The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

by Edward Hitchcock

My second argument is derived from the fact that the organic functions often produce pleasure where suffering was just as consistent with their most perfect action; or I might say that such are the arrangements of the natural world, that pleasure often results to sentient beings from its operations, when they might have been as perfectly performed with the production of pain. A few illustrations will render the meaning of this position obvious.

As we look abroad upon nature, one of the most striking traits we discover is its unbounded variety. With the Psalmist we involuntarily exclaim, O Lord, how manifold are thy works! It is not merely variety as to form, texture, attitude, and arrangement; but who can describe the countless tints of coloring which are spread over the heavens and the earth? Now, there is in the human soul an aptitude to be pleased with variety; nay, there is a craving for it. Nor can there be a more terrible infliction than unvarying monotony and sameness of appearance, arrangement, and action. If, therefore, the Creator had been malevolent, or indifferent to the happiness of man and other sentient beings, he might have gratified this disposition most perfectly by giving to the human soul its present love of variety, and then spreading over the face of nature a dead uniformity of figure, position, arrangement, and coloring; forming every thing upon the same model. And this might have been done without impairing at all the perfect operation of all her laws that are essential. Every thing might have been as systematic and harmonious as it now is; but sentient beings would have been miserable; and this must have been supremely gratifying to infinite malevolence. He might also have so constructed the organs of hearing, sight, and smell, that every sound might have been ungrateful and grating, every odor repulsive, and every prospect disgusting. While hunger would have urged animals, as it now does, to seek food, its reception might have been painful, or utterly void of gustatory enjoyment. So in regard to social enjoyments; we might have been irresistibly drawn towards our fellow-men, and yet their society might have been hateful in the extreme.

Had such a state of things existed, how very clearly we should have inferred the malevolence of the Author of nature! Or if such a state had been witnessed about as often as its opposite, we might reasonably have said that he was indifferent to the happiness of his creatures. Why, then, may we not, with equal reason, infer his benevolence, when we find, in a vast majority of cases,—nay, for aught I know, universally,—that pleasure is superadded to animal enjoyment where it was wholly unnecessary to the perfect operation of nature’s laws?

The fact is, God has made all nature “beauty to our eye and music to our ear,” when it was wholly unnecessary for the perfect operation of her laws; and the inference is irresistible, that he delights in the happiness of his creatures. Nor can the fact that evil exists in the world destroy the force of this argument, unless that evil is so general as to be obviously the design of the Creator in devising and arranging the system of the world. While we admit its existence, we say that it is only incidental, and that pleasure is so often superadded unnecessarily, as to prove happiness to be the design, and evil the exception.

The two arguments above presented are the evidence on which Dr. Paley relies to prove the divine benevolence. They are, indeed, as it seems to me, unanswerable. But if I mistake not, they do by no means exhaust the storehouse of nature’s proofs of this fundamental principle of natural and revealed religion. I derive a third argument for the predominance of benevolence in the works of nature from the variety of means often provided for the performance of important functions; so that animals and plants can adapt themselves to different circumstances, and prolong their existence.

The examples which I have in mind to illustrate this argument are all derived from the organic world. I refer, for instance, to the fact that nearly all our muscles, and many other important organs, as the hands, the feet, the eyes, and the lungs, are in pairs, so that if one meets with an injury, or is destroyed, the other can, to some extent, perform the office of both. The brain has two hemispheres, and one of them may be seriously wounded without destroying the healthy action of the other.

But perhaps the most appropriate example is in the blood-vessels, whose inosculations are so numerous that even though large arteries and veins be tied, the blood will find its way through the smaller ones, which ultimately will so enlarge as to keep up the circulation nearly as well as before the injury. And, in fact, almost every one of the large blood-vessels has been tied by the surgeon with little ultimate injury to the patient.

In the process of deglutition, or swallowing the nourishment essential to the existence of all the more perfect animals,—since the food and the air for respiration pass for a time through a common opening, the pharynx,—it is extremely important that the passage to the lungs should be most vigilantly guarded; since strangulation would follow the introduction there of any thing but air. Accordingly, the entrance of the glottis is so sensitive, that the approach of the food causes it to close. But lest this security should sometimes fail, we have an additional guard in the epiglottis, which shuts down like a valve upon the orifice. Even with this double precaution, strangulation sometimes follows the act of deglutition. How much oftener would it occur, had not benevolence thus multiplied its vigilant sentinels at the point of danger!

Another illustration of this argument lies in the fact, that many of the organs of animals and plants possess the power, when an exigency requires it, of greatly increasing their action. When, for instance, an unusual quantity of osseous matter is requisite to repair a broken bone, the glands, whose office it is to elaborate that matter, are capable of secreting an extraordinary quantity, until the injury is repaired.

Of an analogous character is the sympathy existing between the different organs, so that when one has an unusual amount of labor to perform, the rest impart of their nervous energy to sustain their overtasked companion. Thus, and thus only, could animals be carried through many of the severe exigencies of their existence. Their organs help one another, just as if they were conscious of one another’s necessities, and were prompted by benevolence to aid the weakest.