Chapter XI: The Argument From Design (2)

25. But perhaps there is in the minds of many persons, a sentiment connected with this regular and symmetrical form of the heavenly bodies; that being thus beautifully formed and finished they must have been the objects of especial care to the Creator. These regular globes, these nearly circular orbits, these families of satellites, they too so regular in their movements; this ring of Saturn; all the adjustments by which the planetary motions are secured from going wrong, as the profoundest researches into the mechanics of the universe show;--all these things seem to indicate a peculiar attention bestowed by the Maker on each part of the machine. So much of law and order, of symmetry and beauty in every part, implies, it may be thought, that every part has been framed with a view to some use;--that its symmetry and its beauty are the marks of some noble purpose.

26. To reply to this argument, so far as it is requisite for us to do so, we must recur to what we have already said; that though we see in many parts of the universe, inorganic as well as organic, marks which we cannot mistake, of design and purpose; yet that this design and purpose are often effected by laws which are of a much wider sweep than the design, so far as we can trace its bearing. These laws, besides answering the purpose, produce many other effects, in which we can see no purpose. We have now to observe further that these laws, thus ranging widely through the universe, and working everywhere, as if the Creator delighted in the generality of the law, independently of its special application, do often produce innumerable results of beauty and symmetry, as if the Creator delighted in beauty and symmetry, independently of the purpose answered.

27. Thus, to exemplify this reflection: the powers of aggregation and cohesion, which hold together the parts of solid bodies, as metals and stones, salts and ice,--which solidify matter, in short,--we can easily see, to be necessary, in order to the formation and preservation of solid terrestrial bodies. They are requisite, in order that man may have the firm earth to stand upon, and firm materials to use. But let us observe, what a wonderful and beautiful variety of phenomena grows out of this law, with no apparent bearing upon that which seems to us its main purpose. The power of aggregation of solid bodies is, in fact, the force of crystallization. It binds together the particles of bodies by molecular forces, which not only hold the particles together, but are exerted in special directions, which form triangles, squares, hexagons, and the like. And hence we have all the variety of crystalline forms which sparkle in gems, ores, earths, pyrites, blendes; and which, when examined by the crystallographers, are found to be an inexhaustible field of the play of symmetrical complexity. The diamond, the emerald, the topaz, have got each its peculiar kind of symmetry. Gold and other metals have, for the basis of their forms, the cube, but run from this into a vastly greater variety of regular solids than ever geometer dreamt of. Some single species of minerals, as calc-spar, present hundreds of forms, all rigorously regular, and have been alone the subject of volumes. Ice crystallizes by the same laws as other solid bodies; and our Arctic voyagers have sometimes relieved the weariness of their sojourn in those regions, by collecting some of the innumerable forms, resembling an endless collection of hexagonal flowers, sporting into different shapes, which are assumed by flakes of snow[7]. In these and many other ways, the power of crystallization produces an inexhaustible supply of examples of symmetrical beauty. And what are we to conceive to be the object and purpose of this? As we have said, that part of the purpose which is intelligible to us is, that we have here a force holding together the particles of bodies, so as to make them solid. But all these pretty shapes add nothing to this intelligible use. Why then are they there? They are there, it would seem, for their own sake;--because they are pretty;--symmetry and beauty are there on their own account; or because they are universal adjuncts of the general laws by which the creator works. Or rather we may say, combining different branches of our knowledge, that crystallization is the mark and accompaniment of chemical composition: and that as chemical composition takes place according to definite numbers, so crystalline aggregation takes place according to definite forms. The symmetrical relations of space in crystals correspond to the simple relations of number in synthesis; and thus, because there is rule, there is regularity, and regularity assumes the form of beauty.

28. This, which thus shows itself throughout the mineral kingdom, or, speaking more widely and truly, throughout the whole range of chemical composition, is still more manifest in the vegetable domain. All the vast array of flowers, so infinitely various, and so beautiful in their variety, are the results of a few general laws; and show, in the degree of their symmetry, the alternate operation of one law and another. The rose, the lily, the cowslip, the violet, differ in something of the same way, in which the crystalline forms of the several gems differ. Their parts are arranged in fives or in threes, in pentagons or in hexagons, and in these regular forms, one part or another is expanded or contracted, rendered conspicuous by color or by shape, so as to produce all the multiplicity of beauty which the florist admires. Or rather, in the eye of the philosophical botanist, the whole of the structure of plants, with all their array of stems and leaves, blossoms and fruits, is but the manifestation of one Law; and all these members of the vegetable form, are, in their natures, the same, developed more or less in this way or in that. The daisy consists of a close cluster of flowers of which each has, in its form, the rudiments of the valerian. The peablossom is a rose, with some of its petals expanded into butterfly-like wings. Even without changing the species, this general law leads to endless changes. The garden-rose is the common hedge-rose with innumerable filaments changed into glowing petals. By the addition of whorl to whorl, of vegetable coronet over coronet, green and colored, broad and narrow, filmy and rigid, every plant is generated, and the glory of the field and of the garden, of the jungle and of the forest, is brought forth in all its magnificence. Here, then, we have an immeasurable wealth of beauty and regularity, brought to view by the operation of a single law. And to what use? What purpose do these beauties answer? What is the object for which the lilies of the field are clothed so gaily and gorgeously? Some plants, indeed, are subservient to the use of animals and of man: but how small is the number in which we can trace this, as an intelligent purpose of their existence! And does it not, in fact, better express the impression which the survey of this province of nature suggests to us, to say, that they grow because the Creator willed that they should grow? Their vegetable life was an object of His care and contrivance, as well as animal and human life. And they are beautiful, also because He willed that they should be so:--because He delights in producing beauty;--and, as we have further tried to make it appear, because He acts by general law, and law produces beauty. Is not such a tendency here apparent, as a part of the general scheme of Creation?

29. We have already attempted to show, that in the structure of animals, especially that large class best known to us, vertebrate animals, there is also a general plan which, so far as we can see, goes beyond the circuit of the special adaptation of each animal to its mode of living: and is a rule of creative action, in addition to the rule that the parts shall be subservient to an intelligible purpose of animal life. We have noticed several phenomena in the animal kingdom, where parts and features appear, rudimentary and inert, discharging no office in their economy, and speaking to us, not of purpose, but of law:--consistent with an end which is visible, but seemingly the results of a rule whose end is in itself.

30. And do we not, in innumerable cases, see beauties of color and form, texture and lustre, which suggests to us irresistibly the belief that beauty and regular form are rules of the Creative agency, even when they seem to us, looking at the creation for uses only, idle and wanton expenditure of beauty and regularity. To what purpose are the host of splendid circles which decorate the tail of the peacock, more beautiful, each of them, than Saturn with his rings? To what purpose the exquisite textures of microscopic objects, more curiously regular than anything which the telescope discloses? To what purpose the gorgeous colors of tropical birds and insects, that live and die where human eye never approaches to admire them? To what purpose the thousands of species of butterflies with the gay and varied embroidery of their microscopic plumage, of which one in millions, if seen at all, only draws the admiration of the wandering schoolboy? To what purpose the delicate and brilliant markings of shells, which live, generation after generation, in the sunless and sightless depths of the ocean? Do not all these examples, to which we might add countless others, (for the world, so far as human eye has scanned it, is full of them,) prove that beauty and regularity are universal features of the work of Creation, in all its parts, small and great: and that we judge in a way contrary to a vast range of analogy, which runs through the whole of the Universe, when we infer that, because the objects which are presented to our contemplation are beautiful in aspect and regular in form, they must, in each case, be means for some special end, of those which we commonly fix upon, as the main ends of the Creation, the support and advantage of animals or of man?

31. If this be so, then the beautiful and regular objects which the telescope reveals to us; Jupiter and his Moons, Saturn and his Rings, the most regular of the Double Stars, Clusters and Nebulae; cannot reasonably be inferred, because they are beautiful and regular, to be also fields of life, or scenes of thought. They may be, as to the poet's eye they often appear, the gems of the robe of Night, the flowers of the celestial fields. Like gems and like flowers, they are beautiful and regular, because they are brought into being by vast and general laws. These laws, although, in the mind of the Creator, they have their sufficient reason, as far as they extend, may have, in no other region than that which we inhabit, the reason which we seek to discover everywhere, the sustentation of a life like ours. That we should connect with the existence of such laws, the existence of Mind like our own mind, is most natural; and, as we might easily show, is justifiable, reasonable, even necessary. But that we should suppose the result of such laws are so connected with Mind, that wherever the laws gather matter into globes, and whirl it round the central body, _there_ is also a local seat of minds like ours; is an assumption altogether unwarranted; and is, without strong evidence, of which we have as yet no particle, quite visionary.

32. But finally, it may be said that by this our view of the universe, we diminish the greatness of the work of creation, and the majesty of the Creator. Such a view appears to represent the other planets as mere fragments, which have flown off in the fabrication of this our earth, and of the mechanism by which it answers its purpose. Instead of a vast array of completed worlds, we have one world, surrounded by abortive worlds and inert masses. Instead of perfection everywhere, we have imperfection everywhere, except at one spot; if even there the workmanship be perfect.

33. To this, the reply is contained in what we have already said: but we may add, that it cannot be wise or right, to prop up our notions of God's greatness, by physical doctrines which will not bear discussion. God's greatness has no need of man's inventions for its support. The very conviction that the Creation must be such as to confirm our belief in the greatness of God, shows that such a belief is more deeply seated than any special views of the structure of the universe, and will triumphantly survive the removal of error in such views. We may add, that till within a few thousand years, this earth, compared with what it now is, having upon it no intelligent beings, might be regarded as an abortive world; that all the parts of the solar system which we can best scrutinize, the moon, and meteoric stones, are inert masses; and further, that there is everywhere the perfection which results from the operation of law, and that _that_ seems to be the perfection with which the Creator is contented.

34. And perhaps, when the view of the universe which we here present has become familiar, we may be led to think that the aspect which it gives to the mode of working of the Creator, is sufficiently grand and majestic. Instead of manufacturing a multitude of worlds on patterns more or less similar, He has been employed in one great work, which we cannot call imperfect, since it includes and suggests all that we can conceive of perfection. It may be that all the other bodies, which we can discover in the universe, show the greatness of this work, and are rolled into forms of symmetry and order, into masses of light and splendor, by the vast whirl which the original creative energy imparted to the luminous element. The planets and the stars are the lumps which have flown from the potter's wheel of the Great Worker;--the shred-coils which, in the working, sprang from His mighty lathe:--the sparks which darted from His awful anvil when the solar system lay incandescent thereon;--the curls of vapor which rose from the great cauldron of creation when its elements were separated. If even these superfluous portions of the material are marked with universal traces of regularity and order, this shows that universal rules are his implements, and that Order is the first and universal Law of the heavenly work.

35. And, that we may see the full dignity of this work, we must always recollect that Man is a part of it, and the crowning part. The workmanship which is employed on mere matter is, after all, of small account, in the eyes of intellectual and moral creatures, when compared with the creation and government of intellectual and moral creatures. The majesty of God does not reside in planets and stars, in orbs and systems; which are, after all, only stone and vapor, materials and means. If, as we believe, God has not only made the material world, but has made and governs man, we need not regret to have to depress any portion of the material world below the place which we had previously assigned to it; for, when all is done, the material world _must_ be put in an inferior place, compared with the world of mind. If there be a World of Mind, _that_, according to all that we can conceive, must have been better worth creating, must be more worthy to exist, as an object of care in the eyes of the Creator, than thousands and millions of stars and planets, even if they were occupied by a myriad times as many species of brute animals as have lived upon the earth since its vivification. In saying this, we are only echoing the common voice of mankind, uttered, as so often it is, by the tongues of poets. One such speaks thus of stellar systems:

Behold this midnight splendor, worlds on worlds;
Ten thousand add and twice ten thousand more,
Then weigh the whole: one soul outweighs them all,
And calls the seeming vast magnificence
Of unintelligent creation, poor.

And as this is true of intelligence, with the suggestion which that faculty so naturally offers, of the inextinguishable nature of mind, so is it true of the moral nature of man. No accumulation of material grandeur, even if it fill the universe, has any dignity in our eyes, compared with moral grandeur: as poetry has also expressed:

Look then abroad through nature, to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,
And speak, O man! Can this capacious scene
With half that kindling majesty exalt
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar's fate
Amid the band of patriots; and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove
When guilt calls down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the Father of his Country, Hail!
For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
And Rome again is free.

This action being taken, as it is here meant to be conceived, for one of the highest examples of moral greatness. And however we may judge of this action, we must allow that the characters which are implied in this praise of it,--the loftiest kinds of moral excellence,--are more suitable to the highest idea of the object and purpose of a Deity creating worlds, than would be any mere material structure of planets and suns, whether kept in their places by adamantine spheres, wheeling unshaken through the void immense, or themselves wheeling unshaken by the power of a universal law. The thoughts of Rights and Obligations, Duty and Virtue, of Law and Liberty, of Country and Constitution, of the Glory of our Ancestors, the Elevation of our Fellow-Citizens, the Freedom and Happiness and Dignity of Posterity,--are thoughts which belong to a world, a race, a body of beings, of which any one individual, with the capacities which such thoughts imply, is more worthy of account, than millions of millions of mollusks and belemnites, lizards and fishes, sloths and pachyderms, diffused through myriads of worlds.

36. We might illustrate this argument further, by taking actions of the moral character of which there will be less doubt. If we look at the great acts which render Greece illustrious and interesting in our eyes,--such as the death of Socrates, for instance, the triumph of a reverence for Law and a love of country;--can we think it any real diminution of the glory of the universe, if we are reduced to the necessity of rejecting the belief in a multitude of worlds, which though, it may be, peopled with lower animals, contain none endowed with any higher principle than hunger and thirst?

37. That the human race possesses a worth in the eyes of Reason beyond that which any material structure, or any brute population can possess, might be maintained on still higher and stronger grounds; namely, on religious grounds: but we do not intend here to dwell on that part of the subject. If man be, not merely (and he alone of all animals) capable of Virtue and Duty, of Universal Love and Self-Devotion, but be also immortal; if his being be of infinite duration, his soul created never to die; then, indeed, we may well say that one soul outweighs the whole unintelligent creation. And if the Earth have been the scene of an action of Love and Self-Devotion for the incalculable benefit of the whole human race, in comparison with which the death of Socrates fades into a mere act of cheerful resignation to the common lot of humanity; and if this action, and its consequences to the whole race of man, in his temporal and eternal destiny, and in his history on earth before and after it, were the main object for which man was created, the cardinal point round which the capacities and the fortunes of the race were to turn; then indeed we see that the Earth has a pre-eminence in the scheme of creation, which may well reconcile us to regard all the material splendor which surrounds it, all the array of mere visible luminaries and masses which accompany it, as no unfitting appendages to such a drama. The elevation of millions of intellectual, moral, religious, spiritual creatures, to a destiny so prepared, consummated, and developed, is no unworthy occupation of all the capacities of space, time, and matter. And, so far as any one has yet shown, to regard this great scheme as other than the central point of the divine plan; to consider it as one part among other parts, similar, co-ordinate, or superior; involves those who so speculate, in difficulties, even with regard to the plan itself, which they strive in vain to reconcile; while the assumption of the subjects of such a plan, in other regions of the universe, is at variance with all which we, looking at the analogies of space and time, of earth and stars, of life in brutes and in man, have found reason to deem in any degree probable.

38. And thus that conjecture of the Plurality of Worlds, to which a wide and careful examination of the physical constitution of the Universe supplied no confirmation, derives also little support from a contemplation of the Design which the Creator may be supposed to have had in the work of the Creation; when such Design is regarded in a comprehensive manner, and in all its bearings. Such a survey seems to speak rather in favor of the Unity of the World, than of a Plurality of Worlds. A further consideration of the intellectual, moral, and religious nature of man may still further illustrate this view; and with that object, we shall make a few additional remarks.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The greatest anatomists, and especially Mr. Owen, have recently expressed their conviction, that researches on the structure of animals must be guided by the principle of _unity of composition_ as well as the principle of _final causes_. See Owen _On the Nature of Limbs_.

[2] This has been termed by physiologists _The Law of the Development from the General to the Special_.

[3] Every reader of physiological works knows how easy it would be to multiply examples of this kind to any extent. Thus it is held by physiologists, that the sporules of fungi are universally diffused through the atmosphere, ready to vegetate whenever an opportunity presents itself: and that a single individual produces not less than ten millions of germs. It is held also that innumerable seeds of plants still capable of vegetation, lie in strata far below the earth's surface, finding the occasion to vegetate only by the rarest and most exceptional occurrences.--Carpenter, _Manual of Physiology_. 1851, Art. 44.

[4] Chalmers, p. 35.

[5] Ibid. p. 21

[6] Ibid. p. 119.

[7] Dr. Scoresby, in his _Account of the Arctic Regions_ (1820) Vol. II. has given figures of 96 such forms, selected for their eminent regularity from many more.