Chapter II: MODERN, or Period of Man and Modern Mammals, including (2)

"On a secluded lake in one of the Hebrides, I observed a dun-diver, or female of the red-breasted merganser (_Mergus serrator_), with her brood of young ducklings. On giving chase in the boat we soon found that the young, although not above a fortnight old, had such extraordinary powers of swimming and diving that it was almost impossible to capture them. The distance they went under water, and the unexpected places in which they emerged, baffled all our efforts for a considerable time. At last one of the brood made for the shore, with the object of hiding among the grass and heather which fringed the margin of the lake. We pursued it as closely as we could; but when the little bird gained the shore, our boat was still about twenty yards off. Long drought had left a broad margin of small flat stones and mud between the water and the usual bank. I saw the little bird run up about a couple of yards from the water, and then suddenly disappear. Knowing what was likely to be enacted, I kept my eye fixed on the spot; and when the boat was run upon the beach, I proceeded to find and pick up the chick. But, on reaching the place of disappearance, no sign of the young merganser was to be seen. The closest scrutiny, with the certain knowledge that it was there, failed to enable me to detect it. Proceeding cautiously forward, I soon became convinced that I had already overshot the mark; and, on turning round, it was only to see the bird rise like an apparition from the stones and, dashing past the stranded boat, regain the lake, where, having now recovered its wind, it instantly dived and disappeared. The tactical skill of the whole of this manoeuvre, and the success with which it was executed, were greeted with loud cheers from the whole party; and our admiration was not diminished when we remembered that, some two weeks before that time, the little performer had been coiled up inside the shell of an egg, and that about a month before it was apparently nothing but a mass of albumen and of fatty oils."

On this the duke very properly remarks that any idea of training and experience is absolutely excluded, because it "assumes the pre-existence of the very powers for which it professes to account." He then turns to the idea that animals are merely automata or "machines." Here it is to be observed that the essential idea of a machine is twofold. First, it is a merely mechanical structure put together to do certain things; secondly, it must be related to a contriver and constructor. If we think proper to call the young merganser a machine, we must admit both of these characters, more especially as the bird is in every way a more marvellous machine than any of human construction. He concludes his notice of this case with the following suggestive words:

"This is a method of escape which cannot be resorted to successfully except by birds whose coloring is adapted to the purpose by a close assimilation with the coloring of surrounding objects. The old bird would not have been concealed on the same ground, and would never itself resort to the same method of escape. The young, therefore, cannot have been instructed in it by the method of example. But the small size of the chick, together with its obscure and curiously-mottled coloring, are specially adapted to this mode of concealment. The young of all birds which breed upon the ground are provided with a garment in such perfect harmony with surrounding effects of light as to render this manoeuvre easy. It depends, however, wholly for its success upon absolute stillness. The slightest motion at once attracts the eye of any enemy which is searching for the young. And this absolute stillness must be preserved amidst all the emotions of fear and terror which the close approach of the object of alarm must, and obviously does, inspire. Whence comes this splendid, even if it be unconscious, faith in the sufficiency of a defence which it must require such nerve and strength of will to practise? No movement, not even the slightest, though the enemy should seem about to trample on it,--such is the terrible requirement of nature, and by the child of nature implicitly obeyed. Here, again, beyond all question, we have an instinct as much born with the creature as the harmonious tinting of its plumage, the external furnishing being inseparably united with the internal furnishing of mind which enables the little creature in very truth to 'walk by faith, and not by sight.' Is this automatism? Is this machinery? Yes, undoubtedly, in the sense explained before--that the instinct has been given to the bird in precisely the same sense in which its structure has been given to it; so that anterior to all experience, and without the aid of instruction or of example, it is inspired to act in this manner on the appropriate occasion arising."

Lastly, the reason of man himself is an actual illustration of mind in nature. Here we raise a question which should perhaps have been considered earlier: Is man himself actually a part of what we call nature? We are so accustomed to the distinction between things natural and things artificial that we are liable to overlook this essential question. Is nature the universe outside of us, containing the things that we study and which constitute our environment? Are we elevated on a pedestal, so to speak, above nature? or, on the other hand, does nature include man himself? In that haze or fog of ideas which environs modern evolutionism, it is not wonderful that this question escapes notice, and that the most contradictory utterances are given forth. Tyndall--by no means the most foggy of the agnostics--may afford an instance. He remarks respecting the philosophers of antiquity:[14] "The experiences which formed the weft and woof of their theories were drawn, not from the study of nature, but from that which lay much closer to them-the observation of man.... Their theories accordingly took an anthropomorphic form." Here we see that in the view of the writer man is distinct from and outside of nature, and so much out of harmony with it that the observation of him leads to false conclusions, stigmatized, accordingly, as "anthropomorphic." In this case man must be supernatural, and preternatural as well. But it is Tyndall's precise object to show us that there is nothing supernatural either in man or elsewhere. The contradiction is an instructive example of the delusions which sometimes pass for science.

If, with Tyndall, we are to place man outside of nature, then the human mind at once becomes to us a supernatural intelligence. But truth forbids such a conclusion. The reason of man, however beyond the intelligence of lower animals, so harmonizes with natural laws that it is evidently a part of the great unity of nature, and we can no more dissociate the mind of man from nature than from his own animal body. If we could do so, we might have ground to distrust the validity of all our conclusions as to nature, and thus to cut away the foundations of science; and what remained of philosophy and religion would be preternatural, in the bad sense of destroying the unity of nature and imperilling our confidence in the unity of the Creator himself.

In connection with this we have cause to consider the true meaning and use of two terms often hurled at theists as weapons of attack.

The word "anthropomorphic" is a term of reproach for our interpreting nature in harmony with our own thoughts or our own constitution. But if man is a part of nature, he must be a competent interpreter of it. If he is not a part of nature, then, whether we make him godlike or a demon, we have, in him, to deal with something supernatural. It is true that in a certain sense he is above nature, but not in any sense which so dissociates him from it as to prevent him from rationally thinking of it in his own thoughts and speaking of it in his own form of words. So true is this that no writers are more anthropomorphic in their modes of speaking of nature than those who most strongly denounce anthropomorphism. Even the celebrated definition of life by Herbert Spencer cannot escape this tincture. "Life," he says, "is the continuous adjustment of internal to external conditions." Now, the essence of this definition lies in the word "adjustment." But to adjust is to arrange, adapt, or fit--all purely human and intelligent actions. Nothing, therefore, could be more anthropomorphic than such a statement. As theists we need not complain of this, but surely as agnostics we should decidedly object to it.

The other word whose meaning it is necessary to consider is "supernatural," which it might be well, perhaps, to follow the example of the New Testament in avoiding altogether as a misleading term. If by supernatural we mean something outside of and above nature and natural law, there is really no such thing in the universe. There may be that which is "spiritual," as distinguished from that which is natural in the material sense; but the spiritual has its own laws, which are not in conflict with those of the natural. Even God cannot in this sense be said to be supernatural, since his will is necessarily in conformity with natural law. Yet this absurd sense of the term "supernatural" is constantly forced upon us by so-called advanced thinkers, and employed as an argument against theism. The only true sense in which any being or any thing can be said to be supernatural is that in which we use it with reference to the original creation of matter and force and the institution of natural law. The power which can do these things is above nature, but not outside of it; for matter, energy, and law must be included in, and in harmony with, the Creative Will.

To return from this digression. If man is a part of nature, we can see how it is that he conforms to natural law, not merely in his bodily organization and capabilities, but in his mind and habits of thought, so that he can comprehend nature and employ it for his purposes. Even his moral and his religious ideas must in this case be conformed to his conditions of existence as a part of nature. We have here also the surest guarantee of the correctness of our conclusions respecting the laws of nature. In like manner, there is here a sense in which man is above nature, because he is placed at the head of it. In another sense he is inferior to the aggregate of nature, because, as Agassiz well puts it, there is in the universe a "wealth of endowment of the most comprehensive mental manifestations which man can never fully comprehend."

Still further, if the universe has been created, then, just as its laws must be in harmony with the will of the Creator, so must our mental constitution; and man, as a reasoning and conscious being, must be made in the image of his Maker. If we discard the idea of an intelligent Creator, then mind and all its powers must be potentially in the atoms of matter or in the forces which move them; but this is a mere form of words signifying nothing, or, if it has any significance, this is contrary to science, since it bestows on matter properties which experiment does not show it to possess. Thus the existence of man is not only a positive proof of the presence of mind in nature, but affords the strongest possible proof of a higher Creative Mind, from which that of man emanates. The power which originated and sustains the universe must be at least as much greater and more intelligent than man as the universe is greater than man in the power and the contrivance which it indicates. Thus we return to the Pauline idea--that the power and the divinity of the Creator are shown by the things he has made. Legitimate science can say nothing more, and can say nothing less.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] As _Piloceras_, for example.

[13] I am indebted for these figures to my friend Dr. S. P. Robins of Montreal.

[14] Belfast Address.

LECTURE VI.

SCIENCE AND REVELATION.

Thus far we have proceeded solely on scientific grounds, and have seen that Monism and Agnosticism fail to account for nature. We may therefore feel ourselves justified in assuming, as the only promising solution of the enigma of existence, the being of a Divine Creator. But this does not wholly exhaust the relations of science to religion. When Science has led us into the presence of the Creator, she has brought us to the threshold of religion, and there she suggests the possibility that the spirit of man may have other relations with God beyond those established by merely physical law. Science may venture to say: "If all nature expresses the will of the Creator as carried out in his laws, if the instinct of lower animals is an inspiration of God, should we not expect that there will be laws of a higher order regulating the free moral nature of man, and that there will be possibilities of the reason of man communicating with, or receiving aid from, the Supreme Intelligence?" Science undoubtedly suggests this much to our reason, and the suggestion has commended itself to most of the greater and clearer minds that have studied nature, whatever their religious beliefs or their want of them.

It may thus be allowable for us, without encroaching on the domain of theology, to inquire to what extent scientific principles and scientific habits of thought agree with or diverge from the religious beliefs of men. I do not propose to enter here into the inquiry as to the accordance of the Bible with the earth's geological history, or that of its representations of nature with the facts as held by science. These subjects I have fully discussed in other works, which are sufficiently accessible.[15] I shall merely refer to certain general relations of science to the probability of a divine revelation, and to the character of such revelation.

As to what is termed natural religion, enough has already been said. If nature testifies to the being of God, and if the reason and the conscience implanted in man, "accusing and excusing" one another, constitute a law of God within him, regulating in some degree his relations to God and to his fellow-men, we have a sufficient basis for the natural religion which more or less actuates the conduct of every human being. The case is different with revealed religion. Here we have an apparent interference on the part of the Creator with his own work, an additional intervention in one department to effect results which elsewhere are worked out by the ordinary operation of natural law. In revelation, therefore, we may have something, quite out of the ordinary course of nature. On the other hand, it is possible that even here we may have something more in harmony with natural laws than at first sight appears.

It cannot truly be said that a revelation from God to man is improbable from the point of view of science. Physical laws and brute instincts are in their nature unvarying, and neither require nor admit of intervention. But the reason and the will of free agents are in this respect different. Though necessarily under law, they can judge and decide between one law and another, and can even evade or counteract one law by employing another, or can resolve to be disobedient. Rational free agents may thus enter into courses not in harmony with their own interests or their relations to their surroundings. Hence, so soon as it pleased God to introduce in any part of the universe a free rational will gifted with certain powers over lower nature, only two courses were possible: either God must leave such free agent wholly to his own devices, making him a god on a small scale, and so far practically abdicating in his favor, or he must place him under some law, and this not of the nature of mere physical compulsion--which, on the hypothesis, would be inadmissible--but in the nature of requirements addressed to his reason and his conscience. Hence we might infer _a priori_ the probability of some sort of communication between God and man. Further, did we find such rational creature beginning, on his introduction into the world, to mar the face of nature, to inflict unnecessary suffering or injury on lower creatures or on members of his own species, to disregard the moral instincts implanted in him, or to disown the God who had created him, we should still more distinctly perceive the need of revelation. This would in such case be no more at variance with science or with natural law than the education given by wise parents to their children, or the laws promulgated by a wise government for the guidance of its subjects, both of which are, and are intended to be, interventions affecting the ordinary course of affairs.

Of necessity, all this proceeds on the supposition that there is a God. But in certain discussions now prevalent as to the "origin of religion," it is customary quietly to assume that there is no God to be known, and consequently that religion must be a mere gratuitous invention of man. It is not too much to say, however, that any scientific conception of the unity of nature and of man's place in it must forbid our making atheistic assumptions. If man were a mere product of blind, unintelligent chance, the idea of a God was not likely ever to have occurred to him, still less to have become the common property of all races of men. In like manner, there is no scientific basis for the assumption that man originated in a low and bestial type, and that his religion developed itself by degrees from the instincts of lower animals, from which man is supposed to have originated. Such suppositions are unscientific (1) because no ancient remains of such low forms of man are known; (2) because the lowest types of man now extant can be proved to be degraded descendants of higher types; (3) because, if man had originated in a low condition, this would not have diminished the probability of a divine revelation being given to promote his elevation.

On the other hand, it is a sad reality that man tends to sink from high ideal morality and reason into debasing vices and gross superstitions that are not natural, but which, on the contrary, place him at variance with natural as well as with moral law. Thus the actual and the possible debasement of man, instead of proving his bestial origin, only increases the need of a divine revelation for his improvement.

But, supposing the need of a revelation to be admitted, other questions might arise as to its mode. Here the anticipations of science would be guided by the analogy of nature. We should suppose that the revelation would be made through the medium of the beings it was intended to affect. It would be a revelation impressed on human minds and expressed in human language. It might be in the form of laws with penalties attached, or in that of persuasions addressed to the reason and the sentiments. It would probably be gradual and progressive--at first simple, and later more complex and complete. It would thus become historical, and would be related to the stages of that progress which it was intended to promote. It would necessarily be incomplete, more especially in its earlier portions, and it would always be under the necessity of more or less rudely representing divine and heavenly things by earthly figures. Being human in its medium, it would have the characteristics and the idiosyncrasies of man to a certain extent, except in so far as it might please God to communicate it directly through a perfect humanity identified with divinity, or through higher and more perfect intelligences than man.

We should further expect that such revelation would not conflict with what is good in natural religion or in the natural emotions and sentiments of man; that it would not contradict natural facts or laws; and that it would take advantage of the familiar knowledge of mankind in order to illustrate such higher spiritual truths as cannot be expressed in human language. Such a revelation would of necessity require that we should receive it in faith, but faith resting on evidence derived from things known, and from the analogy of the revelation itself with what God reveals in nature. It would be no valid objection to such a revelation to say that it is anthropomorphic, since, in the nature of the case, it must come through man and be suited to man; nor would it be any valid objection that it is figurative, for truth as to spiritual realities must always be expressed in terms of known phenomena of the natural world.

It has been objected, though not on behalf of science, that such a revelation, if it related to things discoverable by man, would be useless, while, if it related to things not discoverable, it could not be understood. This is, however, a mere play upon words, and reminds one of the doctrine attributed to the Arabian caliph with reference to the Alexandrian Library: If its books contain what is written in the Koran, they are useless; if anything different, they are injurious; therefore let them be destroyed. It would indeed be subversive of all education, human as well as divine; for the essence of this is to take advantage of what the pupil knows, and to build on it acquirements which, unaided, he could not have attained.

But, though all may agree as to the possibility, or even the probability, of a revelation, many may dissent from particular dogmas contained in or implied by the particular form of revelation in which Christians believe. It is true that this dissent is based, not so much on science as on alleged opposition to human sentiments; but it is more or less supposed to be reinforced by scientific facts and laws. Of doctrines supposed to be objectionable from these points of view, I may name the reality of miracles and of prophecy; the efficacy of prayer and of atonement or sacrifice; and the permanence of the consequences of sin. Admitting that these doctrines are not original discoveries of man, but revealed to him, and that they are not founded on science, it may nevertheless be easily shown that they are in harmony with the analogy of nature in a greater degree than either their friends or their opponents usually suppose.

Miracles--or "signs," as they are more properly called in the New Testament--are sometimes stated to imply suspension of natural law. If they were such, and were alleged to be produced by any power short of that of the Lawmaker himself, they would be incredible; and if asserted to be by his power, they would be so far incredible as implying changeableness, and therefore imperfection. It may be affirmed, however, of the miracles recorded in Scripture, that they do not require suspension of natural laws, but merely modifications of the operation and peculiar interactions of these. Many of them, indeed, profess to be merely unusual natural effects arranged for special purposes, and depending for their miraculous character on their appositeness in time to certain circumstances. This is the case, for instance, with the plagues of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the supply of quails to the Israelites. Miracles, whether performed as attestations of revelation or as works of mercy or of judgment, belong to the domain of natural law, but to those operations of it which are beyond human control or foresight. Their nature in this respect we can understand by considering the many operations possible to civilized men which may appear miraculous to a savage, and which, from his point of view, may be amply sufficient as evidence of the superior knowledge and power of him who performs them. That one man should be able instantaneously to transmit his thoughts to another situated a thousand miles away was, until the invention of the electric telegraph, impossible. The actual performance of such an operation would have been as much a miracle as the communication of thought from one planet to another would be now. But if man can thus work miracles, why should not the Almighty do so, when higher moral ends are to be served by apparent interference with the ordinary course of matter and force? Admitting the existence of God, physical science can have nothing to say against miracles. On the contrary, it can assure us of the probability that if God reveals himself to us at all by natural means, such revelation will probably be miraculous.

If the possibility of God communicating with his rational creatures be conceded, then the objections taken to prophecy lose all value. If anything known to God and unknown to man can be revealed, things past and future may be revealed as well as things present. Science abounds in prophecy. All through the geological history there have been prophetic types, mute witnesses to coming facts. Minute disturbances of heavenly bodies, altogether inappreciable by the ordinary observer, enable the astronomer to predict the discovery of new planets. A line in a spectrum, without significance to the uninitiated, foretells a new element. The merest fragment, sufficient only for microscopic examination, enables the palæontologist to describe to incredulous auditors some organism altogether unknown in its entire structures. What possible reason can there be for excluding such indications of the past and the future from a revelation made by him who knows perfectly the end from the beginning, and to whom the future results of human actions to the end of time must be as evident as the simplest train of causes and effects is to us? It is Huxley, I think, who says that if the laws affecting human conduct were fully known to us, it would have been possible to calculate a thousand years ago the exact state of affairs in Britain at this moment. Probably such a calculation might be too complicated for us, even if the data were given; but it cannot be too complicated for the Divine Mind, and possibly might even be mastered by some intelligences in the universe subject to God, but higher than man.

That there should be suffering at all in the universe is, no doubt, a mysterious thing; but the fact is evident, and certain benefits which flow from it are also evident. Indeed, we fail to see how a world of sentient beings could continue to exist, unless the penalty of suffering were attached to natural law. Further, all such penalties are, in consequence of the permanence of matter and the conservation of force, necessarily permanent, unless in cases where some reaction sets in under the influence of some other law or force than that which brings the penalty. Even in this case, the effect of any violation of any natural law is eternal and infinite. No sane man doubts this in the case of what may be called sins against natural laws; but many, with strange inconsistency, doubt and disbelieve it in the higher domain of morals. If we were for a moment to admit the materialist's doctrine that appetites, passions, and sentiments are merely effects of physical changes in nerve-cells, then we should be shut up to the conclusion that the effects of any derangement of these must be perpetual and coextensive with the universe. Why should it be otherwise in things belonging to the domains of reason and conscience? Further, if natural laws are the expression of the will of the Creator, and if these unfailingly assert themselves, and must do so, in order to the permanence of the material universe, would not analogy teach that, unless the Supreme Being is wholly bound up in material processes, and is altogether indifferent to moral considerations, the same regularity and constancy must prevail in the spiritual world?

This question is closely connected with the ideas of sacrifice and atonement. Nothing is more certain in physics than that action and reaction are equal, and that no effect can be produced without an adequate cause. It results from this that every action must involve a corresponding expenditure of matter and force. Anything else would be pure magic; which, we know, is nonsense. Thus every intervention on behalf of others must imply a corresponding sacrifice. We cannot raise a fallen child or aid the poor or the hungry without a sacrifice of power or means proportioned to the result. So, in the moral world, degradation cannot be remedied nor punishment averted without corresponding sacrifice; and this, it may be, on the part of those who are in no degree blameworthy. If men have fallen into moral evil and God proposes to elevate them from this condition, this must be done by some corresponding expenditure of force, else we have one of those miracles which would imply a subversion of law of the most portentous kind. The moral stimulus given by the sacrifice itself is a secondary consideration to this great law of equivalency of cause and effect. There is, therefore, a perfect conformity to natural analogy in the Christian idea of the substitution of the pure and perfect Man for the sinner, as well as in that of the putting forth of the divine power manifested in him to raise and restore the fallen.

The efficacy of prayer is one of the last things that a scientific naturalist should question, if he is at the same time a theist. Prayer is itself one of the laws of nature, and one of those that show in the finest way how higher laws override and modify those that are lower. The young ravens, we are told, cry to God; and so they literally do; and their cry is answered, for the parent-ravens, cruel and voracious, under the impulse of a God-given instinct range over land and water and exhaust every energy that they may satisfy that cry. The bleat of the lamb will not only meet with response from the mother-ewe, but will even exercise a physiological effect in promoting the secretion of milk in her udder. The mother who hears the cry of her child, crushed under some weighty thing which has fallen on it, will never pause to consider that it is the law of gravitation which has caused the accident; she will defy the law of gravitation, and if necessary will pray any one who is near to help her. Prayer, in short, is a natural power so important that without it the young of most of the higher animals would have little chance of life; and it triumphs over almost every other natural law which may stand in its way. If, then, irrational animals can overcome the forces of dead nature in answer to prayer; if man himself, in answer to the cry of distress, can do things in ordinary circumstances almost impossible,--how foolish is it to suppose that this link of connection cannot subsist between God and his rational offspring! One wonders that any man of science should for a moment entertain such an idea, if, indeed, he has any belief whatever in the existence of a God.

There is another aspect of prayer insisted on in revelation on which the observation of nature throws some light. In the case of animals, there must be a certain relation between the one that prays and the one that answers--a filial relation, perhaps--and in any case there must be a correspondence between the language of prayer and the emotions of the creature appealed to. Except in a few cases where human training has modified instinct, the cry of one species of animal awakes no response in another of a different kind. So prayer to God must be in the Spirit of God. It must also be the cry of real need, and with reference to needs which have his sympathy. There is a prayer which never reaches God, or which is even an abomination to him; and there is prayer prompted by the indwelling Spirit of God, which cannot be uttered in human words, yet will surely be answered. All this is so perfectly in accordance with natural analogies, that it strikes one acquainted with nature as almost a matter of course.

In tracing these analogies, I do not desire to imply that natural science can itself teach us religion, or that it is to afford the test of what is true in spiritual things. I have merely wished to direct attention to obvious analogies between things natural and things spiritual, which show that there is no such antagonism between science and revelation as many suppose, and that, in grand essential laws and principles, it may be true that earth is

"But the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to the other like more than on earth is thought."

FOOTNOTE:

[15] More especially in _The Origin of the World_ (London and New York, 1877).

THE END.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious typographical errors were repaired. Hyphenation variants used equally were retained (back-bone and backbone, thread-like and threadlike).

Original had chapter title pages before the start of each chapter, resulting in duplication of chapter titles. Those duplications have been removed.

Original contents erroneously indicated Lecture VI began on page 217. This has been corrected to page 219.