EVOLUTION AND REVELATION.*

THAT this work should have so soon reached a second edition is a proof of the anxiety in the public mind to attain to a mocha vivendi between Evolution and Revelation. In truth, the literature of conciliation seems to be very popular. Dr.

s Can the Old Pala. Live with the Neter or, the Problems of Evolution and Isreslation. By the Bev. George Idetheyar„ D D. Beeceal Edition. Balisbargh

and London : Blackwood and Baas.

Matheson has many qualifications to fit him for the accom- plishment of this task, He is able ; he is eloquent ; he has read widely in the literature of theology and philosophy, and has thought over the problems which at present invite attention and await solution. His book is not so much a criticism either of the Old Faith or of the New. He does not profess to inquire into the truth of the theory of Evolution, nor ask if it is sup- ported by adequate truth. His question is,— Suppose it true, what then ? Can the Old Faith live with the New ?

That the book is able, and the argumentation subtle and ingenious, we need not say. We admire the subtle energy of his argument ; we have an endless variety of illustrative statements set forth with great felicity of phrase ; and we are often carried away with the strong rush of eloquence, until we are ready almost to accept his conclusions as inevitable. There are many excellent things in the book. The first four chapters are admirable. They state the question, they show it is no new question, they argue it in an admirable manner; and of the book as a whole, in tone, and temper, and style, we have nothing but praise.

When we ask, however, has Dr. Matheson succeeded in giving an affirmative answer to the question ? we are not so sure. We may frankly say that, in our judgment, Dr. Matheson has not made out his case. An attempt like this, so chivalrously made by Dr. Matheson, should be treated with all respect. It is pro- bable that any attempt at compromise should at the outset offend both parties. Still, it is best for the ultimate settlement of the question that we should not make too much haste, nor strive to hide differences which exist and are real. If necessary, we may let the Old Faith and the New subsist for a little longer side by side, or it may be in conflict, until we see more clearly the nature and tendency of both. Those who believe in the final victory of truth need not make haste.

Taking Dr. Matheson's book as it stands, with the question he asks, and our answer is,—The Old Faith can live with the New, if the New be what he describes it to be. We quite readily accept his description of the Old Faith as sufficient and adequate in the circumstances and for the purpose he has in view. We grant at once that he has found a number of places in which the Old and New may meet in harmony. When, how- ever, we come to consider the description of the New Faith given by Dr. Matheson, and compare it with the doctrine of Evolution set forth by its advocates, we feel persuaded that no reconciliation is possible on the line pursued by him. We observe that Dr. Matheson in his book lays the greatest possible stress on Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine of the persistence of force, and of the inscrutable nature of force. He refers to it in every chapter, and builds his argument mainly on what is implied in it.

Supposing that Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable should readily lend itself to the Theistic implications found in it by Dr. Matheson, we should not be one step nearer to the goal. It is now pretty generally recognised that the metaphysical basis which Mr. Spencer seeks to give to his doctrine of Evolu- tion does not really belong to it. He makes no use of his meta- physical conception in the working-out of his system. He has not attempted to show why the Unknowable should manifest itself in time, nor why it should manifest itself as a material world before it appears under the form of mind or conscious- ness. In order to make a beginning with the building-up of his system, Mr. Spencer has to identify the inscrutable force with the actual working forces which we know. He really worts not with the Unknowable, but with the known forces, which we observe active and operative in the world. From these known forces be sets out, with them he works, and he finds no need of anything beyond them in order to account for all the changes and all the progress of the world. Mr. Spencer does not admit, as Dr. Matheson says "he does and must, that movement requires a mover." On the contrary, he expressly tells us that he deliberately chose the word " persistence " instead of the

word " conservation," because " conservation " implies a con-

server and act of conserving. Nor does he at all agree with Dr. Matheson's statement that " the modern evolutionist believes that matter has no powers of its own." Mr. Spencer says :-

" Men who have not risen above that vulgar conception which unites with matter the contemptuous epithets ' gross' and brute; may naturally feel dismay at the proposal to reduce the phenomena of Life, of Mind, and of Society to a level with those which they think so degraded. Ent whoever remembers that the forms of exist- ence which the uncultivated regard with so much scorn, are shown by the man of science to be the more marvellous the more they are investigated, and are also proved in their ultimate natures absolutely

incomprehensible—as absolutely incomprehensible as sensation, or the conscious something which perceives it—whoever clearly recog- nises this truth, will see that the course proposed does not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, but an elevation of the so-called lower." (First Principles, p. 556.)

Thus Mr. Spencer wrote many years ago. In his latest pub- lication he writes to the same effect

"Each generation of physicists discovers in so-called brute matter' powers which but a few years before the more instructed physicists would have thought incredible, as instance the ability of a mere iron plate to take up the complicated aerial vibrations produced by articulate speech, which, translated into multitudinous and varied electric pulses, are retranslated a thousand miles off by another iron plate, and again heard as articulate speech. When the explorer of Nature sees that, quiescent as they appear, surrounding solid bodies are thus sensitive to forces which are infinitesimal in their amounts, —when the spectroscope proves to him that molecules on the earth pulsate in harmony with molecules in the stars,—there is forced on him the inference that every point in space thrills with an infinity of vibrations passing through it in all directions, the conception to which he tends is much less that of a Universe of dead matter, than that of a Universe everywhere alive ; alive, if not in the restricted sense, still in a general sense." (Ecclesiastical Institutions, p. 840.)

We quote these passages in order to show what, in the view of Mr. Spencer, the New Faith really is. The more wonderful the properties of matter can be shown to be, the less need will there be to call in the aid of the inscrutable force to make any

final change. The inscrutable force remains at hand and within call as a (lens ee machinci in the time of need. If Dr. Matheson succeeded in showing that this inscrutable force may

readily enough submit to a Theistic interpretation of itself, he would still have to face the difficulty of a modus vivendi with the theory of Evolution as wrought out by Mr. Spencer in his various works. This is really the work which he must do if he is to make good his theory. Mr. Spencer believes he can interpret all things in terms of matter and motion. Life is a result of physical forces. It arose out of them. It will vanish with the forms which present forces have when that universal dissolution comes to which all things tend in virtue of the per- sistence of force.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Spencer almost in terms denies all that Dr. Matheson affirms with regard to special creation, the Divine origin of life, the primitive man, Providence, and immor- tality. If we take his successive works and place them alongside of Dr. Matheson's chapters, we shall find the work of concilia- tion to be exceedingly difficult. The solution offered by Mr.

Spencer contradicts that offered by Dr. Matheson step by step.

Dr. Matheson points to the possibility of correspondence between man and his Maker, and he makes out his case ; but Mr. Spencer affirms these to be mere delusions which have grown out of dreams, and have been evolved out of the savage belief in ghosts. Dr. Matheson lays stress on the sense of freedom, the consciousness of self-identity, the feeling of moral obligation. As a consequence of the theory of Evolution, Mr. Spencer holds these also to be delusive, or illusive. There is no position assumed by Dr. Matheson or argued by him which is not denied or ex- plained away by Mr. Spencer. With regard to the religions idea, and to customs and institutions connected with it, Mr.

Spencer has no hesitation in declaring them to be delusions from end to end. If we are to take Mr. Spencer as a guide to the meaning of Evolution, we cannot help regarding it as sub- versive of the Old Faith, and destructive of all its contents. We can no longer have the old conceptions of God, of man, and of the world; there will remain only a persistent force and its vanishing manifestations, of which evanescent quantities man, with his moral and spiritual life, is one.

Nor will the theory of Evolution, as taught by Mr. Spencer, allow Dr. Matheson to hold the position he describes in the following eloquent words :—

" The recent age of Evolution has reversed the judgment that the display of physical strength was the display of the highest heroism. There has come into the world a higher kind of heroism—an ideal which consists, not in self-aggrandisement, but in self-surrender for the sake of others • not in the abundance of the things a man pos- sesses, but in the abundance of the things he can bestow. There is no man who does not in his heart believe that the life of sacrifice for the universal good is nobler than the life of struggle for individual gain, more like a hero, more worthy of a human soul."

For Mr. Spencer teaches in The Data of Ethics that conduct

which has any element of pain in it, is so far bad, and the life of sacrifice described so well and truly by Dr. Matheson, is to Mr. Spencer part of the " tacit assumption common to Pagan stoics and Christian ascetics, that we are so diabolically organised, that pleasures are injurious, and pains beneficial." The ethics of Evolution will not bear the weight of the generous inference drawn from it by Dr. Matheson.

We submit, then, that any attempted conciliation between Evolution and Revelation must have regard to the actual exposi- tion of the theory of Evolution, in its detailed solution of problems. This Dr. Matheson has not done. What he has done is to give a Theistic interpretation of Mr. Spencer's inscrutable force. He has a perfect right to do so. Suppose it done, however, he has not accomplished much. For the con- nection between the inscrutable force and its effect is too vague to allow the Theistic interpretation of it to have any bearing on the actual problem of Evolution. What we wish to say here is that Dr. Matheson parts company with Mr. Spencer at the outset. For the inscrutable force, according to Mr. Spencer, works along the lines of Evolution, and works on no other lines. When the inscrutable force has manifested itself in matter and motion, and has committed itself to the formula of Evolution, it, according to Mr. Spencer, has left to itself no possibility of action beyond these lines. If it had an existence apart from matter and motion, if it could hasten the progress or change the direction of Evolution, this possibility would be fatal to the theory of Mr. Spencer. Dr. Matheson assumes that the inscrutable force has an existence, and can maintain itself apart from the universe; can enter into relations with it, and can communicate to it, if not new elements, at least new directions. Here we are face to face with a controversy as old as speculation, of which controversy Dr. Matheson takes one side, and Mr. Spencer the other. It is old as Hindooism, old as the schools of Greece. Is God transcendent to the world, as well as immanent to it ? We take a particular instance, and we remark that the same issue arises in every chapter of the latter part of Dr. Matheson's book. "Alike," says Dr. Matheson, "in the system of Mr. Spencer, and in the system of him who wrote the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, the primal agency was not matter, but movement. The difference between them does not lie here, it lies in their view of the agency that moves." The difference between them, in our view, is greater far. With Mr. Spencer, the moving agency is wholly within the indefinite, incoherent homo- geneity. He finds no reason for, no proof of, any activity or agency from above or from without. Both Dr. Matheson and the writer of the Book of Genesis assume that the agent who " moved upon the face of the waters " did not lose itself in the world, so as to have no existence apart from it. On the contrary, they assume the continued separate existence of the moving agency, and the possibility of its entering into new relations with the evolving world. The difference here is funda- mental, and it does not help us to find secondary points of contact between Theism and Evolution while this fatal chasm remains unbridged. Dr. Matheson as steadfastly insists on, as Mr. Spencer resists, the contention that the inscrutable force may have other ways of existing and of working beyond and in addition to those represented by the formula of Evolution. It is well to recognise this funda- mental difference,—The Old Faith can live with anything which does not identify God with the world. It can afford to look with kindly interest on all attempts to make the growth of things more intelligible. It is not concerned how much time is taken in the process, nor how slowly the changes may have been effected. But it cannot live with anything which will not permit it to hold that the Creator has a life apart from the Creation, that God may enter into new relations with His creatures, and that He may be known by them. It cannot live with the theory of Evolution as held by Mr. Spencer, nor is it necessary that it should. It may live with Evolution, but not with the Evolution of Mr. Spencer.