LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
DARWINISM AND THEOLOGY.-1.11.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Another head of offence in Mr. Darwin's theory, beyond those referred to in my previous letters is this,—that it seems to displace from its eminence the notion of design in the Divine .government of the world, and in the doctrine of the struggle for existence to introduce a hard-and-fast and somewhat cruel general law.
But this, if a difficulty at all, is not a new one. The existence of what we call general laws,—that is, series of facts, some of which .press hardly and, as it seems, harshly on individuals, is a long-ago ascertained fact,—and though it may be a very different result from what we should have expected a priori, it is thought by no devout mind to be an insuperable difficulty, and the point to which our .attention is rightly drawn is the beneficence of the general law in its general results. Now, tested in this way, Mr. Darwin's law of natural selection is a very striking illustration of this character of the general laws of the Divine government, because what he has described to us is a continuously acting and self-acting machinery, by which nature is always tending to produce forms more and more exactly fitted to the circumstances for which they are in- tended ; so that no more remarkable instance of design in a law or of .an abiding tendency towards perfection can possibly be conceived.
The terrible facts of nature are not new, and for them Mr. Darwin is not responsible. The beasts and birds of prey, with all their awfully beautiful contrivances to produce suffering and death ; the selfish eagerness with which each creature struggles for its own existence, though to the destruction of others ; the odious instincts and habits which exist in some animals, such as the young cuckoo, which ejects its foster-brothers, the ants, which make slaves, the .larvae of ichneumonidx, which feed on the live bodies of caterpillars, —these and many other facts in nature are difficult to explain, and often raise in one's mind questions like that which Blake expressed in his wonderful little poem to the Tiger,- " Did He who made the lamb make thee ? "
'These facts, I repeat, have no more place in Mr. Darwin's than in any other theory of creation ; but to his imagination (he observes, p. 291, 4th Ed.) it is far more satisfactory to look on instincts of the class to which I have referred, "not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic being."
Like observations apply to another class of facts to which Mr. Darwin's theory has called attention, —1 mean the facts which seem to show an imperfection in the adaptation of a given plant or animal to the circumstances in which it is placed. Mr. Darwin thinks that such facts are due to the transition which the organism is undergoing. Certainly such an explanation, whether true or false, is in nowise derogatory to the Divine Author. Certainly it -does not tend to increase, but seeks to diminish the difficulty which such facts naturally create in our minds. Certainly it is just that sort of explanation, by a reference to general laws, with which most good men (who think) are accustomed to reconcile to their minds the imperfections of the moral order of things.
Another doubt yet remains to be encountered. The evolutionist seems to many to say, " Give me but the smallest organism, and I will show you how from thence you have arrived at all the com- plicated system of created beings and at man himself. Give me but the smallest spark of consciousness, and I will show how man's moral and religious nature has been developed." And thereupon a doubt arises of this sort :—" If that is all that a Creator is wanted for, do we not almost get rid of Him ? If these are all the demands we make from God, shall we not soon come to do without Him at all?" The doubt is a vain one, for it is absolutely immaterial, for the logical necessity of a Divine Creator, whether the postulate with which you start be much or little ; if you demand anything from Him, He must be there to give it you, or your whole fabric of evolution fails. Now, every theory of evolu- tion proceeds upon this, that there is something given from which something else can be unfolded ; and who gives the first thing, if there be no God ? so that the logical necessity for a first cause stands precisely as and where it did. Those who believe that there is no such necessity, and prefer to believe that the world made itself, will believe so still ; those who believed that the world did not make itself, but had a Divine Author, may still rest in their belief, untroubled by any new difficulty or any new fear.
The dread lest evolution should remove the necessity or lessen our sense of the presence of a God is felt in the regions to which that doctrine is newly applied, it is not felt in the regions where the doctrine has long reigned undisputed. The imagination is affected by it in the one set of instances, it is undisturbed by it in the other. To suppose that God did not make the living organisms of this present world, because they were evolved from small beginnings, is to suppose that God did not make the tree because it first appears as a little seed, that He did not make the butterfly because it first appears as a grub, that He did not make man because he is born a baby.
But consider a little more carefully what are the postulates in such a theory of evolution as that of Mr. Darwin. They are (1) something, for evolutionism has not yet reached the step of evolv- ing something out of nothing, and it will be time enough to con- sider that theory when it is propounded ; (2) something vital : for evolutionism does not propose to explain the unfolding of life out of dead matter ; (3) the power of reproduction, for evolu- tionism offers no explanation of that delegated power of creation ; (4) the power of variation in reproduction, of the laws of which Mr. Darwin confesses profound ignorance; and (5) the power of such variations to reproduce themselves and to become strengthened by accumulation. So that this doctrine requires us to assume the great mysteries of creation, of life, of generation, and of variation. A man may believe all these things to exist without a Divine Author, but he who does so will as readily do so on any one theory of crea- tion as another ; and a man who thinks that the existence of this world, on the old theories of creation, could only be explained by the existence of a God, will have no need to fear or to hope that he can do without His existence by virtue of the theory of evolution. The little that that theory seemed to demand of God is found to be all that goes to make up the existence of the world.
To me, I confess, no theory of the universe seems so intellectual as that of evolution ; no other requires in such vast proportions the elements of forethought, forecast, design, the seeing of the end from the beginning. Who can believe that anything is unfolded in fact which has not been unfolded in thought? Who can take into his band a seed, and consider the marvellous forces and powers wrapped up in that little thing,—consider the predestination of which it is the subject, the definite ends and aims to which it is directed, separate from those of all other seeds,—and not feel some- thing like awe, something like conviction that nothing but pre- science could have created such a thing? And the seed is the type and incarnation of the doctrine of evolution.
And now, Sir, I will conclude. I have endeavoured to state fairly and honestly the various objections which I believe to be afloat in the minds of many religious people to Mr. Darwin's theory, I have tried to consider each one candidly, and what I ask my readers to inquire is, not whether every difficulty in the way of religion is removed, but whether the difficulties which exist in Darwinism are not the difficulties which exist in nature itself, and which existed in all reasonable theories of creation and of nature before Mr. Darwin was thought of. Have we not walked up to the spectres, and found them old trees with which we are familiar,—ugly enough, if you will, but nothing but the old trees?
I have not inquired whether Darwinism be true or false, but I have asked whether, if it be true, it is terrible to religion. For my own part, I have no notion that there can be such a thing. My belief in the existence and empire of God is too strong to allow me to credit for a moment the existence of anything at once true and atheistic. I have no fear whatever of further investigations into nature, I have no fear of true science, though I have much of false science and of false theology too. I have no fear even of the tendencies of modern science. I may read it wrongly (as I know that I read it little and ignorantly), but to me its tendencies seem towards a sublime spirituality,—towards the belief that all matter is but force, and all force is but mind.—I am, Sir, &c.,
EDWARD FRY.
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