Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

"A man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe." By "scientific grounds," I presume is meant, in the case of a fact or occurrence, proper proof of the fact or occurrence. This varies with the nature of the thing which one professes to know. We constantly act upon proofs which do not amount to demonstration, and there could be no practical enjoyment of our lives and no safety if we did not. If a government were to receive information that a foreign army was on the border of the country and about to invade it, and the information fell short of being the testimony of eye-witnesses, what would be thought of the rulers if they were to fold their hands and say that they did not know the fact because they had no "scientific grounds for professing to know it"? On the other hand, if in a court of justice the question to be determined were the presence of an individual at a certain place and at a certain time, the established rules of evidence require certain kinds of proof of the fact.

Belief, however, is a conviction of something which may or may not require what are called "scientific grounds" before we can be permitted to profess that we believe. It depends upon the thing which we profess to believe, and upon the grounds on which we rest the belief, whether we have or have not safe and sufficient means of belief. Belief in the law of gravitation as a force operating throughout the universe is arrived at as a deduction from scientific data. Belief in an existence beyond phenomena, in a being who is the producing agent of the phenomena, depends upon a great variety of grounds, some of which are scientific data and some of which are the elements of moral reasoning. We may not say that we "know" that God or any other supernatural being exists, but we may say that we "believe" in his existence. Here knowledge is one thing; belief is another. Knowledge of the existence of God, like knowledge of the existence of any other being, might come to us through the testimony of a competent witness commissioned and authorized to inform us. Belief in the existence of God may be founded on many and various grounds without the direct testimony of the competent witness; and these grounds may be perfectly satisfactory without being mathematical or scientific demonstration. It is a very remarkable fact that some of the most eminent of the school of agnosticism profess to have, and probably have, the most undoubting faith in the theory and actual occurrence of animal evolution, without any data, scientific or other, which can enable other men to arrive at the same conviction, whatever may be the character of the supposed proofs. They certainly have no grounds for professing to know that an evolution of species out of species has ever taken place; and the grounds of their belief in the fact, whether denominated "scientific" or called something else, do not satisfy the rules of belief on which mankind must act, in accordance with their mental and moral constitutions; and this belief does not rise any higher in the scale of moral probabilities than the belief in special creations, nor does it rise so high. But to return to Mr. Spencer.

If we did not act upon the process of thinking of another reality than that which appearance gives, act upon it fearlessly and by a mode of thinking to which we can safely trust ourselves, science would stand still, there would be no progress in physics, discoveries would cease, there would be no improvement in morals, the world would remain stationary. What did Columbus do, when, going behind the phenomena that made the earth appear to be a flat surface, he thought of it as a sphere? Did he break the law of thought? He formed an idea of a reality behind appearance, not by employing the phenomenal manifestations to help him to the new conception, but by going away from them in search of a reality that lay behind them, and which they seemed to contradict. This conception of a sphere as the reality of the earth's condition proved to be the truth. He did not bring it, and did not need to bring it, into connection with appearance. He did not use, and did not need to use, the relations of the visible phenomena to help him to attain his conception of a spherical form of the earth. He contradicted them all.

Did all the moral lawgivers who have reformed the world break the law of thought, when, going behind the phenomena of human conduct, with their relations pointing to one idea of right and wrong, they conceived the idea of a new and a better rule of life? When it was said, in place of the old law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you"—when for the old rule of revenge there was substituted forgiveness of injuries—something was inculcated that contradicted all the appearances of the social phenomena, and that lay beyond them. Did the consciousness of this new reality become "a formless consciousness of the inscrutable"? What is there about it that is inscrutable? There is nothing inscrutable about it, or in the consciousness of it, excepting the mode in which the being who promulgated it came to exist. The idea of forgiveness is clearly within the compass of human thought and of human endeavor.

When we are in the process of making a new physical discovery, or of forming a new rule of moral action, we work away from the materials which the phenomenal manifestations give us, to a new conception. We become conscious of a new reality behind appearance, and of an existence beyond the relations of the phenomena with which we have heretofore been familiar. It is to this striving after realities behind appearances—striving by an entirely true process of thinking—that the world owes its progress.

When the phenomenal manifestations of an intellectual and moral nature in man have given us the idea of an existence of an intellectual and moral being as a reality of which we become conscious, what is to prevent us from thinking of another intellectual and moral being as a reality, with faculties and powers immeasurably superior to ours? It is true that the phenomenal manifestations of man's intellectual and moral nature give us an idea of a being of very limited faculties and very imperfect moral qualities. But what is the "insoluble difficulty" in which we become involved, when we think of a being whose faculties are boundless, and whose moral nature is perfect? Does the "insoluble difficulty" consist in the impossibility of thinking of that which transcends all our powers of measurement? All that we have done, in the case of man, is to have a consciousness of a being whose phenomenal manifestations evince the existence of an intellectual and moral nature. He happens to be a being of very limited faculties and very imperfect moral characteristics. What prevents us from thinking, in the true sense of thinking, of another being, whose powers are without limit, and whose moral nature is perfect? Is it said that we can not bring into any shape the idea of unlimited power or of perfect goodness, or bring into any shape its connection with appearance, because all our ideas of power and goodness, all our forms of thought and expression, are molded on experiences of limited power and imperfect goodness? The truth is that we do not and need not strive to bring into connection with appearance the idea of any quality which we conceive of as unlimited. What we derive from the phenomenal manifestations of human power and goodness is a consciousness of the qualities of power and goodness. It is perfectly correct thinking to reason that these qualities, whose phenomenal manifestations, in the case of man, show that in him they exist only in a limited degree, may exist in another being in unlimited perfection and without degree. Our minds are so constituted that we reason from the finite to the infinite, by observing that one class of phenomena evince the existence of the finite and another class of phenomena evince the existence of the infinite.

When, therefore, we pass from the phenomenal manifestations of human power and goodness, we come into the presence of other phenomena which we know could not be and were not produced by such a limited and imperfect being as man, but which must yet have had an author, a maker, an originator, a creator. We thus contemplate and investigate facts which show that the phenomena were the products of a skill, wisdom, and power that transcend all measurement. Is it said that the phenomena of nature, stupendous and varied and minute and wonderful as they are, evince only that a certain degree of power and wisdom was exerted in their production, even if their production is attributed to a being competent to bring them about? And therefore that the idea of a being of unlimited faculties and perfect goodness is as far as ever from our reach by any true process of thought? This assumption begs something that should not be taken for granted. It assumes that the production of the phenomena of nature does not evince unlimited power and perfect goodness; did not call for the existence of boundless faculties and inexhaustible benevolence; involved only a degree of such qualities, although a vastly superior degree to that possessed by us. The correctness of this assumption depends upon the force of the evidence which nature affords of the character of the Deity. It is an assumption which has led to enormous errors—errors of conception and belief which impute to the Supreme Being only a superior degree of power and wisdom, greater than our own, but still limited and imperfect, liable to error, and acting in modes which distress us with contradictions and inconsistencies.

It may without rashness be asserted that the phenomena of the universe could not have been produced by a power and wisdom that were subject to any limitations. While all the researches of science, from the first beginnings of human observation to the present moment, show that in the production of the phenomena of nature there has been exerted a certain amount of power and wisdom, they also show that it is an amount which we can not measure; that there is, moreover, a power and wisdom that have not been exhausted; that the reserved force and skill and benevolence are without limit. For, in every successive new discovery that we make, in every new revelation of the power and goodness which our investigations bring forth, we continuously reach proofs of an endless capacity, an inexhaustible variety of methods and of products. So that, if we conceive of the whole human race, with all its accumulated knowledge, as ending at last in one individual possessed of all that has been learned on earth, and imagine him to be then translated to another state of existence, with all his faculties of observation and study preserved, and new fields of inquiry to be opened to him, his experience on earth would lead him to expect to find, and we must believe that in his new experience he will find, that the physical and the moral phenomena of the universe are an inexhaustible study; that search and discovery must go on forever; and that forever new revelations of power and goodness will be made to the perceptions whose training began in a very limited sphere. His experience in that limited sphere has taught him that there was no end to the discoveries which were here partially within his reach. His experience in the new sphere will be a continuation of his experience in the old one; for there is a law by which we judge of the future by the past. This law is one of the conditions of our intellectual existence; an inevitable habit of our minds; imposed upon us by an inexorable but familiar authority. Our experience in this life has taught us that, in the investigation of the phenomena of nature that are open to our observation here, we have never reached the end of possible discovery; that every fresh discovery has evinced that there are still new things to be learned, new manifestations of power to be revealed, new products and new methods to be seen. However long we may suppose the human race to exist on earth and its researches to be prosecuted here, we must suppose an endless accumulation of knowledge hereafter, because the law which compels us to judge of the future by the past obliges us to accept as the fruition of the future that which has been the fruition of the past.[99]

Is there in this any violation of the true law of thought? Does the relation between our past experience and the experience which we forecast for the future fade into a dim symbol of a relation? On the contrary, both are equally capable of mental representation; for we are mentally so constituted that the consciousness of what has happened to us in the past—the unending succession of new discoveries, the constant accumulation of knowledge, which we have experienced here—gives us the conception of the same endless progress hereafter, compels us to believe in it, and enables us to grasp it as a product of true thought.

Mr. Spencer has much to say of "the imbecility of human intelligence when brought to bear on the ultimate question." What is the ultimate question? The ultimate question with which science and philosophy are concerned is the existence of the Supreme Being. It is of the utmost consequence for us to understand wherein consists the imbecility of human intelligence when brought to bear upon this question of the existence of God. How does our imbecility manifest itself? What is the point beyond which thought can not go? We become conscious of the existence of the being called man, because, from the phenomena which we know that he produces by the exercise of his will and power, and which we know must have had an author and producer, we deduce an existence beyond the phenomena, an actor in their production. What more, or what that is different, do we do or undertake to do, when, from the phenomena of nature which we know that man did not produce, we think of another existence beyond the phenomena? In both cases, we study the phenomena by our senses and powers of observation; in both cases we reason that there is an actor who produces the phenomena; yet the existence of the actor who produces the phenomena is inscrutable in the case of the Deity in the same sense and for the same reason that it is inscrutable in the case of man. How the human mind came to exist, by what process it was made to exist, by what means it was created, what was the genesis of the human intellect, is just as inscrutable, no more and no less so, as the mode in which the Deity came to exist. In both cases the existence of a being is what we think of; and when we think of either being we think of that which is beyond phenomena but which we deduce from phenomena. In neither case do we "accept a formless consciousness of the inscrutable"; for what we accept is the consciousness of a being, and it is not a consciousness of the mode in which he came to exist. The latter consciousness is the inscrutable problem. The existence is what we think of, and we think of it by a perfectly true process of thought, deducing it from the simple truth that the phenomena must have had an actor in their production. We do not undertake to think of the process by which man was created, or of the mode in which that other existence came to be without beginning and without end.