Henry Calderwood

“ Even if it be granted, as it readily will be by those who have studied the results of recent research, that there is a vast body of evidence to prove that there is development of species by adaptation and selection, it is equally evident that this is not the only law affecting the existence of different orders of organized beings. Just as clear as it is that pollen and seed are both required to provide for the continuance of plant life, so clear is it that plants are needed to support insects, and insects to propagate plants. ”

“ Among animals, a regard to justice is the very last thing we expect to find. It would seem that the very success of the Darwinian theory depends upon absence of any approach to justice in animal life. The masterfulness of force is the thing most conspicuous as we mark the conduct of animals. Food is the reward of fight; what is to happen to the one who is beaten is matter of no concern for the one who has secured a good repast. On any definition of justice that can be offered, it would seem clear that any regard to it is impossible under the conditions of animal life. ”

“ We are dealing with conjecture, not with science. There is no reason in the interests of truth to object to hypothesis in this region, any more than in another, for conjecture has often proved the handmaid of discovery, and it is likely to be so in a still larger degree. But an essential condition of this acknowledgment is, that conjecture do not claim any respect beyond what its nature warrants, and specially do not take to itself the name of science,—knowledge, or certainty. ”

“ What in surface form appears as antipathy to Nature's laws, in deeper significance is sympathy with Nature itself. It is the witness of recoil, for an advance which is not impossible, but is progressing even while we shrink from sight of the procedure, — it is coming through all this suffering which we deplore. Here, as often, the shadow which crosses our spirits helps us to see more readily the brightness still remote. We must learn this lesson of Nature's teaching, — through suffering and through death lies the pathway of progress. ”

“ Thus are we enabled to trace the boundaries of two distinct regions of thought, closely related, yet clearly separated. Science can not do the work of religion, nor can religion do the work of science. Each must fulfil its own part, and abide its proper tests. Science has its own place and its own task. Religion will simply wait upon science, leaving it to make its own discoveries, gladly accepting each one of them as it is established. The most reverend students of the Bible do not regard it as a revelation presenting a key to scientific research ”

“ There is no such avowed antagonism to an evolution theory as once appeared, — no such unexpressed apprehension as at one time disturbed the minds of many. This is the result of a truer and fuller knowledge of fixed laws in nature. Life of all grades is tried by environment. This natural testing ab extra leads life to adapt itself to circumstances. So much as this belongs to the common belief of our age. In the struggle for existence throughout past ages lay the promise now read by its fulfilment in the history of species. ”

“ Facts now recorded in multitudes of scientific journals, and more elaborate treatises, illustrate wonderful minuteness of contrivance and completeness of adaptation in the works of nature, giving to the range of knowledge possessed only a century ago an aspect of insignificance. What the microscope has done by enlarging the range of human vision, subdivision of labor among scientific inquirers, and proportionate concentration, have done, in the way of embracing the vast and complicated field, of observation lying open to all eyes. ”

“ If we bring new conditions into the life of the dog and horse, training them to do what they would not do unless trained, we introduce into animal life what does not belong to it under natural law. If in this way we introduce a kind of rule or order of service for animals; and if, in view of this, we begin to speak of "something which may be regarded as animal ethics," the ethics are of our own introduction; they do not appear in actions "proper to the species," but only in actions possible to them under the regulation of man. ”

“ The supernatural is not more remote from us by such discoveries as science can boast, but is in reality brought nearer. The fancy that enlarged knowledge of the natural, is steadily driving before it all recognition of the supernatural, is one of which thinking men will by and by be ashamed. That men should consider the discovery of the component parts of certain forms of existence, or of the laws of well known movements, as a final disposal of the demands of intelligence, only shows how little the intellect of inquirers has been prepared for appreciation of the full demands of reason. ”

“ If men long continued unwilling to admit that the earth moves round the sun, and that the rising and setting of the luminary are delusions, while the succession of light and darkness is real, we can not wonder at this slowness of assent, or charge it to the power of religious thought. The conflict was not between religion and science, but between popular notions and scientific observations. ”

“ Animal necessities we can see clearly; animal benefits we can reckon up accurately; but animal ethics we cannot find even in faintest outline. The weakest life dies off; the completest survives, and contributes to the advance of the species; but the laws applicable are physical, not ethical.
If we judge of things by reference to our emotions, it will be apparent that we do not escape a sense of antipathy, even in contemplating the application of physical law. We may hesitate as to our expression of antipathy, when it concerns what we own to be a law of Nature ”

“ Neither science, nor philosophy, nor religion can deliver them from the narrow round of materialism. But neither science, nor philosophy, nor religion, can restrict itself to the testimony of the senses. A deeper, and wider range of inquiry is demanded of the man who would walk at large in the vast field spread out in nature. All human life is subjected to the test of accepting evidence other than that the senses supply. ”

“ There are thus before us the chief results of physical science, as to the nature of matter, when we specify that it is indestructible, that it consists of ultimate molecules or atoms, and that its compressibility is to be explained by pressure upon such atoms, or cohesion, or comparative closeness of relation between them, this being greater in solids, less in liquids, and least in gases.
From the structure of matter, we are led by science to the consideration of energy, as distinct from matter. ”

“ Whether there is a clear line of demarcation between vegetable and animal life is a comparatively subordinate question. It is the wider and more perplexing question which most fundamentally affects our general conceptions as to the history and government of the world? And when this question is pressed singly,—how can we account for the appearance of life in the world?—science has no answer to present. Life still remains a mystery in scientific times, as it had been in past ages. Much has been written as to the origin of species ”

“ Indeed it should be alien to the reflective observer, to marvel at the discovery of diversity of thought in any region, or to make its existence a ground for adverse criticism. Commonly accepted conclusions must afford the basis for competent criticism, whatever be the field of inquiry brought under review; diversity of opinion beyond and around these, must be accepted as the uniform attendant of human knowledge, indicating at once the provision for intellectual progress and the inducement to it. ”

“ It is, therefore, no marvel that there is large diversity of opinion among scientific men, on many problems arising out of universally accepted positions. It is only by the same necessity that there is diversity of opinion on matters of religion. The materials of study are set before us in the mass, and our knowledge is to be obtained by the slow processes of intellectual procedure, in accordance with which some things become clear, while many more remain obscure. ”

“ Thus taking the world as presented to us, it has a constitution which requires for its explanation that we go beyond every thing to be found within itself. The matter in the universe can not account for the energy; nor can the energy account for the matter; and the relations between the two must find explanation in something higher than both. What their source may be, science is incapable of telling; it can not contribute towards satisfying the requirements of the law of causality in view of the mutual relations of matter and energy which it has itself revealed. ”

“ Religion, therefore, has no conflict with science here; it simply accepts the teaching of science, finding in it ample support for its fundamental position. What creation really means, or how we can fittingly represent it to our minds, does not in the least affect the question here under discussion, for these are not points on which science can offer any testimony. Nor have the defenders of religion any complaint to urge against the claims which science makes to explain all that belongs to nature. ”

“ Progress is transition, and in a sense unsettling; but it is also accumulation, and thus in a more enduring sense, consolidating. Fresh observation in some one department of research does not overthrow all that was credited previously. It extends the area of knowledge, or carries us into a more minute acquaintance with particulars, and only in a restricted way modifies accepted positions, by introducing relations formerly unrecognized. Thus, progress in a particular science does not unsettle scientific belief. ”

“ As the contrary lines of conduct are so often followed, and even vindicated as permissible in the competitions of life, we need to show with some care that the law of benevolence is uniformly regarded as a law of human conduct even when its requirements are unfulfilled. This becomes obvious if we look along another line of observation. If we pass from what a man does to his fellowmen to what he is seen to expect of them, we at once perceive that the authoritative feature alleged to belong to the principle of benevolence is admitted by him. ”

“ The ebb and flow of intellectual interests follow in such rapid succession, and each is so absorbing during its continuance, that we readily forget the tangled waste buried from sight under the spring-tide of rising expectation. We easily lose sight of the past, even though it lie close at hand, and as we feel the pulse of life beat high in proportion [Pg 45] to the vividness and apparent value of our prospects, we are ever liable to overestimate the importance of the present position, thus severing ourselves too readily from all that lies behind. ”

“ Impotent in the extreme has been the voice of a "positive" philosophy, denouncing the search for causes, sounding its trumpet call to rally all divisions of scientific workers to search exclusively for facts, as if such workers were but a band of quarrymen, boring, blasting, and gathering up shattered fragments of rock. For facts must science ever search ”

“ Whatever may be the ultimate view of the history of life on the earth, based on purely scientific data,—and we are still a far way removed from what may be regarded as scientific evidence for such a view,—the fewer the primordial forms to which the multiplicity of existing species can be traced, the greater is the marvel which science presents, and the more convincing becomes the intellectual necessity by which we travel back to a Supernatural Intelligence as the source of all. ”

“ The defender of the harmony of scientific with religious thought has nothing more to desire. The very place where science comes to a halt, acknowledging that its utmost boundary has been reached, is the place where it is demonstrated that scientific thought and religious are not involved in real conflict. ”