Part 25

Two views, then, offer themselves to us. Life was present potentially in matter when in the nebulous form, and was unfolded from it by the way of natural development, or it is a principle inserted into matter at a later date. With regard to the question of time, the views of men have changed remarkably in our day and generation; and I must say as regards courage also, and a manful willingness to engage in open contest, with fair weapons, a great change has also occurred.

The clergy of England—at all events the clergy of London—have nerve enough to listen to the strongest views which any one amongst us would care to utter; and they invite, if they do not challenge, men of the most decided opinions to state and stand by those opinions in open court. No theory upsets them. Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated only in the language current among gentlemen, and they look it in the face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven and the terrors of the other place, smiting the theory, if they do not like it, with honest secular strength. In fact, the greatest cowards of the present day are not to be found among the clergy, but within the pale of science itself.

Two or three years ago in an ancient London college—a clerical institution—I heard a very remarkable lecture by a very remarkable man. Three or four hundred clergymen were present at the lecture. The orator began with the civilization of Egypt in the time of Joseph; pointing out that the very perfect organization of the kingdom, and the possession of chariots, in one of which Joseph rode, indicated a long antecedent period of civilization. He then passed on to the mud of the Nile, its rate of augmentation, its present thickness, and the remains of human handiwork found therein; thence to the rocks which bound the Nile valley, and which team with organic remains. Thus, in his own clear and admirable way, he caused the idea of the world’s age to expand itself indefinitely before the mind of his audience, and he contrasted this with the age usually assigned to the world.

During his discourse he seemed to be swimming against a stream; he manifestly thought that he was opposing a general conviction. He expected resistance; so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was no adverse current, no opposing conviction, no resistance, merely here and there a half humorous but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they good-humoredly rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.

In fact, clergymen, if I might be allowed a parenthesis to say so, have as strong a leaning towards scientific truth as other men, only the resistance to this bent—a resistance due to education—is generally stronger in their case than in others. They do not lack the positive element, namely, the love of truth, but the negative element, the fear of error, preponderates.

The strength of an electric current is determined by two things—the electro-motive force, and the resistance that force has to overcome. A fraction, with the former as numerator and the latter as denominator, expresses the current-strength. The “current-strength” of the clergy towards science may also be expressed by making the positive element just referred to the numerator, and the negative one the denominator of a fraction. The numerator is not zero nor is it even small, but the denominator is large; and hence the current strength is such as we find it to be. Slowness of conception, even open hostility, may be thus accounted for. They are for the most part errors of judgment, and not sins against truth. To most of us it may appear very simple, but to a few of us it appears transcendently wonderful, that in all classes of society truth should have this power and fascination. From the countless modifications that life has undergone through natural selection and the integration of infinitesimal steps, emerges finally the grand result that the strength of truth is greater than the strength of error, and that we have only to make the truth clear to the world to gain the world to our side. Probably no one wonders more at this result than the propounder of the law of natural selection himself. Reverting to an old acquaintance of ours, it would seem, on purely scientific grounds, as if a Veracity were at the heart of things; as if, after ages of latent working, it had finally unfolded itself in the life of man; as if it were still destined to unfold itself, growing in girth, throwing out stronger branches and thicker leaves, and tending more and more by its overshadowing presence to starve the weeds of error from the intellectual soil.

But this is parenthetical; and the gist of our present inquiry regarding the introduction of life is this: Does it belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent principle inserted into matter at some suitable epoch—say when the physical conditions become such as to permit of the development of life? Let us put the question with all the reverence due to a faith and culture in which we all were cradled—a faith and culture, moreover, which are the undeniable historic antecedents of our present enlightenment. I say, let us put the question reverently, but let us also put it clearly and definitely.

There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theater of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or merely a molten period, does not much matter; and if we revert to the nebulous condition, it is because the probabilities are really on its side. Our question is this: Did creative energy pause until the nebulous matter had condensed, until the earth had been detached, until the solar fire had so far withdrawn from the earth’s vicinity as to permit a crust to gather round a planet? Did it wait until the air was isolated, until the seas were formed, until evaporation, condensation, and the descent of rain had begun, until the eroding forces of the atmosphere had weathered and decomposed the molten rocks so as to form soils, until the sun’s rays had become so tempered by distance and by waste as to be chemically fit for the decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having waited through those æons until the proper conditions had set in, did it send the fiat forth, “Let life be!”? These questions define a hypothesis not without its difficulties, but the dignity of which was demonstrated by the nobleness of the men whom it sustained.

Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between this hypothesis and another; and public thought generally will afterwards be called upon to do the same. You may, however, rest secure in the belief that the hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and that it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege. To gain new territory, modern argument requires more time than modern arms, though both of them move with greater rapidity than of yore.

But however the convictions of individuals here and there may be influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the rival hypothesis of natural evolution to the public mind. For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a motion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go even further than this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that at the present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are potential in the fires of the sun.

We long to learn something of our origin. If the evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across the ages which separate the unconscious primeval mist from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand or fall.

Surely these notions represent an absurdity too monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind. Let us, however, give them fair play. Let us steady ourselves in front of the hypothesis, and, dismissing all terror and excitement from our minds, let us look firmly into it with the hard, sharp eye of intellect alone. Why are these notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them? The law of relativity, of which we have previously spoken, may find its application here. These evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet in relation to the ideas concerning matter which were drilled into us when young. Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in the rudest contrast, the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But is this correct? Does it represent what our mightiest spiritual teacher would call the eternal fact of the universe? Upon the answer to this question all depends.

Supposing, instead of having the foregoing antithesis of spirit and matter presented to our youthful minds, we had been taught to regard them as equally worthy and equally wonderful; to consider them, in fact, as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery. Supposing that in youth we had been impregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe, instead of the notion of the poet Young, looking at matter, not as brute matter, but as “the living garment of God;” do you not think that under these altered circumstances the law of relativity might have had an outcome different from its present one? Is it not probable that our repugnance to the idea of primeval union between spirit and matter might be considerably abated? Without this total revolution of the notions now prevalent the evolution hypothesis must stand condemned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of them from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between both. In substance, if not in words, their position as regards spirit and matter is: “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”

I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for beyond the nebula scientific thought has never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of these things.

The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.” Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as an hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom it does nothing more than “transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.”

For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. And with regard to the ages of forgetfulness which lie between the conscious life of the nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it is but an extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable, and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Within the long range of physical inquiry they have never discerned in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side. Having thus determined the elements of their curve in this world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.

You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of uniformity speaking of impossibilities in nature. They never say, what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible for the builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world which might be, but with a world which is. This they explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which, like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. They keep such questions open, and will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls. They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.

“Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.” And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyze nor comprehend.

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● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “NOTES AND REFERENCES” section. The following footnotes appear in the text where they are referenced. ○ The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part from the decimal fraction of the number. ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics). ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that the following letter or letters was intended to be a superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century. ○ Superscripts are used to indicate numbers raised to a power. In this plain text document, they are represented by characters like this: “MV^2” or “10^{18}”, i.e. MV squared or 10 to the 18th power.