MR. DARWIN ON A PUTURE STATE.
IIARDLY any question of Philosophy has so pressing and immediate an interest as the relation of the theory of Evolution to the belief in the Supernatural. This relation, at first exceedingly obscure, has shown of late a tendency to be- come more clear, evolutionism separating itself more decidedly from materialism. True materialism makes God impossible, revelation an imagination, and a future life an absurdity. God cannot be matter, and therefore cannot be; if He is not, there is no one to reveal, and therefore no revelation ; and as the matter of man remains here, and there is only matter, there is nothing after death to be elsewhere. The logic of materialism is absolute, and its result a complete denial of the supernatural. True evolutionism, on the other hand, though it has in it a strain of materialism so deep, as often to leaven the whole lump, still differs from it in its essential thought, and leads, if strictly followed up, to widely different results. A true evolu- tionist can be logical, yet not absolutely deny the three great postulates of the supernaturalist. The late Mr. Darwin, for example, in this noteworthy letter, published in the Pall Mall Gazette of Saturday, does not deny them. He had been told by a student at Jena that in reading his works, his (the student's) faith had perished, and had been asked to state his own. Mr. Darwin was asked that question, perhaps, too often, and in his natural impatience, aggravated by the state of his health, he penned the following short reply :— " am very busy, and am an old man in delicate health, and have not time to answer your questions fully, even assuming that they are capable of being answered at all. Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other, except in as far as the habit of scien- tific investigation makes a man cautions about accepting any proofs. As far as I am concerned, I do not believe that any revelation has ever been made. With regard to a future life, every one must draw his own conclusions from vague and contradictory probabilities.-- Wishing you well, I remain your obedient servant, "Down, ,Tune 5th, 1879. CHARLES DARWIN." It will be noticed at once that no allusion is made to the funda- mental question of all,—the relation of Evolution to Theism, and it is probable that the omission was intentional. Mr. Darwin, we believe, himself held—and it certainly follows from his teaching—that on the question of Theism evolution can have nothing to say. Evolutionists may by possibility discover the origin of Life, or even of Thought, though they have dis- covered neither yet ; but they cannot by possibility discover the origin of all things,—of the things older, that is, than evidence, or the beginning of the first atom. The Ultimate Cause, therefore, though it may be "the necessity of things," which is a mere phrase, may also be a sentient Mind. There is no proof in evolution that it is, but no proof, either, that it is not, the ultimate discovery possible on this route being only the sug- gestion that, as nothing that lives seems self-existent or irreduci- ble, the ultimate cause of life must be sought outside itself. That, if proved, would be fatal to Materialism, and indicate, though not demonstrate, a Creator. Evolution, then, as the great Catholic divines have been quick to see, does not deny God as a possi- bility, nor can it deny revelation. Mr. Darwin does deny the latter, but we understand him to deny it by himself and from the result of his general thoughts, and not as exponent of his special theory. Au evolutionist can accept a revelation, for he would as soon deny that a meteorolite could come from outside the world, ,or, 16, as that an idea could ; and reduced to its essence, revelation a mental meteorolite from outside. Whether the hand that hurled it is divine or not, is another and subsequent ques- tion; the foreign idea if it. comes, is
might Come, no e • "revelation,"—and that it
Principle; deny. Grant could by any deduction from his
evolved, and there -oily. Gra t that idea; are evolved as stones are
earth would erbe remains the fact that an idea not
of this e no more inconsistent with evolu- tion than a stone not of this earth, which does come. And then, on the third subject, the possibility of a future state, the evolutionist, as compared with the materialist, is humble. He
that the evidence for or .1 impossibilities or absurdities. He only says con- tradictory," and must be investigated a future life is "vague and con- evidence about the origininvestigated by the inquirer. So is the in- vestigated also, perhapsb of consciousness, which must be in- ages, without certainty of result, a series of Darwins, for a series of esult, even of theory. Yet conscious- ness is born in the unconscious every day and hour, and is as much a fact, a brute, concrete fact, past question, as if conscious- ness were ponderable, mensurable, or liable to be pricked with
a lancet. To mention difficulties of evidence and demand more thought, is not to deny.
It is not our business to work out the problems suggested by Evolution, but we find it difficult, in the face of Mr. Darwin's letter, to avoid saying that evolution, as applied to the mind, rather fosters than discourages the idea of a future state, of some life—not necessarily immortal—after death. There is none of the usual difficulty, be it remembered, of so-called miracle," for birth through death is the universal phenomenon, and there is no more miracle in an unconscious mind being born to consciousness in the next world, than in this. We hardly see how, on the theory of evolution, an idea can be born without an experience to beget it, still less an idea to which the universal experience of man in all climes and through- out all ages is opposed. No evolutionist would admit that a revenant had been seen, and whence did the idea of one arise, and, that so early P Still less can we understand how, if ideas are evolved gradually, and like qualities and limbs tend to survival, the great evolution of all in the sphere of mind should he a grand, overmastering, irresistible illusion, destined not to produce any thing, but to expire sterile, as intelligence advances. A creature may produce wings and then abandon wings as unsuited to its environment, as some flies seem to have done, under stress of windy islands ; but then the wings were originally useful. Of what use could an illusory idea be, in the battle of life ? We do not see sound thought in the assumption that, throughout life, whatever concrete thing is developed is real, and potentially useful—as, for instance, the rudimentary organs in animals—but that an idea, which, on any theory of evolution, is a thing with powers in it, may be only an illusion, helping nowhither, —indeed, deceiving, and so far a drawback to progress, that is, to evolution itself. It is as if we found a fly which pro- duced temporary wings, that always ran it against the rocks or into the water, and then, finding that out, ceased to produce them. That is not the case with the Challenger's flies, the wing being produced originally because it is useful and no illusion, and only abandoned when circumstances have made of it a nuisance. If the first fly had been born in the windy island, it would never have developed wings.
Nor do we quite see why an instinct is held in one creature to prove a fact, and. in another to prove a falsehood. Migrating birds, when locked up in cages at the season of migration, restlessly flap their wings, and try to fly away. The evolutionists say that fact helps to prove, not only that birds which do so are migratory, but that migration is a fact. They would deduce migration from the birch' habitual action, even if they had never seen birds migrating7 Yet if that instinct is to be allowed all that weight, why is the instinct of humanity, which keeps it perpetually flapping its mental wings, straining, as it were, towards another life, to be considered illusory ? Why should not the instinct be evidence in one animal, as well as in another P If migration never had.: been, and could not be, would not the evolutionist regard the birds' action as a strange break in his system, for which he could not account? We suppose an evolu- tionist would reply that man has derived his ideas of the supernatural from his fears, and that he is not straining towards an object, but intent on avoiding a danger. That is an answer to many theories of religious belief, but does not affect the genesis of the idea of a future state. How came man to fear a danger of which he had no experience, and which has no reality ? No other animal does it. A Himalayan hill- tit, which never saw a wasp, when shown one, kills it, then wastes five minutes in digging its sting out, and then eagerly swallows the body, making every sign Of enjoying a bonne houolte. The little creature avoids a, danger of which it has no experience, but then the danger is there. Is there in all Nature a creature which spends its life in pursuing an object or avoiding a danger which is not only unreal, but never was real, and never could have been? Recol- lect that, on the theory, man is an animal, so highly developed, it is true, as to have acquired exceptional powers, but still an animal, and bound by laws which, as regards other animals, aid pronounced to be immutable. Why, then, this strange excep- tion? Is it not at least more probable on the evidence that; as an idea from outside is conceivable, Man, originally a de- veloped animal, received from the outside this idea? That once granted as conceivable, the Supernatural— i.e., the life outSide this world—becomes conceivable, too, and if conceivable, can be studied, like any other phenomenon.
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