3.07. Creation
Creation In Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 8 it is said that “God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence.” The decree itself, we have seen, as immanent in the divine being, is formed in eternity and is one single act which simultaneously includes all that comes to pass in all space and time. But as emanent and transitive, it passes into execution by a gradual and endless succession of events and phenomena. The two general modes in which the divine decree is executed are creation and providence. It might at first sight seem as if redemption should constitute a third mode; but theologians have commonly included this under the head of providence, as the special manner in which God provides for the needs of men as sinners.
CreationEx Nihilo
Creation, in the proper sense of origination ex nihilo, is the very first work that God does ad extra. Nothing precedes it, except that eternal activity in the divine essence which results in the trinitarian persons. These latter are not creations, but emanations. Hence creation is called “the beginning of God’s way” (Proverbs 8:22); and God is said to have created the heaven and earth “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). The doctrine of creation is taught in Genesis 1:1; Nehemiah 9:6; Job 26:3; Psalms 19:1; Psalms 104:30; Psalms 124:8; Psalms 146:6; John 1:3; Acts 17:24; Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 2 Corinthians 4:6; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 3:4; Hebrews 4:4; Hebrews 11:3. The peculiar characteristic in creation, namely, the origination of entity from nonentity, is mentioned in the following: “The worlds were framed so that things which are seen were not made of things that do appear” (Hebrews 11:3); “God commanded the light to shine out of darkness” (2 Corinthians 4:6); and “by him were all things created, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16).
Creation ex nihilo is peculiar to the Scriptures. It is not found even in the most rational and spiritual of the ancient cosmogonies. Even when an intelligent architect of the universe is affirmed, as in the systems of Plato and Aristotle, an eternal hylē,1[Note: 1. ὕλη] or chaotic matter, is postulated, out of which it is formed. Philo (On the World) takes the same view. In the Platonic writings, God is rather a demiurge than a Creator. Plutarch (Procreation of the Soul) describes Plato’s view as follows: “The creation was not out of nothing, but out of matter wanting beauty and perfection, like the rude materials of a house lying first in a confused heap.” Ranke (Universal History 1.22) marks the difference between the Mosaic and the Egyptian and Assyrian cosmogonies as … an express counterstatement. With the Egyptians and Babylonians, everything is developed from the inherent powers of the sun, the stars, and the earth itself. Jehovah, on the other hand, appears as the Creator of heaven and earth; as both the originator and the orderer of the world. The conception of a chaos is not excluded, but this conception itself rested on the idea of a previous creation. (See supplement 3.7.1.) In Scripture, the term creation is sometimes employed in a secondary sense: “You send forth your spirit, they are created” (Psalms 104:30); “I create evil” (Isaiah 45:7); “the Lord has crated a new thing in the earth” (Jeremiah 31:22); “create in me a clean heart” (Psalms 51:10); “I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1; and other passages). In these instances, divine agency operating by means of second causes is intended. Creatures are propagated under laws established by the Creator; sin is permitted and controlled by God employing the human will; an extraordinary event in history is brought about by divine providence; the regeneration and sanctification of the human soul is a secondary creation.
Under the head of creation, we have to do only with the primary and strict signification of the term, as denoting origination from nothing: de nihilo or ex nihilo. The poverty and inadequateness of human language is very apparent in respect to this idea. Words are more or less pictorial in their roots and elements. But the creation of entity from nonentity utterly forbids any picturing or imaging. For this reason, more or less of qualification or explanation must be employed, in all languages, in connection with the words that are used to denote this purely abstract and inexplicable conception. The Hebrew word employed to denote the idea of creation is bārā˒.2[Note: 2. áÌÈøÈà = to create] According to Gesenius (in voce) it signifies “(1) to cut, to carve; (2) to form, create, produce; Genesis 2:3 reads bārā˒ la˒ăśôt:3[Note: 3. áÌÈøÈà ìÇòÂùÒåÉú = to create by making] which he created in making, that is, which he made in creating something new.” Says Delitzsch (in Lange’s Commentary on Genesis 1:1), “Bārā˒4[Note: 4. áÌÈøÈà] in the Piel signifies to cut, hew, form; but in the Qal,5[Note: 5. The Qal is the simplest pattern of the Hebrew verb. It is used to express the basic meaning of the verb root. The Piel is a Hebrew verb pattern that may also express the basic meaning for some verb roots, though it more usually indicates some intensification of the action. For verbs whose Qal pattern represents a state or condition rather than an action (e.g., “to be heavy”), the Piel will refer to bringing about or making that condition (e.g., “to make heavy”).] it is employed to denote divine products, new and not previously existing in the sphere of nature and history (Exodus 34:10; Numbers 16:30; and frequently in the prophets) or in the sphere of spirit (Psalms 51:10). In the Qal it never denotes human productions and is never used with the accusative of the material.” In Exodus 5:16, ˓āśâ6[Note: 6. òÈùÒÈä = to make] is used with the accusative of material: “Make brick.” Dillmann (on Genesis 18:21) agrees with Delitzsch. Oehler (Theology of the Old Testament 1.169) takes the same view. Dorner (Christian Doctrine 2.23) endorses it. The patristic, medieval, and Reformation exegesis adopts this interpretation. The clause ex nihilo is explanatory of the term creation and is necessary to define it and guard it from misuse. Unless it be employed, creation may be used to signify evolution or development, which is a wholly different conception. Ex nihilo denotes that a created thing is not produced out of existing matter of any kind whatever: “ ‘Out of’ (ex) does not indicate matter but rather excludes it.”7[Note: 7. ex, non designat sed excludit materiam] Creation of entity from nonentity is expressed in Romans 4:17 : “God calls those things which be not, as though they were (ta mē onta hōs onta).”8[Note: 8. τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα] The same idea is suggested in 2 Corinthians 4:6 : “God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness.” It is not meant that darkness is the material of which light is made, but the state or condition of things in which light is made to begin by a fiat. Hebrew 11:3, which says that “things which are seen were not made of things that do appear,” teaches that there is an invisible cause for all visibles; and Colossians 1:16, which says that “all things visible and invisible” were created (ektisthē)9[Note: 9. ἐκτίσθη] by the first begotten, teaches that God creates the invisible forces of matter, as well as the invisible spirits of angels and men. In the apocryphal 2Ma 7:28 it is said that “God made the heaven and earth of things that are not (ex ouk ontōn).”10[Note: 0 10. ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων = from nonexisting things] Creation ex nihilo has its human analogies. The understanding originates thoughts from nothing; and the will originates volitions from nothing. Thoughts and volitions, however, are not entities or substances, and here the analogy fails. But they are ex nihilo. One thought is not made out of another thought; nor is a volition made out of another volition. Here the analogy holds good. The maxim “nothing comes from nothing”11[Note: 1 11. ex nihilo nihil fit] is true in the sense that nothing comes from nothing (a) by finite power, (b) as the material out of which something is produced, and (c) by the mode of emanation, generation, or evolution, because this supposes existing matter. Lucretius (1.151) lays down the position that “nothing ever was brought forth from nothing by divine power.”12[Note: 2 12. nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus unquam] The reason that he gives why even by divine power (divinitus) nothing can be produced from nothing is that in this case there would be no need of a seed or egg and that, consequently, everything might be produced out of everything: men could be originated out of the sea, and fishes and birds out of the earth. Lucretius does not conceive of the seed or egg as created, but as eternal. His reasoning is valid against pseudoevolution or evolution defined as “the transmutation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.” Everything may be originated out of everything, upon this theory. The homogeneous vegetable may develop into the heterogeneous animal; the homogeneous animal into the heterogeneous man. And the process may be downward as well as upward, because either process is alike the transmutation of a homogeneous substance into a heterogeneous one. If it were possible by the operation of merely natural law to convert the inorganic mineral into the organic vegetable, it would be possible by the same method to convert the organic vegetable into the inorganic mineral. The rule would work in both ways. As plausible an argument might be constructed out of the deterioration and degradation of some of the human family to prove that man may be evolved downward into an anthropoid ape, as that which has been constructed to prove that he has been evolved upward from one.
Spinoza’s definition of “substance” was intended to exclude the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. He defines substance as “that which exists of itself, that is, the conception of which does not require the conception of anything else” (Ethics 1.3). But the conception of a creature is the conception of a substance that requires another substance to account for it. A created substance, consequently, is precluded by Spinoza’s definition of substance. There cannot be any such thing. Descartes had previously defined the absolute and primary substance as “that which so exists that it needs nothing else for its existence”; and Aquinas (1.29.2) so defines a trinitarian subsistence or person. But Descartes added a definition of created or secondary substance as “that which requires the concurrence (concursus) of God, for its existence.” Spinoza in his early life made an abstract of Descartes’s philosophy for the use of a pupil (Concerning the Principles of Rene Descartes’ Philosophy).13[Note: 3 13. De principiis philosophiae Renati Descartes.] His editor, De Meyer, remarks that Spinoza must not be understood to agree with Descartes and mentions that he rejected Descartes’s distinction between intellect and will, but says nothing about the distinction between primary and secondary substance (Bruder’s Spinoza 1.89). Subsequently, when Spinoza published his own system, he rejected the distinction between primary and secondary substance and gave no definition of any substance but the “one and only substance,”14[Note: 4 14. substantia una et unica] of which everything is a modification. By this begging the question15[Note: 5 15. petitio principii] or postulate of one substance only, he excludes created substance and lays the foundation of pantheism.16[Note: 6 16. WS: A similar petitio principii is seen in von Baer’s definition of evolution, adopted by Spencer, as the “transformation [transmutation] of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.” That a homogeneous substance (say, vegetable) can be transmuted into a heterogeneous substance (say, animal or mineral) is the point in dispute, but is quietly assumed in the definition. And, in order to give plausibility to this petitio, a false definition of the “homogeneous” is introduced. It is defined as “that which is without organs,” the heterogeneous being “that which has organs” (Carpenter, Physiology, 888). But the presence or absence of organs is not a mark of a difference in substance, which is what is requisite in order to heterogeneity. Vegetable protoplasm before the differentiation into organs begins is as really vegetable substance as afterward. Animal protoplasm is as really animal matter before the organs appear as after. There is nothing heterogeneous in either instance. Another petitio principii of the same kind appears in the agnostic definition of knowledge as “classification.” According to this definition, nothing can be known unless it can be brought under a class; and a class implies several individuals of the same species. “The first cause, the infinite, in order to be known must be classed,” says Spencer (First Principles, 81). But as the infinite is the only one of the species, he cannot be put into a class, and therefore he is utterly unknowable. The point in dispute is whether all knowledge is classification and is quietly assumed by the agnostic in his definition of knowledge. Even in regard to those objects which can be classified, the whole of our knowledge does not consist merely in knowing the class to which they belong. Classification is only one of several elements in cognition.] This theory of the universe energetically rejects creation ex nihilo and maintains emanation. Fichte says that “the assumption of a creation is the fundamental error of all false metaphysics and philosophy.” Hegel explains the universe of matter and spirit as an immanent process of God, a material efflux out from the absolute which is retracted again as immaterial spirit. Strauss expresses the same idea in the statement that “Trinity and creation are, speculatively considered, one and the same thing; only the former is the rational, and the latter the empirical aspect.”Kant, on the contrary, asserts that “the proposition that God, as the universal first cause, is the cause of the existence of substance can never be given up without at the same time giving up the notion of God as the being of all beings and thereby giving up his all sufficiency, on which everything in theology depends” (Practical Reason, 279 [trans. Abbott]). (See supplement 3.7.2.) The maxim “nothing comes from nothing”17[Note: 7 17. ex nihilo nihil fit] is false in reference to the supernatural and omnipotent power of God. The Supreme Being can originate entity from nonentity.18[Note: 8 18. WS: On this dogma of creation ex nihilo, so vital to theism, ethics, and religion, see Cudworth, Intellectual System, chap. 5; Pearson, On the Creed, art. 1; Clarke, Demonstration, 76; Augustine, Confessions 11-12; Ambrose, Hexaemeron 2.1-2; Shedd, History of Doctrine 1.7-15; Theological Essays, 133-35, 154-59.] The following are the characteristics of creation from nothing:
1. Creation has a beginning. It is not the eternal emanation of an eternal substance or the eternal evolution of an eternal germ. This is taught in Genesis 1:1 by the clause in the beginning and in the phrase before the foundation of the world frequently employed to denote eternity. Origen held that God is eternally creating; otherwise he would have nothing to do and would be mutable in deciding to create (Schleiermacher, Dogmatics 1.197). The opera ad intra meet the first objection. The eternal generation and spiration are divine activities prior to the creation of the universe and independent of it. Boethius asserted that God is eternal and that the world is perpetual. Rothe (Ethics §40) affirms eternal creation. Defective trinitarian or positively antitrinitarian theories logically tend either to the dogma of an eternal creation or else of emanation in order that the deity may have an object for himself as a subject. True trinitarianism finds this object within the Godhead. God the Son is God the Father’s object. If creation is eternal, the universe is as old as the Creator. It could be said of it, as the Nicenes said of the Son of God: ouk ēn pote hote ouk ēn.19[Note: 919. οὐκ ἦ ν πότε ὅτε οὐκ ἦ ν = there was not when he was not]
2. Creation is optional, not necessary, for God. It proceeds from free will and is expressed by fiat: “He has stretched out the heavens by his discretion” (Jeremiah 10:2). Emanation is necessary and constitutional, like the generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit.
3. Creation originates another new substance; but emanation and evolution produce only modifications of an old and existing substance. The conception of creation from nothing is purely intellectual, like that of a mathematical point, line, or surface. These latter cannot be explained or even illustrated by sensuous images and are held as valid conceptions by a purely rational act of the mind unassisted by sensation. The atheistic mathematician who denies the being of God and creation ex nihilo, because he cannot image them, should upon the same principle deny the validity of the mathematical conceptions of a point, line, and surface. Owing to man’s strong propensity to image his knowledge and explain conceptions by a sensuous method, he attempts to account for the universe by postulating an eternal substance of some ethereal kind, out of which it is made. Hence even Plato and Aristotle suppose a hylē,20[Note: 0 20. ὕλη = matter] which is formed into the cosmos by the supreme architect. Müller (Literature of Greece, 87-88) asserts that the idea of creation from nothing is wanting in the Greek conception of the deity and is found in the Eastern nations. But the only Eastern people who had the idea were the Hebrews. The Persian cosmogony is dualistic; and the Indian is pantheistic. “It is,” says Augustine (City of God 11.2), “a great and very rare thing for a man, after he has contemplated the whole creation, corporeal and incorporeal, and has discerned its mutability, to pass beyond it, and by the continued soaring of his mind to attain to this unchangeable substance of God, and, in that height of contemplation to learn from God himself that none but he made all that is not of the divine essence.” Mosheim, in a note to Cudworth (3.140), proves by a survey of ancient philosophy and theology that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is found only in Scripture.
Creation Account in Genesis The first verse of Genesis mentions the first of the opera ad extra of the triune God, namely, the creation of the present universe. The clause heaven and earth denotes all that is not God, namely, the worlds of matter and of finite mind or the sensible and intelligible worlds. “Heaven and earth” means the universe; as when one says of another: “He would move heaven and earth to accomplish his purpose.” The sacred writer begins with an all-comprehending proposition: God created all finite beings and things. The same truth is taught in Colossians 1:16 : “By him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible.” Here, the creation of the universe is referred to the second trinitarian person. A portion of the universe is spiritual in its substance and is denoted by “heaven”; and a portion is physical and is denoted by “earth.” The spirits of angels and men constitute the spiritual part of the universe, and matter constitutes the physical part of it. From Job 38:7 it appears that the angels were created before the six days’ work, and from Genesis 1:26 that men were created on the sixth day. This is the old patristic interpretation of Genesis 1:1. Says Augustine (Confessions 12.7): “You created heaven and earth: things of two kinds; one near to you, the other near to nothing.” By this latter, Augustine means the rarefied matter of chaos. Again (Confessions 12.7) he says, “You created heaven and earth; not out of yourself, for so they should have been equal to your only begotten Son, and thereby equal to you also.”21[Note: 1 21. WS: See also City of God 11.9; On the Literal Meaning ofGenesis 1:9:15; Gangauf, Augustinus, 100. Howe (Oracles 2.9) takes the same view, as does Pearson, On the Creed, art. 1. Delitzsch (Old Testament History of Redemption, 12) says that “the account of the creation begins with an all-comprehending statement (Genesis 1:1). The creation which is here intended is the very first beginning, which was not preceded by any other and hence embraces the heaven of heavens. That which follows in the second verse is confined to the earth and its heavens.”] (See supplement 3.7.3.) The created universe of mind and matter, denominated “heaven and earth” in Genesis 1:1, is diverse from God, that is, is another substance. It is not God or a part of God, because God created it from nonentity. God and the universe are not one substance, but two substances: one primary and the other secondary, one necessary and the other contingent. God and the universe do not constitute one system of being, but two distinct and different systems; for a system implies that all the parts are of one nature and coequal in dignity and duration. Some theists, like Edwards, for example, under the phrase being in general, have unintentionally taught Spinozism. This phrase brings God and the universe into a single system and makes God a part of it. Whatever is really one system of being is a numerical unity and is of one and the same essence. The three trinitarian persons, for example, constitute one system of divine being, and they are numerically one substance. The universe is not infinite, but finite, and therefore cannot belong to the system of the infinite. The term infinite in the proper sense is applicable only to God. For that which is strictly infinite is also eternal and necessary. But neither eternity of being or necessity of being belongs to the “heaven and earth” that was created “in the beginning” of time. The universe is the finite, and God is the infinite (see Howe, Oracles 2.9). The universe is unlimited, in distinction from infinite. The unlimited is capable of increase, diminution, and division; the infinite is not. Space, time, and matter are unlimited; they can be added to, subtracted from, and divided. God is infinite and incapable of addition, subtraction, or division. The finite spirit is also unlimited, not infinite. It is capable of increase and diminution; not by addition and subtraction of substance, but by development of latent properties or suppression of them. “World” is sometimes put for “universe.” In this case, “world” denotes all being that is not God. Coleridge’s formula illustrates this: “World minus God = zero. God minus world = reality absolute. The world without God is nonentity. God without the world is, in and of himself, absolute being and infinite perfection” (Marsh, Remains, 162). The use of “world” as the antithesis of “God” and the equivalent of “universe” is more common in philosophy than in literature. In literature, “world” more generally denotes a part of the universe. Milton uses the term to denote the visible universe of matter:
How this world Of heaven and earth conspicuous first began.
-Paradise Lost 7.62 In Genesis 1:2 Moses proceeds to speak of the first state and condition of the “earth,” in distinction from the “heaven”: “And the earth was without form and void.” He describes the “earth” (excluding the “heaven”) as a mass of chaotic matter which had been created ex nihilo in that “beginning” spoken of in the first verse. By the “earth” in the second verse is not meant merely the planet earth, but the whole material system connected with it, both solar and stellar. The ensuing description of God’s work upon that part of the universe called “earth” shows that the sun, moon, and stars belong to it. Says Matthew Henry (on Genesis 1:2): A chaos was the first matter. It is here called the “earth” (though the earth in the sense of the dry land was not made until the third day), because it did most resemble that which afterward was called earth, mere earth, an unwieldy mass. It is also called the “deep,” both for its vastness and because the waters which were afterward separated from the earth were now mixed with it. This mighty bulk of matter was it, from which all bodies even the firmament and visible heavens were afterward produced by the power of the eternal word.
Between the single comprehensive act of the creation of the angels and of chaotic matter mentioned in Genesis 1:1 and the series of divine acts in the six days described in Genesis 1:3-31, an interval of time elapsed. This is the old patristic interpretation. The very common assertion that the church has altered its exegesis, under the compulsion of modern geology, is one of the errors of ignorance. The doctrine of an immense time prior to the six creative days was a common view among the fathers and Schoolmen. So also was the doctrine of the rarefied and chaotic nature of matter in its first form a patristic tenet. Kant’s gaseous chaos filling the universe, adopted by La Place and Herschel, was taught, for substance, by Augustine, in the following positions taken in Confessions 12.8.1. God created a chaotic matter that was “next to nothing,” that is, the most tenuous and imponderable form of matter. This chaotic matter was made from nothing “before all days,” that is, in that prior period marked by the words in the beginning. This chaotic unformed matter was subsequently formed and arranged in the six days that are spoken of after Genesis 1:1.
Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis 1:1-31 is substantially this: In the beginning, that is, in a time prior to the six days, God created ex nihilo the angelic world or “the heaven” and chaotic inorganic matter or “the earth.” Then in the six days he formed (not created) chaotic inorganic matter into a cosmic system, solar, stellar, and planetary, and upon the planet earth created (not formed) the organic vegetable, animal, and human species. This was the interpretation generally accepted in the patristic and Middle Ages. Lombard (Sentences 2.12) adopts Augustine’s views. David Kimchi, a learned rabbi of the twelfth century, respecting whom the Jews said, “No Kimchi, no understanding of the Scriptures,” explained Genesis 1:1-31 in the following manner: “First of all, God created the ‘heaven,’ that is the highest heaven with the angels; then the ‘earth,’ the first appearance and condition of which are described in the second verse and out of which the other creatures are subsequently formed. And it is called without ‘form and void,’ in opposition to heaven; which was immediately carried to its full perfection and replenished with inhabitants” (Witsius, Apostles’ Creed, diss. 8).
Respecting the length of the six creative days, speaking generally, for there was some difference of views, the patristic and medieval exegesis makes them to be long periods, not days of twenty-four hours. The latter interpretation has prevailed only in the modern church. Augustine teaches (On the Literal Meaning ofGenesis 4:27) that the length of the six days is not to be determined by the length of our days. Our seven days, he says, resemble the seven days of the account in Genesis in being a series and in having the vicissitudes of morning and evening, but they are “quite unequal.”22[Note: 2 22. multum impares (i.e., to our days)] In 4.1 he says that it is difficult to say what “day” means. In 5.1 he calls attention to the fact that the “six or seven days may be and are called one day” (Genesis 2:4). In 2.14 he calls the six days “God-divided days,” in distinction from “sun-divided days” (see Lewis, “Genesis” in Lange’s Commentary, 131). Gangauf (Augustine, 111n) cites numerous passages to the same effect. Anselm (Cur deus 1.18) remarks that there was a difference of opinion in his time as to whether the six days of Moses “are to be understood like days of ours” as a successive creation or whether “the whole creation took place at once.” He says it is “the opinion of the majority” that man and angels were created at the same time, because we read: “He who lives forever created all things at once.”
There is nothing in the use of the word day by Moses that requires it to be explained as invariably denoting a period of twenty-four hours; but much to forbid it. The following facts prove this: (1) day means daylight in distinction from darkness (Genesis 1:5; Genesis 1:16; Genesis 1:18); (2)day means daylight and darkness together (1:5); and (3) day means the six days together (2:4). The first day (1:5) could not have been measured by the revolution of the sun around the earth because this was not yet visible. The same variety in signification is seen in the Mosaic use of the word earth: (1) the entire material universe (Genesis 1:1); (2) the solar, stellar, and planetary system (1:2); (3) the dry land of the planet earth (1:10); or (4) the whole of the planet earth (1:15, 17). The Ten Commandments were called by the Jews the “ten words.”The term word here denotes a truth or proposition, not a single word. Similarly, a period of time having its beginning and ending, its evening and morning, may naturally be called a “day.” (See supplement 3.7.4.) The seven days of the human week are copies of the seven days of the divine week. The “sun-divided days” are images of the “God-divided days.” This agrees with the biblical representation generally. The human is the copy of the divine, not the divine of the human. Human fatherhood and sonship are finite copies of the trinitarian fatherhood and sonship. Human justice, benevolence, holiness, mercy, etc., are imitations of corresponding divine qualities. The reason given for man’s rest upon the seventh solar day is that God rested upon the seventh creative day (Exodus 20:11). But this does not prove that the divine rest was only twenty-four hours in duration any more than the fact that human sonship is a copy of the divine proves that the latter is sexual.
Harmony of the Biblical Creation Account with Physical Science
Respecting the harmony between physical science and revelation, it is to be observed in the first place that physical science is not infallible, so that an actual conflict between science and revelation would not necessarily be fatal to revelation. It might be fatal to science. In the seventeenth century the physics of Descartes had great authority, and much was made by the skeptics of that day of the fact that the Mosaic physics did not square with the Cartesian physics. Says Howe (Oracles 2.21), “Some are sick of the history of the creation, because they cannot reconcile the literal account thereof, in the beginning of Genesis, with the philosophy of their Descartes: as if his reputation were a thing more studiously to be preserved than that of Moses; though yet, more might be said than has been, to reconcile with natural principles even the whole history of the creation.” The “vortices” of the Cartesian physics are today an exploded and rejected “science”; and the most skeptical physicist of this generation would not dream of alleging a conflict between science and religion because Moses does not agree with Descartes.
Again, in the second place, physical science is not one and invariable in its contents. There have been a multitude of scientific theories that cannot be reconciled with each other. The Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomies are examples. For centuries the Ptolemaic system was undisputed; and the skeptic of those centuries endeavored to show that the Bible did not agree with it, and the believer of those centuries endeavored with equal strenuousness to show that it did (Herschel, Discourse §336). Christianity, on the other hand, has had substantial invariability. The differences between Christian believers, even upon the more recondite doctrines, are by no means so great as those between the ancient Greek and the modern Englishman upon the nature and laws of matter. The difference between the Augustinian and the Semipelagian or between the Calvinist and the Arminian is not at all equal to that between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, apostasy, the redemption have always constituted the essential substance of the Christian faith. But no such substantial invariability as this appears in the history of physical science. Even, therefore, if it could not be shown that revelation is in harmony with a science that confessedly is not infallible and actually is not invariable, it would not be a very serious matter for revelation. The error might be upon the side of science.
After this preliminary observation, we remark, in the first place, that the biblical physics does not conflict with the heliocentric Copernican theory. Nothing at all is said in the opening of Genesis respecting the motion of the earth in relation to the sun; and the phraseology in other parts of Scripture is popular and to be explained as it is when the modern astronomer himself speaks of the rising and setting of the sun. In the second place, the order of creation as given in Genesis is corroborated by the best settled results of modern physics. The whole field cannot of course be gone over. Let us test the matter by referring to geology, in respect to which science the conflict has been the most severe.23[Note: 3 23. WS: For a lucid statement of the teachings of geology concerning the order of creation, see Dana, Creation.]
The now generally accepted facts in geology remarkably coincide with the series of events related in Genesis. The sequence of the creative periods is substantially the same in both. Physical science may be regarded as having established with considerable certainty the following positions: (1) The planet earth, at first, was a chaotic mass in a state of fusion and enveloped in a totally dark atmosphere of vapor. This agrees with the statement in Genesis 1:2 : “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” (2) By the cooling caused by the radiation of heat, a crust was formed over the molten interior, and the atmospheric vapor was condensed into an ocean of water which covered the superficial crust. This primeval ocean is mentioned in Genesis 1:2 : “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The creative work under these two heads is not a part of the six days’ work. It occurred before the first day and belongs to the immense duration between “the beginning” and the six days’ work. (3) The condensation of vapor did not make the earth’s atmosphere clear and translucent immediately. But in course of time it so cleared it, that the light, which had been generated by the heat, could penetrate it with some obscurity. Light as a luminous haze could now be distinguished from darkness. This agrees with Genesis 1:3-4 : God said, “Let there be light; and God divided the light from the darkness.” The appearance of light before the appearance of the sun is one of the strongest proofs that the author of this narrative was instructed upon his point. Such a fact as this must have been revealed to him. Previous to modern physical investigations, this apparent misplacement of light before the sun was regarded as singular by the believer and absurd by the skeptic. The fact, moreover, that the sun and moon did not appear until the fourth day and that the vegetable kingdom was created on the third day and was growing without sun visible in the sky greatly increased the difficulty. But the theory of the modern geologist removes the difficulty and corroborates with Moses. According to geology, there was a long period when the primeval oceans were tepid water, when the atmosphere was a gloaming and was as moist, warm, and germinating as that of the rainy season in the tropics:
Over all the face of the earth Main oceans flowed, not idle, but, with warm Prolific humor softening all her globe Fermented the great mother to conceive, Satiate with genial moisture.
-Milton The consequence was that rank growth of succulent, fernlike vegetation, of which the coal beds are now the exponent. As the inorganic process of radiation of heat and condensation of vapors went on, the earth’s atmosphere became less and less vaporous and more and more luminous, until the space around the planet assumed the appearance of the empty, hollow arch of heaven. Previously, this space had been so much filled with vapor that no distinction between earth and sky was possible. This formation of the atmospheric welkin or dome is described in Genesis 1:6-8 : “And God said, Let there be a firmament [expanse], and let it divide the waters which are under the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven.” A similar atmospheric process is continually occurring on a smaller scale in the clearing up of a storm or fog. It is described by Shelley in “The Cloud”: For after the rain, when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, Prolific humor softening all her globe The winds and the sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of the air. By the contact of water with the lava beneath the earth’s crust, steam and gases are generated, causing earthquakes and convulsions which lift the crust, forming the mountain ranges, elevating tablelands, lagoons, and ocean beds. This process having taken place, the planet is fitted to support the first and lowest form of organized matter, namely, the vegetable. Up to this point in the Mosaic account, there is no life of any kind in that part of the created universe designated by the term earth in Genesis 1:2. Everything is inorganic and lifeless, and the only forces in operation are mechanical and chemical. Now the plant as a living species, which could not be originated by any of the mechanical and chemical that had previously been in action, is created ex nihilo, and the vegetable kingdom is established on earth. Geology finds no evidences of vegetable life in igneous rocks and corroborates the teaching of Moses in Genesis 1:9-12 : “And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind.” With this is to be compared 2 Peter 3:5 : “By the word of God, there were heavens from of old and an earth compacted (synestōsa)24[Note: 4 24. συνεστῶσα] out of water (ex hydatos)25[Note: 5 25. ἐξ ὕδατος] and amid (or through) water (di’ hydatos)”26[Note: 6 26. δι᾽ ὕδατος] (Revised Version). This teaching of St. Peter seems to agree with the geological view that earth got its solid consistence “out of” and above the water, by means of the convulsions that lifted it up, and “amid” and under the water, by means of the deposit of rocky strata. In saying “let the earth bring forth (dāšā˒)27[Note: 7 27. ãÌÈùÑÈà] grass” (Genesis 1:11), it is not meant that the inorganic earth or mineral develops into the organic vegetable and thus that vegetable life is an evolution from the lifeless clod; because it is also said that God “created every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew” (Genesis 2:5).28[Note: 8 28. WS: This is the rendering of the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Authorized Version. But even if that of the Targums, Syriac, Gesenius, and many modern Hebraists, whom the Revised Version follows, be adopted, it still appears from the narrative that there was a time when “no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up.” In this state of things, it is plain that the earth could not “bring forth” what was not “in the earth,” except by the intervention of a creative act.] The words let the earth bring forth mean that the earth furnishes the nonvital material elements that constitute the visible form of a plant, which are vitalized and assimilated by an invisible principle of vegetable life-which invisible principle was a creation ex nihilo.29[Note: 9 29. WS: Philo (Questions on Genesis) so explains: “Moses here (Genesis 2:5) intimates, in enigmatic expressions, the incorporeal species which were created first in accordance with the intellectual nature which those things which are upon the earth perceptible to the outward senses were to imitate.”] The creation of this is the creation of the species vegetable. This interpretation is evidently the true one, not only because it agrees with Genesis 2:5, but because the earth in verse 24 is said to bring forth animals also. If there be no intervening creative energy and the earth is the sole cause, then evolution produces out of the very same lifeless elements both vegetable and animal life. But even the evolutionist has not yet claimed that the animal comes directly from the mineral. The vegetable is the link between the two. The mineral first becomes a vegetable, and then the vegetable becomes an animal, according to the materialistic physics. Our Lord’s words in Mark 4:28 explain the words let the earth bring forth grass: “The earth brings forth fruit of herself (automatē),30[Note: 0 30. αὐτομάτη] first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.” The earth today “brings forth fruit spontaneously of itself” only because of the seed planted in it. And on the third creative day, the earth “brought forth grass spontaneously” only because of the new vegetable species then created by God “before it was in the earth and before it grew” (Genesis 2:5). The sun and moon now appear in the vault of heaven, that is, in the atmosphere entirely cleared of the primeval vapor. The seasons are now arranged, since the sun can exert its power, and the vegetable world in its higher as well as its lower forms is developed. This agrees with Genesis 1:14-19.
Animal life in the waters and in the air is then created (Genesis 1:20-23). It is acknowledged that marine life is the oldest of all animal life. The coral formations of the Florida reefs are the work of living creatures. Agassiz (Graham Lectures, 68) thinks that they are “hundreds of thousands of years old.” This distinguished naturalist, in his Fossil Fishes, shows that of the vertebrate animals fishes alone existed at first; that amphibious animals came later; and that birds and mammals appeared still later, the lower orders first and the higher afterward. Haeckel (Creation 1.68) concedes that Agassiz has shown this. The fiat “let the waters bring forth” is to be explained like “let the earth bring forth.” A specific animal principle is created ex nihilo, which builds up out of the vegetable and other elements now in the waters a particular form of fish or bird: “The causality of ‘the swarming of the swarm’ cannot lie in the water itself” (“Genesis” in Lange’s Commentary, 171; Philo, Works 4.284 [ed. Bohn]).
Animal life on the land is then created: (a) irrational animals and (b) man (Genesis 1:24-31). Geology shows that man is latest in the series. The six days of Genesis 1:1-31 are six creative periods, each having its evening and morning and each one of these marked by a particular manifestation of divine power: some more distinctly than others, but all really so marked. This is indicated in the Hebrew: “There was [an] evening, and there was [a] morning: one day.” The first, second, and fourth days exhibit the Creator operating through those mechanical laws and chemical properties of matter, which he established “in the beginning” spoken of in Genesis 1:1. The effects in these three days are brought about by radiation of heat, condensation of vapor, chemical affinity and repulsion, attraction of cohesion, gravitation, etc. The third, fifth, and sixth days are periods during which life-vegetable, animal, and mental-is originated ex nihilo by creative energy. Neither of these forms of life can be accounted for by the operation of those laws and properties of matter which were employed on the first, second, and fourth days. The first, second, and fourth are inorganic days during which nothing vital is originated. The third, fifth, and sixth are organic days during which the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms are originated. The Mosaic record mentions four and perhaps five creative fiats by which the living species in the organic world were originated ex nihilo. The first fiat creates the vegetable species (Genesis 1:11-12). The second creates the animal species in its lower forms, namely, fishes, reptiles, and birds (1:20-22). The third creates the animal in the higher forms of the quadruped (1:24-25). The fourth creates man (1:26-28). It is somewhat uncertain whether the bird is included under the same fiat with the fish and reptile because the Hebrew reads, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven” (Revised Version). In this case, the “fowl” are not necessarily the product of the “waters.” The Authorized rendering “and fowl that may fly” represents the “waters” as bringing forth the “fowl.” St. Paul teaches the doctrine of distinct living species when he says, “All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of man, another of fishes, and another of birds” (1 Corinthians 15:39).
These several fiats establish and fix the limits that separate the vegetable from the animal kingdom and the several species in the animal kingdom from each other. The result of each fiat is distinct from that of the others. The fiat that created the vegetable did not create the fish. The fiat that created the quadruped did not create man. No mere evolution of that which was created by the first fiat will yield that which was created by the second; in other words, no one of these distinct species can be transmuted into another by merely natural causes. The supernatural power of God must intervene in order to account for an absolutely new species. God must say: “Fiat.” The theory of evolution as presented either by Haeckel in its extreme form or by Darwin in its more moderate form unquestionably contradicts the Mosaic physics: “The divine word of power creates not merely a force in general; each new and distinct creative word introduces a new and distinct principle into the already existing sphere of nature-a principle which hitherto had not been present in it” (Lange’s Commentary on Genesis 1:9-13). Agassiz (Graham Lectures, 13) comes to the same conclusion from considering the diversities of structure in the kingdom of animal life: “It must be mind acting among these material elements, making them subservient to its purpose, and not the elements themselves working out higher combinations of structure.” (See supplement 3.7.5.) At the same time, the Mosaic physics does not needlessly multiply the miracle, but admits the evolution of varieties under a species. If but one fiat is intended in Genesis 1:11-12 and no subdivisions are implied under it, then all the innumerable varieties of plants in the vegetable kingdom have been evolved by propagation from one original vegetable principle. Vegetable protoplasm, in this case, has developed into the endless variety of plants. The mention, however, of “kinds” of grass, herb, and tree looks like subdivisions under the general fiat. So, likewise, if only a single fiat without subdivisions is mentioned in 1:20-21, it would not contradict the Mosaic physics to concede that reptiles have developed from fishes and even birds from reptiles. But the mention of “kinds” (1:21) appears rather to imply subdivisions under the general fiat. Again, if in 1:24-25 but a single fiat without subdivisions is intended by the sacred writer, then the species quadruped originated on the sixth day has developed, under the law of propagation and by the influences of environment, into the innumerable varieties that now fill the earth. The fact, however, that the quadruped is produced “after its kind” would seem to indicate particular creative acts under the general.
While there is this amount of indefiniteness and flexibility in the Mosaic account respecting the breadth of a species, there is the strictest definiteness and inflexibility respecting the fact. While, according to Moses, the vegetable may evolve from the vegetable and the animal from the animal, it would utterly contradict the Mosaic physics to concede that fishes, reptiles, and birds have evolved from the plant or vegetable; that quadrupeds have evolved from fish, reptile, and bird; that man has developed from irrational biped or quadruped. The products of two general fiats cannot be brought under a single one. The species man, originated by a distinct fiat on the sixth day, has developed under the law of propagation and by the influence of environment into the several varieties or races of men. This fiat is distinguished from all the others in that God addresses himself, not the earth or the waters. It is certain, also, that no subdivisions under it are implied, as in the case of the others, because man is not said to have been produced “after his kind.” This creation and fixedness of species is corroborated by the observations of the physicist. There are botanical and zoological provinces and groups on the globe. Each species has its own center and is propagated from it. Plants, fishes, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds have their own habitat. The lion is not found in every zone nor the horse. Neither is the pine nor the palm. Man differs in this respect from all other species. He is found in all zones; and this because he has a higher grade of intelligence found in no other species by which he can supplement nature and counteract what is unfavorable or deadly in his environment. He can build a fire-a thing no other animal can do. He can sow and reap grain-which no other animal can do. He can make clothing to protect himself from cold, can build a house, can cook food.
Eternity of Matter vs. CreationEx Nihilo The first theory antagonistic to creation ex nihilo is that of the eternity of matter. One or the other doctrine must be adopted. Something is now and has been from eternity: “The very words there is nothing or there was a time when there was nothing are self-contradictory. There is that within us which repels the proposition with as full and instantaneous a light, as if it bore evidence against it in the light of its own eternity” (Coleridge, Friend in Works 2.464). If this “something” is not mind, then it is matter. The objections to the eternity of matter are the following:
1. The idea of matter does not imply absolute perfection. Matter is not the most perfect substance or being that we can conceive of. The idea of matter does not include all kinds of perfection. Rational intelligence is a quality of which matter is destitute. So, also, is free will.
2. The idea of matter does not imply necessary existence. This follows from its not being the absolutely perfect. Matter is contingent being. The supposition of the nonexistence of matter is not in conflict with the proposition that something is from eternity. We could still suppose the eternal existence of mind and account for the temporal existence of matter as its created product. But the converse is not supposable. For should we suppose the primary nonexistence of mind and its subsequent creation by matter, this would imply that the nonintelligent originates the intelligent, which is as difficult to believe as that nonentity originates entity.
3. The idea of matter does not imply eternal existence, because it does not imply perfection and necessity of existence. The three conceptions stand or fall together.
4. If matter is eternal it must be the first cause; but matter cannot be the first cause since this must be self-moving and perpetually moving. Matter is marked by the force of inertia.31[Note: 1 31. vis inertiae] It must be moved ab extra;32[Note: 2 32. from the outside] and its motion diminishes if not perpetuated ab extra.33[Note: 3 33. from the outside] The burden of proof lies upon him who denies this. The Newtonian physics and mathematics are inseparable from one another, and both must stand until they are refuted by a materialistic physics and mathematics. If therefore there was a time when there was nothing but matter, there could be no beginning of motion because there is nothing self-moving; and if there be no beginning of motion there can be no causation. Matter cannot therefore originate anything. Locke (Understanding 4.10.10) argues that inert matter, having no self-motion, can no more produce motion than nonentity can produce entity. If, in reply, the materialist should postulate an eternal motion along with an eternal matter, Locke replies that even if his postulate should be conceded matter and material motion could no more produce mind and mental motion or thought and will than nothing could produce something. Incogitative being, he says, cannot originate cogitative being. Matter cannot create mind. Locke sums up the whole in the following sentence: “If we suppose nothing to be eternal, matter can never begin to be; if we suppose bare matter without motion to be eternal, motion can never begin to be; if we suppose only matter and motion to be eternal, thought can never begin to be.” Says Henry More (Immortality 1.7): “If matter as matter had motion, that is, were self-moved, nothing would hold together; but flints, adamant, brass, iron, yea this whole earth would suddenly melt into a thinner substance than the subtle air, or rather, it would never have been condensed together to this consistency we find it.” That self-motion is the characteristic of mind and that its contrary (vis inertiae) is the characteristic of matter has been the historical opinion. Plato (Phaedo) maintains that intellect is the only cause, in the strict meaning of the word. Matter is only apparently a cause. A material cause has another cause back of it and so backward indefinitely. We get no real cause until we get to a mind which is self-moved. Here we have real beginning and a true cause. Plato approves of and defends the dictum of Anaxagoras that nous esti archē tēs kinēseōs.34[Note: 4 34. νοῦς ἔστι ἀρχή τῆς κίνησεως = mind is the beginning of motion] Berkeley has reproduced this view with great clearness and elegance. Cicero (Scipio’s Dream) says: “That which is ever moving is eternal; that which communicates to another object a motion which it received elsewhere must necessarily cease to live, as soon as its motion is at an end. The being which is self-moving is the only being that is eternal, because it is never abandoned by its own properties, neither is this self-motion ever at an end.”
Newton’s first axiom in the beginning of his Principia is that “every body continues in its state of resting or of moving uniformly in a straight line, except insofar as it, being acted upon by forces, is compelled to change its state.”35[Note: 5 35. Corpus omne perseverare in statu quo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud, a viribus impressis, cogitur statum suum mutare.] All matter uniformly remains in status quo, either of motion or of rest, unless it is made to change its state by external causes. The entire structure of the historical physics is built upon this foundation. That the distance between motion and rest is as great as between existence and nonexistence has from the first been the dictum of all physics that has a support in mathematics: “Matter has no inherent power, either of beginning to move when at rest, or of arresting its progress when in motion. Its indifference to either state has been expressed by the term force of inertia36[Note: 6 36. vis inertiae] (Turner, Chemistry, 1). The recent materialistic physics is anti-Newtonian in denying the vis inertiae and in postulating self-motion for matter. “Body and mind,” says Haeckel (Creation 2.360), “can in fact never be considered as distinct. As Goethe has clearly expressed it: ‘Matter never can exist and act without mind, and mind never without matter.’ ” The first part of Goethe’s remark is true, but not the last part. Goethe was a Spinozist, and Spinoza asserted one substance with the contradictory properties of thought and extension. Says Maudsley (Physiology of Mind, 148), “We must get rid of the notion of matter as inert. Matter is not inert.” The hypothesis of the eternity of matter has been recently revived in that of molecular motion. This assumes that the ultimate atoms of matter have self-motion. A motive force is inherent in matter per se. The theorist postulates intrinsic motion along with his molecule. And he must, because he denies that there is any mental or intelligent source of motion. One molecule must impinge upon another molecule by its own motivity or not at all. The doctrine of self-motion is thus applied to atoms of matter. This is carried to its extreme in the so-called natural selection attributed to matter. Haeckel maintains that inorganic matter, by varying its molecular motion, becomes organic matter. Vegetable and animal life result from mechanical changes in dead matter, and these changes are “selected” and self-caused. Haeckel (Creation 1.18) quotes with approbation the following from Virchow: “Life is only a complicated kind of mechanics. A part of the sum total of matter emerges, from time to time, out of the usual course of its motions, into special chemico-organic combinations, and after having for a time continued therein, returns again to general modes of inorganic action.” Here, both self-motion and choice are ascribed to inorganic matter. Certain molecules, by their own election, pass or “emerge” from one kind of motion into a different kind and then go back or “return” to the first kind. Darwin confines this theory to organic matter. Only living protoplasm can effect such changes by its own motivity. Natural selection, according to him, is restricted to the molecules of living matter. A primitive protoplasm being supposed, all the varieties of vegetable, animal, and rational life can then be accounted for by natural selection-that is, by protoplasmic molecules altering their own motion. Huxley goes further and contends that the organic sprang from the inorganic: “What are called second causes produce all the phenomena of the universe” (Man’s Place in Nature, essay 2). (See supplement 3.7.6.)
Upon the theory of Haeckel and Huxley, there is no need of an intelligent and personal mind in order to account for the phenomena of the universe.37[Note: 7 37. WS: Darwin’s theory of evolution requires a Creator to account for the primitive protoplasm, though no Creator subsequently.] Self-motion and natural selection in the molecules of matter are sufficient to explain all. The difference in the direction and velocity with which molecules choose to move is the key. When molecules elect to move in one way, the product is a mineral-inorganic and lifeless. When they elect to move in another way, the product is a vegetable; in still another way is an animal; in still another way is a human soul. “The soul of man,” says Haeckel (Creation 1.179, 237), “just like the soul of animals, is a purely mechanical activity, the sum of the molecular phenomena of motion in the particles of the brain. The will is the habit of molecular motion. The will is never free. It depends upon the material processes in the nervous system.”
Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, anticipated this theory in these terms:
All the phenomena of life depend upon mechanical, physical, and chemical causes which are inherent in the nature of matter itself. The simplest animals and the simplest plants, which stand at the lowest point on the scale of organization, have originated, and still do, by spontaneous generation. All animate natural bodies or organisms are subject to the same laws as inanimate natural bodies. The ideas and activities of the understanding are the motional phenomena of the central nervous system. The will is in truth never free. Reason is only a higher degree of the development and combination of [sensuous] judgments.
Lamarck’s opinion that infusoria are vegetable and not animal was refuted by Ehrenberg and Spallanzani, the eminent microscopists (Kirby, On Animals, 80-81). Lamarck, however, extended the theory no further than Darwin does. He derived organized beings from the microscopically organic, not from the inorganic. In so doing, he is inconsistent with his theory that “all the phenomena of life depend upon the mechanical, physical, and chemical causes which are inherent in the nature of matter.” As we have before remarked, the materialistic physics is anti-Newtonian. If it be the truth, the physics of the Principia, of Copernicus and Kepler, is exploded. Matter has the properties of mind, namely, self-motion and self-direction. If the molecular force, in the words of Virchow, “emerges out of the usual course of its motion into special chemico-organic combinations and, after having for a time continued therein, returns again to the general modes of inorganic motion,” this is a self-motion and self-direction as real as any act of the human will. And what is still more important than this antihistorical attitude, this physics has and can have no mathematics to support it. It is wholly disconnected from calculus. Yet it ought to have a mathematical basis, if it be indeed true that vital and voluntary forces are mechanical. Whatever is mechanical is subject to laws that can be expressed mathematically. But no vital or voluntary force can be formulated algebraically. The vital action of a plant or an animal, the volitions of the human will, the feelings of the human heart, the thoughts of the human intellect cannot like the fall of an apple or the rise of a fluid in a vacuum be expressed in mathematical terms. The absence of a mathematics for the materialistic physics demonstrates its spuriousness.38[Note: 8 38. WS: “The progress of science is incalculably promoted by the existence of a body of men, trained to the study of the higher mathematics, who are prepared when an abstruse theory comes before the world to appreciate its evidence, to take steady hold of its principles, to pursue its calculations, and to convert it into a portion of the permanent science of the world” (Whewell, Inductive Sciences 2.130). Pseudoevolution has had no endorsement of this kind.] (See supplement 3.7.7.) The first objection to this theory is that mechanical motion obeys an invariable law and is incompatible with such varieties of motion as the theory requires. All observation shows that a material force left to itself never varies in any particular. Gravity never alters its direction, sidewise or upward. It is forever downward. And it never alters the rate of its velocity. Matter is marked in its motion by fixed necessity and immutability. To attribute a power of selection and of variability to it is to introduce imagination into science. The materialistic physics is as fanciful as that of the Middle Ages, which explained phenomena by the action of fairies and spirits. What is the difference between saying that a molecule moves of itself and “selects” the velocity and direction of its own motion and saying that the molecules of a gas rise and float on a sylph of the air and those of a mineral fall and sink in a gnome of the mine. The machinery of the Haeckel-Huxley physics is as fanciful as that of Pope’s Rape of the Lock.39[Note: 9 39. WS: The theory that thought is nothing but cerebration and that all mental phenomena result from the motion of the molecules of the brain was taught in the University of Laputa, according to Swift. Among the various methods of instruction employed in that wonderful institution, Lemuel Gulliver mentions the following: “I was at the mathematical school, where the master taught his pupils after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The proposition and demonstration were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture. This, the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following eat nothing but bread and water. As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it” (Gulliver’s Travels, 5).]
Theorists of this school feel the difficulty and invent expedients for explaining how “selected” changes and varieties can occur within an immutable sphere like that of matter. Strauss, for example (Old and New Faith, 199), suggests that an adequate cause for such peculiar modes of motion among atoms “might exist in the conditions, the temperature, the atmospheric combinations of primeval times, so utterly different from ours.” But these themselves are all material causes. “Atmospheric combinations” are combinations of molecules, and why the “primeval” combinations should be “so utterly different from ours” is one of the difficulties to be explained and cannot therefore be introduced to explain a difficulty.
Another objection to the theory that explains all phenomena by matter and mechanical motion is that material motion is not perpetual. It gradually and surely exhausts itself. If observation and experiment have settled anything in physics, it is that the perpetual motion of matter by reason of a force inherent in matter is impossible. Friction finally brings moving matter to a rest. It may require millions of years to do it, but it will certainly be done. The motion of the bodies in the solar system approaches as nearly as anything does to perpetual motion. But the planets, says Newton, are marked by certain “small irregularities which appear to come from the mutual action of the planets and comets and which will probably become greater and greater in the course of time, until at last the system will again require its author to put it in order” (“Solar System” in Penny Cyclopaedia; Whewell, Astronomy and Physics 2.7-12). It is true that these irregularities caused by planetary and cometary attraction are very slight, because the great attraction of the vast mass of the sun overmasters and nullifies to a great extent. Still there is a disturbing element after all. Lagrange and Poisson have mathematically demonstrated the great stability of the solar system, but not its endless immutability (Foreign Quarterly Review 3.138). (See supplement 3.7.8.) But this is not the whole difficulty. There is a positive resistance to the motion of the heavenly masses from the medium through which they pass. If this medium were as dense as atmospheric air, the motion would soon come to an end, unless reinforced ab extra.40[Note: 0 40. from the outside] It is not atmospheric air, but the so-called ether. Says a writer in the Penny Cyclopaedia (“Solar System”):
It has become highly probable that an external cause does exist which must, unless there be a counteracting force of which we know nothing, in time cause the destruction of the solar system. If the planets move in any medium which resists these motions, however little, the consequence must be a gradual diminution of their mean distances from the sun, and a gradual increase of their velocities, ending in their absolutely falling into the sun.41[Note: 1 41. WS: The following facts go to prove the comparatively recent origin of the solar system. (1) The earth is cooling slowly, yet at such a rate as to make it impossible that it should have existed many millions of years. It would have been stone cold clear through, in that case. (2) There is reason to believe that the earth is not rotating on her axis with the same rapidity as in former ages, and inasmuch as her shape would have been different if, at the same time she was in a molten state, she had been rotating more rapidly than now, it follows that she has not been rotating so long as has been supposed. (3) The sun is parting with caloric at such a rate as to make it certain that it could not have continued to radiate heat at the same rate for more than a few millions of years. (4) The changes in the earth’s crust, stupendous and varied as they are, could be and probably were accomplished in shorter periods than some geologists consider possible (Quarterly Review 1876).]
The doctrine of the “correlation of forces” does not relieve the difficulty, in respect to perpetual motion. The forces of nature may be correlated to each other, that is, convertible into one another, and yet be diminishing in amount. That all material forces may be found, ultimately, to be but one material force, is not incredible. Physical investigations tend to this view. But this fact, even if established, would not prove that the sum total of this one material force is suffering no loss from millennium to millennium. Five forms of anything might be demonstrated to be but one and the same thing, but this would not prove anything respecting the quantity of being at any one time in this thing. This fact seems to be seen by the theorist, and an attempt is made to conceal it by calling the “correlation of forces,” the “conservation of force,” or energy. Conservation is a different conception from correlation and a stronger term. The “conservation of energy” may mean that in the transmutation of one force into another the whole of the primary form is conserved in the second form; or it may mean that only a part of it is conserved. Which of the two is the fact is the question in dispute. The “correlation of forces” really amounts only to the analysis of force. Whether the sum total of material force in the universe be greater or smaller cannot be determined unless the analysis demonstrates that the quantity remains unchanged under all the different forms which material force assumes. The motion of a cannonball is preceded by a certain amount of heat from ignited gunpowder and is followed by a certain amount of heat in the iron plate which it strikes. But no experiment thus far made has demonstrated that the amount of heat is mathematically the same in the second instance that it was in the first, that the heat in the iron plate is exactly equal to the heat in the gunpowder. Heat is converted into motion, and motion reconverted into heat. Here is correlation of forces. One force is convertible into another. And here also is conservation of force. But how much conservation is the question. How much of the heat in the powder is conserved in the heat of the iron plate remains to be shown. Before we can say that there has been absolutely no loss of material force in these transmutations, it must be demonstrated mathematically. No experiment is nice or delicate enough to establish it. At this point calculus should come in, as it always has in the historical physics at points when sensible experiments fail.42[Note: 2 42. WS: It is claimed that the same amount of heat produced by the combustion of the carbon in a man’s dinner would be produced by the same amount of carbon if burnt out of the body. But no experiment has proved that the vital heat in this instance is equivalent mathematically to the chemical heat or that the two are identical in kind. Cf. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 172-73.] But, as yet, there is no mathematics for the new physics. A German investigator, Clausius, claims to have proved mathematically that motion when converted into heat is a mathematical equivalent, but that heat when converted into motion is not. There is, he says, some loss of motion in every instance in which heat is converted into motion. The final result, consequently, if there is no interference ab extra,43[Note: 3 43. from the outside] will be that motion will gradually diminish in the universe and finally cease; and heat or temperature will be uniform (Gardiner, Bibliotheca sacra, Jan. 1881). This lack of demonstration is acknowledged by Balfour Stewart. He remarks (Conservation of Energy, 8) that we have the strongest possible evidence for the assertion, that all the various energies in the universe are a constant quantity, which the nature of the case admits. The assertion is, in truth, a peculiar one; peculiar in its magnitude, in its universality, in the subtle nature of the agents with which it deals. If true, its truth certainly cannot be proved after the manner in which we prove a proposition in Euclid. Nor does it admit a proof so rigid as that of the somewhat analogous principle of the conservation of matter; for in chemistry we may confine the products of our chemical combination so as to completely prove, beyond a doubt, that no heavy matter passes out of existence.
Stewart then gives some indirect proofs which, he contends, make the position probable.
Another objection to the theory that mechanical and vital forces are identical is the fact that mechanical forces never originate varieties, while the vegetable and animal kingdoms are full of them. In inorganic nature, there is no deviation from the typical form. Crystals are rigorously confined to their order. No new varieties arise. Gold and copper always crystallize in a cube; bismuth and antimony in a hexagon; iodine and sulfur in a rhomb. But flowers are not thus rigorously confined to their type. A white flower, in some individuals, shows a reddish tint. This is a so-called accidental variety. If seeds be taken from it, its offspring will be redder yet. In this way, a new variety is artificially produced. But this cannot be done with a crystal. The geometrical form here is produced by a mechanical and inorganic, not a vital force; and it is unchangeable. There is no “accidental variety” of a crystal. No such alterations of typical form can be artificially produced in this inorganic province. A crystal can be produced artificially by chemical action, as well as by the natural action of mechanical forces. But in this case too, there can be no variation from the type. This proves a difference in kind between the inorganic and organic; the chemical and the vital. A fourth objection to the hypothesis of the variation of mechanical motion is found in the immutability of the molecule. Maxwell, professor of Physics at Cambridge, in an address before the British Association, remarked as follows: A molecule of hydrogen, whether on earth, in Sirius or Arcturus, executes its vibrations in the same time. No theory of evolution can be formed to account for this identity of molecules; for evolution implies continual change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of nature have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are, therefore, unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules, or the identity of their properties, to any of the causes we call natural. On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article and precludes the notion of its being eternal and self-existent. Though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred, and may yet occur, in the heavens; though ancient systems may be dissolved, and new ones constructed out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built, the foundation stones of the material universe, remain unbroken and unworn. They continue this day as they were created, perfect in number, and measure, and weight; and from the ineffaceable characters impressed upon them, we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are the essential qualities of him who, in the beginning created not only the heaven and earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.
Theory of Evolution vs. CreationEx Nihilo The second theory antagonistic to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is that of pseudoevolution. There is a true and a false theory of evolution. The former defines evolution to be simply “the transformation of the homogeneous”; the latter defines it to be the “transformation [transmutation] of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.” This is Spencer’s definition adopted from von Baer. The two definitions and the two theories are direct contraries and contradictories. Evolution in the historical physics of Linnaeus, Cuvier, Hunter, Blumenbach, and Agassiz wholly excludes the heterogeneous. It is the same substance in kind under new forms. A vegetable seed evolves or develops into a root and stalk; but the root and stalk are still vegetable. They are still homogeneous with the seed. A vegetable bud, again, becomes a flower, and the flower becomes fruit; but both flower and fruit are still homogeneous with the vegetable substance of the bud; they are vegetable. If anything mineral or animal, anything heterogeneous, should appear in this evolution of the seed and the bud, this would prove that it was no evolution. But pseudoevolution postulates what true evolution denies, namely, that homogeneous substance transmutes itself into heterogeneous. It asserts that a homogeneous mineral, by intrinsic force, slowly, by infinitesimal degrees, converts itself into a heterogeneous vegetable. Evolution is thus not a mere change of form, but of matter. As this assertion is not supported by proof, it is surreptitiously introduced into a preliminary definition which the opposing party is expected to accept. But this is begging the question in dispute. The question is whether homogeneous substance ever does or can change itself into heterogeneous substance (Shedd, Theological Essays, 133-37, 154-67). (See supplement 3.7.9.)
According to this theory of evolution, all the kingdoms of nature issue out of each other without any intervening creative agency. The fiats in the Mosaic account are denied. The homogeneous mineral develops into the heterogeneous vegetable; the homogeneous vegetable into the heterogeneous animal; the homogeneous animal into the heterogeneous man. The doctrine is applied through the entire scale of existence. Vegetable life issues from the lifeless mineral. Sentient and conscious life evolves from the insentient and unconscious plant. Rational and moral life develops from an animal and brutal life that is utterly destitute of reason and morality. This accounts for and explains the universe of being. In each of these instances, the homogeneous substance is transmuted into the heterogeneous by purely material laws and causes. There is no rational act of an intelligent and personal Creator when the animal kingdom supervenes upon the vegetable or when the rational kingdom supervenes upon the animal. Impersonal, unintelligent, and unconscious evolution accounts for all varieties of being.
Several methods of explanation have been proposed. Lamarck explained by habit. The giraffe at first had a short neck. The habit of reaching up for the leaves of trees when the grass failed lengthened the neck. The frog’s foot and that of the goose was at first without web. The attempt to swim finally produced it. When the long neck and the webfoot were thus produced, they were propagated, and a new species was the result. St. Hilaire explained by circumstances. Somehow or other the atmosphere lost carbon, and the proportion of oxygen was increased. This made the breathing quicker; this heated the blood; this made the nerves and muscles more active; this changed the scales of reptiles into feathers; and thus the reptile was transformed into the bird. This scheme, just now, is revived in that of “creation by environment.” The first objection to the theory of pseudoevolution is that it is contradicted by the whole course of scientific observation and experiment. It is a theory in the face of the facts. “Darwinism,” says Agassiz (On Classification), “is an a priori conception” and “a burlesque of facts.” It “shuts out almost the whole mass of acquired knowledge, in order to retain and use only that which may serve its purpose.” Quatrefages (Human Species 1.1) asserts that to attempt, under any pretext whatever, to confound the inorganic with the organic, is to go in direct opposition to all the progress made for more than a century, and especially during the last few years, in physics, chemistry, and physiology. It is inexplicable to me that some men, whose merits I otherwise acknowledge, should have recently again compared crystals to the simplest living forms: to the sarcodic organisms, as they are called by Du Jardin who discovered them. A change of name is useless; the things remain the same, and protoplasm has the same properties as sarcode. The animals whose entire substance they seem to form have not altered their nature; whether monera or amoebas, these forms are the antipodes of the crystal from every point of view.
“No conceivable combinations,” says Roget (Physiology 2.582), “of mechanical or of chemical powers bear the slightest resemblance or the most remote analogy to organic reproduction or can afford the least clue to the solution of this dark enigma” (Foreign Quarterly Review 3.189-96). No naturalist has ever discovered an instance of the transmutation of species. Varieties under a species have been seen to be changed into other varieties. Darwin shows how pigeons may be made to vary from pigeons, but not how pigeons can be evolved into the horse. No observer has furnished even a scintilla of proof that the vital develops from the nonvital. It is an axiom older than Aristotle and always accepted in the historical physics that “every animal comes from an egg.”44[Note: 4 44. omne animal ex ovo est] Life supposes life. The living individual issues only from the living germ. A material molecule never transmutes itself into a vegetable germ. A mustard seed is never changed into the egg of animal life. A grain of wheat may be kept in a mummy for three thousand years, and upon being cast into the ground it will begin to sprout. A true evolution of this vegetable seed immediately begins. But no natural or artificial force can cause a diamond to bud and blossom, can transmute this homogeneous mineral into a heterogeneous vegetable. The vast geological ages which the theorist brings in do not help his theory. A force of nature is no stronger in a million years than it is in a hundred. What gravitation cannot do in a century it cannot do in a hundred centuries. A mechanical force is fixed. It does not increase with the lapse of time. Rousseau (Dictionnaire botanique) thus speaks of the nouvelle physique of his day, which confounded the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms and maintained that “minerals live, and vegetables feel”: “I have often seen a tree die which before had been full of life; but the death of a stone is an idea that would never enter my mind. I see exquisite feeling in a dog, but never saw it in a cabbage. The paradoxes of Jean-Jacques are very celebrated, but I never advanced anything so absurd as this.” (See supplement 3.7.10.) The experimental and scientific evidence for the transmutation of substance is so deficient that only enthusiasts like Haeckel, Huxley, and Maudsley venture to maintain the evolution of the organic from the inorganic. Darwin confines the transmutation of substance to the organic world. He postulates life, primarily given by the Creator. “I imagine,” he says in phraseology that is curiously unscientific: “I imagine that probably all organic beings that ever lived on this earth descended from some primitive form, which was first called into being by the Creator.” In the Origin of Species (577) he speaks of “the breathing of life, by the Creator, into a few forms, or into one.” He does not assert that the mollusk can be developed from inorganic molecules; though he maintains that man may be evolved from the mollusk. While he bridges by evolution the chasm between the oyster and man, he lets it stand between the mineral and the oyster. His work upon insectivorous animals looks like an attempt to prove that animal life can be developed from vegetable, but he makes no distinct statement to this effect. That this spurious theory of evolution is contradicted by the general course of physical experiment and observation is proved by its failure to obtain general currency. Lamarck did not supersede Linnaeus. Eminent microscopists like Ehrenberg and Spallanzani demonstrated that the infusoria which Lamarck asserted to be vegetable were animal (Kirby, On Animals 1.4). St. Hilaire made no impression upon the established zoology of Cuvier, so that to this day French physics is even more unanimous than either German or English in affirming an impassable limit between the kingdoms of nature. In Germany, Kepler, Leibnitz, Kant, Haller, and Blumenbach are greater names in physical science than Goethe, Oken, Haeckel, and Büchner. In England, the physics of Newton, Linnaeus, Hunter, Cuvier, Faraday, Whewell, Herschel, Agassiz, Guyot, and Dana influences the educated and disciplined intellect of the nation far more than do the speculations of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall. Haeckel (Creation 1.34) mentions it as a discouraging sign that the views of Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Agassiz are adopted by “the great majority of both scientific and unscientific men” and that “the majority of French naturalists are the blind followers of Cuvier.” He adds that “in no country has Darwin’s doctrine had so little effect as in France.” The opinions of Kant are entitled to great respect, for he began his remarkable philosophical career with the metaphysics of mathematics. He investigated inorganic nature before he investigated mind, and his attitude is firm in reference to theism and the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In his Critique of the Judgment (§§74-79), while maintaining that the inorganic world is explainable by mechanical forces and laws, he is explicit in saying that these forces and laws themselves have a teleological character. They imply a designing mind beyond them. He holds that theism and creation ex nihilo are the truth and rejects the hylozoism of Spinoza and of atheism. Respecting the possibility of the evolution of the organic from the inorganic, he remarks that “it is absurd even to think of explaining organized creatures and their potentialities by purely mechanical principles, or to expect that a Newton will one day arise who will be able to explain the production of a blade of grass, according to a law ordained by no designing intelligence.” “Give me,” he said, “inorganic matter, and I will explain the formation of an inorganic world.” But he denied that it can be said, “Give me inorganic matter, and I will explain the production of a caterpillar” (this latter remark is quoted by Strauss, Old Faith, 196). (See supplement 3.7.11.)
Physical science can perhaps explain the formation of the solar system by the nebular hypothesis, but not the creation of it. For this hypothesis supposes a nebulous matter with its inherent force of gravity and other forces to be already in existence. Unless this postulate of fire mist and the attraction of gravitation, cohesion, etc., is granted, it cannot account for the solar system. The question immediately arises: “Whence is this fire mist with its properties?” If this is the origin of the solar system, what is the origin of this origin? If this is the explanation of the material universe, what is the explanation of this explanation? The nebular hypothesis may be a correct generalization from observed facts and have its place in the system of physics, but it cannot be a substitute for the first cause. The words of Whewell, respecting the nebular hypothesis, are true and forcible:
Let it be supposed that the point to which this hypothesis leads us is the ultimate point of physical science; that the farthest glimpse we can obtain of the material universe by our natural faculties, shows it to us as occupied by a boundless abyss of luminous matter; still we ask, how space came to be thus occupied, how matter came to be thus luminous? If we establish by physical proofs that the first fact that can be traced in the history of the world is that “there was light,” we shall still be led, even by our natural reason, to suppose that before this could occur, “God said, Let there be light.” (Astronomy and General Physics 2.7)
Since there is no proof of the theory of pseudoevolution from the past results of scientific inquiry, its advocates when called upon for the demonstration betake themselves either to an a priori method or else to prophecy. Haeckel, for example (Creation 1.169), replies in the following manner to the assertion of the opponent that the theory is a hypothesis which is yet to be proved: “That this assertion is completely unfounded may be perceived even from the outlines of the doctrine of selection.” But the “outlines of a doctrine” are the doctrine itself; and the doctrine itself cannot be the proof of the doctrine unless it be a priori and axiomatic in its nature. And this characteristic Haeckel actually claims for his theory of evolution in the following terms: “The origin of new species by natural selection, by the interaction of inheritance and adaptation, is a mathematical necessity of nature which needs no further proof. Whoever, in spite of the present state of our knowledge, still seeks for proofs of the theory of selection, only shows that he does not thoroughly understand the theory.” Haeckel, here, makes short work with the whole subject, by claiming an a priori necessity for the theory of pseudoevolution. Of course, if this be so, experiment and observed facts are not to be demanded. But such a claim for a science that professes to rest upon experiment and observation and not upon a priori grounds is of a piece with Haeckel’s assertion (Creation, 2) that a posteriori knowledge, by means of use and habit, can be transmuted into a priori knowledge; in other words, that a truth of experience becomes axiomatic when the experience is long continued-a notion similar to that mentioned by Coleridge “that a weathercock may form a habit of turning to the east, from the wind having been a long time in that quarter” (Works 3.227).
Respecting spontaneous generation, Haeckel (Creation 1.340-41) remarks that experiments on autogeny have furnished no certain and positive results. Yet we must protest against the notion that these experiments have proved the impossibility of spontaneous generation. The impossibility of such a process can, in fact, never be proved. For how can we know that in remote primeval times there did not exist conditions quite different from those at present obtaining, which may have rendered spontaneous generation possible? By such reasoning as this, any hypothesis whatever may be proved. Haeckel (Creation 1.335) explains vital growth by chemical action thus: “A crystal grows by the apposition of particle upon particle; a plant grows by the intussusception of particle into particle. The fluidity of the albuminous carbon, in the instance of the plant, permits this penetration, so that the addition is not mere accretion upon the outside or addition of surface to surface.” But why does a chemical force act so differently from a vital one? A salt in solution is as much a fluid as the albumen; but it yields a crystal instead of a plant. If the chemical and the vital are really one and the same mechanical force, why this diversity? A really mechanical force acts in only one way. The force of gravity does not sometimes lift bodies and sometimes cause them to fall. As an example of the employment of prophecy in support of the theory of pseudoevolution, consider the following remark of Haeckel (Creation 1.32) respecting the production of albumen by a chemical process-thus far found to be impossible: “At some future time, we shall succeed in discovering, in the composition of albuminous matter, certain molecular relations as the remoter causes of these phenomena of life.” There is no logic against prophecy. Seers and soothsayers have an advantage over ordinary investigators, who have nothing but their understandings to work with.45[Note: 5 45. WS: The hopefulness of the evolutionist is expressed in the words of Wagner in the second part of Goethe’s Faust,Acts 2:1-47:
Look yonder! see the flashes from the hearth!
Hope for the world dawns there, that, having laid The stuff together of which man is made, The hundredfold ingredients mixing, blending, (For upon mixture is the whole depending), If then in a retort we slowly mull it, Next to a philosophic temper dull it, Distil and redistil, at leisure thin it, All will come right, in silence, to a minute.
Turning again to the hearth.
’Tis forming-every second brings it nearer- And my conviction becomes stronger, clearer.
What nature veils in mystery, I expect Through the plain understanding to effect;
What was organization will at last Be with the art of making crystals classed.]
Second, the examples adduced by the advocate of pseudoevolution do not prove that species develops from species, but only that varieties develop from species-which no one denies.46[Note: 6 46. WS: The loose use of the term species covers up much sophistical reasoning of the evolutionists. Quatrefages (Human Species, 96) says: “Darwin has formed no clear conception of the sense which he gave to the word species; I have been unable to find in any of his works a single precise statement on this point.” Darwin remarks that “it seems probable that allied species are descended from a common ancestor.” The connection in which this is said shows that by “allied species” he means only varieties of pigeons, dogs, etc.] Haeckel shows that many varieties of sponges spring from the one species olynthus. But the difference between sponge and sponge is not the same as that between mineral and plant or between plant and animal. When one kind of sponge is transformed into another kind of sponge, this is not the transmutation of a homogenous substance into a heterogeneous. This does not answer to Spencer’s definition of evolution, if the definition is to be taken as it reads. If the sponge should develop into the rose, or the rose into the worm, this would answer the definition. But nothing approaching to such a mortal leap as this is seen in nature. Darwin makes it seem probable that all varieties of pigeons may have sprung from one original pair of pigeons-say the blue rock pigeon; but this does not prove that the pigeon sprang from a fish, still less from a cabbage, and still less from a bit of granite.
Virchow, in an address at Munich, said that two doctrines are not yet proved, but are hypotheses still: (1) spontaneous generation of living from inorganic matter and (2) the descent of man from some nonhuman vertebrate animal. We may expect, he says, that these will hereafter be proved, but meanwhile must not teach them as scientific facts (Nineteenth Century, April 1878). Gray, though accepting the Darwinian theory of evolution as “fairly probable,” asserts that it is a “complex and loose hypothesis, less probable than the nebular hypothesis or the kinetic theory of gases” (New York Times, 6-7 Feb. 1880).
Third, if the doctrine of pseudoevolution be true, it should be supported, like that of gravitation, by a multitude of undisputed facts and phenomena. A law of nature-and this kind of evolution is claimed to be such, even the law of laws47[Note: 7 47. lex legum] -is a uniform and universal thing. The hypothesis of gravitation is not supported by a few doubtful and disputed facts, like those which are cited in proof of spontaneous generation. If there were really such a transition by development from the inorganic to the organic, from the vegetable to the animal, and from the animal to the rational, as is asserted, the process ought to be going on all the time and all around us in nature and before the eyes of everyone. A real and actual law of nature cannot be put under a bushel. The theorist should have millions of examples to show. But as yet he has not a single example. Darwin’s pigeons, after all his efforts to transform them into another species, are pigeons still. Said Ambrose (Hexaemeron 3.10), “When wheat degenerates, it does not cease to be wheat; there is no alteration of species: ‘It would seem that it ought to be attributed to a certain degeneration of the seed, not to a transformation of kind.’ ”48[Note: 8 48. Non ad translationem generis, sed ad aegritudinem quandam seminis, videtur esse referendum.]
Fourth, the well-known fact that hybrids between real species are infertile proves that there is no transmutation of species. A hybrid is an artificial, not a natural product. When man attempts to originate a new species by crossing breeds, as in the case of the horse and ass, he is working against nature and fails. “Domestication,” says Agassiz (Animal Life, 51), “never produces forms which are self-perpetuating and is therefore in no way an index of the process by which species are produced.” Quatrefages (Human Species 1.6-9) takes the same view. Haeckel (Creation 1.45) mentions as hybrids that can be propagated some between hares and rabbits and between different varieties of dog. Also of plants the willow, the thistle, and the mullein, he says, are hybrids. But hares and rabbits are varieties of the same species; and, as Macbeth says, “Hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, waterrugs, and demiwolves are cleped all by the name of dogs.” A true species is self-perpetuating. Says Dana: “When individuals multiply from generation to generation, it is but a repetition of the primordial type-idea, and the true notion of the species is not in the resulting group, but in the idea or potential element which is the basis of every individual of the group” (Bibliotheca sacra 1857: 861).
Fifth, this theory of evolution, conflicting as it does with the invariability of nature in the several kingdoms, conflicts also with the certainty of natural science. There can be no fixed laws of operation upon this scheme. Anything may originate out of anything. There is no certainty that mineral substance will always be mineral, for it may become vegetable substance. It is not certain that a vegetable species will always remain vegetable, for it may be transmuted into an animal species. Chance rules in nature, not invariable law. And the transmutation of substance may descend as well as ascend. Man may evolve into ape, as well as ape into man. As an example of the haphazard that is introduced into physical science by this theory, take its explanation of the origin of the eye as an organ of vision. Once there was no such organ in existence. It came into being in the following manner. A certain piece of nervous tissue happened in the lapse of ages to become sensitive to light; then, after another lapse of time, a transparent tissue happened to be formed over it; then, after other ages, a fluid happened to be formed which increased in density and adaptedness to vision; and thus changes at haphazard take place; and finally we have the eye of an animal.49[Note: 9 49. WS: This supposes that in nature an eye can be found in isolation, by itself, separate from the body of which it is the eye. But nature never forms organs in this way. They are found only in connection with the organization and growth of the entire body.] The Duke of Argyll exposes the capriciousness of this kind of physics in the following terms:
Under the modes of applying the theory of evolution which have become commonplace, it is very easy to account for everything. We have only to assume some condition opposite to that which now exists and then to explain the change by showing that the existing conditions are useful and adapted to existing needs. Do we wish, for example, to explain why the female pheasant is dull colored? We have only to assume that once she was gaily colored and became dull by the gaudier hens being killed off when setting on eggs, and by the duller hens being saved. Do we wish, on the contrary, to explain the brilliant coloring of the male pheasant? We have only to make the reverse assumption-that once they were all dull colored, and that accidental dandies were preserved by the admiration and the consequent selection of the ladies. In like manner, the migration of birds is explained by assuming at once upon a time there were no migratory birds, although there must always have been the same changing seasons. Then a few birds came to travel a little way, and then a little farther, and so at last they came to go a great way, and finally the habit, “organized in the race,” became the migratory instinct. It is curious that in this and all similar explanations of what are admitted to be now pure instincts, the theory demands that the earliest beginnings were more rational than the last developments; the commencements were more in the nature of intelligent perception than the final results, which have become the mere mechanical effect of hereditary habits.
According to the theory of pseudoevolution, there is no preconceived plan and design by which the origin of living and organized objects in nature is accounted for. They come wholly by chance. Those varieties from which new species are claimed to spring are denominated “accidental.” If a piece of nervous tissue happens to become sensitive to light, the first step toward the production of the eye of animal life is taken; otherwise not. And so with the second step, by which a film is drawn over the sensitive tissue; and so with all the steps. The processes of nature are entirely fortuitous upon this scheme, and there is nothing possible but the calculation of chances. No invariable and uniform order of nature is possible, and therefore no science of nature is possible. Haeckel (Creation 1.167) would parry this objection, by the following self-stultifying remark: “The difference between the two forms of selection is this: In artificial selection, the will of man makes the selection according to a plan, whereas in natural selection, the struggle for life (that universal interrelation of organisms) acts without a plan, but produces quite the same result, namely, a selection of a particular kind of individual for propagation.” This is saying that nature’s acting by chance will produce “the same result” that man’s acting by plan does; and that nature would have the same regularity and order by the method of chance as by the method of design. (See supplement 3.7.12.)
Sixth, some evolutionists, for example, Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, try to adopt a middle theory. They say that a species may be originated either by selection or by creation. But the alternative is impossible. One idea necessarily excludes the other. If a particular being is intrinsically such that creation ex nihilo accounts for it, then molecular motion and natural selection cannot and vice versa. If a thing is intrinsically such that it may be equal to four, it must be. It may not be equal to five. The ideas of creation and evolution are as incompatible with each other, as four and five are. Both cannot be true.
Seventh, the abundant proof of design in nature overthrows the theory of evolution. This design is executed even in an extreme manner. The mammary glands on man’s breast and the webfeet of the upland goose and the frigate bird show that the plan of structure is carried out with persistence, even when in particular circumstances there is no use for the organ itself. The symmetry of the species is preserved. Nature is punctilious in respect to design. Even in the deformed and irregular products of nature, the same respect for plan is observed. There is design in these. In a misgrowth of a vegetable, matter is organized methodically. It is not thrown together at haphazard, as in a kaleidoscope. Holberg’s (Memoirs, 196) anecdote of the priest and the humpback will apply here. The priest had said in his sermon that everything which God makes is well made. “Look at me,” said a humpback, “Am I well made?” The priest looked at him, and replied that he was well made for a humpbacked man. The priest was wiser than he knew, and his answer had truth in it, as well as wit. The humpback was built upon the plan of a man, not of a dog. (See supplement 3.7.13.) The theory of development is valid when properly applied. Take, for example, Linnaeus’s arrangement of the genus felis: felis domestica (common cat), felis catus (wild cat), felis pardus (leopard), felis onca (jaguar), felis tigris (tiger), felis leo (lion). These six species of the one genus, as Linnaeus uses terms, may be developed from one original type. The same may be said also of the seven species of the one genus pinus50[Note: 0 50. pine] in the vegetable kingdom. But according to Linnaeus, felis could not develop from equus;51[Note: 1 51. horse] nor pinus from pirus.52[Note: 2 52. pear tree]
Species should not be multiplied or the creative act be introduced extravagantly often. The biblical phrases let the earth bring forth and let the waters bring forth imply that within the several kingdoms, after they have been established by creative power, much may then have been done in the production of varieties (not species) by the law of evolution impressed upon each kingdom. There is no objection to tracing all varieties of pigeon to one original, say the blue rock pigeon, as Darwin does, or all varieties of rabbit to one original type. John Hunter held that “the true distinction between different species of animals must ultimately be gathered from their incapacity of propagating with each other an offspring capable again of continuing itself by subsequent propagation.” Hunter wrote a tract entitled “Observations Tending to Show That the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog are All of the Same Species.”
It should be understood, moreover, how terms are employed. If “genus” is the base, then “species” are the divisions. If “species” is the base, then “varieties” are the divisions. In the first case, species can come from species; in the second, not (Quatrefages, Human Species 1.3). Dana defines a species as the “unit” in the organic world. Morton defines it as a “primordial organic form.” The criteria of a species are (1) permanent fecundity; (2) sameness of external form (animals with teeth for eating flesh belong to a different species from those having teeth for eating vegetable food; animals with webbed feet are not of the same species with those having feet without a web); and (3) sameness of internal structure shown in habits and instincts. Of these three, the first is the surest criterion. The other two are less certain. Two animals of great similarity in external structure may be of wholly different species-for example, the ape and man. Hence all three criteria must be combined. A plausible argument for the development of man from lower animals is derived from a comparison of the embryo of man at four weeks with that of the chick, or at eight weeks with that of the dog. There is a great similarity. The evolutionist asks: “Is it any more improbable that man should develop from the ape than that a Plato or a Shakespeare should develop from an embryo so like the dog’s embryo?” It certainly is not any more improbable, upon the supposition that the human embryo contains nothing but what is in that of the chick or the dog. But if the human embryo contains, over and above the physical elements, a rational and spiritual principle; if this embryo be a synthesis of mind and matter and not mere matter, then it is more probable that a Plato will come from it than from the canine embryo. This kind of argument proves too much. For not only the embryo, but the newborn babe itself has little more in its external appearance to suggest the career of a Newton or an Aristotle than a newborn dog has. The wailing unconsciousness of the one is as far from science and philosophy as the yelping unconsciousness of the other. But the babe possesses along with physical qualities the “image of God,” namely, a rational soul, while the dog has only an animal soul. There is an invisible rational principle in one that is not in the other. The maxim “judge not by the outward appearance” has full force here.
Resemblance in corporeal form has been overestimated. Similarity in the visible and material structure does not necessarily prove similarity in the invisible and mental structure. It is conceivable that a creature might be produced whose anatomy might be entirely like that of man and yet have no human as distinguished from brutal traits. The idiot is an example. A human body with only an animal soul would look like a man, but would be as far from man as is an ox. The gorilla is nearer to man in physical structure than is a dog; but he is not so near to man in respect to sagacity, affection, and other manlike traits. The monkey species is not so intelligent as the canine species. The elephant is nearer to man in respect to mental traits than is the gorilla, but his anatomy is farther off. The ant and bee have more intelligence than many animals have, yet are entirely destitute of brain. Naturalists notice that the period of infancy in man is much longer than in the brute. This is because there is a rational soul in the one and not in the other, which unfolds more slowly than a physical organism does. The animal takes care of itself in infancy; but the infant man must be taken care of. For example, the young calf, of itself, finds its nourishment from the dam; but the babe must be put to the breast of the mother. The latter if left to itself would die; but the former would not.
Antiquity of Man
Respecting the time when man was created and his antiquity, the narrative in Genesis teaches that he is the last in the series of creations and that the Creator rested from creation ex nihilo after the origination of the human species.53[Note: 3 53. WS: Lewis, “On the Early Populations of the Globe” in “Genesis” in Lange’s Commentary, 314-15; Southall, Recent Origin of Man; Pouchet, Universe, 609; Fraser, Blinding Lights; Lyell, Antiquity of Man; Quatrefages, Human Species 3.12-13; British Quarterly Review 1863 (review of Lyell); Cabell, Unity of Mankind.] While minerals, vegetables, and irrational animals, according to Genesis, may be referred back to a long duration in the first five days, man cannot be referred to any but the sixth day and to the “morning” or last part of that. From six to eight thousand years is the period during which the human species has existed. The Septuagint gives fifteen hundred years more from the creation of man than the Hebrew text. The Christian fathers generally adopted the Septuagint chronology. Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus 24-25, 28) makes the Scriptures to give 5,698 years from the creation of man to the death of the emperor Aurelius Verus in a.d. 69. Julius Africanus (230), the earliest Christian chronologist, dates the creation to 5499 b.c. Eusebius, Jerome, and Bede reckon 2,242 years between Adam and the deluge-following the Septuagint. The Hebrew text gives 1,656 years. Augustine (City of God 15.20) says: “From Adam to the deluge, there are reckoned according to our copies of the Scripture 2,262 years and according to the Hebrew text 1,656 years” (cf. City of God 20.7). Hales (Chronology 1.273-303) and Clinton (Fasti hellenici 1.283-301) defend the Septuagint chronology (see “Introduction to Jeremiah” in Speaker’s Commentary, 323-26, where Payne Smith favors the Septuagint recension). Murphy (On Genesis, 196) defends the Hebrew chronology. The Samaritan text gives only 1,307 years between the creation and the deluge. Desvignoles, in the preface to his Chronology, says that he has collected above two hundred calculations, of which the longest makes the time between the creation and the incarnation to have been 6,984 years and the shortest 3,483 years. (See supplement 3.7.14.)
Extravagant statements respecting the great antiquity of man are not found in the Greek and Roman literatures. Plato (Laws 2.656; 3.676) speaks of “ten thousand years ago” and “thousands and thousands of cities.” But this is indefinite description; and the first instance relates to Egypt. Mythical and fabulous representations appear in the Egyptian and Hindu traditions. The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that they possessed a history going back 11,340 years; and they also told him that during this period the sun had four times altered its regular course, having been twice observed to rise in the west and to set in the east (cf. Spenser’s Faery Queen 5). The zodiac of Denderah, according to Dupuis, went back 15,000 years. The astronomer Delambre thought it to be later than the time of Alexander; and Biot demonstrated that it represented the state of the heavens in 700 b.c. Furthermore, it was discovered in an Egyptian temple that proved to have been built during Roman rule (Pouchet, Universe, 610). The conclusions of Lepsius from the monuments of Egypt make that civilization 20,000 years old. But the dates on the Babylonian and Assyrian tablets disprove this chronology. Even if it be conceded that Egypt is older than Assyria, it cannot be so immensely older.
Smith (Assyrian Discoveries, 51) gives 1850 b.c. as the date for Assur, the first capital of Assyria, and 1350 b.c. for Nineveh, the second capital. He makes Babylon “the capital of the whole country” in the sixteenth century b.c. “The enormous reigns ascribed by Berosus of Babylon to his ten kings, making a total of 432,000 years, force us to discard the idea that the details are historical” (Smith, Chaldean Genesis, 307). This scholar thinks the representation of ancient authors that the walls of Babylon were from forty to sixty miles in circumference to be an exaggeration and infers from the ruins that they were “about eight miles around, making Babylon nearly the same size with Nineveh.” He believes that the Babylonian records “reach to the 24th century b.c.,” adding that “some scholars are of opinion that they stretch nearly 2,000 years beyond that time.” The oldest date assigned by Smith is 2500 b.c. He places the early Babylonian monarchy 2500-1500 b.c. and refers the Izdubar (Nimrod) legends to 2000 b.c. (Assyrian Discoveries, 166-67). By the Septuagint reckoning, according to Theophilus, there would be 887 years from the deluge to 2500 b.c. and from the creation to the deluge 2,242 years (“Introduction to Kings” §8 and “Hosea” in Speaker’s Commentary; Conder, Syrian Stone Lore). The Vedas, according to Max Müller (Origin of Religion, 147), go back to 1000 b.c.; how much earlier is uncertain. Whitney (Oriental Studies, 21) places them between 1500 b.c. and 2000 b.c. The Brahmins asserted that the astronomical tables of India were compiled more than 20,000,000 years ago. But Laplace proved that the calculations had been made after the alleged events and moreover that they were incorrect (Pouchet, Universe, 610). Had man existed 20,000 years upon the globe, its population would be immensely greater than it is. Remains of ancient cities would be found all over the planet. But there are only 1.2 billion or 1.4 billion men now on the globe, and remains of cities are found mostly around the Mediterranean and in Asia. If we go back to the beginning of profane history (say, to 1000 b.c.), we find most of the globe uninhabited by man. All of the Western hemisphere, all of middle and northern Europe, all of northern Asia, all of Africa south of Sahara, and all of Australia and the islands of the sea were without human population. At the time of the advent, the majority of the population of the globe was still gathered about the Mediterranean Sea. Probably there were not more than 100,000,000 people on the globe, at that date. Man is very recent upon the American continents. South America has only about 30,000,000 inhabitants. North America at the time of its discovery had but a handful of men, compared with the vast extent of territory. We cannot assume an extravagant antiquity for man, because by this time the globe would be overrunning with population; as we cannot assume an extravagant antiquity even for the material globe, because by this time it would have parted with all its caloric and would be stone-cold at the center. The small number of human bones that have been found, compared with the large number of the bones of animals, shows that man was of late origin. Were the earth now to be subjected to earthquake and deluge, human bones would be the most numerous of any in some of the strata that would be opened a thousand years hence. Few fossil human bones have been discovered; but there are multitudes of animal and vegetable fossils. (See supplement 3.7.15.)
Even if the shorter biblical chronology be adopted, Manetho’s Egyptian chronology might possibly be harmonized with it. The following is one explanation of it. Placing the flood in 2348 b.c., according to Ussher’s reckoning, there are 450 years between the flood and the call of Abraham in 1900 b.c. The first twelve dynasties of Manetho (280 b.c.) can be placed here, giving 37 years to each dynasty. This would be the Old Empire of Menes and his successors. The pyramids of Gizeh were built in this age. There is, however, great difference of opinion. Mariette Bey makes the Old Empire a period of 2,700 years; Brugsch Bey says 2,400 years; Bunsen 1,076 years (making its beginning 3059 b.c.); Wilkinson and Poole say 650 years, beginning 2700 b.c. The second period from Abraham to Joseph, 1900-1637 b.c., is that of the Middle Empire and the Shepherd kings, embracing five dynasties of 52 years each (Manetho’s dynasties 13-17). According to the Bible, Egypt during this period had a settled government. Abraham comes into contact with its pharaoh for the first time (Genesis 12:1-20). Rawlinson (Ancient Egypt 2.22) regards the Middle Empire as beginning about 1840 b.c. and terminating about 1640 b.c. The third period, 1637-1117 b.c., includes Egyptian history from Joseph downward, in which the remaining thirteen of Manetho’s thirty dynasties may be placed. This is the New Empire, commencing with the eighteenth dynasty. This period includes the ascendancy of Joseph and of all the pharaohs mentioned in Scripture, excepting the one contemporary with Abraham (Genesis 12:1-20). The 520 years of this period would give forty years to each dynasty. The alleged great antiquity of Egypt must be found, if at all, in the first period of the Old Empire. The data here are in utter obscurity. “For times anterior to 700 b.c., Egypt has no fixed chronology” (“Manetho” in Kitto’s Encyclopedia). De Rougé says that “Manetho’s texts are significantly changed, and the series of monumental dates is very incomplete.”54[Note: 4 54. Les textes de Manéthou sont profondément altérés, et la série des dates monumentales est très incomplète.] Rawlinson (Ancient Egypt 2.9, 21) says that the chronological riddle in respect to early Egypt is insoluble. Manetho’s general scheme, being so differently reported, is in reality unknown to us; its details, being frequently contradicted by the monuments, are untrustworthy; and the method of the scheme, the general principles upon which it was constructed, was so faulty, that even if we had it before us in its entirety, we could derive from it no exact or satisfactory chronology. (See supplement 3.7.16.) The repopulation of the globe after the deluge presents no serious difficulty. Population is rapid. According to Malthus, the increase of the means of subsistence is in arithmetical proportion; that of population is in geometrical.55[Note: 5 55. WS: Hume, Populousness of Ancient Nations; “Population” in Penny Cyclopaedia; Wallace, Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind; Petavius, Computation in Thomas Brown’s Pseudodoxia 6.6.] “Every man,” says Blackstone (Commentaries 2.14), “has above one million lineal ancestors, if he reckons back to the twentieth generation.” Blackstone’s table gives 1,048,576 descendants from a single pair in the twentieth generation, or 660 years, supposing only two children to each pair. But supposing four children to each pair, the twentieth generation would yield a vast population. Petavius, taking only seven hundred years of the sixteen hundred between the creation and the deluge and supposing that seven hundred years is the average of patriarchal life and that twenty children are born to a single pair in each century, makes the total product 1,347,368,420. The increase is very great in the last century. The sixth century has 64,000,000; the seventh has twenty times this: 1,347,368,420. But in every generation, this total number of descendants is diminished by death. Supposing, continues Petavius, that Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives had six children (Genesis 10:1-32 mentions sixteen children of Shem, Ham, and Japhet) to each pair and that this ratio continues to give 12,937,284 descendants in fourteen generations of thirty-three years each or 462 years. But six children is a low estimate in view of the longevity of man in this period and the easiness of subsistence in the simplicity of the East and of early civilization. The United States census shows that in 250 years, the 20,000 Puritans who emigrated from England between 1620 and 1640 have now 13,000,000 descendants. The objections to the biblical account of the origin of man drawn from varieties of color and of race are not serious. Climatic influence is very great, especially in a state of barbarism. When man is not protected from the sun and the elements by the appliances of civilization, when he is a savage, changes go on very rapidly (see Quatrefages, Human Species, 7): “The Portuguese during a 300 years’ residence in India have become as black as Caffres, yet they form connections among themselves alone, or if they can, with Europeans” (Heber, Indian Journal, 53-55; Quarterly Review 37.100; see Carpenter, Physiology, 17). (See supplement 3.7.17.) The argument from languages is strong for the unity of the race. The oldest form of Sanskrit, the Vedic, strikingly resembles its next neighbors to the westward: the language of the Avesta called the Zend and that of the Persian inscriptions. The later form of the Sanskrit has less resemblance (Whitney, Oriental Studies, 8): “The mutual agreement of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan languages is complete enough to justify the conclusion that all the nations of this family of languages are only branches of one great nation, which was settled in Upper Asia and included the ancestors of the Indians, Persians, Greeks, Italians, Germans, Slavs, and Celts” (Curtius, Greece 1.1). The opinions of scientific zoologists favor the recent origin of man: “Cuvier does not date the appearance of man farther back than tradition. According to this illustrious zoologist, the history of the human race attests that man has not ruled over the surface of the globe for more than a limited number of years” (Pouchet, Universe, 609). “Man,” says Quatrefages (Human Species 2.12.13), “was most certainly in existence during the quaternary period; has in all probability seen Miocene (middle tertiary) times and, consequently, the entire Pliocene (later tertiary) epoch.” As to the question whether man was earlier than this, Quatrefages says it is possible: “Man is a mammal, and the conditions of existence sufficient for mammals ought to have been sufficient for him. Man is intelligent and can protect himself against cold. There is nothing then impossible in the idea that he should have survived other species of the same class. But this is a question to be proved by facts. Before we can even suppose it to be so, we must wait for information from observation” (152-53). “The discoveries of Bourgeois testify, in my opinion, to the existence of a tertiary man. But everything seems to show that, as yet, his representatives were few in number. The quaternary population, on the contrary, were, at least in distribution, quite as numerous as the life of the hunter permitted” (177). man is known to us only from a few faint traces of his industry. Of tertiary man himself, we know nothing. Portions of his skeleton have been discovered, it has been thought, in France, Switzerland, and especially in Italy. Closer study has, however, always forced us to refer to a comparatively much later period these human remains, which at first sight, were regarded as tertiary” (286). Arcelin makes the age of quaternary clay 6,750 years. Quatrefages thinks this rather too low and says that the present geological period goes much farther back than 7,000 to 8,000 years (140). “No facts have as yet been discovered which authorize us to place the cradle of the human race otherwise than in Asia” (178). The discovery of human bones and implements in situations and connections that seem to imply a great antiquity for man is not a sufficient reason for rejecting the biblical account, owing to the uncertainty of the data. Human bones found in juxtaposition with the bones of the cave bear and the elephant are not conclusive. (a) They may not have been deposited contemporaneously. The action of floods and of violent convulsions makes it very difficult to say with certainty when deposits were made or to tell the order in which they occurred. The bear may have laid his bones in the cave hundreds of years before the man laid his, and yet the two now be found side by side. When the bones of extinct animals and stone implements are found together in a gravel bed, who can be certain whether the gravel was deposited upon them or whether they were deposited upon the gravel and subsequently mingled and buried under it by earthquakes and inundations? (b) The now extinct animal may not have been extinct four or five thousand years ago. He and early man may have been contemporaneous. The elephant has been found encased in ice in Siberia during the nineteenth century. It had long hair and was adapted to a cold climate. This specimen could not have been many thousands of years old (see Life of Agassiz, 708-10). (See supplement 3.7.18.)
Agassiz found in the deep waters of the West Indies “three characteristic genera of sponges from the secondary formation, till now supposed to be extinct.” He also caught in his dredge “three specimens of the genus micrestor of the cretaceous formation, of which no living species had been previously found.”
Antiquity is fabricated for things that are recent. The so-called lake dwellings are an instance. Gibbon (Rome, 42) relates that the Bulgarians in the time of Justinian (a.d. 525) lived in lacustrine structures. It is probable that no remains of them are earlier than the time of Julius Caesar. Herodotus (§5, beginning) speaks of lake dwellings among a people in Asia Minor in 450 b.c. Robert Gray, an English traveler, speaks of seeing them in 1794 on the borders of Lake Wallenstadt. The skeleton discovered at Mentone has all the characteristic marks of the Ligurian Gaul, who was a man of large skeleton according to Livy’s account of the Gauls. Livingstone (Last Journal, 442) says that he never found a single flint arrowhead or any other flint implement in Africa. No flint exists south of the equator, but quartz might have been used. Iron, he says, was smelted in the remotest ages in Africa. According to this, the iron age was the earliest.
There is great uncertainty in the conclusions drawn from the varieties of implements used by men in past ages. Three kinds have been discovered: (a) rude stone implements, (b) finished stone implements, and (c) bronze and iron implements. Some theorists give this as the natural order. Geikie, however (Ice Age, 405), remarks that the difference between the rude flint arrowheads and axes of Paleolithic men and the polished and finely finished tools of the Neolithic men is too great to have no intermediate. And yet, no intermediate, he says, has been found. But may not the bronze implements be this intermediate? In the history of arts, the cutting of gems did not begin until after much skill had been acquired in the use of metals; and the finish of the “elegantly shaped” stone implements is more like that of gem cutting than like that of the rude Paleolithic implements. May not the order, consequently, be (1) Paleolithic, (2) bronze, (3) Neolithic instead of, as the geologist claims, (1) Paleolithic, (2) Neolithic, (3) bronze. It is difficult to suppose that the polished stone implement could have been made by the rude stone implement. It requires iron tools. (See supplement 3.7.19.)
Again, the use of rude stone implements is no proof of the great antiquity of a people. There are tribes of men now on the globe who are using them. Should these tribes become extinct and their implements be discovered one thousand years hence, it would be a false inference to assert that they belonged to a race that lived before Adam. The stone implement is an index of a particular period in the history of a nation’s civilization, rather than of its antiquity. A nation may be in its barbarous state and its stone age at almost any time in the history of the world. “Neobarbarism,” says Mahaffy (Greece, 16), “means the occurrence in later times of the manners and customs which generally mark very old and primitive times. Some few things of the kind survive everywhere; thus in the Irish Island of Arran, a group of famous savants mistook a stone donkey shed of two years’ standing for the building of an extinct race of great antiquity. As a matter of fact, the construction had not changed from the oldest type.” Says Turner (Anglo-Saxons 1.10), “we even now, at this late age, see the Eskimo, the wild Indian, the Backsettler, and the cultivated Philadelphian existing at the same time in North America; so did the Egyptian, the Scythian, and the Greek; so did high polish and rude barbarism at all times appear in disparted but coeval existence.” A contributor to the public press remarks that scientific teachers who hold to the succession of stone, bronze, and iron ages, in the development of early civilization, have found a peculiarly incorrigible scholar in Dr. Schliemann. From a very careful study of the store of stone and bronze weapons and implements treasured in the prehistoric portion of the museum in Leiden, he has become convinced that the distinction between the different stone, bronze, and iron ages is purely artificial and imaginary and concludes that there never was a time, when the earliest inhabitants of Denmark (from whence the proofs were derived), were totally unacquainted with bronze or used only unpolished, rude stone weapons and implements.
S U P P L E M E N T S
3.7.1 (see p. 367). Creation ex nihilo more than any other metaphysical idea differences and separates the Bible from all human cosmogonies. All of these latter exclude this idea by their postulate of an eternal, amorphous, and chaotic matter, which is formed by the operation of its own intrinsic properties and forces into the universe. Scripture refers all chaotic matter, with its properties and laws, to a personal deity who is other than it and before it. The creative power of God, according to the biblical conception, is as much needed to account for the forces and laws of material nature as the voluntary power of the watchmaker is needed to account for the watch. In the case of an artificial product like a watch, both the working force and the intelligent art by which it is made are in the artificer. In the case of a natural product like a tree, both the working force and the formative art by which it is constructed are in the tree; the watch is manufactured; the tree grows. But in both cases a Creator other than the watchmaker and the informing vegetable life is requisite. The watch cannot make the watchmaker; and the principle of vegetable life cannot make itself. Both artificial and natural products must therefore ultimately be referred to a first cause, who from nothing, by an absolutely originating act, creates the artificer who makes the watch and the vital principle which builds up the tree.
Augustine (Faith and Creed 2) teaches the creation of matter ex nihilo and of matter in its visible and invisible modes: “You did make the world out of ‘matter unseen,’ or also ‘without form,’ as some copies give it; yet we are not to believe that this material of which the universe was made, although it might be ‘without form’ [chaotic], although it might be ‘unseen,’ whatever might be the mode of its subsistence, could possibly have subsisted of itself, as if it were coeternal and coeval with God. For even although the world was made of some sort of material, this self-same material itself was made of nothing.”
Neander (History 1.372) directs attention to the radical difference between creation and evolution or emanation as constituting the difference in kind between the Christian cosmogony and the pagan or ethic: “Christianity separated entirely what belongs to the province of religion from what belongs to speculation and a merely speculative interest. And just by so doing Christianity preserved religion from the danger of confounding things divine with the things of this world; the idea of God with that of nature. It directed the eye of the mind beyond that whole series of the phenomena of the world, where, in the chain of causes and effects, one thing ever evolves out of another, to that almighty creative word of God by which the worlds were framed; so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Hebrews 11:3). The creation was here apprehended as an incomprehensible fact by the upward gaze of faith, which rose above the position of the understanding, the faculty which would derive all things from one another, which would explain everything [sensuously] and hence denies all immediate [or intuitive] truth. This one practically important truth the church was for holding fast in the doctrine of creation from nothing; taking her stand in opposition to the ancient view, which would condition God’s act of creation by a previously existing matter; and which, in an anthropopathic manner conceived of him, not as the free, self-sufficient author of all existence, but as the fashioner of a material already extent. Gnosticism would not acknowledge any such limits to speculation. It would explain, clear up to the mental vision, how God is the source and ground of all existence. It was thus compelled to place in the essence of God himself a process of development, through which God is the source and ground of all existence. From overlooking the negative sense of the doctrine concerning creation from nothing, it was led to oppose against it the old principle ‘nothing can come out of nothing.’ It substituted in place of this doctrine the sensuous imageable idea of an efflux of all existence out of the Supreme Being of the deity. This idea of an emanation admits being presented under a great variety of images; of an irradiation of light from an original light; of a development of spiritual powers or ideas acquiring self-subsistence; of an expression in a series of syllables and tones, dying away gradually to an echo.”
Pagan cosmogonies postulate a germ or egg when they explain “creation.” Absolute origination of entity from nonentity is not only denied, but asserted to be impossible. On this scheme there is nothing but second causes. The eternal germ is operated upon by secondary agents and agencies, and the so-called creation is merely the emanation and evolution of an existing substance. There is no first cause originating substance itself. Charnock (Power of God, 419) thus notices the need of a Creator in order to such an evolution: “Nature, or the order of second causes, has a vast power; and the sun and the earth bring forth harvests of corn, but from seed first sown in the earth; were there no seed in the earth, the power of the earth would be idle and the influence of the sun insignificant. All the united strength of nature cannot produce the least thing out of nothing. It may multiply and increase things by the powerful blessing God gave it at the first erecting of the world, but it cannot create.” Pagan cosmogonies which account for the universe by emanation reappear in the modern materialism which accounts for it by evolution.
3.7.2 (see p. 369). Spinoza, often and with emphasis, denies that substance can be created. In a letter to Oldenburg (Letter 2) he says: “In the universe there cannot exist two substances without their differing utterly in essence. Substance cannot be created. All substance must be infinite or supremely perfect.” The assertion that “there cannot be two substances without their differing utterly in essence” is true. One must be infinite, and the other finite. But as Spinoza assumes that the postulate upon which his whole system depends, namely, that there is only one substance and that infinite, is axiomatic and needs no proof, it follows from his assumption that there cannot be two substances. Two infinites are impossible.
3.7.3 (see p. 371). Howe (Oracles 2.9) thus explains the phrase heaven and earth in Genesis 1:1 : “The first and most obvious distribution of the created universe is into these two heads, matter and mind. This is the distribution in Colossians 1:16 : ‘By him were all things made that are in heaven or that are in earth, visible and invisible.’ We may well enough suppose all matter to be, some way or other, visible, though there be indeed a finer sort of matter than is visible to us. [Howe refers here to the invisible material forces-gravitation, electricity, attraction, etc.-and the invisible physical principles, namely, vegetable and animal life; see p.157 n.16.] But then there is the other head of things that are absolutely invisible; as it is altogether impossible that any sense can perceive a mind or a thought which is the immediate product of that mind. Some, indeed, will have by ‘heavens’ all intellectual beings that are created to be comprehended and meant; and by ‘earth,’ all matter whatsoever. We shall not dispute the propriety of that conjecture or what probability it has or has not; but take what is more obvious to ourselves. And so, by ‘heaven’ must be understood not only all the several superior orbs, but all their inhabitants, unto which our own minds and spirits do originally appertain, as being nearer of kin and more allied to the world of spirits than they are to this world of flesh and earth. And then, by ‘earth’ is meant this lower orb, which is replenished with numerous sorts of creatures with one or another sort of lives; either that do live an intellectual life or from an intelligent soul as we live; or else that live a merely sensitive life as all the brutes do; or else that live a merely vegetable life as the plants do; and then there are inanimate things that have no proper life at all. Of such extent is this created universe; it takes in all these several sorts of things.” Pearson (On the Creed, art. 1) explains similarly, “The two terms heaven and earth taken together signify the universe or that which is called the world, in which are contained all things material and immaterial, visible and invisible. Under the name of ‘heaven and earth’ are comprehended all things contained in them, which are of two classes. Some were made immediately out of nothing by a proper creation; and some only mediately, as out of something formerly made out of nothing by an improper kind of creation. By the first were made all immaterial substances, all the orders of angels, and the souls of men, the heavens, and the simple or elemental bodies, as the earth, the water, and the air. By the second were made all the ‘hosts of earth’ (Genesis 2:1), the grass and herb yielding seed, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea: ‘Let the earth bring forth grass; let the waters bring forth the moving creature that has life and fowl that may fly above the earth.’ As well may we grant these plants and animals to have their origination from such principles [namely, earth, water, and air] when we read, ‘God formed man out of the dust of the ground’ and said unto him whom he created in his own image, ‘Dust you are.’ ” This statement needs qualification. Plants and animals and the body of man did not “originate” from earth, water, and air in the strict sense of the term; for a vital principle was required to vitalize and organize these nonvital and inorganic elements. “Nothing is satisfactory,” says Bell (Hand, chap. 2), “until it is declared that it has been the will of God to create life; and that it was he who gave the animating principle to produce organization.” This animating principle was as much an immediate creation from nothing as the spirits of angels and men or the simple elements of matter. When it is said, “Let the earth bring forth grass; let the waters bring forth the moving creature,” the meaning is that the earth and waters furnish the nonvital material elements that constitute the visibility of a plant or animal, which are vivified and assimilated by an invisible principle of vegetable or animal life created ex nihilo (p. 377). The vegetable and animal kingdoms fall into Pearson’s first class.
Augustine (City of God 11.33) sums up as follows: “Under these names heaven and earth the whole creation is signified, either as divided into spiritual and material, which seems the more likely, or into the two great parts of the world [universe] in which all created things are contained, so that, first of all, the creation is presented in sum and then its parts are enumerated, according to the mystic number of the days.”
3.7.4 (see p. 374). Grabe, in his Spicilegium patrum56[Note: 6 56. Gleaning of the fathers] (2.195), gives a fragment from the commentary of Anastasius upon the six days’ work, in which the latter remarks that “Justin Martyr says that all things which were made by God are sextuply divided: Into immortal and intelligent things such as angels; into mortal things endowed with reason such as men; into sentient things destitute of reason such as cattle, birds, and fishes; into insentient things that move such as winds, clouds, waters, and stars; into things that grow but do not move such as trees; and into insentient things that do not move such as mountains, land, and the like. All the creatures of God fall into one of these divisions and are circumscribed by them.” This shows that the classification of the works of creation was a familiar conception at a very early date. This would harmonize with the theory of long periods and creative days and would naturally suggest it.
3.7.5 (see p. 379). The tendency to explain the kingdoms of vegetable and animal life by evolution of the one from the other, instead of by a divine fiat creating them from nothing, is seen in the following remark of Coleridge (Table Talk for 30 April 1823): “There are only two acts of creation, properly so called, in the Mosaic account: the material universe and man. The intermediate acts [the origination of vegetables and animals] seem more as the results of secondary causes or, at any rate, of a modification of prepared materials.” Bacon (Natural History, century 5), on the contrary, calls attention to the creation from nothing of life as the organizing principle and power which vivifies and assimilates the lifeless elements of earth, air, and water. “Plants or vegetables are the principal part of the third day’s work. They are the first producat,57[Note: 7 57. let it bring forth] which is the word of animation; for the other words [of the inorganic days] are but words of essence [inorganic substance].” Agassiz, also, during the recent revival by Darwin of the pseudoevolution of Lamarck and St. Hilaire, has maintained the historical physics of Linnaeus, Blumenbach, Cuvier, and Hunter: “To Agassiz, as the leading opponent of the development or Darwinian theories, development meant development of plan as expressed in structure, not the change of one structure into another. To his apprehension this change was based upon intellectual not upon material causes” (Life of Agassiz 1.244). Similarly, Davy (Consolations, dialogue 4) remarks: “I can never believe that any division or refinement or subtilization or juxtaposition or arrangement of the particles of matter can give them sensibility; or that intelligence can result from the combinations of insensate and brute atoms. I can as easily imagine that the planets are moving by their will or design round the sun or that a cannonball is reasoning in making its parabolic curve.” Charles Bell (Hand, chap. 6) says, “Everything declares the diversity of species to have its origin in distinct creations; and not to be owing to a process of gradual transition from some original type. Any other hypothesis than that of new creations of animals, suited to the successive changes in the inorganic matter of the globe; the condition of the water, atmosphere, and temperature; brings with it only an accumulation of difficulties. Life preserves the materials of the body free from the influence of those affinities which hold the inorganic world together; and it not only does that, but it substitutes other laws. Of the wonders of the microscope none exceed those presented on looking at the early rudiments of an animal. This rudimentary structure will appear but a homogeneous, transparent, soft jelly; there will be visible in it only a single pulsating point; yet this mass possesses within it a principle of life; and it is not only ordered what this principle shall perform in attracting matter, and building up the complex structure of the body, but even the duration of the animal’s existence is from the beginning defined. The term may be limited to a day, and the life be truly ephemeral; or it may be prolonged to a hundred years; but the period is adjusted according to the condition and enjoyment of the individual and to the continuance of its species, as perfectly as are the mechanism and structure themselves.… There is nothing like this in inanimate nature. It is beautiful to see the shooting of a crystal; to note the formation of the integrant particles from their elements in solution, and these, under the influence of attraction or crystalline polarity, assuming a determinate shape; but the form here is permanent. In the different processes of elective attraction and in fermentation we perceive a commotion; but in a little time the products are formed, and the particles are rigidly at rest. In these instances there is nothing like the revolutions of the living animal substance, where the material is alternately arranged, decomposed, and rearranged. The changes in the embryo state are a remarkable example of the latter. The human brain in its earlier stage of growth resembles that of a fish; next, it bears a resemblance to the cerebral mass of the reptile; in its increase it is like that of a bird; and slowly, and only after birth, does it assume the proper form and consistence of the human brain.” Such is the judgment of the eminent naturalist to whom “the honor is exclusively due of having demonstrated for the first time that the nerve of motion is distinct from the nerve of sensation, and that when a nerve, apparently simple, possesses both properties, it is a sign that it is really compound and consists of fibrils derived from distinct divisions of the brain or spinal cord”-a discovery with which, in respect to originality and influence upon biology, nothing in the entire results of the recent materialistic physics can be compared for a moment.
Haeckel (Evolution ofMan 1:73-74) calls attention to the fact that the current pseudoevolutionary theory is a revival of that of Lamarck and St. Hilaire and until recently had so sway in biology: “As an instance how utterly biologists refrained from inquiries into the origin of organisms and the creation of the animal and vegetable species during the period from 1830 to 1859, I mention from my own experience the fact that during the whole course of my studies at the university I never heard a single word on these most important and fundamental questions of biology. During the time from 1852 to 1857 I had the good fortune to listen to the most distinguished teachers in all branches of the science of organic nature; but not one of them even once alluded to the question of the origin of the vegetable and animal species. It was never thought worth while to allude to Lamarck’s valuable Zoological Philosophy, in which the attempt to answer it had been made in 1809. The enormous opposition which Darwin met with when he first took up this question again may therefore be understood. His attempt seemed at first to be unsubstantial and unsupported by previous labors. Even in 1859 the entire problem of creation, the whole question of the origin of organisms, was considered by biologists as supernatural and transcendental. The dualistic position taken by Kant, and the extraordinary importance attached during the whole of the nineteenth century to this most influential of modern philosophers, probably offer the best explanation of this fact. For while this great genius, equally excellent as a naturalist and a philosopher, in the field of inorganic nature made a successful attempt in his theory of the heavens to treat the constitution and mechanical origin of the material universe according to Newtonian principles, in other words, to treat it mechanically and to conceive it monistically, he for the most part adopted the supernatural view of the origin of organisms. He maintained that ‘the principle of the mechanism of [inorganic] nature, without which there could be no science of [inorganic] nature, was wholly inadequate to explain the origin of living organisms and that it was necessary to assume supernatural causes effecting a design (causae finales)58[Note: 8 58. final causes. In the Aristotelian scheme of causality, a final cause refers to the goal or end toward which an entity or activity tends.] for the origin of these.’ ” Haeckel then adds that Kant sometimes departed from this view and “expressed himself in quite the opposite or monistic sense.” But he gives no passages in proof and remarks that “these monistic utterances are but stray rays of light; as a rule Kant adhered in biology to those obscure dualistic notions according to which the powers which operate in organic nature are entirely different from those which prevail in the inorganic world.” The assertion that Kant in his theory of the heavens adopted monism or Spinoza’s doctrine of only one substance is contradicted by Haeckel’s own statement that Kant explained the material universe “according to Newtonian principles.” Newton held with energy to the dualism of mind and matter and to theism, and his Principia is the strongest of all demonstrations of the truth of this theory, because it is mathematical. Haeckel has confounded Newton’s explanation of inorganic nature by the operation of inorganic and mechanical forces employed by the Creator with the very different theory which explains it by the operation of these inorganic forces of themselves and without a superintending mind. The fact that Kant accounted for the inorganic world by the operation of nonvital and mechanical forces and of the organic world by the operation of vital and nonmechanical forces-the forces in both instances being created, upheld, and controlled by the Creator-by no means proves that in the former domain he adopted pantheistic monism and in the latter theistic dualism.
3.7.6 (see p. 382). Haeckel (Evolution ofMan 2:391) endows matter with the intelligent properties of mind, namely, self-motion and choice, in the most extreme form conceivable. Even the germ cell, he maintains, decides for itself whether it will be male or female: “At first two united cells may have been entirely alike. Soon, however, by natural selection a contrast must have arisen between them. One cell became a female egg cell, the other a male seed or sperm cell.”
3.7.7 (see p. 383). The discussions respecting the scientific value of the theory of pseudoevolution which makes all the phenomena of the mineral, vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms to be alike the mechanical motion of molecules of matter have overlooked the fact that it has no foundation or support in mathematics. A really mechanical force and motion can be investigated and enunciated arithmetically and algebraically. Gravitation is expressed in the well-known formula that its attraction is inversely as the square of the distance. The motion of light, in the refraction and dispersion of its rays, is governed by laws that have been demonstrated by the employment of calculus. Mathematical optics is one of the most striking examples of the manner in which material nature operates mathematically. The motion of heat has been subjected to the tests of mathematics, and Clausius by this method has proved that when the heat-motion of ignited gunpowder is converted into the motion of the cannonball and then is reconverted into heat-motion by impact upon an iron plate, there is an actual loss of heat and consequently of motion. This is something which no observation of the senses, naked or armed, could have demonstrated. Electricity and magnetism are likewise beginning to be measured by this method. “Geometers,” says a French journalist, “who are the continuators of Ampère, Fourier, Ohm, Gauss, Helmholtz, Thompson, and Maxwell and have helped so much in connecting electricity with the laws of mechanics are preparing a great synthesis which will mark an epoch in the history of natural philosophy. They are very near demonstrating that the electromagnetic phenomena are subjected to the same elementary laws as the optical; that they are two manifestations of a motion in the same element, namely, ether; the problems of optics are solved by equations of electromagnetism; and the speed of light, determined by optical methods, is measured also by purely electrical measures.”
It is owing to the fact that whatsoever is really mechanical is also mathematical that it has from the first been the aim of the natural philosopher to introduce as much as possible the calculations and methods of mathematical science into physics, because in this way a precision and certainty are secured such as the most careful observations by the senses, even when aided by instruments, cannot afford. In some instances the algebraic process demonstrates irrefragably a result that contradicts the notices of the senses. An eminent geometer has demonstrated that the center of the shadow made by a circular plate of metal in a ray of light coming through an aperture is in fact no shadow, but an illumination as bright as if the metal plate were away. The remark of Euler, after demonstrating certain properties of the arch, that “all experience is in contradiction to this, but that this is no reason for doubting its truth,” paradoxical as it sounds, is scientific certainty.
Accordingly, the progress of genuine, in distinction from spurious, physics has invariably been accompanied with that of mathematics. Newton’s theory of gravitation immediately resulted in the Principia-that wonderful treatise of which the full title is Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy-in which calculus is employed by an intellect never excelled in the power of concentrated reflection to demonstrate the truth of a hypothesis which without this method of proof would be open to doubt and denial. For subtract the evidence furnished by the theorems and calculations of the Principia and leave the law of gravitation to be accepted merely on the ground of what can be observed and measured of its operations by the naked or the armed eye, and it would no longer have the certainty which it now has for the scientific mind.
Now if, as the materialist contends, the phenomena of the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms are really and truly mechanical, like those of gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity, light, heat, electricity, and magnetism, they should like these latter be capable of mathematical expression and demonstration. If it indeed be true, as Haeckel (Creation 1.21) asserts that “when a stone falls by certain laws to the ground, or a solution of salt forms a crystal, the result is no less a mechanical manifestation of life than the flowering of a plant, the generation or sensibility of animals, or the feelings or mental activity of man”-if it be indeed true that all these phenomena are alike the effect of molecular motion, then the vitality of the plant, the sensibility of the animal, and the rationality of the man can be examined mathematically and the results expressed in mathematical formulas. In this case treatises in biology and psychology should be as full of mathematical propositions and calculations as those in chemistry and mechanics. But the mere assertion of such a possibility is the refutation of the theory of pseudoevolution. The law of vegetable life has nothing in common with that of gravitation, and to attempt to express it in mathematical terms is absurd. The same is true of the law of animal life, and still more of rational. How would a scientist set about describing the motion of the sap or the circulation of the blood in terms of calculus? How would he express the thinking of the human mind or the feeling of the human heart by algebraic equations? No evolutionist has yet gone to the length of asserting that one sense can evolve from another; that smelling can transmute itself into hearing, or seeing into tasting; and no one of this class has attempted to explain one sensation by another; but the task would not be greater than to explain vegetable life in the blooming of a rose or animal life in the crawling of a worm or rational life in “the thoughts that wander through eternity” and are “too deep for tears” by the mechanical motion of atoms algebraically formulated by some Newton or Laplace. When one considers the great amount of publication by materialistic physicists during the last twenty years upon subjects in physics and how little of mathematics there is in it all, he is made suspicious respecting its credibility. Former periods in the history of science that were distinguished, as the last two decades have not been, for real discoveries and additions to the knowledge of nature were marked by the cultivation of mathematical analysis. But the present is a time when the most novel and improbable theories of matter and mind are broached without a particle of this highest order of proof. Let anyone read the History of the Physical Sciences by Whewell, one of the first mathematicians of the century and a natural philosopher in the line of Newton and Leibnitz, and see how constantly and inextricably mathematical calculation is in-woven with all that is really mechanical and inorganic in them, and then let him turn to the physics of Haeckel, Huxley, Maudsley, and Büchner and see how destitute their schematizing is of all support from the exact sciences and how contradictory it is to the demonstrated and established results of past investigation, and he will perceive the immense difference between the historical and the provincial physics. A striking instance of the error introduced into the physics of inorganic nature by theories that not merely lack corroboration by mathematics, but are refuted by it, is seen in Goethe’s theory of colors. He contended, in opposition to Newton and physicists generally, that color is not a particular mode of light, but a mixture of light and darkness. He held that darkness is a positive quality and not the mere negation of light and that colors are composed of light and darkness-which, as his biographer Lewis remarks, is “like saying that tones are composed of sound and silence.” He prosecuted his experiments and observations with great industry, but in a purely empirical way, without any knowledge or employment of mathematical optics. On the contrary, he rejected the aid of this science and actually took credit to himself for so doing: “I raised,” he said, “the whole school of mathematicians against me, and people were greatly amazed that one who had no insight into mathematics could venture to contradict Newton. For that physics could exist independently of mathematics, no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion.” His biographer, who shared in the exaggerated estimate of Goethe common to all his devotees, was nevertheless too sound a physicist to fall in with this view of mathematics. Respecting Goethe’s theory of color and those sciences which are concerned with really mechanical forces, he remarks: “On Goethe’s theory, the phenomena are not measurable; and whoever glances into a modern work on optics will see that the precision and extent to which calculation has been carried are themselves sufficient ground for preferring the theory which admits such calculation. No amount of observation will render observation precise, unless it can be measured. You may watch falling bodies for an eternity, but without mathematics mere watching will yield no law of gravitation. You may mix acids and alkalies together with prodigality, but no amount of experiment will yield the secret of their composition if you have flung away the balance. Goethe flung away the balance” (Lewis, Life of Goethe 5.9). It is worthy of particular notice that this error of the poet was endorsed by the philosophers Schelling and Hegel, both of whom, like Goethe, adopted the monism of Spinoza, which explains all the phenomena of the universe by the doctrine of one infinite substance. This accounts for the agreement between them.
Goethe was more successful in botany than in optics. His Metamorphoses of Plants, in which he developed a theory that had been suggested but not adopted by Linnaeus, namely, that all the parts of a plant are varieties of the leaf, has met with favor among scientific botanists. But botany is within the domain of life, not of mechanics, if the historical physics is to be accepted rather than that of the materialistic schools. Because botany is concerned with a vital force, it cannot be constructed mathematically, and consequently Goethe’s ignorance of the exact sciences did no great harm in this instance, as it did in that of optics. The inability of the materialist to ground his theory that mind is matter and that thought, like heat, is a mode of molecular motion in the mathematics that support all genuine mechanics is proof that it will be short lived, that the pseudoevolution of Darwin at the close of the nineteenth century will share the fate of the pseudoevolution of Lamarck at the beginning of it. A writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review (3.194-95) makes the following objections to the position that life is a property of inorganic matter and the effect of the arrangement of its atoms: “(1) If the living principle is an essential property of inorganic matter, it would follow that this property would increase with the quantity of matter. This, however, is not the fact. Nature nowhere manifests more living energy than in its most minute productions. The insect, for example, the spider, with its instincts performs more remarkable functions than many a larger animal; the dog more than the horse, and man more than the elephant, and this more than the whale. (2) The first rudiment of all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, is a fluid in which a few globules are found. If the arrangement of particles or structural organization were the cause of life, this cause would have little energy in a fluid in which no organ at all is to be detected; and yet the reverse is the fact, for in no state does the living principle act so energetically as in the first periods of existence. In the first month of conception the human embryo weighs only a few grains; at the ninth month it weighs eight pounds and is twenty inches in length. In the first month it is as simple as a worm in its structure; at the ninth it has all the characteristic complication of the human species. In the early periods of our existence, therefore, the living principle operates with much greater intensity than in the later; being employed not so much in merely preserving as in the later periods, but in forming and building up from the beginning. Every most minute artery, nerve, or vein is then laid out with uniform skill; parts are planned and formed which had no previous existence; and it seems as unreasonable to assert from a contemplation of such facts that organization or structure is the cause of life as that the house is the cause of the architect. If the arrangement of particles is the cause of life, then the consistent materialist must in physics give up the axiom that the effect is in proportion to the cause. The effects and changes are far greater in the embryo and uterine existence than they are in the body after birth; but the number of the particles of matter that are arranged is far smaller. (3) In the mechanical sciences, we say that certain substances are the conductors of electricity, but we do not say that they cause electricity; they develop its phenomena, and that is all. Now life, like electricity, or any other mechanical force, though it does not exist separate from matter, yet is transferable from one body to another. The plant, for example, collects from air, earth, and water that which it transforms into wood, sap, leaf, and fruit, thus vivifying these elements. The animal collects from the plant its material for nerve, blood, and muscle. Man converts bread and meat into blood, muscle, nerve, and bone, all of which are capable of vital motion. In all these instances a piece of inanimate matter has received the gift of life; it has acquired vital properties. Is it not a distinct transfer of something from one substance to another, which something cannot be a mere property of the substance to which it is transferred? Is the principle of life any more a property of the matter which is vitalized by it than the principle of heat is the property of the iron that is melted by it? If the two things are entirely diverse in the latter case, are they not also in the former? (4) Extension, figure, impenetrability are properties of matter, and we never see them leave matter; but the dead nerve, although to all appearance the same as the living, loses sensation, and the dead muscle loses irritability. If it be replied that the dead muscle or nerve is not the same as the living, but that death has been accompanied by a cessation of motion in the fluids or atoms, this implies that the motion of the fluids or atoms produces life. But is there a single instance in nature of motion producing anything but motion of identically the same kind? Is there any proof from observed phenomena that mechanical motion sometimes does more than this and produces sensation, thought, and volition?” In agreement with this last remark, Quatrefages (Human Species, 13) remarks: “We do not find in the application of the laws of life and in the results to which they lead the mathematical precision of the laws of gravitation and ethero-dynamy [sound and light]. Crystals, when similar in composition and when formed under similar circumstances, resemble each other perfectly; but we never find two leaves exactly alike upon the same tree.”
Regarding spontaneous generation, “Pasteur proves and Tyndall corroborates that if all germs of life are excluded, inorganic matter never ferments, never of itself produces life, and remains inorganic” (Popular Science Monthly, Dec. 1876: 135).
3.7.8 (see p. 384). The effect of friction in diminishing force is seen even in the provinces of imponderable matter. Every reflection of a ray of light diminishes its intensity; going in a direct line it is stronger, in a zigzag it is weaker. Moonlight is paler than sunlight. But reflection is resistance by friction. The deflection of a bullet diminishes its motion. When it glances from a rock its movement is less swift than before the glancing. The same is true of sound when deflected and of heat when reflected.
3.7.9 (see p. 387). The fallacy in pseudoevolution is the assumption that variation is identical with transmutation, that the rise of new varieties is the same thing as the rise of new species. Quatrefages (Human Species, 37) notices this: “Lamarck, St. Hilaire, Darwin and his school consider the species not only as variable but as transmutable. The specific types are not merely modified, they are replaced by new types. Variation is, in their estimation, only a phase of the very different phenomena of transmutation.” Consider, for illustration of this remark of Quatrefages, Darwin’s explanation of the moral sense out of the gregarious instinct in animals, and this latter from animal instinct. Animals associate; thence cooperation, as in the instance of beavers; then the wishes of others of the same community are perceived; then the idea of a common good; then the notion of obligation to consult the common good. There are the following objections to this genesis of the moral sense. (1) This process stops with the animal, but moral obligation stops with God. Even if the improbable supposition be granted that a beaver may come to feel obliged and bound by a sense of duty to another beaver, this would not make him feel obliged and bound to a Supreme Being; if for no other reason, that there is nothing in Darwin’s account of the matter by which the beaver can get the idea of such a being. The only idea the beaver has is the idea of another beaver. But a “moral sense” without a knowledge of a Supreme Being and a sense of duty to him is nonsense. (2) This process surreptitiously injects elements into succeeding parts of it that cannot be derived out of the preceding. This destroys the alleged evolution. There is a leap from actual fact to mere imagination of a fact. An examination shows this. Animals “associate” from animal instinct and “cooperate” from animal instinct. But they do not “perceive the wishes of others” from animal instinct or “have the idea of a common good” from animal instinct or “the notion of obligation to consult the common good”from animal instinct. Association and cooperation are action; but perception of others’ wishes, the idea of a common good, and the notion of obligation to consult the common good are reflection. The former may be explained by animal instinct; but the latter require human reason to account for them. This pedigree of the moral sense is like Irving’s derivation of mango from Jeremiah King: “Jerry King, gherkin, cucumber, mango.” This criticism applies also to Spencer’s explanation of the moral sense by the idea of utility: “Experiences of utility organized and consolidated in generations by transmission become experiences of morality; of right and wrong.” The mere “organization”and “consolidation” of a thing does not alter the nature and substance of it. It only changes its form. Utility condensed ad infinitum is only infinite utility.
3.7.10 (see p. 389). The materialist when pressed with the fact that there is no visible transmutation of species within the period of time that man has existed replies that the asserted change requires vast ages. This implies that natural forces grow stronger as they grow older. But the inherent force of matter is no more augmented by the increase of time than by the increase of size. If a minute atom of matter cannot start itself into motion today, it cannot in three hundred and sixty-five days; and the same is true of a granite boulder or the plant Jupiter. Longer duration will add no new and additional force to either of these which it does not intrinsically have. So also with the increase of bulk. If a grain of sand cannot begin motion from a state of rest, neither can the entire globe of which it is a part. Size, greater or smaller, is of no account in such a case, and neither is time.
3.7.11 (see p. 390). J. W. Dawson (Salient Points in the Science of the Earth, chap. 7) presents the following view of the succession of animal forms, as the teaching of scientific paleontology. “(1) The existence of life and organization on the earth is not eternal or even coeval with the beginning of the physical universe, but may possibly date from Laurentinian or immediately pre-Laurentinian ages. (2) The introduction of new species of animals and plants has been a continuous process, not in the sense of derivation of one species from another, but in the higher sense of the continued operation of the cause or causes which introduced life at first. (3) Though thus continuous the process has not been uniform; but periods of rapid production of species have alternated with others in which many disappeared and few were introduced. This may have been an effect of physical cycles reacting on the progress of life. (4) Species, like individuals, have greater energy and vitality in their younger stages and rapidly assume all their varietal forms and extend themselves as widely as external circumstances will permit. Like individuals, also, they have their periods of old age and decay, though the life of some species has been of enormous duration in comparison with that of others; the difference appearing to be connected with degrees of adaptation to different conditions of life. (5) Many allied species, constituting groups of animals and plants, have made their appearance at once in various parts of the earth, and these groups have obeyed the same laws with the individual and the species in culminating rapidly and then slowly diminishing, though a large group once introduced has rarely disappeared together. (6) Groups of species, as genera and orders, do not usually begin with their highest or lowest forms, but with intermediate and generalized types, and they show a capacity for both elevation and degradation in their subsequent history. (7) The history of life presents a progress from the lower to the higher and from the simpler to the more complex and from the more generalized to the more specialized. In this progress new types are introduced and take the place of the older ones, which sink to a relatively subordinate place and thus become degraded. But the physical and organic changes have been so correlated and adjusted that life has been enabled to assume more complex forms, and thus older forms have been made to prepare the way for newer, so that there has been, on the whole, a steady elevation culminating in man. Elevation and specialization have, however, been secured at the expense of vital energy and range of adaptation, until the new element of a rational and spiritual nature was introduced in the case of man. (8) In regard to the larger and more distinct types, we cannot find evidence that they have in their introduction been preceded by similar forms connecting them with previous groups; but there is reason to believe that many supposed representative species in successive formations are really only races or varieties. (9) Insofar as we can trace their history, specific types are permanent in their characters from their introduction to their extinction, and their earlier varietal forms are similar to their later ones. (10) Paleontology furnishes no direct evidence, perhaps never can furnish any, as to the actual transmutation of one species into another; but the drift of its testimony is to show that species come in per saltum,59[Note: 9 59. in through a leap, suddenly. The meaning here is that species arise suddenly rather than gradually.] rather than by any slow and gradual process. (11) The origin and history of life cannot, any more than the origin and determination of matter, be explained on purely material grounds, but involve the consideration of power referable to the unseen and spiritual world. There is a creative force above and beyond them, to the threshold of which we shall inevitably be brought.”
3.7.12 (see p. 394). Respecting Haeckel’s assertion that “natural selection, which acts without a plan, produces quite the same result as artificial selection, which the will of man makes according to a plan,” Janet (Materialism of the Present: A Critique of Büchner, 174) remarks: “The true stumbling block of Darwin’s theory is the passage from artificial to natural selection; it is when he wishes to prove that a blind and designless nature has been able to obtain, by the fortuitous occurrence of circumstances, the same results which man obtains by well-calculated industry.”
3.7.13 (see p. 394). A striking example of the punctilious carrying out of the plan of structure when there is no use for the organ is seen in the whale. The whale is not a fish, but a mammal. It has lungs, not gills; cannot live continually under water, but must come to the surface to breathe; is warm blooded, having a bilocular heart, movable eyelids, ears opening externally, viviparous generation, and suckles its young. In all these respects it is like a quadruped, yet there are no external legs. “But,” observes Roget (Physiology 1.485), “although the bones of the legs do not exist, yet there are found in the hinder and lower part of the trunk, concealed in the flesh and quite detached from the spine, two small bones, apparently corresponding to pelvic bones, for the presence of which no more probable reason can be assigned than the tendency to preserve an analogy with the more developed structures of the same type. A similar adherence to the law of uniformity in the plan and construction of all the animals belonging to the same class is strikingly shown in the conformation of the bones of the anterior extremities of the cetacea; for although they present, externally, no resemblance to the leg and foot of a quadruped, being fashioned into finlike members, with a flat oval surface for striking the water, yet when the bones are stripped of the think integument which covers them and conceals their real form, we find them exhibiting the same divisions into carpal and metacarpal bones, and phalanxes of fingers, as exist in the most highly developed organization, not merely of a quadruped, but also of a monkey, and even of a man.”
3.7.14 (see p. 397). The biblical chronology, while forbidding the immense antiquity for the existence of man on the globe attributed to him by one class of geologists, does not require an exact mathematical definiteness, but allows an uncertain margin of one or two thousand years. This is due to the difference between the two texts from which the contents of Scripture are derived. The following account of the case is given by a learned writer in the London Quarterly Review (43.120-21): “We are accustomed to suppose that we possess an undoubted, precise canon of chronology in the Holy Scriptures; but perhaps next to a clear acquaintance with what the sacred volume does undoubtedly contain, the most valuable knowledge is of what it does not. In the Universal History above one hundred and twenty dates are given for the creation, most of them made out by persons who regard with sincere reverence, and derive their arguments from, the sacred writings. The first of these places that event 6984 b.c.; the last, 3616 b.c.; differing by the amount of more than 3,000 years. The period of the deluge is fixed with no greater uniformity. The Septuagint gives 3246 b.c.; the Hebrew text, according to Ussher, gives 2348 b.c. The extreme dates assigned to the exodus are those of Josephus, according to Hales, who agrees nearly with Des Vignolles, 1648 b.c.; of the English Bible, according to Ussher, 1491 b.c.; and by the common Jewish chronology, 1312 b.c.
“Our object is to show that the longer of these chronologies is the best supported and affords ample space for the highest antiquity which the great Egyptian kingdom can claim. For the period between the flood and the first connection of sacred history with Egypt we have four distinct authorities: the Septuagint version; the Samaritan text; Josephus, who professes to have adhered faithfully to the sacred volume; and the Hebrew chronology adopted in our Bibles. None of these, strictly speaking, agree, but the first three concur in assigning a much longer period between the deluge and the birth of Abraham: the Septuagint, 1,070 years; the Hebrew, only 292. If it should urged that the translators of the Septuagint, environed on all sides by Egyptian antiquities and standing in awe of Alexandrian learning, endeavored to conform their national annals to the more extended chronological system and that Josephus, either influenced by their authority or actuated by the same motives, may have adopted the same views, yet the ancient Samaritan text still remains an unexceptionable witness to the high antiquity of the longer period. In fact, we are perhaps wasting our time in contesting this point, as we may fairly consider the Hebrew chronology of this period between the deluge and the call of Abraham almost exploded. In our own country, most of those who have investigated the subject, men who certainly cannot be suspected of want of reverence for the sacred volume-Bryant, Faber, and Hales-concur in reverting to the system which generally prevailed in the early Christian church; and, last, Russell, in an essay prefixed to his work on the connection of sacred and profane history, has shown, with great probability, not only the late construction of what may perhaps fairly be called the rabbinic chronology, in the second century of Christianity, but also, following the steps of the ancient Christian writers on the subject, the peculiar object for which it was framed.
“It would be difficult, indeed, to conceive the vast extension and multiplication of the human race, the slow development of civilization, the revolutions in the forms of government, the rise of mighty empires, the splendor of great cities, within the narrow limits of two or three centuries; but in above a thousand years what changes might not be wrought. Compare the France and England, the Paris and London, of the days of William the Conqueror with their present state; or the wild woods of America, inhabited by wandering tribes of savages, with her present populous cities. Nor must it be forgotten that from the visit of Abraham to Egypt, above two centuries more elapsed before the migration of his descendants; and of the state of Egypt in the days of the patriarch we know little more than that a king was ruling, with some degree of state, in some part of Lower Egypt-probably at Tanis or Zoan; and that the valley of the Nile had begun to make its rich return to the toil of the agricultural cultivator.”
3.7.15 (see p. 398). In corroboration of the position that the population of the globe at the beginning of profane history was comparatively sparse, the following estimates are noteworthy. Caesar states that the population of Helvetia, or Switzerland, in his time was 368,000. In 1880 it was 2,846,000. Gibbon (chap. 9) asserts that the populousness of northern Europe in the time of Caesar has been much exaggerated. Robertson (Charles V, 1) says the same; and so does Hume (Populousness of Ancient Nations). In 1756 Burke says: “I think the numbers of men now upon earth are computed at five hundred millions, at the most” (Vindication of Natural Society). The Abbé Raynal (History 6) says concerning the Mexican Empire: “The Castilian historians tell us that before the tenth century after Christ this vast space was inhabited only by some wandering hordes that were entirely savage. They tell us that about this period some tribes issuing from the north and northwest occupied parts of the territories and introduced milder manners. They tell us that three hundred years after, a people still more advanced in civilization and coming from the neighborhood of California, settled on the borders of the lakes and built Mexico there.”
3.7.16 (see p. 399). Whether some of the dynasties of Manetho were contemporaneous or all of them were successive makes a great difference with the antiquity of Egypt. Eratosthenes (died 194 b.c.), adopting the first view, reduced Manetho’s Old Empire from 2,900 years to 1,076. Panadorus (?) reduced the 5,000 or more years of the thirty dynasties to 3,555. The total number of years assigned by Manetho to his thirty dynasties is given in the Eusebius of Syncellus (a.d. 800) as 4,728, in the Armenian Eusebius as 5,205, in the Africanus of Syncellus as 5,374. Eusebius (Chronicle 1.20) says: “We are told that there were, perhaps, at one and the same time several kings of Egypt” (Rawlinson, Egypt 2.6-8).
3.7.17 (see p. 399). Carpenter (Physiology §§941-48) mentions the following facts in proof of the original unity of the human species and of the variations produced by climate and manner of life: “The influence of habits of life, continued from generation to generation, upon the form of the head is remarkably evinced by the transition from one type to another [namely, the prognathous, pyramidal, and elliptical skulls], which may be observed in nations that have undergone a change in their manners and customs and have made an advance in civilization. Thus, to mention but one instance, the Turks at present inhabiting the Ottoman and Persian empires are undoubtedly descended from the same stock with those nomadic races which are still spread through Central Asia. The former, however, having conquered the countries which they now inhabit, eight centuries since, have gradually settled down to the fixed and regular habits of the Indo-European race and have made corresponding advances in civilization; while the latter have continued their wandering mode of life and can scarcely be said to have made any decided advance during the same interval. Now the long-since civilized Turks have undergone a complete transformation into the likeness of Europeans, while their nomadic relatives retain the pyramidal configuration of the skull in a very marked degree. Some have attributed this change in the physical structure of the Turkish race to the introduction of Circassian slaves into the harems of the Turks; but this could only affect the opulent and powerful among the race; and the great mass of the Turkish population have always intermarried among themselves. In like manner, even the Negro prognathous head and face may become assimilated to the European by long subjection to similar influences. Thus, in some of our older West Indian colonies, it is not uncommon to meet with Negroes, the descendants of those first introduced there, who exhibit a very European physiognomy; and it has even been asserted that a Negro belonging to the Dutch portion of Guiana may be distinguished from another belonging to the British settlements by the similarity of the features and expression of each to those which respectively characterize his masters. The effect could not be here produced by the intermixture of bloods, since this would be made apparent by alteration of color. But not only may the pyramidal and prognathous types be elevated toward the elliptical; the elliptical may be degraded toward either of these. Want, squalor, and ignorance have a special tendency to induce that diminution of the cranial portion of the skull and that increase of the facial, which characterizes the prognathous type, as cannot but be observed by anyone who takes an accurate and candid survey of the condition of the most degraded part of the population of the great towns of Great Britain and as it is seen to be preeminently the case with regard to the lowest class of Irish emigrants. A certain degree of retrogression to the pyramidal type is also to be noticed among the nomadic tribes which are to be found in every civilized community. Among these, as has been remarked by a very acute observer (Mayhew, in London Labor and the London Poor), according as they partake more or less of the purely vagabond nature, doing nothing whatsoever for their living, but moving from place to place, preying on the earnings of the more industrious portion of the community, so will the attributes of the nomadic races be found more or less marked in them; and they are all more or less distinguished for their high cheekbones and protruding jaws, thus showing that kind of mixture of the pyramidal with the prognathous type, which is to be seen among the lowest of the Indian and Malayo-Polynesian race. Hence we are led to conclude that, so far as regards their anatomical structure, there is no such difference among the different races of mankind as would justify to the zoologist the assertion of their distinct origin. The variations which they present in physical respects are not greater than those which we meet with between the individuals of any one race. Thus, we not only find the average duration of life to be the same, making allowance for the circumstances which induce disease, but the various epochs of life-such as the times of the first and second dentition, the period of puberty, the duration of pregnancy, the intervals of catamenia, and the time of their final cessation-present a marked general uniformity such as does not exist among similar epochs in the lives of species allied but unquestionably distinct. Further, the different races of man are all subject to the same diseases-to the sporadic, endemic, and epidemic; the only exceptions being those in which the constitution of a race has grown to a certain set of influences (as that of the Negro to the malaria which generates certain pernicious fevers in the Europeans) producing a hereditary immunity in the race, which is capable of being acquired by individuals of other races by acclimatization begun sufficiently early. Although the comparison of the structural characters of the human races does not furnish any positive evidence of their descent from a common stock, it yet justifies the assertion that even if their stocks were originally distinct, there could have been no essential difference between them-the descendants of any one stock being able to assume the characteristics of the other. The most important physiological test, however, of specific unity or diversity is that furnished by the generative process. It may be considered as a fundamental fact, alike in the vegetable and in the animal kingdom, that hybrid races originating in the sexual connection of individuals of two different species, do not tend to self-perpetuation; the hybrids being nearly sterile with each other, although they may propagate with either of their parent races, in which the hybrid race will soon merge; while, on the other hand, if the parents be themselves varieties of the same species, the hybrid constitutes but another variety, and its powers of reproduction are rather increased than diminished, so that it may continue to propagate its own race or may be used for the production of other varieties almost ad infinitum. The application of this principle to the human races leaves no doubt with respect to their specific unity; for, as is well known, not only do all the races of men breed freely with each other, but the mixed race is generally superior in physical development and in tendency to rapid multiplication to either of the parent stocks. Finally, the question of psychical conformity or difference among the races of mankind is one which has a most direct bearing upon the question of their specific unity or diversity; but it has an importance of its own, even greater than that which it derives from this source. For, as has been recently argued with great justice and power by Agassiz, the real unity of mankind does not lie in the consanguinity of a common descent, but has its basis in the participation of every race in the same moral nature and in the community of moral rights which hence becomes the privilege of all. ‘This is a bond,’ says Agassiz, ‘which every man feels more and more the further he advances in his intellectual and moral culture and which in this development is continually placed upon higher and higher ground; so much so that the physical relation arising from a common descent is finally lost sight of in the consciousness of higher moral obligations. It is in these obligations that the moral rights of men have their foundation; and thus while Africans have the hearts and consciences of human beings, it could never be right to treat them as domestic cattle or as wild fowl, even if it were ever so abundantly demonstrated that their race was but an improved species of ape and ours a degenerate kind of god.’ The psychical comparison of the various races of mankind is really, therefore, the most important part of the whole investigation; but it has been, nevertheless, the most imperfectly pursued until the inquiry was taken up by Dr. Prichard. The mass of evidence which he has accumulated on this subject leaves no reasonable doubt that no more ‘impassable barrier’ really exists between the different races with respect to their psychical than in regard to their physical peculiarities; the variations in the development of their respective psychical powers and capacities not being greater, either in kind or degree, than those which present themselves between individuals of our own or of any other race, by some members of which a high intellectual and moral standard has been attained. The tests by which we recognize the claims of the outcast and degraded of our own or any other highly civilized community to a common humanity are the same as those by which we should estimate the true relation of the Negro, the Bushman, or the Australian to the cultivated European. If, on the one hand, we admit the influence of want, ignorance, and neglect in accounting for the debasement of the savages of our own great cities and if we witness the same effects occurring under the same conditions among the Bushmen of Southern Africa, we can scarcely hesitate in admitting that the long-continued operation of the same agencies has had much to do with the psychical as well as the physical deterioration of the Negro, Australian, and other degraded races.”
3.7.18 (see p. 400). The following article upon the antiquity of man by John A. Zahn was published in the American Catholic Review:
“Archeologists divide the first period of human history into three ages called, in the order of succession, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.
“If the evolution theory of the origin of man and the development of civilization be true, we should expect to find the archeological division universally true and applicable equally to all peoples in all parts of the world. There does not seem to be any doubt that in certain parts of Europe, perhaps throughout the greater portion of it, the Stone Age preceded the Ages of Bronze and Iron. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that the Stone Age marks a fixed period in human history and that it prevailed at the same time in all lands and among all peoples. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While one nation or one tribe was living in the Age of Stone, its next neighbors may have been enjoying the advantages of the Age of Bronze or of Iron.
“If there is no fixed period in time for the Stone Age, neither is there a hard-and-fast line of demarcation between the Age of Stone and that of Bronze or between the Age of Bronze and that of Iron. They frequently overlap one another and are, in many instances, quite synchronous.
“Again, it would be equally wide of the truth to assert that all peoples passed through the three phases of civilization indicated by the Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. This is so far from being the case that numerous instances are citable when there were but two ages, and sometimes only one. Some of the more barbarous tribes of the earth are still in the Stone Age and have never known any other. There are others, in Europe, that have never known a Bronze Age, but who passed directly from the Stone to the Iron Age. From the fact that stone, bronze, and iron implements are found together in the most ancient Chaldean tombs and Assyrian ruins, archeologists have inferred that neither Chaldea nor Assyria ever knew the Ages of Bronze and Iron as distinct from that of Stone. More remarkable still, we find that, in the case of the majority of the tribes of Africa, excluding the Egyptians, the only age that has ever existed is the Age of Iron. Stone has been used, but from the most remote period that archeology has been able to reach, iron has been in common use, while bronze has been entirely unknown.
“Yet more. According to the researches of Dr. Schliemann, there was neither a Stone Age nor a Metal Age in Greece and Asia Minor. In the finds at Troy, especially, there is the most striking evidence of devolution. Here, as well as at Mycenae, the ornaments and implements discovered, even in the lowest strata, far from indicating a state of savagery and degradation, betoken one of high civilization. In the light of Schliemann’s discoveries, not to speak of others pointing in the same direction made in Egypt and among the ruins of Assyria and Babylonia, bearing on the condition of primitive man in the Orient, the conclusion seems to be inevitable that the modern evolution school is wrong-that the history of our race is not one of development, but one of degeneration. Thus the story of the fall, as recorded in Holy Writ, is corroborated by the declarations of the newest of sciences-prehistoric archeology.
“The Age of Iron, even according to those who claim a great antiquity for our race, was posterior to the alleged Age of Bronze. But when, in European countries, was the Age of Bronze ushered in, and when did it close? The bronze used in Europe in prehistoric times and even in historic times was brought by the Phoenicians. The period of commercial prosperity for Phoenicia, it is thought, extended approximately from the twelfth to the fifth century before the Christian era. And this is the epoch, according to the latest and most reliable researches, during which the many objects of bronze, mostly of Phoenician design and manufacture, were distributed over western, central, and northern Europe. This would place the so-called Bronze Age in the neighborhood of 1000 b.c. But this, probably, is assigning it a maximum antiquity.
“As to the Iron Age in Scandinavia, it belonged, if we are to credit the ablest authorities on the subject, to the fourth and sixth centuries after Christ. The Age of Iron in Gaul dates back, probably, to the fourth century before our era. Judging from the finds in the necropolis of Hallstatt, the Iron Age began in Austria one or two centuries earlier. The Stone Age terminated in Denmark about 500 b.c. or 600 b.c.
“But the fact is, it is utterly impossible to arrive at anything even approximating exact dates for any of the three Ages. They are different for different peoples. For this reason, therefore, to construct a system of chronology based on the implements of stone, bronze, and iron that have been used by man in the prehistoric past is, at least in the present state of science, clearly impracticable.
“What has been said of the futility of all attempts to arrive at a system of chronology based on the various objects of human industry obviously applies with equal force to the skulls and other bones of primitive man that have attracted so much attention during the past few decades. They can, no more than the implements of stone and bronze and iron so far discovered, be accepted as evidence of the great antiquity of the human race.
“We heartily endorse the words of W. H. Holmes, of the Smithsonian Institution, when he says: ‘The whole discussion of early man has been so surcharged with misconception of facts and errors of interpretation that all is vitiated, as a stream with impurities about its source. Until an exhaustive scientific study of the origin, form, genesis, and meaning of all the handiwork of man made use of in the discussion is completed, the discussion of man and culture is worse than useless, and speculation can lead but to embarrassment and disaster.’
“When examining some of the evidence presented by geologists in favor of the antiquity of man, one cannot help saying with Goethe, ‘The thing the most terrible to hear is the constantly reiterated assurance that geologists agree on a given point.’ In 1857 the famous Neanderthal skull was discovered near Düsseldorf. Professor Schaaffhausen adjudged it to be ‘the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of Europe.’ Professor Fuhbrott wrote a book on it in which he declared the age of the relic to be from 200,000 to 300,000 years, but Dr. Mayer, of Bonn, after a critical examination of the ‘fossil’ and the locality in which it was found came to the conclusion that it was the skull of a Cossack killed in 1814!” The conclusions that are drawn within the province of paleontology are of a very uncertain nature because the data are largely conjecture and are also exposed to misrepresentation and forgery. The following extract from the public press illustrates this:
“In those parts of England and Europe where relics of the Stone Age have been found and where new discoveries occasionally come to light, the manufacture of counterfeit Paleolithic implements has become a fine art. Forgeries of prehistoric antiquities, both in stone and bronze, are numerous. The chipping of the English imitations is said to be superior to that of the French, but in each case the lancelet form is the favorite. The appearance of antiquity is usually given by a thin coating of fine clay, but at Amiens a plan of whitening the flint by long boiling in the family kettle has been introduced. In some of the bone caves of the reindeer period, both in France and Germany, ancient bones have had designs engraved upon them by modern forgers, and ancient flint tools have been inserted in sockets of ancient bone so as together to form a composite falsification. Something of the same kind has been practiced with regard to relics from the Swiss lake dwellings, many of the bronze objects from which have also been imitated by casting. Of Neolithic implements forgeries are equally abundant and in some instances equally difficult to detect. Large perforated axheads when made of soft sandstone, which could not possibly be used for cutting purposes, of course betray themselves; but the modern flint axes and arrowheads are not so easily distinguishable from the ancient. To the experienced eye there is, however, a difference both in the workmanship and the character of the surface, the ancient arrowheads having probably been worked into shape by pressure with a tool of stag’s horn and not by blows of an iron hammer. The grinding of the edges of modern imitations has usually been effected on a revolving grindstone; in ancient times a fixed stone was always used, on which the surface and edges of axes or hatchets were ground by friction.”
3.7.19 (see p. 401). In some nations civilization is found to be very ancient and in others barbarism very modern. Two thousand years before Christ, Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria were far advanced in the knowledge of the mechanical arts and inventions. Two thousand years after Christ the barbarous tribes of the islands of the sea and of portions of the continents, like Alaska and Greenland, have little or no knowledge of them. “The tools of the pyramid builders,” says Petrie, “show that the Egyptian stoneworkers of 4,000 years ago had a surprising acquaintance with what have been considered modern tools. Among the many tools used by the pyramid builders were both solid and tubular drills and straight and circular saws. The drills, like those of today, were set with jewels (probably coriandrum, as the diamond was very scarce), and even lathe tools had such cutting edges. So remarkable was the quality of the tubular drills and the skill of the workmen that the cutting marks in hard granite give no indication of wear of the tool, while a cut of a tenth of an inch was made in the hardest rock at each revolution, and a hole through both the hardest and softest material was bored perfectly smooth and uniform throughout. Of the material and method of making the tools nothing is known.” Even in semibarbarous tribes a considerable inventiveness is found. “We were shown,” says Lady Brassy (Last Voyage, 148), “one of the ingenious air-compressing tubes which have been used by the natives of Borneo for hundreds of years to produce fire. Professor Faraday alluded in one of his lectures to the possibility of producing fire by means of compressed air as a discovery of comparatively modern science; whereas the fact has long been known and put to use in these obscure regions of the earth.”
Respecting the high degree of civilization in Egypt and Babylon at a very early date, corroborating the representations of the Pentateuch and Job, J. W. Dawson (London Expositor) says: “We are only beginning to understand the height of civilization to which Egypt and other ancient countries around the Mediterranean had attained even before the time of Moses. Maspero and Tomkins have illustrated the extent and accuracy of the geographical knowledge of the Egyptians of this period. The latter closes a paper on this subject with the following words: ‘The Egyptians, dwelling in their green, warm river course, and on the watered levels of their El Faiyûm and Delta, were yet a very enterprising people, full of curiosity, literary, scientific in method, admirable delineators of nature, skilled surveyors, makers of maps, trained and methodical administrators of domestic and foreign affairs, kept alert by the movements of their great river and by the necessities of commerce, which forced them to the Syrian forests for their building timber and to Kush and Pun for their precious furniture woods and ivory, to say nothing of incense, aromatics, cosmetics, asphalt, exotic plants, and pet and strange animals, with a hundred other needful things.’ The heads copied by Petrie from Egyptian tombs show that the physical features of all the people inhabiting the surrounding countries, as well as their manners, industries, and arts, were well known to the Egyptians. The papers of Lockyer have shown that long before the Mosaic age the dwellers by the Euphrates and the Nile had mapped out the heavens, ascertained the movements of the moon and planets, established the zodiacal signs, discriminated the poles of the ecliptic and the equator, ascertained the law of eclipses and the precession of the equinoxes, and, in fact, had worked out all the astronomical data which can be learned by observation and had applied them to practical uses. Lockyer would even ask us to trace this knowledge as far back as 6000 b.c. or into the postglacial or antediluvian period; but, however this may be, astronomy was a very old science in the time of Moses, and it is quite unnecessary to postulate a late date for the references to the heavens in Genesis or Job. In geodesy and allied arts also, the Egyptians had long before this time attained to a perfection never since excelled, so that our best instruments can detect no errors in very old measurements and levelings. The arts of architecture, metallurgy, and weaving had attained to the highest development; civilization and irrigation, with their consequent agriculture and cattle breeding, were old and well-understood arts; and how much of science and practical sagacity is needed for regulating the distribution of Nile water, anyone may learn who will refer to the reports of Colin Scott Moncrieff and his assistants. Sculpture and painting in the age of Moses had attained their acme and were falling into conventional styles. Law and the acts of government had become fixed and settled. Theology and morals and the doctrine of rewards and punishments had been elaborated into complex systems. Ample material existed for history, not only in monuments and temple inscriptions, but in detailed writings on papyrus. Egypt has left a wealth of records of this kind, unsurpassed by any nation, and very much of these belongs to the time before Moses; while, as Birch has truly said, the Egyptian historical texts are ‘in most instances contemporaneous with the events they record and written and executed under public control.’ There was also abundance of poetical and imaginative literature and treatises on medicine and other useful arts. At the court of Pharaoh correspondence was carried on with all parts of the civilized world in many languages and in various forms of writing, including that of Egypt itself, that of Chaldea, and probably also the alphabetical writing afterward used by the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Greeks, but which seems to have originated at a very early period among the Mineans or Punites of South Arabia. Educations were carried on in institutions of various grades, from ordinary schools to universities. In the latter, we are told, were professors or ‘mystery teachers’ of astronomy, geography, mining, theology, history, and languages, as well as many of the higher technical arts.”
According to a correspondent of the London Daily Chronicle, an exhibition of exceeding interest has just been opened at the Vienna Museum: “This consists of a collection of upward of 10,000 Egyptian papyrus documents, which were discovered at El Faiyûm and purchased by the Austrian Archduke Rainer several years ago. The collection is unique, and the documents, which are written in eleven different languages, have all been deciphered and arranged scientifically. They cover a period of 2,500 years and furnish remarkable evidence as to the culture and public and private life of the ancient Egyptians and other nations. They are also said to contain evidence that printing from type was known to the Egyptians as far back as the tenth century b.c. Other documents show that a flourishing trade in the manufacture of paper from linen rags existed six centuries before the process was known in Europe. Another interesting feature in the collection is a number of commercial letters, contracts, tax records, wills, novels, tailors’ bills, and even love letters, dating from 1200 b.c.
“There are two documents in existence which sufficiently prove the wealth and civilization of Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah (726 b.c.). The first contains evidence of wide commercial relations; the second gives indications of a considerable lapse of time since the first birth of Hebrew civilization. The first is the account given by Sennacherib of his unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem; the second is the celebrated Siloam inscription, the oldest monument of Hebrew literature still extant. In the face of these documents it is no longer possible to suppose that the Hebrews were merely rude tribes, which only attained to a knowledge of writing and to a national literature by adopting the civilization of their Assyrian and Babylonian captors. Hezekiah, we are told by Sennacherib, sent a tribute, including £15,000 of gold, 800 talents (£400,000) of silver, precious stones, a chain of ivory, elephants’ hides and tusks, rare woods, etc. The mention of ivory is important. We know that Egyptian ivory objects have been found in Nineveh and in the oldest remains of Troy. It appears, therefore, that during, or more probably before, the time of Hezekiah, a trade with Egypt existed. We learn that Sargon took 27,280 prisoners from the city of Samaria in 772 b.c. This would make Jerusalem, which was a city certainly as important as Samaria, cover about 200 acres of ground, representing a population of at least 20,000 souls. The Siloam inscription has been placed by Dr. Taylor as late as the time of Manasseh; but if we accept the Old Testament account of the great waterworks of Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 39:30), it seems more probable that the date should be earlier than 703 b.c.” (Conder, Syrian Stone Lore, 116-17).