We wished to say something about the way in which scientific men, worthy of the name, hold hypotheses and theories, using them for the purpose of investigation and the collocation of facts, yielding or withholding assent in degrees or provisionally, according to the amount of verification or likelihood, or holding it long in suspense; which is quite in contrast to that of amateurs and general speculators (not that we reckon Dr. Dawson in this class), whose assent or denial seldom waits, or endures qualification. With them it must on all occasions be yea or nay only, according to the letter of the Scriptural injunction, and whatsoever is less than this, or between the two, cometh of evil.
VII
EVOLUTION AND
THEOLOGY [VII-1]
(The Nation, January 15, 1874)
The attitude of theologians toward doctrines of evolution, from the nebular hypothesis down to "Darwinism," is no less worthy of consideration, and hardly less diverse, than that of naturalists. But the topic, if pursued far, leads to questions too wide and deep for our handling here, except incidentally, in the brief notice which it falls in our way to take of the Rev. George Henslow's recent volume on "The Theory of Evolution of Living Things." This treatise is on the side of evolution, "considered as illustrative of the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty." It was submitted for and received one of the Actonian prizes recently awarded by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. We gather that the staple of a part of it is worked up anew from some earlier discourses of the author upon "Genesis and Geology," "Science and Scripture not antagonistic," etc.
In coupling with it a chapter of the second volume of Dr. Hodge's "Systematic Theology (Part II, Anthropology)," we call attention to a recent essay, by an able and veteran writer, on the other side of the question. As the two fairly enough represent the extremes of Christian thought upon the subject, it is convenient to review them in connection. Theologians have a short and easy, if not wholly satisfactory, way of refuting scientific doctrines which they object to, by pitting the authority or opinion of one savant against another. Already, amid the currents and eddies of modern opinion, the savants may enjoy the same advantage at the expense of the divines— we mean, of course, on the scientific arena; for the mutual refutation of conflicting theologians on their own ground is no novelty. It is not by way of offset, however, that these divergent or contradictory views are here referred to, but only as an illustration of the fact that the divines are by no means all arrayed upon one side of the question in hand. And indeed, in the present transition period, until some one goes much deeper into the heart of the subject, as respects the relations of modern science to the foundations of religious belief, than either of these writers has done, it is as well that the weight of opinion should be distributed, even if only according to prepossessions, rather than that the whole stress should bear upon a single point, and that perhaps the authority of an interpretation of Scripture. A consensus of opinion upon Dr. Hodge's ground, for instance (although better guarded than that of Dr. Dawson), if it were still possible, would—to say the least—probably not at all help to reconcile science and religion. Therefore, it is not to be regretted that the diversities of view among accredited theologians and theological naturalists are about as wide and as equably distributed between the extremes (and we may add that the views themselves are quite as hypothetical) as those which prevail among the various naturalists and natural philosophers of the day.
As a theologian, Mr. Henslow doubtless is not to be compared with the veteran professor at Princeton. On the other hand, he has the advantage of being a naturalist, and the son of a naturalist, as well as a clergyman: consequently he feels the full force of an array of facts in nature, and of the natural inferences from them, which the theological professor, from his Biblical standpoint, and on his implicit assumption that the Old Testament must needs teach true science, can hardly be expected to appreciate. Accordingly, a naturalist would be apt to say of Dr. Hodge's exposition of "theories of the universe" and kindred topics—and in no captious spirit— that whether right or wrong on particular points, he is not often right or wrong in the way of a man of science.
Probably from the lack of familiarity with prevalent ideas and their history, the theologians are apt to suppose that scientific men of the present day are taking up theories of evolution in pure wantonness or mere superfluity of naughtiness; that it would have been quite possible, as well as more proper, to leave all such matters alone. Quieta non movere is doubtless a wise rule upon such subjects, so long as it is fairly applicable. But the time for its application in respect to questions of the origin and relations of existing species has gone by. To ignore them is to imitate the foolish bird that seeks security by hiding its head in the sand. Moreover, the naturalists did not force these questions upon the world; but the world they study forced them upon the naturalists. How these questions of derivation came naturally and inevitably to be revived, how the cumulative probability that the existing are derived from preexisting forms impressed itself upon the minds of many naturalists and thinkers, Mr. Henslow has briefly explained in the introduction and illustrated in the succeeding chapters of the first part of his book. Science, he declares, has been compelled to take up the hypothesis of the evolution of living things as better explaining all the phenomena. In his opinion, it has become "infinitely more probable that all living and extinct beings have been developed or evolved by natural laws of generation from preexisting forms, than that they, with all their innumerable races and varieties, should owe their existences severally to Creative fiats." This doctrine, which even Dr. Hodge allows may possibly be held in a theistic sense, and which, as we suppose, is so held or viewed by a great proportion of the naturalists of our day, Mr. Henslow maintains is fully compatible with dogmatic as well as natural theology; that it explains moral anomalies, and accounts for the mixture of good and evil in the world, as well as for the merely relative perfection of things; and, finally, that "the whole scheme which God has framed for man's existence, from the first that was created to all eternity, collapses if the great law of evolution be suppressed." The second part of his book is occupied with a development of this line of argument. By this doctrine of evolution he does not mean the Darwinian hypothesis, although he accepts and includes this, looking upon natural selection as playing an important though not an unlimited part. He would be an evolutionist with Mivart and Owen and Argyll, even if he had not the vera causa which Darwin contributed to help him on. And, on rising to man, he takes ground with Wallace, saying:
"I would wish to state distinctly that I do not at present see any evidence for believing in a gradual development of man from the lower animals by ordinary natural laws; that is, without some special interference, or, if it be preferred, some exceptional conditions which have thereby separated him from all other creatures, and placed him decidedly in advance of them all. On the other hand, it would be absurd to regard him as totally severed from them. It is the great degree of difference I would insist upon, bodily, mental, and spiritual, which precludes the idea of his having been evolved by exactly the same processes, and with the same limitations, as, for example, the horse from the palaeotherium."