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Natural Science and Religion - Asa Gray · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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Speaker 1: Section one of Natural Science and Religion. This is a
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Speaker 1: Natural Science and Religion by ASA Gray. Lecture one Scientific Beliefs,
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Speaker 1: Part one. I am invited to address you upon the
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Speaker 1: relations of science to religion, in reference as I suppose,
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Speaker 1: to those claims of natural science which have been thought
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Speaker 1: to be antagonistic to supernatural religion, and to those assumptions
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Speaker 1: connected with the Christian faith which scientific men in our
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Speaker 1: day are disposed to question or to reject. While listening weekly,
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Speaker 1: I hope with edification to the sermons which it is
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Speaker 1: my privilege and duty to hear. It has now and
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Speaker 1: then occurred to me that it might be well if
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Speaker 1: an occasional discourse could be addressed from the pews to
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Speaker 1: the pulpit. But until your invitation reached me, I had
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Speaker 1: no idea that I should ever be called upon to
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Speaker 1: put this pass thought into practice. I am sufficiently convinced
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Speaker 1: already that the members of a profession know their own
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Speaker 1: calling better than any one else can know it. And
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Speaker 1: in respect to the debatable land which lies along the
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Speaker 1: borders of theology and natural science, and which has been
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Speaker 1: harried by many a raid from both sides. I am
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Speaker 1: not confident that I can be helpful in composing strifes
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Speaker 1: or in the fixing of boundaries, nor that you will
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Speaker 1: agree with me that some of the encounters were inevitable
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Speaker 1: and some of the alarm groundless. Indeed, upon much that
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Speaker 1: I may have to say, I expect rather the charitable
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Speaker 1: judgment than the full assent of those whose approbation I
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Speaker 1: could most wish to win. But I take it for
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Speaker 1: granted that you do not wish to hear an echo
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Speaker 1: from the pulpit nor from the theological class room. You
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Speaker 1: ask a layman to speak from this desk because you
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Speaker 1: would have a layman's thoughts expressed from a layman's point
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Speaker 1: of view, because you would know what a naturalist comes
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Speaker 1: to think upon matters of common interest, and you would
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Speaker 1: have him liberate his mind frankly, unconventionally, and with as
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Speaker 1: little as may be of the technicalities of our several professions.
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Speaker 1: Frankness is always commendable, but outspokenness upon delicate and unsettled
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Speaker 1: problems in the ground of which cherished convictions are rooted.
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Speaker 1: Ought to be tempered with consideration. Now, I, as a layman,
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Speaker 1: may claim a certain license in this regard, and any
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Speaker 1: over free handling of sensitive themes should compromise no one
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Speaker 1: but myself, as a student who has devoted an ordinary
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Speaker 1: lifetime to one branch of natural history, in which he
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Speaker 1: is supposed to have accumulated a fair amount of particular experience,
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Speaker 1: and to have gained a general acquaintance with scientific methods
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Speaker 1: and aims. As one, moreover, who has taken kindly to
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Speaker 1: the new turn of biological study in these latter years,
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Speaker 1: but is free from partisanship, I am asked to confer
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Speaker 1: with other and younger students of another kind of science
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Speaker 1: in respect to the tendencies of certain recently developed doctrines,
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Speaker 1: which in schools of theology are almost everywhere spoken against,
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Speaker 1: but which are everywhere permeating the lay mind, whether for
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Speaker 1: good or for evil, and are raising questions more or
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Speaker 1: less perplexing to all of us. But our younger and
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Speaker 1: middle aged men must not think that such perplexities and
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Speaker 1: antagonisms have only recently begun. Some of them are very old.
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Speaker 1: Some are old questions transferred to new ground, in which
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Speaker 1: they spring to rankness of growth, or sink their roots
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Speaker 1: till they touch deeper issues than before, issues of philosophy
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Speaker 1: rather than of science, upon which the momentous question of
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Speaker 1: theism or non theism eventually turns. Some, on the other hand,
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Speaker 1: are mere survivals, now troublesome only to those who are
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Speaker 1: holding fast to theological positions which the advance of actual
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Speaker 1: knowledge has rendered untenable, but which they do not well
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Speaker 1: know how to abandon, yet which in principle have mostly
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Speaker 1: been abandoned already. To begin with trite examples. Among the
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Speaker 1: questions which disquieted pious souls in my younger days, but
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Speaker 1: which have ceased to disquiet any of us, are those
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Speaker 1: respecting the age and gradual development of the Earth and
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Speaker 1: of the solar system, which came in with geology and
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Speaker 1: modern astronomy. I remember the time when it was a
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Speaker 1: mooted question whether geology and orthodox christis Richtianity were compatible.
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Speaker 1: And I suppose that when in these quarters the balance
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Speaker 1: inclined to the affirmative, it was owing quite as much
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Speaker 1: to Professor Silliman's transparent Christian character as to his scientific ability.
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Speaker 1: One need not be an old man to know that
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Speaker 1: laplace was accounted an atheist because he developed the nebular hypothesis,
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Speaker 1: and because of his remark that he had no need
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Speaker 1: to postulate a creator for the mathematical discussion of a
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Speaker 1: physical theorem. For a venerable and most religious astronomer still living,
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Speaker 1: who adopted this hypothesis in his exposition of certain harmonies
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Speaker 1: of the Solar System, published only five years ago, thought
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Speaker 1: it needful to add an appendix, asking the question, is
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Speaker 1: the nebular hypothesis in any form essentially atheistical in its character?
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Speaker 1: He answered it in the negative, but with the salvo
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Speaker 1: that this hypothesis having to do with a strictly azoic period,
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Speaker 1: and forces no connection with the development theory of the
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Speaker 1: beginning or of the progress of life. Close quote. The
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Speaker 1: great antiquity of the habitable the world and of existing
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Speaker 1: races was the next question. It gave some anxiety fifty
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Speaker 1: years ago, but is now, I suppose generally acquiesced in
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Speaker 1: in the sense that existing species of plants and animals
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Speaker 1: have been in existence for many thousands of years. And
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Speaker 1: as to their associate man, all agree that the length
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Speaker 1: of his occupation is not at all measured by the
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Speaker 1: generations of the biblical chronology, and are awaiting the result
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Speaker 1: of an open discussion as to whether the earliest known
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Speaker 1: traces of his presence are in quaternary or in the
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Speaker 1: latest tertiary deposits. As connected with this class of questions,
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Speaker 1: many of us remember the time when schemes for reconciling
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Speaker 1: genesis with geology had an importance in the churches and
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Speaker 1: among thoughtful people, which few, if any, would now assign
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Speaker 1: to them, when it was thought necessary, for only necessity
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Speaker 1: could justify it to bring the details of the two
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Speaker 1: into agreement by extraneous suppositions and forced constructions of language
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Speaker 1: such as would now offend our critical and sometimes our
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Speaker 1: moral sense. The change of view which we have witnessed
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Speaker 1: amounts to this. Our predecessors implicitly held that Holy Scripture
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Speaker 1: must somehow truly teach such natural science as it had
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Speaker 1: occasion to refer to, or at least could never contradict it.
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Speaker 1: While the most that is now intelligently claimed is that
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Speaker 1: the teachings of the two properly understood are not incompatible.
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Speaker 1: We may take it to be the accepted idea that
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Speaker 1: the Mosaic Books were not handed down to us for
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Speaker 1: our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our
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Speaker 1: duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference,
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Speaker 1: unmixed with considerations of a different order. Then, when fundamental
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Speaker 1: principles of the cosmogony in Genesis are found to coincide
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Speaker 1: with established facts and probable inferences, the coincidence has its value,
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Speaker 1: And wherever the particulars are incongruous, the discrepancy does not
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Speaker 1: distress us. I may add, does not concern us. I
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Speaker 1: trust that the veneration rightly due to the Old Testament
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Speaker 1: is not impaired by the ascertaining that the Mosaic is
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Speaker 1: not an original but a compiled cosmogony. Its glory is
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Speaker 1: that while its materials were the earlier property of the race,
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Speaker 1: they were in this record purged of polytheism and nature worship,
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Speaker 1: and impregnated with ideas which we suppose the world will
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Speaker 1: never outgrow. For its fundamental note is the declaration of
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Speaker 1: one God maker of heaven and earth, and of all
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Speaker 1: things visible and invisible, a declaration which, if physical science
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Speaker 1: is unable to establish, it is equally unable to overthrow.
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Speaker 1: But leaving aside for the present all questions of this sort,
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Speaker 1: I proceed with the proper subject of this discourse, namely
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Speaker 1: the further changes in scientific belief which have occurred within
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Speaker 1: my own recollection ever since the time when I first
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Speaker 1: aspired to authorship, now forty five years ago. There will
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Speaker 1: be no need to go much beyond the line of
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Speaker 1: subjects which it has been my business to study in
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Speaker 1: order to bring before you in a cursory review, not
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Speaker 1: indeed all the disturbing topics of the time, but quite
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Speaker 1: enough of them for our purpose. For the changes which
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Speaker 1: we have to consider are all more or less connected
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Speaker 1: with the evolutionary theories which are now uppermost in the
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Speaker 1: popular mind. In this presentation, it is best to set
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Speaker 1: them forth in their simplest or most general form, divested
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Speaker 1: of all theological or philosophical considerations which have been or
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Speaker 1: may be attached to them. I should rather say, to
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Speaker 1: some of them, for the foundations, or at least the buttresses,
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Speaker 1: of the now prevalent doctrine of the derivative origin of species,
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Speaker 1: mainly rest upon researches independently made without speculative bias, being
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Speaker 1: the general contributions to biological science in this century, the
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Speaker 1: results of which have been accepted as far as made
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Speaker 1: out without apprehension or other than scientific controversy. Upon no
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Speaker 1: one of these particular points has there been a completer
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Speaker 1: change of view than upon the distinctness of the animal
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Speaker 1: and vegetable kingdoms. The former conviction that these two kingdoms
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Speaker 1: were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind
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Speaker 1: of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which
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Speaker 1: the naturalists encountered when he undertook to define them. It
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Speaker 1: was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted
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Speaker 1: in their higher reports sentives, approached each other very closely
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Speaker 1: in their lower and simpler forms, but they were believed
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Speaker 1: not to blend. It was implicitly supposed that every living
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Speaker 1: thing was distinctively plant or animal, that there were real
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Speaker 1: and profound differences between the two, if only they could
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Speaker 1: be seized, and that increased powers of investigation, microscopical and
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Speaker 1: chemical might be expected to discover them. This expectation has
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Speaker 1: not been fulfilled. It is true that the ambiguities of
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Speaker 1: a hundred years ago are settled now. The zoophytes are
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Speaker 1: all remanded to their proper places. Though the animal kingdom
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Speaker 1: at first claimed more than belonged to it, but other
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Speaker 1: more recondiite and insurmountable difficulties arose in their place. The
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Speaker 1: best I am disposed to say. The settled opinion now
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Speaker 1: is that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently
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Speaker 1: differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal. While as
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Speaker 1: respects ordinary plants and animals, the difficulty of laying down
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Speaker 1: a definition has become far greater than ever before. In short,
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Speaker 1: the animal and vegetable lines diverging widely above joined below
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Speaker 1: in a loop. Naturalists may help classification, but do not
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Speaker 1: alter these facts when they sever this loop arbitrarily at
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Speaker 1: what they deemed the lowest point, or when they cut
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Speaker 1: away the whole loop and form of it a separate
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Speaker 1: kingdom the protista of Heckel. The only objection to the
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Speaker 1: latter is that the definition of this tertium quid from
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Speaker 1: plant on the one hand and animal on the other,
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Speaker 1: is equally impracticable. One difficulty is removed only to have
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Speaker 1: two in its place. The fact is that a new
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Speaker 1: article has recently been added to the scientific creed, the
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Speaker 1: essential oneness of the two kingdoms of organic nature. I
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Speaker 1: crave your patients, while I enter somewhat into particulars. Not
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Speaker 1: many years ago, it was taught that plants and animals
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Speaker 1: were composed of different materials. Plants of a chemical substance
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Speaker 1: of three elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, animals of one
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Speaker 1: of four elements, nitrogen, being added to the other three.
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Speaker 1: The plant substance, named cellulose, because it formed the cell walls,
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Speaker 1: was supposed to constitute the whole vegetable fabric. It was
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Speaker 1: known that all plants produced nitrogenous matter in the form
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Speaker 1: of a compound of four elements, but this was thought
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Speaker 1: to be merely a contained product in a structureless condition,
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Speaker 1: and to be not so much essential to the plant's
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Speaker 1: life as to that of the animals which the plants nourished.
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Speaker 1: It was known to be structure building material for animals,
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Speaker 1: it was not known to be essential plant structure also,
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Speaker 1: But it was soon ascertained that this quaternary matter of
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Speaker 1: the animal body was chemically the same in the plant,
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Speaker 1: was elaborated there and only appropriated by the animal. Next,
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Speaker 1: it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the
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Speaker 1: same in the plant, that it was the living part
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Speaker 1: of the plant, that which manifested the life and did
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Speaker 1: the work. In vegetable as well as in animal organisms.
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Speaker 1: This substance which is manifold in its forms and protein
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Speaker 1: in its transformations, has in its state of living matter,
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Speaker 1: one physiological name which has become familiar, that of protoplasm.
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Speaker 1: The statement that protoplasm is the physical basis of life
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Speaker 1: must be accepted as true. As Professor Allman puts it, quote,
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Speaker 1: wherever there is life, from its lowest to its highest manifestations,
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Speaker 1: there is protoplasm. Wherever there is protoplasm, thereto is life
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Speaker 1: close quote, or has been. The cellulose or solid material
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Speaker 1: which composes the bulk of a tree or herb did
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Speaker 1: not produce the protoplasm contained in its living parts, as
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Speaker 1: was formerly supposed, But the protoplasm produced the cellulose. The
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Speaker 1: semi liquid and mobile matter within produced the cell walls
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Speaker 1: which enclose it. The walls or solid parts are to
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Speaker 1: the protoplasm what the shell is to the oyster. The
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Speaker 1: contents not only preceded the protective investment, but can exist
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Speaker 1: and prosper apart from it, as many a mollusk does,
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Speaker 1: as many a simple plant does throughout the earlier and
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Speaker 1: most active period of its life. Indeed, this slimy matter
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Speaker 1: lives before and apart from anything which can be called
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Speaker 1: a living being, a formless, apparently diffluent, and structureless mass
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Speaker 1: is seen to exhibit the essential phenomena of life, to move,
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Speaker 1: to feed, to grow, to multiply. We have spoken of
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Speaker 1: beings so low in the scale that the individuals, throughout
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Speaker 1: their whole existence are not sufficiently specialized to be distinctively
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Speaker 1: plant or animal. Yet these are definite in form and
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Speaker 1: fixed in phase. Are individual beings, though we may not
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Speaker 1: determine to which kingdom they belong. But there is life
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Speaker 1: in simpler shape quote. If shape it might be called
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Speaker 1: that shape has none distinguishable in member, joint or limb
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Speaker 1: close quote, there is vital activity in that which has
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Speaker 1: not attained even the semblance of individuality. Little lumps of
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Speaker 1: protoplasm Are these with outline, in a state of perpetual change,
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Speaker 1: divisible into two or three, or more or two or
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Speaker 1: three combining into one mass either way without hindering or
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Speaker 1: altering their manifestations. This living matter, of which bathebius, if
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Speaker 1: there be a bathebius, or if it be anything more
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Speaker 1: than protoplasm of sponges is one example, is said to
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Speaker 1: have nothing more than molecular structure. It would be safer
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Speaker 1: to say that the microscope has as yet revealed no
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Speaker 1: organic structure. The natural history of protoplasm has recently been
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Speaker 1: well expounded by Professor Allman, late President of the British Association,
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Speaker 1: a most judicious naturalist of conservative tendency, and his address,
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Speaker 1: which you have read or should read, saves me from
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Speaker 1: further details and enables me to proceed to other evidences
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Speaker 1: of the substantial oneness of the two kingdoms of organic nature.
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Speaker 1: Cellulose makes up the bulk of a vegetable and was
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Speaker 1: thought to be its true element, but it is now
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Speaker 1: known to be not even peculiar to it. It enters
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Speaker 1: largely into the fabric of certain animals, not of the
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Speaker 1: very lowest grade. Starch was equally regarded as a purely
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Speaker 1: and characteristically vegetable production, and its presence in ambiguous cases
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Speaker 1: has been taken as a test. But it follows the
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Speaker 1: example of cellulose being a prepared material from which cellulose
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Speaker 1: in the plant is made by a molecular change. We
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Speaker 1: are not now surprised to learn that starch grains of
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Speaker 1: animal origin have been found. We cannot conceive anything more
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Speaker 1: characteristic of a vegetable than chlorophyll the green of herbage,
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Speaker 1: for in it the special work of the plant is done, namely,
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Speaker 1: the transformation of mineral matter into organic under the light
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Speaker 1: of the sun, this being the prerogative of vegetation. Now
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Speaker 1: not only does chlorophyll abound in many ambiguous microscopical organisms
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Speaker 1: of fresh and salt water, which, except for this, would
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Speaker 1: be taken for animals, but it has recently been detected
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Speaker 1: in hydras and c anemones and planarias, which are as
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Speaker 1: certainly animals as are oysters and clams. Nor can it
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Speaker 1: be thought that they possess something merely resembling chlorophyll, for
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Speaker 1: it performs the characteristic work of that peculiar substance, which,
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Speaker 1: as I have said, is the characteristic work of vegetation.
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Speaker 1: For the index and essential accompaniment of this work, i e.
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Speaker 1: Of the conversion of mineral into organic matter is the
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Speaker 1: evolution of oxygen gas from the decomposition of carbonic acid water,
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Speaker 1: et cetera, in which, if in anything, vegetation consists. Now
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Speaker 1: the proof that what these animals possess is chlorophyll itself
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Speaker 1: is demonstrated by their performance of the same function they
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Speaker 1: decompose carbonic acid and evolve oxygen gas, just as if
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Speaker 1: the green leaf does. Moreover, the chlorophyll has been extracted
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Speaker 1: and identified by the spectroscopic test. Here, then animals undoubted animals,
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Speaker 1: in addition to their own proper functions, take on the
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Speaker 1: essential function of plants. There is no avoiding the conclusion
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Speaker 1: that such animals are doing the duty of vegetables. Although
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Speaker 1: I make little account of it, I should not overlook
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Speaker 1: a more empirical distinction between the two kingdoms, which has
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Speaker 1: also failed. The characteristic features of an animal were mouth
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Speaker 1: and stomach. This is the normal correlation of an animal
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Speaker 1: with its conditions, having to feed on vegetable matter, or
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Speaker 1: what has been vegetable matter in solid as well as
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Speaker 1: liquid form. A mouth opening into an internal cavity of
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Speaker 1: some sort was the natural pattern to which all animals
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Speaker 1: are supposed to conform. But nature, with all her fondness
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Speaker 1: for patterns, will not be arbitrarily held to them. Entozoa feed,
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Speaker 1: like rhizophytes and turbolarias in their relatives, have no alimentary canal.
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Speaker 1: The food taken by what answers to mouth, passing as
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Speaker 1: directly into the general t tissue as does the material
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Speaker 1: which a parasitic root imbibes from its host, or an
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Speaker 1: ordinary root from the soil. While animals are thus overpassing
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Speaker 1: the boundary in one direction, vegetables are making reprisals on
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Speaker 1: the other. The rule is that vegetables create organic matter
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Speaker 1: and animals consume it, producing none. But while some animals
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Speaker 1: produce some organic matter, some plants, even among those of
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Speaker 1: the highest grade, feed wholly upon other plants, or even
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Speaker 1: upon animals or their products. Like animals, some are herbivorous
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Speaker 1: and some are carnivorous. That certain plants live parasitically upon
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Speaker 1: other plants or upon animals has long been too familiar
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Speaker 1: to be remarkable. But that plants of the highest grade
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Speaker 1: could capture or in some way take possession of small animals,
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Speaker 1: extract and feed upon their juices, and appropriate these as
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Speaker 1: nourishment is essentially a recent wonder and a recently ascertained fact.
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Speaker 1: Yet some of the facts which point to this conclusion
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Speaker 1: are old enough, and the conclusion would probably have been
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Speaker 1: reached years ago, except for the preconception that plants in
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Speaker 1: anasnimals were too distinct for interchange of functions. Now that
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Speaker 1: we know they are not, and that the living structure
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Speaker 1: in the two is fundamentally identical. What were formerly regarded
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Speaker 1: as freaks of nature are no longer mere wonderments, but
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Speaker 1: parts of a system and capable of being correlated with
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Speaker 1: the rest. By investigation, and investigation soon ascertained that this
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Speaker 1: carnivorous attachment to the vegetable organism in Dionea and drosera
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Speaker 1: was an organ for digesting, as well as capturing animal food.
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Speaker 1: Juices are imbibed by it directly, as in animals from
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Speaker 1: the stomach and nourishing solid parts are rendered soluble and
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Speaker 1: assimilable by imbuing them with peptones or digestive ferments, analogous
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Speaker 1: in composition and in action to the gastric juice of
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Speaker 1: the higher animals. Perhaps nothing in nature can be more
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Speaker 1: wonderful than all this, and nothing is more characteristic of
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Speaker 1: the change which has come over scientific mind in our
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Speaker 1: day than the manner in which such a discovery is received.
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Speaker 1: The leading facts were well known a hundred years ago
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Speaker 1: and more, But until recently these phenomena were regarded as
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Speaker 1: altogether anomalous, And such anomalies appear to have troubled nobody
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Speaker 1: except the framers of definitions. Lusus naturi was a convenient
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Speaker 1: phrase and stood in the place of explanation, as if
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Speaker 1: the play of nature was something apart from her work.
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Speaker 1: No one seems to have had any difficulty in believing
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Speaker 1: that a few particular plants were endowed with faculties of
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Speaker 1: which no other plants were sharers. The thoughtful naturalist of
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Speaker 1: our day is in a different frame of mind. He
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Speaker 1: expects to find that the extraordinary is only an extreme
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Speaker 1: case of the ordinary, and he looks for instances leading
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Speaker 1: up from the one to the other. I cannot tarry
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Speaker 1: to explain how this expectation has directed observation and stimulated
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Speaker 1: research in this particular field, and reach the result that
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Speaker 1: these wonderful plants are distinguished only by higher degrees and
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Speaker 1: more prominent manifestations of a power which is in some
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Speaker 1: sort common to many, or to all their brethren. We
19:52
Speaker 1: learn even that the germinating embryo of a grain of
19:55
Speaker 1: corn feeds upon and digests the solid maternal nourishment which
19:59
Speaker 1: surrounds it, and the humblest mold appropriates the organic matter
20:02
Speaker 1: which it attacks by the aid of a peptone or
20:05
Speaker 1: inversive ferment. Not different in nature and office from the
20:08
Speaker 1: gastric and other juices by aid of which we appropriate
20:10
Speaker 1: our daily meals. It does appear also that the lowest organisms,
20:14
Speaker 1: which live a kind of scavenger life, by using over
20:17
Speaker 1: again dead or ifeat organic matter running to decay, but
20:21
Speaker 1: to some of which living juices come not amiss, have
20:23
Speaker 1: also the power certain salts being given, of creating organic
20:27
Speaker 1: matter and building up a fabric without sunlight and without chlorophyll. Here, then,
20:32
Speaker 1: is the simplest organic life, in which germs being given
20:36
Speaker 1: i e. First individuals of the sort supplied and placed
20:39
Speaker 1: in favorable surroundings, they increase and multiply into more, each
20:43
Speaker 1: to multiply again, and so on. In geometrical progression. From
20:47
Speaker 1: such lowly basis, the two kingdoms may be conceived to rise,
20:51
Speaker 1: diverging as they ascend in separate lines, the one developing
20:55
Speaker 1: close relations with sunlight and becoming the food producing vegetable realm,
20:59
Speaker 1: the other the food consuming animal realm, Which dispensed from
21:02
Speaker 1: the labor of assimilation and from the fixity of position
21:05
Speaker 1: which generally attends it, may rise to higher and freer
21:09
Speaker 1: manifestations of life. Such at least appear to be the
21:12
Speaker 1: relations of the two kingdoms to each other and to
21:14
Speaker 1: their common base. And such is the conception through which
21:17
Speaker 1: we may attain to an explanation of how it may
21:20
Speaker 1: be that members of each line possess so many characteristics
21:23
Speaker 1: of the other. I have said, germs being given, the
21:27
Speaker 1: forms increase and multiply. If asked, whence the germs, and
21:31
Speaker 1: were they everywhere and always prerequisite? The scientific answer must
21:35
Speaker 1: be yes, so far as we know thus far. Spontaneous
21:39
Speaker 1: generation or abiogenesis, the incoming of life apart from that
21:43
Speaker 1: which is living, is not supported by any unequivocal evidence,
21:47
Speaker 1: though not a little may be said in its favor,
21:49
Speaker 1: however it may be in the future. Here scientific belief
21:52
Speaker 1: stands mainly where it did forty five years ago, only
21:55
Speaker 1: on a better tried and firmer footing. It remains to
21:59
Speaker 1: mention two. Suppose distinctions between vegetables and animals, which were
22:02
Speaker 1: until recently prominent, but which are no longer criteria even
22:06
Speaker 1: as between the higher forms of the two. The first
22:09
Speaker 1: is the faculty of automatic movement, or, to take up
22:12
Speaker 1: the question only on the highest plane, the faculty of
22:15
Speaker 1: making movements in reference to ends. This is affirmed of
22:19
Speaker 1: animals and is an undoubted faculty of all of them,
22:22
Speaker 1: but was long denied to plants, perhaps from a notion
22:25
Speaker 1: that such movements argued consciousness, But consciousness in any legitimate
22:30
Speaker 1: sense of the term pertains only to the higher animals.
22:34
Speaker 1: To show the breaking down of the distinction, it would
22:36
Speaker 1: suffice to contrast the rooted fixity and vegetative growth of
22:39
Speaker 1: very many lower animals with the free locomotion of most
22:43
Speaker 1: microscopic aquatic plants, and of the germs of those not microscopic,
22:48
Speaker 1: but plants of the highest organization furnish obvious examples better
22:51
Speaker 1: suited to our purpose. Is there not an independent movement
22:55
Speaker 1: in response to an external impression and in reference to
22:58
Speaker 1: an end, When the two sides of the trap of
23:00
Speaker 1: dionea suddenly enclose and a lighted fly cross their fringe
23:04
Speaker 1: of marginal bristles over the only avenue of escape, remain
23:07
Speaker 1: quiescent in this position long enough to give a small
23:09
Speaker 1: fly full opportunity to crawl out soon open if this happens,
23:13
Speaker 1: but after due intervals, shut down firmly upon one of
23:16
Speaker 1: greater size which cannot get out, then pour out digestive juices,
23:20
Speaker 1: and in due time reabsorb the whole. So when the
23:24
Speaker 1: free end of a twining stem, or the whole length
23:26
Speaker 1: of a tendril outreaches horizontally and makes circular sweeps and
23:30
Speaker 1: secures thereby a support to which it clings by coiling.
23:33
Speaker 1: When a tendril, having fixed its tip to a distant support,
23:36
Speaker 1: shortens itself by coiling, so bringing the next tendril nearer
23:39
Speaker 1: the support. When a free revolving tendril avoids winding up
23:43
Speaker 1: itself uselessly around the stem it belongs to, and in
23:46
Speaker 1: the only practicable way, namely, by changing from the horizontal
23:50
Speaker 1: to the vertical position until it passes by it, and
23:52
Speaker 1: then rapidly resumes its horizontal sweep to result in reaching
23:56
Speaker 1: a distant support. Is it possible to think that these
23:59
Speaker 1: are not movements? In recas diference to ends, You may
24:02
Speaker 1: say that all such movements are capable of explanation, or
24:04
Speaker 1: in time will be so, are the result of mechanism
24:07
Speaker 1: and adjustments and of common physical forces, no doubt, And
24:11
Speaker 1: this is equally true of every animal movement, not accepting
24:13
Speaker 1: those instigated by volition. Still it moves, as the humbled
24:18
Speaker 1: Galileo said of the Earth, and the idea that such
24:21
Speaker 1: movements are in reference to ends is not superseded by
24:24
Speaker 1: any yet devised explanation of the mechanism. Our remaining distinction
24:29
Speaker 1: between plants and animals was based on the relations they
24:31
Speaker 1: respectively sustain to the air we breathe. This has already
24:35
Speaker 1: been stated and the exceptions noted, but the topic is
24:37
Speaker 1: resumed in order to bring to view the substantially different
24:40
Speaker 1: relations of the two kingdoms to physical force. Plants give
24:44
Speaker 1: out oxygen gas and thus purify the air for the
24:47
Speaker 1: respiration of animals. Animals consuming this oxygen breathe it back
24:51
Speaker 1: to the air in the form of carbonic acid. But
24:54
Speaker 1: the putting of this contrast is only another way of
24:56
Speaker 1: saying that plants produce organic matter. In animals decocs impose it.
25:01
Speaker 1: The oxygen gas given out by sunlit foliage is just
25:04
Speaker 1: what is left over when carbonic acid is decomposed and
25:07
Speaker 1: the carbon enters into the composition of the vegetable matter
25:10
Speaker 1: then produced. This elaborated matter, more complex and unstable than
25:15
Speaker 1: the materials of which it was made, is the food
25:17
Speaker 1: of animals is first appropriated, then decomposed by them, and
25:21
Speaker 1: in the decomposition the carbon is given back to the air,
25:24
Speaker 1: recombined with the oxygen. They inhale the carbon, again taking
25:27
Speaker 1: the oxygen which was separated from it by the plant.
25:30
Speaker 1: So respiration means decomposition, and this decomposition in the animal
25:35
Speaker 1: economy means organic material used up, work done, energy degraded.
25:41
Speaker 1: It means that the clock weight which was wound up
25:43
Speaker 1: by the sun in the plant has run down. It
25:46
Speaker 1: means that, very much as the sun shining on the
25:48
Speaker 1: earth and ocean converts water into vapor and lifts it
25:51
Speaker 1: into the upper air, so the same luminary shining upon
25:55
Speaker 1: the plant there raises mineral matter to a higher and
25:58
Speaker 1: unstable state, what we call organic products, in both cases
26:02
Speaker 1: endowing the affected matter with a certain energy. The exalted
26:06
Speaker 1: matter in the one case falls at length as rain,
26:09
Speaker 1: perhaps directly into the ocean from which it was lifted,
26:12
Speaker 1: perhaps upon a mountain summit, whereas snow or glacier ice.
26:16
Speaker 1: It may long remain poised and comparatively stationary, but sooner
26:20
Speaker 1: or later it falls into the rivulet and the river,
26:22
Speaker 1: and in its fall and flow it expends its endowment
26:25
Speaker 1: of energy and does work, turns wheels and spins, or
26:29
Speaker 1: forges if man so directs, And when it has reached
26:32
Speaker 1: stable equilibrium at the level of the ocean, it will
26:35
Speaker 1: have expended just the energy which was imparted to it
26:37
Speaker 1: in the raising. So the energy with which the sun
26:41
Speaker 1: endowed vegetable matter when it was raised to the organic
26:44
Speaker 1: state may be given up as heat when this matter
26:46
Speaker 1: is restored to its original condition by burning or falls
26:50
Speaker 1: slowly back to the same condition in the process of
26:52
Speaker 1: natural decay, or the heat, like the falling water, may
26:56
Speaker 1: do mechanical work, but also the organic material may be
27:00
Speaker 1: consumed in the plant itself. For the plant, like the animal,
27:03
Speaker 1: is a consumer. The only difference is that, whereas the
27:06
Speaker 1: animal is always and only a consumer and decomposer, the
27:09
Speaker 1: plant creates or composes likewise, and it produces vastly more
27:14
Speaker 1: than it consumes or decomposes. It decomposes only when it
27:17
Speaker 1: does mechanical work. But all its processes, all movements, all transformations,
27:22
Speaker 1: are work done at the expense of organized material and
27:24
Speaker 1: accumulated energy. Even the act of storing up solar force
27:29
Speaker 1: in the green herbage, or rather the change is connected
27:31
Speaker 1: with it, can only be done at a certain cost,
27:34
Speaker 1: though the cost is small in comparison with the gain.
27:38
Speaker 1: But every transference of material from one place, or one
27:40
Speaker 1: state to another, is done only by the decomposition and
27:43
Speaker 1: loss of some portion of it, one part suffering that
27:47
Speaker 1: another may be changed and saved. When the germ feeds
27:50
Speaker 1: upon the maternal store in the seed, a considerable part
27:53
Speaker 1: is consumed in order to make the rest available, and
27:56
Speaker 1: the loss is made manifest. Just as in the breathing
27:59
Speaker 1: of an animal, or in the combustion of fuel by
28:01
Speaker 1: the evolution of carbonic acid and of heat, the same thing,
28:05
Speaker 1: in its measure occurs in the upbuilding of the fabric,
28:08
Speaker 1: the carrying of material high into the air into a
28:11
Speaker 1: tree top, for instance, and in all the processes of
28:13
Speaker 1: flowering and in storing up in the seed the richest
28:16
Speaker 1: products as an outfit for a new generation. Where visible
28:20
Speaker 1: movements take place, the quicker action is at equivalent cost.
28:24
Speaker 1: The sensitive tendril, which will coil promptly after the first
28:27
Speaker 1: brushing with my finger, will coil again only after an
28:30
Speaker 1: interval of rest, and upon the third or fourth excitation,
28:34
Speaker 1: or after a certain number of spontaneous revolutions, it falls exhausted.
28:38
Speaker 1: But material endowed with energy in the plant is largely
28:41
Speaker 1: transferred as food to animals. It brings to them an
28:44
Speaker 1: energy which they may use, but did not originate. Not
28:48
Speaker 1: many years ago, it was taken for granted that living
28:51
Speaker 1: things moved and had their being, and did their work
28:53
Speaker 1: by strength of their own that the power by which
28:56
Speaker 1: I strike a blow, or write on my paper, or
28:59
Speaker 1: move my lips in our particulate speech was somehow an
29:01
Speaker 1: original contribution to rather than a directed use of the
29:05
Speaker 1: common forces of physical nature. To all who have familiarized
29:09
Speaker 1: themselves with the facts of the case, the contrary is
29:12
Speaker 1: now substantially certain. The Sun is the source of all
29:16
Speaker 1: motion and force manifested in life on the earth, and
29:19
Speaker 1: plants are the medium in which energy is exalted to
29:21
Speaker 1: the most serviceable state. The work done by living beings
29:25
Speaker 1: is at the expense of and is measured by the
29:27
Speaker 1: passage of so much matter from an unstable to a
29:30
Speaker 1: relatively stable equilibrium, by the coming together of molecules into
29:33
Speaker 1: closer and firmer positions, and by the attendant fall of
29:37
Speaker 1: so much energy from an exalted to a relatively degraded condition.
29:41
Speaker 1: So plants, animals, men, in all their doings, add nothing
29:45
Speaker 1: to and take nothing from the sum of physical force.
29:49
Speaker 1: Their prerogative is each in its measure to direct the
29:52
Speaker 1: application of physical force and to direct it to ends.
29:58
Speaker 1: End of Lecture I, Part one one, Section two of
30:07
Speaker 1: Natural Science and Religion by A. S. Gray. This LibriVox
30:11
Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain Lecture one Scientific Beliefs,
30:16
Speaker 1: Part two. The idea of ends involves that of individuality.
30:21
Speaker 1: The higher animals and men among them are complete individuals.
30:25
Speaker 1: We cannot make the idea of individuality any clearer than
30:28
Speaker 1: by adducing them as examples of it. In the lowest
30:31
Speaker 1: form of life, in those amorphous or indefinitely polymorphous little
30:35
Speaker 1: lumps of protoplasm which the biologists have made known to us,
30:39
Speaker 1: and even perhaps in a stratum or mass which takes
30:42
Speaker 1: the form of whatever bounds it. It is said that
30:45
Speaker 1: we may contemplate the phenomena of life in that which
30:47
Speaker 1: has no manifest individuality. What have we between these two extremes.
30:52
Speaker 1: The first and simplest individuality is that of cells. Cell doctrine,
30:57
Speaker 1: or the cellular composition of plants and animals, belongs wholly
31:00
Speaker 1: to the biological science of the last half century, although
31:03
Speaker 1: the name is older, and some knowledge of the structure
31:06
Speaker 1: in plants is as old as the microscope. The homologizing
31:10
Speaker 1: of animals with plants in this regard began about forty
31:13
Speaker 1: years ago, and the doctrine of the individual life of
31:16
Speaker 1: cells is recent. Unfortunately, the rather inappropriate name cell came
31:21
Speaker 1: into use before the structure was rightly understood, and may
31:24
Speaker 1: be misleading. It was given naturally enough to the walls
31:28
Speaker 1: circumscribing cavities in ordinary plant tissue, before it was understood
31:32
Speaker 1: that the walls were not made and then filled, Before
31:35
Speaker 1: it was known that the contents are the living thing
31:37
Speaker 1: and the wall an encasement or shell. The substance of
31:40
Speaker 1: our recent knowledge is that a plant is an aggregate
31:43
Speaker 1: of organic units, mostly of very small size. That these
31:47
Speaker 1: are to the herb or tree what the bricks and
31:49
Speaker 1: stones of this chapel are to the edifice. Only they
31:53
Speaker 1: are living stones, fitly framed together in organic growth, and
31:56
Speaker 1: their walls answer to the cement. Animals do not different materially,
32:00
Speaker 1: except that the mortar is mostly of the same nature
32:03
Speaker 1: as the bricks, and there is a greater or at
32:05
Speaker 1: length complete fusion or confluence of the cells. The component material,
32:10
Speaker 1: the protoplasm, is essentially the same as has already been stated,
32:15
Speaker 1: But each aggregate, each ordinary plant or animal begins as
32:18
Speaker 1: one cell, which is then the simple individual. This, in
32:21
Speaker 1: growth and propagation, divides itself into two, these two into four,
32:26
Speaker 1: these into sixteen, and so on, thus building up the
32:29
Speaker 1: structure a whole of which the individual cells are component parts.
32:34
Speaker 1: The simplest plant begins in the same way with an
32:37
Speaker 1: initial cell, but this, instead of multiplying with cohesion into
32:40
Speaker 1: a structure, multiplies with separation into progeny. Other simple plants
32:45
Speaker 1: go on without separation to form a row of similar cells,
32:49
Speaker 1: which may casually fall apart into individuals, or may remain connected.
32:53
Speaker 1: But in either case each has its own life and
32:55
Speaker 1: does what the others do, so that the separation or
32:58
Speaker 1: the continued connection is a matter of Dae difference. But
33:01
Speaker 1: when higher in the scale structures are built up, what
33:04
Speaker 1: were individuals become parts or organs, or the thousandth or
33:07
Speaker 1: millionth part of an organ. Then the life of the
33:10
Speaker 1: cells is their own, no less, but their individuality blends
33:13
Speaker 1: in the common life of the aggregate. By increasing complexity
33:17
Speaker 1: of organization, with increasing subordination of parts and specialization of office,
33:22
Speaker 1: the highest plants and animals are composed in them. Each
33:26
Speaker 1: unit or cell has its own life and its own nutrition,
33:28
Speaker 1: while also contributing to the common wheel, some by this function,
33:32
Speaker 1: some by that. But in the higher forms all are
33:35
Speaker 1: somehow controlled by a pervasive life and directed to common ends.
33:39
Speaker 1: Ends the more various complex and special in proportion to
33:42
Speaker 1: the rank of the organism in the scale of being.
33:45
Speaker 1: So too, the component cells become effete and die, while
33:49
Speaker 1: the aggregate life continues, and the continued structure, which is
33:52
Speaker 1: nothing but an aggregate, is somehow informed, animated, and operated
33:56
Speaker 1: by a common life of higher grade than that of
33:59
Speaker 1: any or all its components. In numerous lower plants and animals,
34:04
Speaker 1: we cannot definitely determine what our organisms and what our organs.
34:08
Speaker 1: In the herb or tree, and in the coral polypidum
34:11
Speaker 1: organ individual colony are inextricably blended. In the higher animals,
34:16
Speaker 1: subordination of parts to a whole is completely attained all
34:20
Speaker 1: along the ascent. That which controls and subordinates parts aggrandizes
34:24
Speaker 1: its manifestations. The lowest animals add very little to merely
34:28
Speaker 1: vegetative life, except greater sensitiveness to external impressions and more
34:33
Speaker 1: free and varied response. A step higher brings in a
34:36
Speaker 1: greater range of unconscious feeling. The higher brute animals have
34:39
Speaker 1: attained unto specific desires, affections, imagination, and the elements of
34:44
Speaker 1: simple thought. The highest, gifted with reflective reason, may make
34:48
Speaker 1: their own thoughts the subject of thought. So our conception
34:51
Speaker 1: of individuality is from ourselves, conscious beings. It is carried
34:56
Speaker 1: down unqualified to the brute animals with which we are associated.
35:00
Speaker 1: Comes vague and shadowy in plants, but still somehow the
35:03
Speaker 1: idea inheres throughout all organisms. The beginning of organization is individuation,
35:08
Speaker 1: or tendency to individualize. The complete itself is man. Here
35:13
Speaker 1: let me interject a remark in correction of a common
35:15
Speaker 1: misapprehension as regards the nature of the simplicity of the
35:18
Speaker 1: lowest organisms. An animalcule and a unicellular plant, or the
35:23
Speaker 1: cellular components of common plants or animals are simple, indeed comparatively.
35:28
Speaker 1: But the recent science which has brought out the close
35:30
Speaker 1: connection of the lower with the higher forms and showed
35:33
Speaker 1: that through all one increasing purpose runs, is also showing
35:37
Speaker 1: in all the latest microscopic work that the plant cell
35:40
Speaker 1: and the animal cell are really very complex structures, and
35:43
Speaker 1: the processes through which one cell becomes two, instead of
35:46
Speaker 1: being a simple bisection prove to be very elaborate and wonderful.
35:50
Speaker 1: The further the investigation is carried under the modern microscope,
35:54
Speaker 1: the more complex and recondite does their structure and behavior
35:57
Speaker 1: appear to be. They seemed to be simple because because
36:00
Speaker 1: they are small, but much of the simplicity vanishes upon
36:03
Speaker 1: intimate acquaintance. Wherefore, in view of recent discoveries of this sort,
36:07
Speaker 1: it is premature to conclude that the little lumps of
36:09
Speaker 1: protoplasm described by Heckel are really destitute of organic structure.
36:14
Speaker 1: It is an illusion to fancy that the mystery of
36:16
Speaker 1: life is less in anamba or a blood corpusal than
36:19
Speaker 1: in a man. From individuals in themselves. Let us pass
36:23
Speaker 1: to questions relating to their succession and kinds. Plants and animals,
36:27
Speaker 1: each propagating their kind produce lines of individuals sustaining to
36:31
Speaker 1: each other the relation of parent and progeny. These lines
36:34
Speaker 1: are the species of the naturalist. Have the species come
36:38
Speaker 1: down from the beginning of life unaltered or altered? Or
36:41
Speaker 1: have there been successive creations? Taking first the vegetable and
36:45
Speaker 1: animal kingdoms as a whole. It has long been well
36:48
Speaker 1: understood that ages upon ages have passed since the Earth
36:51
Speaker 1: was stalked with living beings of numerous sorts, kind after
36:55
Speaker 1: kind has appeared, flourished, and disappeared, and in the long succession,
36:59
Speaker 1: species of progressively higher rank have come into existence, the
37:03
Speaker 1: forms more and more approximating those which now exist. There
37:07
Speaker 1: is good reason to believe that at more than one
37:09
Speaker 1: epoch the Earth has been as fully stalked with species
37:12
Speaker 1: as it is now, and in equal diversity, except as
37:14
Speaker 1: to the highest types. What relation have these beings of
37:18
Speaker 1: the earlier and of the succeeding times sustained to each
37:21
Speaker 1: other and to the present inhabitants of the Earth. Half
37:24
Speaker 1: a century ago, when I began to read scientific books
37:27
Speaker 1: and journals, the commonly received doctrine was that the Earth
37:30
Speaker 1: had been completely depopulated and repopulated over and over, each
37:34
Speaker 1: time with the distinct population, and that the species which, now,
37:37
Speaker 1: along with man, occupy the present surface of the Earth,
37:40
Speaker 1: belonged to an ultimate and independent creation, having an ideal
37:44
Speaker 1: but no genealogical connection with those that preceded. This view
37:48
Speaker 1: as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements,
37:50
Speaker 1: has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal
37:54
Speaker 1: death with agacy who maintained it with all his great
37:57
Speaker 1: ability as long as it was tenable. I am not
37:59
Speaker 1: aware that it now has any scientific upholder. It is
38:02
Speaker 1: certain that there has been no absolute severance of the
38:05
Speaker 1: present from the nearer past. For while some species have
38:08
Speaker 1: taken the place of other species, not a few have
38:10
Speaker 1: survived unchanged or almost unchanged. And it is most probable
38:15
Speaker 1: that this holds throughout, for certain species appear to have
38:18
Speaker 1: bridged the intervals between successive epochs, all along the line,
38:22
Speaker 1: surviving from one to another, and justifying the inference that species,
38:25
Speaker 1: however originated, have come in and gone out one by one,
38:29
Speaker 1: and that probably no universal catastrophe has ever blotted out
38:32
Speaker 1: life from the earth. Life seems to have gone on
38:35
Speaker 1: through many and great vicissitudes, now with losses, now with renewals,
38:40
Speaker 1: and everywhere at length with change. But from first to
38:43
Speaker 1: last it has inhered in one system of nature, one
38:46
Speaker 1: vegetable and one animal kingdom, which themselves show indications of
38:50
Speaker 1: a common starting point as respects the vegetation, from which
38:53
Speaker 1: I should naturally draw illustrations the nature and amount of
38:56
Speaker 1: the likeness between the existing flora and that of a
38:59
Speaker 1: preceding geological period has recently been summed up by supporta
39:03
Speaker 1: in the statement that there is not a tree nor
39:05
Speaker 1: a shrub in Europe or North America which has not
39:08
Speaker 1: recognizable relatives in the fossil remains of the tertiary period.
39:12
Speaker 1: It is like visiting a country churchyard where the rude
39:15
Speaker 1: forefathers of the hamlets sleep, and spelling out one by
39:19
Speaker 1: one from mossed and broken gravestones the names of most
39:22
Speaker 1: of the living inhabitants of the parish, names differing, it
39:25
Speaker 1: may be, in orthography from those on the village signs,
39:28
Speaker 1: But as of the people, so of the trees. It
39:30
Speaker 1: is beyond reasonable doubt that the later are descendants of
39:33
Speaker 1: the earlier. The same holds true of animals, and the
39:37
Speaker 1: facts therefore point toward the conclusion that existing species in
39:40
Speaker 1: general are descended from tertiary ancestors. But if so, they
39:44
Speaker 1: have mostly undergone change and great change. As we go
39:47
Speaker 1: farther back with the comparison, and there are many existing
39:51
Speaker 1: forms of which no fossil ancestor is known, What relation,
39:54
Speaker 1: if any, can these sustain to a bygone flora or fauna?
39:58
Speaker 1: And with what reason do we predicate kate change of
40:00
Speaker 1: species in former times if they are not changeable now,
40:04
Speaker 1: this brings up the question of the fixity or variability
40:07
Speaker 1: of species. Scientific opinion upon this point is not what
40:11
Speaker 1: it was thirty or forty years ago. Then. It was generally,
40:15
Speaker 1: though not universally, believed that species are perfectly definite and stable,
40:19
Speaker 1: capable of variation, indeed, but only within circumscribed limits. Wherever
40:23
Speaker 1: it was difficult or impracticable to discriminate them. The difficulty
40:27
Speaker 1: was presumed to be not in the things themselves, but
40:30
Speaker 1: in the imperfection of the naturalist's knowledge or acumen. There
40:34
Speaker 1: was the evidence of a good number of cases to
40:36
Speaker 1: show that species had not perceptibly altered in four or
40:39
Speaker 1: five thousand years, and of some having lasted for a
40:42
Speaker 1: vastly longer time. Hence, it was an article of scientific
40:45
Speaker 1: faith that species on the whole were fixed now, and
40:49
Speaker 1: that probably they have come down essentially unaltered from the beginning,
40:52
Speaker 1: a beginning which was wholly beyond the ken and scope
40:55
Speaker 1: of science, which is concerned with questions about how things
40:57
Speaker 1: go on, and has nothing to say as to how
41:00
Speaker 1: they absolutely began. The naturalists of that day might suppose,
41:04
Speaker 1: certainly many of them did, suppose, that existing species may
41:07
Speaker 1: have come into being by other than direct supernatural origination,
41:11
Speaker 1: and indeed the foremost of them were well aware that
41:13
Speaker 1: the question of origin would have to be re argued
41:15
Speaker 1: at no distant day. But so far the various speculative
41:19
Speaker 1: attempts at explaining the mystery of the incoming of species
41:22
Speaker 1: had not been encouraging, and eminent naturalists deprecated all general
41:26
Speaker 1: theories of the sort as at the best a waste
41:28
Speaker 1: of time. So the fixity and inscrutability of species, though
41:33
Speaker 1: silently doubted by some and controverted by a few, was
41:36
Speaker 1: still the postulate of natural history, and more than one
41:40
Speaker 1: laborious naturalist has been known to declare that if this
41:43
Speaker 1: fixity was not complete, natural history was not worth pursuing
41:46
Speaker 1: as a science. There is now a different attitude towards
41:49
Speaker 1: this class of questions. First, the absoluteness of species is
41:52
Speaker 1: no longer taken for granted. That species have a stability
41:56
Speaker 1: that every form reproduces after its kind is obvious, But
41:59
Speaker 1: it is ease equally obvious that the similarity of its
42:01
Speaker 1: individuals is not complete. It had been assumed that the
42:05
Speaker 1: differences brought about by variation are always comparatively small, unessential,
42:09
Speaker 1: and limited. This is now partly doubted and partly explained away.
42:14
Speaker 1: In the first place, much of the popular idea of
42:16
Speaker 1: the distinctness of all species rests on a fallacy which
42:19
Speaker 1: is obvious enough when once pointed out. In systematic works,
42:23
Speaker 1: every plant and animal must be referred to some species.
42:26
Speaker 1: Every species is described by such and such marks, and
42:30
Speaker 1: in the books one species is as good as another.
42:32
Speaker 1: The absoluteness of species being the postulate of the science,
42:36
Speaker 1: was taken for granted to begin with, and so all
42:39
Speaker 1: the forms which have been named and admitted into the
42:41
Speaker 1: systematic works as species are thereby assumed to be completely distinct.
42:46
Speaker 1: All the doubts and uncertainties which may have embarrassed the
42:48
Speaker 1: naturalist when he proposed or admitted a particular species, the
42:52
Speaker 1: nice balancing of the probabilities and the hesitating character of
42:54
Speaker 1: the judgment, either do not appear at all in the record,
42:57
Speaker 1: or are overlooked by all but the critical student. Whether
43:01
Speaker 1: the form under consideration should be regarded as a new
43:03
Speaker 1: species or should be combined with others into a more
43:06
Speaker 1: generalized and variable species is a question which a naturalist
43:09
Speaker 1: has to decide for the time being, often upon insufficient
43:12
Speaker 1: and always upon incomplete knowledge, and increasing knowledge and wider
43:16
Speaker 1: observation generally raise full as many doubts as they settle.
43:20
Speaker 1: This may not be so decidedly the case in zoology
43:22
Speaker 1: as in botany, but I incline to the opinion that
43:25
Speaker 1: there is no wide difference in this respect. The patient
43:28
Speaker 1: and plodding botanists spends much of his time in the
43:30
Speaker 1: endeavor to draw specific lines between the parts of a series,
43:33
Speaker 1: the extremes of which are patently different, while the means
43:36
Speaker 1: seem to fill the interval. When he is addressed by
43:39
Speaker 1: the triumphant popular argument if one form and one species
43:42
Speaker 1: has been derived from another, show us the intermediate forms
43:44
Speaker 1: which prove it, he can only ejaculate his wish that
43:47
Speaker 1: this ideal vegetable kingdom was the one he had to
43:49
Speaker 1: deal with. Moreover, when he shows the connecting links, he
43:53
Speaker 1: is told, then these are all varieties of one species.
43:56
Speaker 1: Species are fixed only with wider variation than was thought.
44:00
Speaker 1: And when he points to the wide difference between the
44:02
Speaker 1: extremes as being greater than that between undoubted species, he
44:05
Speaker 1: is met with the rejoinder, then here are two or
44:08
Speaker 1: three or more species which undoubtedly have true distinctions. If
44:10
Speaker 1: only you would find them out. That is quite possible.
44:13
Speaker 1: But it is hardly possible that such fine differences are supernatural.
44:17
Speaker 1: Some one, when asked if he believed in ghosts, replied no,
44:20
Speaker 1: he had seen too many of them. So I have
44:23
Speaker 1: been at the making and unmaking of far too many
44:25
Speaker 1: species to retain any overweening confidence in their definiteness and stability.
44:29
Speaker 1: I believe in them, certainly. I do not exactly agree
44:32
Speaker 1: that they are shadows, not substantial things, but I believe
44:36
Speaker 1: that they have only a relative fixity and permanence. You
44:39
Speaker 1: will ask if lack of capacity to interbreed is not
44:42
Speaker 1: a criterion of species. I must answer no. As a
44:45
Speaker 1: matter of course, individuals of widely diverse species cannot interbreed
44:49
Speaker 1: those of related species. Not uncommonly do, But it is
44:53
Speaker 1: said that when they do interbreed, the hybrid progeny is sterile.
44:56
Speaker 1: Commonly it is so, sometimes not. The rule is not
44:59
Speaker 1: sufficient true to serve as a test, either in the
45:02
Speaker 1: vegetable or in the animal kingdom. The only practical use
45:05
Speaker 1: of the test is for the discrimination of the higher
45:07
Speaker 1: grade of varieties from species. Now, in fact, some varieties
45:12
Speaker 1: of the same species will hardly interbreed at all, while
45:15
Speaker 1: some species interbreed most freely and produce fully fertile offspring.
45:19
Speaker 1: So the supposed criterion fails in the only cases in
45:22
Speaker 1: which it could be of service. All that can be
45:24
Speaker 1: said is that, whereas known varieties tend to interbreed with
45:27
Speaker 1: unimpaired and sometimes with increased fertility, distinct species of near
45:31
Speaker 1: resemblance tend not to interbreed at all. And between the
45:34
Speaker 1: two extremes there are all intermediate conditions. Here as throughout
45:38
Speaker 1: organic nature, the extremes are far apart. The interval is
45:42
Speaker 1: filled with gradations. What then, is the substantial difference between
45:46
Speaker 1: varieties and species? Just here is the turning point between
45:49
Speaker 1: the former view and the present. The former doctrine was
45:52
Speaker 1: that varieties come about in the course of nature, but species,
45:55
Speaker 1: not that varieties became what they are, but that species
45:59
Speaker 1: were originally made what they are. I suppose that even
46:03
Speaker 1: before the day of Darwinism, most working naturalists were reaching
46:06
Speaker 1: the conviction that this distinction was untenable, that the same
46:10
Speaker 1: rule was applicable to both, and therefore that either varieties
46:13
Speaker 1: did not come in the course of nature, or that
46:16
Speaker 1: species did perfectly. Apprehending the alternative and its consequences. Agassi
46:21
Speaker 1: took the ground that varieties as well as species were primordial,
46:25
Speaker 1: or rather that the more marked forms called varieties by
46:28
Speaker 1: most naturalists were species and therefore original creations. Rightly, to
46:32
Speaker 1: understand his view, it must be taken along with his
46:35
Speaker 1: conception of species as consisting from the very first of
46:38
Speaker 1: a multitude of individuals. Other naturalists were looking to the
46:42
Speaker 1: opposite alternative, and were coming to the conclusion that species,
46:45
Speaker 1: as well as varieties were natural developments in botany. This
46:49
Speaker 1: conclusion was reached more than sixty years ago through observation
46:52
Speaker 1: and experiment by an English clergyman and naturalist, Herbert Afterward,
46:56
Speaker 1: Dean of Manchester. He announced his conviction that quote, horticultural
47:01
Speaker 1: experiments have established, beyond the possibility of doubt, that botanical
47:04
Speaker 1: species are only a higher and more permanent class of
47:07
Speaker 1: varieties close and consequently that the genus is the progenitor
47:12
Speaker 1: of the species belonging to it. Others have reached the
47:15
Speaker 1: same conclusion by more speculative roots, and have deduced the
47:18
Speaker 1: theoretical consequences, but no marked impression was made until the
47:22
Speaker 1: hypothesis of natural selection or the preservation of favored races
47:26
Speaker 1: in the struggle for life was promulgated and supplied a
47:30
Speaker 1: scientific reason for the diversification of varieties into species. The
47:34
Speaker 1: principle brought to view is too obvious to have been
47:36
Speaker 1: wholly overlooked. It is interesting to notice that the earliest
47:40
Speaker 1: known anticipation of that principle, which Darwin and Wallace developed
47:43
Speaker 1: almost simultaneously, was published sixty years ago by doctor Wells,
47:48
Speaker 1: the sagacious author of the theory of dew, who hit
47:51
Speaker 1: upon the idea of natural selection while resident in America,
47:54
Speaker 1: as abstracted by mister Darwin, who evidently takes delight in
47:58
Speaker 1: the discovery of these anticipations. The points which doctor Wells
48:01
Speaker 1: made were substantially these. All animals vary more or less.
48:05
Speaker 1: Agriculturists improve domesticated animals by selection. What is thus done
48:10
Speaker 1: by art is done with equal efficacy, though more slowly,
48:13
Speaker 1: by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind fitted
48:17
Speaker 1: for the country which they inhabit. And in this way,
48:20
Speaker 1: negroes and mulattoes enjoy immunity from certain tropical diseases, and
48:24
Speaker 1: white men a comparative immunity from those of cold climates.
48:28
Speaker 1: Under the variation common to all animals, some of the
48:30
Speaker 1: darker would be better adapted than the rest to bear
48:33
Speaker 1: the diseases of a warm country, say of tropical Africa.
48:37
Speaker 1: This race would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease,
48:41
Speaker 1: directly because the prevalent diseases would be more fatal to them,
48:44
Speaker 1: and indirectly by inability to contend with their more vigorous neighbors.
48:49
Speaker 1: Through the continued operation of the same causes, darker and
48:52
Speaker 1: darker races would prevail over the less dark and in
48:55
Speaker 1: time would monopolize the region where they originated or into
48:58
Speaker 1: which they had advanced. Similarly, would white races, to the
49:01
Speaker 1: exclusion of dark be developed and prevail in cooler regions.
49:05
Speaker 1: Now this simple principle extended from races to species, from
49:09
Speaker 1: the present to geological ages, from man and domesticated animals
49:13
Speaker 1: to all animals and plants, from struggle with disease to
49:17
Speaker 1: struggle for food, for room, and against the diverse hardships
49:20
Speaker 1: which at times beset all living things, and which are
49:23
Speaker 1: intensified by the Malthusian law of the pressure of population
49:26
Speaker 1: on subsistence, population tending to multiply in geometrical progression, while
49:31
Speaker 1: food can increase only in a much lower ratio and
49:33
Speaker 1: room may not be increasable at all, so that out
49:36
Speaker 1: of multitudinous progeny, only the few fittest to the special
49:39
Speaker 1: circumstances in each generation can possibly survive and propagate. This
49:43
Speaker 1: is Darwinism, that is Darwinism, pure and simple, free from
49:47
Speaker 1: all speculative accretions. Here it may be remarked that natural
49:51
Speaker 1: selection by itself is not a hypothesis, nor even a theory.
49:55
Speaker 1: It is a truth, a catena of facts and direct
49:58
Speaker 1: inferences from facts. As has been happily said, it is
50:02
Speaker 1: a truth of the same kind as that which we
50:03
Speaker 1: enunciate in saying that round stones will roll down a
50:06
Speaker 1: hill further than flat ones. There is no doubt that
50:09
Speaker 1: natural selection operates. The open question is what do its
50:12
Speaker 1: operations amount to. The hypothesis based on this principle is
50:17
Speaker 1: that the struggle for life and survival of only the
50:19
Speaker 1: fittest among individuals, all disposed to vary and no too
50:23
Speaker 1: exactly alike, will account for the diversification of the species
50:27
Speaker 1: and forms of vegetable and animal life, will even account
50:30
Speaker 1: for the rise in the course of countless ages from
50:32
Speaker 1: simpler and lower to higher and more specialized living beings.
50:37
Speaker 1: We need not here enter into any further explanation of
50:39
Speaker 1: this now familiar but not always well understood hypothesis, nor
50:43
Speaker 1: need I here pronounce any judgment of my own upon it.
50:46
Speaker 1: No doubt it may account for much which has not
50:48
Speaker 1: received other scientific explanation, and mister Darwin is not the
50:52
Speaker 1: man to claim that it will account for everything. But
50:55
Speaker 1: before we can judge at all of its capabilities, we
50:57
Speaker 1: need clearly to understand what is contained in the hypotheest.
51:00
Speaker 1: For what can be got out of it in the
51:02
Speaker 1: way of explanation depends upon what has gone into it.
51:05
Speaker 1: So certain discriminations should here be attended. To natural selection,
51:10
Speaker 1: we understand to be a sort of personification or generalize
51:13
Speaker 1: expression for the processes and the results of the whole
51:16
Speaker 1: interplay of living things on the earth with their energanic
51:19
Speaker 1: surroundings and with each other. The hypothesis asserts that these
51:23
Speaker 1: may account not for the introduction of life, but for
51:26
Speaker 1: its diversification into the forms and kinds which we now behold. This,
51:30
Speaker 1: I suppose, is tantamount to asserting that the differences between
51:33
Speaker 1: one species and another now existing, and between these and
51:37
Speaker 1: their predecessors has come to pass in the course of nature,
51:40
Speaker 1: that is without miracle in these days, all agree that
51:43
Speaker 1: a scientific inquiry whether this may be so, that is,
51:46
Speaker 1: whether there are probable grounds for believing it. No thoughtful
51:50
Speaker 1: person expects to prove it is perfectly legitimate, And so
51:54
Speaker 1: far as it becomes probable, I imagine that you might
51:56
Speaker 1: safely accept it. For the hypothesis in its normal and
51:59
Speaker 1: simplest form, when kept close to the facts and free
52:02
Speaker 1: from extraneous assumptions, is merely this given the observed capacity
52:07
Speaker 1: for variation as an inexhaustible factor, Assuming that what has
52:11
Speaker 1: varied is still prone to vary, and there are grounds
52:13
Speaker 1: for the assumption, and natural selection will, so to say,
52:17
Speaker 1: pick out for preservation the fittest forms for particular surroundings,
52:21
Speaker 1: lead on and diversify them, and by continual elimination of
52:24
Speaker 1: the less fit, segregate the survivors into distinct species. This,
52:29
Speaker 1: you see, assumes and does not account for the impulse
52:31
Speaker 1: to variation. Assumes that variation is an inherent and universal
52:35
Speaker 1: capacity and is the efficient cause of all the diversity,
52:38
Speaker 1: while natural selection is the proximate cause of it. So
52:42
Speaker 1: it is the selection, not the creation of forms, that
52:45
Speaker 1: is accounted for Darwinism does not so much explain why
52:48
Speaker 1: we have the actual forms as it does why we
52:50
Speaker 1: have only these and not all intermediate forms. In short,
52:54
Speaker 1: why we have species. There is, of course a cause
52:57
Speaker 1: for the variation. Nobody supposes that anything changes without a
52:59
Speaker 1: cou and there's no reason for thinking that proximate causes
53:03
Speaker 1: of variation may not come to be known. But we
53:05
Speaker 1: hardly know the conditions, still less the causes. Now. The
53:09
Speaker 1: point I wish to make here is that natural selection,
53:11
Speaker 1: however you expand its meaning, cannot be invoked as the
53:14
Speaker 1: cause of that upon which it operates, i e. Variation. Otherwise,
53:18
Speaker 1: if by natural selection is meant the totality of all
53:21
Speaker 1: the known and unknown causes of whatever comes to pass
53:23
Speaker 1: in organic nature, then the term is no longer an
53:26
Speaker 1: allowable personification, but a sheer abstraction, which, meaning everything, can
53:30
Speaker 1: explain nothing. It is like saying that whatever happens is
53:33
Speaker 1: the cause of whatever comes to pass. We may conclude therefore,
53:37
Speaker 1: that natural selection, in the sense of the originator of
53:40
Speaker 1: the term, and in the only congruous sense, stands for
53:43
Speaker 1: the influence of inorganic nature upon living things, along with
53:47
Speaker 1: the influence of these upon each other, and that what
53:50
Speaker 1: it purports to account for is the picking out from
53:52
Speaker 1: the multitude of incipient variations of the few which are
53:55
Speaker 1: to survive and which thereby acquire distinctness. There's a first,
54:00
Speaker 1: or the assumption in the hypothesis which must not be overlooked, namely,
54:03
Speaker 1: that the variation of plants and animals out of which
54:05
Speaker 1: so much comes is indefinite or all directioned and accidental. This,
54:10
Speaker 1: I would insist, is no fundamental part of the hypothesis
54:13
Speaker 1: of the derivation of species, and is clearly no part
54:16
Speaker 1: of the principle of natural selection. But it is an
54:18
Speaker 1: assumption which mister Darwin judge is to be warranted by
54:21
Speaker 1: the facts, and in some of its elements it is unavoidable. Evidently,
54:25
Speaker 1: if the innate tendency to vary upon which physical circumstances
54:28
Speaker 1: operate is indefinite, then the variations which the circumstances elicit
54:32
Speaker 1: and which could not otherwise amount to anything, must be
54:35
Speaker 1: accidental in the same sense as are the circumstances themselves.
54:39
Speaker 1: Out of this would immediately rise the question as to
54:41
Speaker 1: what can be the foundation and beginning of this long
54:44
Speaker 1: and wonderful chapter of accidents which has produced and maintained
54:47
Speaker 1: not only for this time, but through all biological periods
54:50
Speaker 1: and ever varying yet ever well adapted cosmos. But the facts,
54:55
Speaker 1: so far as I can judge, do not support the
54:57
Speaker 1: assumption of every sided and indifferent variation variation is somehow,
55:01
Speaker 1: in somewhere introduced in the transit from parent to offspring.
55:05
Speaker 1: The actual variations displayed by the progeny of a particular
55:08
Speaker 1: plant or animal may differ much in grade and tend
55:11
Speaker 1: in more than one direction, but in fact they do
55:13
Speaker 1: not appear to tend in many directions. It is generally
55:16
Speaker 1: agreed that the variation is from within is an internal
55:20
Speaker 1: response to external impressions. All that we can possibly know
55:24
Speaker 1: of the nature of the inherent tendency to vary must
55:26
Speaker 1: be gathered from the facts of the response, and these,
55:29
Speaker 1: I judge, are not such as to require or support
55:32
Speaker 1: the assumption of a tendency to wholly vague and all
55:34
Speaker 1: direction to variation. Let us here correct a common impression
55:39
Speaker 1: that Darwinian evolution predicates actual or necessary variation of all
55:43
Speaker 1: existing species, and counts that the variation must be in
55:46
Speaker 1: some definite ratio to the time. That is not the idea,
55:49
Speaker 1: nor the fact evolution is not a course of haphazard
55:53
Speaker 1: and incessant change, but a continuing readjustment which may or
55:57
Speaker 1: may not, according to circumstances, involve considerable changes. In a
56:00
Speaker 1: given time, every form is in a relatively stable equilibrium,
56:06
Speaker 1: else it would not exist. Forms adjusted to their surroundings
56:09
Speaker 1: ought by the hypothesis to remain unchanged until the circumstances change.
56:14
Speaker 1: Only those of their variations could come to anything which
56:16
Speaker 1: happened to be equally well adapted to the unchanged circumstances.
56:20
Speaker 1: And this may be what we have when two or
56:21
Speaker 1: more nearly related species inhabit similar stations in the same area.
56:26
Speaker 1: From this point of view, you see how wide of
56:28
Speaker 1: the mark are those who imagine that Darwinian evolution supposes
56:32
Speaker 1: that the organic world was in early times, or at
56:34
Speaker 1: any time, out of joint or in ill relations to
56:37
Speaker 1: the surroundings. On the contrary, it is of the very
56:40
Speaker 1: nature of natural selection that, while inducing changes eventually immense,
56:44
Speaker 1: it should preserve throughout all time a condition of harmonious adaptation.
56:49
Speaker 1: Catastrophes must destroy, but gradual modification under the long and
56:53
Speaker 1: silent struggle, which never hastes and never rests, preserves, While
56:57
Speaker 1: it renovates and diversifies the races. I ought here to
57:01
Speaker 1: state that there are eminent naturalists, one of them of
57:04
Speaker 1: your own university, who accept the doctrine of evolution, but
57:07
Speaker 1: who think little of natural selection as a modus operandi
57:10
Speaker 1: in the diversification of species. And there are distinguished writers,
57:14
Speaker 1: not naturalists, who, from other points of view, are ready
57:17
Speaker 1: to accept quote the doctrine of the successive evolution from
57:20
Speaker 1: ancestral germs of higher and higher forms of life, and
57:23
Speaker 1: mind close quote, while they profess to have buried the
57:26
Speaker 1: principle of natural selection and with it, the Malthusian theory
57:29
Speaker 1: of population in one common grave. These are evolutionists in
57:33
Speaker 1: their way, because the probability of evolutionary theories springs from
57:37
Speaker 1: the very various lines of facts otherwise inexplicable, which they
57:40
Speaker 1: harmonize and explain. In geology, the previous existence of forms
57:45
Speaker 1: more and more like those now existing, and at length
57:47
Speaker 1: coalescing in them. In geography, the actual distribution of species
57:52
Speaker 1: in genera over the Earth's surface. In systematic natural history,
57:56
Speaker 1: the reason why species in genera and orders are so
57:59
Speaker 1: variously related are here connected by transitions and there separated
58:03
Speaker 1: by wide gaps in morphology, why the same functions may
58:06
Speaker 1: be assumed by different organs, or the same kind of
58:09
Speaker 1: organ may perform here one function and there another, or
58:12
Speaker 1: again exist as a vestige of no service at all.
58:15
Speaker 1: In anatomy and biology, the transition from one element of
58:18
Speaker 1: structure to another, the gradual specialization of organs, and the
58:22
Speaker 1: remarkable coincidence between the order of the development and the
58:25
Speaker 1: individual animal, and that of the rise from low to
58:28
Speaker 1: high in the scale of being, and that of the
58:30
Speaker 1: successive appearance of the grades in time. Finally, in psychology,
58:35
Speaker 1: the gradations between beings endowed with rudimentary sensation and beings
58:39
Speaker 1: endowed with mind. Here, where the touch of nature makes
58:43
Speaker 1: the whole world kin, we reach the sensitive point. Man,
58:47
Speaker 1: while on the one side a wholly exceptional being, is
58:50
Speaker 1: on the other an object of natural history, a part
58:53
Speaker 1: of the animal kingdom. If you agree with Catrifage that
58:56
Speaker 1: man is a kingdom by himself, you must agree with
58:59
Speaker 1: him that this caseim is solely intellectual, that he is
59:02
Speaker 1: as certainly and completely an animal as he is certainly
59:05
Speaker 1: something more. We are sharers not only of animal, but
59:08
Speaker 1: a vegetable life, sharers with the higher brute animals in
59:11
Speaker 1: common instincts and feelings and affections. It seems to me
59:14
Speaker 1: that there is a sort of meanness in the wish
59:16
Speaker 1: to ignore the tie. I fancy that human beings may
59:19
Speaker 1: be more humane when they realize that, as their dependent
59:22
Speaker 1: associates live a life in which man has a share,
59:24
Speaker 1: so they have rights which man is bound to respect. Man,
59:28
Speaker 1: in short, is a partaker of the natural as well
59:31
Speaker 1: as of the spiritual. And the evolutionist may say, with
59:34
Speaker 1: the apostle quote, howbeit that was not first which is spiritual,
59:38
Speaker 1: but that which is natural, and afterward that which is
59:40
Speaker 1: spiritual close quote, man formed of the dust of the ground,
59:44
Speaker 1: endowed with the breath of life, became a living soul.
59:48
Speaker 1: Is there any warrant for affirming that these processes were instantaneous?
59:53
Speaker 1: As has just been intimated. The characteristic of that particular
59:56
Speaker 1: theory of evolution which is now in the ascendant is that,
59:59
Speaker 1: by taking advantage of every creature's best for bettering conditions,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: it has made strife work for good throughout an immensely
1:00:06
Speaker 1: long line of adjustments and readjustments in a series ascending
1:00:10
Speaker 1: as it advanced. That it supposes a process not from
1:00:13
Speaker 1: discord to harmony, but from simpler to fuller and richer harmonies,
1:00:18
Speaker 1: conserving throughout the best adaptations to the then existing conditions.
1:00:22
Speaker 1: So while its advocates nowhere contemplate a state quote what
1:00:27
Speaker 1: nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay and could
1:00:30
Speaker 1: not heave her head close quote, they may appropriate Dryden's
1:00:33
Speaker 1: closing lines quote from harmony from heavenly harmony. This universal
1:00:38
Speaker 1: frame began from harmony to harmony through all the compass
1:00:42
Speaker 1: of the notes it ran the Diapacan closing full in
1:00:45
Speaker 1: man close quote. I have now indicated at more than
1:00:49
Speaker 1: sufficient length for one discourse, some of the principal recent
1:00:52
Speaker 1: changes and present tendencies in scientific belief especially in biology.
1:00:57
Speaker 1: Even the most advanced of the views here presented, are
1:01:00
Speaker 1: held by very many scientific men, some as established truths,
1:01:03
Speaker 1: some as probable opinions. There is a class moreover, by
1:01:07
Speaker 1: whom all these scientific theories and more are held as
1:01:10
Speaker 1: ascertained facts and as the basis of philosophical inferences, which
1:01:14
Speaker 1: strike at the root of theistic beliefs. It remains to
1:01:17
Speaker 1: consider what attitude thoughtful men and Christian believers should take
1:01:20
Speaker 1: respecting them, and how they stand related to beliefs of
1:01:23
Speaker 1: another order that will be the topic of a following lecture.
1:01:28
Speaker 1: End of Lecture one, Part two, Section three of Natural
1:01:38
Speaker 1: Science and Religion by Asa Gray. This LibriVox recording is
1:01:43
Speaker 1: in the public domain. Lecture two, The Relations of Scientific
1:01:48
Speaker 1: to Religious belief Part one. In a preceding discourse, I
1:01:53
Speaker 1: brought to your notice a series of changes in view
1:01:56
Speaker 1: and opinion which have taken place among scientific men within
1:01:59
Speaker 1: my own remembrance. I restricted the survey to the biological
1:02:03
Speaker 1: sciences with merely a reference to the principle of the
1:02:06
Speaker 1: conservation of energy in its application to the organic world,
1:02:09
Speaker 1: and in these to the supposed facts and immediate inferences
1:02:13
Speaker 1: to what may be called their natural historical interpretation. These
1:02:17
Speaker 1: new views are full of interest of a kind which
1:02:19
Speaker 1: you cannot expect a naturalist to undervalue, for they have
1:02:23
Speaker 1: greatly exalted his calling. In the days of Linnaeus, who
1:02:27
Speaker 1: died only one hundred and two years ago, and throughout
1:02:29
Speaker 1: a long generation of his followers, species were looked upon
1:02:33
Speaker 1: as simple curiosities of nature to be inventoried and described,
1:02:38
Speaker 1: and striking phenomena in plants and animals has something to
1:02:41
Speaker 1: be wondered at, but not to be explained with the
1:02:44
Speaker 1: advent of morphology, the precursor and parent of evolution. Natural
1:02:48
Speaker 1: history developed from a curious pursuit, training the observing powers
1:02:52
Speaker 1: to that of a true science, engaging the reason in
1:02:55
Speaker 1: the search for causes. According to one definition quote the
1:03:00
Speaker 1: labor of mind applied to nature. In this sense, modern
1:03:04
Speaker 1: botany and zoology have certainly become scientific. They are at
1:03:08
Speaker 1: least attempting great labors, but in widely extending as they
1:03:12
Speaker 1: now do the operation of natural causes in the organic world.
1:03:16
Speaker 1: They make close connections between biology and physics or what
1:03:19
Speaker 1: used to be called and I think deserves to be
1:03:21
Speaker 1: called natural philosophy, and the connection brings in or brings
1:03:26
Speaker 1: up afresh considerations which affect the ground of natural and
1:03:29
Speaker 1: revealed religion. Under this aspect, they properly excite your anxious attention.
1:03:35
Speaker 1: I used throughout the phrase scientific belief as the one
1:03:39
Speaker 1: best suited to the occasion. The term is comprehensive and elastic,
1:03:43
Speaker 1: covering many degrees of conviction or assent, from moral certainty
1:03:47
Speaker 1: down to probable opinion. In this respect, scientific and theological
1:03:52
Speaker 1: beliefs are similar, as they also are in being mainly
1:03:55
Speaker 1: states of mind toward that which is incapable of demonstration,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: either because as if the case of ultimate beliefs on
1:04:01
Speaker 1: which all science and knowledge are based, it is impossible
1:04:05
Speaker 1: to go beyond them, or else because the subject matter
1:04:08
Speaker 1: is not positively known and certainty is unattainable from the
1:04:11
Speaker 1: nature or the present conditions of the case. The proofs
1:04:15
Speaker 1: upon which both biological and theological investigations have to rely
1:04:19
Speaker 1: are largely probabilities, some of the higher some of a
1:04:22
Speaker 1: lower order. And much that is accepted for the time
1:04:25
Speaker 1: is taken on trial or on prima facee evidence. Much
1:04:29
Speaker 1: also is or should be held under suspense of judgment,
1:04:33
Speaker 1: a state of mind eminently favorable to accurate investigation. As
1:04:37
Speaker 1: to those who can forthwith assort the contents of their
1:04:40
Speaker 1: minds into two compartments, one for what they believe and
1:04:42
Speaker 1: the other for what they disbelieve, neither their belief nor
1:04:45
Speaker 1: their denial can be of much account in all subjects
1:04:48
Speaker 1: of inquiry. Those only are to be trusted who discriminate
1:04:52
Speaker 1: between inevitable beliefs, established convictions, probable opinions, and hypotheses on trial. Now,
1:04:59
Speaker 1: our general inquire in this lecture is what should be
1:05:01
Speaker 1: the attitude I will not say, of theological students, but
1:05:04
Speaker 1: of thoughtful men. In respect to scientific beliefs, tendencies, and anticipations,
1:05:09
Speaker 1: such as we have been considering to a certain extent,
1:05:12
Speaker 1: it may well be a waiting attitude. The strictly scientific
1:05:16
Speaker 1: matters must necessarily be left mainly to the experts, whose
1:05:19
Speaker 1: very various and independent investigations, pursued under every diversity of bias,
1:05:24
Speaker 1: must in time reach reasonably satisfactory conclusions. But the naturalists
1:05:28
Speaker 1: claim no monopoly in the consideration of the great problems
1:05:31
Speaker 1: which now interest us, in which indeed most of them
1:05:34
Speaker 1: decline to take any part. Perhaps theological students and divines
1:05:38
Speaker 1: might be asked to wait until views and hypotheses still
1:05:41
Speaker 1: ardently controverted among scientific investigators are brought nearer to a settlement.
1:05:46
Speaker 1: But the disposition to discount expected results, either for or
1:05:49
Speaker 1: against supernatural religion, has always prevailed. The theologians, at least
1:05:54
Speaker 1: have never waited and cannot be expected to wait, And
1:05:57
Speaker 1: while some of their contributions to the subject have been inconsiderate,
1:06:00
Speaker 1: others have been most valuable. In any case, there is
1:06:03
Speaker 1: no call to wait on the ground that the disturbing
1:06:05
Speaker 1: views are only hypotheses for in the first place, we
1:06:08
Speaker 1: should have long to wait for demonstration one way or
1:06:10
Speaker 1: the other, and one crop of hypotheses is the fertile
1:06:13
Speaker 1: seed of another. Besides, hypothesis is the proper instrument for
1:06:17
Speaker 1: dealing with this class of questions. Indeed, it is the
1:06:20
Speaker 1: essential precursor of every fruitful investigation in physical nature. You
1:06:24
Speaker 1: can seldom sound with the plummet whilst standing on the shore.
1:06:28
Speaker 1: To do this to any purpose, you must launch out
1:06:30
Speaker 1: on the sea and brave some risks. Nearly all valuable
1:06:34
Speaker 1: results have been gained in this way. Newton's theory of
1:06:37
Speaker 1: gravitation was a typical hypothesis, and one which happened to
1:06:40
Speaker 1: be capable of early and sufficient verification. The undulatory theory
1:06:45
Speaker 1: of light was another. The nebular hypothesis or portions of it,
1:06:49
Speaker 1: and the kinetic theory of gases less verifiable, are accepted
1:06:53
Speaker 1: willingly because of the success with which they explain the facts.
1:06:56
Speaker 1: Evolution is a more complex, loose and less provable hypothesis
1:07:00
Speaker 1: or conjuries of hypotheses, which can at most have only
1:07:04
Speaker 1: a relative though perhaps continually increasing probability. From its power
1:07:08
Speaker 1: of explaining a great variety of facts. Its strength appears
1:07:12
Speaker 1: on comparing it with the rival hypothesis, For such it
1:07:15
Speaker 1: is of immediate creation, which neither explains nor pretends to
1:07:19
Speaker 1: explain any How, the more exact physical sciences are becoming
1:07:23
Speaker 1: more reconditely hypothetical, especially in the imagination of entities of
1:07:27
Speaker 1: which there can be no possible proof beyond their serviceability
1:07:30
Speaker 1: in explaining phenomena. We must not stop to consider. Only
1:07:34
Speaker 1: this may be said that the adage quote where faith
1:07:37
Speaker 1: begins science ends close quote is now well nigh inverted,
1:07:42
Speaker 1: for faith, in a just sense of the word, assumes
1:07:45
Speaker 1: as prominent a place in science as in religion. It
1:07:48
Speaker 1: is indispensable to both. Let it be noted moreover that
1:07:51
Speaker 1: the case we have to consider does not come before
1:07:53
Speaker 1: the tribunal of reason with antecedent presumptions all on one side,
1:07:57
Speaker 1: as theologians generally suppose. They say to the naturalists, not improperly,
1:08:02
Speaker 1: we will think about adopting your conclusions, contrary as they
1:08:05
Speaker 1: are to all our preprocessions, when they are thoroughly and
1:08:08
Speaker 1: irrevocably substantiated, and not till then your theory may prove true.
1:08:12
Speaker 1: But it seems vastly improbable. Here the naturalist is ready
1:08:16
Speaker 1: with a rejoinder, in this world of law, you cannot
1:08:19
Speaker 1: expect us to adopt your assumption of specific creations by
1:08:22
Speaker 1: miraculous intervention with the course of nature, not once for
1:08:26
Speaker 1: all at a beginning, but over and over in time.
1:08:28
Speaker 1: We will accept intervention only when and where you can
1:08:31
Speaker 1: convincingly establish it, and where we are unable to explain
1:08:34
Speaker 1: it away, as in the case of absolute beginning. If
1:08:37
Speaker 1: the naturalist starts with the presumption against him when he
1:08:40
Speaker 1: broaches the theory of the descent of later from preceding
1:08:42
Speaker 1: forms in the course of nature, so no less does
1:08:45
Speaker 1: the theologian when in a world governed by law he
1:08:48
Speaker 1: asserts a break in the continuity of natural cause and effect.
1:08:52
Speaker 1: But indeed, you are not so much concerned to know
1:08:54
Speaker 1: whether evolutionary theories are actually well founded or ill founded,
1:08:59
Speaker 1: as you are to know whether, either if true, or
1:09:01
Speaker 1: if received as true, they would impair the foundations of religion.
1:09:05
Speaker 1: And surely, if views of nature which are incompatible with
1:09:07
Speaker 1: theism and with Christianity can be established or can be
1:09:10
Speaker 1: made as tenable as the contrary, it is quite time
1:09:13
Speaker 1: that we knew it. If, on the other hand, all
1:09:16
Speaker 1: real facts and necessary inferences from them can be adjusted
1:09:19
Speaker 1: to our grounded religious convictions as well as other ascertained
1:09:22
Speaker 1: facts have been adjusted. It may relieve many to be
1:09:25
Speaker 1: assured of it. The best contribution that I can offer
1:09:28
Speaker 1: towards the settlement of these mooted questions may be the
1:09:31
Speaker 1: statement and explanation of my own attitude in this regard,
1:09:34
Speaker 1: and of the reasons which determine it. I accept substantially
1:09:38
Speaker 1: as facts, or as apparently well grounded inferences, or as
1:09:41
Speaker 1: fairly probable opinions, according to their nature and degree, the
1:09:45
Speaker 1: principal series of changed views which I brought before you
1:09:48
Speaker 1: in the preceding lecture. I have no particular predilection for
1:09:52
Speaker 1: any of them, and I have no particular dread of
1:09:54
Speaker 1: any of the consequences which legitimately flow from them. Beyond
1:09:57
Speaker 1: the general awe and sense of total insufficience with which
1:10:00
Speaker 1: a mortal man contemplates the mysteries which shut him in
1:10:03
Speaker 1: on every side. I claim, moreover, not merely allowance, but
1:10:07
Speaker 1: the right to hold these opinions. Along with the doctrines
1:10:10
Speaker 1: of natural religion and the verities of the Christian faith.
1:10:13
Speaker 1: There are perplexities enough to bewilder our souls. Whenever and
1:10:16
Speaker 1: wherever we look for the causes and reasons of things.
1:10:19
Speaker 1: But I am unable to perceive that the idea of
1:10:21
Speaker 1: the evolution of one species from another, and of all
1:10:24
Speaker 1: from an initial form of life, adds any new perplexity
1:10:27
Speaker 1: to theism. In unfolding my thoughts upon the subject, I
1:10:30
Speaker 1: wish to keep as close to the solid ground of
1:10:33
Speaker 1: nature as I possibly can, even where the discourse must
1:10:36
Speaker 1: rise from the ground of science into the finer air
1:10:38
Speaker 1: of philosophy. Specially, I must heed the injunction quote. If
1:10:42
Speaker 1: thou hast any tidings, prithee deliver them like a man
1:10:45
Speaker 1: of this world, close quote, and not trouble myself nor
1:10:48
Speaker 1: you with metaphysical refinements and distinctions, which, however needful in
1:10:53
Speaker 1: their way and place, are unnecessary to our purpose. I
1:10:56
Speaker 1: take for granted, like a man of this world, the
1:10:59
Speaker 1: objective reality and substantiality of what we see and deal with,
1:11:03
Speaker 1: though I am told it cannot be proved, and I assume,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: although demonstration is impossible, that what I and my fellow
1:11:09
Speaker 1: men cannot help be leaving we ought to believe, or
1:11:11
Speaker 1: at least must rest content with. I suppose you will
1:11:14
Speaker 1: agree with me that it is not science, at least,
1:11:17
Speaker 1: not natural science, which raises the most formidable difficulties to
1:11:20
Speaker 1: Christian theism, but philosophy, and that it is for philosophy
1:11:24
Speaker 1: to surmount them. The question which science asks of all
1:11:28
Speaker 1: it meets, is what is the system and course of things?
1:11:31
Speaker 1: And how is this or that a part of it
1:11:33
Speaker 1: in the fixed sequence of cause and effect? Philosophy asks
1:11:37
Speaker 1: whence the system itself? And what art causes and effects?
1:11:41
Speaker 1: Theology is partly historical science and partly philosophy. Now, I,
1:11:46
Speaker 1: as a scientific man, might rest in the probability of
1:11:49
Speaker 1: evolution as a general inference from the facts or a
1:11:51
Speaker 1: good hypothesis, and relegate the questions you would ask to
1:11:54
Speaker 1: the philosophers and theologians. But I am not one of
1:11:58
Speaker 1: those who think that scientific men should not concern themselves
1:12:00
Speaker 1: with such matters. And having gone so far as to
1:12:03
Speaker 1: say that the evolution which I accept does not seem
1:12:06
Speaker 1: to me to add any new perplexity to theism, and
1:12:09
Speaker 1: well knowing that others are of a contrary opinion, I
1:12:12
Speaker 1: am bound to further explanation and argument. But I have
1:12:15
Speaker 1: not the presumption to suppose that I can make any
1:12:17
Speaker 1: new contribution to this discussion, and what I may suggest
1:12:20
Speaker 1: must not be expected to cover the ground widely nor
1:12:23
Speaker 1: penetrate it deeply. I am sure that you will not
1:12:25
Speaker 1: look to me for the rehandling of insoluble problems and
1:12:28
Speaker 1: inevitable contradictions into which the philosophical consideration of the relations
1:12:32
Speaker 1: of nature and man to God ultimately lands us. Certainly,
1:12:36
Speaker 1: they are not peculiar to evolution. So in so far
1:12:39
Speaker 1: as we may fairly refer any of its perplexities to
1:12:41
Speaker 1: old antinomies, which can neither be reconciled nor evaded, the
1:12:45
Speaker 1: burden will be off our shoulders. It might suffice to
1:12:49
Speaker 1: show that evolution need raise no other nor greater religious
1:12:52
Speaker 1: or philosophical difficulties than the views which have already been
1:12:55
Speaker 1: accepted and held to be not inimical to religion. But indeed,
1:13:00
Speaker 1: our universal concession that nature is, and that it is
1:13:03
Speaker 1: a system of fixed laws and uniformities, under which everything
1:13:07
Speaker 1: we see and know in the inorganic universe, and very
1:13:10
Speaker 1: much in the organic world, have come to be as
1:13:12
Speaker 1: they are in unbroken sequence, implicitly gives away the principle
1:13:16
Speaker 1: of all ordinary objection to the evolution of living as
1:13:19
Speaker 1: well as of lifeless forms of species as well as
1:13:22
Speaker 1: of individuals. It leaves the matter simply as one of
1:13:25
Speaker 1: fact and evidence. Indeed, mediate creation is just what the
1:13:30
Speaker 1: thoughtful and thorough observer of the ways of God in
1:13:32
Speaker 1: nature would expect, and is what some of the most
1:13:35
Speaker 1: illustrious of the philosophic saints and fathers of the Church
1:13:38
Speaker 1: have more or less believed in. In saying that the
1:13:41
Speaker 1: doctrine of the evolution of species has taken its place
1:13:43
Speaker 1: among scientific beliefs, I do not mean that it is
1:13:46
Speaker 1: accepted by all living naturalists, for there are some who
1:13:50
Speaker 1: wholly reject it, nor that it is held with equal
1:13:53
Speaker 1: conviction and in the same way by all who receive it.
1:13:56
Speaker 1: For some teach it dogmatically along with assumptions both scientific
1:13:59
Speaker 1: and philips esop which are to us both unwarranted and unwelcome.
1:14:03
Speaker 1: More accepted with various confidence and in a tentative way,
1:14:07
Speaker 1: for its purely scientific uses and without any obvious reference
1:14:10
Speaker 1: to its ultimate outcome, and some looking to its probable prevalence,
1:14:14
Speaker 1: are adjusting their conditional belief in it to cherished beliefs
1:14:17
Speaker 1: of another order. One thing is clear that the current
1:14:20
Speaker 1: is all running one way, and seems unlikely to run dry,
1:14:23
Speaker 1: and that evolutionary doctrines are profoundly affecting all natural science.
1:14:28
Speaker 1: Here you remark that your objection is not so much
1:14:30
Speaker 1: to the idea of mediate creation as to the form
1:14:33
Speaker 1: it has assumed. That the mediate production of species may
1:14:37
Speaker 1: indeed be completely theistic, but that whereas their immediate creation
1:14:41
Speaker 1: directly asserts divine action, their incoming under nature only implies it.
1:14:46
Speaker 1: To those who already believe in a supreme being. The
1:14:48
Speaker 1: two views may religiously amount to the same thing, but
1:14:51
Speaker 1: you continue living beings were thought to afford a kind
1:14:54
Speaker 1: of demonstration of a supernatural creator. Science, in taking this away,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: leaves us only the assurance that if we bring the
1:15:00
Speaker 1: idea of God to nature, we may find nature wholly
1:15:03
Speaker 1: compatible with that idea. Well, what is lost in directness
1:15:07
Speaker 1: may perhaps be gained in breadth and depth. It is
1:15:09
Speaker 1: certain that the whole progress of physical science tends in
1:15:12
Speaker 1: respect to divine action. To consider that mediate general and
1:15:15
Speaker 1: innocence indirect, which had been thought to be immediate and
1:15:18
Speaker 1: special youth is ever taught by instances manhood by laws.
1:15:24
Speaker 1: You go on to say, the evolution of species, now
1:15:27
Speaker 1: so commended to us by science, not long ago seemed
1:15:29
Speaker 1: as improbable to scientific as to ordinary minds. What assurance
1:15:33
Speaker 1: can we unscientific people have that science will not reverse
1:15:36
Speaker 1: its present judgments. None, perhaps, except that while many particular
1:15:41
Speaker 1: judgments have been reversed or altered, the general course of
1:15:44
Speaker 1: thought has run in one direction, and theologians, like naturalists,
1:15:48
Speaker 1: must be content with the best judgments they can form
1:15:50
Speaker 1: upon the present showing, and be ready to modify them
1:15:53
Speaker 1: upon better Finally, and to reach the present point, you
1:15:57
Speaker 1: pertinently commend to scientific men their own saying. Quote. Science
1:16:01
Speaker 1: asks of everything how it is a part of the
1:16:03
Speaker 1: system of nature, of the chain of cause and effect
1:16:05
Speaker 1: close quotes. A hypothesis must give the how and why,
1:16:09
Speaker 1: and from its owner sources, before it is worth attending to.
1:16:12
Speaker 1: A credible hypothesis should assign real and known causes and
1:16:16
Speaker 1: ascertain their actual operation somewhere before assuming their operation everywhere.
1:16:21
Speaker 1: A complete hypothesis should assign not only real but sufficient
1:16:25
Speaker 1: causes for all the effects, and when it assumes them
1:16:28
Speaker 1: in invisible and intangible forms such as molecules and molecular movements,
1:16:32
Speaker 1: it is bound to show that all the observed consequences
1:16:35
Speaker 1: flow from the assumption. Now to declare that species come
1:16:38
Speaker 1: through evolution without either proving it by facts or clearly
1:16:41
Speaker 1: conceiving the mode and manner. How is only supporting a
1:16:44
Speaker 1: thesis which was until lately deemed scientifically improbable by hypotheses
1:16:48
Speaker 1: of a kind which have always been regarded as invalid.
1:16:51
Speaker 1: Just here, Darwinism comes in with a modus operandi in
1:16:54
Speaker 1: which lies all its essential value, as the conception of
1:16:58
Speaker 1: the derivation of one form from another other is the
1:17:00
Speaker 1: only distinctly pointed alternative to specific supernatural creation. So the
1:17:04
Speaker 1: principle of natural selection, taken in its fullest sense, is
1:17:07
Speaker 1: the only one known to me which can be termed
1:17:09
Speaker 1: a real cause in the scientific sense of the term.
1:17:13
Speaker 1: Other modern hypotheses assign metaphysical, vague or verbal causes, such
1:17:17
Speaker 1: as development, anticipation, laws of molecular constitution, without indicating what
1:17:21
Speaker 1: the special constitution is, none of which have much advantage
1:17:25
Speaker 1: over the nisis formativus of earlier science. I have no
1:17:29
Speaker 1: time to recapitulate what I briefly said of natural selection
1:17:32
Speaker 1: in a former lecture, nor to analyze the applications of
1:17:35
Speaker 1: the principle by Darwin Wallace and others to critical instances,
1:17:38
Speaker 1: nor to specify its limitations and apparent failures. The discussion
1:17:42
Speaker 1: or even the presentation of these would fill the hour
1:17:45
Speaker 1: and divert me from my particular task. Instead of this,
1:17:48
Speaker 1: I will merely give my impression of the present state
1:17:50
Speaker 1: of the case as respects the points now before us.
1:17:53
Speaker 1: You will remember the distinction which I pointed out between
1:17:56
Speaker 1: the principle of natural selection, which I take to be
1:17:58
Speaker 1: a true one, and the Darwinian hypothesis founded on it,
1:18:02
Speaker 1: which I take to be to a considerable extent probable.
1:18:05
Speaker 1: That is, I think that the influences and actions which
1:18:07
Speaker 1: the term natural selection stands for give a sufficient scientific
1:18:11
Speaker 1: explanation of the way in which smaller differences among plants
1:18:14
Speaker 1: and animals may rise into greater varieties into species. Given
1:18:18
Speaker 1: differences and an internal tendency to differ more, i e.
1:18:22
Speaker 1: Given variation as an inexhaustible factor, and natural selections should
1:18:26
Speaker 1: suffice for the preservation and increase of the select few
1:18:29
Speaker 1: as a consequence of the destruction of the intermediate many. Surely,
1:18:33
Speaker 1: there is nothing either improbable or irreligious in the idea
1:18:36
Speaker 1: that lines of individuals or races, once in existence, should
1:18:39
Speaker 1: be subject to the conditions of nature, and that the
1:18:41
Speaker 1: fittest for particular conditions, should thereby be preserved as to
1:18:46
Speaker 1: variation that really occurs as a fact, though we know
1:18:49
Speaker 1: not how. And if we frame explanations of the mode
1:18:52
Speaker 1: and get conceptions of the causes of the variation of
1:18:54
Speaker 1: living things, still we probably shall never be able to
1:18:57
Speaker 1: carry our knowledge very much further back. For any each
1:19:00
Speaker 1: variation lies hidden the mystery of a beginning. We cannot
1:19:03
Speaker 1: tell why offspring should be like unto parent. How then
1:19:06
Speaker 1: should we know why it should sometimes be different? So
1:19:09
Speaker 1: then Darwinism has real causes at its foundation, viz. The
1:19:12
Speaker 1: fact of variation and the inevitable operation of natural selection
1:19:16
Speaker 1: determining the survival only of the fittest forms for the
1:19:19
Speaker 1: time and place. It is therefore a good hypothesis so far.
1:19:23
Speaker 1: But is it a sufficient and a complete hypothesis? Does
1:19:26
Speaker 1: it furnish scientific explanation of i e. Assigned natural causes
1:19:30
Speaker 1: for the rise of living forms from low to high,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: from simple to complex, from protoplasm to simple plant and animal,
1:19:37
Speaker 1: from fish to flesh, from lower animal to higher animal,
1:19:40
Speaker 1: from brute to man. Does it scientifically account for the
1:19:44
Speaker 1: formation of any organ Show that under given conditions, sensitive
1:19:48
Speaker 1: eye spot initial hand or brain, or even a different
1:19:51
Speaker 1: hue or texture must then and there be developed as
1:19:54
Speaker 1: a consequence of assignable conditions. Does it explain how and
1:19:57
Speaker 1: why so much or any sensitiveness, fculty of response by movement, perception, consciousness,
1:20:02
Speaker 1: intellect is correlated with such and such an organism. I
1:20:06
Speaker 1: answer not at all. The hypothesis does none of these things.
1:20:10
Speaker 1: For my own part, I can hardly conceive that anyone
1:20:13
Speaker 1: should think that natural selection scientifically accounts for these phenomena.
1:20:17
Speaker 1: Let us here discriminate. To account scientifically for phenomena or
1:20:21
Speaker 1: for complex series of phenomena by assigning real and sufficient
1:20:24
Speaker 1: natural causes is one thing. To believe that the phenomena
1:20:28
Speaker 1: have occurred in the course of nature and have natural
1:20:30
Speaker 1: causal connection is another. It is not natural selection which
1:20:34
Speaker 1: has led mister Darwin and many others to believe that
1:20:37
Speaker 1: life was originally breathed by the Creator into a few
1:20:40
Speaker 1: forms or into one, and that the production and extinction
1:20:43
Speaker 1: of the past and present inhabitants of the world has
1:20:45
Speaker 1: been due to secondary causes. But it is the observed
1:20:48
Speaker 1: fact of likenesses and that of gradation from form to form,
1:20:51
Speaker 1: which suggested the idea of an actual evolution from form
1:20:54
Speaker 1: to form, having somehow taken place. Variation and natural selection
1:20:58
Speaker 1: are now assigned as causes or reasons of the evolution.
1:21:01
Speaker 1: Variation originates all the differences, natural selection, determining which forms
1:21:06
Speaker 1: shall survive, reduces their number and intensifies their character. But
1:21:10
Speaker 1: Darwin may likewise consistently speak of his favorite principle as
1:21:14
Speaker 1: a cause of the evolution, it being that in the
1:21:16
Speaker 1: absence of which the evolution could not take effect. A
1:21:19
Speaker 1: cause of variation, it certainly is not, but it is
1:21:22
Speaker 1: a necessary occasion of it, or of its progress, because
1:21:26
Speaker 1: without natural selection to pave the way, the wheels of
1:21:29
Speaker 1: variation would at once be clogged and all progress be arrested.
1:21:33
Speaker 1: Variation provides that upon which natural selection operates. The operation
1:21:38
Speaker 1: of natural selection makes room for further variation, gives opportunity
1:21:42
Speaker 1: for variability to change its fashions and display its novelties,
1:21:45
Speaker 1: and so the two go on hand in hand. But
1:21:48
Speaker 1: although thus conjoined, there is always this difference between the two.
1:21:52
Speaker 1: That natural selection works externally with known natural agencies and
1:21:56
Speaker 1: in the light of common day, Variation works internally in darkness,
1:22:00
Speaker 1: and its agencies and ways are recondite and past finding out,
1:22:04
Speaker 1: or when we find out something, as we may hope
1:22:07
Speaker 1: to do, we only resolve a before unexplained phenomenon into
1:22:10
Speaker 1: two factors, one of them a now ascertained natural process,
1:22:13
Speaker 1: the other a something which still eludes our search, but
1:22:17
Speaker 1: we suppose it to be natural, although as yet unknown.
1:22:20
Speaker 1: Surely we are not to suppose that natural agencies cease
1:22:23
Speaker 1: just where we fail to make them out to proceed.
1:22:26
Speaker 1: What Darwinism maintains is that variation, which is the origination
1:22:30
Speaker 1: of small differences, and species production which represents somewhat larger differences,
1:22:35
Speaker 1: and genus production, which represents still greater differences, are parts
1:22:38
Speaker 1: of a series and differ only in degree, and therefore
1:22:41
Speaker 1: have common natural causes, whatever these may be. And that
1:22:44
Speaker 1: natural selection gives a clear conception of a way in
1:22:47
Speaker 1: which continually or occasionally arising small differences may be added
1:22:51
Speaker 1: up into large sums in the course of time. This
1:22:54
Speaker 1: is illegitimate and on the whole a good working hypothesis.
1:22:58
Speaker 1: The questionable point is whether the some of the differences
1:23:01
Speaker 1: can be obtained from the individually small variations by simple addition.
1:23:05
Speaker 1: I very much doubt it. I doubt especially if simple
1:23:08
Speaker 1: addition is capable of congruously adding up such different denominations.
1:23:12
Speaker 1: That is, while I see how variations of a given
1:23:15
Speaker 1: organ or structure can be led on to great modification,
1:23:18
Speaker 1: I cannot conceive how non existent organs come thus to be,
1:23:21
Speaker 1: how holly new parts are initiated, how anything can be
1:23:24
Speaker 1: led on which is not there to be taken hold of.
1:23:27
Speaker 1: Nor am I at all helped in this respect by
1:23:29
Speaker 1: being shown that the new organs are developed little by little.
1:23:33
Speaker 1: The doubt is not whether the organs and forms were
1:23:35
Speaker 1: actually evolved in the course of nature. I agree with
1:23:38
Speaker 1: Darwin that they probably were, and if so, then doubtless
1:23:41
Speaker 1: under natural selection. And I cannot help thinking that Darwin
1:23:44
Speaker 1: would agree with me that the principle of natural selection
1:23:47
Speaker 1: does not account for it. That is, we both account
1:23:49
Speaker 1: for it all only by assuming as an inexplicable fact
1:23:52
Speaker 1: that variation does occur to the whole extent of the
1:23:55
Speaker 1: extreme differences. All appears to have come to pass in
1:23:58
Speaker 1: the course of nature, and therefore or under second causes.
1:24:01
Speaker 1: But what these are, or how connected and interfused with
1:24:04
Speaker 1: first cause, we know not now perhaps shall never know. Now.
1:24:08
Speaker 1: Views like these, when formulated by religious instead of scientific thought,
1:24:12
Speaker 1: make more of divine providence and for ordination, than of
1:24:15
Speaker 1: divine intervention. But perhaps they are not the less theistical
1:24:19
Speaker 1: on that account, Nor are they incompatible with special creative act,
1:24:24
Speaker 1: unless natural process generally is incompatible with it, which no
1:24:27
Speaker 1: theist can allow. No Christian theist can eliminate the idea
1:24:31
Speaker 1: of divine intervention any more than he can that of
1:24:33
Speaker 1: divine ordination. Neither, on the other hand, can he agree
1:24:37
Speaker 1: that what science removes from the supernatural to the natural
1:24:40
Speaker 1: is lost to theism. But the business of science is
1:24:43
Speaker 1: with the course of nature, not with interruptions of it,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: which must rest on their own special evidence. Still more,
1:24:48
Speaker 1: it is the business of science to question searchingly all
1:24:51
Speaker 1: seeming interruptions of it, and its privilege to refer events
1:24:54
Speaker 1: and phenomena, not at the first, but in the last
1:24:57
Speaker 1: resort to divine will. Moreover, special creative act is not
1:25:01
Speaker 1: excluded by evolutionists on scientific ground, is not excluded at
1:25:05
Speaker 1: all on principle, except by those who adopt a philosophy
1:25:08
Speaker 1: which antecedently rules out all possibility of it. Darwin postulates
1:25:13
Speaker 1: one creative act and a probability of more, and so
1:25:16
Speaker 1: in principle is at one with Wallace, and with Dana
1:25:19
Speaker 1: who insist on more. But it has been said, and
1:25:22
Speaker 1: indeed is said over and over even by thoughtful men,
1:25:25
Speaker 1: that although Darwinism is not necessarily atheistic, yet when once started,
1:25:29
Speaker 1: it dispenses with further need of God. Given it is
1:25:33
Speaker 1: said the laws which we find, then there is no
1:25:35
Speaker 1: more use for God. And all things have come out
1:25:38
Speaker 1: as we find them, with none of His supervision there
1:25:40
Speaker 1: may have been. We do not know a God once,
1:25:43
Speaker 1: but law and not God is the great creator. A
1:25:46
Speaker 1: few words should dispose of this. First, by what right
1:25:50
Speaker 1: is it assumed that the Darwinian differs from the orthodox
1:25:52
Speaker 1: conception of law. In the next place, this line of
1:25:56
Speaker 1: argument applies equally to a series of creative acts separated
1:25:59
Speaker 1: by intervals, during which it could, with the same reason
1:26:02
Speaker 1: or unreason, be said that there is no use for God,
1:26:05
Speaker 1: that there may have been a God at times. So
1:26:08
Speaker 1: it cuts away the ground from under the Christian evolution
1:26:11
Speaker 1: which the writer quoted from allows, as well as from
1:26:13
Speaker 1: that which he deprecates, and it equally dispenses with use
1:26:17
Speaker 1: for God in nature. For the several thousand years which
1:26:19
Speaker 1: have passed since creation under the Biblical view was finished,
1:26:22
Speaker 1: and the Creator wrested from all the work which he
1:26:25
Speaker 1: had made. There is no more validity in the argument
1:26:28
Speaker 1: in the one case than in the others. A word
1:26:30
Speaker 1: or two upon the subject of creative acts occurring in
1:26:33
Speaker 1: time may not be out of place. These, when spoken
1:26:36
Speaker 1: of in the present connection, do not usually refer to
1:26:39
Speaker 1: the making of a new form of plant or animal
1:26:41
Speaker 1: instanter out of the dust of the ground. However it
1:26:45
Speaker 1: might have been when there was only one act of creation.
1:26:47
Speaker 1: To think of the enormous crudeness of such a conception,
1:26:50
Speaker 1: when applied to a long succession of animals, would now
1:26:52
Speaker 1: be seriously felt by every one. It is a phrase
1:26:55
Speaker 1: most used by those who accept the idea of the
1:26:58
Speaker 1: evolution of one species from another, but who feel the
1:27:00
Speaker 1: utter incompetence of known natural causes to account for it.
1:27:04
Speaker 1: In the absence of such causes, they, being theists naturally
1:27:08
Speaker 1: and I cannot say unphilosophically, assign the simpler and seeming
1:27:12
Speaker 1: the easier part of evolution to recondiit natural causes which
1:27:15
Speaker 1: they are unable to specify, the more difficult or inscrutable
1:27:18
Speaker 1: to a diviner and more direct or supernatural act which
1:27:21
Speaker 1: they liken to creation. I suppose they do not feel
1:27:24
Speaker 1: the necessity, as they have not the ability to draw
1:27:27
Speaker 1: any definite line between what they think mere nature may
1:27:30
Speaker 1: accomplish and what they believe she cannot. Probably what they
1:27:33
Speaker 1: have in mind is mediate creation and not miracle. Perhaps
1:27:37
Speaker 1: they are convinced that if they could behold the birth
1:27:39
Speaker 1: of a species, they would see nothing more miraculous than
1:27:42
Speaker 1: in the birth of an individual. They mean that the
1:27:44
Speaker 1: springs of nature are somehow touched by a new form
1:27:47
Speaker 1: or instance of force directed to some new end. Yet
1:27:50
Speaker 1: so they must be in a degree in the origination
1:27:53
Speaker 1: of a new race or variety. This whole conception of
1:27:56
Speaker 1: mediate creation is logically carried out to its extreme by
1:27:59
Speaker 1: my philosophical colleague Professor Bowen, when he concludes that quote
1:28:04
Speaker 1: not only every new species, but that each individual living
1:28:07
Speaker 1: organism originated in a special act of creation. Close quote.
1:28:11
Speaker 1: So the difference between pure Darwinism and a more theistically
1:28:14
Speaker 1: expressed evolution is not so great as it seemed. Both
1:28:17
Speaker 1: agree in the opinion that species are evolved from species,
1:28:20
Speaker 1: and that evolution somehow occurs in the course of nature.
1:28:24
Speaker 1: Darwinism opines that the whole is a natural result of
1:28:27
Speaker 1: general causes such as we know of and in a
1:28:29
Speaker 1: degree understand, such as we recognize under the concrete terms
1:28:32
Speaker 1: of variability, heredity, and the like, terms which we can
1:28:36
Speaker 1: estimate and limit only by reference to what we see
1:28:38
Speaker 1: coming to pass, along with complex physical interactions which are
1:28:41
Speaker 1: more measurable and predictable. Very much that it has not
1:28:45
Speaker 1: accounted for by these causes and processes, it assumes may
1:28:48
Speaker 1: be in time accounted for by them, or by as
1:28:50
Speaker 1: yet unrecognized general causes like them, especially theistic evolution referred to,
1:28:55
Speaker 1: judges that these general causes cannot account for the whole work,
1:28:58
Speaker 1: and that the unknown causes are of a more special
1:29:00
Speaker 1: character and higher order. I think it does not declare
1:29:03
Speaker 1: that these are not secondary causes, and whether they would
1:29:06
Speaker 1: be ranked as natural causes would depend upon the sense
1:29:08
Speaker 1: in which the term nature was at the moment used.
1:29:11
Speaker 1: Probably such evolutionists, if they had to give form to
1:29:14
Speaker 1: their conceptions, would vary in all degrees between the direct
1:29:17
Speaker 1: interposition of a supernatural hand at certain stages or crises,
1:29:21
Speaker 1: and that extreme extension of the supernatural into and through
1:29:24
Speaker 1: the natural, which Professor Bowen reaches in the assertion that
1:29:27
Speaker 1: each individual living organism as well as every new species
1:29:30
Speaker 1: originated in a special act of creation. This, the complete
1:29:33
Speaker 1: assimilation of specific to individual origination, is simply Darwinism expressed
1:29:38
Speaker 1: in less appropriate language. But the one calls special act.
1:29:42
Speaker 1: The other, along with the rest of mankind, calls general process,
1:29:45
Speaker 1: the common principle of the divine ordination of nature, which
1:29:49
Speaker 1: the philosopher here asserts in a paradoxical way. The Darwinian
1:29:53
Speaker 1: implies or even postulates on appropriate occasions. The Darwinian naturalist,
1:29:58
Speaker 1: I mean not the monistic and agnosis philosopher, from whom
1:30:01
Speaker 1: so far we have kept as clear as has mister
1:30:03
Speaker 1: Darwin in every volume and every line. End of Lecture two,
1:30:09
Speaker 1: Part one, Section four of Natural Science and Religion by A.
1:30:18
Speaker 1: Se Gray. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
1:30:23
Speaker 1: Lecture two, The Relations of Scientific and Religious Belief, Part two.
1:30:28
Speaker 1: Suppose now that we are shut up to nature for
1:30:30
Speaker 1: the evolution of the forms of living things. As theists,
1:30:34
Speaker 1: we are not debarred from the supposition of supernatural origination,
1:30:38
Speaker 1: mediate or immediate. But suppose the facts suggest and inferentially
1:30:43
Speaker 1: warrant the conclusion that the course of natural history has
1:30:45
Speaker 1: been along an unbroken line that account for it or not,
1:30:49
Speaker 1: the origination of the kinds of plants and animals comes
1:30:52
Speaker 1: to stand on the same footing as the rest of nature.
1:30:55
Speaker 1: As this is the complete outcome of Darwinian evolution, it
1:30:58
Speaker 1: has to be met and considered. The inquiry what attitude
1:31:01
Speaker 1: should we Christian theists present to this form of scientific
1:31:05
Speaker 1: belief should not be a difficult one to answer. In
1:31:08
Speaker 1: my opinion, We should not denounce it as atheistical, or
1:31:11
Speaker 1: as practical atheism, or as absurd. Although from the nature
1:31:14
Speaker 1: of the case this conception can never be demonstrated, it
1:31:17
Speaker 1: can be believed, and is coming to be largely believed,
1:31:20
Speaker 1: and it falls in very well with doctrines said to
1:31:22
Speaker 1: have been taught by philosophers and saints, by Leibniz and Malbranche, Thomas,
1:31:27
Speaker 1: Aquinas and Augustine. So it may possibly even share in
1:31:31
Speaker 1: the commendation bestowed by the Pope in a recent sensible,
1:31:34
Speaker 1: if not infallible, allocution upon the teaching of the Angelic Doctor,
1:31:39
Speaker 1: and make a part of that genuine philosophy which the
1:31:42
Speaker 1: Pope declares to stand in no real opposition to religious truth. Seriously,
1:31:47
Speaker 1: it would be rash and wrong for us to declare
1:31:49
Speaker 1: that this conception is opposed to theism. Our idea of
1:31:54
Speaker 1: nature is that of an ordered and fixed system of
1:31:56
Speaker 1: forms and means working to ultimate ends. If this this
1:32:00
Speaker 1: is our idea of inorganic nature, shall we abandon or
1:32:02
Speaker 1: depreciate it when we pass from mere things to organisms,
1:32:06
Speaker 1: to creatures, which are themselves both means and ends. Surely
1:32:09
Speaker 1: it would be suicidal to do so. We may, and
1:32:12
Speaker 1: indeed we do, question gravely whether all this work is
1:32:15
Speaker 1: committed to nature. But we all agree that much is
1:32:18
Speaker 1: so done, far more than was formerly thought possible. We
1:32:22
Speaker 1: cannot pretend to draw the line between what may be
1:32:24
Speaker 1: and what may not be so done, or what is
1:32:27
Speaker 1: and what is not so done. And so it is
1:32:29
Speaker 1: not for us to object to the further extension of
1:32:31
Speaker 1: the principle. On sufficient evidence, I trust it is not
1:32:35
Speaker 1: necessary to press this consideration, though it is needful to
1:32:38
Speaker 1: present it in order to warn Christian theists from the
1:32:40
Speaker 1: folly of playing into their adversary's hand, as is too
1:32:44
Speaker 1: often done. But I am aware that we have not
1:32:46
Speaker 1: yet reached the root of the difficulty. We are convinced theists.
1:32:51
Speaker 1: We bring our theism to the interpretation of nature, and
1:32:54
Speaker 1: nature responds like an echo to our thought. Not always
1:32:57
Speaker 1: unequivocally broken, confused, and even contrad victory sounds are sometimes
1:33:01
Speaker 1: given back to us. Yet as we listen to and
1:33:04
Speaker 1: ponder them, they mainly harmonize with our inner idea and
1:33:07
Speaker 1: give us reasonable assurance that the God of our religion
1:33:10
Speaker 1: is the author of nature. But what of those you
1:33:13
Speaker 1: will say, who are not already convinced of his existence.
1:33:16
Speaker 1: We thought that we had an independent demonstration of his existence,
1:33:19
Speaker 1: and that we could go out into the highways of
1:33:21
Speaker 1: unbelief and compel them to come in. That the invisible
1:33:24
Speaker 1: things of Him from the creation of the world were
1:33:26
Speaker 1: clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
1:33:30
Speaker 1: so that they are without excuse. We could shut them
1:33:33
Speaker 1: up to the strict alternative of divinity or chance, with
1:33:36
Speaker 1: the odds incalculably against chance. But now Darwinism has given
1:33:40
Speaker 1: them an excuse and placed us on the defensive. Now
1:33:43
Speaker 1: we have as much as we can do, and some
1:33:45
Speaker 1: think more to reshape the argument in such wise as
1:33:47
Speaker 1: to harmonize our ineradicable belief in design with the fundamental
1:33:51
Speaker 1: scientific belief of continuity and nature, now extended to organic
1:33:55
Speaker 1: as well as inorganic forms, to living beings as well
1:33:58
Speaker 1: as inanimate things. The field which we took to be
1:34:01
Speaker 1: thickly sown with design, seems, under the light of Darwinism,
1:34:05
Speaker 1: to yield only a crop of accidents. Where we thought
1:34:08
Speaker 1: to reap the golden grain, we find only tears. The
1:34:12
Speaker 1: outlook is certainly serious, yet not altogether disheartening. Perhaps we
1:34:16
Speaker 1: cannot now safely separate the wheat from the tears, but
1:34:19
Speaker 1: must let them grow together unto the harvest. Nobody expects
1:34:22
Speaker 1: in this world to ascertain the limits between design and contingency.
1:34:26
Speaker 1: Nobody expects to demonstrate any design except his own to
1:34:30
Speaker 1: himself by consciousness. He cannot really prove his own to
1:34:33
Speaker 1: his bosom friend, though his assertion may give his friend,
1:34:36
Speaker 1: and his actions may give his enemy convincing reasons for
1:34:38
Speaker 1: inferring it. But we are sure that every intellectual being
1:34:42
Speaker 1: has designs, that the rich and pervasiveness of design must
1:34:46
Speaker 1: be in proportion to the wisdom, and that the designs
1:34:48
Speaker 1: of the author of nature, if any there be, must
1:34:51
Speaker 1: be all pervading and fathomless. Yet if they be wrought
1:34:55
Speaker 1: into a system of adaptations, some of the adaptations themselves
1:34:58
Speaker 1: may be such as IRRESISTI to suggest their reason to
1:35:01
Speaker 1: our minds. At least, they suggest reason, even if we
1:35:04
Speaker 1: fail to apprehend or wrongly apprehend, the reason. The sense
1:35:09
Speaker 1: that there is reason why is as innate in man
1:35:12
Speaker 1: as that there is cause. Whereby now, to adopt the
1:35:16
Speaker 1: apt words of Francis Newman quote. After stripping off all
1:35:20
Speaker 1: that goes beyond the mark of sober and cautious thought,
1:35:22
Speaker 1: there remained in this world fitnesses innumerable on the largest
1:35:25
Speaker 1: and the smallest scale, in which alike common sense and
1:35:29
Speaker 1: uncommon sense see design. And the only mode of evading
1:35:32
Speaker 1: this belief is by carrying out the cumbrous epicurean argument
1:35:36
Speaker 1: to a length of which Epicurus could not dream. We
1:35:38
Speaker 1: cannot prove we are told that the eye was intended
1:35:41
Speaker 1: to see, or the hand to grasp, or the fingers
1:35:43
Speaker 1: to work delicately. Of course we cannot. But what is
1:35:46
Speaker 1: the alternative to believe that it came about by blind chants?
1:35:50
Speaker 1: No science has any calculus or apparatus to decide between
1:35:54
Speaker 1: the two theories. Common sense, not science, has to decide,
1:35:57
Speaker 1: and the most accomplished physical student has in the decision
1:36:00
Speaker 1: no advantage whatever over a simple but thoughtful man. Close quote.
1:36:05
Speaker 1: Arrangements innumerable extending through all nature, Subserving all ends, of course,
1:36:09
Speaker 1: involve innumerable contingencies. The theist is not expected to have
1:36:13
Speaker 1: any definite idea of the respective limits of these. He
1:36:16
Speaker 1: can only guess at the limits of intention and contingency
1:36:19
Speaker 1: in the actions of his nearest neighbor. The non theist
1:36:22
Speaker 1: gains nothing by eliminating instances unless he can eliminate all
1:36:25
Speaker 1: design from the system. Until he does this, he gains
1:36:28
Speaker 1: nothing by showing that particular fitness has come to pass
1:36:31
Speaker 1: little by little and under natural causes. He cannot point
1:36:35
Speaker 1: to a time whether there were no fitnesses apparent or latent.
1:36:38
Speaker 1: And if he argues that all fitnesses were germinal in
1:36:40
Speaker 1: the nebulous matter of our solar system, he does not
1:36:43
Speaker 1: harm our case. The throwing of design, ever so far
1:36:46
Speaker 1: back in time does not harm it, nor deprivate of
1:36:48
Speaker 1: its ever present and ever efficient character. For as has
1:36:51
Speaker 1: been acutely said quote, if design has once operated in
1:36:55
Speaker 1: rerem natura, as in the production of a first life germ,
1:36:59
Speaker 1: how can it stop operating an undesigned formation succeeded it cannot,
1:37:03
Speaker 1: and intention in nature having once existed. The test of
1:37:06
Speaker 1: the amount of that intention is not the commencement, but
1:37:08
Speaker 1: the end, not the first low organism, but the climax
1:37:11
Speaker 1: and consummation of the whole closet. I am not going
1:37:15
Speaker 1: to re argue an old thesis of my own that
1:37:18
Speaker 1: Darwinism does not weaken the substantial ground of the argument
1:37:21
Speaker 1: as between theism and non theism for design in nature.
1:37:24
Speaker 1: I think it brought in no new difficulty, though it
1:37:27
Speaker 1: brought old ones into prominence. It must be reasonably clear
1:37:30
Speaker 1: to all who have taken pains to understand the matter,
1:37:32
Speaker 1: that the true issue as regards design is not between
1:37:35
Speaker 1: Darwinism and direct creationism, but between design and fortuity, between
1:37:40
Speaker 1: any intention or intellectual cause and no intention nor predictable
1:37:44
Speaker 1: first cause. It is really narrowed down to this, and
1:37:47
Speaker 1: on this line all maintainers of the affirmative may present
1:37:50
Speaker 1: an unbroken front. The holding of this line secures all
1:37:54
Speaker 1: the weakening of it in the attempted defense of unessential
1:37:57
Speaker 1: and now untenable outposts and dangers. All I have only
1:38:01
Speaker 1: to add a few observations and exhortations addressed to Christian theists.
1:38:06
Speaker 1: If intention must pervade every theistic system of nature, if
1:38:09
Speaker 1: we give credit to mister Darwin, when in this regard
1:38:11
Speaker 1: he likens his divergence from the Orthodox view to the
1:38:14
Speaker 1: difference between general and particular providence, is it safe to
1:38:18
Speaker 1: declare that his theory and his denial that particular forms
1:38:21
Speaker 1: are especially created are practically atheistical. I might complain of
1:38:25
Speaker 1: this as unfair, It is more to my purpose to
1:38:27
Speaker 1: complain of it as suicidal. It is, in effect holding
1:38:30
Speaker 1: a theistic conception of nature for our private use, but
1:38:33
Speaker 1: acting on the opposite when we would discredit an unwelcome theory,
1:38:37
Speaker 1: or else it is trusting so little to our own
1:38:39
Speaker 1: belief that we abandon it as soon as any weight
1:38:41
Speaker 1: is laid upon it. As soon as you do this
1:38:44
Speaker 1: by conceding that the evolution of forms under natural laws
1:38:47
Speaker 1: militates against design in nature, you are at the mercy
1:38:50
Speaker 1: of those reasoners who, looking at the probabilities of the
1:38:52
Speaker 1: case from their own point of view, coolly remark that
1:38:56
Speaker 1: on the whole, therefore, we seem entitled to conclude that,
1:38:59
Speaker 1: during such time as we have evidence of, no intelligence
1:39:02
Speaker 1: or volition has been concerned in events happening within the
1:39:05
Speaker 1: range of the Solar system, except that of animals living
1:39:07
Speaker 1: on the planets. You may say that implicit belief of
1:39:11
Speaker 1: intention in nature affords an insufficient foundation for theism, but
1:39:15
Speaker 1: you are not asked to ground your theism upon it,
1:39:18
Speaker 1: or upon the whole world of external phenomena. You may
1:39:21
Speaker 1: reiterate that you cannot believe that all these events have
1:39:23
Speaker 1: occurred under natural laws. Nothing hinders you assuming what you
1:39:27
Speaker 1: need from the supernatural, but allow that the need of
1:39:29
Speaker 1: other minds may not be identical with yours. As I
1:39:32
Speaker 1: have said before, what you want is not a system
1:39:35
Speaker 1: which may be adjusted to Theism, nor even one which
1:39:38
Speaker 1: finds its most reasonable interpretation in theism, but one which
1:39:41
Speaker 1: Theism only can account for that it seems to me
1:39:44
Speaker 1: you have an excellent judge, a gifted adept in physical
1:39:48
Speaker 1: science and exact reasoning. The late Clerk Maxwell is reported
1:39:52
Speaker 1: to have said, not long before he left the world,
1:39:55
Speaker 1: that he had scrutinized all the agnostic hypotheses he knew of,
1:39:58
Speaker 1: and found that they won and all needed a God
1:40:00
Speaker 1: to make them workable. When you ask for more than this,
1:40:03
Speaker 1: namely for that which will compel belief in the personal
1:40:05
Speaker 1: divine being, you ask for that which he has not
1:40:08
Speaker 1: been pleased to provide. Experience proves that the opposite hypothesis
1:40:12
Speaker 1: is possible. Some rest in it, but few, I think
1:40:15
Speaker 1: on scientific grounds, the affirmative hypothesis gives us a workable
1:40:19
Speaker 1: conception of how the world of forms and means is
1:40:22
Speaker 1: related to the world of worths and ends. The negative
1:40:26
Speaker 1: hypothesis gives no mental or ethical satisfaction whatever. Like the
1:40:30
Speaker 1: theory of the immediate creation of forms, it explains nothing.
1:40:34
Speaker 1: You inquire, whither are we to look for independent evidence
1:40:37
Speaker 1: of mind and will quote? Concerned in natural events happening
1:40:40
Speaker 1: within the range of the solar system close quote? Certainly
1:40:44
Speaker 1: not to the court of pure physical science, for that
1:40:46
Speaker 1: has ruled this case out of its jurisdiction by assuming
1:40:49
Speaker 1: a fixed dependence of consequence upon antecedent throughout its domain.
1:40:53
Speaker 1: There are plenty of phenomena to which it cannot assign
1:40:56
Speaker 1: known cause of antecedents, but it supplies their place at
1:40:59
Speaker 1: once by assuming that there is a physical antecedent still
1:41:02
Speaker 1: on guest, or by inventing one in an hypothesis. It
1:41:06
Speaker 1: deals in effects and causes and knows nothing of ends.
1:41:10
Speaker 1: It has no verdict to render against our case, for
1:41:12
Speaker 1: it does not entertain it and has no jurisdiction under
1:41:15
Speaker 1: which to try it, But its wiser judges do not
1:41:18
Speaker 1: insist that theirs is the only court in the realm.
1:41:21
Speaker 1: We have not to go beyond nature for a jurisdiction
1:41:24
Speaker 1: which may be likened to that of equity, since it
1:41:26
Speaker 1: enforces specific performance and which adds to causes and effects.
1:41:30
Speaker 1: The consideration of ends biology takes cognizance of the former,
1:41:35
Speaker 1: like physics, of which it is on one side apart,
1:41:37
Speaker 1: but also of ends, and here ends which mean intention,
1:41:42
Speaker 1: become a legitimate scientific study. The natural history of ends
1:41:45
Speaker 1: becomes consistent and reasonably intelligible under the light of evolution.
1:41:50
Speaker 1: As the forms and kinds rise gradually out of that
1:41:53
Speaker 1: which was well nigh formless into a consummate form, so
1:41:56
Speaker 1: do biological ends rise and assert themselves in increasing distinct
1:42:00
Speaker 1: variety and dignity. Vegetables and animals have paved the earth
1:42:04
Speaker 1: with intentions. The study and the estimate of these is
1:42:07
Speaker 1: quite the same under whatever view of the mode in
1:42:09
Speaker 1: which the structure and beings that exemplify them came to be.
1:42:13
Speaker 1: The highest of these exemplars is himself conscious of ends.
1:42:16
Speaker 1: He pronounces that critical monosyllable I I am I will
1:42:21
Speaker 1: I accomplish ends, I modify the outcome of nature. Here
1:42:26
Speaker 1: at length is something on the planets which has been
1:42:29
Speaker 1: concerned in events, And in my opinion, it is just
1:42:32
Speaker 1: now a good and useful theistic view which connects this
1:42:34
Speaker 1: something with all the lower psychological phenomena that precede it
1:42:37
Speaker 1: and accompany it. Our wills, in their limited degree, modify
1:42:42
Speaker 1: the course of nature, subservient, though that be, to fixed laws,
1:42:46
Speaker 1: by our will. We make these laws subserve our ends.
1:42:50
Speaker 1: We momently violate the uniformity of nature, but we do
1:42:53
Speaker 1: not violate the law of the uniformity of nature? Is
1:42:56
Speaker 1: it not legitimate? Is it not inevitable that a being
1:42:59
Speaker 1: who knows that he is a will and a power
1:43:01
Speaker 1: and a successful contriver, should explain what he sees around
1:43:04
Speaker 1: and above him by the hypothesis of a higher and
1:43:06
Speaker 1: supreme will, a will which has disposed things in view
1:43:09
Speaker 1: of ends in establishing nature, and which may it need
1:43:12
Speaker 1: be disposed to particular and time dends, either with or
1:43:16
Speaker 1: without perceptible suspension of the law of the uniformity of nature.
1:43:20
Speaker 1: The question I ask has been adversely answered substantially as follows.
1:43:25
Speaker 1: It may be that in the first instance, men can
1:43:27
Speaker 1: hardly avoid predicating a being who has done and is
1:43:29
Speaker 1: doing all this. Nevertheless, a trained mind soon reaches the
1:43:33
Speaker 1: incongruity of it, at least quote as concerns any events
1:43:36
Speaker 1: which have happened within the range of the solar system.
1:43:39
Speaker 1: Close quote. For the belief that a supernatural power has
1:43:42
Speaker 1: so acted contradicts that very belief in the uniformity of
1:43:45
Speaker 1: nature upon which all scientific reasoning and practical judgments rest.
1:43:50
Speaker 1: To this, it is well rejoined that the ultimate scientific
1:43:53
Speaker 1: belief on which our reason reposes quote is that belief
1:43:56
Speaker 1: in the uniformity of nature, which is equivalent to a
1:43:58
Speaker 1: belief in the law of ruth universal causation, which again
1:44:02
Speaker 1: is equivalent to a belief that similar antecedents are always
1:44:04
Speaker 1: followed by similar consequence. But this belief is in no
1:44:08
Speaker 1: way inconsistent with a belief in supernatural interference. Close quote.
1:44:13
Speaker 1: If the principle of the uniformity of nature asserted that
1:44:15
Speaker 1: every natural effect is and has ever been preceded by
1:44:19
Speaker 1: natural causes, then it would be in terms inconsistent with
1:44:22
Speaker 1: supernatural interference and with supernatural origination of the system. But
1:44:26
Speaker 1: science does not give us, nor find any such principle.
1:44:30
Speaker 1: All scientific beliefs quote are in themselves as true and
1:44:33
Speaker 1: as fully proved if supernatural interference be possible, as they
1:44:37
Speaker 1: are if such interference be impossible. A law does no
1:44:40
Speaker 1: more than state that, under certain circumstances positive and negative
1:44:44
Speaker 1: certain phenomena will occur. If on some occasions these circumstances
1:44:48
Speaker 1: owing to supernatural interference do not occur, the fact that
1:44:52
Speaker 1: the phenomena do not follow proves nothing as to the
1:44:54
Speaker 1: truth or falsehood of the law close quote. If such
1:44:57
Speaker 1: interference violates the law of the uniformity of nature, the
1:45:00
Speaker 1: human will and all wills, and all direction of material
1:45:04
Speaker 1: forces to ends are every day violating it. It has
1:45:07
Speaker 1: also urged that giving particular direction in a special act
1:45:10
Speaker 1: would be an addition to the plenium of force in
1:45:12
Speaker 1: the universe, and therefore a contradiction to the recently acquired
1:45:16
Speaker 1: scientific principle of the conservation of energy. The answer may
1:45:19
Speaker 1: be this, it is not at all certain that all
1:45:22
Speaker 1: direction given to force expends force. It is certain that
1:45:25
Speaker 1: under callocations, a minute use of force, as pulling a
1:45:28
Speaker 1: hair trigger or jostling a valve, may bring about immense results.
1:45:32
Speaker 1: And finally, increments of force by divine action in time
1:45:36
Speaker 1: of the kind in question, if such there be, could
1:45:38
Speaker 1: never in the least be known to science. The only
1:45:41
Speaker 1: remaining supposition that I now think of is the crude
1:45:44
Speaker 1: one that thought and will are functions of the body, secretions,
1:45:47
Speaker 1: as it were, of the organ through which they are
1:45:49
Speaker 1: manifested psychical modes of motion. Then, as has well been said,
1:45:54
Speaker 1: they must be correlated with physical modes of motion, at
1:45:56
Speaker 1: least in conception. But it is conceded by all sense
1:45:59
Speaker 1: of thinkers that thought cannot be translated into extension, nor
1:46:03
Speaker 1: extension into thought. Now, since the only conceivable source of
1:46:06
Speaker 1: physical force is supernatural power, still more, must this be
1:46:10
Speaker 1: the only conceivable source of thought. There is an old
1:46:13
Speaker 1: objection which threatens to undermine the ground on which we
1:46:16
Speaker 1: infer divine will from the analogy of human namely that
1:46:19
Speaker 1: our wills, being a part of the course of nature
1:46:21
Speaker 1: and amenable to its laws, their movements, though seemingly free,
1:46:25
Speaker 1: are as fixed as physical sequences. Upon this insoluble problem,
1:46:29
Speaker 1: we have nothing practical to say except to admit that
1:46:32
Speaker 1: so much of choice is determined by antecedent conditions and
1:46:34
Speaker 1: the surroundings by hereditary bias. By what has been made
1:46:38
Speaker 1: for the individual and inwrought into his nature. That granting
1:46:41
Speaker 1: the will has an element of freedom. It may be
1:46:44
Speaker 1: in effect a small factor. I can only urge that
1:46:47
Speaker 1: it is not an insignificant factor. As to this, A pertinent,
1:46:50
Speaker 1: although homely suggestion came to me in the remark of
1:46:53
Speaker 1: a humble but shrewd neighbor, to the effect that he
1:46:56
Speaker 1: found the difference between people and people he dealt with
1:46:58
Speaker 1: was really very little, but that what there is was
1:47:01
Speaker 1: very important. So facts and reasonings may shut us up
1:47:04
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that the will, sovereign as it seems
1:47:06
Speaker 1: to the user, is practically a small factor in the
1:47:09
Speaker 1: determination of events. But what there is makes all the
1:47:12
Speaker 1: difference in the world in man, and now as to
1:47:16
Speaker 1: man himself in relation to evolution. I have no time
1:47:19
Speaker 1: left for the discussion of questions which naturally interest you
1:47:22
Speaker 1: more than any other, but which, even with time at disposal,
1:47:25
Speaker 1: are not easy to treat. I will not undertake to
1:47:28
Speaker 1: consider what your attitude should be upon a matter which
1:47:30
Speaker 1: connects itself with grave ulterior considerations. But I will very
1:47:34
Speaker 1: briefly and frankly intimate what views I think a scientific
1:47:37
Speaker 1: man religiously disposed is likely to entertain to pursue the
1:47:41
Speaker 1: illustration just ventured upon. The anatomical and physiological difference between
1:47:46
Speaker 1: man and the higher brutes is not great from a
1:47:48
Speaker 1: natural history point of view compared with the difference between
1:47:51
Speaker 1: these and lower grades of animals. But we may justly
1:47:54
Speaker 1: say that what corporeal difference there is is extremely important.
1:47:57
Speaker 1: The series of considerations which suggest evolution up to man
1:48:01
Speaker 1: suggests man's evolution. Also, we may indeed fall back upon
1:48:05
Speaker 1: mister Darwin's declaration in a case germane to this that
1:48:09
Speaker 1: quote analogy may be a deceitful guide close, yet here
1:48:13
Speaker 1: it is the only guide we have. If the alternative
1:48:16
Speaker 1: be the immediate origination out of nothing or out of
1:48:19
Speaker 1: the soil of the human form, with all its actual marks,
1:48:22
Speaker 1: there can be no doubt which side a scientific man
1:48:24
Speaker 1: will take. Mediate creation derivative origination will at once be accepted,
1:48:30
Speaker 1: and the mooted question comes to be narrowed down to this.
1:48:33
Speaker 1: Can the corporeal differences between man and the rest of
1:48:36
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom be accounted for by known natural causes?
1:48:39
Speaker 1: Or must they be attributed to unknown causes? As shall
1:48:43
Speaker 1: we assume these unknown causes to be natural? Or supernatural.
1:48:46
Speaker 1: As to the first question, you are aware, from my
1:48:49
Speaker 1: whole line of thought and argument, that I know no
1:48:51
Speaker 1: natural process for the transformation of a brute mammal into
1:48:54
Speaker 1: a man. But I am equally at a loss as
1:48:57
Speaker 1: respects the processes through which any one species, any one variety,
1:49:01
Speaker 1: gives birth to another. Yet I do not presume to
1:49:04
Speaker 1: limit nature by my small knowledge of its laws and powers.
1:49:07
Speaker 1: I know that a part of these still occult processes
1:49:10
Speaker 1: are in the everyday course of nature. I am persuaded
1:49:13
Speaker 1: that it is so through the animal kingdom. Generally, I
1:49:16
Speaker 1: cannot deny it as respects the highest members of that kingdom.
1:49:19
Speaker 1: I allow, however, that the superlative importance of comparatively small
1:49:23
Speaker 1: corporeal differences in this consummate case may justify anyone in
1:49:26
Speaker 1: regarding it as exceptional. In most respects, man is an
1:49:30
Speaker 1: exceptional creature. If, however, I decline to regard Man's origin
1:49:34
Speaker 1: as exceptional in the sense of directly supernatural, you will
1:49:37
Speaker 1: understand that it is because under my thoroughly theistic conception
1:49:41
Speaker 1: of nature and my belief immediate creation, I am at
1:49:44
Speaker 1: a loss to know what I should mean by the exception.
1:49:47
Speaker 1: I do not allow myself to believe that immediate creation
1:49:49
Speaker 1: would make man's origin more divine, and I do not
1:49:52
Speaker 1: approve either the divinity or the science of those who
1:49:55
Speaker 1: are prompt to invoke the supernatural to cover our ignorance
1:49:58
Speaker 1: of natural causes, and equally so to de viscarred its aid.
1:50:01
Speaker 1: Whenever natural causes are found sufficient. It is probable that
1:50:05
Speaker 1: the idea of mediate creation would be more readily received
1:50:08
Speaker 1: except for a prevalent misconception upon a point of genealogy.
1:50:11
Speaker 1: When the naturalist is asked what and whence the origin
1:50:15
Speaker 1: of man, he can only answer, in the words of
1:50:17
Speaker 1: catafage and vehicle, We do not know at all. We
1:50:20
Speaker 1: have traces of his existence up to and even anterior
1:50:23
Speaker 1: to the latest marked climatic change in our temperate zone.
1:50:27
Speaker 1: But he was then perfected man, and no vestige of
1:50:30
Speaker 1: an earlier form is known. The believer indirect or special
1:50:33
Speaker 1: creation is entitled to the advantage which this negative evidence gives.
1:50:37
Speaker 1: A totally unknown ancestry has the characteristics of nobility. The
1:50:40
Speaker 1: evolutionist can give one satisfactory assurance. As the wolf in
1:50:44
Speaker 1: the fable was captious in his complaint that the lamb
1:50:47
Speaker 1: below had muddied the brook he was drinking from. So
1:50:49
Speaker 1: those are mistaken who suppose that the Simian race can
1:50:52
Speaker 1: have defiled the stream along which evolution traces human descent.
1:50:56
Speaker 1: Sober evolutionists do not suppose that man has descended from monkeys.
1:51:00
Speaker 1: The stream must have branched too early for that. The resemblances,
1:51:04
Speaker 1: which are the same in fact under any theory, are
1:51:06
Speaker 1: supposed to denote collateral relationship. The psychological differences between man
1:51:11
Speaker 1: and the higher brute animals. You do not expect me
1:51:14
Speaker 1: now to discuss here too. We may say that although
1:51:17
Speaker 1: gradations abridge the wide interval, the transcendent character of the
1:51:20
Speaker 1: superadded must count for more than a host of lower
1:51:23
Speaker 1: similarities and identities. For surely, what difference there is between
1:51:26
Speaker 1: the man and the animal in this respect is supremely important.
1:51:30
Speaker 1: If we cannot reasonably solve the problems, even of inorganic nature,
1:51:33
Speaker 1: without assuming initial causation, and if we assume for that
1:51:36
Speaker 1: supreme intelligence, shall we not more freely assume it and
1:51:39
Speaker 1: with all the directness the case may require, in the
1:51:41
Speaker 1: field where intelligence at length develops intelligences. But while on
1:51:45
Speaker 1: the one hand we rise in thought into the supernatural,
1:51:48
Speaker 1: on the other we need not forget that one of
1:51:50
Speaker 1: the three old Orthodox opinions, the one held to be tenable,
1:51:53
Speaker 1: if not directly favored by Augustine, and most accordant to
1:51:56
Speaker 1: his theology, as it is to observation, is that soul
1:52:00
Speaker 1: as well as lives are propagated in the order of nature.
1:52:03
Speaker 1: Here we may note in passing that since the quote,
1:52:06
Speaker 1: theologians are as much puzzled to form a satisfactory conception
1:52:09
Speaker 1: of the origin of each individual soul as naturalists are
1:52:12
Speaker 1: to conceive of the origin of species close quotes. And
1:52:15
Speaker 1: since the Darwinian and the Theologian, at least the Traducian
1:52:19
Speaker 1: take similar courses to find a way out of their difficulties,
1:52:21
Speaker 1: they might have a little more sympathy for each other.
1:52:24
Speaker 1: The High Calvinists and the Darwinian have a good number
1:52:26
Speaker 1: of points in common view these high matters, as you will,
1:52:30
Speaker 1: The outcome as concerns us of the vast and partly
1:52:33
Speaker 1: comprehensible system, which under one aspect we call nature, and
1:52:36
Speaker 1: under another providence, and in part under another creation is
1:52:40
Speaker 1: seen in the emergence of a free and self determining personality, which,
1:52:44
Speaker 1: being capable of conceiving it may hope for immortality, may
1:52:48
Speaker 1: hope for immortality. You ask for the reasons of this
1:52:51
Speaker 1: hope upon these lines of thought, I suppose that they
1:52:54
Speaker 1: are the same as your own, so far as natural
1:52:56
Speaker 1: reasons go. A being who has the faculty, however, bestow
1:53:00
Speaker 1: of reflective, abstract thought, superadded to all lower psychical faculties,
1:53:04
Speaker 1: is thereby persaltam immeasurably exalted. This and only this brings
1:53:09
Speaker 1: with it language and all that comes from that wonderful instrument.
1:53:12
Speaker 1: It carries the germs of all invention and all improvement,
1:53:15
Speaker 1: all that man does and may do in his rule
1:53:17
Speaker 1: over nature, and his power of ideally soaring above it.
1:53:21
Speaker 1: So we may well deem this a special gift, the
1:53:23
Speaker 1: gift beyond recall, in which all hope is enshrined. None
1:53:27
Speaker 1: of us have any scientific or philosophical explanation to offer
1:53:30
Speaker 1: as to how it came to be added to what
1:53:32
Speaker 1: we share with the brutes that perish. But it puts
1:53:34
Speaker 1: man into another world than theirs, both here and with
1:53:37
Speaker 1: the aid of some evolutionary ideas we may add hereafter.
1:53:41
Speaker 1: Let us consider it must be that the eternal can
1:53:44
Speaker 1: alone impart the gift of eternal life. But he alone
1:53:47
Speaker 1: originates life. Now, what of that life which reaches so
1:53:50
Speaker 1: near two ours, yet misses it so completely. The perplexity
1:53:54
Speaker 1: this question raises was as great as it is now
1:53:56
Speaker 1: before evolution was ever heard of. It has been turned
1:53:59
Speaker 1: in to something much more trying than perplexity by the
1:54:02
Speaker 1: assurance with which monistic evolutionists press their answer to the question.
1:54:06
Speaker 1: But a better line of evolutionary doctrine may do something
1:54:09
Speaker 1: toward disposing of it. It will not do to say
1:54:11
Speaker 1: that thought carries the implication of immortality, for our humble
1:54:15
Speaker 1: companions have the elements of that or of simple rasescination
1:54:18
Speaker 1: and the power of reproducing conceptions in memory, and what
1:54:21
Speaker 1: is even more to the present purpose in dreams. Once
1:54:25
Speaker 1: admit this to imply immortality, and you will be obliged
1:54:28
Speaker 1: to make soul co extensive with life, as some have done,
1:54:31
Speaker 1: thereby well nigh crushing the whole doctrine of immortality with
1:54:34
Speaker 1: the load layed upon it. At least this is poisoning
1:54:36
Speaker 1: the ponderous pyramid on its apex, and the apex on
1:54:39
Speaker 1: a logical fallacy, for the entire conception that the highest
1:54:42
Speaker 1: brute animals may be endowed with an immortal principle is
1:54:45
Speaker 1: a reflection from the conception of such a principle in ourselves.
1:54:48
Speaker 1: And so the farther down you carry it, the wider
1:54:50
Speaker 1: and more egregious the circle you are reasoning in. Still
1:54:53
Speaker 1: with all life goes duality. There is the matter and
1:54:57
Speaker 1: there is the life, and we cannot get one out
1:54:59
Speaker 1: of the other unless you do fine matter as something
1:55:01
Speaker 1: which works to ends. As all agree that reflective thought
1:55:04
Speaker 1: cannot be translated into terms of extension, matter and emotion,
1:55:08
Speaker 1: nor the converse, so as truly it cannot be translated
1:55:11
Speaker 1: into terms of sensation and perception, of desire and affection
1:55:15
Speaker 1: of even the feeblest vital response to external impressions of
1:55:18
Speaker 1: simplest life. The duality runs through the whole. You cannot
1:55:22
Speaker 1: reasonably give over any part of the field to the
1:55:24
Speaker 1: moanest and retain the rest. Now see how evolution may
1:55:28
Speaker 1: help you in its conception that while all the lower
1:55:31
Speaker 1: serves its purpose for the time being, and is a
1:55:34
Speaker 1: stage toward better and higher, the lower sooner or later perish,
1:55:37
Speaker 1: the higher the consummate survive. The soul, in its bodily tenement,
1:55:41
Speaker 1: is the final outcome of nature. May it not well
1:55:44
Speaker 1: be that the perfected soul alone survives the final struggle
1:55:47
Speaker 1: of life, and indeed then chiefly lives because in it
1:55:51
Speaker 1: all worths and ends in here, because it only is
1:55:53
Speaker 1: worth immortality, because it alone carries in itself the promise
1:55:57
Speaker 1: and potentiality of eternal life. Certainly in it only is
1:56:00
Speaker 1: the potentiality of religion, or that which aspires to immortality.
1:56:05
Speaker 1: Here I should close, but in justice to myself and
1:56:08
Speaker 1: to you, a word must still be added. You rightly
1:56:11
Speaker 1: will say that although theism is at the foundation of religion,
1:56:14
Speaker 1: the foundation is of small practical value without the superstructure.
1:56:18
Speaker 1: Your supreme interest is Christianity. And you ask me if
1:56:21
Speaker 1: I maintain that the doctrine of evolution is compatible with this,
1:56:24
Speaker 1: I am bound to do so. Yet I have left
1:56:27
Speaker 1: myself no time in which to vindicate my claim, which
1:56:29
Speaker 1: I should wish to do most earnestly yet very deferentially.
1:56:32
Speaker 1: Considering wherein to whom I speak. Here we reverse positions.
1:56:36
Speaker 1: You are the professional experts. I am the unskilled inquirer.
1:56:40
Speaker 1: I accept Christianity on its own evidence, which I am
1:56:43
Speaker 1: not here to specify or to justify, And I am
1:56:46
Speaker 1: yet to learn how physical or any other science conflicts
1:56:49
Speaker 1: with it any more than it conflicts with simple theism.
1:56:52
Speaker 1: I take it that religion is based on the idea
1:56:54
Speaker 1: of a divine mind revealing himself to intelligent creatures from
1:56:57
Speaker 1: moral ends. We shall perhaps agree that the revelation on
1:57:00
Speaker 1: which our religion is based is an example of evolution,
1:57:03
Speaker 1: that it has been developed by degrees and in stages,
1:57:06
Speaker 1: much of it in connection with second causes and human actions,
1:57:09
Speaker 1: and that the current of revelation has been mingled with
1:57:11
Speaker 1: the course of events. I suppose that the Old Testament
1:57:14
Speaker 1: carried the earlier revelation and the germs of Christianity, as
1:57:18
Speaker 1: the apostles carried the treasures of the Gospel in earthen vessels.
1:57:21
Speaker 1: I trust it is reverent. I am confident it is
1:57:24
Speaker 1: safe and wise to consider that revelation in its essence
1:57:27
Speaker 1: concerns things moral and spiritual, and that the knowledge of
1:57:30
Speaker 1: God's character and will, which has descended from the fountain
1:57:32
Speaker 1: Head in the earlier ages, has come down to us
1:57:35
Speaker 1: through analysts and prophets and psalmists in a mingled stream,
1:57:39
Speaker 1: more or less tinged or rendered turbid by the earthly
1:57:42
Speaker 1: channels through which it has worn its way. The stream
1:57:45
Speaker 1: brings down precious gold, and so may be called a
1:57:48
Speaker 1: golden stream, But the water, the vehicle of transportation, is
1:57:51
Speaker 1: not gold. Moreover, the analogy of our inquiry into design
1:57:55
Speaker 1: in nature may teach us that we may be unable
1:57:58
Speaker 1: always accurately to sift out the gold from the earthy sediment.
1:58:01
Speaker 1: But however we may differ in regard to the earlier
1:58:04
Speaker 1: stages of religious development, we shall agree in this that
1:58:07
Speaker 1: revelation culminated and for us most essentially consists in the
1:58:11
Speaker 1: advent of a divine person, who, being made man, manifested
1:58:15
Speaker 1: the divine nature in union with the human, and that
1:58:18
Speaker 1: this manifestation constitutes Christianity, having accepted the doctrine of the
1:58:22
Speaker 1: incarnation itself, the crowning Miracle attendant. Miracles are not obstacles.
1:58:26
Speaker 1: To believe, their primary use must have been for those
1:58:29
Speaker 1: who witness them. And we may allow that the record
1:58:31
Speaker 1: of a miracle cannot have the convincing force of the
1:58:33
Speaker 1: miracle itself. But the very reasons on which scientific men
1:58:37
Speaker 1: reject miracles for the carrying on of nature may operate
1:58:40
Speaker 1: in favor of miracles to attest and incoming of the
1:58:42
Speaker 1: supernatural for moral ends. At least, they have nothing to
1:58:46
Speaker 1: declare against them. If now you ask me what are
1:58:49
Speaker 1: the essential contents of that Christianity which is in my
1:58:52
Speaker 1: view as compatible with my evolutionary conceptions as with former
1:58:55
Speaker 1: scientific beliefs, it may suffice to answer that they are
1:58:58
Speaker 1: briefly summed up in the early creeds of the Christian Church.
1:59:01
Speaker 1: Reasonably interpreted. The creeds to be taken into account are
1:59:04
Speaker 1: only two, one commonly called the Apostles, the other the Nicene.
1:59:09
Speaker 1: The latter and larger, is remarkable for its complete avoidance
1:59:12
Speaker 1: of conflict with physical science. The language in which its
1:59:15
Speaker 1: users look for the resurrection of the dead bears, and
1:59:18
Speaker 1: doubtless at its adoption, had in the minds of at
1:59:20
Speaker 1: least some of the council a worthier interpretation than that
1:59:24
Speaker 1: naturally suggested by the short Western creed, namely the crude
1:59:27
Speaker 1: notion of the revivification of the human body against which
1:59:30
Speaker 1: Saint Paul earnestly protested. Moreover, as brethren uniting in a
1:59:35
Speaker 1: common worship, we may honorably, edifyingly, and wisely use that
1:59:39
Speaker 1: which we should not have formulated, but may on due
1:59:41
Speaker 1: occasion qualify statements, for instance, dogmatically pronouncing upon the essential
1:59:45
Speaker 1: nature of the supreme Being, of which nothing can be
1:59:48
Speaker 1: known and nothing is revealed. Instead of the divine manifestation.
1:59:52
Speaker 1: We may add more to our confession. We all of
1:59:54
Speaker 1: us draw more from the exhaustless revelation of Christ in
1:59:57
Speaker 1: the gospels. But this should suffice for the profect of Christianity.
2:00:01
Speaker 1: If you ask, must we require that I reply that
2:00:04
Speaker 1: I am merely stating what I accept. Whoever else will
2:00:07
Speaker 1: accept him who is himself the substance of Christianity, let
2:00:10
Speaker 1: him do it in his own way. In conclusion, we
2:00:13
Speaker 1: students of natural science and of theology have very similar tasks.
2:00:17
Speaker 1: Nature is a complex of which the human race, through investigation,
2:00:21
Speaker 1: is learning more and more the meaning and the uses.
2:00:24
Speaker 1: The scriptures are a complex, an accumulation of a long
2:00:27
Speaker 1: series of records which are to be well understood only
2:00:29
Speaker 1: by investigation. It cannot be that in all these years
2:00:33
Speaker 1: we have learned nothing new of their meaning and uses
2:00:35
Speaker 1: to us, and have nothing still to learn. Nor can
2:00:38
Speaker 1: it be that we are not free to use what
2:00:39
Speaker 1: we learn in one line of study to limit, correct
2:00:42
Speaker 1: or remodel the ideas which we obtain from another. Gentlemen
2:00:47
Speaker 1: of the theological school about to become ministers of a gospel.
2:00:50
Speaker 1: Receive this discourse with full allowance for the different point
2:00:53
Speaker 1: of view from which we survey the field. If I,
2:00:56
Speaker 1: in my solicitude to attract scientific men to religion, be
2:00:59
Speaker 1: thought to have minimize the divergence of certain scientific from
2:01:02
Speaker 1: religious beliefs, I pray that you, on the other hand,
2:01:05
Speaker 1: will never needlessly exaggerate them, for that may be more harmful.
2:01:09
Speaker 1: I am persuaded that you, in your day will enjoy
2:01:12
Speaker 1: the comfort of a much better understanding between the scientific
2:01:14
Speaker 1: and the religious mind than has prevailed. Yet. Without doubt,
2:01:18
Speaker 1: a full share of intellectual and traditional difficulties will fall
2:01:21
Speaker 1: to your lot. Discreetly to deal with them as well
2:01:24
Speaker 1: for yourselves as for those who may look to you
2:01:26
Speaker 1: for guidance. Rightly to present sensible and sound doctrine, both
2:01:30
Speaker 1: to the learned and the ignorant, the lowly and the
2:01:32
Speaker 1: lofty minded, the simple believer and the astute speculatist, you
2:01:36
Speaker 1: will need all the knowledge and judgment you can acquire
2:01:38
Speaker 1: from science and philosophy, and all the superior wisdom we
2:01:41
Speaker 1: your supplications may draw from the infinite source of knowledge, wisdom,
2:01:44
Speaker 1: and grace. End of Lecture two. Part two, End of
2:01:50
Speaker 1: Natural Science and Religion by A. Segrae