Chapter 2

As to the nature of this primal force or power, he quotes abundantly and approvingly from Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, to prove that it is unknowable, inconceivable, unthinkable. He, however, differs from those distinguished writers in two points. While admitting that we know no more of the first cause than we do of a geometrical figure which is at once a circle and a square, yet we do know that it is actual. For this conviction we are not dependent on faith. In the second place, Hamilton and Mansel taught that we know that the Infinite cannot be a person, self-conscious, intelligent, and voluntary; yet we are forced by our moral constitution to believe it to be an intelligent person. This Mr. Spencer denies. "Let those," he says, "who can, believe that there is eternal war between our intellectual faculties and our moral obligations. I, for one, admit of no such radical vice in the constitution of things." (p. 108). Religion has always erred, he asserts, in that while it teaches that the Infinite Being cannot be known, it insists on ascribing to it such and such attributes, which of course assumes that so far forth it is known. We have no right, he contends, to ascribe personality to the "Unknown Reality," or anything else, except that it is the cause of all that we perceive or experience. There may be a mode of being, as much transcending intelligence and will, as these transcend mechanical motion. To show the folly of referring to the Unknown the attributes of our own spirits, he makes "the grotesque supposition that the tickings and other movements of a watch constituted a kind of consciousness; and that a watch possessed of such a consciousness, insisted on regarding the watchmaker's actions as determined like its own by springs and escapements." (p. 111). The vast majority of men, instead of agreeing with Mr. Spencer in this matter, will doubtless heartily, each for himself, join the German philosopher Jacobi, in saying, "I confess to Anthropomorphism inseparable from the conviction that man bears the image of God; and maintain that besides this Anthropomorphism, which has always been called Theism, is nothing but Atheism or Fetichism."[4]

Mr. Spencer, therefore, in accounting for the origin of the universe and all its phenomena, physical, vital, and mental, rejects Theism, or the doctrine of a personal God, who is extramundane as well as antemundane, the creator and governor of all things; he rejects Pantheism, which makes the finite the existence-form of the Infinite; he rejects Atheism, which he understands to be the doctrine of the eternity and self-existence of matter and force. He contents himself with saying we must acknowledge the reality of an unknown something which is the cause of all things,--the noumenon of all phenomena. "If science and religion are to be reconciled, the basis of the reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts,--that the Power which the universe manifests is utterly inscrutable." (p. 46). "The ultimate of ultimates is Force." "Matter and motion, as we know them, are differently conditioned manifestations of force." "If, to use an algebraic illustration, we represent Matter, Motion, and Force, by the symbols _x_, _y_, _z_; then we may ascertain the values of _x_ and _y_ in terms of _z_, but the value of _z_ can never be found; _z_ is the unknown quantity, which must forever remain unknown, for the obvious reason that there is nothing in which its value can be expressed." (pp. 169, 170).

We have, then, no God but Force. Atheist is everywhere regarded as a term of reproach. Every man instinctively recoils from it. Even the philosophers of the time of the French Revolution repudiated the charge of atheism, because they believed in motion; and motion being inscrutable, they believed in an inscrutable something, _i. e._ in Force. We doubt not Mr. Spencer would indignantly reject the imputation of atheism; nevertheless, in the judgment of most men, the difference between Antitheist and Atheist is a mere matter of orthography.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] _First Principles of a New System of Philosophy._ By Herbert Spencer. Second edition. New York, 1869, p. 30.

[4] _Von den göttlichen Dingen_, _Werke_, III. pp. 422, 425. Leipzig, 1816.

_Hylozoic Theory._

This theory assumes the universe to be eternal. There is nothing extra, or antemundane. There is but one substance, and that substance is matter. Matter, however, has an active and passive principle. Life and rationality are among its attributes or functions. The universe, therefore, is a living whole pervaded by a principle not only of life but of intelligence. This hylozoic doctrine, some modern scientific men, as Professor Tyndall, seem inclined to adopt. They tell us that matter is not the dead and degraded thing it is commonly regarded. It is active and transcendental. What that means, we do not know. The word transcendental is like a parabola, in that there is no knowing where its meaning ends. To say that matter is transcendental, is saying there is no telling what it is up to. This habit of using words which have no definite meaning is very convenient to writers, but very much the reverse for readers. Some of the ancient Stoics distinguished between the active and passive principles in the world, calling the one mind, the other, matter. These however were as intimately united as matter and life in a plant or animal.

_Theism in Unscriptural Forms._

There are men who are constrained to admit the being of God, who depart from the Scriptural doctrine as to his relation to the world. According to some, God created matter and endowed it with certain properties, and then left it to itself to work out, without any interference or control on his part, all possible results. According to others, He created not only matter, but life, or living germs, one or more, from which without any divine intervention all living organisms have been developed. Others, again, refer not only matter and life, but mind also to the act of the Creator; but with creation his agency ceases. He has no more to do with the world, than a ship-builder has with the ship he has constructed, when it is launched and far off upon the ocean. According to all these views a creator is a mere _Deus ex machina_, an assumption to account for the origin of the universe.

Another general view of God's relation to the world goes to the opposite extreme. Instead of God doing nothing, He does everything. Second causes have no efficiency. The laws of nature are said to be the uniform modes of divine operation. Gravitation does not flow from the nature of matter, but is a mode of God's uniform efficiency. What are called chemical affinities are not due to anything in different kinds of matter, but God always acts in one way in connection with an acid, and in another way in connection with an alkali. If a man places a particle of salt or sugar on his tongue, the sensation which he experiences is not to be referred to the salt or sugar, but to God's agency. When this theory is extended, as it generally is by its advocates, from the external to the internal world, the universe of matter and mind, with all their phenomena, is a constant effect of the omnipresent activity of God. The minds of some men, as remarked above, are so constituted that they can pass from the theory that God does nothing, to the doctrine that He does everything, without seeing the difference. Mr. Russel Wallace, the companion and peer of Mr. Darwin, devotes a large part of his book on "Natural Selection," to prove that the organs of plants and animals are formed by blind physical causes. Toward the close of the volume he teaches that there are no such causes. He asks the question, What is Matter? and answers, Nothing. We know, he says, nothing but force; and as the only force of which we have any immediate knowledge is mind-force, the inference is "that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually _is_, the will of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme Intelligence."[5] This is a transition from virtual materialism to idealistic pantheism. The effect of this admission on the part of Mr. Wallace on the theory of natural selection, is what an explosion of its boiler would be to a steamer in mid-ocean, which should blow out its deck, sides, and bottom. Nothing would remain above water.

The Duke of Argyll seems at times inclined to lapse into the same doctrine. "Science," he says, "in the modern doctrine of conservation of energy and the convertibility of forces, is already getting a firm hold of the idea, that all kinds of force are but forms of manifestations of one central force issuing from some one fountain-head of power. Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to say, 'that it is but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or will existing somewhere.' And even if we cannot certainly identify force in all its forms with the direct energies of the one Omnipresent and All-pervading Will, it is at least in the highest degree unphilosophical to assert the contrary,--to think or to speak, as if the forces of nature were either independent of, or even separate from the Creator's power."[6] The Duke, however, in the general tenor of his book, does not differ from the common doctrine, except in one point. He does not deny the efficiency of physical causes, or resolve them all into the efficiency of God; but he teaches that God, in this world at least, never acts except through those causes. He applies this doctrine even to miracles, which he regards as effects produced by second causes of which we are ignorant, that is, by some higher law of nature. The Scriptures, however, teach that God is not thus bound; that He operates through second causes, with them, or without them, as He sees fit. It is a purely arbitrary assumption, that when Christ raised the dead, healed the lepers, or gave sight to the blind, any second cause intervened between the effect and the efficiency of his will. What physical law, or uniformly acting force, operated to make the axe float at the command of the prophet? or, in that greatest of all miracles, the original creation of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _The Theory of Natural Selection._ By Alfred Russel Wallace. London, 1870, p. 368.

[6] _Reign of Law._ By the Duke of Argyle. Fifth edition, London, 1867, p. 123.

_Mr. Darwin's Theory._

We have not forgotten Mr. Darwin. It seemed desirable, in order to understand his theory, to see its relation to other theories of the universe and its phenomena, with which it is more or less connected. His work on the "Origin of Species" does not purport to be philosophical. In this aspect it is very different from the cognate works of Mr. Spencer. Darwin does not speculate on the origin of the universe, on the nature of matter, or of force. He is simply a naturalist, a careful and laborious observer; skillful in his descriptions, and singularly candid in dealing with the difficulties in the way of his peculiar doctrine. He set before himself a single problem, namely, How are the fauna and flora of our earth to be accounted for? In the solution of this problem, he assumes:--

1. The existence of matter, although he says little on the subject. Its existence however, as a real entity, is everywhere taken for granted.

2. He assumes the efficiency of physical causes, showing no disposition to resolve them into mind-force, or into the efficiency of the First Cause.

3. He assumes also the existence of life in the form of one or more primordial germs. He does not adopt the theory of spontaneous generation. What life is he does not attempt to explain, further than to quote (p. 326), with approbation, the definition of Herbert Spencer, who says, "Life depends on, or consists in, the incessant action and reaction of various forces,"--which conveys no very definite idea.

4. To account for the existence of matter and life, Mr. Darwin admits a Creator. This is done explicitly and repeatedly. Nothing, however, is said of the nature of the Creator and of his relation to the world, further than is implied in the meaning of the word.

5. From the primordial germ or germs (Mr. Darwin seems to have settled down to the assumption of only one primordial germ), all living organisms, vegetable and animal, including man, on our globe, through all the stages of its history, have descended.

6. As growth, organization, and reproduction are the functions of physical life, as soon as the primordial germ began to live, it began to grow, to fashion organs however simple, for its nourishment and increase, and for the reproduction, in some way, of living forms like itself. How all living things on earth, including the endless variety of plants, and all the diversity of animals--insects, fishes, birds, the ichthyosaurus, the mastodon, the mammoth, and man--have descended from the primordial animalcule, he thinks, may be accounted for by the operation of the following natural laws, viz.:--

First, the law of Heredity, or that by which like begets like. The offspring are like the parent.

Second, the law of Variation, that is, while the offspring are, in all essential characteristics, like their immediate progenitor, they nevertheless vary more or less within narrow limits, from their parent and from each other. Some of these variations are indifferent, some deteriorations, some improvements, that is, they are such as enable the plant or animal to exercise its functions to greater advantage.

Third, the law of Over Production. All plants and animals tend to increase in a geometrical ratio; and therefore tend to overrun enormously the means of support. If all the seeds of a plant, all the spawn of a fish, were to arrive at maturity, in a very short time the world could not contain them. Hence of necessity arises a struggle for life. Only a few of the myriads born can possibly live.

Fourth, here comes in the law of Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. That is, if any individual of a given species of plant or animal happens to have a slight deviation from the normal type, favorable to its success in the struggle for life, it will survive. This variation, by the law of heredity, will be transmitted to its offspring, and by them again to theirs. Soon these favored ones gain the ascendency, and the less favored perish; and the modification becomes established in the species. After a time another and another of such favorable variations occur, with like results. Thus very gradually, great changes of structure are introduced, and not only species, but genera, families, and orders in the vegetable and animal world, are produced. Mr. Darwin says he can set no limit to the changes of structure, habits, instincts, and intelligence, which these simple laws in the course of millions or milliards of centuries may bring into existence. He says, "we cannot comprehend what the figures 60,000,000 really imply, and during this, or perhaps a longer roll of years, the land and waters have everywhere teemed with living creatures, all exposed to the struggle for life, and undergoing change." (p. 354). "Mr. Croll," he tells us, "estimates that about sixty millions of years have elapsed since the Cambrian period, but this, judging from the small amount of organic change since the commencement of the glacial period, seems a very short time for the many and the great mutations of life, which have certainly occurred since the Cambrian formation; and the previous one hundred and forty million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed toward the close of the Cambrian period." (p. 379). Years in this connection have no meaning. We might as well try to give the distance of the fixed stars in inches. As astronomers are obliged to take the diameter of the earth's orbit as the unit of space, so Darwinians are obliged to take a geological cycle as their unit of duration.

_Natural Selection._

As Natural Selection which works so slowly is a main element in Mr. Darwin's theory, it is necessary to understand distinctly what he means by it. On this point he leaves us no room for doubt. On p. 92, he says: "This preservation of favorable variations, and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or, the Survival of the Fittest." "Owing to the struggle (for life) variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by their offspring. The offspring also will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and sometimes is equally convenient." (p. 72). "Slow though the progress of selection may be, if feeble man can do so much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another, and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection, or the survival of the fittest." (p. 125). "It may be objected that if organic beings thus tend to rise in the scale, how is it that throughout the world a multitude of the lowest forms still exist; and how is it that in each great class some forms are far more highly developed than others?... On our theory the continuous existence of lowly forms offers no difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development, it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life.... Geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state." (p. 145). "The fact of little or no modification having been effected since the glacial period would be of some avail against those who believe in an innate and necessary law of development, but is powerless against the doctrine of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, which implies only that variations or individual differences of a favorable nature occasionally arise in a few species and are then preserved." (p. 149)

This process of improvement under the law of natural selection includes not only changes in the organic structure of animals, but also in their instincts and intelligence. On entering on this part of his subject, Mr. Darwin says, "I would premise that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of other mental qualities within the same class." (p. 255) He shows that even in a state of nature the instincts of animals of the same species do in some degree vary, and that they are transmitted by inheritance. A mastiff has imparted courage to a greyhound, and a greyhound has transmitted to a shepherd-dog a disposition to hunt hares. Among sporting dogs, the young of the pointer or retriever have been known to point or to retrieve without instruction. "If," he says, "it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have arisen." (p. 257) He was rather unguarded in saying that he saw no difficulty in accounting for the most wonderful instincts of animals. He admits that he has found very great difficulty. He selects three cases which he found it specially hard to deal with: that of the cuckoo, that of the cell-building bee, and of the slave-making ant. He devotes much space and labor in endeavoring to show how the instinct of the bee, for example, in the construction of its cell, _might_ have been gradually acquired. It is clear, however, that he was not able fully to satisfy even his own mind; for he admits that "it will be thought that I have an over-weening confidence in the principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well established facts do not annihilate the theory." (p. 290) This remark was made with special reference to the instincts of the ant, which he finds very hard to account for. He adds, "No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection: cases in which we cannot see how an instinct could possibly have originated; cases in which no intermediate gradations are known to exist; cases of instinct of such trifling importance that they could hardly have been acted upon by natural selection; cases of instincts almost identically the same in animals so remote in the scale of nature, that we cannot account for their similarity by inheritance from a common progenitor, and consequently cannot believe that they were independently acquired through natural selection. I will not here enter on those cases, but will confine myself to one special difficulty which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory. I allude to neuters, or sterile females in insect communities; for these neuters often differ widely in instinct and structure from both the males and the fertile females, and yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate their kind." (p. 289) He is candid enough to say, in conclusion, "I do not pretend that the facts given in this chapter (on instinct) strengthen in any great degree my theory; but none of the cases of difficulty, to the best of my judgment, annihilate it." (p. 297) When it is remembered that his theory is, that slight variations occurring in an individual advantageous to it (not to its associates), in the struggle for life, is perpetuated by inheritance, it is no wonder that the case of sterile ants gave him so much trouble. Accidental sterility is not favorable to the individual, and its being made permanent by inheritance, is out of the question, for the sterile have no descendants. Yet these sterile females are not degenerations, they are in general larger and more robust than their associates.

We have thus seen that, according to Mr. Darwin, all the infinite variety of structure in plants and animals is due to the law of natural selection. "On the principle of natural selection with divergence of character," he says, "it does not seem incredible that, from some such low and intermediate form, both animals and plants have been developed, and if we admit this, we must likewise admit that all the organized beings which have ever lived on this earth may be descended from some one primordial form." (p. 573) We have seen also that he does not confine his theory to organic structure, but applies it to all the instincts and all the forms of intelligence manifested by irrational creatures. Nor does he stop there; he includes man within the sweep of the same law. "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the _necessary_ acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." (p. 577)