Page:Evolution and Theological Belief R. V. Chamberlin 1911.pdf/2

2 had been accomplished the divine fiat issued and the waters of the earth brought forth fish and other sea animals, and again the earth was caused in like manner to produce land forms and plants. The whole organic creation is thus represented largely as a growth or crude evolution process initiated and controlled by the divine power or word. It will readily be noted by the reader that this, if exception be made to the interpolation regarding the moulding of man, is precisely the method of organic creation pictured in Genesis in a more refined and spiritual form.

The main features of the Babylonian account of creation seems to have passed to the Phoenicians, Assyrians, and other neighboring peoples, and through the Phoenicians to the Greeks, the fertile genius of whose philosophers took hold of the evolution idea and elaborated and extended it in a way at times strongly suggestive of modern conceptions. Anaximander shows clearly the influence of the Babylonian account. He was the first to suggest that man must have originated from lower forms. Crude evolution theories or suggestions toward such are worked out and presented in the teachings of Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Thales, Pythagoras, and Empedocles. Empedocles had a conception of the gradual development upon the earth of higher and higher forms of life, the earliest being rude and imperfect, and a "struggle for existence" ensuing in which the more monstrous and deficient were gradually eliminated. He thus first conceived of an evolution definitely regulated by something akin to law. Heraclitus was particularly impressed with the constant and orderly changes occurring in the universe and, accordingly, saw in movement or change—in an evolution—the universal law or cosmic process. Among the Greeks the evolution theory reached its highest and most refined development in the master mind of Aristotle. Aristotle was much more than a mere speculator; for he pursued in his natural history studies the inductive or scientific method which alone has given us substantial advances in knowledge. He made various discoveries of fundamental significance which have been confirmed only within the last century. He understood correctly the general character of the origin of the individual as a progressive development from a simple germ to the complex adult, and subsequently extended this development

process to the kinds of organisms, definitely conceiving of the origin of the higher from successively tower and lower forms through the operation of a "perfecting principle" or law.

Through the collapse of the ancient classic civilization and the crushing of Greek freedom of thought, the mental continuity of the kind of investigation and thinking represented so brilliantly in Aristotle was completely broken. For nearly two thousand years no real successor to Aristotle appeared, the writings on Nature that have come down to us from these long centuries representing a surprisingly lower plane. Among the Romans the poet Lucretius was much impressed with the evolution idea; and in his De Rerum Natura he represents the process as applying to all things both living and inorganic. Lucretius, however, wrought wholly in speculation and fancy, as did Pliny the elder who lived during the first century A. D. Long famed as the foremost naturalist of antiquity, we now know that Pliny added nothing to our knowledge but that, as a shallow compiler, he wrought together fact and the fabulous indiscriminately.

The world-renouncing character of the Christianity of the Middle Ages was not favorable to devotion to natural things; and, in fact, direct investigation of Nature was completely dead. The writings of the time were largely based upon such works as those of Pliny and treated in all seriousness such mythical creatures as the phoenix and dragon. The fact is that the world had passed thoroughly under the thraldom of book learning The effort was to settle difficulties by reference to ancient authorities; and the polemics of the time were esentiallyessentially [sic] polemics on interpretation. Nature was not directly studied, but the ablest minds of these times were in the Church, and among them speculation upon matters treated in scripture and the earlier church fathers was rife, Among these matters those involved in the creation were prominent. Among many other questions that as to the mode of creation was naturally much considered. A dominant belief in this matter, based upon the passage in Genesis referring to the formation of man, was that God moulded directly with his hands all things, both living and dead. At all times, however, there was present along with this belief another one equally ancient and rather more scriptural, according to which creation in the beginning was largely

potential. According to this the impress of the Creator was given once for all, and under its power the actual formation and unfolding of natural things was even yet continuing—the creation occurring largely through the operation of secondary causes as an evolution process.

In the fourth century of our era, St. Basil in the eastern church declared that in the beginning at the command of God the waters and earth were gifted with productive powers, and that the same command which gave this generative power to the earth in the beginning should be effective until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa held practically the same views. In the western church St. Augustine held still more free and positive opinions in this direction and completely opposed the current of belief as to a creation "like that by which a toy maker brings into existence a box of playthings." "To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish. God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips." He advocated the growth doctrine and argued that even though living things come into being from other substances or things, God is none the less their creator as the ultimate author of the productive power according to which or as a result of which the beings arose. This productiveness was involved potentially in the primary creation.

This view of the creation gathered strength in the following centuries among churchmen and others. To many churchmen it appealed because it removed a difficulty furnished by the account of the flood and ark. The number of animals known to exist had become so large that, though grounds were found for doubling and trebling or enlarging to any actually feasible degree the dimensions of the ark, it was seen to be impossible that the vessel or a hundred such could house two of each kind; and it was thought humanly impossible that Adam could have given names to so many creatures. The difficulties were at once removed by the view that only a limited number of forms were created in the beginning, and that from these or from the earth the others had subsequently taken origin, through the operation of divinely imparted power or through an evolution. In the twelfth century St. Lombard accepts and elaborates this doctrine and urges particularly that all things were nevertheless