Francis Bowen

“ Of course, the immature ovum, arrested in its development, could not form a more perfect being than its parent. There is no pretence that the embryo, at any stage of its progress, images an animal of a higher grade than its own family. Then what aid do these similarities of structure afford to the theory, that all the higher organisms have been evolved by successive steps out of the lowest monad? At the best, you have only shown, that a retreat is possible; you have still to point out any likelihood, even the remotest, of an advance in the scale of being. ”

“ The Creator, then, is no longer banished from his creation, nor is the latter an orphan, or a deserted child. It is not a great machine, that was wound up at the beginning, and has continued to run on ever since, without aid or direction from its artificer. As well might we conceive of the body of a man moving about, and performing all its appropriate functions, without the principle of life, or the indwelling of an immortal soul. The universe is not lifeless or soulless. ”

“ Just so, when the atheist tells us, that far off in infinite space is a region, of which we can see nothing, even with our best telescopes, except a faint glimmer of light, floating like a cloudlet in the heavens, where the primitive atoms of matter, directed by gravity alone, are slowly congregating together, and forming suns, and planets, and secondary satellites, and giving birth to such intricate harmonies of mutually dependent and revolving worlds as those which have prevailed for ages in our own system ”

“ We have only to decide whether it is more likely, that the complex system of things in the midst of which we live,—the beautiful harmonies between the organic and inorganic world, the nice arrangements and curious adaptations that obtain in each, the simplicity and uniformity of the general plan to which the vast multitude of details may be reduced,—was built up, and is now sustained, by one all-wise and all-powerful Being, or by particles of brute matter, acting of themselves, without direction, interference, or control. ”

“ If these considerations are well founded, the whole framework of what are called "secondary causes" falls to pieces. The laws of nature are only a figure of speech; the powers and active inherent properties of material atoms are mere fictions. Mind alone is active; matter is wholly passive and inert. There is no such thing as what we usually call the course of nature; it is nothing but the will of God producing certain effects in a constant and uniform manner; which mode of action, however, being perfectly arbitrary, is as easy to be altered at any time as to be preserved. ”

“ Organization is subservient to life, ministers to it, manifests it,—supports it, if you please,—but does not constitute it. He must be a bolder man than we are, who will undertake to say what it is; but we can very safely declare what it is not; and in any particular form or aggregation of matter, whether organic or inorganic, we can give a shrewd guess as to its presence or absence. It may be said, that we beg the question by assuming that organization is not life; it may be so; but it is quite too much to allow the materialist quietly to take the opposite doctrine for granted. ”

“ The conditions requisite for a development more perfect than usual,—that is, for the production of a new species,—instead of a new individual of the same species, may be fulfilled only at long intervals; but when they are fulfilled, the result—the more perfect development—takes place as necessarily, as much by the virtue of law, as the more ordinary phenomenon of the propagation of one race. These conditions may be answered in the successive stages of improvement, through which the earth and its atmosphere pass, during the vast periods of time contemplated in geology. ”

“ The body is the curiously contrived machine through which the man communicates with the material world. The eye is but his instrument to see with, the ear is his trumpet for communicating sound to him, the leg is his steed, and the arm his soldier. ”

“ Passing over, then, our author's theory of the origination of life from inorganic matter as utterly untenable, we come to the next point in his system,—the most chimerical of all,—the gradual development of the higher orders of being out of those next beneath them in the scale. It is not pretended, that there is any known instance of the transmutation of species, or of the evolution, in the ordinary way, of any being specifically different from its parents. The same animal, indeed, may pass through different grades of development; but these changes affect only the individual, not the race. ”

“ And this is the whole business of the student of nature, to place together results which are so similar, that we may attribute them to a common cause, without assuming to know what that cause is. The sole office of science is the theory, not of causation, but of classification. ”

“ As we have seen, it is absurd to say, that one atom of matter literally acts on another. On the other hand, in the world of mind, we are directly conscious of action, and even of causation. All mental exertion is true action; every determination of the will implies effort, or the direction and use of power. The result to be accomplished is preconsidered, or meditated, and therefore is known a priori, or before experience; the volition succeeds, which is a true effort, or a power in action; and this, if the power be sufficient, is necessarily followed by the effect. Volition is a true cause ”

“ One of the latest events in the geological history of the earth was a great submersion of the land, by which "terrestrial animal life was extensively, if not universally, destroyed"; so that the creation of the species now in being—at least, all the higher species—was "a comparatively recent event, and one posterior, generally speaking, to all the great natural transactions chronicled by geology." Science does not contradict, it rather confirms, that voice of revelation or tradition, which assigns about six thousand years as the period of man's residence upon the earth. ”

“ That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. ”

“ Natural history teaches us, that there is quite a regular gradation among the several tribes of vegetables and animals; though we may not be able to range all the species, as constantly advancing in a single line, there is certainly the general appearance of a scale, beginning with the most simple, and going on to the most complex forms. While the external characteristics are very different, all are but variations of a single plan, which exists as the basis of all, and is varied in each individual only so as to accommodate it to the conditions under which the individual is to live. ”

“ All events, all changes, in the external world, from the least even unto the greatest, are attributable to his will and power, which, being infinite, is always and necessarily adequate to the end proposed. The laws of motion, gravitation, affinity, and the like, are only expressions of the regularity and continuity of one infinite cause. The order of nature is the effect of divine wisdom, its stability is the result of divine beneficence. ”

“ At any rate, geology informs us, that the causes, whatever they may be, which produce life, have been long and frequently in operation. They were not exhausted in the first effort; they are probably still at work throughout the universe. Not merely successive generations, but successive races, both of plants and animals, widely distinguished from each other, have, at different periods, tenanted the earth's surface. Those of which we possess the fossil remains belong, almost without exception, to extinct species. ”

“ Gravitation is now referred to the communication of motion by impulse; electricity, to the combination and separation of different fluids; affinity, to the attraction or repulsion of these fluids. The latter classes of phenomena are more general, but not a whit more explicable, than the former. We have now fewer causes to seek for, but not one of these few has been discovered. When we have resolved electricity or gravitation into the presence of an elastic medium, it is a mere figure of speech to say, that we have discovered the cause of the electric phenomena or of gravity. ”

“ As respects the manner in which all physical effects are produced by the direct action of the Deity, we are not bound to offer any explanation, as the subject confessedly transcends the limit of the human faculties. It is enough for us, that the supposition is the only conceivable one, the only mode of accounting for the phenomena of the material world. But as man is made in the image of his Creator, in the union for a time of his spirit with his corporeal frame we may find at least an intelligible illustration of the connection of God with the universe. ”

“ In the abyss of space, it is also forming new suns, and solar systems, and worlds that are to pass through the same stages and wonderful transformations to which our own planet has already been subjected. All that has occurred with respect to this earth, and the system of which it forms a part, is but a type of what is constantly going on in the countless other systems of stars that people the firmament. ”

“ It may be asked, if divine power, instead of operating immediately throughout the universe, might not have endowed material atoms at the outset with certain properties and energies, the gradual evolution of which in after ages would produce all the phenomena of nature, without the necessity of his incessant presence, agency, and control. Certainly, we may not put bounds to omnipotence; though we may assert of a given hypothesis respecting its exercise, that it is inconceivable, or involves wholly incongruous ideas. ”

“ There is no fact whatever to confirm the supposition, that birth may possibly be delayed till the animal be developed into one of a higher species; and the law of immature births seems to be, that, if the offspring escapes at all—for there is great risk consequent on such an accident,—it becomes as perfect as its progenitors. Nature seems to guard the distinctions between the several races with peculiar care; so far as we know, monsters either do not survive their birth, or are incapable of continuing their kind, or in the course of a single generation are reunited to the original family. ”

“ In accounting for the work of creation by the natural and unassisted development of the inherent qualities of brute matter, the great difficulty is found at the first link in the chain of animated being. How can we explain the commencement of life? We must have a clear idea of the whole scope of this problem, before we can make any attempt at its solution. Life, then, is not mere organization, though most materialists, philosophers, like our author, willingly confound the two things; to hear them reason, one would almost suppose that there was no difference between a dead man and a living one. ”

“ Observe, now, how all the phraseology employed in speaking of these successive generalizations of science is borrowed from the action of mind. The word action itself has no real significance, except when applied to the doings of an intelligent agent; we cannot speak of the doings of matter, as we could if the word action were applicable to it in any other than a figurative sense. Again, in speaking of the similarity of facts and the regularity of sequences, we refer them to a law of nature, just as if they were sentient beings acting under the will of a sovereign. ”

“ The reciprocal action of the respiratory, circulating, and nervous systems is absolutely necessary to life. The animal dies, and this unity, this subservience of the parts to the whole, immediately ceases. In the functions of the living body, it may be that the ordinary laws of chemistry are preserved, and that the elements of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen combine and separate according to their ordinary affinities, and in no unusual proportions. ”

“ As many of these animals, in their perfect state, are not more than the twelve thousandth part of an inch in diameter, it is not much to be wondered at, that we should not be able in all cases to discover their ova, or to follow these ova through all their stages of development into the complete being. It is farther remarkable, that these animalcules, when once produced, whether by spontaneous or natural generation, are all found to be provided with the organs or requisite means for continuing their species, and, in fact, for multiplying their number from themselves with astonishing rapidity. ”

“ The progeny of this animal must begin at the same point where its parent did, and run precisely the same cycle. The tadpole becomes a frog, but the young of that frog are tadpoles; the worm becomes a winged insect, but the eggs of that insect are hatched into nothing but worms. These changes in the life of the individual, like the successive periods of the embryotic state, of infancy, and manhood in the human being, are perfectly consistent with persistence of type in the race, and do not indicate even the possibility that a new species may be developed out of an old one. ”

“ With the exposure of this crowning absurdity, we must close our direct examination of this "History of Creation." We have not room to consider some of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. ”

“ There has been a constant progress, the soil and the atmosphere becoming more and more fitted for the support of the higher forms of life; and when all things were thus made ready for them, these higher forms have appeared, and the lower orders of being, which formerly occupied the scene, have entirely died out, so that their remains, entombed in the solid rock, are now the only indications of their past existence. In the era of the primary rocks, as we have seen, there was no organization or life, as there was nothing to support it. ”

“ A person who should hear for the first time this naked exposition of the writer's theory would be tempted at once to reject the whole, as too extravagant and absurd to deserve further notice. But he would be much mistaken in this conclusion. The theory is a very plausible one; it is one of the best cosmogonies that the wit of man has ever framed. It is a revival of the old atheistic hypothesis,—the Epicurean doctrine of the formation of the universe by a fortuitous concourse of atoms,—with all the modifications and improvements that were rendered necessary by the discoveries of modern science. ”