Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

Sophereus. Perhaps it is. But although this nineteenth century has witnessed many great scientific discoveries, and has produced extraordinary inventions, I do not find that among the speculative philosophers of this age there are such very superior powers of reasoning displayed that we ought to regard them as authorities entitled to challenge our acceptance of their theories without examination. I must say that among your scientific people of the present day, and especially among the philosophers of the class of which Mr. Spencer is the leading representative, there are certain tendencies and defects which surprise me. One of their defects is that they do not obviate remote difficulties, perhaps because they have not been trained, as other men have, to foresee where such difficulties must arise. This is sometimes apparent even when the difficulties are not very remote, but are quite obvious. One of their tendencies is to arrive at a theory from some of the phenomena, and then to strain the remaining phenomena to suit the theory; and sometimes they proceed to the invention or imagination of phenomena which are necessary to the completion of a chain of proof. This last process is called bridging the interval. I will now apply this criticism to Mr. Spencer's philosophy of the origin of man. In the first place he has not obviated a fundamental difficulty, whether it be a near or a remote one. Where did the molecules get their tendency or capacity to arrange themselves into higher and more complex forms? Whence came the auxiliary or additional force of their surrounding environment? What endowed protein with its capacity to assume a thousand isomeric forms? What made the favoring conditions which have helped on the influence of its metamorphic tendencies, so as to produce still more sensitive and variously-changeable portions of organic matter? These questions must have an answer; and, when we ask them, we see the significance of the inquiry, "Where wast thou (man) when I laid the foundations of the world?" For these things, on the evolution theory, are the foundations of the world. It is no answer to say, as Mr. Spencer does, that these tendencies, or capacities of matter, and these laws of the favoring conditions, came from the Unknown Cause. Known or unknown, did they have a cause, or did they make themselves? Did these, the foundations of the world, have an origin, or were they without any origin? If they had an origin, was it from the will and power of a being capable of giving existence to them and prescribing their modes of action? If they had no origin, if they existed from all eternity, how came it that they formed this extraordinary habit of invariable action in a certain method, which amid all its multiformity shows an astonishing persistency? If we deny, with Mr. Spencer, the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe, we must still go back of all the traces of organic life, and inquire whence matter, molecules, organized or unorganized, derived the capacities or tendencies to become organized, and how the favoring conditions became established as auxiliary or subsidiary forces. And therefore it is that this difficulty, whether remote or near at hand, is not met by Mr. Spencer: for whether we call the cause an unknown or a known cause, the question is, Was there a cause, or did the foundations of the world lay themselves? The reasoning powers of mankind, exercised by daily observation of cause and effect, of creative power and created product, are equal to the conception of a First Cause as a being who could have laid the foundations of the world, but they are utterly unequal to the conception that they had no origin whatever. Again, consider how numerous are the missing links in the chain of evolution, how many gaps are filled up by pure inventions or assumptions. The evolution of one distinct and perfect animal, or being, out of a pre-existing animal or being of a different type, has never been proved as a fact. Yet whole pedigrees of such generation of species have been constructed upon the same principles as we should construct the pedigree of an individual. Furthermore, if we regard the facts about which there can be no controversy, we find not only distinct species of animals, but we find the same species divided into male and female, with a system of procreation and gestation established for the multiplication of individuals of that species. Now go back to the imaginary period when protein began to form itself into something verging toward organic life, and then there became evolved the nascent life of an organized being. How did the division of the sexes originate? Did some of the molecules or their progressive forms, or their aggregates, or masses, under some conditions, tend to the production of the male, and others under certain conditions tend to the development of the female, so that the sexes were formed by a mere habit of arrangement without any special intervention? Here is one of the most serious difficulties which the doctrine of evolution, whether it be the Darwinian or the Spencerian theory, has to encounter. There is a division into male and female: there is a law of procreation by the union of the two sexes. This is a fact about which there can be no dispute. It is one of the most remarkable facts in Nature. It is the means by which species are continued, and the world is peopled with individuals of each species. Is it conceivable that this occurred without any design, that it had no origin in a formative will, that it had, properly speaking, no origin at all, but that it grew out of the tendencies of organized matter to take on such a diversity in varying conditions? And if the latter was all the origin that it had, whence came the tendencies and whence the favoring conditions that helped them on toward the result? It seems to me that the Spencerian theory, so far as it suggests a mode in which the two sexes of animals came to exist, is hardly less fanciful than what Plato has given us in his "Timæus." I have studied them both.

If you will hand me Mr. Spencer's work from which you have just quoted, I will point out a passage which fully justifies my criticism. It is this: "Before it can be ascertained how organized beings have been gradually evolved, there must be reached the conviction that they have been gradually evolved." He says this in praise of De Maillet, one of the earliest of the modern speculators who reached this conviction, and whose "wild notions" as to the way should not make us, says Mr. Spencer, "forget the merit of his intuition that animals and plants were produced by natural causes."[108] That is to say, first form to yourself a theory, and have a thorough conviction of it. Then investigate, and shape the facts so as to support the theory. Is it not plain that an inquiry into the mode in which organized beings have been gradually evolved must precede any conclusion or conviction on the subject? It is one of those cases in which the how a thing has been done lies at the basis of the inquiry whether it has probably been done at all. If a suggested mode turns out to be wild and visionary, what is the value of any "intuition" of the main fact? But, what is still more extraordinary in this kind of deduction, which is no deduction, is the way in which, according to Mr. Spencer, the first conviction is to be reached before one looks for the facts. The process of the evolution of organisms, according to Mr. Spencer's philosophy, is contained as a part in the great whole of evolution in general. We first convince ourselves that evolution obtains in all the other departments of Nature, and is the interpretation of all their phenomena. Then we conclude that it has obtained in the animal kingdom, and so we have the conviction necessary to be acquired before we examine the phenomena; and then we make that investigation so as to reconcile the facts with the supposed universal laws of matter and motion. I do not exaggerate in the least. Here is what he says: "Only when the process of evolution of organisms is affiliated on the process of evolution in general can it be truly said to be explained. The thing required is to show that its various results are corollaries from first principles. We have to reconcile the facts with the universal laws of the redistribution of matter and motion."[109] What would Bacon have thought of this method of establishing the probable truth of a theory? It leaves out of consideration a multitude of facts, and one of them at least is of the utmost importance. It is that in the domain of animated matter, in organized beings, and most signally in the animal kingdom, there is a principle of life; and, whatever may be the universal laws of the redistribution of matter and motion, in their operation upon or among the products which are not endowed with this principle, when we come to reason about products that are endowed with it we are not entitled to conclude that this principle of animal life is itself a product of the operation of those laws because they have resulted in products which do not possess life, or life of the same kind. In order to reach the conviction that animal organisms have resulted solely from the operation of the laws of matter and motion, we must not undertake to reconcile the facts with those laws, but we must have some evidence that those laws have produced living beings with complex and diversified organisms, and this evidence must at least tend to exclude every other hypothesis. It is not enough to flout at all other hypotheses, or to pronounce them ex cathedra to be idle tales.

Kosmicos. You must not catch at single expressions and make yourself a captious critic. That would be unworthy of such an inquirer as you profess to be, and as I believe you are. Mr. Spencer did not mean, by reconciling the facts with the laws of matter and motion, that we are to distort the facts. He meant that we are to discover the correspondence between the facts and the operation of those laws. Now, let me show you more explicitly that he is quite right. There are certain laws of matter and motion, discoverable and discovered by scientific investigation, which prevail throughout all Nature. The phenomena which they produce, although not yet fully understood, justify the assumption of their universality and their modes of operation. It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, to reason that the same laws which have produced the observable phenomena in other departments of Nature have had a like potency as causes by which the phenomena in the animal kingdom have been produced. Using this legitimate mode of reasoning, Mr. Spencer traces the operation of those laws upon the primal molecules, which are peculiarly sensitive to their effects. He follows them through the successive aggregations of higher combinations until he arrives at the protoplasmic substance, out of which, from its capability of assuming an infinity of forms, aided by the environing conditions, the simplest organic forms become evolved, and thus what you call the principle of life gradually arose through a vast extent of time. He is therefore perfectly consistent with himself in denying the absolute commencement of organic life on the globe; for you must understand that he means by this to deny that there was any point of time, or any particular organism, at or in which animal life can be said to have had its first commencement, without having been preceded by some other kind of being, out of which the more highly organized being has been produced by modifications wrought by insensible gradations. If you will attend closely to his reasoning, you will see that you have small cause for criticising it as you have; and, if you will look at one of his illustrations, you will see the strength of his position. Hear what he says: "It is no more needful to suppose an absolute commencement of organic life or a 'first organism' than it is needful to suppose an absolute commencement of social life and a first social organism. The assumption of such a necessity in this last case, made by early speculators with their theories of 'social contracts' and the like, is disproved by the facts; and the facts, so far as they are ascertained, disprove the assumption of such a necessity in the first case."[110] That is to say, as the social facts, the social phenomena, disprove the "social contract" as an occurrence taking place by human design and intention, so the phenomena of animal life disprove the assumption of such an occurrence as its commencement by divine intervention, or its commencement at all.

Sophereus. I think I understood all this before, just as you put it, but I am not the less obliged to you for the restatement. In regard to society, I know not why the family, the institution of marriage, is not to be regarded as the first social organism, and the union of two or more families in some kind of mutual league is certainly the first society in a more comprehensive sense. I care very little about the theory of the social contract, as applied to more complex societies, although, as a kind of legal fiction, it is well enough for all the uses which sound reasoners nowadays make of it. But the institution of marriage, the family, is no fiction at all; it is a fact, however it was first established, and it was the absolute commencement of social life. But I do not hold to this sort of analogies, or to this mode of reasoning from what happens in a department, in which the actions of men have largely or exclusively influenced the complex phenomena, to a department in which human influence has had nothing to do with the phenomena. But now let us come back to the proposition that there never was any absolute commencement of organic life on the globe. I will take Mr. Spencer's meaning—his denial, as you put it—and will test it by one or two observations upon his own explanation, as given in the elaborate paper in which he replied to a critic in the "North American Review" a little more than four years ago.[111] In the first place, then, as to time. It will not do to say that there never was a time when such a product as life, animated or organized life, had its first existence. To whatever it owed its existence, it must at some time have begun to exist. It matters not how far back in the ages of the globe you place it: you must contemplate a time when it did not exist, and a point of time at which it began to exist. It matters not that you can not fix this time. There was such a time, whether you can fix it chronologically or not. In the next place, however minute the supposed gradations which you trace backward from a recognizable organism to the primal protoplasmic substance, out of which you suppose it to have been gradually evolved, and through whatever extent of time you imagine these gradations to have been worked out by the operation of the forces of Nature, modifying successive beings, you must find an organism to which you can attribute life. Whatever that organism was, it was the commencement of organic life; for, when you go back of it in the series, you come to something that was not organic life, but was merely a collection of molecules or a product of aggregated molecules, that had a capacity to be developed into an animated organism under favorable conditions. "It is," says Mr. Spencer, "by the action of the successively higher forms on one another, joined with the action of environing conditions, that the highest forms are reached." Some one, then, of those highest forms, something that can be called an animal organism, some being endowed with life, was the commencement of organic life on the globe; and it is just as correct and necessary to speak of it as the "absolute" commencement as it is when we speak of Darwin's aquatic grub, or of the Mosaic account of the creation of the different animals by the hand and will of God. Neither Mr. Spencer nor any other man can construct a chain of animated existence back into the region of its non-existence without showing that it began to have an existence. He can say that the affirmation of universal evolution is in itself a negation of an absolute commencement of anything. And so it is theoretically. But this does not get over the difficulty. On his own explanation of the mode in which organisms have been evolved, there must have been a first organism, and in that first organism life began. So that I am not yet prepared to yield my criticism, or to yield my convictions to a writer who is so much carried away by his theory.

Kosmicos. But you will allow that the theory is perfect in itself; and why, then, do you say that he is carried away by it? You ought either to give up your criticism, or to show that there is a superior hypothesis by which to account for the origin of organisms, and one that is supported by stronger proofs and better reasoning. You have nothing to oppose to Mr. Spencer's explanation of the origin of organic life, excepting the fable which you find in the book of Genesis.

Sophereus. Undoubtedly the opposite hypothesis is that which attributes to a Creator the production of organic life; and whether the Mosaic account, as it stands, be a fable or a true narrative of an actual occurrence, what we have to do is to ascertain, upon correct principles of reasoning, whether the creating power can be dispensed with. Mr. Spencer dispenses with it altogether. He gives it a direct negative in the most absolute manner. But the perfection of his theory depends upon its ability to sustain itself as an explanation of the existence of organisms without the intervention of a creating power anywhere at any time. I have already suggested the serious defect of his whole philosophic scheme as applied to the existence of organisms, namely, that the foundation of the theory, the existence of the molecules with their properties and capacities tending to rearrangement under the laws of matter and motion, those laws themselves, and the environing conditions which assist the process of adjustment and combination, must all have had an origin, or a cause. If we can get along without that origin, without any cause, without any actor laying the foundations of the world, we can make a theory. But that theory can not sustain itself by such a negation if all experience, observation, and reflection amount to anything; for these all point in one direction. They all tend to show that every existing thing must have had a cause, that every product must have had an origin, and, if we place that origin in the operation of certain laws of matter and motion upon and among the primal molecules of matter, we still have to look for the origin of those laws and of the molecules on which they have operated. If we say that these things had no origin, that they existed without having been caused to exist, we end in a negation at which reason at once rebels. If, on the other hand, we reject, as we must reject, this negation, then the same power which could establish the laws of matter and motion, and give origin to the molecules and the favoring conditions by which their aggregated higher forms are supposed to have been developed, was alike capable of the direct production of species, the creation of the sexes, and the establishment of the laws of procreation and gestation. So that it becomes a question of probability, of the weight of evidence, as to whether we can explain the phenomena of species, of the sexual division and the sexual union, with all that they involve, without the hypothesis of direct intervention, design, and formative skill of a boundless character. I have seen no explanation of the origin of species and of the sexual distinction, with its concomitant methods of reproduction, that does not end in an utter blank, whenever it undertakes to dispense with that kind of direct design to which is derisively given the name of "miraculous interposition," but which in truth implies no miracle at all.

Kosmicos. I have to be perpetually recalling you to the first principles of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. You seem to think it enough to point to the existence of species and the sexual division, as if his philosophy did not afford the means of accounting for them by the operation of natural causes. Let me put to you, then, this question: If natural causes have produced a crystal, by successive new combinations of molecules of matter through gradations rising successively into higher forms, why should not natural causes, acting upon other molecules in a corresponding way, have produced organic life, or animated organisms? If natural causes have evolved out of certain molecules the substance known as organizable protein, why should not the continued operation of the same or similar causes have modified organizable protein into some distinct and recognizable animated organism? If you admit this as a possible or highly probable result, why should not natural causes have produced, in the course of millions of years, the division of the sexes and the methods of procreation and multiplication?

Sophereus. I will assign the reasons for not adopting the conclusions to which you expect me to arrive, in a certain order. In the first place, the capacity of certain molecules to result in the formation of a crystal, under the operation of what you call natural causes, requires that the molecules, their capacity, and the natural causes should all have had an origin, call it known or unknown. The cause was of equal potency to produce the crystal directly, or anything else that exists in Nature. The same thing is true of certain other molecules which, under the operation of the so-called natural causes, have resulted in organizable protein. There must have been an origin to the molecules, to their capacity, and to the laws which effect their combinations; and this cause could equally fashion an organism and fashion it in the related forms of male and female by direct intervention, for to such a power there is no assignable limit. In the next place, the distinction between inanimate and animated matter, between beings endowed and beings not endowed with animal life, is a distinction that can not be overlooked; for, although we find this distinction to be a fact that has resulted after the operation of whatever causes may have produced it, we must still note that there is a distinction, and a very important one. It may be that the dividing line is very difficult of detection; that it is impossible to determine in all cases just where organizable matter passes from dead matter into a living organism. But that at some point there has arisen a living organism, however produced, is certain. Now, suppose that what you call natural causes have operated to bring organizable matter up to this dividing line, the question is, whether we can conclude that they have had the potency to pass that line, and to lead of themselves to all the varying and manifold results of species, the division of the sexes, and all that follows that division. Certain great facts seem to me to negative this conclusion. The first is, that we have species, which differ absolutely from each other as organisms, in their modes of life, and their destinies, however strong may be the resemblances which obtain among them in certain respects. The second fact is, that each of the true species is divided into the related forms of male and female, and is placed under a law of procreation, by the sexual union, for the multiplication of individuals of that species. The third fact is, that no crosses take place in Nature between different species of animals—between the true species—resulting in a third species, or a third animal. It is true that multiplication of individuals of some of the lowest organisms takes place without the bisexual process of procreation, as where, in the severance of a part of an organism the severed part grows, under favorable conditions, into a perfect organism of the same kind, as in the analogous phenomenon of a plant propagated by a branch or a slip from the parent stem. But this occurrence does not take place among the animals which are placed for their multiplication under the law of the sexual union and the sexual procreation. The sexual division, therefore, the law of sexual procreation, and all that they involve, have to be accounted for. Can they be accounted for by the theory of evolution? Wherever you place their first occurrence, you have to find a process adequate to their production. What, then, entitles you to say that the hypothesis of their production, by the capacity and tendency of organizable substances, when they have reached certain combinations, is superior to the hypothesis of a direct interposition and a formative will? At the outset, you must begin with some interposition and some formative will; you must account for the existence of the very capacities of matter to become organized under the laws of the redistribution of matter and motion, or you will end nowhere whatever. If you assume, as you must, that, in laying "the foundations of the world," there was exercised some interposition and some formative will, you have a power which was just as adequate to the production of species, and their sexual division, as it was to the endowment of matter with certain properties and capacities, and the establishment of any laws for the redistribution of matter and motion. If you deny the existence and potency of the original power in the one production you must deny them in the other. If you concede them in the one case, you must concede them in the other. Now, although the original power was equal to the endowment of organizable matter with its capacities for and tendencies to organization, and may be theoretically assumed to have made that endowment, the question is, whether these capacities and tendencies, without special formative interposition, and by the mere force of what you call natural causes, were equal to the production of such phenomena as the division of the sexes and all that follows that division. Can it with any truth he said that the so-called natural causes have produced any phenomena which can be compared, on the question of special design, to the phenomena of the sexual division, the law of sexual procreation, and the whole system of the multiplication of individuals of distinct and true species? When I can see any facts which will warrant the belief that the origin of the sexes is to be attributed to the capacity of organizable protein to form itself into new compounds, to the capacity of these new compounds to become living organisms, and to the capacity of these living organisms, without the intervention of any formative will specially designing the result, to divide themselves into related forms of male and female, to establish for themselves the law of procreation, and to limit that procreation to the same species, I shall, perhaps, begin to see some ground for the superior claims of the evolution hypothesis. I should like, by-the-by, to see a system of classification of animal organisms, based exclusively on the distinction between the bisexual and the unisexual, or the non-sexual, methods of reproduction, and without running it out into the analogies of the vegetable world. I fancy that it would be found extremely difficult to account for the bisexual division without reaching the conclusion that it required and was effected by a special interposition. At all events, I should like to see it explained how the asexual and the unisexual construction passed into the bisexual by the mere operation of what you call natural causes.

Kosmicos. You said, a while ago, that you had never learned any nursery-stories. Yet, all along, you seem to me to have been under the influence of the Mosaic account of the creation. Of course you have read it, and, although you did not learn anything about it in childhood, and now try to treat it solely as a hypothesis, without any regard to its claims as a divinely inspired narrative, it is certainly worth your while to see how completely it becomes an idle tale of the nursery when scientific tests are applied to it. Hear what Spencer says about the creation of man, as given by Moses: "The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and molds a new creature, as a potter might mold a vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of special creations."