THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL.*
Tins is an elder work of Dr. MeCoeh, whose Christianity and Positivism was lately reviewed in these columns. It belongs to that numerous family of writings which owes its existence to the protest of liberal orthodoxy against the Essays and Reviews, and is written throughout with much piety and some candour. The greater part of it seems to us rather better than an average sermon, and if there are any persons who imagine that no one can take any interest in science without being irreligious, we can fancy that they might derive benefit from reading the book. We pro- pose, in the remarks which follow, to criticize rather the aim which writers like Dr. McCosh set before themselves, than to estimate this particular specimen of their efforts. His last book has lately given us occasion to attempt a statement of the difficulties—arising both from the world of Nature and of Man—which in our day divert men's sympathies from theology ; but, as our object was then mainly with the human element in this movement, we only touched upon the other in passing. We now return to it, wishing that by some such considerations as those which follow, any thinker could be awakened to the need there is of approaching, from a different point of view and with a different intellectual apparatus, the task undertaken by so many .excellent men, with no other qualification than zeal for religious truth and a certain amount of reading. "Those who would end * The Supernatural in Relation N the Natural. By Jam McOosh, LL.D. Loudon: Macmillan. with certainties," says Bacon, "must begin with doubts." All that will be attempted here is to show that a large problem has to be solved; but let it not be said that those who attempt to point out its magnitude either take for granted, or are indifferent to, its solution.
It would surely be waste of time to prove that the chasm which books like this attempt to bridge, exists. No one in our day will deny the divergence of those who study the laws of the visible world and those who promulgate and teach what are supposed to be the laws of the invisible. Pew will deny this divergence to be a misfortune, for it is a misfortune equally obvious to those who sytnpathise with either aide, and is felt by many who sympathize with neither. Everyone knows that when you speak of So-and-So's "opinions," you moan what he thinks about religion, while if you wish to express his corresponding attitude towards science, you speak not of what he thinks, but of what he knows. The veriest idler of the Clubs is aware that no one has an opinion about gravitation, and without caring a straw for science, oven he has learnt from experience that it is better to attend to what is certain than to what is probable. Such a one as we are imagining does not trouble himself with attempts to " reconcile " science and theology, but he cannot read the newspapers without discovering them to be frequent enough to prove the difficulty of the feat they aim at accomplishing, and is probably enough of a logician to draw the inevitable inference that what some men think, is discredited by the mere difficulty of reconciling it with what other men know. Ile does not necessarily, cease to yield a languid deference to the outward forms of religion, but every avenue which might lead into those depths of our nature whore intellect and conscience find com- mon ground, and thus connect those forms with realities, is closed as with bars of iron. Now we do not pay this state of mind the compliment of asserting that science has anything to do with it, nor do we suppose there would he any great difference in the numbers of those whose lives are ruled by indolence and wordliness if the thoughts of men about religion ceased to be apparently refuted by their knowledge of science. But while this is the aspect presented by the result of thought to the unthinking, the position which indolence and worldliness hold is fortified by logic. In that struggle against the tyranny- of sense which not the most worldly of us is quite without, the order and the majesty of law seem not with man, but with his enemy. The instincts that centre in the conscience seem to belong to a world of chaos, and those which take their rise in the senses to be the only guides to a world of order.
In the belief that this result is more evil than almost any alter- native, an attempt is hero made by one who holds the Super- natural to be the only permanent home for, the spirit of Man, to exhibit the case of those who in our day regard this conception as an injurious fiction, diverting men's attention from the enduring facts of Nature.
The meaning of the word "Nature" has been given by Coleridge in terms which would satisfy at once the scholar and the physicist. Nature, he says in effect, is literally Natura, that which is always "about to be born." It is the effect as latent in its cause, it is the chain of varying force by which all that we hear and see and touch is connected together. Whether we are to include in this natural world the will of Man depends wholly on the question whether we consider will to be a mere effect. It is for the very purpose of establishing this distinction that Coleridge gives his defi- nition of Nature. Will, he says, is an exercise of creative force, a fresh start in time, a sequence which is not a mere consequence. Anyone who believes this must look upon all Will as supernatural, but those who do not believe it are not obliged to look upon all Will as natural, or Calvinism would have no logical standing- ground. There is a point where originating, uncaused, Will must, according to the view of the theologian (whatever his opinion on free-will), have come in contact with nature, and the question is, Does nature bear any trace of this? Does "that which is always becoming," to repeat the words of Coleridge, bring with it any evidence of that which does not become, but is? Does a mind not bringing that conception to the study of the outward world find it there ? This question is often supposed to be answered, when it has been established that a mind which does bring this conception will find it strengthened by the study of the outward world. It is this slight shifting of the issue which makes controversy unprofitable. Once allow that such books as the Bridgewater Treatises or Paley's Natural Theology are appeals to Theists only, and you change their whole character. They remain valuable and instructive illustrations of the light the Supernatural throws upon Nature, but they and the principles they embody cease to have any relevance to the question we are
now urging on men of science,—does Nature bear any testimony to the Supernatural ?
Now it can scarcely be doubted that a grave change has been introduced into the conditions of this problem by the general sur- render of the principle of independent specific creation. When the stet lent of nature, whatever his theological opinions, supposed every species of animals and plants to be descended from an ancestor which had no natural connection with any other, the very conditions of his study brought him in contact with the supernatural. There is a definite plan, for instance, in every natural order of plants. On the old theory this plan was trans- ferred directly from the mind of the Creator to the outward world. Natural history was a science which broke off abruptly in face of supernatural Will. The mind of the inquirer could find no screen to shut out the thought of an intelligence like in kind to his own and infinitely superior in degree ; there must be a creative mind, because there was a result which could in no other way be accounted for. The hypothesis of independent specific creation, in fact not only implied, but was the common territory of theology and science. Here the supernatural overlapped the natural, here the chain of every-varying effect, reaching its last link, touched on cause which was not effect. This, at all events, has ceased to be the case. We have reccejed very far from that uncaused cause. Have we kept it in sight ? That is the question. Do not confuse it with the other question, whether to those who approach it from a different region the shadow it casts is widened by the change. There is the same sort of differencebetween nature on the old and new belief as there would be, to take the least mislead- ing analogy, between a farm or estate where every alternative had to be submitted to the distant owner, and one where the subor- dinates were loft to make the decision for themselves. If you had an independent knowledge of that distant owner, you might recog- nize his discernment of intelligence in the shrewdness with which the bailiff should decide what trees were to be cut down or what crops were to be sown. But how could you from this shrewdness ever convince a sceptical friend that the bailiff was not the owner ?
The difficulties which would lie in the way of such an attempt are common to any hypothesis of evolution. But if we are to accept that theory of origin which is associated with the name of Mr. Darwin, we must accept these and others besides. It is not merely in this case that the imaginary servants of our distant pro- prietor do not refer to him for direction ; they are not, with regard to the ends which we see them accomplish, even well chosen. Thep who believe the perfect wisdom of the owner, must explain the apparent waste of power in his management of his estate by the belief that his purposes embrace some results wholly out of their ken. A wise man would not fling a handful of wheat where only a single grain would take root. If a wise God acts thus, it must be with some purpose, including the development of species, no doubt, inasmuch as it results in that, but also for transcending it in directions which we cannot remotely conceive. With regard to this particular end, we are obliged to use language which would imply chance even whore it is not intended. "I have sometimes spoken," says Mr. Darwin (Origin, p. 131), "as if the variations" (which are ultimately species) "had been due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly incorrect expression"—but it precludes the necessity of lengthy paraphrase, and will be misunderstood byno one. Still the very fact that it is convenient to use this word points out the direction in which it will guide all association. And we may exhibit this tendency yet more clearly by quoting a passage, which has been quoted before as a remarkable anticipation of this theory, but which we bring forward only to show the kind of ideas and belief with which it is most naturally convected. A hypothesis in such a different thing, according as it is suggested -and confirmed by observation of outward fact, or accepted on the snore evidence of its own satisfying coherence, that we hesitate to give the same name to the two things. But so far as one can ispeak of the same theory in the mind of a thinker of to-day and -of 2,000 years ago, Natural Selection may be described in the words of the only great speculative genius of Rome :—" We see," says Lucretius, "that many conditions are necessary in order that a race should be perpetuated, and among all the animals which have existed, some have been brought into the world unfitted for these ; others, again, have perished from being unprovided with any peculiar advantage in the struggle for existence. For races are preserved in this struggle either by their own craft, strength, .or at least activity, on the one hand, or else by being useful to us, many different races of animals being secured from extinction by the guardianship of man." We see nothing here wanting to the theory of Natural Selection (speaking from the point of view of the logician, and not the naturalist), except the minute fortuit- ous variations, which are, of course, all that gives it its value as A product of science, but which, when we are considering its influ- ence as an idea, may be thrown out of account without loss. Now let us turn back to the origin of the world which was to be a home for the races thus selected by nature. " The elements of things came together according to no previous scheme, but in the whirl of infinite time, having exhausted every possible arrangement, they have now fallen into that by which the present universe is composed." Do not the two conceptions fit one another ? The ceaseless movement of the elements, trying, as it were, every possible combination, is so fitting a prelude to that ceaseless variation of organism which at last arrives at some acci- dental advantage conferring success in the struggle for life, that we think every one who has fully studied this noble poem, and who is not too scientific to overlook some glaring absurdities, must feel as if the theory of Natural Selection fell here into its place as part of a coherent scheme. Now, what is it which gives such unity to the poem on the Nature of things ? It is the sense of delight and deliverance in escaping from the notion of the Supernatural, the relief at discovering that what we call Creation was a result, " not," to quote Mr. Darwin, "arrived at by means superior to, though analogous with human reason," but by change which had
not its source in any will. We accord sympathy of the imagination to such a mental condition with greater diffi- culty than attention of the intellect. It is more easy for us to put ourselves in the position of believing that this throbbing human world is the product of some agency or sets of agencies which do not feel or think, than in the position of those who desire to find this true. The certainty of the worst misfortune would be to most of us infinitely less terrible than the suspicion that the laws which govern the universe came from some impersonal cause. It would be here irrelevant to inquire what changes are implied in this change of feeling, we only mention it that we may not seem to ignore it in pointing out that all the inspiration of the philoso- phic poem in which natural selection was, we may say, prophesied, comes from the conviction that the scheme of which it formed part was one wholly to supplant the idea of Providence ; that the "divina voluptas" which breaks forth at every halting-place in the argument is most conspicuous at the discovery
"At contra nuequam apparent Acherusla tempts."
If these remarks have any force, we do not see how a thinker can shut his eyes to the fact that the testimony of Nature to the Supernatural has become in our day more recondite, if not more uncertain. Its absolute value we make no attempt to estimate. It is enough hero that we accept as unquestionable a thickening of the veil of second causes, by which we are screened from the direct view of creation. The chain of "that which is always becoming" is lengthened in our hands, and that which is seems, from this point of view, further off than it did to our fathers. And hence for those who deem the spiritual and intellectual world not to be separate regions, but rather distinct only as the smell of a rose is die- taut from its colour, there has come a time like the period when we waken up to the discovery that affections which have filled our life with warmth are not quite what they were. We speak of an ex- perience which will not be familiar either to the man of science or the theologian. Neither of these is a good judge of his influence on the intermediate world. The study of Nature seems to absorb and to a great degree almost satisfy the whole being ; he who is sus- tained by that continual contact with large ideas and observation of unvarying sequence is secured, to some extent, from keen desires and permanent suffering. The intellectual life has the danger or the privilege, according as we choose to regard it, of sheltering the soul surrendered to it from strong emotion. The spiritual life finds in this strong emotion (and it is quite equally a danger or a privilege) the fuel for its brightest flame. But for the every-day crowd, who only fitfully and at intervals partake of either life, the fact that their influence is mutually hostile is of deadly significance ; and their common rival, the life of sloth and ease, draws back to lower aims many a heart which has shrunk back from the life of the soul because science has east on it the shadow of superstition, or from the life of the mind because theology has set on it the brand of infidelity.
How differently would the utterances of religious men fall on the oars of those who are passing through this dark valley if they would acknowledge that the shadow is an objective reality ! What a power would he have for direct utterance of the truth as re- vealed to himself who should have courage to confess, " may be that God really designs to shroud himself in that complex combination of cause and effect which we call Nature." This, we should have thought, would have been not too great an effort of candour and trust for the followers of him who said, in.
speaking of the lessons of nature, "To them that are without, these things are done in parables." Anyhow, it is, we are sure, the indispensable preface to the success of any movement which shall turn the attention of our contemporaries and our children to a region where the laws of the Supernatural world are exhibited as unquestionably as the laws of the Natural in the phenomena of every-day practical life.
Previous page
