Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

[CHAPTER IX.]

Does evolution account for the phenomena of society and of nature?—Necessity for a conception of a personal actor—Mr. Spencer's protoplasmic origin of all organic life—The Mosaic account of creation treated as a hypothesis which may be scientifically contrasted with evolution.

A long interval has elapsed since the conference described in the last chapter, between the searcher after wisdom and his scientific friend. At their next interview they take up the subject of a First Cause where they left it at the conclusion of their debate on the solar system.

Kosmicos. Well, Sophereus, what have you been studying since we last met?

Sophereus. Many things. I have been studying what is commonly called Nature, and I have been studying society. With regard to society, I have been endeavoring to discover to what the phenomena of social life are to be attributed as their producing cause or causes; whether they can be said to owe their existence to the direct action or influence of intelligent wills, or are to be considered as effects produced in the course of an ungoverned development, wrought by incidental forces in varying conditions of human existence. The latter, I find, is one of the theories now prevailing.

Kosmicos. And what is your conclusion?

Sophereus. My general conclusion in regard to the phenomena of human society is the same as that which I formed from a study of the phenomena of the solar system. I find a great many things which I can not explain without the hypothesis of a direct creating power exerted by an intelligent being. I know that you object to the idea of creation, but I explained to you in our last discussion that I understood it to mean the causing something to exist which did not exist before, and the doing it by an intentional and direct act of production.

Kosmicos. No matter about your definition. What are the facts that you propose to discuss?

Sophereus. In the social phenomena I find many acts of creation. I do not find that buildings spring out of the ground without human intervention, or that machinery is formed by the spontaneous arrangement of matter in certain forms and relations, or by the tendencies that are implanted in matter as its inherent properties. I find an enormous multitude of concrete objects, formed out of dead matter, by human intervention, availing itself of those properties of matter, which without such active intervention would have remained quiescent, and would not have resulted in the production of these objects. It is a common form of expression to speak of the "growth" of cities, but no one understands by this form of speech that a city has become what it is without the action of numerous individuals projecting and building their separate structures, or without the combined action of the whole body of the inhabitants in determining and executing a general plan to which individuals are to conform, more or less exactly, their particular erections. Again, I find that there are rules of social life, which take the form of what are called "laws," and these are imposed by the will of some governing authority; they are always the product of some one human will, or of the collective will of a greater number of persons. I have looked into history and have found many instances of military conquest, invasions of the territory inhabited by one race of men by another race, domination of different dynasties, overthrow of one governing power, and substitution of another. Although the changes thus produced are often very complex, sometimes rapid and sometimes slow in reaching the consequences, I do not find that they have ever taken place without the direct action of some one human will, or of the aggregate force of many human wills. The conquests of Alexander and Napoleon are instances of what a single human will can do in changing the condition of nations; and I have not been able to read history by the interpretation that makes such men mere instruments in the hands of their age, which would, without their special existences and characters, have brought about the same or something like the same results. The invasions of the Roman Empire by the Northern barbarians are instances of the pressure of one population upon another, not attributable, perhaps, to the will and leadership of any one individual, but produced by the united force of a great horde of individuals determined to enjoy the plunder which a superior civilization spread before them. Then, with regard to the phenomena of what are called constitutions of government, or the political systems of exercising public authority, I find numerous cases in which the force of an individual will and intelligence has been not only a great factor, but by far the largest factor in the production of particular institutions. The genius of Cæsar, and his extraordinary constructive faculties, molded the institutions of Rome in the most direct manner, and created an imperial system that lasted for a thousand years, and that even out of its ruins affected all subsequent European civilization. In such cases, more than once repeated in modern times, the particular circumstances of the age and the co-operation of many other individuals have helped on the result, but the conception, the plan, the purpose, and the execution, have had their origin in some one mind. But for the individual character, the ambition, the force, and the mental resources of the first Napoleon, can one believe that the first French Empire of modern times would have grown out of the condition of France? Suppose that Oliver Cromwell had never lived. The protectorate, the system of government which he gave to England, was the most absolute product of the will and intellect of one man that the world in that kind of product had ever seen; for, although the people of England were ready for and needed that system, and although the antecedent and the surrounding circumstances furnished to Cromwell many materials for a political structure that was not the old monarchy, and yet had while it lasted all the vigor, and more than the vigor, of the old monarchy, still, without his personal characteristics, his ambition to found a dynasty on the wants of his country, and his personal capacity to devise and execute such a system, one can not believe that England would have had what he gave her. What he could not give her was a son capable of wielding the scepter which he had fashioned. Here is this America of yours—a country in which, to a certain extent, the political institutions have been influenced by the circumstances that followed the separation of your colonies from the English crown. Undoubtedly, your ancestors of the Revolutionary epoch could not construct a monarchy for the group of thirteen newly existing States, each with its right and enjoyment of an actual autonomy. The habits and genius of the people forbade the experiment of monarchical or aristocratic institutions; no materials for either existed. But within the range of republican institutions there was a choice open, and the people exercised that choice. They made one system of confederated States, and found it would not answer. They then deliberately assembled their wisest and greatest men. They gave to them a commission that was restricted by nothing but the practical necessity of framing a government that would unite the requirements of power with the requirements of liberty. The result was the Constitution of the United States—a system of government that was, within the limitations of certain practical necessities, both in its fundamental principles and in many of its details, the deliberate choice and product of certain leading minds, aided by the public consent, to a degree that is almost unparalleled in the formation of political institutions. After it had gone into operation, it was believed that the requirements of liberty had not been sufficiently regarded, and it was directly and purposely modified by the intervention of the collective will of the whole people. And when I turn to the history of philosophies, of religions, of the fine arts, or of the mechanical arts, I find everywhere traces of the force of individual genius, of the direct intervention of individual wills, and of the power of men to cause new systems of thought and action to come into existence, and to create new objects of admiration or utility. In regard to languages, I have read a good deal about the controversy concerning their origin, but I have observed one thing to be very apparent: whether the gift of articulate speech was bestowed on man, when he had become a distinct being, in a manner and for a purpose which would distinguish him from all the other animals, or whether it became a developed faculty akin to that by which other animals utter vocal sounds intelligible to those of their species, it is certain that in man there is a power of varying his vocal utterances at pleasure, which is possessed by no other creature on this earth. The expansion of languages, therefore, the coinage of new words, the addition of new inflections, the introduction of new shades of meaning, the method of utterance which is called pronunciation, and the different dialects of the same tongue, are all matters which have been under the control of individuals dwelling together, and have all resulted from the arbitrary determination of more or less numerous persons, followed by the great mass of their nation, their race, or their tribe. Even when a new and third language has been formed by the contact of two peoples speaking separate tongues, we may trace the same arbitrary adoption of parts of each separate tongue, in the first beginning of the fusion, and the new language consequently exhibits a greater or a less predominance of the characteristics of one of its parent tongues, according as the one population has compelled the other to adopt the greater part of its peculiar modes of speech.