ROBERT CHAMBERS
Robert Chambers was born in Peebles, Scotland, July 10, 1802, and died at St. Andrews on March 17, 1871. He was partner with his brother in the publishing firm of W. & R. Chambers, was editor of "Chambers's Journal," and was author of several works when he published anonymously, in October 1844, the work by which his name will always be remembered, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." His previous works, some thirty in number, did not deal with science, and his labour in preparing his masterpiece was commensurate with the courage which such an undertaking involved. When the book was published, such interest and curiosity as to its authorship were aroused that we have to go back to the publication of "Waverley" for a parallel. Little else was talked about in scientific circles. The work was violently attacked by many hostile critics, F.W. Newman, author of an early review, being a conspicuous exception. In the historical introduction to the "Origin of Species," Darwin speaks of the "brilliant and powerful style" of the "Vestiges," and says that "it did excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views." Darwin's idea of selection as the key to the history of species does not occur in the "Vestiges," which belongs to the Lamarckian school of unexamined belief in the hereditary transmission of the effects of use and disuse.
I.—The Reign of Universal Law
The stars are suns, and we can trace amongst them the working of the laws which govern our sun and his family. In these universal laws we must perceive intelligence; something of which the laws are but as the expressions of the will and power. The laws of Nature cannot be regarded as primary or independent causes of the phenomena of the physical world. We come, in short, to a Being beyond Nature—its author, its God; infinite, inconceivable, it may be, and yet one whom these very laws present to us with attributes showing that our nature is in some way a faint and far-cast shadow of His, while all the gentlest and the most beautiful of our emotions lead us to believe that we are as children in His care and as vessels in His hand. Let it then be understood—and this for the reader's special attention—that when natural law is spoken of here, reference is made only to the mode in which the Divine Power is exercised. It is but another phrase for the action of the ever-present and sustaining God.
Viewing Nature in this light, the pursuit of science is but the seeking of a deeper acquaintance with the Infinite. The endeavour to explain any events in her history, however grand or mysterious these may be, is only to sit like a child at a mother's knee, and fondly ask of the things which passed before we were born; and in modesty and reverence we may even inquire if there be any trace of the origin of that marvellous arrangement of the universe which is presented to our notice. In this inquiry we first perceive the universe to consist of a boundless multitude of bodies with vast empty spaces between. We know of certain motions among these bodies; of other and grander translations we are beginning to get some knowledge. Besides this idea of locality and movement, we have the equally certain one of a former soft and more diffused state of the materials of these bodies; also a tolerably clear one as to gravitation having been the determining cause of both locality and movement. From these ideas the general one naturally suggested to us is—a former stage in the frame of material things, perhaps only a point in progress from some other, or a return from one like the present—universal space occupied with gasiform matter. This, however, was of irregular constitution, so that gravitation caused it to break up and gather into patches, producing at once the relative localities of astral and solar systems, and the movements which they have since observed, in themselves and with regard to each other—from the daily spinning of single bodies on their own axes, to the mazy dances of vast families of orbs, which come to periods only in millions of years.
How grand, yet how simple the whole of this process—for a God only to conceive and do, and yet for man, after all, to trace out and ponder upon. Truly must we be in some way immediate to the august Father, who can think all this, and so come into His presence and council, albeit only to fall prostrate and mutely adore.
Not only are the orbs of space inextricably connected in the manner which has been described, but the constitution of the whole is uniform, for all consist of the same chemical elements. And now, in our version of the romance of Nature, we descend from the consideration of orb-filled space and the character of the universal elements, to trace the history of our own globe. And we find that this falls significantly into connection with the primary order of things suggested by Laplace's theory of the origin of the solar system in a vast nebula or fire-mist, which for ages past has been condensing under the influence of gravitation and the radiation of its heat.
II.—History of the Earth's Crust
When we study the earth's crust we find that it consists of layers or strata, laid down in succession, the earlier under the influence of heat, the later under the influence of water. These strata in their order might be described as a record of the state of life upon our planet from an early to a comparatively recent period. It is truly such a record, but not one perfectly complete.
Nevertheless, we find a noteworthy and significant sequence. We learn that there was dry land long before the occurrence of the first fossils of land plants and animals. In different geographical formations we find various species, though sometimes the same species is found in different formations, having survived the great earth changes which the record of the rocks indicates. There is an unbroken succession of animal life from the beginning to the present epoch. Low down, where the records of life begin, we find an era of backboneless animals only, and the animal forms there found, though various, are all humble in their respective lines of gradation.
The early fishes were low, both with respect to their class as fishes, and the order to which they belong—that of the cartilaginous or gristly fishes. In all the orders of ancient animals there is an ascending gradation of character from first to last. Further, there is a succession from low to high types in fossil plants, from the earliest strata in which they are found to the highest. Several of the most important living species have left no record of themselves in any formation beyond what are, comparatively speaking, modern. Such are the sheep and the goat, and such, above all, is our own species. Compared with many humbler animals, man is a being, as it were, of yesterday.
Thus concludes the wondrous section of the earth's history which is told by geology. It takes up our globe at an early stage in the formation of its crust—conducts it through what we have every reason to believe were vast spaces of time, in the course of which many superficial changes took place, and vegetable and animal life was gradually evolved—and drops it just at the point when man was apparently about to enter on the scene. The compilation of such a history, from materials of so extraordinary a character, and the powerful nature of the evidence which these materials afford, are calculated to excite our admiration, and the result must be allowed to exalt the dignity of science as a product of man's industry and his reason.
It is now to be remarked that there is nothing in the whole series of operations displayed in inorganic geology which may not be accounted for by the agency of the ordinary forces of Nature. Those movements of subterranean force which thrust up mountain ranges and upheaved continents stand in inextricable connection, on the one hand, with the volcanoes which are yet belching forth lavas and shaking large tracts of ground, as, on the other, with the primitive incandescent state of the earth. Those forces which disintegrated the early rocks, of which detritus formed new beds at the bottom of the sea, are still seen at work to the same effect.
To bring these truths the more nearly before us, it is possible to make a substance resembling basalt in a furnace; limestone and sandstone have both been formed from suitable materials in appropriate receptacles; the phenomena of cleavage have, with the aid of electricity, been simulated on a small scale, and by the same agent crystals are formed. In short, the remark which was made regarding the indifference of the cosmical laws to the scale on which they operated is to be repeated regarding the geological.
A common furnace will sometimes exemplify the operation of forces which have produced the Giant's Causeway; and in a sloping ploughed field after rain we may often observe, at the lower end of a furrow, a handful of washed and neatly deposited mud or sand, capable of serving as an illustration of the way in which Nature has produced the deltas of the Nile and Ganges. In the ripple-marks on sandy beaches of the present day we see Nature's exact repetition of the operations by which she impressed similar features on the sandstones of the carboniferous era. Even such marks as wind-slanted rain would in our day produce on tide-deserted sands have been read upon tablets of the ancient strata.
It is the same Nature—that is to say, God through or in the manner of Nature—working everywhere and in all time, causing the wind to blow, and the rain to fall, and the tide to ebb and flow, inconceivable ages before the birth of our race, as now. So also we learn from the conifers of those old ages that there were winter and summer upon earth, before any of us lived to liken the one to all that is genial in our own nature, or to say that the other breathed no airs so unkind as man's ingratitude. Let no one suppose there is any necessary disrespect for the Creator in thus tracing His laws in their minute and familiar operations. There is really no true great and small, grand and familiar, in Nature. Such only appear when we thrust ourselves in as a point from which to start in judging. Let us pass, if possible, beyond immediate impressions, and see all in relation to Cause, and we shall chastenedly admit that the whole is alike worshipful.
The Creator, then, is seen to have formed our earth, and effected upon it a long and complicated series of changes, in the same manner in which we find that he conducts the affairs of Nature before our living eyes; that is, in the manner of natural law. This is no rash or unauthorised affirmation. It is what we deduce from the calculation of a Newton and a Laplace on the one hand, and from the industrious observation of facts by a Murchison and a Lyell on the other. It is a point of stupendous importance in human knowledge; here at once is the whole region of the inorganic taken out of the dominion of marvel, and placed under an idea of Divine regulation.
III.—The History of the Earth's Life
Mixed up, however, with the geological changes, and apparently as final object connected with the formation of the globe itself, there is another set of phenomena presented in the course of our history—the coming into existence, namely, of a long suite of living things, vegetable and animal, terminating in the families which we still see occupying the surface. The question arises: In what manner has this set of phenomena originated? Can we touch at and rest for a moment on the possibility of plants and animals having likewise been produced in a natural way, thus assigning immediate causes of but one character for everything revealed to our sensual observation; or are we at once to reject this idea, and remain content, either to suppose that creative power here acted in a different way, or to believe unexaminingly that the inquiry is one beyond our powers? Taking the last question first, I would reply that I am extremely loth to imagine that there is anything in Nature which we should, for any reason, refrain from examining. If we can infer aught from the past history of science, it is that the whole of Nature is a legitimate field for the exercise of our intellectual faculties; that there is a connection between this knowledge and our well-being; and that, if we may judge from things once despaired of by our inquiring reason, but now made clear and simple, there is none of Nature's mysteries which we may not hopefully attempt to penetrate. To remain idly content to presume a various class of immediate causes for organic Nature seems to me, on this ground, equally objectionable.
With respect to the other question the idea has several times arisen that some natural course was observed in the production of organic things, and this even before we were permitted to attain clear conclusions regarding inorganic nature. It was always set quickly aside as unworthy of serious consideration. The case is different now, when we have admitted law in the whole domain of the inorganic.
Otherwise, the absurdities into which we should be led must strike every reflecting mind. The Eternal Sovereign arranges a solar or an astral system, by dispositions imparted primordially to matter; he causes, by the same means, vast oceans to join and continents to rise, and all the grand meteoric agencies to proceed in ceaseless alternation, so as to fit the earth for a residence of organic beings. But when, in the course of these operations, fuci and corals are to be, for the first time, placed in these oceans, a change in his plan of administration is required. It is not easy to say what is presumed to be the mode of his operations. The ignorant believe the very hand of Deity to be at work. Amongst the learned, we hear of "creative fiats," "interferences," "interpositions of the creative energy," all of them very obscure phrases, apparently not susceptible of a scientific explanation, but all tending simply to this: that the work was done in a marvellous way, and not in the way of Nature.
But we need not assume two totally distinct modes of the exercise of the divine power—one in the course of inorganic nature and the other in intimately connected course of organic nature.
Indeed, when all the evidence is surveyed, it seems difficult to resist the impression that vestiges, at least, are seen of the manner and method of the Creator in this part of His work. It appears to be a case in which rigid proof is hardly to be looked for. But such evidences as exist are remarkably consistent and harmonious. The theory pointed to consorts with everything else which we have learned accurately regarding the history of the universe. Science has not one positive affirmation on the other side. Indeed, the view opposed to it is not one in which science is concerned; it appears as merely one of the prejudices formed in the non-age of our race.
For the history, then, of organic nature, I embrace, not as a proved fact, but as a rational interpretation of things as far as science has revealed them, the idea of progressive development. We contemplate the simplest and most primitive types of being as giving birth to a type superior to it; this again producing the next higher, and so on to the highest. We contemplate, in short, a universal gestation of Nature, like that of the individual being, and attended as little by circumstances of a miraculous kind as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week to another of her pregnancy.
Thus simple—after ages of marvelling—appears organic creation, while yet the whole phenomena are, in another point of view, wonders of the highest kind, being the undoubted results of ordinances arguing the highest attributes of foresight, skill and goodness on the part of their Divine Author.
If, finally, we study the mind of man, we find that its Almighty Author has destined it, like everything else, to be developed from inherent qualities.
Thus the whole appears complete on one principle. The masses of space are formed by law; law makes them in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals; sensation, disposition, intellect, are all in like manner sustained in action by law.
It is most interesting to observe into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of Nature thus ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has been thought to have one final comprehensive law—gravitation. The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and that is—development. Nor may even these be after all twain, but only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of a unity flowing immediately from the One who is first and last.
IV.—The Future and its Meaning
The question whether the human race will ever advance far beyond its present position in intellect and morals is one which has engaged much attention. Judging from the past, we cannot reasonably doubt that great advances are yet to be made; but, if the principle of development be admitted, these are certain, whatever may be the space of time required for their realisation. A progression resembling development may be traced in human nature, both in the individual and in large groups of men. Not only so, but by the work of our thoughtful brains and busy hands we modify external nature in a way never known before. The physical improvements wrought by man upon the earth's surface I conceive as at once preparations for, and causes of, the possible development of higher types of humanity, beings less strong in the impulsive parts of our nature, more strong in the reasoning and moral, more fitted for the delights of social life, because society will then present less to dread and more to love.
The history and constitution of the world have now been hypothetically explained, according to the best lights which a humble individual has found within the reach of his perceptive and reasoning faculties.
We have seen a system in which all is regularity and order, and all flows from, and is obedient to, a divine code of laws of unbending operation. We are to understand from what has been laid before us that man, with his varied mental powers and impulses, is a natural problem of which the elements can be taken cognisance of by science, and that all the secular destinies of our race, from generation to generation, are but evolutions of a law statuted and sustained in action by an all-wise Deity.
There may be a faith derived from this view of Nature sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, the calamities, the woes and pains of this sphere of being. For let us but fully and truly consider what a system is here laid open to view and we cannot well doubt that we are in the hands of One who is both able and willing to do us the most entire justice. Surely, in such a faith we may well rest at ease, even though life should have been to us but a protracted malady. Thinking of all the contingencies of this world as to be in time melted into or lost in some greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us wait the end with patience and be of good cheer.