We all know that the savage thinks of each striking phenomenon, or group of phenomena, as caused by some separate personal agent; that out of this conception there grows up a polytheistic conception, in which these minor personalities are variously generalized into deities presiding over different divisions of nature; and that these are eventually further generalized. This progressive consolidation of causal agencies may be traced in the creeds of all races, and is far from complete in the creed of the most advanced races. The unlettered rustics who till our fields, do not let the consciousness of a supreme power wholly absorb the aboriginal conceptions of good and evil spirits, and of charms or secret potencies dwelling in particular objects. The earliest mode of thinking changes only as fast as the constant relations among phenomena are established. Scarcely less familiar is the truth, that while accumulating knowledge makes these conceptions of personal causal agents gradually more vague, as it merges them into general causes, it also destroys the habit of thinking of them as working after the methods of personal agents. We do not now, like Kepler, assume guiding spirits to keep the planets in their orbits. It is no longer the universal belief that the sea was once for all mechanically parted from the dry land; or that the mountains were placed where we see them by a sudden creative act. All but a narrow class have ceased to suppose sunshine and storm to be sent in some arbitrary succession. The majority of educated people have given up thinking of epidemics of punishments inflicted by an angry deity. Nor do even the common people regard a madman as one possessed by a demon. That is to say, we everywhere see fading away the anthropomorphic conception of Cause. In one case after another, is abandoned the ascription of phenomena to a will analogous to the human will, working by methods analogous to human methods.
If, then, of this once-numerous family of beliefs the immense majority have become extinct, we may not unreasonably expect that the few remaining members of the family will become extinct. One of these is the belief we are here considering—the belief that each species of organism was specially created. Many who in all else have abandoned the aboriginal theory of things, still hold this remnant of the aboriginal theory. Ask any well-informed man whether he accepts the cosmogony of the Indians, or the Greeks, or the Hebrews, and he will regard the question as next to an insult. Yet one element common to these cosmogonies he very likely retains: not bearing in mind its origin. For whence did he get the doctrine of special creations? Catechise him, and he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be right while all the rest is wrong, he is unable to say. May we not then expect that the relinquishment of all other parts of this story, will by and by be followed by the relinquishment of this remaining part of it?
§ 112. The belief which we find thus questionable, both as being a primitive belief and as being a belief belonging to an almost-extinct family, is a belief not countenanced by a single fact. No one ever saw a special creation; no one ever found proof of an indirect kind that a special creation had taken place. It is significant, as Dr. Hooker remarks, that naturalists who suppose new species to be miraculously originated, habitually suppose the origination to occur in some region remote from human observation. Wherever the order of organic nature is exposed to the view of zoologists and botanists, it expels this conception; and the conception survives only in connexion with imagined places, where the order of organic nature is unknown.
Besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this hypothesis of special creations cannot support itself internally—cannot be framed into a coherent thought. It is one of those illegitimate symbolic conceptions which are mistaken for legitimate symbolic conceptions (First Principles, § 9), because they remain untested. Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like a definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism, when specially created, is created out of nothing? If so, there is a supposed creation of matter; and the creation of matter is inconceivable—implies the establishment of a relation in thought between nothing and something—a relation of which one term is absent—an impossible relation. Is it supposed that the matter of which the new organism consists is not created for the occasion, but is taken out of its pre-existing forms and arranged into a new form? If so, we are met by the question—how is the re-arrangement effected? Of the myriad atoms going to the composition of the new organism, all of them previously dispersed through the neighbouring air and earth, does each, suddenly disengaging itself from its combinations, rush to meet the rest, unite with them into the appropriate chemical compounds, and then fall with certain others into its appointed place in the aggregate of complex tissues and organs? Surely thus to assume a myriad supernatural impulses, differing in their directions and amounts, given to as many different atoms, is a multiplication of mysteries rather than the solution of a mystery. For every one of these impulses, not being the result of a force locally existing in some other form, implies the creation of force; and the creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter. It is thus with all attempted ways of representing the process. The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and moulds a new creature, as a potter moulds a vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of the special-creation doctrine. But having abandoned this crude belief, what belief is he prepared to substitute? If a new organism is not thus produced, then in what way is one produced? or rather—in what way does he conceive a new organism to be produced? We will not ask for the ascertained mode, but will be content with a mode which can be consistently imagined. No such mode, however, is assignable. Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from a divine interposition, do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. They do not really believe, but rather believe they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed, and no such mental representation is here possible.
§ 113. If we imagine mankind to be contemplated by some being as short-lived as an ephemeron, but possessing intelligence like our own—if we imagine such a being studying men and women, during his few hours of life, and speculating as to the mode in which they came into existence; it is manifest that, reasoning in the usual way, he would suppose each man and woman to have been separately created. No appreciable changes of structure occurring in any of them during the time over which his observations extended, this being would probably infer that no changes of structure were taking place, or had taken place; and that from the outset each man and woman had possessed all the characters then visible—had been originally formed with them. The application is obvious. A human life is ephemeral compared with the life of a species; and even the period over which the records of all human lives extend, is ephemeral compared with the life of a species. There is thus a parallel contrast between the immensely-long series of changes which have occurred during the life of a species, and that small portion of the series open to our view. And there is no reason to suppose that the first conclusion drawn by mankind from this small part of the series visible to them, is any nearer the truth than would be the conclusion of the supposed ephemeral being respecting men and women.
This analogy, suggesting as it does how the hypothesis of special creations is merely a formula for our ignorance, raises the question—What reason have we to assume special creations of species but not of individuals; unless it be that in the case of individuals we directly know the process to be otherwise, but in the case of species do not directly know it to be otherwise? Have we any ground for concluding that species were specially created, except the ground that we have no immediate knowledge of their origin? And does our ignorance of the manner in which they arose warrant us in asserting that they arose by special creation?
Another question is suggested by this analogy. Those who, in the absence of immediate evidence of the way in which species arose, assert that they arose not in a natural way allied to that in which individuals arise, but in a supernatural way, think that by this supposition they honour the Unknown Cause of things; and they oppose any antagonist doctrine as amounting to an exclusion of divine power from the world. But if divine power is demonstrated by the separate creation of each species, would it not have been still better demonstrated by the separate creation of each individual? Why should there exist this process of natural genesis? Why should not omnipotence have been proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour? Is it replied that the Creator was able to make individuals arise from one another in a natural succession, but not to make species thus arise? This is to assign a limit to power instead of magnifying it. Either it was possible or not possible to create species and individuals after the same general method. To say that it was not possible is suicidal in those who use this argument; and if it was possible, it is required to say what end is served by the special creation of species which would not have been better served by the special creation of individuals. Again, what is to be thought of the fact that the immense majority of these supposed special creations took place before mankind existed? Those who think that divine power is demonstrated by special creations, have to answer the question—to whom demonstrated? Tacitly or avowedly, they regard the demonstrations as being for the benefit of mankind. But if so, to what purpose were the millions of these demonstrations which took place on the Earth when there were no intelligent beings to contemplate them? Did the Unknowable thus demonstrate his power to himself? Few will have the hardihood to say that any such demonstration was needful. There is no choice but to regard them, either as superfluous exercises of power, which is a derogatory supposition, or as exercises of power that were necessary because species could not be otherwise produced, which is also a derogatory supposition.
§ 113a. Other implications concerning the divine character must be recognized by those who contend that each species arose by divine fiat. It is hardly supposable that Infinite Power is exercised in trivial actions effecting trivial changes. Yet the organic world in its hundreds of thousands of species shows in each sub-division multitudinous forms which, though unlike enough to be classed as specifically distinct, diverge from one another only in small details which have no significance in relation to the life led. Sometimes the number of specific distinctions is so great that did they result from human agency we should call them whimsical.
For example, in Lake Baikal are found 115 species of an amphipod, Gammarus; and the multiplicity becomes startling on learning that this number exceeds the number of all other species of the genus: various as are the conditions to which, throughout the rest of the world, the genus is subject. Still stranger seems the superfluous exercise of power on examining the carpet of living forms at the bottom of the ocean. Not dwelling on the immense variety of creatures unlike in type which live miles below the surface in absolute darkness, it will suffice to instance the Polyzoa alone: low types of animals so small that a thousand of them would not cover a square inch, and on which, nevertheless, there has been, according to the view we are considering, an exercise of creative skill such that by small variations of structure more than 350 species have been produced!
Kindred illustrations are furnished by the fauna of caverns. Are we to suppose that numerous blind creatures—crustaceans, myriapods, spiders, insects, fishes—were specially made sightless to fit them for the Mammoth Cave? Or what shall we say of the Proteus, a low amphibian with rudimentary eyes, which inhabits certain caves in Carniola, Carinthia and Dalmatia and is not found elsewhere. Must we conclude that God went out of his way to devise an animal for these places?