a profound reasoner regarding them: and on his discoveries and his reasonings, compelled by the inexorable laws of his mental constitution, did he build up certain deductive beliefs, which had no previous existence in his mind. His convictions were consequents, not antecedents. Such, also, is the character of geological discovery and inference, and of the existing belief,—their joint production,—regarding the great antiquity of the globe. No geologist worthy of the name _began_ with the belief, and then set himself to square geological phenomena with its requirements. It is a deduction,—a result;—not the starting assumption, or given sum, in a process of calculation, but its ultimate finding or answer. Clergymen of the orthodox Churches, such as the Sumners, Sedgwicks, Bucklands, Conybeares, and Pye Smiths of England, or the Chalmerses, Duncans, and Flemings of our own country, must have come to the study of this question of the world’s age with at least no bias in favor of the geological estimate. The old, and, as it has proven, erroneous reading of the Mosaic account, was by much too general a one early in the present century, not to have exerted upon them, in their character as ministers of religion, a sensible influence of a directly opposite nature. And the fact of the complete reversal of their original bias, and of the broad unhesitating finding on the subject which they ultimately substituted instead, serves to intimate to the uninitiated the strength of the evidence to which they submitted. There can be nothing more certain than that it is minds of the same calibre and class, engaged in the same inductive track, that yielded in the first instance to the astronomical evidence regarding the earth’s motion, and, in the second, to the geological evidence regarding the earth’s age.[40]

But how very different the nature and history of the development hypothesis, and the character of the intellects with whom it originated, or by whom it has been since adopted! In the first place, it existed as a wild dream ere Geology had any being as a science. It was an antecedent, not a consequent,—a starting assumption, not a result. No one will contend that Maillet was a geologist. Geology has no place among the sciences in the age in which he lived and even no name. And yet there is a translation of his _Telliamed_ now lying before me, bearing date 1750, in which I find very nearly the same account given of the origin of animals and plants as that in the “Vestiges,” and in which the sea is described as that great and fruitful womb of nature in which organization and life first began. Lamarck, at the time when Maillet wrote, was a boy in his sixth year. He became, comparatively early in life, a skilful botanist and conchologist; but not until turned of fifty did he set himself to study general zoology; and his greater work on the invertebrate animals, on which his fame as a naturalist chiefly rests, did not _begin_ to appear—for it was published serially—until the year 1815. But his development hypothesis, identical with that of the “Vestiges,” was given to the world long before,—in 1802; at a time when it had not been ascertained that there existed placoids during the Silurian period, or ganoids during the Old Red Sandstone period, or enaliosaurs during the Oolitic period; and when, though Smith had constructed his “Tabular View of the British Strata,” his map had not yet appeared, and there was little more known regarding the laws of superposition among the stratified rocks than was to be found in the writings of Werner. And if the presumption be strong, in the circumstances, that Lamarck originated his development hypothesis ere he became in any very great degree skilful as a zoologist, it is no mere presumption, but a demonstrable truth, that he originated it ere he became a geologist; for a geologist he never became. In common with Maillet and Buffon, he held by Leibnitz’s theory of a universal ocean; and such, as we have already seen, was his ignorance of fossils, that he erected dermal fragments of the Russian _Asterolepis_ into a new genus of Polyparia,—an error into which the merest tyro in palæontology could not now fall. Such, in relation to these sciences, was the man who perfected the dream of development. Nor has the most distinguished of its continental assertors now living,—Professor Oken,—any higher claim to be regarded as a disciple of the inductive school of Geology than Lamarck. In the preface to the recently published translation of his “Physio-Philosophy,” we find the following curious confession:—“I wrote the first edition of 1810 _in a kind of inspiration_, and on that account it was not so well arranged as a systematic work ought to be. Now, though this may appear to have been amended in the second and third edition, yet still it was not possible for me to completely attain the object held in view. The book has therefore remained essentially the same as regards its fundamental principles. It is only the empirical arrangement into series of plants and animals that has been modified from time to time, _in accordance with the scientific elevation of their several departments, or just as discoveries and anatomical investigations have increased, and rendered some other position of the objects a matter of necessity_.” An interesting piece of evidence this; but certainly rather simple as a confession. It will be found that while whatever gives value to the “Physio-Philosophy” of the German Professor (a work which, if divested of all the inspired bits, would be really a good one) was acquired either before or since its first appearance in the ordinary way, its development hypothesis came direct from the god. Further, as I have already had occasion to state, Oken holds, like Lamarck and Maillet, by the universal ocean of Leibnitz; he holds, also, that the globe is a vast crystal, just a little flawed in the facets: and that the three granitic components—quartz, feldspar, and mica—are simply the hail-drops of heavy stone showers that shot athwart the original ocean, and accumulated into rock at the bottom, as snow or hail shoots athwart the upper atmosphere, and accumulates, in the form of ice, on the summits of high hills, or in the arctic or antarctic regions. Such, in the present day, are the geological notions of Oken! They were doubtless all promulgated in what is modestly enough termed “a _kind_ of inspiration;” and there are few now so ignorant of Geology as not to know that the _possessing_ agent in the case—for _inspiration_ is not quite the proper word—must have been at least of kin to that ingenious personage who volunteered of old to be a lying spirit in the mouths of the four hundred prophets. And the well-known fact, that the most popular contemporary expounder of Oken’s hypothesis—the author of the “Vestiges”—has in every edition of his work been correcting, modifying, or altogether withdrawing his statements regarding both geological and zoological phenomena, and that his gradual development as a geologist and zoologist, from the sufficiently low type of acquirement to which his first edition bore witness, may be traced, in consequence, with a distinctness and certainty which we in vain seek in the cases of presumed development which he would so fain establish,—has in its bearing exactly the same effect. His development hypothesis was complete at a time when his geology and zoology were rudimental and imperfect. Give me your facts, said the Frenchman, that I may accommodate them to my theory. And no one can look at the progress of the Lamarckian hypothesis, with reference to the dates when, and the men by whom, it was promulgated, without recognizing in it one of perhaps the most striking embodiments of the Frenchman’s principle which the world ever saw. It is not the illiberal religionist that rejects and casts it off,—it is the inductive philosopher. Science addresses its assertors in the language of the possessed to the sons of Sceva the Jew;—“The astronomer I know, and the geologist I know; but who are ye?”

One of the strangest passages in the “Sequel to the Vestiges,” is that in which its author carries his appeal from the tribunal of science to “another tribunal,” indicated but not named, before which “this new philosophy” [remarkable chiefly for being neither philosophy nor new] “is to be truly and righteously judged.” The principle is obvious, on which, were his opponents mere theologians, wholly unable, though they saw the mischievous character and tendency of his conclusions, to disprove them scientifically, he might appeal from theology to science: “it is with scientific truth,” he might urge, “not with moral consequences, that I have aught to do.” But on what allowable principle, professing, as he does, to found his theory on scientific fact, can he appeal from science to the want of it? “After discussing,” he says, “the whole arguments on both sides in so ample a manner, it may be hardly necessary to advert to the objection arising from the mere fact, that nearly all the scientific men are opposed to the theory of the ‘Vestiges.’ As this objection, however, is likely to be of some avail with many minds, it ought not to be entirely passed over. If I did not think there were reasons, independent of judgment, for the scientific class coming so generally to this conclusion, I might feel the more embarrassed in presenting myself in direct opposition to so many men possessing talents and information. As the case really stands, the ability of this class to give at the present a true response upon such a subject appears extremely challengeable. It is no discredit to them that they are, almost without exception, engaged each in his own little department of science, and able to give little or no attention to other parts of that vast field. From year to year, and from age to age, we see them at work, adding, no doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies; all beyond is regarded with suspicion and distrust. The consequence is, that philosophy, as it exists amongst us, does nothing to raise its votaries above the common ideas of their time. There can therefore be nothing more conclusive against our hypothesis in the disfavor of the scientific class, than in that of any other section of educated men.”