Haeckel was much vexed by two fellow scientists, M. von Baer (died 1876) and G. J. Romanes (died 1894). Baer was prominent in the science of evolution. He was led to theism by his studies. Romanes, a friend of Darwin, had been an adherent of materialism, but through serious study he returned to the belief in God and Christianity. His posthumous work, “Thoughts on Religion, a scientist's religious evolution from Atheism to Christianity,” furnishes a brilliant voucher thereof. Romanes's conversion was a sad blow for Haeckel. However, he constructed an explanation to give himself comfort. “When the news of this conversion,” he wrote, “was first circulated by a friend of Romanes, a zealous English Churchman, the assumption suggested itself to me that it was all a mystification and invention, for it is known that the fanatical champions of ecclesiastical superstition have never hesitated to pervert the truth to save their dogma. Later on, however, it was found that it was really an instance (analogous to the case of old Baer) of one of those interesting psychological metamorphoses with which I have dealt in Chapter 6 of my book. Romaneswas in his last years a sick man. It was pathological debility. The first condition, however, of an unbiassed, pure conception of reason is the normal condition of its organ. His phronema was not in a normal condition.” Haeckel will have to rank among those whose phronema is not in a normal condition a good many other natural scientists; indeed, most of those of higher standing.
Every one knows the celebrated name of Louis Pasteur (died 1895), the discoverer of various bacteria, of whom Huxley says that his manifold inventions have repaid to French industry the five billion francs indemnity which France had to pay to Germany after the war. It is equally well known that Pasteur was to his death a staunch Catholic. “As his soul departed, he held in his hands a small cross of brass, and his last words were the confession of faith and hope” (La Science Catholique, X, 1896, 182). The story is told that one of his pupils asked him how he could be so religious after all his thinking and studying. Pasteur replied: “Just because I have thought and studied, I remained religious like a man of Brittany, and had I thought and studied still more, I would be as religious as a woman of Brittany” (Revue des Questions Scientifiques, 1896, 385).
In the year 1859 great commotion was caused in the world of thought by the appearance of Darwin's book on the “Origin of Species.”It stated that the various species had gradually evolved from most simple, primordial forms, and this by natural selection; not, therefore, in the sense that the Creator had put the laws of evolution into nature, but that in the struggle for existence the survival of the fittest was the result of natural selection. Soon it was claimed that man, too, in his rational life, was the result of an evolution from animal stages; indeed, the whole universe had arisen by the survival of the accidentally fittest. Evolution was to be substituted for creation. In Germany, E. Haeckel was the man who considered it the task of his life to spread those ideas as the established result of science. In our own time a belated high tide is sweeping over the intellectual lowlands.
Darwin himself was an agnostic; to begin with, he lacked all religious training; his mother had died early, his father was a free-thinker, and his education at school was rationalistic. The doubt of all higher truths, and finally, according to his own confession, the doubt respecting the power of reason, were his companions through life. Yet he confesses: “... I never was an atheist in the sense that I would deny the existence of God. I think, in general (and more so the older I grow), but not at all times, agnostic would be a more accurate description of my state of mind” (F. Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, I, 304). Remarkable, however, is the following passage at the end of Darwin's chief work: “It is a great belief, indeed, of the Creator having breathed the embryo of all life surrounding us into a few forms, or in but one single form, and an endless row of most beautiful, most wonderful forms having evolved and are still evolving from such a simple beginning, while our planet, following the laws of gravitation, has steadily revolved in its circle.” [pg 223]What Darwin was lacking in a high degree was a philosophical training of the mind.
In itself the theory of evolution, which asserts the variability of species of animals and plants, is by no means opposed to religious truths. It neither includes a necessity of assuming the origin of the human soul from the essentially lower animal soul, nor is it an atheistic theory. On the contrary, such an evolution would most clearly certify to God's wisdom in laying such a wonderful basis for the progress of nature, provided this theory could be proved by scientific facts; indeed, for an evolution within narrow limits, circumstantial evidence is not lacking. That there is no contradiction between the theory of evolution and the fundamental tenets of Christian Creed is sufficiently shown by the representatives of the theory. Lamarck(died 1829) and Saint-Hilaire (died 1844), both of them representatives of the theory of evolution long before Darwin, believed in God. There were, prior to Darwin, two celebrated Catholic scientists, to wit, Ampère and d'Omalius, who had decidedly taken the part of Saint-Hilairein his controversy with Cuvier. And also after Darwin, a number of Christian and Catholic scientists have contended for the idea of evolution, as, for instance, the pious Swiss geologist, Heer; also Quenstedt, Volkmann, and the American geologist, Ch. Lyell. More recently Catholic scientists have expressed themselves in favour of the theory of evolution; for instance, the noted zoölogist, E. Wasmann, and the geologists Lossen and W. Waagen, both of whom had to bring bitter sacrifices in their career on account of their Catholic faith.
Mature Science Respects Faith.
There have now passed in review the great natural scientists of the past, those living at the present time we shall leave to the judgment of the future. Is it true, then, that the foremost representatives of natural science had the conviction that science and faith are incompatible? No! On the contrary, most of them, and the greatest of them, have professed the fundamental truths of religion, or have even been devout Christians themselves.
“Theism in natural science, or, if you prefer, in natural philosophy,”so says a modern scientist, “rests upon the basis of a fundamental view which an old formula has clothed in words as simple as they are sublime: ‘I believe in God, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and of Earth.’ This confession does not cling to theistic scientists like an egg-shell from the time of unsophisticated childhood faith; it is the result of their entire scientific thought and judgment. This conviction has been professed by the most discerning natural scientists of all ages”(J. Reinke, Naturwissenschaft und Religion).
Still it cannot be denied that some of the great scientists were of different mind, men like R. von Virchow, Tyndall, A. von Humboldt, Du Bois-Reymond. Nor shall it be disputed that, at the present time, a large number of men of average learning are on the side of unbelief. However, it must not be forgotten that unbelief is more frequently pretended to the outside world for appearance's sake than it really dwells in the heart. This is, to a great extent, due to human respect, to public opinion, and the prevailing tendency of science. Then again, it must be remembered, that religiously minded scientists are often crowded out from the schools of science, with the natural result that the others predominate. Another point to be borne in mind is that the atheistic representatives of science are doing more to get themselves talked about; they are seeking more diligently the attention of public opinion. Men like Tyndall, Vogt, Moleschott, Haeckel, are known in larger circles than men like Faraday, Maxwell, Ampère, Volta, Pasteur, who, engaged in serious work, gave no time to making propaganda, as the others did by lecturing and popular writing for materialistic and monistic views in the name of science; they had no desire for the limelight of attention, and for posing as personified science.
All this does not change the fact that a very large number, indeed the largest number, of natural scientists of first rank were believers in God, or of pious, Christian mind. And that is of the greater importance. To do pioneer work in the field of science, to give impetus, to make progress, requires a penetrating and, at the same time, an independent mind, one that can rise above conventional commonplace. The fact that such men have largely been very religious, that they never belittled religion, weighs much more in the balance than the disparagement of inferior minds.