Chapter IX (2)

KOSMICOS. But you will allow that the theory is perfect in itself; and why, then, do you say that he is carried away by it? You ought either to give up your criticism, or to show that there is a superior hypothesis by which to account for the origin of organisms, and one that is supported by stronger proofs and better reasoning. You have nothing to oppose to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the origin of organic life, excepting the fable which you find in the book of Genesis.

SOPHEREUS. Undoubtedly the opposite hypothesis is that which attributes to a Creator the production of organic life; and whether the Mosaic account, as it stands, be a fable or a true narrative of an actual occurrence, what we have to do is to ascertain, upon correct principles of reasoning, whether the creating power can be dispensed with. Mr. Spencer dispenses with it altogether. He gives it a direct negative in the most absolute manner. But the perfection of his theory depends upon its ability to sustain itself as an explanation of the existence of organisms without the intervention of a creating power anywhere at any time. I have already suggested the serious defect of his whole philosophic scheme as applied to the existence of organisms, namely, that the foundation of the theory, the existence of the molecules with their properties and capacities tending to rearrangement under the laws of matter and motion, those laws themselves, and the environing conditions which assist the process of adjustment and combination, must all have had an origin, or a cause. If we can get along without that origin, without any cause, without any actor laying the foundations of the world, we can make a theory. But that theory can not sustain itself by such a negation if all experience, observation, and reflection amount to anything; for these all point in one direction. They all tend to show that every existing thing must have had a cause, that every product must have had an origin, and, if we place that origin in the operation of certain laws of matter and motion upon and among the primal molecules of matter, we still have to look for the origin of those laws and of the molecules on which they have operated. If we say that these things had no origin, that they existed without having been caused to exist, we end in a negation at which reason at once rebels. If, on the other hand, we reject, as we must reject, this negation, then the same power which could establish the laws of matter and motion, and give origin to the molecules and the favoring conditions by which their aggregated higher forms are supposed to have been developed, was alike capable of the direct production of species, the creation of the sexes, and the establishment of the laws of procreation and gestation. So that it becomes a question of probability, of the weight of evidence, as to whether we can explain the phenomena of species, of the sexual division and the sexual union, with all that they involve, without the hypothesis of direct intervention, design, and formative skill of a boundless character. I have seen no explanation of the origin of species and of the sexual distinction, with its concomitant methods of reproduction, that does not end in an utter blank, whenever it undertakes to dispense with that kind of direct design to which is derisively given the name of "miraculous interposition," but which in truth implies no miracle at all.

KOSMICOS. I have to be perpetually recalling you to the first principles of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. You seem to think it enough to point to the existence of species and the sexual division, as if his philosophy did not afford the means of accounting for them by the operation of natural causes. Let me put to you, then, this question: If natural causes have produced a crystal, by successive new combinations of molecules of matter through gradations rising successively into higher forms, why should not natural causes, acting upon other molecules in a corresponding way, have produced organic life, or animated organisms? If natural causes have evolved out of certain molecules the substance known as organizable protein, why should not the continued operation of the same or similar causes have modified organizable protein into some distinct and recognizable animated organism? If you admit this as a possible or highly probable result, why should not natural causes have produced, in the course of millions of years, the division of the sexes and the methods of procreation and multiplication?

SOPHEREUS. I will assign the reasons for not adopting the conclusions to which you expect me to arrive, in a certain order. In the first place, the capacity of certain molecules to result in the formation of a crystal, under the operation of what you call natural causes, requires that the molecules, their capacity, and the natural causes should all have had an origin, call it known or unknown. The cause was of equal potency to produce the crystal directly, or anything else that exists in Nature. The same thing is true of certain other molecules which, under the operation of the so-called natural causes, have resulted in organizable protein. There must have been an origin to the molecules, to their capacity, and to the laws which effect their combinations; and this cause could equally fashion an organism and fashion it in the related forms of male and female by direct intervention, for to such a power there is no assignable limit. In the next place, the distinction between inanimate and animated matter, between beings endowed and beings not endowed with animal life, is a distinction that can not be overlooked; for, although we find this distinction to be a fact that has resulted after the operation of whatever causes may have produced it, we must still note that there is a distinction, and a very important one. It may be that the dividing line is very difficult of detection; that it is impossible to determine in all cases just where organizable matter passes from dead matter into a living organism. But that at some point there has arisen a living organism, however produced, is certain. Now, suppose that what you call natural causes have operated to bring organizable matter up to this dividing line, the question is, whether we can conclude that they have had the potency to pass that line, and to lead of themselves to all the varying and manifold results of species, the division of the sexes, and all that follows that division. Certain great facts seem to me to negative this conclusion. The first is, that we have species, which differ absolutely from each other as organisms, in their modes of life, and their destinies, however strong may be the resemblances which obtain among them in certain respects. The second fact is, that each of the true species is divided into the related forms of male and female, and is placed under a law of procreation, by the sexual union, for the multiplication of individuals of that species. The third fact is, that no crosses take place in Nature between different species of animals--between the true species--resulting in a third species, or a third animal. It is true that multiplication of individuals of some of the lowest organisms takes place without the bisexual process of procreation, as where, in the severance of a part of an organism the severed part grows, under favorable conditions, into a perfect organism of the same kind, as in the analogous phenomenon of a plant propagated by a branch or a slip from the parent stem. But this occurrence does not take place among the animals which are placed for their multiplication under the law of the sexual union and the sexual procreation. The sexual division, therefore, the law of sexual procreation, and all that they involve, have to be accounted for. Can they be accounted for by the theory of evolution? Wherever you place their first occurrence, you have to find a process adequate to their production. What, then, entitles you to say that the hypothesis of their production, by the capacity and tendency of organizable substances, when they have reached certain combinations, is superior to the hypothesis of a direct interposition and a formative will? At the outset, you must begin with some interposition and some formative will; you must account for the existence of the very capacities of matter to become organized under the laws of the redistribution of matter and motion, or you will end nowhere whatever. If you assume, as you must, that, in laying "the foundations of the world," there was exercised some interposition and some formative will, you have a power which was just as adequate to the production of species, and their sexual division, as it was to the endowment of matter with certain properties and capacities, and the establishment of any laws for the redistribution of matter and motion. If you deny the existence and potency of the original power in the one production you must deny them in the other. If you concede them in the one case, you must concede them in the other. Now, although the original power was equal to the endowment of organizable matter with its capacities for and tendencies to organization, and may be theoretically assumed to have made that endowment, the question is, whether these capacities and tendencies, without special formative interposition, and by the mere force of what you call natural causes, were equal to the production of such phenomena as the division of the sexes and all that follows that division. Can it with any truth he said that the so-called natural causes have produced any phenomena which can be compared, on the question of special design, to the phenomena of the sexual division, the law of sexual procreation, and the whole system of the multiplication of individuals of distinct and true species? When I can see any facts which will warrant the belief that the origin of the sexes is to be attributed to the capacity of organizable protein to form itself into new compounds, to the capacity of these new compounds to become living organisms, and to the capacity of these living organisms, without the intervention of any formative will specially designing the result, to divide themselves into related forms of male and female, to establish for themselves the law of procreation, and to limit that procreation to the same species, I shall, perhaps, begin to see some ground for the superior claims of the evolution hypothesis. I should like, by-the-by, to see a system of classification of animal organisms, based exclusively on the distinction between the bisexual and the unisexual, or the non-sexual, methods of reproduction, and without running it out into the analogies of the vegetable world. I fancy that it would be found extremely difficult to account for the bisexual division without reaching the conclusion that it required and was effected by a special interposition. At all events, I should like to see it explained how the asexual and the unisexual construction passed into the bisexual by the mere operation of what you call natural causes.

KOSMICOS. You said, a while ago, that you had never learned any nursery-stories. Yet, all along, you seem to me to have been under the influence of the Mosaic account of the creation. Of course you have read it, and, although you did not learn anything about it in childhood, and now try to treat it solely as a hypothesis, without any regard to its claims as a divinely inspired narrative, it is certainly worth your while to see how completely it becomes an idle tale of the nursery when scientific tests are applied to it. Hear what Spencer says about the creation of man, as given by Moses: "The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and molds a new creature, as a potter might mold a vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of special creations."

SOPHEREUS. Let us see about this. Let us discard all idea of the source from which Moses received his information of the occurrences which he relates, and put his account upon the same level with Plato's description of the origin of animals, and with the Darwinian or Spencerian theory of that origin; regarding all three of them, that is to say, as mere hypotheses. Whatever may be the supposed conflict between the Mosaic account of the creation and the conclusions of geologists concerning the periods during which the earth may have become formed as we now find it, the question is, on the one hand, whether the Hebrew historian's account of the process of creation is a conception substantially the same as that at which we should have arrived from a study of Nature if we had never had that account transmitted to us from a period when the traditions of mankind were taking the shapes in which they have reached us from different sources; or whether, on the other hand, it is so "grossly anthropomorphic" and absurd that it is not worthy of any consideration as an occurrence that it will bear the slightest test of scientific scrutiny. Let any one take the Mosaic narrative, and, divesting himself of all influence of supposed inspiration or divine authority speaking through the chosen servant of God, and disregarding the meaning of those obscure statements which divide the stages of the work into the first and the second "day," etc., let him follow out the order in which the Creator is said by Moses to have acted. He will find in the narrative an immense condensation, highly figurative expressions, and many elliptical passages. But he will also find that the Creator is described as proceeding in the exertion of his omnipotent power in a manner which we should be very likely to deduce from a study of his works without this narrative. We have, first, the reduction of the earth from its chaotic condition--"without form and void"--to the separation of its elemental substances; then the creation of light; the separation of earth and water; the productive capacity of the dry land; the establishment of the vegetable kingdom, each product "after its kind"; the formation of the heavenly bodies as lights in the firmament, to make the division of day and night, seasons and years. It is obviously immaterial, so far as this order of the work is concerned, down to the stage when the formation of the first animals took place, in what length of time this first stage of the work was accomplished; whether it was done by an Omnipotence that could speak things into existence by a word, or whether the process was carried on through periods of time of which we can have no measure, and by the operation of infinitely slow-moving agencies selected and employed for the accomplishment of a certain result. Confining our attention to the first stage of the work as we find it described, we have the formation of the earth, light, air, the heavenly bodies, alternations of day and night, seasons and years, and the vegetable kingdom, before any animal creation. We then come to the formation of animals which are to inhabit this convenient abode, and which are described as taking place in the following order: first the water animals, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field, "each after its kind"; then, and finally, the creation of man. Respecting his creation, we are told that it was the purpose of the Almighty to make a being after a very different "image" from that of any other creature on the earth; and whatever may be the true interpretation of the language employed, whether man was created literally "in our image, after our likeness," or according to an image and a likeness of which his Creator had conceived, there can be no doubt that what Moses described as the purpose of God was to make a being differing absolutely from all the other animals by a broad line of demarkation which is perfectly discoverable through all the resemblances that obtain between him and all the other living creatures. To this new being there was given, we are told, dominion over all the other animals, and the fruits of the earth were assigned to him for food; he was formed out of the dust of the earth, the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils, and he became "a living soul." Let us now see if this statement of the creation of man is so "grossly anthropomorphic" as is supposed. You are aware that Buffon, who was certainly no mean naturalist or philosopher, and who was uninfluenced by the idea that the book of Genesis was an inspired production, reached the conclusion that a study of nature renders the order of man's creation as described by Moses a substantially true hypothesis. "We are persuaded," said Buffon, "independently of the authority of the sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to wield the scepter of the earth when that earth was found worthy of his sway."[112] You evolutionists will say that this may be very true upon your hypothesis of his gradual development out of other animals, through untold periods of time. But now let us see whether Moses was so grossly unscientific, upon the supposition that God created man as he describes. If man was created, or molded, by the Deity, he was formed, in his physical structure, out of matter; and all matter may be figuratively and even scientifically described as "the dust of the earth," or as "clay," or by any other term that will give an idea of a substance that was not spirit. If Moses had said that man's body was formed out of the constituent elements of matter, or some of them, he would have said nothing that a modern believer in special creations need shrink from, for he would have stated an indisputable fact. He stated in one form of expression the very same fact that a modern scientist would have to state in another form, whatever might have been the mode, or the power, or the time in or by which the constituent elements were brought together and molded into the human body. So that the derisive figure of God taking clay and molding it into the human form, as a potter would mold a vessel, does not strike me as presenting any proof that the account given by Moses is so destitute of scientific accuracy, or as rendering his statements a ridiculous hypothesis.

KOSMICOS. Well, then, it comes at last to this: that you consider the substance of the Mosaic account of the creation, independent of its authority as an inspired statement, to be entitled to stand as a hypothesis against the explanations given to us by the scientists of the great modern school of evolution, notwithstanding those explanations are in one form or another now accepted by the most advanced scientific thinkers and explorers?

SOPHEREUS. I certainly do. But understand me explicitly. As, after my study of the probable origin of the solar system, and our discussion of that subject, I expressed my conclusion that the phenomena called for and manifested the exercise of a formative will by some acts of special creation, so now, in reference to the animal kingdom, I have reached the same conclusion, for reasons which I have endeavored to assign. I can see that the operation of the process which you call evolution may have caused certain limited modifications in the structure and habits of life of different animals; or rather, that limited modifications of structure and habits of life have occurred, and hence you deduce what you call the process of evolution. But to me this entirely fails to account for, or to suggest a rational explanation of, the distinct existence of species, their division into male and female, and the establishment of the laws of procreation by which individuals of a species are multiplied--a process which does not admit of the production of individuals of an essentially different type from the parents, and which, so far as we have any means of knowledge, has never commenced in one species and ended in another, in any length of time that can be imagined, or through any series of modifications.

KOSMICOS. Let us postpone the farther discussion of the origin of species to some future time, when I will endeavor to convince you that both Darwin and Spencer have satisfactorily accounted for them.

SOPHEREUS. Very well; I shall be glad to be enlightened.

THE SINGLE-CELL HYPOTHESIS.

NOTE.--It will readily occur to the reader that Sophereus might most pertinently have asked: Whence did the primal cell originate? It is conceived of as the ultimate unit of organizable matter; invisible to the naked eye, perhaps incapable of being reached by the microscope, but consisting of an infinitesimally small portion of matter, more or less organized in itself, and possessing a capacity to unite with itself other minute particles of matter, and so to form larger aggregates of molecules. The hypothesis is, that this single cell has given origin to all animated organisms, and, through an indefinite series of such organisms, to the human race. The single cell, then, having this capacity and this extraordinary destiny, was either the first and only one of its kind, or it was one of many of the same kind. If we select any supposed point of time in the far antecedent history of matter, the question may be asked whether there existed at first but one such cell, or many. If there were many of such cells, how came they to exist? If one only was selected out of many, for this extraordinary destiny of giving origin to all the animated organisms, who or what made the selection for this transcendent office of the one cell? If there never was but one such cell, how did it come to exist? As these questions are clearly pertinent, the effort to answer them inevitably conducts us to the idea of creation, or else to the conclusion that the numerous cells and the selected one had no origin; that the selection was not made, but was accidental; or that the one cell, if there never was but one, was not a created thing. Human reason can not accept this conclusion.

FOOTNOTES:

[106] "Biology," i, p. 482.

[107] "Biology," i, Appendix, pp. 483, 484.

[108] "Biology," i, p. 408.

[109] "Biology," i, pp. 409, 410.

[110] "Biology," i, p. 482.

[111] Now contained in "Biology," i, Appendix.

[112] Quoted by M. Guizot in his "History of France," vol. vi, p. 328. Guizot observes that Buffon was "absolutely unshackled by any religious prejudice," and that he "involuntarily recurred to the account given in Genesis."