Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

Such a conception of God, as a perpetual Creator, is essential to the intellectual rest of the human mind, and it is painful to see the irresolution of Professor Tyndall in regard to it. "Clear and confident as Jove" in the domain which is his own, where his masterly powers of observation, discrimination, and judgment leave him without a peer, he seems shorn of his strength on entering this field of metaphysics. He has warned theology not to trespass on the grounds of science; or, if she enters them, to submit to science as her superior. Theology has been in the habit of treating science in the same supercilious way; telling her that she was an intruder if she ventured to discuss questions of psychology or religion. This is equally unwise on either part. Theologians should be glad when men of science become seriously interested in these great questions of the Whence and the Whither. The address of Professor Tyndall is excellent in its intention as well as in its candid and manly treatment of the subject. Its indecision and indistinctness are probably due to his having accepted too implicitly the guidance of Spencer, thus assuming that religious truth is unknowable, that creation is impossible, and that only phenomena can become objects of knowledge. "Insoluble mystery" is therefore his final answer to the questions he has himself raised.

Goethe is wiser when he follows the Apostle Paul, and regards the Deity as "the fullness which filleth all in all." There is no unity to thought, and no hope for scientific progress, more than for moral culture, unless we see intelligence at the centre, intelligence on the circumference of being. To place an impenetrable darkness instead of an unclouded light on the throne of the universe, is to throw a shadow over the Creation.

We say that there is no unity in thought without this conviction. The only real unity we know in the world is our own. All we see around us, including our own body, is divisible, subject to alteration and change. Only the ego, or soul, is conscious of a perfect unity in a perpetual identity. Unless we can attribute to the source of all being a similar personal unity, there can be no coherence to science, but it must forever remain fragmentary and divided. This is what we mean by asserting the personality of Deity. This idea reaches what Lord Bacon calls "the vertical point of natural philosophy" or "the summary law of Nature," and constitutes, as he declares, "the union of all things in a perpetual and uniform law."

And unless we can recognize in the ultimate fountain of being an intelligent purpose, the meaning of the universe departs. Without intelligence in the cause there is none in the effect. Then the world has no meaning, life no aim. The universe comes out of darkness, and is plunging into darkness again.

Take away from the domain of knowledge the idea of a creating and presiding intelligence, and there remains no motive for science itself. Professor Tyndall is sagacious enough to see and candid enough to admit that "without moral force to whip it into action the achievements of the intellect would be poor indeed," and that "science itself not unfrequently derives motive power from ultra-scientific sources." Faith in God, as an intelligent creator and ruler of the world, has awakened enthusiasm for scientific investigation among both the Aryan and the Semitic races.

The purest and highest form of monotheism is that of Christianity; and in Christendom has science made its largest progress. Not by martyrs for science, but by martyrs for religion, has the human mind been emancipated. Mr. Tyndall says of scientific freedom, "We fought and won our battle even in the middle ages." But the heroes of intellectual liberty have been the heroes of faith. Hundreds of thousands have died for a religious creed; but how many have died for a scientific theory? Luther went to Worms, and maintained his opinions there in defiance of the anathemas of the church and the ban of the empire, but Galileo denied his most cherished convictions on his knees. Galileo was as noble a character as Luther; but science does not create the texture of soul which makes so many martyrs in all the religious sects of Christendom. Let the doctrine of cosmical force supplant our faith in the Almighty, and in a few hundred years science would probably fade out of the world from pure inanition. The world would probably not care enough for anything to care for science. The light of eternity must fall on this our human and earthly life, to arouse the soul to a living and permanent interest even in things seen and temporal.

Professor Tyndall says: "Whether the views of Lucretius, Darwin, and Spencer are right or wrong, we claim the freedom to discuss them. The ground which they cover is scientific ground."

It is not only a right, but a duty to examine these theories, since they are held seriously and urged earnestly by able men. But we must doubt whether they ought to claim the authority of science. They are proposed by scientific men, and they refer to scientific subjects. But these theories, in their present development, belong to metaphysics rather than to science. Science consists, first, of observation of facts; secondly, of laws inferred from those facts; and thirdly, of a verification of those laws by new observation and experiment. That which cannot be verified is no part of science; astronomy is a science, since every eclipse and occultation verifies its laws; geology is a science, since every new observation of the strata and their contents accords with the established part of the system; chemistry is a science for the same reason. But Darwin's theory of the transformation of species by natural selection is as yet unverified. "There is no evidence of a direct descent of earlier from later species in the geological succession of animals." So says Agassiz, and on this point his testimony can hardly be impeached. Professor W. Thompson, another good geological authority, says: "In successive geological formations, although new species are constantly appearing, and there is abundant evidence of progressive change, no single case has yet been observed of one species passing through a series of inappreciable modifications into another." Neither has any such change taken place within historic times, for the animals and plants found in the tombs of Egypt are "identical, in all respects," says M. Quatrefages, "with those now existing." He adds the opinion, after a very careful and candid examination of the hypothesis of Darwin, that "the theory and the facts do not agree." Not being verified, then, this theory is not yet science, but an unverified mental hypothesis, that is, metaphysics.

It is important that this should be distinctly said, for when men eminent in science propound new theories, these theories themselves are apt to be regarded as science, and those who oppose them are accused of being opposed to science. This is the tendency which Professor Tyndall has so justly described in this very address: "When the human mind has achieved greatness and given evidence of power in any domain, there is a tendency to credit it with similar power in any other domain." Because Tyndall is great in experimental science, many are apt to accept his cosmological conclusions. Because he is a great observer in natural history, his metaphysical theories are supposed to be supported by observation, and to rest on experience. Professor Tyndall's own address terminates, not in science, but nescience. It treats of a realm of atoms and molecules whose existence science has never demonstrated, and attributes to them potencies which science has never verified. It is a system, not made necessary by the stringent constraint of facts, but avowedly constructed in order to avoid the belief in an intelligent Creator, and a universe marked by the presence of design. His theory, he admits, no less than that of Darwin, was not constructed in the pure interests of truth for its own sake. There was another purpose in both,—to get rid of a theology of final causes, of a theology which conceives of God as a human artificer. He wished to exclude religion from the field of cosmogony, and forbid it to intrude on the region of knowledge. Theologians have often been reproached for studying "with a purpose," but it seems that this is a frailty belonging not to theologians only, but to all human beings who care a good deal for what they believe.

Professor Tyndall accepts religious faith as an important element of human nature, but considers it as confined to the sentiments, and as not based in knowledge. He doubtless comes to this conclusion from following too implicitly the traditions of modern English psychology. These assume that knowledge comes only from without, through the senses, and never from within, through intuition. This prepossession, singularly English and insular, is thus stated by John Stuart Mill in his article on Coleridge. "Sensation, and the mind's consciousness of its own acts, are not only the exclusive sources, but the sole materials of our knowledge. There is no knowledge a priori; no truths cognizable by the mind's inward light, and grounded on intuitive evidence." These views have been developed in England by the two Mills, Herbert Spencer, Bain, and others, who have made great efforts to show how sensations may be transformed into thoughts; how association of ideas may have developed instincts; how hereditary impressions, repeated for a million years, may at last have taken on the aspect of necessary truths. In short, they have laid out great labor and ingenuity in proving that a sensation may, very gradually, be transformed into a thought.