St. George Jackson Mivart

“ Still, though the muscular structure of the breast of a bat is not so perfectly arranged for flight as is that of a bird, it is an approximation to bird-structure, and one we can well understand from the similarity of action. But it may puzzle some of my hearers at first to think why the mole, of all creatures in the world, should have a breastbone at all like that of a bird. But a moment's reflection will make it obvious that the mole also requires most powerful breast-muscles, in order that it may dig its way through the soil with the wonderful speed with which it does dig through it. ”

“ Inductive conceptions, very partially and imperfectly realized and apprehended by human intellect, are the exponents in our minds of these great principles in nature." "All science is but the partial reflexion in the reason of man, of the great all-pervading reason of the universe. And thus the unity of science is the reflexion of the unity of nature, and of the unity of that supreme reason and intelligence which pervades and rules over nature, and from whence all reason and all science is derived." ”

“ We have never witnessed the origin of a wild species by any process whatever; and if a species were to come suddenly into being in the wild state, as the Ancon Sheep did under domestication, how could you ascertain the fact? If the first of a newly-begotten species were found, the fact of its discovery would tell nothing about its origin. Naturalists would register it as a very rare species, having been only once met with, but they would have no means of knowing whether it were the first or the last of its race. ”

“ It would be difficult to name another living labourer in the field of physical science who has excited an interest so widespread, and given rise to so much praise, gathering round him, as he has done, a chorus of more or less completely acquiescing disciples, themselves masters in science, and each the representative of a crowd of enthusiastic followers.
Such is the Darwinian theory of "Natural Selection," such are the more remarkable facts which it is potent to explain, and such is the reception it has met with in the world. ”

“ Darwin says, the capacity for change is different in different domestic animals, it must surely be limited in those which have it least, and a fortiori limited in wild animals.
Indeed, it cannot be reasonably maintained that wild species certainly vary as much as do domestic races; it is possible that they may do so, but at least this has not been yet shown. Indeed, the much greater degree of variation amongst domestic animals than amongst wild ones is asserted over and over again by Mr. Darwin, and his assertions are supported by an overwhelming mass of facts and instances. ”

“ It is unquestionable that the degrees of variation which have been arrived at in domestic animals have been obtained more or less readily in a moderate amount of time, but that further development in certain desired directions is in some a matter of extreme difficulty, and in others appears to be all but, if not quite, an impossibility. It is also unquestionable that the degree of divergence which has been attained in one domestic species is no criterion of the amount of divergence which has been attained in another. ”

“ Man is indeed compound, in him two distinct orders of being impinge and mingle; and with this an origin from two concurrent modes of action is congruous, and might be expected a priori. At the same time as the "soul" is "the form of the body," the former might be expected to modify the latter into a structure of harmony and beauty standing alone in the organic world of nature. ”

“ Without a distinct belief in a personal God it is impossible to have any religion worthy of the name, and no one can at the same time accept the Christian religion and deny the dogma of creation.
"I believe in God," "the Creator of Heaven and Earth," the very first clauses of the Apostles' Creed, formally commit those who accept them to the assertion of this belief. If, therefore, any theory of physical science really conflicts with such an authoritative statement, its importance to Christians is unquestionable. ”

“ We have thus a most important and conspicuous fact, the existence of which is fatal to the theory of "Natural Selection," as put forward of late by Mr. Darwin and his most ardent followers. It must be remarked, however, that whatever force this fact may have against a belief in the origination of man from brutes by minute, fortuitous variations, it has no force whatever against the conception of the orderly evolution and successive manifestation of specific forms by ordinary natural law—even if we include amongst such the upright frame, the ready hand and massive brain of man himself. ”

“ Thus, every variation of a kind tending to save the life of the individual possessing it, or to enable it more surely to propagate its kind, will in the long run be preserved, and will transmit its favourable peculiarity to some of its offspring, which peculiarity will thus become intensified till it reaches the maximum degree of utility. On the other hand, individuals presenting unfavourable peculiarities will be ruthlessly destroyed. The action of this law of Natural Selection may thus be well represented by the convenient expression "survival of the fittest." ”

“ Spencer tries to erect a safeguard against such moral disruption, by asserting that for every immoral act, word, or thought, each man during this life receives minute and exact retribution, and that thus a regard for individual self-interest will effectually prevent any moral catastrophe. But by what means will he enforce the acceptance of a dogma which is not only incapable of proof, but is opposed to the commonly received opinion of mankind in all ages? ”

“ Nay, "Natural Selection" seems capable of application not only to the building up of the smallest and most insignificant organisms, but even of extension beyond the biological domain altogether, so as possibly to have relation to the stable equilibrium of the solar system itself, and even of the whole sidereal universe. Thus, whether this theory be true or false, all lovers of natural science should acknowledge a deep debt of gratitude to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, on account of its practical utility. But the utility of a theory by no means implies its truth. ”

“ Aspiration, love, devotion to be poured forth upon what we can never know, upon what we can never affirm to know, or care for, us, our thoughts or actions, or to possess the attributes of wisdom and goodness! ”

“ But on Darwinian principles it is impossible that the class of birds so uniform and homogeneous should have had a double reptilian origin. If one set of birds sprang from one set of reptiles, and another set of birds from another set of reptiles, the two sets could never, by "Natural Selection" only, have grown into such a perfect similarity. To admit such a phenomenon would be equivalent to abandoning the theory of "Natural Selection" as the sole origin of species. ”

“ We have seen that though the laws of nature are constant, yet some of the conditions which determine specific change may be exceptionally absent at the present epoch of the world's history; also that it is not only possible, but highly probable, that an internal power or tendency is an important if not the main agent in evoking the manifestation of new species on the scene of realized existence, and that in any case, from the facts of homology, innate internal powers to the full as mysterious must anyhow be accepted, whether they act in specific origination or not. ”

“ The beauty of certain shell-fish; the wonderful adaptations of structure, and variety of form and resemblance, found in orchids; together with the complex habits and social conditions of certain ants, have been hastily passed in review. When all these complications are duly weighed and considered, and when it is borne in mind how necessary it is for the permanence of a new variety that many individuals in each case should be simultaneously modified, the cumulative argument seems irresistible. ”

“ The theist, though properly attributing to God what, for want of a better term, he calls "purpose" and "design," yet affirms that the limitations of human purposes and motives are by no means applicable to the Divine "purposes." Out of many, say a thousand million, reasons for the institution of the laws of the physical universe, some few are to a certain extent conceivable by us; and amongst these the benefits, material and moral, accruing from them to men, and to each individual man in every circumstance of his life, play a certain, perhaps a very subordinate, part. ”

“ We can easily conceive a being so small, that a gemmule would be to it as large as St. Paul's would be to us.
Admitting then the existence of species, and of their successive evolution, is there anything in these ideas hostile to Christian belief?
Writers such as Vogt and Buchner will of course contend that there is; but naturalists, generally, assume that God acts in and by the various laws of nature. And this is equivalent to admitting the doctrine of "derivative creation." With very few exceptions, none deny such Divine concurrence. ”

“ If, in the past history of this planet, more causes ever intervened, or intervened more energetically than at present, we might a priori expect a richer and more various evolution of forms more radically differing than any which could be produced under conditions of more perfect equilibrium. At the same time, if it be true that the last few thousand years have been a period of remarkable and exceptional uniformity as regards this planet's astronomical relations, there are then some grounds for thinking that organic evolution may have been exceptionally depressed during the same epoch. ”

“ And, as the quality of moral good either must or must not exist in every important operation of the will, we should discern its presence or absence separately in each; and even though we never had the conception of more than one insulated action, we should be able to pronounce upon its character. This, however, we have plainly no power to do. Every moral judgment is relative, and involves a comparison of two terms. When we praise what has been done, it is with the coexistent conception of something else that might have been done ”

“ Yet there are some who appear to find it unreasonable and absurd that men should regard phenomena in a light not furnished by or deducible from the very phenomena themselves, although the men so regarding them avow that the light in which they do view them comes from quite another source. It is as if a man, A, coming into B's room and finding there a butterfly, should insist that B had no right to believe that the butterfly had not flown in at the open window, inasmuch as there was nothing about the room or insect to lead to any other belief ”

“ Seeds are disseminated by their minuteness,—by their capsule being converted into a light balloon-like envelope,—by being embedded in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and be devoured by birds,—by having hooks and grapnels of many kinds and serrated awns, so as to adhere to the fur of quadrupeds,—and by being furnished with wings and plumes, as different in shape as elegant in structure, so as to be wafted by every breeze. ”

“ If, in contemplating an animal of high organization, we regard it purely as an aggregation of developed gemmules, although these gemmules have been evolved successively one after the other, and one within the other, notwithstanding they elude the conception of the real and true individual, these problematical and invisible gemmules must be regarded as so many individuals. Now, that real, true, living individuals exist in nature, is a truth which is persistently attested to us by our consciousness. ”

“ Wallace, in order to be quite self-consistent, should arrive at the very same conclusion, inasmuch as he is inclined to trace all phenomena to the action of superhuman WILL. He says: [59] "If therefore we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our own WILL, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force; and thus, that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the WILL of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme Intelligence." ”

“ Also he quotes from Oersted's "Soul in Nature" (pp. 12, 16, 18, 87, 92, and 377) . "If the laws of reason did not exist in nature, we should vainly attempt to force them upon her: if the laws of nature did not exist in our reason, we should not be able to comprehend them." ... "We find an agreement between our reason and works which our reason did not produce." ... "All existence is a dominion of reason." "The laws of nature are laws of reason, and altogether form an endless unity of reason; ... one and the same throughout the universe." ”

“ In the second place, it was inevitable that a theory appearing to have very grave relations with questions of the last importance and interest to man, that is, with questions of religious belief, should call up an army of assailants and defenders. Nor have the supporters of the theory much reason, in many cases, to blame the more or less unskilful and hasty attacks of adversaries, seeing that those attacks have been in great part due to the unskilful and perverse advocacy of the cause on the part of some of its adherents. ”

“ Were it asserted that man possesses a distinct innate power and faculty by which he is made intuitively aware what acts considered in and by themselves are right and what wrong,—an infallible and universal internal code,—the illustration would be to the point. But all that need be contended for is that the intellect perceives not only truth, but also a quality of "higher" which ought to be followed, and of "lower" which ought to be avoided; when two lines of conduct are presented to the will for choice, the intellect so acting being the conscience. ”

“ Surely the evidence from physical facts agrees well with the overruling, concurrent action of God in the order of nature; which is no miraculous action, but the operation of laws which owe their foundation, institution, and maintenance to an omniscient Creator of whose intelligence our own is a feeble adumbration, inasmuch as it is created in the "image and likeness" of its Maker. ”

“ Darwin seems to admit and assume that the idea of "creation" necessitates a belief in an interference with, or dispensation of, natural laws, and that "creation" must be accompanied by arbitrary and unorderly phenomena. None but the crudest conceptions are placed by him to the credit of supporters of the dogma of creation, and it is constantly asserted that they, to be consistent, must offer "creative fiats" as explanations of physical phenomena, and be guilty of numerous other such absurdities. ”

“ Law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, was the patristic ideal of creation. With this notion, they admitted without difficulty the most surprising origin of living creatures, provided it took place by law. They held that when God said, 'Let the waters produce,' 'Let the earth produce,' He conferred forces on the elements of earth and water, which enabled them naturally to produce the various species of organic beings. This power, they thought, remains attached to the elements throughout all time. ”

“ Also, we find co-existing with this harmony a mode of proceeding so different from that of man as (the direct supernatural action eluding us) to form a stumbling-block to many in the way of their recognition of Divine action at all: although nothing can be more inconsistent than to speak of the first cause as utterly inscrutable and incomprehensible, and at the same time to expect to find traces of a mode of action exactly similar to our own. It is surely enough if the results harmonize on the whole and preponderatingly with the rational, moral, and æsthetic instincts of man. ”

“ It is easy to complain of the onesidedness of many of those who oppose Darwinism in the interest of orthodoxy; but not at all less patent is the intolerance and narrow-mindedness of some of those who advocate it, avowedly or covertly, in the interest of heterodoxy. This hastiness of rejection or acceptance, determined by ulterior consequences believed to attach to "Natural Selection," is unfortunately in part to be accounted for by some expressions and a certain tone to be found in Mr. Darwin's writings. That his expressions, however, are not always to be construed literally is manifest. ”

“ He says: "Why should we suppose the machine too complicated to have been designed by the Creator so complete that it would necessarily work out harmonious results? The theory of 'continual interference' is a limitation of the Creator's power. It assumes that He could not work by pure law in the organic, as He has done in the inorganic world." Thus, then, there is not only no necessary antagonism between the general theory of "evolution" and a Divine action, but the compatibility between the two is recognized by naturalists who cannot be suspected of any strong theological bias. ”

“ The word "individual" denotes a concrete whole with a real, separate, and distinct existence. The word "species," on the other hand, denotes a peculiar congeries of characters, innate powers and qualities, and a certain nature realized indeed in individuals, but having no separate existence, except ideally as a thought in some mind.
Thus the birth of a "species" can only be compared metaphorically, and very imperfectly, with that of an "individual."
Individuals as individuals, actually and directly produce and bring forth other individuals ”

“ Organic nature then speaks clearly to many minds of the action of an intelligence resulting, on the whole and in the main, in order, harmony, and beauty, yet of an intelligence the ways of which are not such as ours.
This view of evolution harmonizes well with Theistic conceptions; not, of course, that this harmony is brought forward as an argument in its favour generally, but it will have weight with those who are convinced that Theism reposes upon solid grounds of reason as the rational view of the universe. ”

“ But are there any grounds for thinking that in the genesis of species an internal force or tendency interferes, co-operates with and controls the action of external conditions?
It is here contended that there are such grounds, and that though inheritance, reversion, atavism, Natural Selection, &c., play a part not unimportant, yet that such an internal power is a great, perhaps the main, determining agent.
It will, however, be replied that such an entity is no vera causa; that if the conception is accepted, it is no real explanation ”