Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root
Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed
With prominent wens globose.”
But though no man lives throughout five hundred years of time, he can trace, by passing in some of the English forests through five hundred yards of space, the history of the oak in all its stages of growth, as correctly as if he did live throughout the five hundred years. Oaks, in the space of a few hundred yards, may be seen in every stage of growth, from the newly burst acorn, that presents to the light its two fleshy lobes, with the first tender rudiments of a leaflet between, up to the giant of the forest, in the hollow of whose trunk the red deer may shelter, and find ample room for the broad spread of his antlers. The fact of the development of the oak, from the minute two-lobed seedling of a week’s growth up to the gigantic tree of five centuries, is as capable of being demonstrated by observation spread over five hundred yards of space, as by observation spread over five hundred years of time. And be it remembered, that the sea-coasts of the world are several hundred thousand miles in extent. Europe is by far the smallest of the earth’s four large divisions, and it is bounded, in proportion to its size, by a greater extent of land than any of the others. And yet the sea-coasts of Europe alone, including those of its islands, exceed twenty-five thousand miles. We have results before us, in this extent of space, identical with those of many hundred thousand years of time; and if terrestrial plants were as certainly developments of the low plants of the sea as the huge oak is a development of the immature seedling, just sprung from the acorn, so vast a stretch of sea-coast could not fail to present us with the intermediate vegetation in all its stages. But the sea-coasts fail to exhibit even a vestige of the intermediate vegetation. Experience spread over an extent of space analogous to millions of years of time, does not furnish, in this department, a single fact corroborative of the development theory, but, on the contrary, many hundreds of facts that bear directly against it.
The author of the “Vestiges” is evidently a practised and tasteful writer, and his work abounds in ingenious combinations of thought; but those powers of abstract reflection on whose vigorous exercise the origination of argument depends, nature seems to have denied him. There are two things in especial which his work wants,—original observation and abstract thought,—the power of seeing for himself and of reasoning for himself; and what we find instead is simply a vivid appreciation of the images of things, as these images exist in other minds, and a vigorous perception of the various shades of resemblance which obtain among them. There is a large amount of analogical power exhibited; but that basis of truth which correct observation can alone furnish, and that ability of nicely distinguishing differences by which the faculty of discerning similarity must be forever regulated and governed, are wanting, in what, in a mind of fine general texture and quality, must be regarded as an extraordinary degree. And hence an ingenious but very unsolid work,—full of images transferred, not from the scientific field, but from the field of scientific mind, and charged with glittering but vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of fancy; which, were they to be used as mere counters in some light literary game of story-telling or character-sketching, would be in no respect out of place, but which, when passed current as the proper coin of philosophic argument, are really frauds on the popular understanding. There are, however, not a few instances in the “Vestiges” and its “Sequel,” in which that defect of reflective power to which I refer rather enhances than diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting to the controversialist mere intangible clouds with which to grapple; that yet, through the existence of a certain superstition in the popular mind, as predisposed to accept as true whatever takes the form of science, as its predecessor the old superstition was inclined a century ago to reject science itself, are at least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of difficulty, the following passage, in which the author of the work cashiers the Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a mere animal-manufacturing piece of clock-work, which bears the name of natural law,[38] furnishes us with a remarkable instance.
“Admitting,” he remarks, “that we see not now any such fact as the production of new species, we at least know, that while such facts were occurring upon earth, there were associated phenomena in progress of a character perfectly ordinary. For example, when the earth received its first fishes, sandstone and limestone were forming in the manner exemplified a few years ago in the ingenious experiments of Sir James Hall; basaltic columns rose for the future wonder of man, according to the principle which Dr. Gregory Watt showed in operation before the eyes of our fathers; and hollows in the igneous rocks were filled with crystals, precisely as they could now be by virtue of electric action, as shown within the last few years by Crosse and Becquerel. The seas obeyed the impulse of gentle breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms, as seas of the present day are doing; the trees grew as now, by favor of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in bad: this while the animals above fishes were yet to be created. The movements of the sea, the meteorological agencies, the disposition which we see in the generality of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most abundant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters of simply natural order, throughout the whole of the ages which saw reptiles enter in their various forms upon the sea and land. It was about the time of the first mammals that the forest of the Dirt-Bed was sinking in natural ruin amidst the sea sludge, as forests of the Plantagenets have been doing for several centuries upon the coast of England. In short all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them; while the supposed extraordinary causes were in requisition for the development of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There surely hence arises a strong presumption against any such causes. It becomes much more likely that the latter phenomena were evolved in the manner of law also, and that we only dream of extraordinary causes here, as men once dreamt of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season, merely because they did not know the laws by which the events in question were evolved.”
How, let us suppose, would David Hume—the greatest thinker of which infidelity can boast—have greeted the auxiliary who could have brought him such an argument as a contribution to the cause? “Your objection, so far as you have stated it,” the philosopher might have said, “amounts simply to this:—Creation by direct act is a miracle; whereas all that exists is propagated and maintained by natural law. Natural laws—to vary the illustration—were in full operation at the period when the Author of the Christian religion was, it is said, engaged in working his miracles. When, according to our opponents, he walked upon the surface of the sea, Peter, through the operation of the natural law of gravitation, was sinking into it; when he withered, by a word, the barren fig-tree, there were other trees on the Mount thriving in conformity with the vegetative laws, under the influence of sun and shower; when he raised the dead Lazarus, there were corpses in the neighboring tombs passing, through the natural putrefactive fermentation, into a state of utter decomposition. In fine, at the time when he was engaged, as Reid and Campbell believe, in working miracles in violation of law, the laws of which these were a violation actually existed, and were every where actively operative; or, to employ your own words, when the New Testament miracles were, it is alleged, in the act of being wrought, ‘all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them.’ Such is the portion of your statement already made; what next?” “It is surely very unlikely,” replies the auxiliary, “that in such a complex mass of phenomena there should have been two totally distinct modes of the exercise of the Divine power,—the mode by miracle and the mode by law.” “Unlikely!” rejoins the philosopher; “on what grounds?” “O, just unlikely,” says the auxiliary;—“unlikely that God should be at once operating on matter through the agency of natural laws, of which man knows much, and through the agency of miraculous acts, of the nature of which man knows nothing. But I have not thought out the subject any further: you have, in the statement already made, my entire argument.” “Ay, I see,” the author of the “Essay on Miracles” would probably have remarked; “you deem it unlikely that Deity should not only work in part, as he has always done, by means of which men,—clever fellows like you and me—think they know a great deal but that he should also work in part, as he has always done, by means of which they know nothing at all. Admirably reasoned out! You are, I make no doubt, a sound, zealous unbeliever in your private capacity, and your argument may have great weight with your own mind, and be, in consequence, worthy of encouragement in a small way; but allow me to suggest that, for the sake of the general cause, it should be kept out of reach of the enemy. There are in the Churches Militant on both sides of the Tweed shrewd combatants, who have nearly as much wit as ourselves.” I think I understand the reference of the author of the “Vestiges” to the dream “of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season.” Taken with what immediately goes before, it means something considerably different from those fancies of the “untutored Indian,” who, according to the poet,
“Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.”
There is a school of infidelity, tolerably well known in the capital of Scotland as by far the most superficial which our country has yet seen, that measures mind with a tape-line and the callipers, and, albeit not Christian, laudably exemplifies, in a loudly expressed regard for science, the Christian grace of loving its enemy. And the belief in a special Providence, who watches over and orders all things, and without whose permission there falleth not even a “sparrow to the ground,” the apostles of this school set wholly aside, substituting, instead, a belief in the indiscriminating operation of natural laws; as if, with the broad fact before them that even man can work out his will merely by knowing and directing these laws, the God by whom they were instituted should lack either the power or the wisdom to make them the pliant ministers of his. It is, I fear, to the distinctive tenet in the creed of this hapless school that the author of the “Vestiges” refers. Nor is it in the least surprising, that a writer who labors through two carefully written volumes,[39] to destroy the existing belief in “God’s works of Creation,” should affect to hold that the belief in his “works of Providence” had been destroyed already. But faith in a special superintendence of Deity is not yet dead: nay, more, He who created the human mind took especial care, in its construction, that, save in a few defective specimens of the race, the belief should never die.
The author of the “Vestiges” complains of the illiberality with which he has been treated. “It has appeared to various critics,” we find him saying, “that very sacred principles are threatened by a doctrine of universal law. A natural origin of life, and a natural basis in organization for the operations of the human mind, speak to them of fatalism and materialism. And, strange to say, those who every day give views of physical cosmogony altogether discrepant in appearance with that of Moses, apply hard names to my book for suggesting an organic cosmogony in the same way, liable to inconsiderate odium. I must firmly protest against this mode of meeting speculations regarding nature. The object of my book, whatever may be said of the manner in which it is treated, is purely scientific. The views which I give of the history of organization stand exactly on the same ground upon which the geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. I am merely endeavoring to read aright another chapter of the mystic book which God has placed under the attention of his creatures.... The absence of all liberality in my reviewers is striking, and especially so in those whose geological doctrines have exposed them to similar misconstruction. If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown upon Newton’s theory of the planetary motions had rushed forward to turn that odium upon the patrons of the dawning science of Geology, they would have been prefiguring the conduct of several of my critics, themselves hardly escaped from the rude hands of the narrow-minded, yet eager to join that rabble against a new and equally unfriended stranger, as if such were the best means of purchasing impunity for themselves. I trust that a little time will enable the public to penetrate this policy.”