Science and Morals and Other Essays by Sir Windle Bertram Coghill Alan (e book reading free .TXT) 📖
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And again, when dealing with the palæontological evidence in favour of evolution, he points out that Cuvier and Agassiz, examining it as it was known in their day, interpreted the facts as the carrying out of a systematic creative plan, an interpretation which the author claims "is not at all invalidated by the acceptance of the evolutionary theory." He is not, we need hardly say, in any way singular in taking up this attitude, since it was held by Darwin, by Wallace, by Huxley, and by other sturdy defenders of the doctrine of evolution.
Yet, just as at the time that Darwin's views were first made public, many thought that they were subversive of Christianity, so, even now, some whose acquaintance with the problem and its history is of a superficial character, are inclined when they see the word creation, even with the qualifying adjective "special" prefixed to it, used in contradistinction to evolution, to imagine that the theory of creation, and of course of a Creator, must fall to the ground if evolution should be proved to be the true explanation of living things and their diversities.
It is more than a little difficult for us, living at the present day, to understand this curious frame of mind; yet it certainly existed, and existed where it might least have been expected to exist. Nor is it quite extinct to-day, though it only lingers in the less instructed class of persons. The misconception arose from a confusion between the fact and the method of creation. As to the former, no Catholic, no Christian, no theist has any kind of doubt; indeed there are those who could not be classified under any of those categories who still would be prepared to admit that there must be a First Cause as the explanation of the universe. Some of them, whose reasoning is a little difficult to follow, seem to be content with an immanent, blind god, a mere mainspring to the clock, making it move, no doubt, but otherwise powerless. If we neglect—in a mathematical sense—those who adopt the agnostic attitude; content themselves with the formula ignoramus et ignorabimus of Du Bois Reymond, and confine their investigations to the machine as a going machine without inquiring how it came to be a machine or what set it to work, we shall, I think, find that most people who have really thought out the question admit that the only reasonable explanation of things as they are, is the postulation of a Free First Cause; in other words, an Omnipotent Creator of the universe. Such, of course, is the teaching of the Scriptures and of the Church, and it must be admitted that neither of them carries us very much further in this matter. In fact, whilst both are perfectly clear and definite about the fact of creation, neither of them has much to say about the method. Yet, as all admit, evolution concerns only the method and tells us absolutely nothing about the cause.
Being omnipotent, it is obvious that its Maker might have created the universe in any way which seemed good to Him—for example, all at once out of nothing just as it stands at this moment. Such a thing would not be impossible to Omnipotence; and, as we know, Fallopius, suddenly confronted by the problems of fossils in the sixteenth century, did suggest that they were created just as they were, and that they had never been anything else. So did Philip Gosse some two and a half centuries later.
There is nothing more sure than that the world was not created just as it is. Reason and Scripture both teach us that, and geology makes it quite clear that the appearance of living things upon the earth has been successive; that groups of living things, like the giant saurians, which were once the dominant zoological objects, had their day and have gone, as we may suppose, for ever. A few very lowly forms, like the lamp-shells, have persisted almost throughout the history of life on the earth, but on the whole the picture which we see is one of appearances, culminations, and disappearances of successive races of living things. There was a time when Trilobites, crustaceans whose nearest living representatives are the King-Crabs, first became features of the fauna of the earth. Then they increased to such an extent as to become the most prominent feature. Then they declined in importance, disappeared, and for uncounted ages have existed only as fossils. Thus we conclude that the creation of species was a progressive affair, just as the creation of individuals is a successive affair, for every living thing, coming as it does into existence by the power of the Creator, is His creation and in a very real sense a special creation. Now we know very well how living things come into existence to-day; can we form any idea as to how they originated in the beginning? Milton, in his crude description in Paradise Lost, pictured living things as gradually rising out of and extricating themselves from the soil.
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brindled mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks: the swift stag from underground
Bore up his branching head: scarce from his mould
Behemoth, biggest born of earth, up heaved
His vastness."
In this description Milton probably represented the ideas of his day—a day penetrated with literal interpretation of the Scripture, though it is well to recall to our minds the fact that not one word or idea of the above is contained in the Bible. The only suggestion is that the body of Adam was fashioned from the "slime of the earth," the precise meaning of which phrase has never been defined by the Church.
Again, we have to say that the Miltonic scheme is not impossible, any more than any other scheme is impossible, but we may further say that it is more than improbable, and with every reverence we may add that to us it does not seem to be specially consonant with the greatness and wisdom of God. There remains the derivative form of creation, compendiously styled evolution. That this also is a possible method of creation no one will deny, and it has been discussed as such by many of the greatest thinkers in the history of the Church. We can consider it, therefore, from the point of fact or of knowledge as we now possess it, and we can do so without imagining that, in so doing, we are contemplating a method which is anything else but the carrying out of a creative plan, existing perfect and complete and from all eternity in the mind of the Being Whose conception it was and by whose fiat it came to pass. Moreover, each form produced is a special creation, since it was specially designed to be as it is and to appear when it did, just as the clockmaker intends his clock to strike twelve at noon, though he can hardly be said to make it strike at that moment. Hence to place special creation in antagonism to evolution is really to use an ambiguous phraseology. No doubt it is not easy to find the proper phraseology. Some have employed the terms "immediate" and "mediate," to which also a certain amount of ambiguity is attached. Perhaps "direct" and "derivative" might convey more accurate ideas; but whatever terminology we adopt, we are still safe in saying that whether God makes things or makes them make themselves He is creating them and specially creating them.
This is not the place to enter into any elaborate discussion as to the truth of the theory of evolution. Few will be found to deny the statement that it is a theory which does explain Nature as we see it and as we learn its history in the past, but that does not necessarily prove that it is true. St. Thomas Aquinas, dealing with the movements of the planets, makes a very important statement when he tells us, in so many words, that, though the hypothesis with which he is dealing would explain the appearances which he was seeking to explain, that does not prove that it is the true explanation, since the real answer to the riddle may be one then unknown to him. There are, however, one or two points it may be useful to consider before we leave the question.
That evolution may occur within a class seems to be quite certain. The case of the Porto Santo rabbits, one of many cited by Darwin or brought to knowledge since his time, will make clear what is meant. Porto Santo is a small island, not far from Madeira, on which a Portuguese navigator, named Zarco, let loose, somewhere about the year 1420, a doe and a recently born litter of rabbits, which we may feel quite sure belonged to one of those domestic breeds which have all been derived from the wild rabbit of Europe known to zoologists as Lepus Cuniculus. The island was a favourable spot for the rabbits, for there do not appear to have been any carnivorous beasts or birds to harry them, nor were there other land mammals competing with them for food; and, as a result, we are told that they had so far increased and multiplied in forty years as to be described as "innumerable." In four and a half centuries these rabbits had become so different from any European rabbits that Haeckel described them as a species apart, and named it Lepus Huxlei. This rabbit is much smaller than the European form, being described as more like a large rat than a rabbit. Its colour is very different from its European relatives; it has curious nocturnal habits; it is exceedingly wild and untamable. Most remarkable of all, and most conclusive as to specific difference, Mr. Bartlett, the highly skilled head keeper of the London Zoological Gardens, utterly failed to induce the two males which were brought over to those gardens to associate with or to breed with the females of various other breeds of rabbits which were repeatedly placed with them. If the history of these Porto Santo rabbits had been unknown to us, instead of being a matter as to which there can be no doubt, every naturalist would at once have accepted them as a separate species. We need not hesitate, it appears, to do so and to admit that it is a new species which has been produced within historic times and under conditions with which we are fully acquainted. It may, however, be argued, and quite fairly argued, that such a process of evolution, though definitely proved, is a very different thing from such an evolution as would permit of a common ancestry for animals so far apart, for example, as a whale and a rabbit, or perhaps even nearer in relationship, as between a lion and a seal. To discuss this further would require a dissertation on the highly involved question of species and varieties, and that is not now to be attempted. What, however, may be said is that the difficulties presented by what is called phylogeny—that is, the
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