Herbert Spencer

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”