Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

In the last preceding chapter, I have examined Mr. Spencer's chief objection to the doctrine of special creations when considered in its general aspects. I now advance to the general aspects of the evolution hypothesis as applied by this philosopher to the animal kingdom. I have already suggested the appropriate answer to the claim that the derivation of the evolution hypothesis is favorable because it has originated "among the most instructed class and in these better-instructed times," and that the derivation of the other hypothesis is unfavorable because "it originated in times of profound ignorance." On this point it is unnecessary to say more. But there is a supposed "kindred antithesis" between "the two families of beliefs" to which these two hypotheses are said respectively to belong; one of which families "has been dying out," while the other family "has been multiplying." This brings into view the peculiar philosophical system of Mr. Spencer, by which he maintains "the unity of Nature," or the prevalence of a universal law of evolution, as the law which is to be discerned in remote fields of inquiry, and which "will presently be recognized as the law of the phenomena which we are here considering," namely, the phenomena of animal life. "The discovery that evolution has gone on, and is going on, in so many departments of Nature, becomes a reason for believing that there is no department of Nature in which it does not go on."[69]

In considering this mode of generalization it is important to distinguish between the phenomena that are observable in those departments of Nature which include only dead or inanimate matter, and the phenomena that are peculiar to matter organized into living beings. Again: it is important to distinguish between phenomena which have been influenced by human agencies and those which can not have been affected by the power of man. Another distinction of the greatest consequence is that which divides the phenomena in question according to their relation to a moral purpose. In one class of phenomena, a moral purpose may be plainly discovered as the purpose of an intelligent causing power, which has chosen a particular means for the accomplishment of an end. In another class of phenomena, a moral purpose may not be discoverable as the end for which the existing arrangement of things was specially designed, and to which that arrangement was an indispensable means. By classifying the departments of Nature and observing their phenomena with these discriminations, we shall be able to judge of the value of Mr. Spencer's philosophical system when applied to the animal kingdom.

In grouping the departments and their respective phenomena as departments in which the law of evolution has obtained, and in drawing from them the sweeping deduction that there is no department in which this law has not obtained as the causa causans, Mr. Spencer does not appear to have made these necessary discriminations. He specifies the following remote fields of inquiry, in which he maintains that this law of evolution is now admitted to be the solution of the phenomena that lie in those respective fields: First, the solar system, which, as he asserts, astronomers now consider has been gradually evolved out of diffused matter.[70] Second, geological discoveries, which show that the earth has reached its present varied structure through a process of evolution. Third, society, which has progressed through a corresponding process of gradual development. "Constitutions are not made, but grow," is said to be now a recognized truth among "philosophical politicians," and a part of the more general truth that "societies are not made, but grow." Fourth, languages, which, we are told, are now believed not to have been artificially or supernaturally formed, but to have been developed. Finally, the histories of religions, philosophy, science, the fine arts, and the industrial arts, show, it is said, development "through as unobtrusive changes as those which the mind of a child passes on its way to maturity."[71]

It is obvious that in some of these departments neither human agency nor the human will and choice can have had any influence in producing the phenomena, while in some of them human agency, will, and choice have had a vast influence in making the phenomena what they are. That political constitutions or social institutions are not made, but grow, is a dogma that is by no means universally true, however wise it may sound, or with whatever confidence in a paradox it may be asserted by "some political philosophers." While past events and present exigencies may have largely shaped some political constitutions, we know that others have been deliberately modified by a choice that has had more or less of a free scope, and that sometimes this has amounted to an arbitrary decision. Languages may or may not have been a direct and supernatural gift from Heaven, but we know that their structure has been powerfully influenced by human agencies, when they have come to be written expressions of thought; for they have then received expansion by the actual coinage of new words, as well as by new meanings of old words; and even when they were in the first stages of a spoken tongue, inflections that were purely arbitrary have been introduced. So it has been with systems of religion, philosophy, the fine arts, the mechanic arts, legislation, and jurisprudence. While in all these departments changes have been going on, which upon a superficial view appear to indicate a kind of spontaneous development, when they are analyzed they are seen to have been wholly caused, or more or less influenced, by the genius, the thought, the discoveries, the exertions, and the acts of particular individuals who have had the force to impress themselves upon the age, and thus to make new systems, new beliefs, new products, new rules of social or political life, new tastes, and new habits of thinking and acting.

Again: in some of the various orders of phenomena which are found in these different departments, there is discernible a distinct moral purpose in the shape which they have been made to assume, and in others of them there is no moral purpose discoverable, which we can say required the employment of the particular means to effect the end. Thus, astronomers can not assign a moral purpose for which the distribution of the fixed stars was made to be what it is, and which purpose could not have been answered by some other arrangement. At the same time, it is easy to see that the solar system was arranged with reference to the law of universal gravitation, which made this arrangement of the different bodies essential to the harmonious working of a great and complex piece of mechanism. The present formation of the earth may have resulted just as geologists think it has, and yet they can not say that there was no moral purpose in the division of the exterior surface of our globe into land and water, seas, continents, mountains, etc. These are departments of Nature in which man has had no influence in producing the phenomena. When we turn to those departments in which man is placed as an actor, we often find an adjustment of means to an end that is so comprehensive, as well as so plain, that we may justly conclude it to have been chosen by the creating power, with the express intent that human agency should be the means by which certain effects are to be produced. For example: man is eminently a social animal. Human society is a result of his strong social propensities. He is placed in it as an actor; and in this arrangement there is discoverable a moral purpose so plain that we may rightfully regard the social phenomena of mutual protection and improvement as proofs that society was ordained as the sphere of man's highest development on earth.

So that, in reasoning about the phenomena of any of the departments of Nature as affording indications of the so-called universal law of evolution, we must not forget the distinction between organized inanimate and organized animated matter; or the distinction between those departments in which human will or choice, or the human intellect, has had no influence in shaping the phenomena, and those in which they have had great influence; or the distinction between phenomena in which a special moral purpose can be and those in which it can not be discovered, as the reason for the existing order of things. It is especially hazardous to argue that because a spontaneous development, or a gradual evolution, can be traced in some of the phenomena of inanimate matter, it therefore must obtain in the animal kingdom. It is alike hazardous to argue, because there has been what is called evolution in some departments of Nature over which man has had no control, that the same law obtains in other departments over which he has also had no control, or those in which he has had a large control.

The bearing of these discriminations upon the supposed universality of the law of evolution may now be seen if we attend to the further inquiry whether that law obtains throughout all the phenomena of any one department of Nature as the sole cause of the phenomena in that department. Take again, for example, the solar system. Suppose it to be true that the bodies which compose it, the sun and the planetary spheres, were gradually evolved out of diffused matter. Does it necessarily follow that their existing arrangements and mutual relations were not specially designed? That their orbits, their revolutions, their distances from each other, were not specially planned? That they were not hung in their respective positions with an intentional adjustment to the great force of gravitation that was prevailing throughout the universe? Must we suppose that all this part of the whole phenomena of the solar system resulted from the operation of an ungoverned evolution, because the bodies themselves may have been gradually formed out of diffused matter into their present condition without being spoken at once into that condition by the fiat of the Almighty? We can certainly see that the existing arrangements must have been intentional; and, if intentional, the intention must have taken effect in the production of the phenomena exhibited by the arrangement, as any design takes effect in the production of the phenomena which are open to our observation. The moral purpose evinced by one part of this arrangement, the alternation of day and night upon the earth, for example, might have been effected by some other means than the means which now produce it. But there is the strongest evidence that a certain means was chosen and intentionally put into operation; and although we can not tell why that means was preferred, the fact that it was both designed and preferred makes it a special creation. To suppose that it was left to be worked out by a process such as the hypothesis of evolution assumes, by the gradual, fortuitous, and ungoverned operation of infinitely slow-moving causes, which might have made the adjustments very different from what they are, is to deprive it of the element of intentional preference that is proved by its existence. The hypothesis of evolution, when applied to all the phenomena of the solar system, relegates one great branch of those phenomena to a realm from which all special purposes and all direct design are absent, and confines the explanation of the phenomena to the operation of causes that might have brought about very different arrangements. That this supposed process of evolution has, in fact, been followed by the existing arrangements of the solar system, does not prove, or tend to prove, that the existing arrangements are solely due to the supposed method of their production; for we can not leave out the element of some design, and if there was a design, the very nature of the system required that the design should be executed by a special creation of a plan for the mutual relations of the bodies composing it. The bodies themselves might have been gradually formed out of diffused matter, floating loosely in the realms of space. The relations of the bodies to each other required the act of an intelligent will, in the direct formation of an intentional plan; and that act was an act of special creation in the same sense in which the structural plan of a species of animal was a special creation.

Here, then, is one department of Nature in which it is not necessary and not philosophical to assume that the law of so-called evolution has been the universal law to which all the phenomena of that department are to be attributed. If we follow out the same inquiry in other departments of Nature remote from the animal kingdom, we shall find reason to adopt the same conclusion in respect to their phenomena. Thus, let us for a moment contemplate another of the departments in which inanimate matter is the subject of observation, and in which human will or intelligence has had no agency in producing the phenomena, namely, the formation of the present structure of the earth as it is described by geologists. This is a department in which the hypothesis of evolution finds perhaps its stronghold. Yet it is necessary even here to recognize an intentional plan and direct design in some part of the phenomena. Let us suppose that during the period required by any of the speculations of geologists, however long, a mass of matter was gathered in an unformed condition, and gradually shaped into the present condition of the earth by the action of its constituent elements upon each other, influenced by the laws of mechanical forces, of chemical combinations, of light and heat, and of whatever physical agencies were made to operate in the process of evolving the mass into the condition in which it has been known to us for a certain time. Is it a rational conclusion that the intelligent power which put these forces in operation—an hypothesis with which we must begin to reason, or leave the origin of both matter and forces to blind chance—did not guide their operation at all to the intentional production of the results which we see? The results disclose some manifest purposes; and although these purposes, or others equally beneficent, might have been accomplished by different arrangements, we can see that they have been effected by a certain arrangement of a specific character. The results have been continents, seas, mountains, rivers, lakes, formation and distribution of minerals, growth of forests, and an almost innumerable, and certainly a very varied, catalogue of phenomena, physical formations, and adaptations. All these varied results disclose a plan by which this earth became a marvelously convenient abode for the living creatures that have inhabited or still inhabit it, especially for man. The formation of this plan was an intelligent act, if we suppose that any intelligent being projected the original gathering of the crude primordial matter and subjected it to the operation of the forces employed to shape it into its present condition. This plan was an act of special creation, in the same sense in which the plan of a particular animal organism may have been a special creation. While, therefore, a process which may be called evolution may have operated as the agency through which the earth has reached its present physical condition, the plan of that condition was certainly not formed by any such process; for it was, if it was the product of anything, the product of an intelligent will operating in the production of preconceived results by the exercise of superhuman and infinite wisdom and foresight.

When we turn to a department in which human influence has largely or wholly shaped the phenomena, we find numerous special creations that are not attributable to the operation of any law of development or evolution such as is supposed to have led to the production of one species of animal out of another, or out of several previous species. In short, a survey of all the departments of Nature leads to the conclusion that while there may be phenomena which are properly traceable to the operation of the forces of Nature, or to fixed general systems of production, there is another very large class of the phenomena which owe their existence to special acts of an intelligent will, finite or infinite, human or divine, according as their production required superhuman power or admitted of the efficacy of man's intervention.