Sir John William Dawson

“ On the hypothesis of evolution, the animal thus ceases to be, in the proper sense of the term, even a machine, and becomes a mere mass of conflicting parts depending for any constancy they may have on a chance balancing of hostile forces, without any compelling power to bring them together at first, or any means to bind them to joint action in the system. The more such a doctrine is considered, the more difficult does it seem to believe in the possibility of its truth. Evolution has already reduced the cosmos into chaos, the harmony of the universe into discord ”

“ Thus far we have proceeded solely on scientific grounds, and have seen that Monism and Agnosticism fail to account for nature. We may therefore feel ourselves justified in assuming, as the only promising solution of the enigma of existence, the being of a Divine Creator. But this does not wholly exhaust the relations of science to religion. When Science has led us into the presence of the Creator, she has brought us to the threshold of religion, and there she suggests the possibility that the spirit of man may have other relations with God beyond those established by merely physical law. ”

“ The mother who hears the cry of her child, crushed under some weighty thing which has fallen on it, will never pause to consider that it is the law of gravitation which has caused the accident; she will defy the law of gravitation, and if necessary will pray any one who is near to help her. Prayer, in short, is a natural power so important that without it the young of most of the higher animals would have little chance of life; and it triumphs over almost every other natural law which may stand in its way. ”

“ But when we consider the variety and the intricacy of nature, the unity and the harmony of its parts, and the adaptation of these to an incalculable number of uses, we find something more than power. There is a fitting together of things in a manner not only above our imitation, but above our comprehension. To refer this to mere chance or to innate tendencies or potencies of things we feel to be but an empty form of words; consequently, we are forced to admit superhuman contrivance in nature, or what Paul terms "divinity." ”

“ If we discard the idea of an intelligent Creator, then mind and all its powers must be potentially in the atoms of matter or in the forces which move them; but this is a mere form of words signifying nothing, or, if it has any significance, this is contrary to science, since it bestows on matter properties which experiment does not show it to possess. Thus the existence of man is not only a positive proof of the presence of mind in nature, but affords the strongest possible proof of a higher Creative Mind, from which that of man emanates. ”

“ There is a method, well known to natural science, for measuring and indicating the divergence of man from his nearest allies. This is the application of those principles of classification which, though of essential importance in science, are by some modern students of nature strangely overlooked or misunderstood. Perhaps in nothing has the progress of ideas of evolution made a more injurious impress on the advance of knowledge than in the manner in which it has caused many eminent and able naturalists to diverge from all logical propriety in their ideas of classification. ”

“ But in certain discussions now prevalent as to the "origin of religion," it is customary quietly to assume that there is no God to be known, and consequently that religion must be a mere gratuitous invention of man. It is not too much to say, however, that any scientific conception of the unity of nature and of man's place in it must forbid our making atheistic assumptions. If man were a mere product of blind, unintelligent chance, the idea of a God was not likely ever to have occurred to him, still less to have become the common property of all races of men. ”

“ The laws of nature are merely mental generalizations of our own, and, so far as they go, show a remarkable harmony between our mental nature and that manifested in the universe. They are not themselves powers capable of producing effects, but merely express what we can ascertain of uniformity of action in nature. The law of gravitation, for example, gives no clew to the origin of that force, but merely expresses its constant mode of action, in whatever way that may have been determined at first. ”

“ It may perhaps rather be compared to a vast series of machines, each running independently like the trains on a railway, but all connected and regulated by an invisible guidance which determines the time and the distance of each, and the manner in which the less urgent and less important shall give place to others. Even this does not express the whole truth; for the harmony of nature must be connected with constant change and progress toward higher perfection. Does this conception of natural law give us any warrant for the idea that the universe is a product of chance? ”

“ Yet this absurd sense of the term "supernatural" is constantly forced upon us by so-called advanced thinkers, and employed as an argument against theism. The only true sense in which any being or any thing can be said to be supernatural is that in which we use it with reference to the original creation of matter and force and the institution of natural law. The power which can do these things is above nature, but not outside of it; for matter, energy, and law must be included in, and in harmony with, the Creative Will. ”

“ We reduce matter to atoms, but it is impossible [25] for us to have any conception of an atom or of the supposed ether, whether itself in some sense atomic or not, including such atoms. Our attempts to form rational conceptions of atoms resolve themselves into complex conjectures as to vortices of ethers and the like, of which no one pretends to have any distinct mental picture; yet on this basis of the incomprehensible rests all our physical science, the first truths in which are really matters of pure faith in the existence of that which we cannot understand. ”

“ If there is a God, he must be in the universe as a pervading power, and in every part of it, and must not be shut out from his own work. This mistaken conception of God as building himself out of his own universe and acting on it by external force is both irrational [30] and unscientific, being, for example, quite at variance with the analogy of force and life. Rightly understood, therefore, Spencer's alternatives resolve themselves into two—either the universe is self-existent, or it is the work of a self-existent Creator pervading all things with his power. ”

“ On the other hand, it is a sad reality that man tends to sink from high ideal morality and reason into debasing vices and gross superstitions that are not natural, but which, on the contrary, place him at variance with natural as well as with moral law. Thus the actual and the possible debasement of man, instead of proving his bestial origin, only increases the need of a divine revelation for his improvement.
But, supposing the need of a revelation to be admitted, other questions might arise as to its mode. Here the anticipations of science would be guided by the analogy of nature. ”

“ If, then, irrational animals can overcome the forces of dead nature in answer to prayer; if man himself, in answer to the cry of distress, can do things in ordinary circumstances almost impossible,—how foolish is it to suppose that this link of connection cannot subsist between God and his rational offspring! One wonders that any man of science should for a moment entertain such an idea, if, indeed, he has any belief whatever in the existence of a God.
There is another aspect of prayer insisted on in revelation on which the observation of nature throws some light. ”

“ Here, in short, we already reach the threshold of that dread unknown future and its possibilities, the realization of which by hope, fear, and imagination constitutes, perhaps, our first introduction to the unseen world as distinguished from the present world of sense. The agnostic may smile if he pleases at religion as a puerile fancy, but he knows, like other men, that the [24] mere consciousness of existence necessarily links itself with a future—nay, unending—existence, and that any being with this consciousness of futurity must have at least a religion of hope and fear. ”

“ Hence, so soon as it pleased God to introduce in any part of the universe a free rational will gifted with certain powers over lower nature, only two courses were possible: either God must leave such free agent wholly to his own devices, making him a god on a small scale, and so far practically abdicating in his favor, or he must place him under some law, and this not of the nature of mere physical compulsion—which, on the hypothesis, would be inadmissible—but in the nature of requirements addressed to his reason and his conscience. ”

“ Scientific men, even when they think proper to call themselves idealists, must reject the first of the above alternatives, since they cannot doubt the objective existence of external nature, and they know that its existence dates from a time anterior to our possible existence as human beings. They may hold to either of the others; and, practically, the minds of students of science are divided between the idea of a spontaneous evolution of all things from self-existent matter and force, and that of the creation of all by a self-existent, omnipotent, and all-wise Creator. ”

“ The first impression of nature presented to a mind uninitiated in its mysteries is that it is a mere conflict of opposing forces; but so soon as we study any natural phenomena in detail, we see that this is an error, and that everything is balanced in the nicest way by the most subtle interactions of matter and force. We find also that, while forces are mutually convertible and atoms susceptible of vast varieties of arrangement, all this is determined by fixed law and carried out with invariable regularity and constancy. ”

“ Still, as a matter of faith, we must hold fast to the proposition "I exist" as the only standpoint for science, philosophy, or common life. If we are asked for evidence of this faith, we can appeal only to our consciousness of effects which imply the existence of the ego, which we thus have to admit or suppose before we can begin to prove even its existence. ”

“ Darwin's facts, that unless "natural selection" is a much more skilful breeder than man, and possesses some secrets not yet discovered by us, the effects of this imaginary power would lead, not to the production of new species, but merely to the extinction of those already existing. In short, all the evidence goes to show that—so beautifully balanced are the parts of the organism—any excess or deficiency in any of them, when artificially or accidentally introduced, brings in elements not only of instability, but of decay and destruction. ”