Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

Kosmicos. Stop where you are. Why do you separate man from Nature? Have you yet to learn that man is a part of Nature? I suspect you have, after all, been reading the book of Genesis for something more than a hypothesis, and that you have adopted the notion that God made Adam a living soul. Put away all the nursery-stories, and come down to the "hard-pan" of actual facts, which show by an overwhelming array of evidence that man had a very different origin.

Sophereus. You know, my friend, that I never learned any nursery-stories, and therefore I have none to unlearn. It may be my misfortune, but I find myself here in the world in mature years, studying the phenomena of life, without having had any early teaching, but with such reasoning as I can apply to what I observe, and to what science, history, and philosophy can furnish to me. I belong to no church, to no sect, to no party, and I have not even a country. I am a citizen of the world, on my travels through it, learning what I can. Now, what are your facts? Let us get down, as you say, upon the "hard-pan," and make it as hard as you please.

Kosmicos. First answer my question: Why do you separate man from Nature?

Sophereus. I know very well that in a certain sense man is a part of Nature. But it is necessary to contemplate man apart from all the rest of Nature, because we find that he is endowed with intellect, and we have very good and direct evidence that his intellect is an actor; and we know that he is endowed with consciousness, and we have very good and direct evidence that, by introspection, he becomes aware of his own consciousness, and what it is.

Kosmicos. Very well, assume all that if you choose. Now let me show you an origin of man, with his intellect and consciousness, which will entirely overthrow the idea that he was a special creation in the sense to which you seem to be drifting, namely, that of miraculous interposition by a being called God. You must be aware, as you have read so much, that modern science has made great discoveries, and that there are certain conclusions on this subject which are drawn from very numerous and important data. Those data involve the origin of all the different animals, man included. They are all to be accounted for in the same way and by the same reasoning. Now, if we go back to a period when none of them existed, we find a method of accounting for them that is infinitely superior as a hypothesis to any idea of their special creation as an act or as a series of acts of divine and direct interposition. I will take this method as it is given by Herbert Spencer, because, as he has reasoned it, it accounts for both intellect and consciousness; and Mr. Spencer is allowed to be one of the leading minds of this age. Mark the starting-point of his whole philosophy on this subject of organic life. Darwin, as you know, supposes some one very low form of organic life, an aquatic grub, and out of it he evolves all the other animal organisms, by the process of natural and sexual selection, through successive generations, ending in man. This hypothesis leaves the original organism to be accounted for, and, although Darwin does not expressly assert that it was the Creator who fashioned the first organism, he leaves it to be implied. Spencer, on the other hand, explicitly denies the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe. Observe that the terms of his theory of evolution are much more complete than Darwin's, for he says that "the affirmation of universal evolution is in itself a negation of an absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing being; and this holds as fully of the supposed commencement of organic life, or a first organism, as of all subsequent developments of organic life."[106]

You will see, therefore, that the idea of a Creator, fashioning a type of animal organism, or making a commencement of organic life, is excluded by this great philosopher, although he does concur in the main in Darwin's general explanation of the mode in which one organism is evolved out of a pre-existing organism. He goes much farther, because his system of universal evolution embraces the elements out of which any organic life whatever has been developed, and negatives the idea of any absolute commencement of anything whatever. He begins with the original molecules of organizable matter. By modifications induced upon modifications these become formed, by their inherent tendencies, into higher types of organic molecules, as we see in the artificial evolution effected by chemists in their laboratories; who, although they are unable to form the complex combinations directly from their elements, can form them indirectly through successive modifications of simpler combinations, by the use of equivalents. In Nature, the more complex combinations are formed by modifications directly from the elements, and each modification is a change of the molecule into equilibrium with its environment, subjecting it, that is to say, to new conditions. Then, larger aggregates, compound molecules, are successively generated; more complex or heterogeneous aggregates arise out of one another, and there results a geometrically increasing multitude of these larger and more complex aggregates. So that by the action of the successive higher forms on one another, joined with the action of the environing conditions, the highest forms of organic molecules are reached. Thus in the early world, as in the modern laboratory, inferior types of organic substances, by their mutual actions under fit conditions, evolved the superior types of organic substances, and at length ended in organizable protoplasm. Now, let me read to you Mr. Spencer's description of the mode in which the substance called "protein" becomes developed into organic life. "And it can hardly be doubted," he says, "that the shaping of organizable protoplasm, which is a substance modifiable in multitudinous ways with extreme facility, went on after the same manner. As I learn from one of our first chemists, Prof. Frankland, protein is capable of existing under probably at least a thousand isomeric forms; and, as we shall presently see, it is capable of forming, with itself and other elements, substances yet more intricate in composition, that are practically intricate in their varieties of kind. Exposed to those innumerable modifications of conditions which the earth's surface afforded, here in amount of light, there in amount of heat, and elsewhere in the mineral quality of its aqueous medium, this extremely changeable substance must have undergone, now one, now another, of its countless metamorphoses. And to the mutual influences of its metamorphic forms, under favoring conditions, we may ascribe the production of the still more composite, still more sensitive, still more variously-changeable portions of organic matter, which, in masses more minute and simpler than existing protozoa, displayed actions varying little by little into those called vital actions, which protein itself exhibits in a certain degree, and which the lowest known living things exhibit only in a greater degree. Thus, setting out with inductions from the experiences of organic chemists at the one extreme, and with inductions from the observations of biologists at the other extreme, we are enabled to deductively bridge the interval—are enabled to conceive how organic compounds were evolved, and how, by a continuance of the process, the nascent life displayed in these becomes gradually more pronounced."[107]

It is in this way that Spencer accounts for the formation of the cell which becomes developed into a living organism, out of which are successively evolved all the higher forms of animal organisms, until we reach man.

Sophereus. And is this put forward as something which rational people are to believe?

Kosmicos. Undoubtedly it is put forward as something that is to be believed, because it is supported by a vast array of evidence; and let me tell you that this conception of Nature as a whole is the consummate flower of this nineteenth century in the domain of philosophic speculation.