Is my argument, then, nothing better than an appeal from the competent to the incompetent, from the few to the many? By no means. Progress, though of small account unless it touch the many, gets its vital impetus always from the few. It is to the patient labours of those rare intelligences who possess originality, courage, subtlety, and sympathy that we must look for the gradual working out of a theory of the universe which shall as fully satisfy our reason and our conscience as the limitations of our faculties permit. But that consummation is not yet. And since, whether we be philosophers or not, we all act on a working body of root-beliefs about men and things: since we are also in general agreement as to the form in which those beliefs can best express the present state of knowledge, is it not legitimate to ask whether, on the basis thus provided, a still larger measure of practical harmony cannot in the meantime be reasonably established? It is true that Theism could never by such methods acquire a certitude either greater than, or independent of, the beliefs of science and common sense. But, could it acquire as much, theologians might well be content, though philosophers most rightly strove for more.
LECTURE II
I
The argument, then, which I propose to lay before you, though its material is provided by our common-sense beliefs, is not an argument from common sense. It does not extend to theology those uncritical methods which we accept (most of us without protest) in the sphere of our every-day activities. Is it, then, you may be tempted to ask, some form of the yet more familiar argument from design? Is it more than Paley and the Bridgwater treatises brought up to date? And, if so, has not the vanity of all such endeavours been demonstrated in advance: from the side of sceptical philosophy by Hume; from the side of idealist philosophy by Kant and his successors; from the side of empirical philosophy by the nineteenth-century agnostics; from the side of science by the theory of Natural Selection? Do not the very catch-words of the argument—“contrivance,” “design,” “adaptation,” exercised by the “Architect of the Universe” fill us with a certain weariness? Do they not represent the very dregs of stale apologetics; the outworn residue of half-forgotten controversies?
For my own part, I do not think the argument from contrivance bad, but I do think it very limited: limited in respect of its premises; limited also in respect of its conclusions. It may, perhaps, be worth dwelling on some of these limitations, if only to make my own position clearer by contrast.
In the first place, it must be noted that, from a consideration of inanimate nature alone it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to infer design. The mere existence of natural laws is not, as it seems to me, a sufficient basis for the argument; we require also that these laws should combine to subserve an end. Were the universe, for example, like a huge impervious reservoir of some simple gas, where nothing rested but nothing changed, where amid all the hurry and bustle of colliding atoms no new thing was ever born, nor any old thing ever perished, we might find in it admirable illustrations of natural law, but no hints, so far as I can see, of purpose or design. Nor is the case really mended if, instead of thus artificially simplifying inanimate nature, we consider it in all its concrete complexity. Even cosmic evolution of the Spencerian type will scarcely help us. Herbert Spencer, as we know, regarded the world-story as a continuous progress from the simple to the complex, in which the emergence of the living out of the not-living is treated as a harmonious episode in one vast evolutionary drama. The plot opens in the first chapter with diffused nebulæ; it culminates in the last with the social organisation of man. Unfortunately its central episode, the transition from the not-living to the living, was never explained by the author of the “Synthetic Philosophy”; and the lamentable gap must be filled in by each disciple according to his personal predilections. For the moment, however, we are concerned only with one part of the story, that which deals with the evolution of inanimate nature. Can this be regarded as displaying design? I hardly think so. Granting, for the sake of argument, the validity of the Spencerian physics, granting that the material Universe exhibits this general trend from the simple to the complex, from a loose diffusion of nebulous matter to the balanced movements of suns and satellites, does this of itself give any hint of purpose? Only, I believe, if we confound evolution with elaboration and elaboration with improvement, and read into it some suggestion of progress borrowed from biology or ethics, sociology or religion.
But we have not the slightest right to do this. Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless uniformity? Why should this type of “evolution” have about it any suggestion of progress? And, if it has not, how can it indicate design?
Spencer himself was, of course, no advocate of “design” after the manner of Paley; and I only mention his cosmic speculations because their unavowed optimism—the optimism that is always apt to lurk in the word “evolution”—makes of them material peculiarly suitable for those who seek for marks of design in lifeless nature. But let us add two touches to Spencer’s picture, and see how the argument then stands.
I have already commented on the great omission which mars the continuity of his world-story—the omission, I mean, of any account of the transition from the not-living to the living. I shall have again to refer to it. But there are, besides this, two other omissions, one at the beginning of his narrative, and the other at the end, whose significance in relation to “design” should receive a passing comment.