This is not the place to discuss the bearings of science on religion[51]; but I think it is a place where one may properly point out the limits within which no such bearings obtain. Now, from what has just been said, it will be apparent that I am not going to minimise the change which has been wrought. On the contrary, I believe it is only stupidity or affectation which can deny that the change in question is more deep and broad than any single previous change in the whole history of human thought. It is a fundamental, a cosmical, a world-transforming change. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is a change of a non-theistic, as distinguished from an a-theistic, kind. It has rendered impossible the appearance in literature of any future Paley, Bell, or Chalmers; but it has done nothing in the way of negativing that belief in a Supreme Being which it was the object of these authors to substantiate. If it has demonstrated the futility of their proof, it has furnished nothing in the way of disproof. It has shown, indeed, that their line of argument was misjudged when they thus sought to separate organic nature from inorganic as a theatre for the special or peculiar display of supernatural design; but further than this it has not shown anything. The change in question therefore, although greater in degree, is the same in kind as all its predecessors: like all previous advances in cosmological theory which have been wrought by the advance of science, this latest and greatest advance has been that of revealing the constitution of nature, or the method of causation, as everywhere the same. But it is evident that this change, vast and to all appearance final though it be, must end within the limits of natural causation itself. The whole world of life and mind may now have been annexed to that of matter and energy as together constituting one magnificent dominion, which is everywhere subject to the same rule, or method of government. But the ulterior and ultimate question touching the nature of this government as mental or non-mental, personal or impersonal, remains exactly where it was. Indeed, this is a question which cannot be affected by any advance of science, further than science has proved herself able to dispose of erroneous arguments based upon ignorance of nature. For while the sphere of science is necessarily restricted to that of natural causation which it is her office to explore, the question touching the nature of this natural causation is one which as necessarily lies without the whole sphere of such causation itself: therefore it lies beyond any possible intrusion by science. And not only so. But if the nature of natural causation be that of the highest order of known existence, then, although we must evidently be incapable of conceiving what such a Mind is, at least we seem capable of judging what in many respects it is not. It cannot be more than one; it cannot be limited either in space or time; it cannot be other than at least as self-consistent as its manifestations in nature are invariable. Now, from the latter deduction there arises a point of first-rate importance in the present connexion. For if the so-called First Cause be intelligent, and therefore all secondary causes but the expression of a supreme Will, in as far as such a Will is self-consistent, the operation of all natural causes must be uniform,—with the result that, as seen by us, this operation must needs appear to be what we call mechanical. The more unvarying the Will, the more unvarying must be this expression thereof; so that, if the former be absolutely self-consistent, the latter cannot fail to be as reasonably interpreted by the theory of mindless necessity, as by that of ubiquitous intention. Such being, as it appears to me, the pure logic of the matter, the proof of organic evolution amounts to nothing more than the proof of a natural process. What mode of being is ultimately concerned in this process—or in what it is that this process ultimately consists—is a question upon which science is as voiceless as speculation is vociferous.
But, it may still be urged, surely the principle of natural selection (with its terrible basis in the struggle for existence) and the principle of sexual selection (with its consequence in denying beauty to be an end in itself) demonstrate that, if there be design in nature, such design at all events cannot be beneficent. To this, however, I should again reply that, just as touching the major question of design itself, so as touching this minor question of the quality of such design as beneficent, I do not see how the matter has been much affected by a discovery of the principles before us. For we did not need a Darwin to tell us that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain. The most that in this connexion Darwin can fairly be said to have done is to have estimated in a more careful and precise manner than any of his predecessors, the range and the severity of this travail. And if it be true that the result of what may be called his scientific analysis of nature in respect of suffering is to have shown the law of suffering even more severe, more ubiquitous, and more necessary than it had ever been shown before, we must remember at the same time how he has proved, more rigidly than was ever proved before, that suffering is a condition to improvement—struggle for life being the raison d’être of higher life, and this not only in the physical sphere, but also in the mental and moral.
Lastly, if it be said that the choice of such a method, whereby improvement is only secured at the cost of suffering, indicates a kind of callousness on the part of an intelligent Being supposed to be omnipotent, I confess that such does appear to me a legitimate conclusion—subject, however, to the reservation that higher knowledge might displace it. For, as far as matters are now actually presented to the unbiased contemplation of a human mind, this provisional inference appears to me unavoidable—namely, that if the world of sentient life be due to an Omnipotent Designer, the aim or motive of the design must have been that of securing a continuous advance of animal improvement, without any regard at all to animal suffering. For I own it does not seem to me compatible with a fair and honest exercise of our reason to set the sum of animal happiness over against the sum of animal misery, and then to allege that, in so far as the former tends to balance—or to over-balance—the latter, thus far is the moral character of the design as a whole vindicated. Even if it could be shown that the sum of happiness in the brute creation considerably preponderates over that of unhappiness—which is the customary argument of theistic apologists,—we should still remain without evidence as to this state of matters having formed any essential part of the design. On the other hand, we should still be in possession of seemingly good evidence to the contrary. For it is clearly a condition to progress by survival of the fittest, that as soon as organisms become sentient selection must be exercised with reference to sentiency; and this means that, if further progress is to take place, states of sentiency must become so organized with reference to habitual experience of the race, that pleasures and pains shall answer respectively to states of agreement and disagreement with the sentient creature’s environment. Those animals which found pleasure in what was deleterious to life would not survive, while those which found pleasure in what was beneficial to life would survive; and so eventually, in every species of animal, states of sentiency as agreeable or disagreeable must approximately correspond with what is good for the species or bad for the species. Indeed, we may legitimately surmise that the reason why sentiency (and, a fortiori, conscious volition) has ever appeared upon the scene at all, has been because it furnishes—through this continuously selected adjustment of states of sentiency to states of the sentient organism—so admirable a means of securing rapid, and often refined, adjustments by the organism to the habitual conditions of its life[52]. But, if so, not only is this state of matters a condition to progress in the future; it is further, and equally, a consequence of progress in the past.
However, be this as it may, from all that has gone before does it not become apparent that pleasure or happiness on the one hand, and pain or misery on the other, must be present in sentient nature? And so long as they are both seen to be equally necessary under the process of evolution by natural selection, we have clearly no more reason to regard the pleasure than the pain as an object of the supposed design. Rather must we see in both one and the same condition to progress under the method of natural causation which is before us; and therefore I cannot perceive that it makes much difference—so far as the argument for beneficence is concerned—whether the pleasures of animals outweigh their pains, or vice versâ.
Upon the whole, then, it seems to me that such evidence as we have is against rather than in favour of the inference, that if design be operative in animate nature it has reference to animal enjoyment or well-being, as distinguished from animal improvement or evolution. And if this result should be found distasteful to the religious mind—if it be felt that there is no desire to save the evidences of design unless they serve at the same time to testify to the nature of that design as beneficent,—I must once more observe that the difficulty thus presented to theism is not a difficulty of modern creation. On the contrary, it has always constituted the fundamental difficulty with which natural theologians have had to contend. The external world appears, in this respect, to be at variance with our moral sense; and when the antagonism is brought home to the religious mind, it must ever be with a shock of terrified surprise. It has been newly brought home to us by the generalizations of Darwin; and therefore, as I said at the beginning, the religious thought of our generation has been more than ever staggered by the question—Where is now thy God? But I have endeavoured to show that the logical standing of the case has not been materially changed; and when this cry of Reason pierces the heart of Faith, it remains for Faith to answer now, as she has always answered before—and answered with that trust which is at once her beauty and her life—Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.