BOOKS.
BREE'S STRICITRES ON DARWIN'S "ORIGIN AND VARIATION OP SPECEES."
HAVING carefully read Dr. Bree's book, and gone over ninny por- tions of it again and again, we remain under the conviction that
the question which the author undertook to settle has been left by him pretty much as he found it. There are many objections more or less weighty to Mr. Darwin's theory, and Dr. Bree has stated them ; but others, including Mr. Darwin himself, had done so before him, and certainly not with less clearness and force. Of objections which have neither clearness nor force, he has raised up not a few, and clothed them in corresponding language— clumsy, confused, and ungraminatical, whilst his main argument is in 'flagrant opposition to the first principles of philosophic reasoning. He undertakes to discuss a theory in natural science, and he sets out by condemning it on the alleged ground of its irreligious tendency ! All through his book there runs a thread of a priori argument against Mr. Darwin's theory, enforced by such epithets as "impious," "profane," "atheistical," and based upon the arbitrary assumption that not to believe in the original creation of species is to deny "the daily providence of God in
creation, and even his existence there." It matters but little," in Dr. Bree's opinion, "whether Mr. Darwin gives us four or five progenitors, or only one. In either case, he denies a special creator [ido] either to plants or animals, and thus at one blow destroys all that we have so lona.° held and cherished among the riches of our knowledge—that beautiful adaptation of struc- ture to its varied uses, which some have called design, life, motion, development ; which others have called evidence of Natural Religion; and, above all, man himself, with his attributes—sensation, thought, consciousness, in a word, reason —all these are swept away as a proof of special creation ; they are but the results of fortuitous variation, acting without order or even natural law!" This quotation is from Dr. Bree's first chapter ; the next we take from his ninth, to show how per- sistently he urges a line of argument which is wholly inadmissible in foro scientim. Among the points discussed by Mr. Darwin is the existence of well-developed organs which are of little import- ance to the animals that possess them. Such is the tail of the giraffe, which looks like an artificially-constructed fly-flapper, and which we can hardly suppose to "have been adapted to its present purpose by successive slight modifications, each better and better, for so trifling an object as driving away flies." His ex- planation is that this and other organs, now of trifling import- ance, may have been of great consequence to an early progenitor ; and, having been slowly perfected, have been transmitted unim- paired to its descendants. Upon this hypothesis, " a well-deve- loped tail having been formed in an aquatic animal, it might subsequently come to be worked in for all sorts of purposes, as a fly-flapper, an organ of prehension, or as an aid in turning, as with the dog, though the aid must be slight, for the hare, with hardly any tail, can turn quickly enough." This view of the matter fills Dr. Bree with indignation. "I do not think," he says, "I need say one word in refutation of an hypothesis, which I might simply designate profane, but I will leave the matter to the cool reflection of those who may read a statement which shocks and outrages every propet feeling, as much as it does violence to our reason and common sense.'
A pretty specimen this of what the good doctor understands by a " critical examination" of a purely scientific question. Senti- ment is the touchstone of science. Galileo was wrong, the Pope and the Inquisition were right, and geology ought not to have survived the attacks of the theologians. Either this or Dr. Bree puts himself out of court the moment he begins to talk of his feelings. We fear they are in a bad plight if it be true, as he avers with passionate iteration, that his faith in the wisdom, goodness, and power of the Creator are inseparably bound up with his belief that every species of animal and vegetable, existing or extinct, was the product of a special act of creation. Dictum for dictum, we think that the words of the eminent naturalist, Dr. Hooker, carry with them at least as much weight of authority as Dr. Bree's ; and the former has declared, to the great disgust of the latter, that the doctrine of the original creation of species was "merely another hypothesis, which was neither more nor less entitled to acceptance than Mr. Darwin's; neither was it in the present state of science capable of demonstration." Still more affiicting to Dr. Bree's "proper feelings" is the following state- meent contained in the last edition of Mr. Darwin's book.—
" A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity, to believe that He created a few forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh sit of creation to supply the needs caused by the action of His laws."
Upon this, Dr. Bree rejoins-
" I think we ought to have had the name of this Divine, given with this remarkable statement. • I confess that I have not yet fully made up my mind, that any Divine could have ever penned lines, so fatal to the truths he is called upon to teach. How does he reconcile the origin of man from one of a few forms, with the history of Creation, as contained in the first chapter of Genesis ? If this Divine doubts the truth of the Mosaic account, how does he reconcile the doctrine of progressive develop • matt, with that of original sin, and the consequent necessity for a Re- deemer ? If man is only a superiorly-developed ape, when in .his history • species not Transmutable, nor the Result of Secondary Causes. Being. a Critical Examination of Mr. Darwin's work, entitled .` Origin and Variation of Species." By C. It, Bree, Esq., M.D. Published by Groombridge and Sons. did he emerge from apehood into manhood? According to Mr. Darwin, the change must have taken immense time, and have been most gradual, for Natures non facit saltum. Now at what period, in the transitional history of the human race, does this Divine fix upon, as that to which the Mosaic account, upon which our religion is founded, refers ? "We must have no trifling upon this subject. By the passage I have quoted, Mr. Darwin has opened out a much wider issue, which his inju- dicious friends have helped to enlarge. It may be urged, that the same argument was used against geological discoveries. I deny the force of this entirely. There is this difference between the two—that while, by a different interpretation of a few words in the first chapter of Genesis, geology can be reconciled with Scripture ; yet, if Mr. harteiter theory is true, the whole Mosaic account of creation must be false, and thus a blow is struck at the root of religion itself. If Mr. Darwin or his friend says, 'but man was one of my original forms specially created in the beginning of time,' he is equally opposed by Scripture and geology, both of which define his special creation at the same time."
Dr. Bree is equally indiscreet in his zeal for biblical and for scientific truth ; for the latter refuses to be tested by any extra- neous standard ; and it may be that, with fuller knowledge, the former shall be found to be something very different from what its dogmatic champion now assumes it to be. Such things have happened not once or twice only in the progress of inquiry. Absolutely null and void therefore are all the arguments which the doctor draws from the Bible, and be is, if possible, still more unhappy in those for which he resorts to the principles of natural religion. He can by no means assent to this plain and almost self-evident proposition, that the Creator "may act with as much design by secondary means as he can by special creation." His creed is: no special creation, no design; to admit that one species has been derived from another is to confess that all animal and vegetable races have been the creatures of chance. Strong in this belief, he casts in Mr. Darwin's teeth some passages from Cicero, in which that enlightened heathen mentions among other proofs of the provident care of the gods, "the salt pits remote from the sea coasts." The example is a true one from Cicero's point of view, but we do not exactly see how it illustrates Dr. Bree's principle. Is he prepared to assert that the salt pits owe their existence to a special act of creation, and not to the operation of secondary causes, which, in his opinion, would be equivalent to chance
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