More puzzling still is a problem presented to the special-creationist by a batrachian inhabiting Central Australia. In a region once peopled by numerous animals but now made unfit by continuous droughts, there exists a frog which, when the pools are drying up, fills itself with water and burrowing in the mud hibernates until the next rains; which may come in a year or may be delayed for two years. What is to be thought of this creature? Were its structure and the accompanying instinct divinely planned to fit it to this particular habitat?
Many such questions might be asked which, if answered as the current theory necessitates, imply a divine nature hardly like that otherwise assumed.
§ 114. Those who espouse the aboriginal hypothesis entangle themselves in yet other theological difficulties. This assumption that each kind of organism was specially designed, carries with it the implication that the designer intended everything which results from the design. There is no escape from the admission that if organisms were severally constructed with a view to their respective ends, then the character of the constructor is indicated both by the ends themselves, and the perfection or imperfection with which the organisms are fitted to them. Observe the consequences.
Without dwelling on the question recently raised, why during untold millions of years there existed on the Earth no beings endowed with capacities for wide thought and high feeling, we may content ourselves with asking why, at present, the Earth is largely peopled by creatures which inflict on one another so much suffering? Omitting the human race, whose defects and miseries the current theology professes to account for, and limiting ourselves to the lower creation, what must we think of the countless different pain-inflicting appliances and instincts with which animals are endowed? Not only now, and not only ever since men have lived, has the Earth been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures; but palæontology shows us that from the earliest eras geologically recorded, there has been going on this universal carnage. Fossil structures, in common with the structures of existing animals, show us elaborate weapons for destroying other animals. We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. How is this to be explained? How happens it that animals were so designed as to render this bloodshed necessary? How happens it that in almost every species the number of individuals annually born is such that the majority die by starvation or by violence before arriving at maturity? Whoever contends that each kind of animal was specially designed, must assert either that there was a deliberate intention on the part of the Creator to produce these results, or that there was an inability to prevent them. Which alternative does he prefer?—to cast an imputation on the divine character or to assert a limitation of the divine power? It is useless for him to plead that the destruction of the less powerful by the more powerful, is a means of preventing the miseries of decrepitude and incapacity, and therefore works beneficently. For even were the chief mortality among the aged instead of among the young, there would still arise the unanswerable question—why were not animals constructed in such ways as to avoid these evils? why were not their rates of multiplication, their degrees of intelligence, and their propensities, so adjusted that these sufferings might be escaped? And if decline of vigour was a necessary accompaniment of age, why was it not provided that the organic actions should end in sudden death, whenever they fell below the level required for pleasurable existence? Will any one who contends that organisms were specially designed, assert that they could not have been so designed as to prevent suffering? And if he admits that they could have been made so as to prevent suffering, will he assert that the Creator preferred making them in such ways as to inflict suffering?
Even as thus presented the difficulty is sufficiently great; but it appears immensely greater when we examine the facts more closely. So long as we contemplate only the preying of the superior on the inferior, some good appears to be extracted from the evil—a certain amount of life of a higher order, is supported by sacrificing a great deal of life of a lower order. So long, too, as we leave out all mortality but that which, by carrying off the least perfect members of each species, leaves the most perfect members to survive and multiply; we see some compensating benefit reached through the suffering inflicted. But what shall we say on finding innumerable cases in which the suffering inflicted brings no compensating benefit? What shall we say when we see the inferior destroying the superior? What shall we say on finding elaborate appliances for furthering the multiplication of organisms incapable of feeling, at the expense of misery to organisms capable of happiness?
Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the species are parasites. "The number of these parasites," says Prof. Owen, "may be conceived when it is stated that almost every known animal has its peculiar species, and generally more than one, sometimes as many as, or even more kinds than, infest the human body." This parasitism begins among the most minute creatures and pervades the entire animal kingdom from the lowest to the highest. Even Protozoa, made visible to us only by the microscope, are infested, as is Paramœcium by broods of Sphærophrya; while in large and complex animals parasites are everywhere present in great variety. More than this is true. There are parasites upon parasites—an arrangement such that those which are torturing the creatures they inhabit are themselves tortured by indwelling creatures still smaller: looking like an ingenious accumulation of pains upon pains.
But passing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dignity, let us limit ourselves to the case of Man. The Bothriocephalus latus and the Tænia solium, are two kinds of tape-worm, which flourish in the human intestines; producing great constitutional disturbances, sometimes ending in insanity; and from the germs of the Tænia, when carried into other parts of the body, arise certain partially-developed forms known as Cysticerci, Echinococci, and Cœnuri, which cause disorganization more or less extensive in the brain, the lungs, the liver, the heart, the eye, &c., often ending fatally after long-continued suffering. Five other parasites, belonging to a different class, are found in the viscera of man—the Trichocephalus, the Oxyuris, the Strongylus (two species), the Ancylostomum and the Ascaris; which, beyond that defect of nutrition which they necessarily cause, sometimes induce certain irritations that lead to complete demoralization. Of another class of entozoa, belonging to the subdivision Trematoda, there are five kinds found in different organs of the human body—the liver and gall-duct, the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. Then we have the Trichina spiralis, which passes through one phase of its existence imbedded in the muscles and through another phase of its existence in the intestine; and which, by the induced disease Trichinosis, has lately committed such ravages in Germany as to cause a panic. To these we must add the Guinea-worm, which in some part of Africa and India makes men miserable by burrowing in their legs; and the more terrible African parasite the Bilharzia, which affects 30 per cent. of the natives on the east coast with bleeding of the bladder. From entozoa, let us pass to epizoa. There are two kinds of Acari, one of them inhabiting the follicles of the skin and the other producing the itch. There are creatures that bury themselves beneath the skin and lay their eggs there; and there are three species of lice which infest the surface of the body. Nor is this all. Besides animal parasites there are sundry vegetal parasites, which grow and multiply at our cost. The Sarcina ventriculi inhabits the stomach, and produces gastric disturbance. The Leptothrix buccalis is extremely general in the mouth, and may have something to do with the decay of teeth. And besides these there are microscopic fungi which produce ringworm, porrigo, pityriasis, thrush, &c. Thus the human body is the habitat of parasites, internal and external, animal and vegetal, numbering, if all are set down, between two and three dozen species; sundry of which are peculiar to Man, and many of which produce great suffering and not unfrequently death. What interpretation is to be put on these facts by those who espouse the hypothesis of special creations? According to this hypothesis, all these parasites were designed for their respective modes of life. They were endowed with constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing nutriment from the human body; they were furnished with appliances, often of a formidable kind, enabling them to root themselves in and upon the human body; and they were made prolific in an almost incredible degree, that their germs might have a sufficient number of chances of finding their way into the human body. In short, elaborate contrivances were combined to insure the continuance of their respective races; and to make it impossible for the successive generations of men to avoid being preyed on by them. What shall we say to this arrangement? Shall we say that "the head and crown of things," was provided as a habitat for these parasites? Shall we say that these degraded creatures, incapable of thought or enjoyment, were created that they might cause human misery? One or other of these alternatives must be chosen by those who contend that every kind of organism was separately devised by the Creator. Which do they prefer? With the conception of two antagonist powers, which severally work good and evil in the world, the facts are congruous enough. But with the conception of a supreme beneficence, this gratuitous infliction of pain is absolutely incompatible.
§ 115. See then the results of our examination. The belief in special creations of organisms arose among men during the era of profoundest darkness; and it belongs to a family of beliefs which have nearly all died out as enlightenment has increased. It is without a solitary established fact on which to stand; and when the attempt is made to put it into definite shape in the mind, it turns out to be only a pseud-idea. This mere verbal hypothesis, which men idly accept as a real or thinkable hypothesis, is of the same nature as would be one, based on a day's observation of human life, that each man and woman was specially created—an hypothesis not suggested by evidence but by lack of evidence—an hypothesis which formulates ignorance into a semblance of knowledge. Further, we see that this hypothesis, failing to satisfy men's intellectual need of an interpretation, fails also to satisfy their moral sentiment. It is quite inconsistent with those conceptions of the divine nature which they profess to entertain. If infinite power was to be demonstrated, then, either by the special creation of every individual, or by the production of species by some method of natural genesis, it would be better demonstrated than by the use of two methods, as assumed by the hypothesis. And if infinite goodness was to be demonstrated, then, not only do the provisions of organic structure, if they are specially devised, fail to demonstrate it, but there is an enormous mass of them which imply malevolence rather than benevolence.
Thus the hypothesis of special creations turns out to be worthless by its derivation; worthless in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless as absolutely without evidence; worthless as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless as not satisfying a moral want. We must therefore consider it as counting for nothing, in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings.