"Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle faculties.
"Substitute 'cosmic vapour' for 'clock,' and 'molecules' for 'works,' and the application of the argument is obvious." (pp. 306, 7.)
One thing is very obvious here—and that is a flaw. State the case as a proposition thus—One or both of the two beetles is to the clock and its maker, as man is to the world and its Maker. A tremendous assumption—surely as sufficient to have startled Francis Bacon as the apparition of a new Idol. Is there any possible reason for elevating a death-watch—thinking in character as a death-watch—into a capable interpreter of clocks? Moreover, the ground principle of our human Teleology is that Man holds a lofty relation, not to the Universe only, but to its Maker likewise. He claims, in a word, the most sublime of all earthly kinships. The very fact that he can look with intelligent and admiring appreciation upon the works of God, justifies his belief that he has a real insight into their excellence, and is so far at least akin to the mind of God. If Mr. Huxley meant that a proportionate degree of insight into clock-making was possessed by his beetles, they would surely have been able to read the clock's dial-plate and understand the lesson conveyed by its pointers. The death-watch would at least say "labuntur horæ"—and comprehend that time was being registered—although he might even then fall far short of our human belief "pereunt et imputantur," and fail of knowing that time registers itself in a record of moral good and evil.
The truth is that all mixing up manlike attributes with brute animality, and what seems ten times worse, with machines of wood and metal, can be nothing better than an attempt to produce a sound and prolific offspring from some ill-assorted and heterogeneous hybridism.
We have adverted to this peculiarity of style before and venture upon doing so again, because all admirers of Mr. Huxley's great powers (and who can read his writings without such admiration?) may surely be justified in wishing that he would discard it at once and for ever. Its practical effect is apparently to assume the real point at issue and to cover up the tacit assumption. That he is really no chance offender in this respect may be gathered from a few instances noted at random. We have just had a couple of philosophic death-watches[84]—one a Teleologist, the other a Mechanicist—the lucubrations of both being neither exactly human, nor yet Coleopterous. We observed before a righteous clock[85]—regularly moral if regularly wound up. He has besides a machine, undescribed but endued with a gift of ratiocination[86]—and more curious still a piano[87] which listens when it is played upon, and though possessed of only one sense (hearing) succeeds in building up "endless ideas" of a certain cast and cogency. From this self-educated instrument much may of course be looked for, and accordingly we find
"Its cogitative faculties immersed
In cogibundity of cogitation,"
till it evolves from the depth of its consciousness something like an idealistic theory of sound. This hypothesis, Mr. Huxley in reply to his piano, refutes, first by an appeal to the material substance of the instrument itself; and secondly to the existence of a musician who plays upon it. Will he permit us to accept in like manner the fact of our own nobler subsistence, and also the being of One Who attunes its secret heart-strings to notes of sublime melody?
The monsters aforecited irresistibly remind us of a repartee of Goldsmith's. He wittily said that Dr. Johnson would make little fishes talk like great whales. Had they done so it may be doubted whether the Doctor's idolatrous biographer would have discovered a minnowy mind beneath their Johnsonian utterances. And we confess to a difficulty of our own. The righteous clock is indeed genuinely Huxleian, but what shall we say of his mechanical logic, his piano, and his death-watches? By way of illustrating our perplexity let us suppose some rural sexton to mix up his own instincts with those of a biological burying beetle. The destiny of all flesh would naturally be determined in the first place by a decent covering of earth. But what about its final end? Would that be an aldermanic beetle feast or a Resurgam?