Page:Evolution and Theological Belief R. V. Chamberlin 1911.pdf/3

Rh brought into being through the word of God either directly or virtually. Some men believed and supported the view from scripture, that all the lower organisms were originated through natural causes, and that man only was separately and directly created.

With the Revival of Learning or Renaissance men again came to observe and study and learn from Nature directly. As a result of systematic observation and experiment the basis for the belief in the spontaneous origin of living things from lifeless which had prevailed from the earliest times came to be questioned, and in the seventeenth century was practically discredited. Men came to accept the view that life comes only from life. This resulted in the view that in the evolution process new beings must have come only from other living things. All living beings had sprung directly from the limited number created directly in the beginning. In the seventeenth century and during most of the eighteenth it became generally accepted by theologians and scientists alike that all closely related species had had a common genetic origin from a single ancestral form. A limited number of types were created in the beginning from which all others had descended and varied. In the early part of the eighteenth century Benoist de Maillet advocated what Aristotle had done so long before, the theory that all existing forms had originated from pre-existing and different species.

It was in the latter part of the eighteenth century that the doctrine of special creation in its rigid form first came to be regarded as an element in Christian orthodoxy. The Swedish botanist Linnaeus, who himself as a young man had shared the prevalent belief in the transformation of species, later devised an effective method for naming species scientifically, the so-called binominal system which is still in use and for which its author is chiefly famous. Students came to him from all parts of the world; and a result of his teaching to these was a tremendous impulse toward the study of species, which accordingly took on a dignity and importance they had not had before. Linnaeus came soon to enunciate the dogma that each existing species was created as such with all its distinguishing features, and that there were upon the earth today just as many species as had been thus independently created in the beginning. There was something in the preciseness of that age, "its exaltation

of law, its cold passion for a stable and measured universe, its cold denial, its cold affirmation of the power of God, a God of ice," that made the more rigid thought of Linnaeus concerning living forms especially acceptable, and accounts in large part for the rapidity with which it became almost universally received and so interwoven with the thought of Christianity as to be considered biblical in origin, a view without rational justification. Thus the opinion of a naturalist was adopted by the churchmen in the form of the doctrine of special creation as it has existed in the more recent times.

While the Linnaean dogma thus came to be widely accepted there were among the students of Nature always some who held evolution to be the only rational explanation of the phenomena with which we are confronted in the living world. The brilliant Frenchman Buffon worked cut a clear theory of evolution which, however, he was early forced, to forsake through the pressure brought to bear by the theological faculty at Paris. Others who forcibly contended for evolution were Goethe (1790) in Germany, an ardent and brilliant advocate, Erasmus Darwin (1794) in England, and Treviranus in France, who in 1802, presented a fully elaborated theory with definite views as to the factors in the process. Finally Lamarck (1744-1829) developed what is justly regarded as the first presentation of the complete modern theory of evolution. But the proportion of fact to speculation was too small, and when Cuvier brought his great knowledge and authority against the theory it was for a time completely checked in France. But Cuvier himself showed that the Linnaean dogma must be radically modified; for he had demonstrated that large numbers of animals had lived which no longer exist, but which were found in the earth's crust as fossils, large numbers of which he himself had excavated and restored. Hence he brought forth the doctrine of a series of creations between which there was no continuity. The earth having been fully inhabited was at the end of each period subjected to a great cataclysm by which all forms of life were swept out of existence. An entirely new creation then followed, to be in turn ended by another cataclysm and so on. It was soon forced upon geologists, however, that no such catastrophes had occurred, but that changes in the earth's crust had been gradual. Furthermore, a vast number of facts

as to the geological history and geographical distribution afof [sic] animals, as to their comparative anatomy and development, were being accumulated which seemed inconsistent with any other theory than that of a common descent for all living things. The result was that when Spencer and Darwin and Wallace presented the theory of evolution in the middle of the nineteenth century upon a thoroughly scientific basis, it met with rapid and almost universal acceptance among men of science, who saw in it the key to a thousand problems that had vexed them in their different special fields and for which no other explanation has ever been found. To be sure Agassiz made a last stand for special creation, modifying again extensively Cuvier's views; but in vain, for the tremendous crowd of new facts shattered his theory irreparably so that not one of his many students has been able to follow him. In the last fifty years the theory of descent has been subjected to such a test as has never been given to any other scientific theory; but through this it stands out clearer and stronger than ever, insomuch that it has rightly to be considered the best demonstrated of all scientific laws. The factors concerned in the process have not been elucidated, and are subject of controversy; but the fact of evolution in the organic world is no longer considered open to question, and is the basis of all productive work in biology today. As Pres. Jordan states it: "All contrary hypotheses have long since ceased to work. The theory of evolution as the method of creation of species is as well attested as the theory of gravitation. All biological investigation must assume it; without it such investigations are impossible. . . . No naturalist whose studies give him the right of an opinion on the origin of species, now holds the old notion of the separate creation of each species and its organs."

What, in the meantime, has been the course of opinion with reference to evolution among theologians? It has been shown how among them the Linnaean theory came to take firm hold. Finally, when the old and familiar doctrine of evolution was put forward in the middle of the nineteenth century upon a scientific basis, theological belief had become so set and developed about the Linnaean dogma of special creation that the churchmen, as before indicated, vigorously assailed the evolution theory in its new dress with its indication of control by natural law