The Story of the Earth and Man

by Sir John William Dawson

Perhaps Paley’s old illustration of the watch, as applied by Huxley, may serve to show this as well as any other. If the imperfect watch, useless as a time-keeper, is the work of the contriver, and the perfection of it is the result of unintelligent agents working fortuitously, then it is clear that creation and design have a small and evanescent share in the construction of the fabric of nature. But is it really so? Can we attribute the perfection of the watch to “accidental material operations” any more than the first effort to produce such an instrument? Paley himself long ago met this view of the case, but his argument may be extended by the admissions and pleas of the evolutionists themselves. For example, the watch is altogether a mechanical thing, and this fact by no means implies that it could not be made by an intelligent and spiritual designer, yet this assumption that physical laws exclude creation and design turns up in almost every page of the evolutionists. Paley has well shown that if the watch contained within itself machinery for making other watches, this would not militate against his argument. It would be so if it could be proved that a piece of metal had spontaneously produced an imperfect watch, and this a more perfect one, and so on; but this is precisely what evolutionists still require to prove with respect both to the watch and to man. On the other hand it is no argument for the evolution of the watch that there may be different kinds of watches, some more and others less perfect, and that ruder forms may have preceded the more perfect. This is perfectly compatible with creation and design. Evolutionists, however, generally fail to make this distinction. Nor would it be any proof of the evolution of the watch to find that, as Spencer would say, it was in perfect harmony with its environment, as, for instance, that it kept time with the revolution of the earth, and contained contrivances to regulate its motion under different temperatures, unless it could be shown that the earth’s motion and the changes of temperature had been efficient causes of the motion and the adjustments of the watch; otherwise the argument would look altogether in the direction of design. Nor would it be fair to shut up the argument of design to the idea that the watch must have suddenly flashed into existence fully formed and in motion. It would be quite as much a creation if slowly and laboriously made by the hand of the artificer, or if more rapidly struck off by machinery; and if the latter, it would not follow that the machine which produced the watch was at all like the watch itself. It might have been something very different. Finally, when Spencer tries to cut at the root of the whole of this argument, by affirming that man has no more right to reason from himself with regard to his Maker than a watch would have to reason from its own mechanical structure and affirm the like of its maker, he signally fails. If the watch had such power of reasoning, it would be more than mechanical, and would be intelligent like its maker; and in any case, if thus reasoning it came to the conclusion that it was a result of “accidental material operations,” it would be altogether mistaken. Nor would it be nearer the truth if it held that it was a product of spontaneous evolution from an imperfect and comparatively useless watch that had been made millions of years before.

We have taken this illustration of the watch merely as given to us by Huxley, and without in the least seeking to overlook the distinction between a dead machine and a living organism; but the argument for creation and design is quite as strong in the case of the latter, so long as it cannot be proved by actual facts to be a product of derivation from a distinct species. This has not been proved either in the care of man or any other species; and so long as it has not, the theory of creation and design is infinitely more rational and scientific than that of evolution in any of its forms.

But all this does not relieve us from the question, How can species be created?—the same question put to Paul by the sceptics of the first century with reference to the resurrection—“How are the dead raised, and with what bodies do they come?” I do not wish to evade this question, whether applied to man or to a microscopic animalcule, and I would answer it with the following statements:—

1. The advocate of creation is in this matter in no worse position than the evolutionist. This we have already shown, and I may refer here to the fact that Darwin himself assumes at least one primitive form of animal and plant life, and he is confessedly just as little able to imagine this one act of creation as any other that may be demanded of him.

2. We are not bound to believe that all groups of individual animals, which naturalists may call species, have been separate products of creation. Man himself has by some naturalists been divided into several species; but we may well be content to believe the creation of one primitive form, and the production of existing races by variation. Every zoologist and botanist who has studied any group of animals or plants with care, knows that there are numerous related forms passing into each other, which some naturalists might consider to be distinct species, but which it is certainly not necessary to regard as distinct products of creation. Every species is more or less variable, and this variability may be developed by different causes. Individuals exposed to unfavourable conditions will be stunted and depauperated; those in more favourable circumstances may be improved and enlarged. Important changes may thus take place without transgressing the limits of the species, or preventing a return to its typical forms; and the practice of confounding these more limited changes with the wider structural and physiological differences which separate true species is much to be deprecated. Animals which pass through metamorphoses, or which, are developed through the instrumentality of intermediate forms or “nurses”[BE] are not only liable to be separated by mistake into distinct species, but they may, tinder certain circumstances, attain to a premature maturity, or may be fixed for a time or permanently in an immature condition. Further, species, like individuals, probably have their infancy, maturity, and decay in geological time, and may present differences in these several stages. It is the remainder of true specific types left after all these sources of error are removed, that creation has to account for; and to arrive at this remainder, and to ascertain its nature and amount, will require a vast expenditure of skilful and conscientious labour.

[BE] Mr. Mungo Ponton, in his book “The Beginning,” has based a theory of derivation on this peculiarity.

3. Since animals and plants have been introduced upon our earth in long succession throughout geologic time, and this in a somewhat regular manner, we have a right to assume that their introduction has been in accordance with a law or plan of creation, and that this may have included the co-operation of many efficient causes, and may have differed in its application to different cases. This is a very old doctrine of theology, for it appears in the early chapters of Genesis. There the first aquatic animals, and man, are said to have been “created;” plants are said to have been “brought forth by the land;” the mammalia are said to have been “made.” In the more detailed account of the introduction of man in the second chapter of the same book, he is said to have been “formed of the dust of the ground;” and in regard to his higher spiritual life, to have had this “breathed into” him by God. These are very simple expressions, but they are very precise and definite in the original, and they imply a diversity in the creative work. Further, this is in accordance with the analogy of modern science. How diverse are the modes of production and development of animals and plants, though all under one general law; and is it not likely that the modes of their first introduction on the earth were equally diverse?

4. Our knowledge of the conditions of the origination of species, is so imperfect that we may possibly appear for some time to recede from, rather than to approach to, a solution of the question. In the infancy of chemistry, it was thought that chemical elements could be transmuted into each other. The progress of knowledge removed this explanation of their origin, and has as yet failed to substitute any other in its place. It may be the same with organic species. The attempt to account for them by derivation may prove fallacious, yet it may be some time before we turn the corner, should this be possible, and enter the path which actually leads up to their origin.

Lastly, in these circumstances our wisest course is to take individual species, and to inquire as to their history in time, and the probable conditions of their introduction. Such investigations are now being made by many quiet workers, whose labours are comparatively little known, and many of whom are scarcely aware of the importance of what they are doing toward a knowledge of, at least, the conditions of creation, which is perhaps all that we can at present hope to reach.

In the next chapter we shall try to sum up what is known as to man himself, in the conditions of his first appearance on our earth, as made known to us by scientific investigation, and explained on the theory of creation as opposed to evolution.