FOOTNOTES:
[23] A note (of 1893) contains the following: 'Being, considered in the abstract, is logically equivalent to Not-Being or Nothing. For if by successive stages of abstraction, we divest the conception of Being of attribute and relation we reach the conception of that which cannot be, i.e. a logical contradiction, or the logical correlative of Being which is Nothing. (All this is well expressed in Caird's Evolution of Religion.) The failure to perceive this fact constitutes a ground fallacy in my Candid Examination of Theism, where I represent Being as being a sufficient explanation of the Order of Nature or the law of Causation.'
[24] This promise is only partially fulfilled in the penultimate paragraph of the essay.—Ed.
[25] Essays, vol. iii. p. 246 et seq. The whole passage ought to be consulted, being too long to quote here.
[26] In an essay on Prof. Flint's Theism, appended to the Candid Examination.
[27] A Candid Examination of Theism, pp. 171-2.
[28] [I have, as Editor, resisted a temptation to intervene in the above argument. But I think I may intervene on a matter of fact, and point out that 'according to the theological theory of things,' i.e. according to the Trinitarian doctrine, God's Nature consists in what is strictly 'analogous to social relations,' and He not merely exhibits in His creation, but Himself is Love. See, on the subject, especially, R.H. Hutton's essay on the Incarnation, in his Theological Essays (Macmillan).—Ed.]
[29] Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, pp. 76-7.
[30] Nature, April 5, 1883.
PART II.
Introductory Note by the Editor.
Little more requires to be said by way of introduction to the Notes which are all that George Romanes was able to write of a work that was to have been entitled A Candid Examination of Religion. What little does require to be said must be by way of bridging the interval of thought which exists between the Essays which have just preceded and the Notes which represent more nearly his final phase of mind.
The most anti-theistic feature in the Essays is the stress laid in them on the evidence which Nature supplies, or is supposed to supply, antagonistic to the belief in the goodness of God.
On this mysterious and perplexing subject George Romanes appears to have had more to say but did not live to say it[31]. We may notice however that in 1889, in a paper read before the Aristotelian Society, on 'the Evidence of Design in Nature[32],' he appears to allow more weight than before to the argument that the method of physical development must be judged in the light of its result. This paper was part of a Symposium. Mr. S. Alexander has argued in a previous paper against the hypothesis of 'design' in Nature on the ground that 'the fair order of Nature is only acquired by a wholesale waste and sacrifice.' This argument was developed by pointing to the obvious 'mal-adjustments,' 'aimless destructions,' &c., which characterize the processes of Nature. But these, Romanes replies, necessarily belong to the process considered as one of 'natural selection.' The question is only: Is such a process per se incompatible with the hypothesis of design? And he replies in the negative.
'"The fair order of Nature is only acquired by a wholesale waste and sacrifice." Granted. But if the "wholesale waste and sacrifice," as antecedent, leads to a "fair order of Nature" as its consequent, how can it be said that the "wholesale waste and sacrifice" has been a failure? Or how can it be said that, in point of fact, there has been a waste, or has been a sacrifice? Clearly such things can only be said when our point of view is restricted to the means (i.e. the wholesale destruction of the less fit); not when we extend our view to what, even within the limits of human observation, is unquestionably the end (i.e. the causal result in an ever improving world of types). A candidate who is plucked in a Civil Service examination because he happens to be one of the less fitted to pass, is no doubt an instance of failure so far as his own career is concerned; but it does not therefore follow that the system of examination is a failure in its final end of securing the best men for the Civil Service. And the fact that the general outcome of all the individual failures in Nature is that of securing what Mr. Alexander calls "the fair order of Nature," is assuredly evidence that the modus operandi has not been a failure in relation to what, if there be any Design in Nature at all, must be regarded as the higher purpose of such Design. Therefore, cases of individual or otherwise relative failure cannot be quoted as evidence against the hypothesis of there being such Design. The fact that the general system of natural causation has for its eventual result "a fair order of Nature," cannot of itself be a fact inimical to the hypothesis of Design in Nature, even though it be true that such causation entails the continual elimination of the less efficient types.
'To the best of my judgement, then, this argument from failure, random trial, blind blundering, or in whatever other terminology the argument may be presented, is only valid as against the theory of what Mr. Alexander alludes to as a "Carpenter-God," i.e. that if there be Design in Nature at all, it must everywhere be special Design; so that the evidence of it may as well be tested by any given minute fragment of Nature—such as one individual organism or class of organisms—as by having regard to the whole Cosmos. The evidence of Design in this sense I fully allow has been totally destroyed by the proof of natural selection. But such destruction has only brought into clearer relief the much larger question that rises behind, viz. as before phrased, Is there anything about the method of natural causation, considered as a whole, that is inimical to the theory of Design in Nature, considered as a whole?'
It is true that this argument does not bear directly upon the character of the God whose 'design' Nature exhibits: but indirectly it does[33]. For instance, such an argument as that found above (on p. 79: 'we see a rabbit, &c.') seems to be only valid on the postulate here described as that of the 'Carpenter-God.'
It is also probable that Romanes felt the difficulty arising from the cruelty of nature less, as he was led to dwell more on humanity as the most important part of nature, and perceived the function of suffering in the economy of human life (pp. 142, 154): and also as he became more impressed with the positive evidences for Christianity as at once the religion of sorrow and the revelation of God as Love (pp. 163, ff.). The Christian Faith supplies believers not only with an argument against pessimism from general results, but also with such an insight into the Divine character and method as enables them at least to bear hopefully the awful perplexities which arise from the spectacle of individuals suffering.
In the last year or two of his life he read very attentively a great number of books on 'Christian Evidences,' from Pascal's Pensées downwards, and studied carefully the appearance of 'plan' in the Biblical Revelation considered as a whole. The fact of this study appears in fragmentary remarks, indices and references, which George Romanes left behind him in note-books. The results of it will not be unapparent in the following Notes, which, I need to remind my readers, are, in spite of their small bulk, the sole reason for the existence of this volume.
In reading these I can hardly conceive any one not being possessed with a profound regret that the author was not allowed to complete his work. And it is only fair to ask every reader of the following pages to remember that he is reading, in the main, incomplete notes and not finished work. This will account for a great deal that may seem sketchy and unsatisfactory in the treatment of different points, and also for repetitions and traces of inconsistency. But I can hardly think any one can read these notes to the end without agreeing with me that if I had withheld them from publication, the world would have lost the witness of a mind, both able and profoundly sincere, feeling after God and finding Him.
C.G.