Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

As the new individual animal grows into further development, we find that along with his animal organism and united with it by a tie which we can not see, but about which we can reason, there is apparently present a kind of life that is something more than the life of the body. The further we carry our investigations of the phenomena which indicate the existence of this mental life, the more we become convinced that it is the life of a spiritual organism. As the Creator had the power to give existence to the corporeal organism, why had he not an equal power to give existence to a spiritual organism? If he established the law of sexual union between a male and a female in order to perpetuate the type of animal to which they belong—the law which gives existence to a new individual of that animal type every time that a new conception and a new birth take place—why should he not have established the collateral law that every time there is a new birth of an infant there shall come into existence a spiritual entity which shall be united to the corporeal organism for a time, thus constituting in that infant a dual existence which makes his whole individuality during this life? If we suppose that the physical organism of our double natures was left to be worked out by a very slow process, by which physical organisms are developed out of one another—or by which we theoretically suppose them to have been so developed—why is it necessary to suppose that our spirits or souls have been developed in the same way or by an analogous method? What reason have we to believe that the Creator works by the same methods in the spiritual world, or by methods that are of the same nature as those which we think we can discover to be his methods in giving existence to corporeal organisms? The two realms of spirit and matter are so completely unlike that we are not compelled to believe that the methods by which creation of organisms of the two kinds are effected by the Almighty are necessarily or probably the same.

In order to be clearly understood I will now repeat my hypothesis in a distinct form. I assume the existence of a pair of animals of the human type, male and female, endowed with the power of producing new individuals of the same type. In their physical organisms is established the law of procreation, and in the female counterpart of that organism is established the concomitant law of conception and parturition. Thus far provision is made for the production of a new individual physically organized like the parents. In those parents there is also established another law, by the operation of which the same process which results in the production of the new individual animal organism brings into existence a spiritual organism, which is united with and becomes the companion of the physical organism so long as the latter shall continue to live. These laws established in the first pair and in every succeeding pair continue to operate through every succeeding generation. Perhaps it will be said that this attributes the production of a spiritual organism to a physical process; but, in truth, it does no more than to assert the simultaneous production of the two existences. It is not necessary to assume that the fœtus which becomes at birth the human infant is before birth animated by a soul; for it is not necessary to suppose, nor is it apparently true, that the physical organism is complete until birth takes place and the breath of life enters the lungs, thus constituting a new life other than that of the fœtus or the unborn child, although the one is a continuation of the other. At whatever point of time the complete animal organism is in a condition to be observed so that we can say here is a living child, at that point we begin to perceive a capacity to receive impressions from the external world without the connection that has theretofore existed between the unborn child and the maternal system. This capacity must either be attributed to the individual experience of the infant, so that without experience of his own he can not begin to be possessed of a growing intelligence, or it must be imputed to an innate and implanted power resident in a spiritual organism that comes into exercise whenever the physical organism has begun to draw the breath of life.

The evolution hypothesis of the origin of the human mind necessarily leaves its nature in an indeterminate state that will not satisfy the requirements of sound reasoning. In one mode of stating and reasoning upon this hypothesis it is assumed that there is not now and never was a mental existence that was created in each individual of the race at his birth; but that at some very remote period in the history of successive animal organisms there was produced an animal of a highly developed nervous structure, capable of intelligence by reason of a superior power of receiving physical impressions and co-ordinating them into states of consciousness which correspond to the physical feelings; and to the perpetually recurring series of these states of consciousness we give the name of mind. This capacity of intelligence is transmitted from parents to offspring, the experiences of the former being registered in the brain of the latter; but however complete may be the inherited nervous structure, and however great the capacity for intelligence, mind in each individual of the race is evidenced by nothing but a constant succession and variation of certain states of feelings produced in the nervous structure.

Against this view we may place what we know from constant observation. We know that it has been ordained, as a consequence of the sexual union of two individuals of opposite sex, there shall come into existence a new individual of the same physical organism as the parents. Of the interior process by which this product is effected we must remain ignorant, but about the fact there can be no doubt. That fact is, that by the union of certain vesicles contributed by each of the parents there results a new individual organism. We know further that simultaneously with the complete production of the new physical organism, there comes into being, and is incorporated with it, an existence that we are compelled by the phenomena which it manifests to regard as a non-physical and a spiritual organism. Of the process by which this distinct existence is effected, we must remain as ignorant as we are of the process by which the physical organism was made to result from the sexual union of the parents. But of the fact there can be no more doubt in the one case than in the other. In every instance of a new birth of a perfect infant, we know that there results a dual existence in the same individual; the one manifested by physical, the other by mental phenomena. To argue that the mental and spiritual existence grew out of an improved and improving physical organism in long-past ages, and became an adjunct to that organism after it had attained a certain development, without any intervention of the creating power at each new birth of an individual infant, is to limit the power of the Creator in a realm wherein the subject of his creating power is essentially unlike the subject with which he deals when he deals with physical organisms. In all reasoning upon the origin and nature of the human mind, the boundless power of the Creator must be assumed. In judging of the probabilities of his methods of action, it is the safest course to be guided by what we can see takes place at every new birth of a human infant. The physical organism results from the operation of a certain law. The mental organism results, it is alike rational to presume, from the operation of a certain other law. How either of these laws operates we are not permitted to know, but we can as safely infer the one as the other, from what is open to our observation.

I shall now touch briefly upon another argument, the foundation of which is to be tested by historical facts into the truth of which I shall not here inquire, because they must, for the purposes for which I use them, be assumed. The immortality of the human soul is said to have been proved by a Divine revelation. This great fact is supposed to be established by evidence of a character quite different from that which convinces us of the existence and attributes of the Almighty. But, assuming revelation to be a fact, it has an important bearing upon the subject of this essay, because the question arises, for what conceivable reason the Almighty should have made to us a revelation of our immortality, through the direct testimony of a competent witness, if we are not spiritual beings. Information of a fact supposes that there was a person to be informed. Concurrently with the consciousness which assures us of our personality, we have the assurance of our immortality certified to us by a messenger expressly authorized to give us the information. If the mind, or that part of our individuality which we call the soul, is in its origin and nature nothing but what the evolution theory supposes, what was there to be informed of immortality, or of anything else? The possibility and certainty of an existence after the death of the body is a conviction that must exercise great influence over the conduct of men in this life. It is consistent with the whole apparent scheme of the revelation to suppose that it was made for a twofold purpose: first, to cause men to lead better lives in this world than they might have led without this information and conviction; and, secondly, to form them for greater happiness in another world. The first of these purposes might have been effectuated by causing men to believe in their own immortality, notwithstanding the belief might be a delusion because there is no being capable, in fact, of any existence after the life of the body is ended. But such a method of action is hardly to be imputed to the Creator and Supreme Governor of the universe, according to the ideas of his character which natural religion alone will give us. It is not in accordance with rational conceptions of his attributes to suppose that he deludes his rational creatures with assurances or apparent proofs of something that is not true for the sake of making them act as if it were true. When we find ourselves running into a hypothesis of this kind, we may be pretty sure that we are departing from correct principles of reasoning. In regard to the second of the supposed purposes for which the revelation of immortality was made—to form men for greater happiness in another state of existence—it is quite obvious that the supposed scheme of the revelation is a mere delusion, if we are not beings capable of a continued spiritual existence after the death of our bodies. It is therefore a matter of great consequence to determine what the evolution theory of the origin and nature of the human mind makes us out to be.

I have never seen any statement of that theory that does not lead to the conclusion that man is a highly developed animal organism, whose mental existence is not something created in each individual of the race, and of a substance and organized structure different from the physical organism, but whose mental phenomena are merely exhibitions and effects of occurrences taking place in the physical system, and assuming the shape of what for distinctness is called thought. In whatever form this theory has been stated by its most distinguished professors, it leaves only an interval of degree, and not an interval of kind, between the mind of man and that which, in some of the other animals, is supposed to be mind. The evolution doctrine, taken in one of its aspects, supposes one grand chain of animal organisms, rising higher and higher in the scale of animal life, but connected together by ordinary generation, so that they are of one kindred throughout; but that, as each distinct species grows out of predecessors, by gradual improvements and increments, forming more and more elaborate organisms, man is the consummate product of the whole process. But when we ask at what point or stage in the series of developing animal organisms the mind of man was produced, or what it was when produced, we get no satisfactory answer. To the first question, it can only be answered, as Darwin himself answers, that there must be a definition of man before we can determine at what time he came to exist. To the second question, we have answers which differ materially from each other. First, we have whatever we can extract from such a system of psychology as Mr. Spencer's, which ignores the capability of the mind to exist independent of the nervous structure and the brain, because it excludes the idea of any ego, any me, any person, and makes consciousness to consist of a connected series of physical feelings, to which there are corresponding psychical equivalents that he calls mental states. It would seem to follow, therefore, that when there is no longer remaining for the individual any nervous structure and any brain, the mental states, or psychical side of the physical impressions, must cease; or, in other words, that the only existing ego has come to an end.

On the other hand, I have seen an ingenious hypothesis which it is well to refer to, because it illustrates the efforts that are often made to reconcile the doctrines of evolution with a belief in immortality. This hypothesis by no means ignores the possibility of a spiritual existence, or the spiritual as distinguished from the material world. But it assumes that man was produced under the operation of physical laws; and that after he had become a completed product—the consummate and finished end of the whole process of evolution—he passed under the dominion and operation of other and different laws, and is saved from annihilation by the intervention of a change from the physical to the spiritual laws of his Creator. Put into a condensed form, this theory has been thus stated: Having spent countless æons in forming man, by the slow process of animal evolution, God will not suffer him to fall back into elemental flames, and be consumed by the further operation of physical laws, but will transfer him into the dominion of the spiritual laws that are held in reserve for his salvation.

One of the first questions to be asked, in reference to this hypothesis, is, Who or what is it that God is supposed to have spent countless æons in creating by the slow process of animal evolution? If we contemplate a single specimen of the human race, we find a bodily organism, endowed with life like that of other animals, and acted upon by physical laws throughout the whole period of its existence. We also find present in the same individual a mental existence, which is certified to us by evidence entirely different from that by which we obtain a knowledge of the physical organism. As the methods employed by the Creator in the production of the physical organism, whatever we may suppose them to have been, were physical laws operating upon matter, so the methods employed by him in the production of a spiritual existence must have operated in a domain that was wholly aside from the physical world. Each of these distinct realms is equally under the government of an Omnipotent Being; and while we may suppose that in the one he employed a very slow process, such as the evolution of animal organisms out of one another is imagined to have been, there is no conceivable reason why he should not, in the other and very different realm, have resorted to the direct creation of a spiritual existence, which can not, in the nature of things, have required to be produced by the action of physical laws. When, at the birth of each individual of the human race, the two existences become united, when, in consequence of the operation of that sexual union of the parents which has been ordained for the production of a new individual, the physical and the spiritual existence become incorporated in the one being, the fact that they remain for a certain time mutually dependent and mutually useful, co-operating in the purposes of their temporary connection, does not change their essential nature. The one may be destructible because the operation of physical laws may dissolve the ligaments that hold it together; the other may be indestructible, because the operation of spiritual laws will hold together the spiritual organism that is in its nature independent of the laws of matter.

I can therefore see no necessary connection between the methods employed by the Almighty in the production of an animal and the methods employed by him in the production of a soul. That in the birth of the individual the two come into existence simultaneously, and are temporarily united in one and the same being, only proves that the two existences are contemporaneous in their joint inception. It does not prove that they are of the same nature, or the same substance, or that the physical organism is the only ego, or that the psychical existence is nothing but certain states of the material structure, to whose aggregate manifestations certain philosophers give the name of mind, while denying to them personal individuality and the consciousness of a distinct being.