With inexorable persistency this principle is now applied wherever science meets with God and the world beyond. Hence, let us proceed on our way and halt at some points to watch this science at work.
The unbiassed reasoning of the mind shows that this world, limited and finite, in all its phenomena accidental and perishable, cannot have in itself the cause of its existence, hence, that it [pg 237] demands a supernatural creative cause. This solution of the question is by no means demonstrated by liberal science as untenable, it is simply declined.
“Natural science, once for all, has not the least occasion to assume a supernatural act of creation”; this we are told by the famous historian of materialism, F. A. Lange. “To fall back upon explanations of this sort amounts always to straying from scientific grounds, which not only is not permissible in a scientific investigation, but should never enter into consideration.” And L. Plate states: “A creation of matter we cannot assume, nor would such an assumption be any explanation at all; at most, it would be tantamount to exchanging one question mark for another. We natural scientists are modest enough, as matters now stand, to forego a further solution of the question.”They will subscribe to Du Bois-Reymond's “ignoramus” rather than assume the only solution of the question, an act of creation. This scientist, asking himself the question, from where the world-matter received its first impulse, argues: “Let us try to imagine a primordial condition, where matter had not yet been influenced by any cause, and we arrive at the conclusion that matter an infinite time ago was inactive, and equally distributed in infinite space. Since a supernatural impulse does not fit into our theory of the universe, an adequate cause for the first action is lacking.”
Thus they frankly violate the scientific method that demands acceptance of the explanation demonstrated as necessary, and violate it only for the reason to dodge the acknowledgment of a Creator. This is not science, but politics.
But let us ask, Why should it be against science to reckon with supernatural factors? Is it because we cannot disclose with certainty the other world? Are they not aware that such a principle is opposed by the conviction of all mankind, that always held these conceptions to be the highest, and therefore not to be considered illusions? Do they not see, moreover, how they involve themselves in flagrant contradictions? Does not science by means of its laws of reasoning, especially on the principle of causality, constantly infer invisible causes from visible facts? From physical-chemical facts ether and physical atoms, which no man has ever seen, are deduced: from falling stones and the movement of astral bodies is inferred a universal gravitation, undemonstrable by experience; from an anonymous letter is deduced an author. The astronomer deduces from certain facts that fixed stars must have dark companions, [pg 238] visible to no one; from disturbances in the movements of Uranus Leverrier found by calculation the existence and location of Neptune, then not as yet discovered. Hence, what does it mean: “to fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from scientific ground”? Let us imagine a noble vessel on the high seas to have become the victim of a catastrophe. It lies now at the bottom of the sea. Fishes come from all sides and stop musingly before the strange visitor. Whence did this come? Was it made out of water? Impossible! Did it creep up from the bottom of the sea? No! At last a fish reasons: “What we see here has undoubtedly come down to us from a higher world, far above us, and invisible to us.” The speech meets with approval. But another fish objects: “Nonsense! To fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from the scientific grounds on which we fish must stand. We cannot assume such a world to exist, because this would offend against the first principle of our science, the principle of the exclusive natural causation of sea and water.” With these words the speaker departs, wagging his tail, his speech having been received with stupefaction rather than with understanding.
To this philosophy may be applied the word of the Apostle: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit” (Col. ii. 8). No, it is not the spirit of true science that opposes the belief in supernatural factors, but it is the desertion of the traditions and the spirit of a better science. To the representatives of paganism, to Plato and others, the highest goal of human quest of truth was to find God and to worship Him. For the great leaders in recent natural science, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Linné, Boyle, Volta, Faraday, and Maxwell, the highest achievement was to point to God's wisdom in the wonderful works of nature; their science ended in prayer. A principle of unbroken natural causation, as a boycott of the Deity, was to them not a postulate of science but an abomination. They were carried by a conviction expressed by a later scientist, W. Thomson, in the following words: “Fear not to be independent thinkers! If you think vigorously enough, you will be forced by science to believe in a God, Who [pg 239] is the basis of all religion”; and expressed by R. Mayer in the following words: “True philosophy must not and cannot be anything else but the propædeutics of the Christian religion.”
But let us proceed. We have before us an astonishing order, we behold uncounted wonders of well-designed purpose in the world. The question suggests itself: Whence this Order? The watch originates from the intelligence of a maker, an accident could not have produced it; hence also the great world-machine must have had an intelligent maker. This is the logic of unbiassed reason. But the principles of liberal research object to the acceptance of this explanation. What is theirs?
There have been some scientists endeavouring to discover the purposeless in nature, and they have gleaned various things. Haeckel invented for them the name Dysteleologists; and this is now the name they go by. Why the destruction of so many living embryos? What is the purpose of pain, of the vermiform appendix? “To what purpose is the immense belt of desert extending through both large continents of the Old World? Could the Sahara not have been avoided?... Indeed, numerous forms of life we cannot look at but with repugnance and horror; for instance, the parasitical beings.” ... (F. Paulsen). Hence the order claimed for the world does not exist, on the contrary, “it is beyond doubt that the most essential means of nature is of a kind which can only be put on a level with the blindest accident” (F. A. Lange). But they do not feel satisfied with this. They feel that even if all these things were actually purposeless, they would amount only to a few drops in the immense ocean of order which still has to be explained. At most, they would form but a few typographical errors in an otherwise ingenious book,—errors that evidently are no proof that the whole book is a mass of nonsense and not dictated by reason.
There appears to them, like a rescuing plank in a shipwreck, Darwin's Natural Selection. The artistic forms in the kingdom of plants and animals arose, says Darwin, by the fact that, among numerous seemingly tentative formations, there were some useful organs or their rudiments which survived in the struggle for existence and became hereditary in the offspring, while others disappeared. It was seen very soon, and it is even better understood to-day, that this enormous feat of “natural selection” is contrary to the facts, and would be, above all, an incredible accident. Nevertheless Darwin has become the rescuing knight for many who became alarmed about the threatening Supernaturalism.
Du Bois-Reymond speaks very frankly: “Albeit, in holding to this theory we may feel like a man kept from drowning only by holding firmly to a plank just strong enough to keep him afloat. But when we have to choose between a plank and death, the preference will decidedly be with the plank.” The same idea is expressed somewhat more gracefully by W. Ostwald: “That the quite complicated problem concerning the purposiveness of organism loses its character of a riddle, at least in principle, and assumes the aspect of a scientific task, all by virtue of this simple thought ... is a gain that cannot be sufficiently appreciated.” With vehement plainness H. Spitzer maintains: “Purposiveness in nature, which was feared by positive research like a ghost, because it really seemed only to be due to the intervention of ghosts in the course of the world, has now been traced by Darwin to its origin from natural causes, and he thereby made it a fit object for the science that is at home only in the sphere of natural causes.” “To the height of this point of view,” D. F. Strauss boasts, “we have been led by modern natural research in Darwin.”[8]