All things are possible to an infinite Creator. He who made the visual organ of the lowest aquatic creature that ever floated could make the human eye as we know it, or could make one that would do more than the eye of man ever was capable of. He could by a direct exercise of his power of creation form the eye of man, or he could leave it to be evolved out of the only type of a visual organ on which he saw fit to exercise his creative power. He could create in the land-animals a true air-breathing lung as a special production of his will, or could permit it to be formed by transitional gradations out of the swim-bladder of an aquatic creature. But why should he abstain from the one method and employ the other? This question brings us at once to the probabilities of the case; and, in estimating those probabilities, we must take into the account all that reason permits us to believe of the attributes of the Almighty. We can not, it is true, penetrate into his counsels without the aid of revelation. But if we confine ourselves to the domain of science, or to the mere observation of nature, we shall find reason for believing that the Omnipotent God had purposes in his infinite wisdom that render the acts of special creation vastly more probable than the theory of evolution. A study of the animal kingdom and of all the phenomena of the universe leads us rationally and inevitably to one of two conclusions: either that there is no God, and that all things came by chance; or to the belief that there is a God, and that he is a being of infinite benevolence as well as infinite wisdom and power. Now, why should such a being, proposing to himself the existence on earth of such an animal as man, to be inhabited for a time by a soul destined to be immortal, abstain from the direct creation of both soul and body, and leave the latter to be evolved out of the lowest form of animal life, and the former to become a mere manifestation or exhibition of phenomena, resulting from the improved and more elaborate structures of successive types of animals? Is there no conceivable reason why an infinitely wise, benevolent, and omnipotent being should have chosen to exercise the direct power of creation in forming the soul of man for an immortal existence, and also to exercise his direct power of creation in so fashioning the body as to fit it with the utmost exactness to be serviceable and subservient to the mind which is to inhabit it for a season? Why depict the infinite God as a quiescent and retired spectator of the operation of certain laws which he has imposed upon organized matter, when there are discoverable so many manifest reasons for the special creation of such a being as man? It is hardly in accordance with any rational theory of God's providence, after we have attained a conception of such a being, to liken him intentionally or unintentionally to the Demiurgus of the acute and ingenious Greek philosopher. We must conclude that human society, with all that it has done or is capable of doing for man on earth, was in the contemplation of the Almighty; and if we adopt this conclusion, we must account for the moral sense, for moral obligation, and for the idea of law and duty. We can not account for these things upon any probable theory of their origin, if we reject the idea that they were specially implanted in the structure of the human soul, and suppose that both the intellectual faculties and the moral sense were evolved out of the struggle of lower animals for their existence, resulting in the formation of higher animals and in the development of their social instincts into more complex, refined, and consciously calculating instincts of the same nature.
I have not drawn this parallel between the Platonic and the Darwinian theories of the origin of different animals for any purpose of suggesting that the one was in any sense borrowed from the other. Plagiarism, in any form, is not, so far as I know, to be detected in the writings of the evolution school. But the speculations of Plato in regard to the origin and nature of the human soul, fanciful as they are, afford great assistance in grasping the conception of a spiritual existence; and the parallel between his process of degradation and Darwin's process of elevation shows to my mind as great probability in the one theory as there is in the other.
[CHAPTER III.]
The Darwinian pedigree of man—The evolution of organisms out of other organisms, according to the theory of Darwin.
It is doubtless an interesting speculation to go back in imagination to a period to be counted by any number of millions of years, or covered by an immeasurable lapse of time, and to conceive of slowly-moving causes by which the present or the past inhabitants of this globe became developed out of some primordial type, through successive generations, resulting in different species, which became final products and distinct organisms. But what the imagination can do in the formation of a theory when acting upon a certain range of facts is, as a matter of belief, to be tested by the inquiry whether the weight of evidence shows that theory to be, in a supreme degree, a probable truth, when compared with any other hypothesis. It is in this way that I propose to examine and test the Darwinian pedigree of man. The whole of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man as an animal consists in assigning to him a certain pedigree, which traces his organism through a long series of other animals back to the lowest and crudest form of animal life; and it must be remembered that this mode of accounting for the origin of man of necessity supposes an unbroken connection of lives with lives, back through the whole series of organisms which constitute the pedigree, and that, according to the Darwinian theory, there was no aboriginal creation of any of these organisms, save the very first and lowest form with which the series commences. Not only must this connection of lives with lives be shown, but the theory must be able to show how it has come about that there are now distinct species of animals which never reproduce any type but their own.
Two great agencies, according to the Darwinian theory, have operated to develop the different species of animals from some low primordial type, through a long series which has culminated in man, who can not lay claim to be a special creation, but must trace his pedigree to some ape-like creature, and so on to the remote progenitor of all the Vertebrata. It is now needful to grasp, with as much precision as such a theory admits of, the nature and operation of these agencies, and to note the strength or weakness of the proof which they afford of the main hypothesis. First, we have what is called "the struggle for existence," which may be conceded as a fact, and to which more or less may be attributed. The term is used by Mr. Darwin in a metaphorical sense, to include all that any being has to encounter in maintaining its individual existence, and in leaving progeny, or perpetuating its kind. In the animal kingdom, the struggle for individual existence is chiefly a struggle for food among the different individuals which depend on the same food, or against a dearth of one kind of food which compels a resort to some other kind. The struggle for a continuation of its species is dependent on the success with which the individual animal maintains the contest for its own existence. Now, it is argued that in this great and complex battle for life it would occur that infinitely varied diversities of structure would be useful to the animals in helping them to carry on the battle under changing conditions. These useful diversities, consisting of the development of new organs and powers, would be preserved and perpetuated in the offspring, through many successive generations, while the variations that were injurious would be rigidly destroyed. The animals in whom these favorable individual differences and variations of structure were preserved would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind. So that, by this "survival of the fittest," Nature is continually selecting those variations of structure which are useful, and continually rejecting or eliminating those which are injurious; the result being the gradual evolution of successive higher types of animals out of the lower ones, until we reach man, the highest animal organism that exists on this earth. In the next place, we have, as an auxiliary agency, in aid of natural selection, what is called "the sexual selection," by which the best endowed and most powerful males of a given species appropriate the females, and thus the progeny become possessed of those variations of structure and the superior qualities which have given to the male parent the victory over his competitors.
The proofs that are relied upon to establish the operation and effect of these agencies in producing the results that are claimed for them, ought to show that, in one or more instances, an animal of a superior organization which, when left to the natural course of its reproduction by the union of its two sexes, always produces its own distinct type and no other, has, in fact, been itself evolved out of some lower and different organism by the agencies of natural and sexual selection operating among the individuals of that lower type. One of the proofs, on which great stress is laid by Mr. Darwin, may be disposed of without difficulty. It is that which is said to take place in the breeding of domestic animals, or of animals the breeding of which man undertakes to improve for his own practical benefit, or to please his fancy, or to try experiments. In all that has been done in this kind of selection, in breeding from the best specimens of any class of animals, there is not one instance of the production of an animal varying from its near or its remote known progenitors in anything but adventitious peculiarities which will not warrant us in regarding it as a new or different animal. No breeder of horses has ever produced an animal that was not a horse. He may have brought about great and important improvements in the qualities of fleetness, or strength, or weight, or endurance, by careful selection of the sire and the dam; but the race-horse or the hunter, or the draught-horse or the war-horse, is but a horse of different qualities and powers, with the same skeleton, viscera, organs, muscles, which mark this species of animal, and with no other variations of structure than such as follow from the limited development of different parts for different uses. No breeder of cows ever produced a female animal that was not a cow, although he may have greatly improved the quality and quantity of the milk peculiar to this animal by careful selection of the individuals which he permits or encourages to breed. No breeder of sheep ever produced an animal that was not a sheep, although the quality of the fleece or of the mutton may have been greatly improved or varied. Among the domestic fowls, no animal that was not a bird was ever bred by any crossing of breeds, although great varieties of plumage, structure of beak, formation of foot, development of wing, habits of life, adaptation to changes of situation, and many minor peculiarities, have been the consequences of careful and intelligent breeding from different varieties of the same fowl. In the case of the pigeon, of which Mr. Darwin has given a great many curious facts from his own experience as a breeder, the most remarkable variations are perhaps to be observed as the results of intentional breeding from different races of that bird; but with all these variations nothing that was not a bird was ever produced. In the case of the dog, whatever was his origin, or supposing him to have been derived from the wolf, or to belong to the same family as the wolf, it is, of course, impossible to produce, by any crossing of different breeds of dogs, an animal that would not belong to the class of the Canidæ. Indeed, it is conceded by Darwin, with all the array of facts which he adduces in regard to the domesticated animals, that by crossing we can only get forms in some degree intermediate between the parents; and that although a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by careful selection of the individuals which present the desired character, yet to obtain a race intermediate between two distinct races would be very difficult, if not impossible. If this is so, how much more remote must be the possibility, by any selection, or by any crossing to which Nature will allow the different animals to submit, to produce an animal of so distinct a type that it would amount to a different species from its known progenitors!
From all that has been brought about in the efforts of man to improve or to vary the breeds of domestic animals—a kind of selection that is supposed to be analogous to what takes place in Nature, although under different conditions—it is apparent that there are limitations to the power of selection in regard to the effects that are to be attributed to it. A line must be drawn somewhere. It will not do in scientific reasoning, or in any other reasoning, to ignore the limitations to which all experience and observation point with unerring certainty, so far as experience and observation furnish us with facts. It is true that the lapse of time during which there has been, with more or less success, an intentional improvement in the breeds of domestic animals carried on with recorded results has been very short when compared with the enormous period that has elapsed since the first creation of an animal organization, whenever or whatever that creation was. But history furnishes us with a pretty long stretch of time through which civilized, half-civilized, and savage nations have had to do with various animals in first taming them from a wild state and then in domesticating so as to make them subservient to human wants, and finally in improving their breeds. But there is no recorded or known instance in which there has been produced under domestication an animal which can be said to be of a different species from its immediate known progenitors, or one that differed from its remote known progenitors in any but minor and adventitious peculiarities of structure. If in passing from what has been done by human selection in the breeding of animals to what has taken place in Nature in a much longer space of time and on a far greater scale, we find that in Nature, too, there are limitations to the power of that agency which is called natural selection—that there is an impassable barrier which Nature never crosses, an invincible division between the different species of animals—we must conclude that there is a line between what selection can and what it can not do. We must conclude, with all the scope and power that can be given to natural selection, that Nature has not developed a higher and differently organized animal out of a lower and inferior type—has not made new species by the process called evolution, because the infinite God has not commissioned Nature to do that thing, but has reserved it unto himself to make special creations. Do not all that we know of the animal kingdom—all that naturalists have accumulated of facts and all that they concede to be the absence of facts—show that there is a clear and well-defined limitation to the power of natural selection, as well as to the power of that other agency which is called sexual selection? Grant that this agency of natural selection began to operate at a period, the commencement of which is as remote as figures can describe; that the struggle for life began as soon as there was an organized being existing in numbers sufficiently large to be out of proportion to the supply of food; that the sexual selection began at the same time, and that both together have been operating ever since among the different species of animals that have successively arisen and successively displaced each other throughout the earth. The longer we imagine this period to have been, the stronger is the argument against the theory of evolution, because the more numerous will be the absences of the gradations and transitions necessary to prove an unbroken descent from the remote prototype which is assumed to have been the first progenitor of the whole animal kingdom. Upon the hypothesis that evolution is a true account of the origin of the different animals, we ought practically to find no missing links in the chain. The fact is that the missing links are both extremely numerous and important; and the longer the period assumed—the further we get from the probability that these two agencies of natural and sexual selection were capable of producing the results that are claimed for them—the stronger is the proof that a barrier has been set to their operation, and the more necessary is it to recognize the line which separates what they can from what they can not do.