Again, there is a law of over-production, we are told, which gives rise to a struggle for existence. Well, is this law not a means to an end worthy of Divine Wisdom? In it we find the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life. What is called over-production is a productivity which is in excess of the means of subsistence provided for the species itself; but no species exists merely for itself. The ratio of the production of life is probably none too high for the wants of all the creatures which have to be supplied with food and enjoyment. And the wants of all creatures are what have to be taken into account; not the wants of any single species—not the wants of man alone. If we adequately realised how vast is the number of guests which have constantly to be fed at the table of nature, we would, I have no doubt, acknowledge that there is little, if any, real waste of life in the world. Then, the struggle to which the rate of production gives rise is, on the showing of the Darwinians themselves, subservient to the noblest ends. Although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness—that He cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves, it was also intended to serve. Besides, the conflict is clearly not a struggle for bare existence; it is, even as regards the animals, a struggle for the largest amount of enjoyment which they can secure, and for the free and full exercise of all their faculties. It thus manifests, not only indirectly but also directly, what its ends are. They are ends which can only be reasonably conceived of as having been purposed by an intelligence, and which are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.
But what of the law, or so-called law, of natural selection? In itself, and so far as physical science can either prove or disprove it, it is simply an expression of the alleged fact, that in the struggle of life, any variation, however caused, which is profitable to the individuals of a species, will tend to their preservation, will have a chance of being transmitted to their offspring, and will be of use to them likewise, so that they will survive and multiply at the expense of competitors which are not so well endowed. But natural selection thus understood is obviously in no opposition to design; on the contrary, it is a way in which design may be realised. Some might even hold that design cannot be conceived of as realised in any other natural way; that if not thus realised, it could only be miraculously realised. But Mr Darwin, and many of those who call themselves his followers, tell us not only that there is natural selection, but that blind forces and mechanical laws alone bring it about; that intention and intelligence have nothing to do with it. What proof do they give us? Alas! the painful thing is that they give us none. They point out the blind forces and the mechanical laws by which the selection is effected and its results secured; they show how they are adapted to accomplish their work: and then they assert that these forces and laws explain the whole matter; that no underlying and all-embracing reason has prepared, arranged, and used them. They see the physical agencies and the physical process by which order and beauty have been attained—they do not see intelligence and design; and because they do not see them, they conclude that they have no existence. They describe the mechanism which their senses apprehend, and affirm it to have made itself, or at least to have been unmade, and to work of itself, because the mind which contrived it and directs it is inaccessible to sense. All their reasoning resolves itself into a denial of what is spiritual because it is unseen.
The only instances of natural selection which have been adduced to show that blind forces may bring about results as remarkable, and of the same kind, as those which are accomplished by intelligent agents, are manifestly irrelevant. They are of such a nature that every teleologist must hold them to imply what they are intended to disprove. When Professor Huxley points to the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay as carefully selecting the particles of sea-sand on the coast of Brittany, and heaping them, according to their size and weight, in different belts along the shore; to a frosty night selecting the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones; and to a hurricane transporting a sapling to a new seat in the soil,—he completely mistakes what the problem before him is. Fire and water can produce wonderful effects in a steam-engine; but the man who should infer, from there being no intelligence in the fire and water themselves, that intelligence must have had nothing to do with their effects when they were brought into contact in a steam-engine, would deserve no great credit for his reasoning. It is precisely Professor Huxley's reasoning. He looks at the fire and water separately, and completely ignores the engine. Because in a world which is a system of order and law a certain collocation and combination of physical conditions and forces will produce an orderly result, he infers that design and intelligence are not needed to produce such a result. I submit that that is illegitimate and irrelevant reasoning. It resolves itself into a denial of Divine and intelligent agency, because the senses apprehend merely physical elements and a physical process. It assumes a selected adaptation, which presupposes intelligence in order to get rid of intelligence. It begs the whole question.
The so-called law of sexual selection, if it be a law at all, is obviously teleological in its nature. Its end is the production of beauty in form and colour. Can blind physical forces, if not subservient to intelligence, be conceived of as working towards so essentially ideal a goal as beauty?
I think enough has now been said to show that the researches and speculations of the Darwinians have left unshaken the design argument. I might have gone farther if time had permitted, and proved that they had greatly enriched the argument. The works of Mr Darwin are invaluable to the theologian, owing to the multitude of "beautiful contrivances" and "marvellous adjustments" admirably described in them. The treatises on the fertilisation of orchids and on insectivorous plants require only to have their legitimate conclusions deduced and applied in order to be transformed into treatises of natural theology. If Paley's famous work be now somewhat out of date, it is not because Mr Darwin and his followers have refuted it, but because they have brought so much to light which confirms its argument.[34]
I have challenged the theology of Mr Darwin, and those who follow his guidance in theology. I have no wish to dispute his science. I pass no judgment on his theories so far as they are scientific theories. It may be safely left to the progress of scientific research to determine how far they are true and how far erroneous. We ought not to assail them needlessly, or to reject the truth which is in them, under the influence of a senseless dread that they can hurt religion. In so far as they are true, they must be merely expressions of the way in which Divine intelligence has operated in the universe. Instead of excluding, they must imply belief in an all-originating, all-foreseeing, all-foreordaining, all-regulative intelligence, to determine the rise and the course and the goal of life, as of all finite things. That intelligence far transcends the comprehension of our finite minds, yet we apprehend it as true intelligence. It is no blind force, but a Reason which knows itself, and knows us, and knows all things, and in the wisdom of which we may fully confide, even when clouds and darkness hide from us the definite reasons of its operations. We can see and know enough of its wisdom to justify faith where sight and knowledge are denied to us. Let us trust and follow it, and, without doubt, it will lead us by a path which we knew not, and make darkness light before us, and crooked things straight.
LECTURE VII.
MORAL ARGUMENT—TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE AND HISTORY.