The second witness as to the character of Mr. Darwin's theory is Professor Huxley. We have some hesitation in including the name of this distinguished naturalist among the advocates of Darwinism.[19] On the one hand, in his Essay on the Origin of Species, printed in the "Westminster Review," in 1860, and reprinted in his "Lay Sermons," etc., in 1870, he says: "There is no fault to be found with Mr. Darwin's method, but it is another thing whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved that species may[20] be originated by selection? that none of the phenomena exhibited by species are inconsistent with the origin of species in this way? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of the rank of hypotheses into that of theories; but so long as the evidence at present adduced falls short of enforcing that affirmative, so long, to our minds, the new doctrine must be content to remain among the former,—an extremely valuable, and in the highest degree probable, doctrine; indeed, the only extant hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still a hypothesis, and not yet a theory of species. After much consideration," he adds, "and assuredly with no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence now stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural."[21]

Again, in his work on "Man's Place in Nature," he expresses himself much to the same effect: "A true physical cause is admitted to be such only on one condition, that it shall account for all the phenomena which come within the range of its operation. If it is inconsistent with any one phenomenon it must be rejected; if it fails to explain any one phenomenon it is so far to be suspected, though it may have a perfect right to provisional acceptance.... Our acceptance, therefore, of the Darwinian hypothesis must be provisional so long as one link in the chain of evidence is wanting; and so long as all the animals and plants certainly produced by selective breeding from a common stock are fertile, and their progeny are fertile one with another, that link will be wanting. For so long selective breeding will not be proved to be competent to all that is required if it produce natural species."[22] In immediate connection with the above passage, there is another which throws a clear light on Professor Huxley's cosmical views. "The whole analogy of natural operations furnish so complete and crushing an argument against the intervention of any but what are called secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations of man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no reason for doubting that all are coÖrdinate terms of nature's great progression, from formless to formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will."[23]Ought not this to settle the matter? Are we to give up the Bible and all our hopes for the sake of an hypothesis that all living things, including man, on the face of the earth, are descended from a primordial animalcule, by natural selection, when such a man as Huxley, who (as Voltaire said of the prophet Habbakuk) is capable de tout, says that it has not been proved that any one species has thus originated?

But on the other hand, while he honestly admits that Darwin's doctrine is a mere hypothesis and not a theory, he has nevertheless written at least three essays or reviews in its exposition and vindication. He is freely referred to on the continent of Europe, at least, as an ardent advocate of the doctrine; and he quotes without protest such designations of himself. At any rate, as he assures his readers that he has no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, as he has devoted much time and attention to the subject, and as he is one of the most prominent naturalists of the age, there can be no question as to his competency as a witness as to what Darwinism is.

His testimony that Mr. Darwin's doctrine excludes all teleology, or final causes, is explicit. In his review of the "Criticisms on the Origin of Species," he says, "that when he first read Mr. Darwin's book, that which struck him most forcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, had received its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands. For the teleological argument runs thus: An organ is precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose; therefore, it was specially constructed to perform that function. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of a watch to the function or purpose of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on the ground that the only cause we know of competent to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that end."[24] This, Mr. Huxley tells us, is precisely what Darwin denies with reference to the organs of plants and animals. The eye was not formed for the purpose of seeing, or the ear for hearing. It so happened that a nerve became sensitive to light; then in course of time, it happened that a transparent tissue came over it; and thus in "millions of years" an eye, as we have seen above, happened to be formed. No such organ was ever intended or designed by God or man. "An apparatus," says Professor Huxley, "thoroughly adapted to a particular purpose, might be the result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as by the application of means appropriate to the end by an intelligent agent." "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something, which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them, and thrive; the many are unsuited, and become extinguished." "For the teleologist an organism exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an organism exists, because, out of many of its kind, it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which it is found." "If we apprehend," Huxley further says, "the spirit of the 'Origin of Species' rightly, then, nothing can be more entirely and absolutely opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwinian theory." (p. 303)

It has already been stated that Mr. Wallace does not apply the doctrine of evolution to man; neither does Mr. Mivart, a distinguished naturalist, who is a member of the Latin Church. The manner in which Professor Huxley speaks of these gentlemen shows how thoroughly, in his judgment, Mr. Darwin banishes God from his works: "Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart are as stout evolutionists as Mr. Darwin himself; but Mr. Wallace denies that man can have been evolved from a lower animal by that process of natural selection, which he, with Mr. Darwin, holds to be sufficient for the evolution of all animals below man; while Mr. Mivart, admitting that natural selection has been one of the conditions of the animals below man, maintains that natural selection must, even in their case, have been supplemented by some other cause,—of the nature of which, unfortunately, he does not give us any idea. Thus Mr. Mivart is less of a Darwinian than Mr. Wallace, for he has faith in the power of natural selection. But he is more of an evolutionist than Mr. Wallace, because Mr. Wallace thinks it necessary to call in an intelligent agent, a sort of supernatural Sir John Sebright, to produce even the animal frame of man; while Mr. Mivart requires no Divine assistance till he comes to man's soul."[25]In the "Academy" for October, 1869, there is a review by Professor Huxley of Dr. Haeckel's "NatÜrlische SchÖpfungsgeschichte," in which he says: "Professor Haeckel enlarges on the service which the 'Origin of Species' has done in favoring what he terms 'the causal or mechanical' view of living nature as opposed to the 'teleological or vitalistic' view. And no doubt it is quite true the doctrine of evolution is the most formidable of all the commoner and coarser forms of teleology. Perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his view offers.

"The teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or in the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, to make the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow. But it is necessary to remember that there is a higher teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based on the fundamental proposition of evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapor; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of that vapor, have predicted, say, the state of fauna of Great Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapor of the breath on a cold winter's day." This is the doctrine of the self-evolution of the universe. We know not what may lie behind this in Mr. Huxley's mind; but we are very sure that there is not an idea in the above paragraph which Epicurus of old, and BÜchner, Vogt, Haeckel, and other "Materialisten von Profession," would not cheerfully adopt. His distinction between a higher and lower teleology is of no account in this discussion. What is the teleology to which, he says, Mr. Darwin has given the death-blow, the extracts given above clearly show. The eye, Huxley says, was not made for the purpose of seeing, or the ear for the purpose of hearing. "According to teleology," he says, "each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grapeshot, of which one hits something and the rest fall wide."[26]

[19] Mr. Huxley, if we may judge from what he says of himself, is somewhat liable to be misunderstood. He says he was fourteen years laboring to resist the charge of Positivism made against the class of scientific men to which he belongs. He also tells us in his letter to Professor Tyndall, prefixed to his volume of Lay Sermons and Addresses, that the "Essay on the Physical Basis of Life," included in that volume, was intended as a protest, from the philosophical side, against what is commonly called Materialism. It turned out, however, that the public regarded it as an argument in favor of Materialism. This we think was a very natural, if not an unavoidable mistake, on the part of the public. For in that Essay, he says that Protoplasm, or the physical basis of life, "is a kind of matter common to all living beings, that the powers or faculties of all kinds of living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially of the same kind." Protoplasm as far as examined contains the four elements,—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These are lifeless bodies, "but when brought together under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body Protoplasm; and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." There is no more reason, he teaches, for assuming the existence of a mysterious something called vitality to account for vital phenomena, than there is for the assumption of something called Aquasity to account for the phenomena of water. Life is said to be "the product of a certain disposition of material molecules." The matter of life is "composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated. I take it," he says, "to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one, which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this, is on the face of the matter absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity."