Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

The way is now somewhat cleared for an examination of Mr. Spencer's application of the law of evolution to the gradual formation of different species of animals out of one or more previous species, without any act of special creation intervening anywhere in the series. We have seen that this alleged law is not of universal force as the cause of all the phenomena in all the departments of Nature. When we come to apply it as the hypothesis which is to account for the existence of different species of animals of very different types, we must remember that we are dealing with organisms endowed with life, and, although we can not sufficiently explain what life is, we know that animated organisms are brought into being by systems of production that are widely different from the modes in which inanimate matter may have been or has been made to assume its existing forms. Bearing this in mind, we come to the arguments and proofs by which Mr. Spencer maintains the immense superiority of the evolution hypothesis over that of special creations, in reference to the animal kingdom. It must be remembered that this is a department in which man can have had no agency in producing the phenomena, for whatever may have been the slight variations produced by human interference with the breeding of animals domesticated from their wild condition, we must investigate the origin of species as if there had never been any human intervention in the crossing of breeds, because that origin is to be looked for in a sphere entirely removed from all human interference. Man himself is included in the investigation, and we must make that investigation in reference to a time when he did not exist, or when he did not exist as we now know him.

One of the favorite methods of Mr. Spencer consists in arraying difficulties for the believers in special creations, which, he argues, can not be encountered by their hypothesis, and then arguing that there are no difficulties in the way of the hypothesis of evolution. His position shall be stated with all the strength that he gives to it, and with all the care that I can bestow upon its treatment. He puts the argument thus: In the animal kingdom individuals come into being by a process of generation—that is to say, they arise out of other individuals of the same species. If we contemplate the individuals of any species, we find an evolution repeated in every one of them by a uniform process of development, which, in a short space of time, produces a series of astonishing changes. The seed becomes a tree, and the tree differs from the seed immeasurably in bulk, structure, color, form, specific gravity, and chemical composition; so that no visible resemblance can be pointed out between them. The small, semi-transparent gelatinous spherule constituting the human ovum becomes the newly-born child; and this human infant "is so complex in its structure that a cyclopædia is needed to describe its constituent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple that it may be defined in a line. Nevertheless, a few months suffice to develop the one out of the other, and that, too, by a series of modifications so small that were the embryo examined, at successive minutes, even a microscope would with difficulty disclose any sensible changes. Aided by such facts, the conception of general evolution may be rendered as definite a conception as any of our complex conceptions can be rendered. If, instead of the successive minutes of a child's fœtal life, we take successive generations of creatures, if we regard the successive generations as differing from each other no more than the fœtus did in successive minutes, our imaginations must indeed be feeble if we fail to realize in thought the evolution of the most complex organism out of the simplest. If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race."[72]

Here, then, we have a comparison between what takes place in the development of the individual animal in the space of a few years, and what may be supposed to take place in the successive generations of different creatures through untold millions of years. We turn then to the proof, direct or indirect, that races of entirely distinct organisms have resulted from antecedent races by gradual transformation. Direct proof sufficient to establish the progressive modifications of antecedent races into other races is not claimed to exist; yet it is claimed that there are numerous facts of the order required by the hypothesis which warrant our acceptance of it. These facts are the alterations of structure which take place in successive generations of the same species, amounting, in the course of several generations of the same race, to additions and suppressions of parts. These changes among the individuals of the same race, comprehended in what is scientifically called "heredity" and "variation," are exhibited by the transmission of ancestral peculiarities of structure, by their occasional suppression in some individuals of the race and their reappearance in others, and by a difference in the relative sizes of parts. These variations, arising in successive short intervals of time, are said to be quite as marked as those which arise in a developing embryo, and, in fact, they are said to be often much more marked. "The structural modifications proved to have taken place since organisms have been observed is not less than the hypothesis demands—bears as great a ratio to this brief period as the total amount of structural change seen in the evolution of a complex organism out of a simple germ bears to the vast period during which living forms have existed on earth."[73]

The difficulty that is thus prepared for the hypothesis of the special creation of species may now be stated. There is a professed conception of the ultimate power which is manifested to us through phenomena. That conception implies omnipotence and omniscience, and it therefore implies regularity of method, because uniformity of method is a mark of strength, whereas irregularity of method is a mark of weakness. "A persistent process, adapted to all contingencies, implies greater skill in the achievement of an end than its achievement by the process of meeting the contingencies as they severally arise." And, therefore, those who adopt the notion of the special creation of species do, it is said, in truth impair the professed character of the power to which they assume that the phenomena of the existence of species are to be referred, whereas the hypothesis of the evolution of species out of other species is much more consistent with the professed conception of the ultimate power.

In this claim of superiority for the evolution hypothesis, the learned philosopher seems to have been almost oblivious of the fact that he was dealing with animal organisms in two aspects: first, in regard to the method by which individuals of the same species come into existence; and, secondly, in regard to the method by which different species have come into existence. In the first case, regularity of method is evinced by the establishment of a uniform process of procreation and gestation. This process, while retaining throughout the different classes of animals one fundamental and characteristic method, namely, the union of the sexes, is widely varied in respect to the time of gestation, the fœtal development, and the nourishment of the young before and after birth. There is no difficulty whatever in discovering the great reason for which this system of the reproduction of individuals was established. The tie that it makes between parents and offspring, and more especially the tie between the female parent and the offspring, was obviously one grand end for which this system of giving existence to individuals was adopted; and although the instinct which arises out of it is in some species feeble and almost inactive, it rises higher and higher in its power and its manifestations in proportion as the animals rise in the scale of being, until in man it exhibits its greatest force and its most various effects, producing at last pride of ancestry, and affecting in various ways the social and even the political condition of mankind. But how can any corresponding connection between one race of animals and another, or between antecedent and subsequent species, be imagined? The sexual impulse implanted in animals leads to the production of offspring of the same race. The desire for offspring keeps up the perpetual succession of individuals, and love of the offspring insures the protection of the newly born by the most powerful of impulses. But what can be imagined as an analogous impulse, appetite, or propensity which should lead one species to strive after the production of another species? Is it said that the different species are evolved out of one another by a process in which the conscious desires, the efforts, the aspirations of the preceding races play no part? This is certainly true, if there was ever any such process as the evolution of species out of species; and it follows that, in respect to one great moral purpose of a process, there is no analogy to be derived from the regularity and uniformity of the process by which individuals of the same species are multiplied. Moreover, in regard to the latter process, we know that a barrier has been set to its operation; for Nature does not now admit of the sexual union between animals of entirely distinct species, and we have no reason to believe that it ever did admit of it at any period in the geological history of the earth.

Still further: In what sense are special creations "irregularities of method"? In what sense are they "contingencies"? And if they are "contingencies," how does it imply less skill to suppose that they have been met as they have severally arisen, than would be implied by supposing that they have been achieved by a uniform process adapted to all contingencies? This notion that something is derogated from the idea of omnipotence and omniscience by the hypothesis that such a power has acted by special exercises of its creating faculty in the production of different orders of beings as completed and final types, instead of allowing or causing them to be successively evolved out of each other by gradual derivations, is neither logical nor philosophical. In no proper sense is a method of action an irregular method unless it was imposed upon the actor by some antecedent necessity, which compelled him to apply a method which was made uniform in one case to another case in which the same kind of uniformity would not be indispensable. The uniformity of the process by which individuals of the same species are multiplied is a uniformity for that particular end. The regularity in that case is a regularity that has its special objects to accomplish. The uniformity and regularity of a different method of causing different types of organisms to exist, so long as the object is always effected in the same way, is just as truly a regularity and uniformity for that case, and just as completely fulfills the idea of infinite skill. That such creations are specially made, that they are independently made, and that each is made for a distinct purpose and also for the complex purposes of a varied class of organisms, does not render them contingencies arising at random, or make the method of meeting them an occasional, irregular, spasmodic device for encountering something unforeseen and unexpected. The very purposes for which the distinct organisms exist—purposes that are apparent on a comprehensive survey of their various structures and modes of life—and the fact that they have come into existence by some process that was for the production of the ends a uniform and regular one, whether that process was special creation or evolution, render the two methods of action equally consistent with the professed conception of the ultimate power. On the hypothesis of special creations so many different types of organism as the Creator has seen fit to create have been made by the exercise of a power remaining uniformly of the same infinite nature, but varying the products at will for the purposes of infinite wisdom.

What, again, does the learned author mean by meeting "contingencies" "as they have severally arisen"? This suggestion of a difficulty for the believers in special creations seems to imply that the distinct types of animal organisms arose somehow as necessities outside of the divine will, and that the Almighty artificer had to devise occasional methods of meeting successive demands which he did not create. The hypothesis of special creations does not drive its believers into any such implications. The several distinct types of animal organisms are supposed to have arisen in the divine mind as types which the Almighty saw fit to create for certain purposes, and to have been severally fashioned as types by his infinite power. They are in no sense "contingencies" which he had to meet as occasions arising outside of his infinite will. A human artificer has conceived and executed upon a novel plan a machine that is distinguishable from all other machines. He did not create the demand for that machine; the demand has grown out of the wants of society; and the artificer has met the demand by his genius and his mechanical skill, which have effected a marked improvement in the condition of society. In one sense, therefore, he has met a "contingency," because he has met a demand. But the infinite Creator, upon the hypothesis of his existence and attributes, does not meet an external demand; there is no demand upon him; he creates the occasion; he makes the different organisms to effectuate the infinite purposes which he also creates; the want and the means of satisfying the want alike arise in the infinite wisdom and will. Such is the hypothesis. We may now, therefore, pursue in some further detail the argument which maintains that this hypothesis is of far inferior strength to that of evolution, as the method in which the Almighty power has acted in the production of different animal organisms.

First we have the analogy that is supposed to be afforded by what takes place in the development of a single cell into a man in the space of a few years, and an alleged correspondence of development by which a single cell, in the course of untold millions of years, has given origin to the human race. Granting any difference of time which this comparison calls for, and substituting in place of the successive moments or years of an individual life, from the formation of the ovum to the fully developed animal, the successive generations of any imaginable series of animals, the question is not merely what we can definitely conceive, or how successfully we can construct a theory. It is whether the supposed analogy will hold; whether we can find that in the two cases development takes place in the same way or in a way that is so nearly alike in the two cases as to warrant us in reasoning from the one to the other. In the case of the development of the single cell into the mature animal, although we can not, either before or after birth, detect the changes that are taking place from minute to minute, the infinitesimal accretions or losses, we know that there is a perpetual and unbroken connection of life maintained from the moment when the fœtus is formed to the moment when the mature animal stands before us. Break this connection anywhere in the process of development, and life is destroyed; the development is at once arrested. It is this connection that constitutes, as I presume, what the learned author calls the "appropriate conditions," in the case of the production of the individual animal; it is, at all events, the one grand and indispensable condition to the development of the cell into the fœtus, of the fœtus into the newly born child, and of the child into the man. Now, if we are to reason from this case of individual development to the other case of successive generations of creatures differing from each other in the same or any other ratio in which the perfect man differs from the ovum, the fœtus, or the newly born child, which are all successive stages of one and the same individual life, we ought to find in the successive generations of the different creatures some bond of connection, some continuity of lives with lives, some perpetuation from one organism to another, that will constitute the "appropriate conditions" for a corresponding development from a single cell through the successive types of animal life into the human race. Without such connection, continuity, perpetuation from organism to organism, shown by some satisfactory proof, we have nothing but a theory, and a theory that is destitute of the grand conditions that will alone support the analogy between the two cases. If anywhere in the supposed chain of successive generations of different animals the continuity of animal and animal is broken, the hypothesis of special creations of new organisms must come in: for we must remember that we are reasoning about animal life, and if the continuity of lives with one another is interrupted, the series terminates, just as the series between the ovum, the fœtus, the child, and the man terminates, at whatever stage it is interrupted by a cause that destroys the mysterious principle of life. It is therefore absolutely necessary to look for some proof which will show that in the supposed series of successive generations of animals out of antecedent types, by whatever gradations and in whatever space of time we may suppose the process of evolution to have been worked, there has been a continuity of life between the different types, a perpetuation of organism from organism, a connection of lives with lives.

We now come to another supposed analogy, on which great stress is laid by the evolution school, and especially by Mr. Spencer. Individuals of the same family are found to be marked by striking peculiarities of structure, ancestral traits, which appear and disappear and then appear again, in successive generations. This is obviously a case where the "appropriate conditions" are all comprehended in the connection of life with life. When we trace the pedigree of a single man or any other individual animal back to a remote pair of ancestors, we connect together in an unbroken chain the successive generations of parents and offspring. If the chain is anywhere broken, so that direct descent can not be traced throughout the series, we can not by direct evidence carry the peculiarities of family traits any further back than the ancestor or pair of ancestors with which we can find an unbroken connection of life with life. We do indeed often say in common parlance that an individual must have a trace of a certain blood in his veins, because of certain peculiarities of structure, complexion, or other tokens of descent, even when we can not find a perfect pedigree which would show where the infusion of the supposed blood came in. But although it might be allowable, in making out the descent of an individual man or any other animal, from a certain ancestor or pair of ancestors, to aid the pedigree by strong family or race resemblance, even when a link is wanting, it could only be for the purpose of establishing a pedigree, a connection of lives with lives, that such collateral evidence could be resorted to. If by direct proof of an unbroken descent a full pedigree is made out, or if, when some link is wanting, the collateral proof from strong family or race resemblances is sufficient to warrant the belief that the link once existed, we might accept it as a fact that the individual descended from the supposed ancestors in a direct line, or that some peculiarity of blood came into his constitution at some point in the descent of individuals from individuals.[74]

Can we apply this mode of reasoning to the evolution of distinct types of animals out of antecedent and different types? The very nature of the descent or derivation that is to be satisfactorily established requires a connection of lives with lives, just as such a connection is required in making out the pedigree of an individual animal. We must construct a pedigree for the different classes or types of animals through which, by direct or collateral evidence, we can connect the different organisms together, so as to warrant the belief that by the ordinary process of generation these animals of widely different organizations have been successfully developed out of each other, life from life, organisms from organisms. The hypothesis is, that from a single cell all the various races and types of animals have in process of time been gradually formed out of each other, through an ascending scale, until we reach the human race, whose race pedigree consists of a series of imperceptible formations, back to the single cell from which the whole series proceeded. This, we must remember, is not a case of the evolving production of different forms of inanimate matter, but it is the case of the evolving production of different forms of animal life out of other preceding and different forms, by the process of animal generation.