Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

[CHAPTER IV.]

The doctrine of evolution according to Herbert Spencer.

Passing from Mr. Darwin as the representative of that class of naturalists who have undertaken to assign the pedigree of man by tracing the stages of his development back to the lowest and crudest form of animal life, I now come to a philosopher whose speculations carry the doctrine of evolution through every field of inquiry, and who, finding, as he supposes, evidence of its operation throughout all the other realms of the physical and the moral word, contends that it also obtains in the animal kingdom. It were to be wished that this writer, whose intellect is of the order of minds to which we naturally look for a judicial treatment of such themes, had been a little less dogmatic in his treatment of the doctrine of special creations. Mr. Spencer has, indeed, consistently recognized the necessity of trying the question between the hypothesis of special creations and the hypothesis of evolution, as one to be decided, if it is to be decided at all, only by an examination of evidence. But to one who approaches this question in a spirit of inquiry, and with a desire to learn whatever can be said on both sides, it is somewhat disappointing to find that the most eminent writer of the evolution school is unjust in his treatment of the belief which he opposes. There can be no objection to advocacy, or to strong and decided advocacy, when settled convictions are to be vindicated. But with advocacy we may expect that kind of fairness which consists in a full recognition of the opposite argument. A great master of dialectics once laid it down as a maxim of advocacy, "State the case of your opponent as strongly as you know how, stronger if possible than he states it himself, and then answer it, if you can." Some instances in which Mr. Spencer has not followed this wise rule may now be mentioned:

1. He attacks with great vigor the hypothesis that living beings resulted from special creations, as a primitive hypothesis; and because it is a very ancient belief he pronounces it to be probably untrue. He even goes so far as to assert that its antiquity raises a presumption against it. He classes it among a family of beliefs which began in primitive ages, and which have one after another been destroyed by advancing knowledge, until this one is almost the only member of the family that survives among educated people.[57] He says that if you catechise any one who holds this belief as to the source from which he derived it, he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has long since rejected. It will give way at last, along with all the rest of the family of beliefs which have already been given up. It may be that the arguments of those whose controversial writings on this subject Mr. Spencer had before him, relied on the antiquity of this belief as one of the strongest proofs of its probable truth. I have not looked to see how any writer on that side of the question has used the antiquity of the doctrine of special creations. But it is certainly not in accordance with the sound rule, even of advocacy, to state the argument in support of the belief which you oppose with less than the force that may be given to it, whether your opponents have or have not given to it the true force that belongs to it. The mere antiquity of the belief in special creations has this force and no more: that a belief which began in the primitive ages of mankind, and has survived through all periods of advancing knowledge, must have something to recommend it. It is not one of those things that can be swept away with contempt as a nursery-tale, originating in times of profound ignorance and handed down from generation to generation without inquiry. That it has survived, after the rejection of other beliefs that originated at the same period—survived in minds capable of dealing with the evidence in the light of increasing knowledge—is proof that it has something more to rest upon than the time of its origin. If some of its defenders now assert its antiquity as the sole or the strongest argument in its favor, its opponents should not assume that this is the only or the best argument by which it can be supported. Nor can it be summarily disposed of by classifying it as one of a family of beliefs that originated in times of ignorance, and that have mostly disappeared from the beliefs held by educated people. Its association with a special class of mistaken beliefs affords no intrinsic improbability of its truth. Every belief has come to be regarded as a mistaken or a true one, not according to its associated relations with other beliefs that have come to be regarded as unfounded, but according to the tests that the knowledge of the age has been able to apply to it. Take the whole catalogue of beliefs that began to be held in the darkest ages, and it will be found that their association has had no influence beyond inducing incorrect habits of reasoning on certain subjects, or a habit of accepting the official authority of those who claimed to be the special custodians of truth. These intellectual habits have been temporary in their influence, and have gradually changed. Every one of the beliefs that have been given up by the lettered or the unlettered part of mankind, has been given up because better knowledge of a special character has come to show that it is unfounded, and because mere official authority has ceased to have the power that it once had. If a belief has survived from a remote antiquity among those who are competent to judge of the evidence in its favor, by comparing the phenomena that increasing knowledge has accumulated, the force of the fact that it has so survived is not weakened by its association for a period with other beliefs that are now rejected.

Mr. Spencer asserts that, as the supposition of special creations is discredited by its origin in a time when men were profoundly ignorant, so conversely the supposition that races of organisms have been gradually evolved is credited by its origin, because it is a belief that has come into existence in the most instructed class, living in these better instructed times. This is a kind of argumentation that is often the result of a love of antithesis. The soundness of the last branch of the proposition appears to depend upon the soundness of the first branch. Make it to appear that the origin of the elder hypothesis is unfavorable by reason of the time of its origin, and it seems to follow that the origin of the modern hypothesis is favorable by reason of its time of origin. But this antithesis does not express the exact truth in either branch of it. It is not because of its antiquity, or of the character of the times in which it was first believed, that the doctrine of special creations can be shown to be irrational or improbable. There is no presumption against the truth of any belief, to be derived from the fact that it was held by persons who also held some erroneous beliefs on other subjects. If there were, nothing could be worthy of belief unless it could show a recent origin, or at least until demonstration of its truth had overcome the presumption against it. On the other hand, there is no presumption in favor of the truth of a new theory to be derived from the fact that it is new, or that it originated among those who think that they do not hold any erroneous beliefs, or because it originated in a comparatively very enlightened age. Every physical and every moral theory, unless we mean to be governed by mere authority, whether it is ancient or recent, must be judged by its merits, according to the evidence.

2. Another of Mr. Spencer's naked assertions is that the belief in special creations is "not countenanced by a single fact." Not only did no man "ever see a special creation," but "no one ever found indirect proof of any kind that a special creation had taken place." In support of this sweeping dogma, he adduces a habit of the naturalists who maintain special creations to locate them in some region remote from human observation.[58] This is another instance of not stating the case of your adversary as strongly as you might state it, or as he states it himself. "While no naturalist and no other person who believes in special creations ever saw one take place, indirect and circumstantial evidence tending to show that the earth is full of them has been accumulated to an enormous amount." It is a monstrous extravagance to assert that the hypothesis is "absolutely without support of any kind." What if Mr. Spencer's opponents were to retort that no man ever saw an instance in which an animal of a distinct species had been evolved out of one of an entirely different organization; that there is no external evidence to support the hypothesis of such derivations, and that the naturalists of the evolution school habitually place the scene of operations in the region of scientific imagination? The discovery of truth is not likely to be much advanced by this mode of attacking opposite opinions, yet it could be used with as much propriety on the one side of this question as on the other.

3. Next, and completing the misrepresentation, we have the assertion that, "besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this hypothesis of special creations can not support itself internally—can not be framed into a coherent thought.... Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism when specially created is created out of nothing? If so, there is a supposed creation of matter, and the creation of matter is inconceivable, implies the establishment of a relation in thought between nothing and something—a relation of which one term is absent—an impossible relation.... Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from divine interposition do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. The case is one of those where men do not really believe, but believe they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed; and no such mental representation is here possible."[59]

When I first read this passage I could hardly trust the evidence of my eye-sight. It seemed as if the types must have in some way misrepresented the distinguished writer; for I could scarcely conceive how a man of Mr. Spencer's reputation as a thinker could have deliberately penned and published such a specimen of logic run riot. It reads like some of the propositions propounded by the scholastics of the middle ages. But, having assured myself that the American edition of his work is a correct reprint, and having carefully pondered and endeavored to ascertain his meaning, I was forced to the conclusion that he supposes this to be a conclusive answer to the idea of absolute creation in respect to anything whatever, because, when put into a logical formula, one term of the relation is nothing, and the other term is something. Logical formulas are not always the best tests of the possibility of an intellectual conception, or of what the mind can represent to itself by thought, although to a certain class of readers or hearers they often appear to be a crushing refutation of the opposite opinion or belief against which they are employed.

Is there in truth anything impossible because it is unthinkable in the idea of absolute creation? Is the creation of matter, for example, inconceivable? It certainly is not if we adopt the postulate of an infinite Creator. That postulate is just as necessary to the evolutionist who maintains the ordination of fixed laws or systems of matter, by the operation of which the organized forms of matter have been evolved, as it is to those who maintain that these forms are special creations. Who made the laws that have been impressed upon matter? Were they made at all, or were they without any origin, self-existing and eternal? If they were made, they were made out of nothing, for nothing preceded them. Then apply to them the logical formula, and say that one term of the relation is absent—is mere nothingness—and so there is an impossible relation, a relation in thought between nothing and something, which is inconceivable. This dilemma is not escaped by asserting, as Mr. Spencer does, that "the creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter." It is necessary to inquire what he means by a "conceivable" idea. If he means that we can not trace or understand the process by which either force or matter was created, our inability may be at once conceded. But if he means that, granting the postulate of an infinite creating power, we can not conceive of the possibility that matter and all the forces that reside in it or govern it were called into being by the will of that power, the assertion is not true. Human faculties are entirely equal to the conception of an infinite creating power, whatever may be the strength or the weakness of the proof by which the existence of such a power is supported; and if there is such a power it is a contradiction in terms to assert that absolute creation, or the formation of "something" out of "nothing," is an impossible conception. Such an assertion is simply a specious play upon words, or else it involves the negation of an infinite creating power. The term "creation," as used in all modern philosophy, implies, ex vi termini, the act of causing to exist; and, unless we assume that nothing which exists was ever caused to exist, we must suppose that the causing power was alike capable of giving existence to matter and to the forces that reside in it.

The reason why the Greek philosophers did not embrace the idea of absolute creation was not because it was an unthinkable idea, or one incapable of representation in thought. They were, as we have seen, surrounded by a mythology which attributed the origin of the world to polytheistic agencies. They struggled against the cosmogony of poetical and popular traditions in an effort to find a cause of a different character. Monotheism, the conception of the one only and omnipotent God, freed philosophy from the great want which had hampered its speculations. This want was the conception of divine power, as abstracted from substance or the qualities of substance. When this conception had been obtained, absolute creation was seen to be a legitimate deduction from the illimitable scope and nature of the power which monotheism imputed to the Being supposed to preside over the universe, and to have existed before all the objects which the universe contains: and this conception of the act of creation thus became equally capable of representation in words and in thought. You may say that it has no evidence to support it; that it leads to contradictory ideas of the attributes claimed for the Creator; that upon the hypothesis of those attributes, his works are inexplicable. Whether you can say this truly or not, you can not say that absolute creation is inconceivable; and unless you mean to claim that neither matter nor force was ever created, that there never was a being competent to make either the one or the other to exist, you can not deny the probability that both were called into being by a definite and specific exercise of power. Mr. Spencer's philosophy manifestly leads to the conclusion that there is no God, or no such God as the hypothesis of special creations supposes, or such as the hypothesis of evolution necessarily calls for. If I understand him rightly, he rejects the idea of any creation, whether of matter, or force, or the properties of matter, or even of law of any kind, physical or moral. Hence it is that I admit the necessity of treating the existence of the Omnipotent Creator as an independent question to be judged upon moral evidence; and hence, too, in reasoning upon the probable methods of the Almighty, I maintain that the postulate of his existence is alike necessary to the evolutionist and to those who believe in special creations, and that both must adopt the same cardinal attributes as attributes of his power and character.