THE SENTIMENTAL ATHEISM OF THE " DAILY NEWS."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...I
Sne,—A short time ago the Daily News, in giving a descriptive report of the lecture of a distinguished modern biologist, told its readers that man was descended from the lemur through monkeys. Having given the world this assurance of its ecien' tific knowledge, the Daily News on November 24th proceeded iii a leading article solemnly to rebuke the naturalist, Mr. E. Robinson, because lie told the world "scientific half-truths.' He was "a very blind naturalist," because he read tit: "Struggle for Existence" as a "straggle for improvement, or rather, because he believed in progress, be said there wag no such thing as a struggle for existence. I have not eeen Mr. Robinson's work, so that I cannot quote what he did say. But I imagine that his argument must have been the modern biological one that the " Struggle for Existence" is capable of a different interpretation from that of the "red in tooth and claw" catchpenny- phrase which the Daily News believes in. Whatever Mr. Robinson said, the position of the Daily News is that progress is irreconcilable with the laws operating in the natural world. Progress, therefore, and religion with it, are shouts, because if there is a God, Ile is the God of the whole universe, and, according to the Daily News, that very substan- tial part of it which we call Nature is nothing but a competitive ehambles, a "gladiatorial show," as Huxley called it. And I can now understand why the Daily News, in spite of repeated pretests on the part of the "Plumage Bill Group," persists in advertising the feather trade, since the trade justifies its abominations by appealing to the very argument which the Daily News employs in disposing of Mr. Robinson. I do not ray that the Daily News deliberately puffs the trade, but that this paper's gross ignorance of modern science and shallow, half-baked thinking upon these biological and philosophic sub- jects, combined with the notorious inconsistency between the lofty sentiments professed in its leaders and tile tone prevail- ing in the rest of tho paper, do not make it difficult to realize why this paper is so much inferior in civilizing influence to the Manchester Guardian and the Westminster Gazette.
Though I often disagree—in some things profoundly—with the political views of the Spectator, I am convinced that it has had a civilizing and humanizing influence upon English life it is impossible to exaggerate. There are many things I could recall in this connexion—the Putumayo horrors, Portuguese slavery, and so on. But I wish to refer particularly in this letter to the knowledge and enlightenment about natural life spread by the Spectator for so many years. That is an achievement as wiritual as it is instructive and deserves the gratitude of men of science, Christians, reformers, and simple men and women alike. This is only a little thing in the eyes of little people, for Darwin called this new sympathy" the latest moral acquisi- tion of the human race." In my opinion, this sympathy has a rational and scientific backing behind it. It is a new possession of the human race, and the scientific interpretation of natural laws has advanced par/ posers with it. In other words, the erude and vulgar theory held by the Daily News and its Ger- man biologists at the beginning of the war is now untenable, not only on moral and religious grounds, but through the deeper and wider intimacy with the system of Nature acquired hy the best modern biology. The earlier materialists mis- interpreted the facts because (very naturally) only a pillion of them were accessible to them. I am not sure, indeed, that this compatibility between the religious and scientific readings of the universe is not the greatest discovery of the twentieth century and the beginning of a new future for humanity. Science, as a modern poet says, is seeking after God. Obviously, one cannot go into the details of this reinterpretation of Nature, but perhaps I may quote Dr. Pettigrew's Design in Nature (quoted by Professor J. A. Thomson) as a summing- up:— Natural Selection may be regarded merely as a process of so-called evolution by which the Creator works and accomplishes His purpose. Indeed the Creator, by conferring upon living matter in its simplest and lowest forms the power of appro- priating the elements and building them up by endless elabora- tion and gradation from a monad to a man proves Himself to bean infinitely more wonderful Designer than was ever dreamed of by even the most ardent teleologists."
By helping to bridge the gulf between ourselves and Nature, the Spectator has played its part in this revaluation of the universe in the light of modern knowledge and modern faith. Before its general spectacle, we can well afford to smile at the Prattle of the Daily News.—I 0111, Sir, &c., H. J. MASSINGHAM. Massingham should not forget that the proprietors of the Daily News have displayed a considerable interest in the competitive instincts of horses.—En. Spectator.]
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