The animals highest on the scale, and most perfect in their organization, have only one mode of reproduction, viz., the viviparous. Descending a little lower, we come to the oviparous and ovoviviparous tribes. Passing to the invertebrate animals, we meet with two other modes of reproduction, the gemmiparous and fissiparous. In the first mode, the animal is propagated by buds, like some plants, as the tiger lily; by the second mode, a spontaneous division of the animal takes place.
Now, in some of the lowest of the invertebrate tribes, we find most of the modes of propagation that have been enumerated in operation; so that the same individual in one set of circumstances is oviparous, in another gemmiparous or fissiparous. The consequence is, a power of multiplication inconceivably great. Mr. Owen calculates that the ascaris lumbricoides, the most common intestinal worm, is capable of producing sixty-four millions of young; and Ehrenberg asserts that the hydatina senta, one of the infusoria, increased in twelve days to sixteen millions, and another species, in four days, to one hundred and seventy billions.
Why, now, are these astonishing powers of reproduction given to these minute animals, if it be true that they can also be produced without parentage, and by mere law? This latter mode would supersede the necessity of the former; and therefore, the care taken by Providence to provide the former is a strong presumption that the latter does not exist.
In the fifth place, it is an instructive fact on this subject that, as instruments have been improved, and observations have become more searching, the supposed cases of spontaneous generation have diminished, until it is not pretended now that it takes place except in a very few tribes, and those the most obscure and difficult to observe of all living things. A hundred years ago, naturalists, and especially other men, might easily have been made to believe that many of the smaller insects had a casual origin. But long since, save in the matter of the acari, the entomological field has been abandoned by the advocates of the law hypothesis, and they have been driven from one tribe after another, till at length some of the obscure hiding-places of the entozoa and infusoria are now the only spots where the light is not too strong for the large-pupiled eyes of this hypothesis. Is not the presumption hence arising very strong that it will need only a little further improvement in instruments and care in observation to carry daylight into these recesses, and demonstrate the parentage and normal development of all organic beings?
Finally. The gross materialism inseparable from this hypothesis is a strong argument against it.
I am not aware that any one, except Oken, perhaps, has ever attempted to show that mind, as a spiritual essence, distinct from matter, has been created by natural laws; in other words, that there is in nature a power to produce mind. All such maintain that intellect is material, or, rather, the result of organization, the mere function of the brain, as are also life and instinct. Generally, also, they contend—and, indeed, consistency seems to require it—that the moral powers depend chiefly upon different developments of the brain; so that a disposition to do wrong results more from organization than from punishable mental obliquity; indeed, the worst of criminals are often, on this account, more to be pitied than blamed, and the physician is of more importance than the moralist and the divine for their reformation.
Now, if this system of materialism is true, we ought to embrace it, without any fear of ultimate bad effects. But a philosopher will hesitate long before he adopts a system which thus seems to degrade man from his lofty standing as a spiritual, accountable, and immortal being, and makes his intellectual and moral powers dependent upon the structure of the brain, and, therefore, destined to perish with the material organization, with no hope of future existence, unless God chooses to recreate the man. Nay, if there be no distinct spirit in man, what evidence have we that there is one in Jehovah? A true philosopher, I say, will demand very strong evidence before he adopts any hypothesis that leads a logical mind to such conclusions; and I see not how the one under consideration can terminate in any thing else.
Such are the reasons that lead me to reject the hypothesis of creation by law. I have endeavored to treat the subject in a candid and philosophical manner, not charging atheism upon its advocates when they declare themselves Theists and Christians. Neither have I called in the aid of ridicule, as might easily be done, and as, in fact, has been done by almost every opponent of the system who has written upon it. I have endeavored to show that the hypothesis, tried in the balances of sound philosophy, is found wanting; because, in the first place, the facts adduced to sustain it are insufficient; and secondly, because, where one fact seems to favor it, a thousand testify against it. Is not the conclusion a fair one, that the hypothesis has no solid foundation? Is not the evidence against it overwhelming? Yet it has many advocates, and I must think—I hope not uncharitably—that these are the reasons: First, because men do not like the idea of a personal, present, overruling Deity; and secondly, because there is very little profound and thorough knowledge of natural history in the community. It is just such an hypothesis as chimes in with the taste of that part of the world who have a smattering of science, and who do not wish to live without some form of religion, but who still desire to free themselves from the inspection of a holy God, and from the responsibility which his existence and presence would impose. Depend upon it, gentlemen, you will meet these delusions not unfrequently among the cultivated classes of society, where they have already done immense mischief. You will, indeed, find all the eminent comparative anatomists and physiologists, such as Cuvier and Owen; such chemists as Liebig; such zoölogists as Agassiz and Edward Forbes; such botanists as Hooker, Henslow, Lindley, Torrey, and Gray; and such geologists as De la Beche, Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, D’Orbigny, Buckland, and Miller, decided in their rejection of these views. But when even educated men obtain only a smattering of natural science, they find something very fascinating in this hypothesis; and this is just the religion, or, rather, the irreligion, that suits the superficial, selfish, and pleasure-seeking exquisites of fashionable drawing-rooms, theatres, and watering-places. You will find, therefore, the need of thoroughly studying this subject, or you will not be able, as you would wish, to vindicate the cause of true science and true religion.
I cannot terminate this discussion without referring to an ingenious analogy, suggested by Hugh Miller, in his “Footprints of the Creator,” and drawn from the facts he had stated respecting the degradation of species. No one who has thoroughly studied Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion to the Course of Nature will venture to say that Mr. Miller’s suggestions are mere fancy. As the ideas are entirely original with him, I give them in his own words.
Having spoken of the several dynasties of animals that have succeeded one another on the globe, in a passage which we have already quoted, he says, “Passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in the mixed state and character is not the final one; but that there is to be yet another creation, or, more properly, re-creation, known theologically as the resurrection, which shall be connected in its physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority, shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of responsible man is superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further taught that, at the commencement of this last of the dynasties, there will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded beings—a re-creation of the lost. We are taught yet further that, though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction were placed on higher ground than that on which they now stand, and sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy the existing platform; and that redemption is thus no afterthought, rendered necessary by the fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that the divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected, was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is designated in the remarkable text, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Slain from the foundation of the world! Could the assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing the two records together,—that revealed in Scripture and that revealed in the rocks,—records which, however widely geologists may mistake the one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the same great Author,—we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, each in succession, ushering in a higher and yet higher scene of existence; that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn; that responsible man, ‘made in the image of God,’ and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long series, but merely the last of the preliminary scenes; and that that period to which the by-gone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall have perfection for its occupant and eternity for its duration. I know not how it may appear to others, but for my own part I cannot avoid thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being, were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected, without the introduction of an intermediate creation of responsible imperfection with that of the dying, irresponsible brute. That scene of things in which God became man, and suffered, seems, as it no doubt is, a necessary link in the chain.”