The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer.

Passing from Mr. Darwin as the representative of that class of naturalists who have undertaken to assign the pedigree of man by tracing the stages of his development back to the lowest and crudest form of animal life, I now come to a philosopher whose speculations carry the doctrine of evolution through every field of inquiry, and who, finding, as he supposes, evidence of its operation throughout all the other realms of the physical and the moral word, contends that it also obtains in the animal kingdom. It were to be wished that this writer, whose intellect is of the order of minds to which we naturally look for a judicial treatment of such themes, had been a little less dogmatic in his treatment of the doctrine of special creations. Mr. Spencer has, indeed, consistently recognized the necessity of trying the question between the hypothesis of special creations and the hypothesis of evolution, as one to be decided, if it is to be decided at all, only by an examination of evidence. But to one who approaches this question in a spirit of inquiry, and with a desire to learn whatever can be said on both sides, it is somewhat disappointing to find that the most eminent writer of the evolution school is unjust in his treatment of the belief which he opposes. There can be no objection to advocacy, or to strong and decided advocacy, when settled convictions are to be vindicated. But with advocacy we may expect that kind of fairness which consists in a full recognition of the opposite argument. A great master of dialectics once laid it down as a maxim of advocacy, "State the case of your opponent as strongly as you know how, stronger if possible than he states it himself, and then answer it, if you can." Some instances in which Mr. Spencer has not followed this wise rule may now be mentioned:

1. He attacks with great vigor the hypothesis that living beings resulted from special creations, as a primitive hypothesis; and because it is a very ancient belief he pronounces it to be probably untrue. He even goes so far as to assert that its antiquity raises a presumption against it. He classes it among a family of beliefs which began in primitive ages, and which have one after another been destroyed by advancing knowledge, until this one is almost the only member of the family that survives among educated people.[57] He says that if you catechise any one who holds this belief as to the source from which he derived it, he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has long since rejected. It will give way at last, along with all the rest of the family of beliefs which have already been given up. It may be that the arguments of those whose controversial writings on this subject Mr. Spencer had before him, relied on the antiquity of this belief as one of the strongest proofs of its probable truth. I have not looked to see how any writer on that side of the question has used the antiquity of the doctrine of special creations. But it is certainly not in accordance with the sound rule, even of advocacy, to state the argument in support of the belief which you oppose with less than the force that may be given to it, whether your opponents have or have not given to it the true force that belongs to it. The mere antiquity of the belief in special creations has this force and no more: that a belief which began in the primitive ages of mankind, and has survived through all periods of advancing knowledge, must have something to recommend it. It is not one of those things that can be swept away with contempt as a nursery-tale, originating in times of profound ignorance and handed down from generation to generation without inquiry. That it has survived, after the rejection of other beliefs that originated at the same period—survived in minds capable of dealing with the evidence in the light of increasing knowledge—is proof that it has something more to rest upon than the time of its origin. If some of its defenders now assert its antiquity as the sole or the strongest argument in its favor, its opponents should not assume that this is the only or the best argument by which it can be supported. Nor can it be summarily disposed of by classifying it as one of a family of beliefs that originated in times of ignorance, and that have mostly disappeared from the beliefs held by educated people. Its association with a special class of mistaken beliefs affords no intrinsic improbability of its truth. Every belief has come to be regarded as a mistaken or a true one, not according to its associated relations with other beliefs that have come to be regarded as unfounded, but according to the tests that the knowledge of the age has been able to apply to it. Take the whole catalogue of beliefs that began to be held in the darkest ages, and it will be found that their association has had no influence beyond inducing incorrect habits of reasoning on certain subjects, or a habit of accepting the official authority of those who claimed to be the special custodians of truth. These intellectual habits have been temporary in their influence, and have gradually changed. Every one of the beliefs that have been given up by the lettered or the unlettered part of mankind, has been given up because better knowledge of a special character has come to show that it is unfounded, and because mere official authority has ceased to have the power that it once had. If a belief has survived from a remote antiquity among those who are competent to judge of the evidence in its favor, by comparing the phenomena that increasing knowledge has accumulated, the force of the fact that it has so survived is not weakened by its association for a period with other beliefs that are now rejected.

Mr. Spencer asserts that, as the supposition of special creations is discredited by its origin in a time when men were profoundly ignorant, so conversely the supposition that races of organisms have been gradually evolved is credited by its origin, because it is a belief that has come into existence in the most instructed class, living in these better instructed times. This is a kind of argumentation that is often the result of a love of antithesis. The soundness of the last branch of the proposition appears to depend upon the soundness of the first branch. Make it to appear that the origin of the elder hypothesis is unfavorable by reason of the time of its origin, and it seems to follow that the origin of the modern hypothesis is favorable by reason of its time of origin. But this antithesis does not express the exact truth in either branch of it. It is not because of its antiquity, or of the character of the times in which it was first believed, that the doctrine of special creations can be shown to be irrational or improbable. There is no presumption against the truth of any belief, to be derived from the fact that it was held by persons who also held some erroneous beliefs on other subjects. If there were, nothing could be worthy of belief unless it could show a recent origin, or at least until demonstration of its truth had overcome the presumption against it. On the other hand, there is no presumption in favor of the truth of a new theory to be derived from the fact that it is new, or that it originated among those who think that they do not hold any erroneous beliefs, or because it originated in a comparatively very enlightened age. Every physical and every moral theory, unless we mean to be governed by mere authority, whether it is ancient or recent, must be judged by its merits, according to the evidence.

2. Another of Mr. Spencer's naked assertions is that the belief in special creations is "not countenanced by a single fact." Not only did no man "ever see a special creation," but "no one ever found indirect proof of any kind that a special creation had taken place." In support of this sweeping dogma, he adduces a habit of the naturalists who maintain special creations to locate them in some region remote from human observation.[58] This is another instance of not stating the case of your adversary as strongly as you might state it, or as he states it himself. "While no naturalist and no other person who believes in special creations ever saw one take place, indirect and circumstantial evidence tending to show that the earth is full of them has been accumulated to an enormous amount." It is a monstrous extravagance to assert that the hypothesis is "absolutely without support of any kind." What if Mr. Spencer's opponents were to retort that no man ever saw an instance in which an animal of a distinct species had been evolved out of one of an entirely different organization; that there is no external evidence to support the hypothesis of such derivations, and that the naturalists of the evolution school habitually place the scene of operations in the region of scientific imagination? The discovery of truth is not likely to be much advanced by this mode of attacking opposite opinions, yet it could be used with as much propriety on the one side of this question as on the other.

3. Next, and completing the misrepresentation, we have the assertion that, "besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this hypothesis of special creations can not support itself internally—can not be framed into a coherent thought.... Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism when specially created is created out of nothing? If so, there is a supposed creation of matter, and the creation of matter is inconceivable, implies the establishment of a relation in thought between nothing and something—a relation of which one term is absent—an impossible relation.... Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from divine interposition do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. The case is one of those where men do not really believe, but believe they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed; and no such mental representation is here possible."[59]

When I first read this passage I could hardly trust the evidence of my eye-sight. It seemed as if the types must have in some way misrepresented the distinguished writer; for I could scarcely conceive how a man of Mr. Spencer's reputation as a thinker could have deliberately penned and published such a specimen of logic run riot. It reads like some of the propositions propounded by the scholastics of the middle ages. But, having assured myself that the American edition of his work is a correct reprint, and having carefully pondered and endeavored to ascertain his meaning, I was forced to the conclusion that he supposes this to be a conclusive answer to the idea of absolute creation in respect to anything whatever, because, when put into a logical formula, one term of the relation is nothing, and the other term is something. Logical formulas are not always the best tests of the possibility of an intellectual conception, or of what the mind can represent to itself by thought, although to a certain class of readers or hearers they often appear to be a crushing refutation of the opposite opinion or belief against which they are employed.

Is there in truth anything impossible because it is unthinkable in the idea of absolute creation? Is the creation of matter, for example, inconceivable? It certainly is not if we adopt the postulate of an infinite Creator. That postulate is just as necessary to the evolutionist who maintains the ordination of fixed laws or systems of matter, by the operation of which the organized forms of matter have been evolved, as it is to those who maintain that these forms are special creations. Who made the laws that have been impressed upon matter? Were they made at all, or were they without any origin, self-existing and eternal? If they were made, they were made out of nothing, for nothing preceded them. Then apply to them the logical formula, and say that one term of the relation is absent—is mere nothingness—and so there is an impossible relation, a relation in thought between nothing and something, which is inconceivable. This dilemma is not escaped by asserting, as Mr. Spencer does, that "the creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter." It is necessary to inquire what he means by a "conceivable" idea. If he means that we can not trace or understand the process by which either force or matter was created, our inability may be at once conceded. But if he means that, granting the postulate of an infinite creating power, we can not conceive of the possibility that matter and all the forces that reside in it or govern it were called into being by the will of that power, the assertion is not true. Human faculties are entirely equal to the conception of an infinite creating power, whatever may be the strength or the weakness of the proof by which the existence of such a power is supported; and if there is such a power it is a contradiction in terms to assert that absolute creation, or the formation of "something" out of "nothing," is an impossible conception. Such an assertion is simply a specious play upon words, or else it involves the negation of an infinite creating power. The term "creation," as used in all modern philosophy, implies, ex vi termini, the act of causing to exist; and, unless we assume that nothing which exists was ever caused to exist, we must suppose that the causing power was alike capable of giving existence to matter and to the forces that reside in it.

The reason why the Greek philosophers did not embrace the idea of absolute creation was not because it was an unthinkable idea, or one incapable of representation in thought. They were, as we have seen, surrounded by a mythology which attributed the origin of the world to polytheistic agencies. They struggled against the cosmogony of poetical and popular traditions in an effort to find a cause of a different character. Monotheism, the conception of the one only and omnipotent God, freed philosophy from the great want which had hampered its speculations. This want was the conception of divine power, as abstracted from substance or the qualities of substance. When this conception had been obtained, absolute creation was seen to be a legitimate deduction from the illimitable scope and nature of the power which monotheism imputed to the Being supposed to preside over the universe, and to have existed before all the objects which the universe contains: and this conception of the act of creation thus became equally capable of representation in words and in thought. You may say that it has no evidence to support it; that it leads to contradictory ideas of the attributes claimed for the Creator; that upon the hypothesis of those attributes, his works are inexplicable. Whether you can say this truly or not, you can not say that absolute creation is inconceivable; and unless you mean to claim that neither matter nor force was ever created, that there never was a being competent to make either the one or the other to exist, you can not deny the probability that both were called into being by a definite and specific exercise of power. Mr. Spencer's philosophy manifestly leads to the conclusion that there is no God, or no such God as the hypothesis of special creations supposes, or such as the hypothesis of evolution necessarily calls for. If I understand him rightly, he rejects the idea of any creation, whether of matter, or force, or the properties of matter, or even of law of any kind, physical or moral. Hence it is that I admit the necessity of treating the existence of the Omnipotent Creator as an independent question to be judged upon moral evidence; and hence, too, in reasoning upon the probable methods of the Almighty, I maintain that the postulate of his existence is alike necessary to the evolutionist and to those who believe in special creations, and that both must adopt the same cardinal attributes as attributes of his power and character.

It is well to pursue this particular topic somewhat further, because this special difficulty arising from the creation of something out of nothing, triumphantly propounded by a certain class of philosophers, is echoed by others as if it concluded the question. The received meaning of language is often a great help to the mind in representing to itself in thought the idea that is expressed by the word. The word contains and suggests the thought. Lexicographers are the learned persons, one part of whose business it is to exhibit the thought that is represented by a word, not according to the popular and, perhaps, uncertain or erroneous use of the term, or according to its secondary meanings, but according to the exact correspondence between the word and the idea which it conveys in its primary and philosophic usage. The definition given to our English verb "create," in its primary and philosophical sense, is: "To produce," "to bring into being from nothing"; "to cause to exist." "Creation," as a noun expressing the act described by the verb, is defined as "the act of creating: the act of causing to exist, and especially, the act of bringing this world into existence." "Created," as the past participle which describes what has been done, is defined as "formed from nothing: caused to exist; produced; generated."[60] This is the sense in which the word is used in the English version of the first verse of the book of Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"; and whatever may be said about the source from which Moses derived his knowledge of the fact which he relates, there can be no doubt about the nature of the fact which he intended to assert. Now, does the lexicographer, when he describes creation as the act of causing something to exist, or the act of producing something out of nothing, present an idea that is incapable of mental representation—a relation impossible in thought? What he means to express is clear enough. Is the idea which he expresses impossible to be conceived by the mind?

It will be a good test of this supposed insuperable difficulty to apply the term "creation" to some human act. When Shakespeare composed the tragedy of "Hamlet," he created something in the sense which we are here considering.[61] He created that something out of nothing: for he caused something to exist which did not exist before. He did not merely inscribe certain words upon paper, by the material process of writing, and afterward cause the same words to be repeated by the material process of printing upon another paper. He gave intellectual existence to certain male and female persons of his imagination, carried them through certain periods of their imaginary lives, and made them and their history an imperishable intellectual idea. It is entirely immaterial to the present discussion that such a product of the imagination presents to us nothing but intellectual ideas; that Hamlet and Ophelia, and the King and Queen, and all the rest of the dramatis personÆ, were mere creatures of the poet's fancy. Although they were nothing but intellectual conceptions, they were "creations" in the sense of being intellectual products that never existed in idea before the poet made them, and therefore they were made out of nothing. Now, although we can not look into the mind of Shakespeare and describe the process by which he formed these creatures of his imagination, we experience no difficulty when we contemplate these imaginary personages, in representing in thought what we mean when we say that he "created" them. It would be simple absurdity to say that he did not create these ideal persons, because the notion of creation implies the formation of something out of nothing. That is the very meaning of creation in its primary and philosophical sense; and, when applied to works of the human imagination, it presents to us an idea that is perfectly capable of representation in thought.

Pass from this illustration of the idea of human creation to the hypothesis of a supreme being, possessing infinite power, and existing before the material universe began. The hypothesis of his existence includes the power to call into being things that had no previous being, whether these things be matter and material properties or moral and intellectual ideas. The whole realms of possible existence, spiritual and material, the whole void which consists in mere nothingness, are, according to the hypothesis, under his absolute sway. He holds the power of absolute creation; and the power this hypothesis imputes to him is no more incapable of representation in thought than is the inferior and limited power of creation, which we know to be performed by the finite human intellect, and which we have no difficulty in conceiving as a true creating faculty. When Watt formed the steam-engine, he did something more than to place certain portions of matter in certain relations, and make them to operate in a certain manner so as to produce a certain effect. He made the intellectual plan of a certain arrangement of matter; and to this act of giving being to something, both intellectual and physical, which did not exist before, we ascribe in its true sense the act of creation, and the idea we express by the term is perfectly capable of mental representation.

"Those," says Mr. Spencer, "who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from a divine interposition, do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts"; and he adds, quite truly, that there is no assignable mode or conceivable way in which the making of a new organism can be described. Let this be applied to some new mechanical structure produced by the intellect and hand of man. It is a result or product of human interposition. When we describe this human product as an invention, do we refrain from translating words into thoughts because we can not describe the process of invention? or, in other words, because we can not assign the mode in which the mind of the inventor reached his conception, are we to conclude that he did not attain to the conception which is plainly embodied in the machine that stands before our eyes? If we say that he created something, do we make a statement that can not be consistently imagined because we can not assign the mode in which his mind operated when it thought out the idea and constructed the plan? We can see how he put together certain material substances, and how they operate; but we can not see or describe the mental process by which he obtained his conception. Yet we ascribe to his act, and rightly ascribe to it, the idea of creation; and the term represents a thought of the mind that is as capable of being imagined as the word is of being spoken and understood.

When Raphael painted the Sistine Madonna, he formed in his mind an image of the heaven-chosen mother of Christ, and the marvelous skill of his artist hand transferred that face of surpassing loveliness to the canvas. The story that it tells may be a fiction or a fact. The image is a reality. It was a new existence; and, if we call it a creation, do we use a word which we can not translate into thought because we do not know how the painter attained to that sweet conception of the human mother's tenderness, and the dignity of her appointed office as the handmaiden of the Lord?

There is nothing unphilosophical in thus ascribing what is done by finite human faculties and what is done by the infinite Creator to a power that is of the same nature, but which in the one being is limited and imperfect, and in the other is superhuman and boundless. If we know, as we certainly do, that weak and finite man can perform some acts of creation, can cause some things to exist that did not previously exist, how much more may we safely conclude that a being of infinite powers can call into existence, out of the primeval nothingness, objects of the most stupendous proportions, of the nicest adaptations, of the most palpable uses—can cause matter and force and law to be where before all was vacuity, where force was unknown, where law had never operated! When the mind contemplates that Omnipotent Power, it reaches forth to an awful presence; but it does not contemplate something of which it can not conceive, for its own inferior faculties teach it that creation is a possible occurrence.

We do not need to be and are not indebted to superstition, to tradition, or to deceptive words, for the idea of creation. At an immeasurable distance from the Almighty Power, we ourselves are constantly creating; and it is when we do so that our acts resemble his in their nature, however below his productions may be the productions of our poor human faculties. It is one of the proofs of our relationship to the infinite Creator, a proof for which we are not indebted solely to revelation, that we are endowed in this imperfect degree with a power that resembles his. It is also one of the chief of the characteristics that distinguish man from the other animals: for, wonderful as are the constructions made by some of them, they are uniformly made under the involuntary and uncontrollable impulse of an implanted instinct; whereas, the constructions of man are made by the exercise of a constructive faculty that is guided by his will, which enables him to effect variations of structure entirely unattainable by any other being that exists on this earth. All the other animals are confined in the exercise of their constructive faculties to an invariable model, appointed for each of them according to the circumstances of its being. The range of choice is bounded by the limitations of the instinct under which the animal is compelled to do its work. It may appear to select a favorable site for its habitation, to cull its materials with judgment, to guard against disturbance from the elements or from enemies. But we have not much reason to suppose that any of these things are done from anything but an irresistible impulse, and we certainly have no reason to suppose that the animal has the moral power to do them or to refrain from them. To man alone does there appear to have been given the power of varying his constructions by the exercise of an intelligent will; and that will is bounded only by the limitations of his power over matter: so that, in respect to material structures, the power of man to make creations approaches nearest to the power of the Almighty Creator, and is, within its limitations, a true creating power. In the realm of intellectual or ideal creations, the resemblance of human and divine power is the same, and the limitations upon the former are those fixed by the finite nature of human faculties.[62]

4. Mr. Spencer has a great deal to urge against "the current theology," and he treats of some of the theological difficulties in which those who espouse the hypothesis of special creations entangle themselves.[63] I have nothing to do with the current theology. I do not borrow from it or rely upon it, and do not undertake to disentangle its professors from any of the difficulties in which they may have involved themselves. The only question that interests me is, whether the objections propounded by this philosopher as an answer to the hypothesis of special creations present insuperable difficulties to one who does not depend upon the current theology for arguments, explanations, or means of judgment. I shall therefore endeavor to state fairly and fully the chief of the supposed difficulties, without considering the answer that is made to them by those who are taken as the representatives of the current theology.

Put into a condensed form, one of Mr. Spencer's grand objections to the belief in special creations of organized beings is that it involves a deliberate intention on the part of the Creator to produce misery, suffering, pain, and an incalculable amount of evil, or else that there was an inability to prevent these results. Omitting for the present the human race, and confining our first view to the other animals, the earth is largely peopled by creatures which inflict on each other and on themselves a vast amount of suffering. The animals are endowed with countless different pain-inflicting appliances and instincts; the earth has been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures; and geology informs us that, from the earliest eras which it records, there has been going on this universal carnage. Throughout all past time there has been a perpetual preying of the superior upon the inferior—a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. In almost every species, the number of individuals annually born is such that the majority die of starvation or by violence before arriving at maturity. But this is not all. Not only do the superior animals prey upon the inferior, for which there may be suggested some compensating benefit by the sustentation of a higher order of life through the death of the lower, or by leaving the most perfect members of a species to continue that species, but the inferior prey upon the superior, and organisms that are incapable of feeling have appliances for securing their prosperity at the expense of misery to organisms capable of happiness. Of the animal kingdom, as a whole, more than half, it is said, are parasites, and almost every known animal has its peculiar species. Passing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dignity and coming to man, we find that he is infested by animal and vegetable parasites of which two or three dozens may be distinctly enumerated; which are endowed with constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing the juices of the human body, furnished with appliances by which they root themselves in the human system, and made prolific in an almost incredible degree. They produce great suffering, sometimes cause insanity, and not infrequently death.[64]

The dilemma that is supposed to be created by these facts for those who believe in the doctrine of special creations is this: If any animals are special creations, all are so; and each animal must be supposed to have been created for the special purposes that are apparent upon an examination of its structure and mode of life. As the superior are constantly preying upon the inferior, and as there are numerous inferior animals that are constantly inflicting evil upon the superior, it results that malevolence rather than benevolence was a characteristic attribute of the creating power, or else that the power which is supposed to have created was unable to make the perfect creation which the hypothesis of infinite benevolence calls for. Infinite goodness fails to be demonstrated by a world that is full of misery, caused by special appliances to bring it about; and infinite power can not have existed, unless it comprehended the power to produce perfect and universal happiness.

I pass entirely aside from the argument which is drawn from the supposed manifestations of Almighty power in the creation of diversified forms of animal and vegetable life, because that argument leads doubtless to the inquiry whether the Almighty made these manifestations to demonstrate his power to himself, or made them to demonstrate it to his human creatures. Admitting the fact, as Mr. Spencer puts it, that millions of these demonstrations took place on earth when there were no intelligent beings to contemplate them—a statement that is said to be verified by the deductions of geology and paleontology—an inquiry into the period or the purpose of these manifestations of divine power as manifestations only, merely leads us into some of the arguments of the current theology. There is another realm of thought and reasoning into which it will be far more profitable to enter. It is that realm which lies outside of tradition and the teachings of theologians, and which takes the hypothesis of infinite power and infinite goodness, not as something which we have been taught to believe, but as a postulate of philosophical reasoning; and, applying this hypothesis to the known facts of the animal and vegetable world, endeavors to ascertain whether these facts necessarily create an insuperable difficulty in the hypothesis which lies at the basis of all sound reasoning on the subject. For I must again insist, and shall endeavor specifically to show, that this hypothesis of infinite power and goodness is equally necessary to the evolutionist and to the believer in special creations, unless all speculation on the genesis of the world is to end in blind chance, and the negation of a personal creating power of any kind.

What, then, is the true philosophical mode of dealing with the existence in the world of physical and moral evil, in reference to the hypothesis of infinite power and infinite goodness? I do not ask what is a perfect demonstration of the problem of physical and moral evil—although I think that the natural solution is very near to demonstration; but the inquiry which I now make is. What is the reasonable mode of comparing the existence of suffering, pain, misery, and their immediate agencies, with the supposition of an all-wise, all-powerful, and perfectly beneficent Creator?[65]

What we have to do, in the first place, is to contemplate the scope of infinite goodness; or, in other words, to consider that infinite benevolence is, in its very nature, guided by unerring wisdom, and consequently that its methods, its plans, and its results are as far beyond the methods, plans, and results which our imperfect benevolence would adopt or achieve, as infinite power is beyond our finite and imperfect capacity. This does not call upon us to conceive of something that is inconceivable, or that can not be represented in thought; for power and goodness are qualities that we know to exist: we know that they exist in degrees; and that what exists in a measurable and limited degree may exist without measurable limitation, or in absolute perfection. The philosophic mode of regarding perfect goodness requires us to consider its methods and results with reference to its perfect character, and not to measure them by the inferior standards of human wisdom. Following out this obvious truth, we have next to inquire whether the physical and moral evil which we see ought to destroy the very idea of an infinitely benevolent Creator, and to compel us to regard him as a malevolent being, or else to destroy our belief in his infinite power, because his power has been unable to make a world of perfect happiness and enjoyment for his creatures. If this dilemma seriously exists, it is just as great a difficulty for the hypothesis of evolution as it is for that of special creations, and it drives both schools into the utter negation of any intelligent causing power adequate to produce what we see.

In the next place, let us see what is the sum total of the physical and moral evil in the animal kingdom, which, in reference to the sum total of happiness, is supposed to create this formidable impeachment of the Almighty benevolence on the one hand, or of the Almighty power on the other. As to the order of things which permits the superior animals to prey upon the inferior, there is an explanation which lies on the surface of the facts, and which would seem to satisfy all the requirements of philosophic reasoning, whatever may be the mode in which this part of the moral problem is dealt with by theologians. We find the fact to be that, as we rise higher and higher in the scale of organized beings, the superior are capable of happiness in a greater degree than the inferior, in some proportion to the superiority of their organization. The comparative duration of life among the different animals also enters into the estimate of the sum total of happiness. As a general rule, the inferior organizations are individually more short-lived than the superior. Now, it might have pleased the Creator to cause all animals to be fed by manna from heaven, or to find their sustenance only in vegetable products; and he could thus have dispensed with the carnivorous appetite, and have rendered it unnecessary for the superior to prey upon and destroy the inferior. But, although he could thus have made a world from which the misery of this perpetual carnage would have been absent, and which would have been so far a world of perfect happiness, the fact is that this law of universal destruction is so shaped as to follow the increasing capacity for happiness and enjoyment which moves through the ascending scale of the organized beings. It also follows another obvious purpose of the carnivorous appetite and of the permission to indulge it. A large part of the whole animal kingdom is so constructed that sustentation requires animal food. The blood, the tissues, the whole substance of some animal structures require to be renewed by similar substances; and although life may sometimes be continued by the assimilation of vegetable substances alone, it is not the life for which the animal was formed, because it is not always the life which makes the full end of its being, and realizes its best capacity for enjoyment and for the continuation of its species. In some cases, the carnivorous appetite is withheld. The animal lives and thrives best upon a vegetable diet, and so far as the flesh of these animals enters into the wholesome and beneficial food of man, the animal fulfills one purpose of its existence. Some animals, before they become fit food for man, have been nourished by the substance of still other animals. In all this variety of modes in which animal food is prepared for man, and in the whole of the stupendous economy by which the superior organizations prey upon the inferior in order that each species may continue itself and may fulfill the purposes of its existence, we may without any difficulty trace an obvious reason for the permission that has been given to such destruction of individual life. When to the sum total of happiness and benefit which this permission bestows on each of the orders of the inferior animals according to its capacity for enjoyment, whether it does or does not enter into the food of man, whether it comes or never comes within the reach of his arm, we add the sum total of happiness and benefit which this law of universal destruction bestows on man, so far as he avails himself of it, we shall find no reason to impeach the Divine Goodness or to adopt a conclusion derogatory to the Infinite Power. We may dismiss the difficulty that is supposed to arise from the warfare of the superior upon the inferior beings, because that warfare, when we trace it through all its stages, involves no sort of deduction from the perfect character of the Divine Goodness or the Divine Power.

Next, we come to the liability of animals, man included, to be preyed upon by parasites, creatures of a very inferior order when compared to the animals which they infest. I have looked in vain through Mr. Spencer's speculations for any explanation which makes the existence of the parasitic animals a support to the theory of evolution without involving the same impeachment of the Divine Power or the Divine Goodness which is supposed to be involved in the hypothesis of special creations. We are indeed told that evolution brings about an increasing amount of happiness, all evils being but incidental; that, applying alike to the lowest and to the highest forms of organization, there is in all cases a progressive adaptation, and a survival of the fittest. "If," it is argued, "in the uniform working of the process, there are evolved organisms of low types, which prey on those of higher types, the evils inflicted form but a deduction from the average benefits. The universal and necessary tendency toward supremacy and multiplication of the best, applying to the organic creation as a whole as well as to each species, is ever diminishing the damage done, tends ever to maintain those most superior organizations which, in one way or another, escape the invasions of the inferior, and so tends to produce a type less liable to the invasions of the inferior. Thus the evils accompanying evolution are ever being self-eliminated."[66]

Admitting, for the argument's sake, that this is true, how does the hypothesis of evolution meet the difficulty? The parasitic inferior organizations exist, and they have existed, more or less, as long as we have known anything of the superior organizations on which they prey. They have inflicted and still inflict an incalculable amount of evil, an untold diminution of the happiness that might have been enjoyed if they had never existed. The mode in which they came into existence, whether by the process of evolution or by special creations of their respective forms, does not affect the amount of evil which their ravages have produced and are still producing. If they exist under an order of things which has made them the products of an evolving process that has formed them out of still lower types, while they exist they have the same power of inflicting evil as if they had been specially made in their respective types without the former existence of any other type. If they owe their existence to the process of evolution, they exist under a system that was designed to lead to their production by the operation of uniform laws working out a uniform process; and under this process, so long as they are produced by it, they imply gratuitous malevolence, just as truly as they do if they are supposed to have been specially created. The evils which they have inflicted and still inflict were deliberately inflicted, unless we suppose that the hypothetical process of evolution was not a system ordained by any supreme and superhuman power, but was a result of blind chance; that the system was not created, but, without the volition of any power whatever, grew out of nothing.

The compensating tendency of the evolution system to evolve superior organisms, which in one way or other "will escape the parasitic invasions," by becoming less liable to them, and so to diminish the damage done, as a sum total, finds a corresponding result in the system of special creations by a different process and at a more rapid rate. For the hypothesis of special creations, rightly regarded, does not assume the special creation of each individual animal as a miraculous or semi-miraculous interposition of divine power; and even when we apply it to the lowest types of animals it implies only the formation of that type with the power in most cases of continuing its species. Assuming the parasitic animals to be in this sense special creations, the superior organisms on which they prey during their existence may become less liable to their invasions by an infinity of causes which will diminish and finally put an end to the parasitic ravages. In the progress of medical science man may be wholly relieved from the worst and most obscure parasites that have ever infested him, without waiting for their evolution into some other type of animal that does not desire or need to prey upon the human system, or without waiting to have the human organism developed into one that will not be exposed to such causes of suffering or death. We know already that very simple precautions will ward off from man some of the most subtle of these enemies; and even in the case of animals lower than man we know that instinct teaches them how to avoid the ravages of some of the parasites to which they are exposed, even if there are others which they can not now escape.

So that, viewing as a whole the amount of misery inflicted by the inferior organisms upon the superior, and looking from the first forward to the last "syllable of recorded time," we are able upon either of the two hypotheses respecting the origin of animals to reach certain definite conclusions, which may be stated as follows: This world was not intended to be a state of unmixed and unbroken individual happiness for any of the animal organisms. Death for every individual in some form was necessary to the carrying on and the carrying out of the scheme of average enjoyment and the accomplishment of a sum total of benefit that becomes larger and larger as time goes on; and, although death without suffering might have been ordained, the moral purpose for which suffering was allowed to precede death required that it should be permitted in numberless cases and forms, and by almost numberless agencies, although not always made necessary. This great purpose can be discerned without taking into view at all the idea of a future state of existence for man or any of the other terrestrial beings, and looking only at the moral development of man individually and collectively as an agent in the promotion of happiness on this earth. Man, however he originated, stands at the head of the whole animal kingdom. If for himself and for all the inferior animal organisms death without suffering had been ordained as the universal rule, he would have been without the full strength of the moral stimulus which now leads him to relieve, to palliate, to diminish, and, as far as possible, to terminate every kind of suffering for himself and the superior organisms that are below him in the scale, which are the most capable of enjoyment and happiness, next after himself, in their various proportionate capacities. He would have had no strong motive for exterminating the inferior and noxious organisms excepting for his own individual and immediate benefit; no reason for extending the protection of his scientific acquirements to the lower animals excepting to promote his own immediate advantage. Human society would have been without that approach to moral perfection which is indicated by a tenderness for life in all its forms, where its destruction is not needed by some controlling necessity or expediency, and by the alleviation of suffering in all its forms for the sake of increasing the sum total of possible happiness. Human life itself would have been less sacred in human estimation if there had been no suffering to draw forth our sympathies and to stimulate us to the utmost contention against its evils. Civilization would have been destitute of that which is now its highest and noblest attribute. Wars would have been more frequent among the most advanced portions of the human race; pestilence would not have been encountered with half the vigor or the skill which now wage battle against it; poverty would have been left to take care of itself, or would have been alleviated from only the lowest and most selfish motives, which would have left half its evils to be aggravated by neglect. As the world has been constituted, and as we have the strongest reason to believe it will continue to the end, there is to be added to the immeasurable sum of mere animal enjoyment of life that other immeasurable sum of moral happiness which man derives from doing good and from the cultivation of his power to do it—an acquisition and accumulation of benefit which would have been wanting if there had been no physical suffering to awaken pity and to prompt our exertions for its relief.

So that the objection that the hypothesis of infinite goodness required a world where physical pain would have been unknown to any of its organisms, where human sorrow would never have been felt, where human tears would have never flowed, and where death would have been always and only euthanasia, is by no manner of means a necessary conclusion, as the existence of suffering is no impeachment of the Infinite Power. If we consider man only in the light of his rank at the head of all the terrestrial beings, and as therefore capable of the greatest amount of benefit, to himself and to the other creatures, and if we regard him individually as nothing more than a being dwelling on this earth for a short-lived existence and endowed with the power of perpetuating his species, he would have been morally an inferior being to what he is now capable of becoming, and human society would have been far below what it can be made and what we know that to a large degree it already is, if physical suffering had been excluded from the world. All this can be discerned without the aid of revelation; it can be seen by the eye of philosophic reason alone; and it is all equally true upon any hypothesis of the physical origin of man or any other living creature on this earth, unless we suppose that the whole animal kingdom came into being without any intentional design, without any plan of intentional benefit, without any purpose, and without the conscious exertion of any power of any kind.

And, if the question is asked, What is to be the end of this world? or if we go forward in imagination toward the probable end of all this animal life, I can not see that the hypothesis of evolution has more to recommend it than the hypothesis of special creations in reference to the perfectibility of the world, or to the sum of approximate perfection that seems to be attainable. As, upon either of the two hypotheses, a perfect world does not even now seem to have demanded an absence of suffering, since suffering tends obviously to produce greater benefit than could have followed from its absence, so, in the remotest conceivable future, a nearer and nearer approximation to a state of universal happiness will continue to be worked out by physical and moral causes, which will be as potent under the system of special creations as they can be supposed to be under the system of evolution. It is true that the moral causes will supplement and aid the physical under either of the two systems. But one difficulty with the evolution theory as the sole method by which the past or present inhabitants of the world have come into existence is that, so far as we can judge, it has done and completed its work just as effectually and finally as special creation appears to have terminated in certain forms, some of which are extinct and some of which are living. Take the Darwinian pedigree of man, as stated in a former chapter, or any other mode of tracing the supposed stages of animal evolution. The process has hypothetically culminated in man. At whatever species in the ascending scale you pause, you find that the particular type of animal has either become extinct or that it has continued and still continues to be produced in that same type, with only such variations and incidental differences as have resulted from changed conditions of life, and from the intermingling of different breeds of the same animal. I do not now speak of the theory, which admits, of course, of the hypothetical development of every known animal, past or present, out of its supposed predecessors. But I speak of the facts as yet revealed by the researches of naturalists among all the extinct and living forms of animal life. If there had ever been discovered any one instance in which it could be claimed by satisfactory proof that an animal of a distinct species had been evolved out of races of animals of a fundamentally different organization, and without the special interposition of any creating power operating to make a new organism, we should certainly have it cited and relied upon as a fact of the utmost importance. I do not say that it would be reasonable to expect direct and ocular demonstration of such a product, any more than it would be reasonable to expect direct and ocular demonstration of an act of special creation. But I say that it could be shown by proofs that ought to be satisfactory if there were any evidence from which the inference that such a fact ever occurred could be reasonably drawn; just as it is possible to draw the inference of special creation by reasonable deduction from the evidence that tends to establish it as a safe conclusion. But if there has ever been such an instance of the evolution of any known species of animal out of other species shown by satisfactory proof, or if we assume such an occurrence in the past as the theory calls for, what reason have we to suppose that the process of evolution is still going on, and to expect it to go on to the end of time? We must judge of the future by the past, for we have no other means of judging it. The past and the present both show, so far as we can yet perceive by the facts, that each distinct and peculiar type of animal life remains a perfect and completed production, however it was fashioned or grew into that type; and that, so far as we have any means of actual knowledge, no crosses of different races of that animal produce anything but incidental variations of structure and mode of life. It is a mere hypothesis that they produce distinct species.

Apply this to the most important of the supposed connections between different animals according to the theory of evolution—that between man and the monkey. The theory calls for the intermediate link or links. Nothing can be yet found that shows the pedigree without eking it out by general reasoning, and by assumptions that are more or less imaginary. But suppose that the chain of proof were complete, what would it show? It would show that the process of evolution has culminated in man, as its crown and summit, and has there stopped. For, whatever may have been the length of time required for the production of this result, we know what the product is. We have the history of man as an animal for a period of time that has been quite long enough to show that, after he had become in his essential structure as an animal what we know him to be, no subsequent intermingling of the races or families into which the species became divided has produced any change in his essential structure, or any new organs or any differences but differences in the development of powers which are to be found in him at all the stages of his known existence as parts of his characteristic animal structure. The period of his known existence is certainly infinitely small when compared with the whole indefinite future. It is long enough, however, to afford some basis of reasoning about the future; and, short as it is, it tends very strongly to show that the further development of man on earth is to be chiefly a moral and intellectual development; that in physical structure he is a completed type; and that whatever superiorities of mere animal life he may attain to hereafter are to be such improvements as can be worked out, within the limits of his animal constitution, by the science which his accumulating experience and knowledge will enable him to apply to the physical and moral well-being of his race.

To return now to the line of thought from which these suggestions have diverged. If, as we have every reason to believe upon either hypothesis of man's origin, he is a completed animal, standing by original creation or by the effect of the evolution process at the head of the whole animal kingdom in the apparent purpose of his existence, his agency and his power in promoting the sum of happiness on earth, for himself and all the other animals, are the same upon either hypothesis of his origin. The hypothesis of his origin by evolution gives him no greater power over his own happiness or that of the other creatures than he has if we suppose him to have been specially created; and it is only by adopting the belief that in his own constitution he is to be hereafter developed into a being incapable of suffering, or one vastly less capable of suffering than the animal called man now is, that the theory of evolution, even in regard to the sum total of happiness on earth, has any advantage over the theory of special creations. If we suppose the future gradual development of a terrestrial being standing still higher in the animal scale than man now stands, exempt from the suffering which man now suffers, we have a great amount of suffering hereafter eliminated from the world by a certain process. But how does this better satisfy the idea of infinite goodness in the power that devised the process, than the hypothesis of special creation which has formed man as an ultimate product of the divine benevolence and power acting together, endowed him with the faculty of eliminating pain and evil from the circumstances of his existence, by his own exertions, and furnished him with the strongest motives as well as with almost immeasurable means for diminishing the amount of evil for himself and all the other beings within his reach?

5. Another of the specific objections urged by Mr. Spencer against the doctrine of special creations is so put that it is manifestly directed against one of the positions assumed by the representatives of the current theology. The learned philosopher begins this part of his argument by imputing to those who assert this doctrine as their reason for maintaining it, that it "honors the Unknown Cause of things," and that they think any other doctrine amounts to an exclusion of divine power from the world. To encounter this supposed reason for maintaining the doctrine of special creations, he proceeds to ask whether the divine power "would not have been still better demonstrated by the separate creation of each individual than it is by the separate creation of each species? Why should there exist this process of natural generation? Why should not omnipotence have been proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour? Is it replied that the Creator was able to make individuals arise from one another in natural selection, but not to make species thus arise? This is to assign a limit to power instead of magnifying it. Is it replied that the occasional miraculous origination of a species was practicable, but that the perpetual miraculous origination of countless individuals was impracticable? This also is a derogation. Either it was possible or not possible to create species and individuals after the same general methods. To say that it was not possible is suicidal in those who use this argument; and, if it was possible, it is required to say what end is served by the special creation of species that would not be better served by the special creation of individuals?"[67] I must again disclaim any participation in the views of those who contemplate this question with reference to the manifestations of divine power by one method of its supposed action or another, or who are influenced by the idea of honoring or dishonoring the Creator. This is not a question of the mode in which the Creator has chosen to manifest his power for the purpose of making it more impressive in the eyes of his intelligent human creatures or more palpable to their perceptions. Nor is it a question, excepting for the theologian who begins to reason upon it from a peculiar point of view, by what belief we best honor the Creator, or the power which Mr. Spencer describes as the "Unknown Cause." In the eye of philosophic reason, apart from all the religious dogmas that have been taught by human interpretations of revelation, this is a question of the probable mode in which the assumed omnipotent power has acted; and it is not a question of how we can best honor or magnify that power by believing that it has acted in one mode and not in another. We have to take, first, the postulate of an infinitely powerful Creator, whose existence is an independent inquiry, which we are to make out upon evidence that satisfies the mind. The hypothesis of his existence and attributes includes the power to create species and to establish the process of natural generation for the continuation of each species, or the power to make separate creations of each individual, as Mr. Spencer phrases it, "from hour to hour." In either mode of action, the power was the same. It is no derogation from it to suppose that the one or the other mode was adopted. It is no augmentation of it to suppose that the one was adopted instead of the other. It is simply a question of what does the evidence show, to the reasonable satisfaction of the human mind, to have been most probably the method that was chosen by a power that could adopt any method whatever. If we find that the creation of species and the establishment of the process of natural generation for the multiplication of individuals is upon the whole sustained by a predominating weight of evidence, it is safe to adopt the belief that this hypothesis of the Almighty method is in accordance with the facts. If the evidence fails to show that species have arisen from each other in the same way that individuals have arisen from each other in natural succession, we have no reason to conclude that such has been the fact. On the other hand, if the evidence shows, by reasonably satisfactory proofs, that a process has been established for the evolution of distinct species out of other and different species, similar to the process by which individuals arise from each other by natural generation, it will be safe to conclude that such has been the fact. Upon either hypothesis, the power of the Creator remains the same.

Nor is it in any degree necessary to consider in what sense the one method of action or the other was "miraculous," or that the one was an occasional and the other a perpetual exercise of power. The special creations of individuals from hour to hour would be just as miraculous as the special creation of species, and it would be occasional, although the occasions would be indefinite in number. The special creation of species would be just as miraculous as the special creation of individuals, but the occasional exercise of such a power would be limited by the number of species, each of which would be a finality in itself. The dilemma that is suggested by Mr. Spencer is a dilemma only for those who think it necessary to mingle the idea of honoring or dishonoring the Creator by one or another mode of interpreting his works, with a question of his probable method of action. His method of action is to be judged upon the evidence which a study of his works discloses.

6. Mr. Spencer, in summing up his objections to the doctrine of special creations, has said that it not only "fails to satisfy men's intellectual need of an interpretation," but that it also "fails to satisfy their moral sentiment"; that "their moral sentiment is much better satisfied by the doctrine of evolution, since that doctrine raises no contradictory implications respecting the Unknown Cause, such as are raised by the antagonist doctrine."[68] I have already suggested what seems to me a sufficient answer to the supposed contradictory implications respecting the goodness and power of the Almighty Creator. But it is here worthy of the further inquiry, What has been the influence upon the sacredness of human life, in human estimation, of a belief in any other theory of man's origin, or of no belief on the subject, compared with the effect of a belief in the doctrine that he is a creature of an Almighty Creator, formed by an exercise of infinite power for the enjoyment of greater happiness on earth than any other creature, and therefore having a peculiarly sacred individual right to the life that has been given to him? This, to be sure, does not afford a direct test of the probable truth of the hypothesis respecting his origin. But the answer to this inquiry will afford some test of the claim upon our consideration that may be put forward for any other hypothesis than the one that embraces the full idea of man's special creation, even if we do not look beyond this world. Compare, then, the civilization of the Romans at the period when it was at its highest development (the age of Julius and Augustus CÆsar), when in many respects it was a splendid civilization. Neither among the vulgar, nor among the most cultivated; not among the most accomplished of the statesmen or philosophers, was there any such belief as the simple belief in the relation between Creator and creature, such as had been held by a people who were regarded by the Romans as barbarians, in respect to man and all the other animals; or such a belief as is now held by the least educated peasant of modern Europe. One consequence of the absence of this belief, or of the want of a vivid perception of it, was that the highest persons in the Roman state, men possessed of all the culture and refinement of their age, not only furnished for the popular amusement combats of wild beasts of the most ferocious natures, but they provided gladiatorial shows in which human beings, trained for the purpose, were by each other "butchered to make a Roman holiday." The statesmen who thus catered to the popular tastes, and never thought of correcting them, subjected themselves to enormous expenses for the purpose; and all that was noble and dignified and cultured of both sexes, as well as the rabble, looked on with delight at the horrid spectacle. But this was not all. The Roman law, in many ways a code of admirable ethics, in utter disregard of the natural rights of men, left the life of the slave within the absolute power of the master, without any mitigation of the existing law of nations which made slaves of the captive in war and his posterity. Compare all this with the civilization of any modern country in which the life or liberty of man can be taken away only by judicial process and public authority, for actual crime; in which institutions exist for the relief of human suffering and for the prevention of cruelty to the inferior creatures; and then say whether the belief in special creations is not a doctrine that has worked vast good in the world, and one that should not be scouted because it is a "primitive belief."

Again, compare the ages in modern Europe when statesmen and politicians of the highest standing with entire impunity employed assassination for political ends, with periods in the same countries when assassination had come to be regarded not only with abhorrence, but as incapable of justification for any end whatever, public or private, and then say whether the world can lose its belief that man is a special creation of God, without losing one of the strongest safeguards of human life that can be derived from any belief on the subject. All these, and a great many similar considerations, while they do not prove the hypothesis of special creation, show strongly that, unlike some of the family of beliefs with which it was associated in the darkest ages, this one has worked no mischiefs; that, on the contrary, it has been producing moral, social, and political benefits in all the ages in which it has been most vividly present to the popular faith. The command, "Thou shalt do no murder," from whatever source it came, whether it was delivered to Moses on the mount of fire, or came from the teachings of Nature and the dictates of social expediency, whether it is a divine or a human law, or both, has unhappily been broken in all times, in all lands, and in all conditions of civilization. It is broken still. But it has never yet ceased, for its moral foundation and for the moral sanction of all the methods which have aimed to enforce it, to rest on the belief that man is peculiarly the child of God, whose life is sacred beyond the life of all other creatures. Whether any other belief of man's origin will afford an equally good foundation for that law, is a question which modern scientific speculation may or may not be able to answer. If its speculations conduct to the conclusion that the "unknown cause" has not specially caused anything, has not established any relation of Creator and creature, that is sufficiently special to imply divine care for the creature, we know what the answer must be. The theologian is not the only person who has occasion to examine the doctrine of evolution; it must be examined by the statesman as well.