The Principles of Biology Vol. I/Chapter III.2

§ 110. Early ideas are not usually true ideas. Undeveloped intellect, be it that of an individual or that of the race, forms conclusions which require to be revised and re-revised, before they reach a tolerable correspondence with realities. Were it otherwise there would be no discovery, no increase of intelligence. What we call the progress of knowledge, is the bringing of Thoughts into harmony with Things; and it implies that the first Thoughts are either wholly out of harmony with Things, or in very incomplete harmony with them.

If illustrations be needed the history of every science furnishes them. The primitive notions of mankind as to the structure of the heavens were wrong; and the notions which replaced them were successively less wrong. The original belief respecting the form of the Earth was wrong; and this wrong belief survived through the first civilizations. The earliest ideas that have come down to us concerning the natures of the elements were wrong; and only in quite recent times has the composition of matter in its various forms been better understood. The interpretations of mechanical facts, of meteorological facts, of physiological facts, were at first wrong. In all these cases men set out with beliefs which, if not absolutely false, contained but small amounts of truth disguised by immense amounts of error.

Hence the hypothesis that living beings resulted from special creations, being a primitive hypothesis, is probably an untrue hypothesis. It would be strange if, while early men failed to reach the truth in so many cases where it is comparatively conspicuous, they reached it in a case where it is comparatively hidden.

§ 111. Besides the improbability given to the belief in special creations, by its association with mistaken beliefs in general, a further improbability is given to it by its association with a special class of mistaken beliefs. It belongs to a family of beliefs which have one after another been destroyed by advancing knowledge; and is, indeed, almost the only member of the family surviving among educated people.

We all know that the savage thinks of each striking phenomenon, or group of phenomena, as caused by some separate personal agent; that out of this conception there grows up a polytheistic conception, in which these minor personalities are variously generalized into deities presiding over different divisions of nature; and that these are eventually further generalized. This progressive consolidation of causal agencies may be traced in the creeds of all races, and is far from complete in the creed of the most advanced races. The unlettered rustics who till our fields, do not let the consciousness of a supreme power wholly absorb the aboriginal conceptions of good and evil spirits, and of charms or secret potencies dwelling in particular objects. The earliest mode of thinking changes only as fast as the constant relations among phenomena are established. Scarcely less familiar is the truth, that while accumulating knowledge makes these conceptions of personal causal agents gradually more vague, as it merges them into general causes, it also destroys the habit of thinking of them as working after the methods of personal agents. We do not now, like Kepler, assume guiding spirits to keep the planets in their orbits. It is no longer the universal belief that the sea was once for all mechanically parted from the dry land; or that the mountains were placed where we see them by a sudden creative act. All but a narrow class have ceased to suppose sunshine and storm to be sent in some arbitrary succession. The majority of educated people have given up thinking of epidemics of punishments inflicted by an angry deity. Nor do even the common people regard a madman as one possessed by a demon. That is to say, we everywhere see fading away the anthropomorphic conception of Cause. In one case after another, is abandoned the ascription of phenomena to a will analogous to the human will, working by methods analogous to human methods.

If, then, of this once-numerous family of beliefs the immense majority have become extinct, we may not unreasonably expect that the few remaining members of the family will become extinct. One of these is the belief we are here considering—the belief that each species of organism was specially created. Many who in all else have abandoned the aboriginal theory of things, still hold this remnant of the aboriginal theory. Ask any well-informed man whether he accepts the cosmogony of the Indians, or the Greeks, or the Hebrews, and he will regard the question as next to an insult. Yet one element common to these cosmogonies he very likely retains: not bearing in mind its origin. For whence did he get the doctrine of special creations? Catechise him, and he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be right while all the rest is wrong, he is unable to say. May we not then expect that the relinquishment of all other parts of this story, will by and by be followed by the relinquishment of this remaining part of it?

§ 112. The belief which we find thus questionable, both as being a primitive belief and as being a belief belonging to an almost-extinct family, is a belief not countenanced by a single fact. No one ever saw a special creation; no one ever found proof of an indirect kind that a special creation had taken place. It is significant, as Dr. Hooker remarks, that naturalists who suppose new species to be miraculously originated, habitually suppose the origination to occur in some region remote from human observation. Wherever the order of organic nature is exposed to the view of zoologists and botanists, it expels this conception; and the conception survives only in connexion with imagined places, where the order of organic nature is unknown.

Besides being absolutely without evidence to give it external support, this hypothesis of special creations cannot support itself internally—cannot be framed into a coherent thought. It is one of those illegitimate symbolic conceptions which are mistaken for legitimate symbolic conceptions (First Principles, § 9), because they remain untested. Immediately an attempt is made to elaborate the idea into anything like a definite shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of no definite shape. Is it supposed that a new organism, when specially created, is created out of nothing? If so, there is a supposed creation of matter; and the creation of matter is inconceivable—implies the establishment of a relation in thought between nothing and something—a relation of which one term is absent—an impossible relation. Is it supposed that the matter of which the new organism consists is not created for the occasion, but is taken out of its pre-existing forms and arranged into a new form? If so, we are met by the question—how is the re-arrangement effected? Of the myriad atoms going to the composition of the new organism, all of them previously dispersed through the neighbouring air and earth, does each, suddenly disengaging itself from its combinations, rush to meet the rest, unite with them into the appropriate chemical compounds, and then fall with certain others into its appointed place in the aggregate of complex tissues and organs? Surely thus to assume a myriad supernatural impulses, differing in their directions and amounts, given to as many different atoms, is a multiplication of mysteries rather than the solution of a mystery. For every one of these impulses, not being the result of a force locally existing in some other form, implies the creation of force; and the creation of force is just as inconceivable as the creation of matter. It is thus with all attempted ways of representing the process. The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and moulds a new creature, as a potter moulds a vessel, is probably too grossly anthropomorphic to be accepted by any modern defender of the special-creation doctrine. But having abandoned this crude belief, what belief is he prepared to substitute? If a new organism is not thus produced, then in what way is one produced? or rather—in what way does he conceive a new organism to be produced? We will not ask for the ascertained mode, but will be content with a mode which can be consistently imagined. No such mode, however, is assignable. Those who entertain the proposition that each kind of organism results from a divine interposition, do so because they refrain from translating words into thoughts. They do not really believe, but rather believe they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies a mental representation of the thing believed, and no such mental representation is here possible.

§ 113. If we imagine mankind to be contemplated by some being as short-lived as an ephemeron, but possessing intelligence like our own—if we imagine such a being studying men and women, during his few hours of life, and speculating as to the mode in which they came into existence; it is manifest that, reasoning in the usual way, he would suppose each man and woman to have been separately created. No appreciable changes of structure occurring in any of them during the time over which his observations extended, this being would probably infer that no changes of structure were taking place, or had taken place; and that from the outset each man and woman had possessed all the characters then visible—had been originally formed with them. The application is obvious. A human life is ephemeral compared with the life of a species; and even the period over which the records of all human lives extend, is ephemeral compared with the life of a species. There is thus a parallel contrast between the immensely-long series of changes which have occurred during the life of a species, and that small portion of the series open to our view. And there is no reason to suppose that the first conclusion drawn by mankind from this small part of the series visible to them, is any nearer the truth than would be the conclusion of the supposed ephemeral being respecting men and women.

This analogy, suggesting as it does how the hypothesis of special creations is merely a formula for our ignorance, raises the question—What reason have we to assume special creations of species but not of individuals; unless it be that in the case of individuals we directly know the process to be otherwise, but in the case of species do not directly know it to be otherwise? Have we any ground for concluding that species were specially created, except the ground that we have no immediate knowledge of their origin? And does our ignorance of the manner in which they arose warrant us in asserting that they arose by special creation?

Another question is suggested by this analogy. Those who, in the absence of immediate evidence of the way in which species arose, assert that they arose not in a natural way allied to that in which individuals arise, but in a supernatural way, think that by this supposition they honour the Unknown Cause of things; and they oppose any antagonist doctrine as amounting to an exclusion of divine power from the world. But if divine power is demonstrated by the separate creation of each species, would it not have been still better demonstrated by the separate creation of each individual? Why should there exist this process of natural genesis? Why should not omnipotence have been proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour? Is it replied that the Creator was able to make individuals arise from one another in a natural succession, but not to make species thus arise? This is to assign a limit to power instead of magnifying it. Either it was possible or not possible to create species and individuals after the same general method. To say that it was not possible is suicidal in those who use this argument; and if it was possible, it is required to say what end is served by the special creation of species which would not have been better served by the special creation of individuals. Again, what is to be thought of the fact that the immense majority of these supposed special creations took place before mankind existed? Those who think that divine power is demonstrated by special creations, have to answer the question—to whom demonstrated? Tacitly or avowedly, they regard the demonstrations as being for the benefit of mankind. But if so, to what purpose were the millions of these demonstrations which took place on the Earth when there were no intelligent beings to contemplate them? Did the Unknowable thus demonstrate his power to himself? Few will have the hardihood to say that any such demonstration was needful. There is no choice but to regard them, either as superfluous exercises of power, which is a derogatory supposition, or as exercises of power that were necessary because species could not be otherwise produced, which is also a derogatory supposition.

§ 113a. Other implications concerning the divine character must be recognized by those who contend that each species arose by divine fiat. It is hardly supposable that Infinite Power is exercised in trivial actions effecting trivial changes. Yet the organic world in its hundreds of thousands of species shows in each sub-division multitudinous forms which, though unlike enough to be classed as specifically distinct, diverge from one another only in small details which have no significance in relation to the life led. Sometimes the number of specific distinctions is so great that did they result from human agency we should call them whimsical.

For example, in Lake Baikal are found 115 species of an amphipod, Gammarus; and the multiplicity becomes startling on learning that this number exceeds the number of all other species of the genus: various as are the conditions to which, throughout the rest of the world, the genus is subject. Still stranger seems the superfluous exercise of power on examining the carpet of living forms at the bottom of the ocean. Not dwelling on the immense variety of creatures unlike in type which live miles below the surface in absolute darkness, it will suffice to instance the Polyzoa alone: low types of animals so small that a thousand of them would not cover a square inch, and on which, nevertheless, there has been, according to the view we are considering, an exercise of creative skill such that by small variations of structure more than 350 species have been produced!

Kindred illustrations are furnished by the fauna of caverns. Are we to suppose that numerous blind creatures—crustaceans, myriapods, spiders, insects, fishes—were specially made sightless to fit them for the Mammoth Cave? Or what shall we say of the Proteus, a low amphibian with rudimentary eyes, which inhabits certain caves in Carniola, Carinthia and Dalmatia and is not found elsewhere. Must we conclude that God went out of his way to devise an animal for these places?

More puzzling still is a problem presented to the special-creationist by a batrachian inhabiting Central Australia. In a region once peopled by numerous animals but now made unfit by continuous droughts, there exists a frog which, when the pools are drying up, fills itself with water and burrowing in the mud hibernates until the next rains; which may come in a year or may be delayed for two years. What is to be thought of this creature? Were its structure and the accompanying instinct divinely planned to fit it to this particular habitat?

Many such questions might be asked which, if answered as the current theory necessitates, imply a divine nature hardly like that otherwise assumed.

§ 114. Those who espouse the aboriginal hypothesis entangle themselves in yet other theological difficulties. This assumption that each kind of organism was specially designed, carries with it the implication that the designer intended everything which results from the design. There is no escape from the admission that if organisms were severally constructed with a view to their respective ends, then the character of the constructor is indicated both by the ends themselves, and the perfection or imperfection with which the organisms are fitted to them. Observe the consequences.

Without dwelling on the question recently raised, why during untold millions of years there existed on the Earth no beings endowed with capacities for wide thought and high feeling, we may content ourselves with asking why, at present, the Earth is largely peopled by creatures which inflict on one another so much suffering? Omitting the human race, whose defects and miseries the current theology professes to account for, and limiting ourselves to the lower creation, what must we think of the countless different pain-inflicting appliances and instincts with which animals are endowed? Not only now, and not only ever since men have lived, has the Earth been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures; but palæontology shows us that from the earliest eras geologically recorded, there has been going on this universal carnage. Fossil structures, in common with the structures of existing animals, show us elaborate weapons for destroying other animals. We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. How is this to be explained? How happens it that animals were so designed as to render this bloodshed necessary? How happens it that in almost every species the number of individuals annually born is such that the majority die by starvation or by violence before arriving at maturity? Whoever contends that each kind of animal was specially designed, must assert either that there was a deliberate intention on the part of the Creator to produce these results, or that there was an inability to prevent them. Which alternative does he prefer?—to cast an imputation on the divine character or to assert a limitation of the divine power? It is useless for him to plead that the destruction of the less powerful by the more powerful, is a means of preventing the miseries of decrepitude and incapacity, and therefore works beneficently. For even were the chief mortality among the aged instead of among the young, there would still arise the unanswerable question—why were not animals constructed in such ways as to avoid these evils? why were not their rates of multiplication, their degrees of intelligence, and their propensities, so adjusted that these sufferings might be escaped? And if decline of vigour was a necessary accompaniment of age, why was it not provided that the organic actions should end in sudden death, whenever they fell below the level required for pleasurable existence? Will any one who contends that organisms were specially designed, assert that they could not have been so designed as to prevent suffering? And if he admits that they could have been made so as to prevent suffering, will he assert that the Creator preferred making them in such ways as to inflict suffering?

Even as thus presented the difficulty is sufficiently great; but it appears immensely greater when we examine the facts more closely. So long as we contemplate only the preying of the superior on the inferior, some good appears to be extracted from the evil—a certain amount of life of a higher order, is supported by sacrificing a great deal of life of a lower order. So long, too, as we leave out all mortality but that which, by carrying off the least perfect members of each species, leaves the most perfect members to survive and multiply; we see some compensating benefit reached through the suffering inflicted. But what shall we say on finding innumerable cases in which the suffering inflicted brings no compensating benefit? What shall we say when we see the inferior destroying the superior? What shall we say on finding elaborate appliances for furthering the multiplication of organisms incapable of feeling, at the expense of misery to organisms capable of happiness?

Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the species are parasites. "The number of these parasites," says Prof. Owen, "may be conceived when it is stated that almost every known animal has its peculiar species, and generally more than one, sometimes as many as, or even more kinds than, infest the human body." This parasitism begins among the most minute creatures and pervades the entire animal kingdom from the lowest to the highest. Even Protozoa, made visible to us only by the microscope, are infested, as is Paramœcium by broods of Sphærophrya; while in large and complex animals parasites are everywhere present in great variety. More than this is true. There are parasites upon parasites—an arrangement such that those which are torturing the creatures they inhabit are themselves tortured by indwelling creatures still smaller: looking like an ingenious accumulation of pains upon pains.

But passing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dignity, let us limit ourselves to the case of Man. The Bothriocephalus latus and the Tænia solium, are two kinds of tape-worm, which flourish in the human intestines; producing great constitutional disturbances, sometimes ending in insanity; and from the germs of the Tænia, when carried into other parts of the body, arise certain partially-developed forms known as Cysticerci, Echinococci, and Cœnuri, which cause disorganization more or less extensive in the brain, the lungs, the liver, the heart, the eye, &c., often ending fatally after long-continued suffering. Five other parasites, belonging to a different class, are found in the viscera of man—the Trichocephalus, the Oxyuris, the Strongylus (two species), the Ancylostomum and the Ascaris; which, beyond that defect of nutrition which they necessarily cause, sometimes induce certain irritations that lead to complete demoralization. Of another class of entozoa, belonging to the subdivision Trematoda, there are five kinds found in different organs of the human body—the liver and gall-duct, the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. Then we have the Trichina spiralis, which passes through one phase of its existence imbedded in the muscles and through another phase of its existence in the intestine; and which, by the induced disease Trichinosis, has lately committed such ravages in Germany as to cause a panic. To these we must add the Guinea-worm, which in some part of Africa and India makes men miserable by burrowing in their legs; and the more terrible African parasite the Bilharzia, which affects 30 per cent. of the natives on the east coast with bleeding of the bladder. From entozoa, let us pass to epizoa. There are two kinds of Acari, one of them inhabiting the follicles of the skin and the other producing the itch. There are creatures that bury themselves beneath the skin and lay their eggs there; and there are three species of lice which infest the surface of the body. Nor is this all. Besides animal parasites there are sundry vegetal parasites, which grow and multiply at our cost. The Sarcina ventriculi inhabits the stomach, and produces gastric disturbance. The Leptothrix buccalis is extremely general in the mouth, and may have something to do with the decay of teeth. And besides these there are microscopic fungi which produce ringworm, porrigo, pityriasis, thrush, &c. Thus the human body is the habitat of parasites, internal and external, animal and vegetal, numbering, if all are set down, between two and three dozen species; sundry of which are peculiar to Man, and many of which produce great suffering and not unfrequently death. What interpretation is to be put on these facts by those who espouse the hypothesis of special creations? According to this hypothesis, all these parasites were designed for their respective modes of life. They were endowed with constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing nutriment from the human body; they were furnished with appliances, often of a formidable kind, enabling them to root themselves in and upon the human body; and they were made prolific in an almost incredible degree, that their germs might have a sufficient number of chances of finding their way into the human body. In short, elaborate contrivances were combined to insure the continuance of their respective races; and to make it impossible for the successive generations of men to avoid being preyed on by them. What shall we say to this arrangement? Shall we say that "the head and crown of things," was provided as a habitat for these parasites? Shall we say that these degraded creatures, incapable of thought or enjoyment, were created that they might cause human misery? One or other of these alternatives must be chosen by those who contend that every kind of organism was separately devised by the Creator. Which do they prefer? With the conception of two antagonist powers, which severally work good and evil in the world, the facts are congruous enough. But with the conception of a supreme beneficence, this gratuitous infliction of pain is absolutely incompatible.

§ 115. See then the results of our examination. The belief in special creations of organisms arose among men during the era of profoundest darkness; and it belongs to a family of beliefs which have nearly all died out as enlightenment has increased. It is without a solitary established fact on which to stand; and when the attempt is made to put it into definite shape in the mind, it turns out to be only a pseud-idea. This mere verbal hypothesis, which men idly accept as a real or thinkable hypothesis, is of the same nature as would be one, based on a day's observation of human life, that each man and woman was specially created—an hypothesis not suggested by evidence but by lack of evidence—an hypothesis which formulates ignorance into a semblance of knowledge. Further, we see that this hypothesis, failing to satisfy men's intellectual need of an interpretation, fails also to satisfy their moral sentiment. It is quite inconsistent with those conceptions of the divine nature which they profess to entertain. If infinite power was to be demonstrated, then, either by the special creation of every individual, or by the production of species by some method of natural genesis, it would be better demonstrated than by the use of two methods, as assumed by the hypothesis. And if infinite goodness was to be demonstrated, then, not only do the provisions of organic structure, if they are specially devised, fail to demonstrate it, but there is an enormous mass of them which imply malevolence rather than benevolence.

Thus the hypothesis of special creations turns out to be worthless by its derivation; worthless in its intrinsic incoherence; worthless as absolutely without evidence; worthless as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless as not satisfying a moral want. We must therefore consider it as counting for nothing, in opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the origin of organic beings.