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®lje ®i)de of ffiitfllwlj Sang.
i.
ANCESTRY AND BIRTH.
When the Persian hosts, under the command of Datis and Artsphernes, threatened, neither for the first nor for the last time, the
independence of Attica, but the critical moment had arrived for vindi
cating Athenian freedom, each of the ten generals deputed to share
the guardianship of her liberties voted, firstly, that command should
be concentrated in his own hands, and, secondly/ in those of Miltiades.
Thus did f.be son of Cimon receive, even before Marathon, a conclusive
uperiority of his military and strategic
LIBRARY
South Place Ethical Society
ith English poetry. The gift of divine
, so universal a veneration is paid to its
ofty an estimate prevails of its intellectual
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itility, and of its part in shaping the desAck'd.........................................
ition would willingly confess itself a lagSource..... .
me a prize. To be a great poet is perhapsClass ____________________
may not command during life the loudest
t homage, ensures after death the most
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jHH|------- J&970 r; and to be a nation which boasts the3 survive in the love and veneration of the
human race ages alter tne speeches of statesmen have ceased to beread and the discoveries of philosophers have ceased to be true;,
when the victories of kings have become but sounding brass, and
the soaring triumphs of laurelled architects but gaping ruins. Nor is
it only, as Horace has finely said, that ante-Agamemnonic heroes haveperished out of remembrance because no Homer has chanted their
praises, and that the greatest of active heroes must be forgotten unless
his deeds be embalmed in sounding verse. The patriotic bard in vain
strives to perpetuate the glories of his compatriots rather than his
own; it is his strains, rather than their struggles, which survive.
The rash and impetuous Ajax, the vindictive yet chivalrous Achilles,
the wise but crafty Ulysses, the sagacious Mentor, Agamemnon king
of men, the blustering Hector, the seductive Paris, even the fair glow
ing Helen herself—what are all these but shadows of shades, echoes
of an echo, invisible ghosts haunting an uncertain coast ? Whilst, for
all the erudition of critics, the doubts of Pyrrhonists, and the hammers
�218
THE CYCLE OFBENGLISH SONG.
of iconoclasts, there lives in this sublunary world no more actual, lasting,
immovable entity than
“ The blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle.”
In the long run it is by its literature that a people is glorified, and
poetry is the crown and summit of literature. What does the world
at large know of Tyre? What of Sidon? What of Carthage?
Carthage may thank a Roman historian that Hannibal’s name is still
in the mouths of men. What of Egypt ? It is due to the Bible of a
race she despised, that archaeologists are still fumbling amongst her
buried palaces. There have been conquerors as potent as Philip and
Alexander of Macedon, only they did not conquer Athenians, and his
tory knows them not. Leuctra, Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae—
these are watchwords for all time; but only because the same blood
that coursed in the veins of Epaminondas, of Miltiades, of Themistocles and of Leonidas, warmed an Alcaeus, a Pindar, a Euripides,
and a Sappho. The triumphs of barbarians, be they ever so brilliant
or ever so faithfully recorded, linger only in the dusty and cobwebbed
corner of men’s minds, because barbarians can point to no literature,
no verse, that for ever enthralls human attention. Take away the
spice of song, and you will in vain attempt to embalm the past.
Well therefore may nations, whose passion for immortatity is yet
stronger and deeper than that of individuals, hug each the flattering
unction to its soul that it has produced great, nay the greatest, poets;
and it would be unnatural to expect them to take the laurel off their
own brows to encircle with it the head of a rival. Italy would be
slow to concede that the Muses have had a fairer offspring than
Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto. Spain would not willingly allow that
the genius of Calderon and Lope de Vega has ever been surpassed.
Germany would certainly refuse to rank Goethe and Schiller below
even the most favoured children of the Muses vaunted by other lands.
Even France would hesitate to own inferiority whilst she can cite
such names as Racine, Corneille, De Musset, and Victor Hugo. But
it is pretty certain—nay it is indubitable—that if competent Italians,
Spaniards, Germans, and Frenchmen were asked to name the country,
apart from their own, which had produced the greatest poets and the
greatest number of them, they would one and all point to this island,
which, though sung round by no syrens, has been a perfect nest and
woodland of song, now soft and melodious, now shrill and piercing,
now full and vocal, ever since the formation of the English language
gave English hearts a voice.
Of the correctness of this assertion we have some direct and much
presumptive evidence. Dante undoubtedly has been translated into
every civilised tongue, but it is only the mere truth that the world at
large is far more familiar with his name than with his works, and that
�THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG.
219
he is rather the favourite of scholars and the study of earnest lovers
of Italy than the companion of the average man or woman of culture.
Yet he is the only Italian poet who can be fairly said to have earned
for himself, on the mere strength of his works, a world-wide reputa
tion. The genius of Calderon is universally acknowledged, but that
of Lope de Vega has been questioned, and though, thanks to Goethe
and Schiller, their works have been more or less popularised in Ger
many, in England they are unread, in Italy they are unknown, and
in France they are unprized. It is probable that it is in this country
rather than in any other that Goethe and Schiller are studied and
appreciated by foreigners; yet, whilst no one here arrogates for the
latter an even rank with the first names in literature, the English
admirers of Goethe are to be found mainly in the ranks of those who
are critics, not to say pedants, rather than sympathising lovers of
poetry, and to whom philosophic poetry is the most agreeable form of
composition. As for Corneille and Racine, they have nowhere excited
enthusiasm out of their own country, whilst De Musset and M. Victor
Hugo, though widely and justly extolled, have not been entered
among the Olympians save by such prose rhapsodists as Mr. Swin
burne, and the source of their inspiration, as we shall see directly,
flows in this country and can scarcely be regarded as a native
fountain.
But it will be said, one nation may be more enlightened and
catholic in its tastes than another; and the fact of a poet not being
highly thought of in a foreign country may prove the crassness of the
country and not the inferiority of the poet. There is truth in the
observation, and we are far from wishing to imply that foreign esti
mates are conclusive, or anything approaching to conclusive, in any
particular case, though it must be rarely that they are of no value.
But the general foreign estimate—that is to say, the estimate of every
foreign country—of any particular poet, must necessarily count for
much; and the general foreign estimate, or the estimate of any foreign
country, of the entire body of a particular nation’s poetry, must neces
sarily be as valuable an opinion as is to be obtained outside that nation
itself. But by the very terms of our search the opinion of the nation
itself must perforce be excluded, since, as in the case of the Athenian
generals, every nation’s opinion would be given in its own favour. It
is an enormous testimony to the accuracy of the judgment of English
men that their body of poetic literature is the finest and most complete
ever yet produced, if we find that all other nations consider it, in those
respects, second only to their own. For no nation is smitten by
general blindness, or afflicted with undeviating special partiality or
affinity in the matter. Frenchmen may not care much for Shakespeare,
but they enthusiastically admire Milton, Pope, and Byron. They
may talk as Boileau did of “Ze clinquant de Tasse” but they entertain
�220
THE CIVILE OF ENGLISH SONCl
a genuine reverence for Dante. We may be more or less indifferent
to the stately tragedies of the time of the Grand Monarque, but we
recognise the signal poetical qualities of ‘ La Legende des Siecles y and
whilst the sonnets of Laura’s lover may be caviare to most Britons,
they incline their head when they hear the Divine Comedy mentioned.
We need not pursue our illustrations, for we have surely said enough
to establish the fact that nations are competent to form an opinion of
the relative value of each other’s poetic literature, and to corroborate
the theory that when they conspire to adjudge the second place to
one and the same nation, their own respectively alone excluding it
from the first, that nation’s claim to the first place is as conclusively
established as anything well can be in this world, outside the arena of
rigid demonstration.
That second place, which is practically the first, has assuredly been
adjudged by universal consent to English poetry; and it has, more
over, as would naturally be expected, more than any other exercised
the pens of foreign critics and translators. The whole of Chaucer has
been translated, and translated admirably, into French. Nearly the
whole of Shakespeare has been translated into German, some of the
most distinguished names in German literature busying themselves
with the task, and so successful have they been that some Germans
like to flatter themselves that their version of the greatest of dramas is
superior to the original. We may smile at the pretension; but it
testifies to the enthusiasm of those who advance it, for the author on
whom they thus attempt to fasten the character of complete acclima
tisation. It is no less a name in French annals than that of Chateau
briand with which we have to associate the continental triumphs of
Milton; the whole of the ‘ Paradise Lost ’ having been rendered into
his native tongue by that brilliant man of letters. Byron, the most
universally popular of all English poets, by reason of that cosmopoli
tanism which Goethe so shrewedly and accurately ascribed to his
works, has been translated into every European language, that of
Russia not excepted ; whilst his influence in moulding the style and
themes of foreign poets in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France,
is one of the most remarkable facts in literary history. Indeed it may
be said that it is only since Byron died that France has boasted poets
proper at all: Lamartine, De Musset, and M. Victor Hugo, being his
natural children.
It has further to be remarked that critics have vied with trans
lators in doing justice to the splendid merits of our long line
of English bards. We cannot say that criticism is a lost art in
this country, for it never existed ; but on the Continent, and
notably in France and Germany, it has been cultivated and pursued
by some of the best-equipped intellects and some of the most accom
plished pens; and they have never been more enthusiastically, and we
�THE’CYCEE' OF ENGLISH1 SONG.
221
may add, more successfully and popularly employed, than when ab
sorbed in the endeavour to explain to their countrymen the meaning
and merits of English poetry. When we want an interpretation of
one of the subtleties of Shakespeare, we can turn to a Gervinus; and
when we are in need of an unanswerable testimony to the genius of
Byron against the stupidity or jealousy of some of his own compatriots,
we have only to turn to our shelf which holds the prose opinions of
Goethe.
The latest tribute, and the most important one of our time, to the
eminence of English poetry comes to us from France, the classic land
of criticism, and is to be found in that long and admirable work which
the author justly calls a ‘ History of English Literature.’* A scholar,
a traveller, a worshipper of the arts, a man of letters in the best sense
of the word, M. Taine has undertaken to survey the literary pro
ducts of this island, both in prose and verse, from the time of Chaucer
to our own day; but it is the poets on whom he chiefly and most
lovingly dwells, and we shall go beyond his example, not only by
dwelling exclusively upon poets, but by illustrating our theory solely
from the most salient and characteristic poets in each of the epochs
into which the cycle of national song naturally divides itself. Yet our
standpoint will be the same as his, whilst we pass over numberless
objects which have attracted his scrutiny; and we cannot give a better
account of the central idea upon which, as on a pivot, all our reflec
tions and conclusions will turn, than is to be found in the preface
written by M. Taine himself to the talented translator’s English
edition of his work.
“A nation,” writes M. Taine, “lives twenty, thirty centuries, and more,
a.nfi a man lives only sixty or seventy years. Nevertheless, a nation in
many respects resembles a man. For during a career so long and, so to
speak, indefinite, it also retains its special character, genius and soul, which,
perceptible from infancy, go on developing from epoch to epoch, and
exhibit the same primitive basis from their origin up to their decline.
This is one of the truths of experience, and whoever has followed the his
tory of a people, that of the Greeks from Homer to the Byzantine Caesars,
that of the Germans from the poem of the ‘ Niebelungen ’ down to Goethe,
that of the French from the first and most ancient versified story-tellers
down to Beranger and Alfred de Musset, cannot avoid recognising a con
tinuity as rigid in the life of a people as in the life of an individual. Suppose
one of the five or six individuals who have played a leading part in the
world’s drama—Alexander, Napoleon, Newton, Dante; assume that by ex
traordinary good chance we have a number of authentic paintings, intact and
fresh—water-colours, designs, sketches, life-size portraits, which represent
the man to us at every stage of life, with his various costumes, expressions,
* ‘ History of English Literature.’ By H. A. Taine. Translated by H. Van
Taun, one of the Masters at the Edinburgh Academy. Edinburgh :
Edmonston & Douglas.
�222
THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONGj
and attitudes, with all his surroundings, especially as regards the leading
actions- he has performed, and at the most telling crises of his interior I
development. Such are precisely the documents which we now possess
enabling us to know that big individual called a nation, especially when
that nation possesses an original and complete literature.”
Without expressing any opinion here as to how far a “ science of
history” may be constructed out of the accumulation of human
records, we may affirm our assent to so much of the scientific method
of regarding human affairs as is expressed in the foregoing passage.
A nation has a term of existence, a character, a development, a history,
and will therefore pass through those stages which mark the growth
and decline of a particular man; and if there be a nation peculiarly
endowed with the poetic temperament, and betraying at every period
of existence the rare possession of poetic faculties, we may be sure that
its poetic literature will be marked by that steady and continuous
progression, broken by definite landmarks, which we recognise in the
individual. We trust that before we desist from the task we have set
ourselves, it will be conceded that, in this instance, facts and theory
agree.
It is a fact deserving of note that the earliest specimen extant of
composition in the Saxon tongue is a fragment of Caedmon, a monk of
Whitby, who lived in the eighth century after Christ, and who, “ for
want of learning,” was compelled to write his for the most part reli
gious poetry in his mother tongue. Want of learning, as most people
understand that term, has far more often than not been the portion of
poets. On the one side we have a Dante and a Milton—and they were
not very learned, after all, the first more especially—and on the other,
all the world of great poetic names, whose owners, judged by any real
scholarly or scientific standard, were extremely ignorant. The late
Lord Lytton has argued, in one of uhis delightful ‘ Caxtoniana,’ that a
poet ought to know everything, and that the best poets have been
remarkable for the variety of their acquirements. We must dissent
from the doctrine; and though of course it would, logically, be incon
clusive to point to that great master’s learning and then to his poetry,
and to insist on the disproportion between the two, still we should be
disposed to go so far as to affirm that, for a poet, not a little, but a
great deal of learning, might possibly be a dangerous thing. Perhaps,
to the greatest poets of all nothing is dangerous. But what in our
opinion, distinguishes the poet from ordinary persons, what specifically
characterises his mind and stamps his productions, is, not a greater
knowledge than his neighbours, but a different sort of knowledge. He
knows the same things as the herd, only he knows them in a distinct
and peculiar fashion. He apprehends them differently, and in render
ing them gives a totally different account of them. He may be as
ignorant as a Burns, as superficial as a Keats; but what little he
�THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG.
223
knows, he knows poetically. There is a soul in his knowledge, and
you can never make mere library faggots of it. It is not lore got
from without; it is inner wisdom. There have been people stupid
enough to fancy that Bacon must have been the author of Shake
speare’s plays and poems on account of the amount of learning there
is in them. All the learning in Shakespeare could be got at a gram
mar-school, in the woods and fields, and in the streets of men, so that
there was the right person to get it. Eyes, heart, and tongue, with
or without a bookshelf, furnish forth a poet.
And so this Caedmon of whom we spoke, had, for want of ‘learning,’ to
write in his native homely Saxon language. There was as yet no other
for him. It was a case of Latin or mother tongue, and he knew only
the latter. By-and-by a finer and more familiar weapon was to be
forged for the use. of the great souls fired with the yearning to go out of
themselves and speak, not for themselves alone, but for their own
time; and not for their own class alone, but for all ranks of the
nation. But the nation had to be made first; and, as usual, it was a
small band of aristocrats who made it. In the tenth century the
bettermost folks of this country used to send their children to France
to be educated; but before another hundred years had passed away
the schoolmaster crossed the Channel and the necessity disappeared.
The Normans brought with them not only laws and the art of govern
ing, but likewise the art of elegant speaking and writing. Never,
however, that we know of, has Saxon blood or Saxon speech
utterly disappeared before the conqueror; there is something too
sturdy in them for that. The tongue of the French troubadours had
to accept an alliance with the tongue of Caedmon, the Saxon monk of
Whitby, before it could get itself accepted as the speech of the people,
and still more as the speech of the poet.
The alliance, moreover, was not one solely of speech. A union
likewise was effected, firstly of race and secondly of caste, which has
had an unspeakably profitable influence upon English song. In the
blending of races, moreover, we must not leave out of the account a
third stock, neither Saxon nor Norman, and singularly different from
either, and by no means abolished either then or now, though the
linguistic traces of it have almost wholly disappeared, and which lent
and still lends its valuable properties, as perhaps a minor but still
important, contribution towards the formation of the full-grown English
temperament, and therefore to the complete character of English
poetry. We allude, of course, to that despised and humbled race,
Celtic in origin and tongue, which first possessed our island; but
which, soon after the dawn of its history, was driven westwards and
northwards, and there- only now survives in visible and tangible shape.
Yet who'can doubt that neither extermination nor ostracism was
complete, and that Celtic units and even Celtic families remained
�224
THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG,
largely dotted over England during the period of Saxon domination,
and that their blood was already intermingled with that of the
Teutonic master, when the final lord, the Norman, arrived ? Both
fact and probability support the supposition, and English poetry is
perpetually sounding a note which reminds us that there runs in our
veins, be it in ever so small a degree, the blood and tears of a
pathetic, subdued, and melancholy people.
It is all the more necessary to dwell and to insist in this place,
before dealing with the origin and consequences of the amalga
mation of the Saxon and Norman elements, upon the Celtic drop in
our „ poetical compositions, since, after that amalgamation, several
centuries had to pass before its minor key was heard in English
literature. It is of the very nature of soft, gentle and melancholy
-characters, races, and feelings, to seem to be suppressed by the sterner
•and more practical ones, which are perpetually striving to extrude
■them or to trample them underfoot; but it is equally of their very
mature never in reality to be so. They bend, but they never break.
These are too supple, too elastic, too yielding, ever to be snapped in
twain and so disposed of. They survive neglect, contumely, persecu
tion, and get the upper hand of their conquerors in moments least
expected, moulding the speech, the modes of thought, even the
policy of the latter, when they cannot aspire to occupy the seats
of influence and authority. Thus Athens, as a Boman poet acknow
ledges, had its triumph over masterful Borne; thus, as we shall
see, the Celtic type of feeling, though utterly crushed and lost for
a long while under the waves of Saxon and Norman domination,
crept up again in the works which are the historical exponent of the
feelings of the English nation; and thus, in a minor degree, we are
beginning to see the “ mild Hindoo ” influencing, and destined yet
more to influence, the sturdy western conqueror of his country.
The Saxon crassness, which is at present so dominant amongst us,
caused a year or two ago a grin of self-sufficient stupidity to adorn
the faces of many of our journalistic wiseacres, when Mr. Disraeli,
peculiarly endowed with the faculty of comprehending ethnic idiosyncracies, alluded to the influence exercised upon the Irish people by the
melancholy sea with which their small island is surrounded. Yet the
fact—for fact unquestionably it is—had never escaped the observation
of anybody deserving the epithet of thinker. M. Benan, himself of
Celtic origin, speaks, in his essay upon Celtic Poetry, of the “ mer
presque toujours sombre,” which forms on the horizon of Brittany “ a
circle of eternal sighs.” “ Meme contraste,” he proceeds, “ dans les
hommes: a la vulgarite normande ”—of course the “vulgarite normande” here spoken of has nothing to do with the aristocratic
Norman element which exists in England, and of which we shall have
occasion to speak so often—“ a la vulgarite normande, a une popula
�THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG?
225
tion grasse et plantureuse, contente de vivre, pleine de ses interets,
egoiste comme tons ceux dont l’habitude est dejouir, succede une
race timide, reservee, vivant toute an dedans, pesante en apparence,
mais sentant profondement et portant dans ses instincts religienx une
adorable delicatesse. Le meme contraste frappe, dit-on, quand on
passe de l’Angleterre au pays de Galles, de la basse Ecosse, anglaise de
langage et de moeurs, au pays des Gaels du nord, et aussi, mais avec
une nuance sensiblement different, quand on s’enfonce dans les parties
de l’lrlande ou la race est restee pure de toute melange avec l’etranger.
Il semble que l’on entre dans les couches souterraines d’une autre age,
et l’on ressent quelque chose des impressions que Dante nous fait
eprouver quand il nous conduit d’-un cercle a un autre de son enfer.”*
It is this combined retreat and resistance, this apparent yielding
ness, ending in an obstinacy that never surrenders, which constitutes
the strong and enduring character of the Celtic influence. It can
not ever be said of it that it dies in a corner; for though it falls back
before every fresh inroad into nooks and retreats ever and ever more
obscure, it does not perish there. Roman civilisation drove Celtic
races before it, as it drove other races ; but these it ended by civilis
ing—the Celtic race, never. The great Teutonic invasion which
followed hurled the Celtic tribes back, but never really broke their
lines. Modern civilisation fares no better against them, and all the
efforts of England to impregnate the Irish people with modern ideas
of progress have generated nothing better than disgust and dis
affection. Without giving itself fine classical airs, or troubling itself
much with what to more ambitious people is exalted as philosophy,
the Celtic race is as sublime in its selection of sides as was the Roman
Cato. It loves the losing cause, and is invariably found shedding its
blood in campaigns that are desperate. Never to attack, but always
to defend—such seems its allotted part in history. It is the con
servative race, fated never to win, but never to be wholly conquered.
It has a delicate presentiment of its perpetual doom, and bears its
destiny with a fatalistic resignation. It believes unchangingly in
God, but does not expect God to fight for it. As has been finely
observed, one would hardly think, to see how slightly endowed it is
with audacious initiation, that it belongs to the race of Japhet—the
• Iapeti genus, audax omnia perpeti.
What is the character that we should expect to find in the poetry
of such a people? Precisely that which strikes the most cursory
observer. Celtic poetry, when undefiled with all alien admixture, is
lyrical and sad. It is for the most part a threnody; a dirge, like the
play and plash of melancholy waves. Not victories, but defeats,
are the theme of its bards; and its metrical stories are stories of
* ‘ Essais de Morale et de Critique.’ Par Ernest Renan, Membre de
1’Institut. Deuxieme edition. Paris : Michel Levy Freres.
vol. xxxvin.
Q
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THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG,
exile and flight. If gaiety for a moment intrudes, it appears only as
a relief to the deep current of melancholy tears. For the Celtic race
has too enduring a consciousness of the world we do not see ever to
accept gladness as the natural condition of man. It has the religious
fibre in a remarkable degree in its composition, and the air it breathes
is for ever haunted with shadows and intangible phantoms. It clings
to the infinite, and is “ an infant crying in the night.” Too devout,
too resigned, too averse from sustained and concentrated thought to
strive, like the laborious Teuton, to solve the mysteries which sur
round us, it is content to recognise their existence, to feel their influ
ence, to acknowledge them as a law of life, but humbly to respect
their insolubility. It never presumes to lift the veil, though it never
forgets how little there is on this side of the veil to satisfy the human
soul. Thus its melancholy, its undying sadness, the plaintiveness of
its poetry, ever remains vague and indefinite. Its most realistic strains
are but a wandering voice.
The melancholy natures are usually gentle; and the Celtic race,
besides being sad, and what in these days is called superstitious, has a
feminine quality in it especially noteworthy. Just as, though it
nourishes an undying reverence for the awful mysteries beyond the
tomb, its annals swarm with apparitions, with witchcraft; and all the
apparatus of demonology; so, whilst it can be wrought by the in
justice of the invader to stubborn defence and even to terrible re
prisals, it asks nothing better than to be left alone, and, womanlike,
to bury itself in the pursuits of home. The contrast between its early
compositions and those of the Germanic peoples can scarcely be ex
aggerated. In the Edda and the Niebelungen we find heroes who
rejoice in slaughter for slaughter’s sake, who revel in blood, as some
men have revelled in lust, and to whom carnage and the bloody reek
of battle are a goodly savour. Savage strength, gigantic rudeness,
horse-play in peace, unlimited and joyous vengeance in strife, these
are the main elements of early Teutonic grandeur. In the Celtic
Mabinogion, on the contrary, though bloodshed abounds, though the
recitals swarm with tales of pitiless cruelty, these are used only as the
foils to gentler sentiments and more feminine scenes.
But in the formation of what we know as the English tongue Celtic
influence had little or no share; and many generations were to elapse
after its formation before Celtic influence was to creep into its poetry.
Using the terminology of a science prevalent amongst us, we may
say that whenever and wherever we find the Celtic element in our
poetical literature, it is there by the law of reversion to a remote
and indirect ancestry. Its two immediate parents are the Saxon
and the Norman. If, as Mr. Coventry Patmore has asserted, meta
phorically embodying an old and popular theory, “ marriage-contracts
are the poles on which the heavenly spheres revolve,” the union
�THETYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG.
227
between the conquered Saxon and the conquering Norman, such as
we find them towards the close of the eleventh century, ought indeed
to have produced celestial results; and there are few who will deny
that it has done so. We need not here concern ourselves to inquire
whether the two were not, after all, not very far distant in blood.
Whatever their original consanguinity, circumstance, and that some
thing which, because we cannot thoroughly scrutinise it, we call acci
dent, had ended by placing them, in character, in habits, in tongue,
poles asunder.
“ Of all barbarians these are the strongest of body and heart, and
the most formidable.” Such is the testimony of a civilised contem
porary concerning the Saxons. Their own account of them selves
sounds over-flattering; but at bottom it tells the same tale and sig
nifies the same thing: “ The blast of the tempest aids our oars; the
bellowing of heaven, the howling of the thunder, hurt us not; the
hurricane is our servant, and drives us whither we wish to go. We
smite with our swords,” sings one narrator of the deeds of himself and
his fellow sea-kings. “ To me it was a joy like having my bright
bride by me on the couch. He who has never been wounded leads a
weary life.” To slay and be slain was with them the whole duty of
life. It was for that that they came into this world; that was their
raison d'etre; that alone reconciled them to existence. Death had no
terrors for them, unless it came upon a bed. “ What a shame for me
not to have been permitted to die in so many battles, and to end thus
by a cow’s death I At least put on my breastplate, gird on my sword,
set my helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, so that a great
warrior like myself may die as a warrior.” So spoke Siegward, Duke
of Northumberland, Henry of Huntingdon tells us, when dysentery
overtook him in the midst of a brief truce.
Evidently a pugnacious and battle-loving race; ( cherishing their
bodies, not for the pleasure and blandishment of ease, but in order that
in the din and stress of battle they might press heavily against and
overbear the foe. For this they ate voraciously, drank hard, and slept
without turning. Their existence was an animal one, relieved only
by those furious passions known but to man. But the conquest by
them of an island kingdom slowly but surely wrought a modification
in their temperament. With a whole continent before them, they
would have gone on conquering, or at least ravaging, as long as there
was a rood of ground left not visited by their stormy footsteps; and in
England they never paused from the work of havoc, slaughter, and
the constant acquisition of sway, until they found themselves stopped
either by the mountains or the sea. Then they began to feel the
pinch of their own success. What were they to do next ? Were
they, like Alexander, to weep because there were no more worlds to
devastate ? Had they not better turn and rend each other ? Thev
q 2
�228
THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG.
found some relief in that course; and the whole world knows to
whom the reproach of their history being a history of kites and
crows was addressed. The Saxon Heptarchy was a praiseworthy
attempt to introduce peace and order among successful savages; but
that in the short space of a hundred years, out of fourteen kings
of Northumbria seven were slain and six deposed, is a conclusive
proof of what difficulties legislators and law-preservers had to contend
with.
Still, a something like settled government at length supervened;
and a wandering, adventure-seeking, battle-loving, brutal, though at
heart not unkindly people, had to find other vents for their turbid
temperaments than surprising their neighbours and dismaying their
foes. Generally they settled down into fixed families, villages, com
munistic states, kingdoms; and social life commenced. But society,
it long remained apparent, was not the natural condition of these
sturdy and moody children of the forest and the foam. Non-gregarious,
they isolated themselves whenever the opportunity arose, drawing a
sort of ring-fence round what they could call their own, and so dividing
it all from the outer world, which, by the law of inherited association,
they still regarded as their natural enemy. Tacitus hadj observed
how in Germany they lived the solitary life, each one near the wood
which pleased him. Self-detached and self-contained, each man would
fain be his own master, develop and give play to his own character,
and rule his own world. Neither law nor state should crush him.
War being no longer open to him, he would find his way out in some
other fashion, but still his own; or rather, since an outward vent for
his huge nature was denied him, he would nurse his feelings and
desires at home. Thus the active, vagrant, aggressive, despoiling
Saxon of the European mainland, gradually toned down to the domestic,
passive, silent, defensive, half-gloomy, meditative Saxon of this island.
He still indulged in enormous and frequent meals, still gave himself
the luxury of swinish intoxication, and corrected these excesses of
animal life by an out-door existence, hunting, and every sport that
field, or air, or river could afford him.
Man is not long in erecting his necessities into preferences, and
the step is not a far one which leads him to exalt his preferences into
virtues. Since he was compelled to lead the domestic life, this soon
became the English Saxon’s ideal; and with it naturally grew up a
great respect for property, for clear distinctions between meum and
tuum; a high regard for the usefulness and fidelity of women; a
strong sanction of reverence and of implicit obedience in children, and,
though to a less degree, in all subordinates. Home life thus estab
lished itself, and with it flourished home-keeping wits. Slow, deliberate,
cautious, practical, full of solid sense, with a strong sense of right and
justice; implacable, but from conscience, not from anger; exacting,
�THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG.
229
mot easily moved to pity, putting heavy burdens upon everybody,
but bearing them unflinchingly himself, the Saxon in England was
perhaps the noblest and the most respectable savage the world has
ever seen.
Indeed, it is only in deference to modern ideas that he can be
regarded as a savage at all. With all his stolidity, he had within
him a deep well of enthusiasm, and the seriousness of his temperament
compelled him to be religious. Thus Christianity found in him an
easy if not a tractable convert. He readily accepted the idea of one
God, for indeed he possessed it already; but for outward symbols
and expressions of each particular religious passion or sentiment he
manifested, even then, an unmistakable aversion. What the Roman
Catholic church calls piety and the Protestant church superstition
had no seductions for him. He was without idols when Augustine
found him; for his earnest nature regarded such minor objects of
veneration as childish trifling. He recognised the universe, the
necessity of things, the difficulties of life, duty, conscience, heroism,
and the obligation of asserting himself. Religion was to be serviceable
io him, not he to religion.
It is not difficult to see what must be the contribution of such a
race to a composite poetical literature. To the Celt English poetry
■owes its pathos, sweetness, sadness, its lyrical faculty, its touches of
ineffable melancholy, that returning of the singer upon himself, that
minor key struck ever and anon in the midst of the strain, its notes of
■wail, its cadence drowned in tears, its sighing for what is not. The
charm of our poetry is Celtic; but its force is Saxon. The Celt says
Ah! the Saxon says Oh ! From the first we get our sentiment,
from the second our sublimity. But as the Saxon is perhaps the most
complex of all known characters, so are his contributions to the
elements of our poetry the most numerous and the most varied. To
this source must be traced not only all that is sounding and soaring
an it, but all on the one hand that is didactic and all on the other
that is deeply tragic. Much of English poetry, in the opinion of
foreign critics, is spoiled by its too evident and intentional moral tone.
Th a Frenchman or an Italian, much of Cowper, more of Words
worth, and no little of Milton, are as tiresome as the lesson taught by
■a schoolmaster. They are perpetually discoursing, playing the peda
gogue, laying down the law, inculcating moral truths, or what they
believe to be such. Yet no Englishman at least will doubt that, here
and there, our didactic poets, Wordsworth more especially, have reached
rare heights of song, even in the act of preaching, and wherever they
have done this, they were indebted to their Saxon blood and spirit.
To the same source must be traced that almost savagely tragic
spirit which permeates our best and most famous dramas. The Greeks
Aid not shrink from supping of horrors; but then they threw the
�230
THE CYCLE OE ENGLISH SONGlI
responsibility of slaughter, of parricide, matricide, fratricide, upon the
gods, upon fate, upon Necessity; and the human agents were victims,
rather than instigators or willing perpetrators, of bloody deeds. The
pages of Shakespeare swarm with furies, but they are furies in
human shape, men, mere men, governed by human motives, forgetful
of heaven, uninfluenced by hell, needing 'no goad but their own
tremendous passions, no goal but their own insatiable desires. Here
we see the old sea-kings at work; fighting, slaying, conquering, dying,
stamping with rage, rolling out sesquipedalian periods, and venting
themselves in prodigious metaphors.
But the Saxons were essentially stutterers. They had much to say,
more especially when they were no longer allowed to act, or at least
to act on the large scale and in obedience to their big carnage-loving
promptings; but they experience almost unconquerable difficulty in
saying it.
“ Time after time,” M. Taine observes, “ they return to and repeat the same
idea. The sun on high, the great star, God’s brilliant candle, the noble
creation—four times they employ the same thought, and each time under
a new aspect. All its different aspects rise simultaneously before the bar
barian’s eyes, and each word was like a shock of the semi-hallucination
which excited him. Verily, in such a condition, the regularity of speech
and of ideas is disturbed at every turn. His phrases recur and change;
he emits the word that comes to his lips without hesitation; he leaps over
wide intervals from idea to idea. The more his mind is transported, the
quicker and wider are the intervals traversed. With one spring he visits
the poles of his horizon, and touches in one moment objects which seem to
have the world between them. His ideas are entangled; without notice,
abruptly the poet will return to the idea he has quitted, and insert in it
the thought to which he is giving expression. It is impossible to translate
these incongruous ideas, which quite disconcert oui' modern style. At
times they are unintelligible. Articles, particles, everything capable of
illuminating thought, of marking the connection of terms, are neglected.
Passion bellows forth like a great shapeless beast.”
We may perhaps suspect that M. Taine, a Frenchman in spite of
all his breadth and toleration of mind, had in his mind, when he
wrote the above passage on the Saxon literature, less the Anglo-Saxon
fragments made familiar to us by Turner, Gonybeare, Thorpe, and
others, than those tragedies of Shakespeare which so many of his
countrymen have found “ barbarian.” It is to our Saxon blood that
we mainly owe our genius, our extravagance, the “ eye in fine frenzy
rolling”—that, indeed, which distinguishes what is best in our poetical
literature above all the poetical literatures of the human race.
But it may well be doubted if it ever would have attained the height
on which it now sits enthroned before the eyes of men, had not
another and most necessary element been introduced, an indispensable
corrector, a chastiser, a moulder, a beneficent wielder of discipline.
From the Celt, as we have said, our sweetness; from the Saxon, our
�THE CYCLE Of ENGLISH SONG.
231
sn-ength; but from the Norman, to use Mr. Arnold’s phrase, our light.
The point may be put yet more clearly, though with every advance in
precision we necessarily exaggerate the truth. The Celt contributes
the spirit, the Saxon, the substance, the Norman, the form; and
without the latter, it may safely be affirmed, we should never have
succeeded in pleasing anybody but ourselves.
As it is, we have accepted it unwillingly, but it has proved a useful
and wholesome restraint, just as the conquered Saxons unwillingly
received Norman laws and discipline, but were enormously improved
by them. As Mr. Froude says, “ through all the arrangements of
the conquerors, one single aim was visible; and that was that every
man in England should have his definite 'place and definite duty
assigned to him, and that no human being should be at liberty to lead
at his own pleasure an unaccountable existence. The discipline of an
army was transferred to the details of social life ” For a long time the
conquered resented this uncongenial treatment, and it was in con
formity with their proud and sullen nature that they should display
their resentment rather in silence than in song. The Normans
brought their troubadours with them, and the Norman court in
England boasted its jongleurs, who were after all but feeble imitators \ '
of what was scarcely worth imitating. But they had at least the
secret of form and of articulate speech. They were devoid of ideas,
idle triflers, court sycophants, ticklers of the fancy of lords and fine
ladies, spurious glorifiers of spurious passions; but they could put
words and sounds together. They knew, moreover, what it was to be
joyous, and they gave to their craft the very name of “ the gay science.”
Witty moreover, and irreverent, they relieved their stilted and affected
sentiments with gibes and delicate laughter.
Hence, when the time came, which was so long in coming, when
Saxon and Norman were to be one in race, one in nation, one in
manners, one in language, the Saxon had given up nothing, and had
acquired much. One in language, do we say ? Whose language ? It
was mainly the Saxon; but the Norman had taught him how to use
it. Its ponderosity had been laid aside, and the conqueror had adopted
it as his own.
Thus was brought about a triple union ; a union of race, a union of
caste, and a union of tongue. Even by the time of Henry the Second
no one asked who was Norman and who was Saxon; all freemen were
Englishmen. The distinction was lost of subduer and subdued. The
former might yet retain more than his fair share of the soil and of the
administration of the laws, but he had practically confessed that the
latter were his equals. The places laid waste by the Conquest become
gradually repeopled. Charters are granted; arbitrary taxes are got
rid of; burgesses are summoned from the towns to Parliament; poli
tical as well as social life makes its appearance. So that an English
�232
THE CYCLE OF ENGLISH SONG.
king, speaking to a pope, uses as his argument that “ it is the custom
of the kingdom of England, that in all affairs relating to the state of
this kingdom, the advice of all who are interested should be taken.”
It was impossible that, under such circumstances as these, the
French verse imported at the Conquest should not disappear. At the
beginning of the twelfth century, Saxon was heard only among the
“ degraded franklins, outlaws of the forest, swineherds, peasants, the
lower orders.” It was no longer written; everybody who wrote, wrote
French, everybody who read, read French. Many did it clumsily
and ill, and eked out their imperfect knowledge with Saxon words.
Gower apologised for his bad French style, adding, “ Je suis Anglais."
Nevertheless, the stronger always wins in the long run; and the
despised and down-trodden tongue, slowly but surely, got the upper
hand. When the Norman Barons began to send their sons across the
Channel to prevent them from learning English from their nurses the
beginning of the end was near. The Saxons would not—perhaps
could not—learn the language of their masters. There was but one
alternative: in order that the two might communicate, the master
had to learn the language of his inferior. There were limits to the in
vasion of the one upon the other. Law, philosophy, and such science
as there was, requiring abstract terms, necessarily borrowed from the
tongue which was indebted to Latin for its culture and expression,
but the rude necessities of life and the simple emotions of the heart
refused to embody themselves, as far as the nation was concerned, in
any but native words. In two centuries or so, the process was
complete. There was an English nation and an English language,
and they only waited for an English poet.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The cycle of English song
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 217-232 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references. Article from Temple Bar magazine, May 1873; attribution from Virginia Clark catalogue.
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[Bentley]
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[1893]
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Music
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Conway Tracts
Songs
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Text
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL
CREATION.
Taking a retrospective view of the dark and unenlightened
past, when the mighty forces of nature were almost entirely
hidden from the human gaze ; contemplating the sad spec
tacle of our forefathers being sunken in gross superstition,
ere the light of to-day had arisen above the horizon of
mental ignorance, and contrasting the then limitation of
knowledge with the extensive educational acquirements now
existing, what a pleasing contrast the intellectual advance
ment presents to the modern observer! Recognising the
glories of nature, and finding ourselves possessed of an
amazing amount of information respecting the laws of
nature and the phenomena with which these laws are con
nected—such information being for ages unknown to the
great masses of the people—we are prompted to inquire
what has produced this marvellous transformation, and to
what agency we are indebted for this grand and stupendous
revolution of the nineteenth century. Whatever may be
the reply of the theologian, whose intellect is too often
clouded with dreamy imaginations, the answer of the patient
and unfettered student of nature will be that it is to science
we owe the magic power which has substituted for the
dense darkness of the past the brilliant light of the present.
The marvels of astronomy, the revelations of geology, the
splendours of botany, the varieties of zoology, the wonders
of anatomy, the useful discoveries of physiology, and the
rapid strides which have been made in the development of
the mental sciences, all combine to unravel the once myste
rious operations of mind and matter. While each of the
modern sciences has corrected long-cherished errors and
�2
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
opened new paths of investigation, one or two of them have
especially tended to unfold to our view the nature, affinity,
and development of man, and the wonderful universe to
which he belongs. For instance, without the science of
geology we should, in all probability, forever have remained
in ignorance of the various changes which had taken place
on the earth previous to the appearance of man, and the
different forms of animal and vegetable life that were then
distributed over its surface. We now examine the various
strata of the earth, and there discover the fossil remains of
animals and plants which existed in the ages that rolled by
when no historian lived to pen the mighty transactions of
nature and hand them down to future generations. The
science of electricity, too, still only in its infancy, pro
mises to confer an amount of benefit upon mankind too
vast to be conceived. We hear the thunder roar, and behold
the vivid flash of lightning darting before our eyes like an
arrow from the bow of the archer ; but while we regard this
phenomenon we have learned not to look upon it with dread
as the vengeance of an angry God, but as a natural result
of the operation of known forces. It was for Dr. Watts to
sing:—
“ There all his stores of lightning lie
Till vengeance darts them down.”
But it remained for a Franklin and a Priestley to inform
us that tempests were not to be beheld as indicating the
wrath of an offended God, but as the effect of an unequal
diffusion of the electric fluid. Thus science has been, and
is, our benefactor, our enlightener, our improver, and our
redeemer. Without its aid we should still have been in a
state of mental darkness and physical degradation. Deprived
of its discoveries, we should still have been bound down
with the ties of superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism. As
Pope observes :—
“ Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.”
Perhaps there is no domain of human thought where the
advantages of scientific investigation are more clear and
pronounced than in connection with what is termed “ Evo
lution ”—a word which, within the last few years, has
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
3
become very popular as representing a theory of man and
the universe opposed to the old orthodox notion of special
creation and supernatural government. There are, of course,
some professedly religious people who avow their belief in
Evolution, and who maintain that it is what they call God’s
mode of working; and there are those who even go so far
as to say that the power and wisdom of God are seen more
thoroughly displayed in the process of Evolution than in
the method, so long believed in, of special and supernatural
creation. But the number of these is comparatively small,
and, consequently, the great mass of those who accept the
word in its legitimate signification may be looked upon as
of a sceptical turn of mind.
It will not be difficult to
demonstrate that the popular theological idea of creation
finds no support in the theory of Evolution, which, if not a
demonstrated thesis, has, at least, in its favour the “ science
of probabilities ”—an advantage that cannot fairly be claimed
for the Biblical account of the origin of phenomena.
The term “evolution” may be defined as an unfolding,
opening out, or unwinding; a disclosure of something which
was not previously known, but which existed before in a
more condensed or hidden form. There is no new exist
ence called into being, but a making conspicuous to our
eyes that which was previously concealed. “ Evolution
teaches that the universe and man did not always exist in
their present form ; neither are they the product of a sudden
creative act, but rather the result of innumerable changes
from the lower to the higher, each step in advance being an
evolution from a pre-existing condition.” On the other
hand, the special creation doctrine teaches that, during a
limited period, God created the universe and man, and
that the various phenomena are not the result simply of
natural law, but the outcome of supernatural design.
According to Mr. Herbert Spencer, the whole theory of
Evolution is based upon three principles—namely, that
matter is indestructible, motion continuous, and force per
sistent. Two contending processes will be seen everywhere
in operation in the physical universe, the one antagonistic
to the other, each one for a time triumphing over its oppo
site.
These are termed “evolution” and “dissolution.”
Spencer remarks that “ Evolution, under its simplest aspect,
is the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion,
�4
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
while dissolution is the absorption of motion and the con
comitant disintegration of matter.” Thus it will be seen
that Herbert Spencer regards evolution as the concentration
or transition of matter from a diffused to a more condensed
and perceptible form. This change he traces in the systems
of the stars ; in the geological history of the earth; in the
growth and development of plants and animals; in the
history of language and the fine arts, and in the condition
of civilised states. Briefly, the theory is that the matter of
which the universe is composed has progressed from a
vague, incoherent, and, perhaps, all but homogeneous nebula
of tremendous extent, to complete systems of suns, worlds,
comets, sea, and land, and countless varieties of living
things, each composed of many very different parts, and of
complex organisations.
Coming to the organic bodies, there may be included
under the term “evolution” many different laws, some of
which we may not even know as yet, and a great number
of processes, acting sometimes in unison and often in an
tagonism, the one to the other. This, however, in no way
weakens the theory of evolution, which, beyond doubt, is
the process by which things have been brought to their
present condition. It will tend, perhaps, to elucidate this
truth the more readily and clearly if a brief exposition of
the theory be given under the chief divisions of this exten
sive subject.
The Formation of Worlds.—According to Evolution, the
present cosmos began its development at an immeasurably
remote date, and any attempt to comprehend the periods
that have rolled by since would paralyse our highest intel
lectual powers. When the matter which is now seen shaped
into suns and stars of vast magnitude, and of incompresible number, was diffused over the whole of the space in
which those bodies are now seen moving—of extreme
variety, and, perhaps, of nearly homogeneous character—
the human mind is unable to comprehend. This matter,
by virtue of the very laws now seen in operation in the
physical universe, would in time shape itself into bodies
with which the heavens are strewed, shining with a glory
that awes while it charms. What is called in these days
the nebular cosmogony may be said to have arisen with Sir
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
5
William Herschel, who discovered with his telescope what
seemed to be worlds and systems in course of formation—
that is, they were in various states which appeared to mark
different degrees of condensation.
M. Laplace, without any knowledge of Herschel’s specu
lations, arrived at a similar idea upon a totally different
ground—namely, the uniformity of the heavenly bodies.
He showed that, if matter existed in such a different state
as the nebular theory assumed, and if nuclei existed in it,
they would become centres of aggregation in which a rotary
motion would increase as the agglomeration proceeded.
Further, Laplace urged that at certain intervals the centri
fugal force acting in the rotating mass would overcome
the force of agglomeration, and the result would be a series
of rings existing apart from the mass to which they originally
adhered, each of which would retain the motion which it
possessed at the moment of separation. These rings would
again break up into spherical bodies, and hence come what
are termed primary bodies and their satellites. This La
place showed to be at least possible, and the results, in the
case of our solar system, are just what would have been
expected from the operations of this Jaw. For example,
everyone knows that the rapidity of the motions in the
planets is in the ratio of their nearness to the sun.
Many facts seem to support this theory, such as the
existence of the hundred and more small bodies, called
asteroids, observed between Mars and Jupiter, which doubt
less indicate a zone of agglomeration at several points, and
the rings of Saturn give an example of zones still preserved
intact. This theory has been held by some of the most
eminent astronomers, and is most ably advocated by the
late Professor Nicol in his “Architecture of the Heavens.”
Some experiments have also been tried—as, for example,
that of Plateau on a rotating globe of oil—which showed
the operation of the law by which the suns, planets, and
their moons were formed. Such is the evolution of worlds,
and it is unnecessary to point out how diametrically it is
opposed to the special creation described in Genesis, where
the heavens and the earth are called suddenly into being by
the fiat of God, and the sun stated to be created four days
afterwards. Which theory should, in these days of thought,
commend itself to a rational mind ?
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
The Beginning of Life upon the Earth.—Evolution has
been subjected to many severe attacks at this point. Those
who contend for special creation have maintained, with a
dogmatism which but ill accords with the knowledge they
possess upon the subject, that nothing but the hypothesis
of the supernatural origin of things is sufficient to account
for the first appearance of life upon the earth, that evolution
completely breaks down here, and that all the experiments
which have been conducted with a view to lend it support
have turned out positive failures. Such is the allegation of
orthodox opponents. Let us see what grounds they have
for these reckless and dogmatic statements. The two views
of the origin of living beings have been called respectively
Biogenesis and Abiogenesis, the first meaning that life can
spring only from prior life, and the latter that life may
sometimes have its origin in dead matter. Dr. Charlton
Bastian, whose experiments will be hereafter referred to,
substitutes for Abiogenesis another word, Archebiosis.
Now, it is well known and admitted on all hands that
there was a time when no life existed on the earth. Not
the most minute animal, or the most insignificant plant,
found a place on the surface of what was probably at that
time a globe heated up to a temperature at which no living
thing could exist. The life, therefore, that did afterwards
appear could not have sprung from germs of prior living
bodies. True, the whimsical theory was put forward by an
eminent scientific man, some years ago, that the first germs
that found their way to the earth were probably thrown off
with meteoric matter from some other planet. But on the
face of it this is absurd, because such matter would be of
too high a temperature to admit of the existence upon it of
living bodies of any kind ; and, besides, were it otherwise,
it would explain nothing. It would only transfer the diffi
culty from this world to some other. For life must have
had a beginning somewhere, and the question is as to that
beginning somewhere. The supernaturalist seeks to get
out of the difficulty rather by cutting the Gordian knot than
by untying it, and falls back upon a special creation, thereby
avoiding any further trouble about the matter. But the
evolutionist thinks that he can see his way clearly in what
must necessarily be to some extent a labyrinth, because no
one lived at that time to observe and record what was taking
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
7
place. One thing is plain, which is, that living things were
made or came into existence—whatever the mode may have
been, or the power by which it occurred—out of non-living
matter. Even the believers in special creation will not
deny this. The only question is, therefore, whether the
process occurred in accordance with natural law, and whether
the forces by which it was brought about were those which
exist, or, at all events, which did exist, in material nature.
For it does not follow that, if such phenomena do not occur
to-day, they could never have taken place in the past. The
conditions of the earth were different then from what they are
now, and forces may have been in operation that are now
quiescent. Professor Huxley, who thinks that no instance
has occurred in modern times of the evolution of a living
organism from dead matter, and that the experiments which
have been conducted on the subject are inconclusive—who,
in fact, ranks himself on the side of the advocates of Bio
genesis—yet says that, if we could go back millions of years
to the dawn of life, we should, no doubt, behold living
bodies springing from non-living matter.
But, of course, it will be argued that, if it happened then,
it might take place now; and although, as I have said, this
is not conclusive, yet to some it has much weight. What
Nature has done once, it is insisted, she can do again.
Quite so ; but, then, all the conditions must be the same.
Dr. Bastian himself asks the question : “If such synthetic
processes took place then, why should they not take place
now? Why should the inherent molecular properties of
various kinds of matter have undergone so much altera
tion ?” (“ Beginnings of Life ”). And the question is likely
to be repeated, with, to say the least of it, some show of
reason.
It must never be forgotten, as Tyndall has very ably
pointed out, that the matter of which the organic body is
built up “ is that of inorganic nature. There is no substance
in the animal tissues that is not primarily derived from the
rocks, the water, and the air.” And the forces operating in
the one are those which we see working in the other, vitality
only excepted, which is probably but another manifestation
of the one great force of the universe. Indeed, Professor
Huxley does not make an exception even in the case of
vitality, which, he maintains, has no more actual existence
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
than the imaginary aqueosity of water. Mr. Herbert
Spencer thinks that life, under all its forms, has arisen by
an unbroken evolution, and through natural causes alone;
and this view accords with the highest reason and philo
sophy.
Nor have the experiments performed with a view to solve
the problem been so conclusive as would appear to some.
At all events, the question is an open one as to whether the
origin of living things in non-living matter has not been
experimentally demonstrated. The old doctrine of “ spon
taneous generation ” can, in its new form and under its
recent name of Abiogenesis, or Archebiosis, claim the sup
port of men of great eminence in the scientific world at the
present time. Pouchet, a very illustrious Frenchman, per
formed a large number of experiments, and in all or most of
them he succeeded, according to his own opinion, in pro
ducing living things. The objection that there were germs
in the air, or water, or the materials that he employed, he met
by manufacturing artificial water out of oxygen and hydrogen,
and submitting the whole of the material employed to a
temperature above boiling-water point, which would certainly
destroy any living germ, either of an animal or vegetable
character. Then, in England a series of experiments have
been performed by Dr. Bastian, one of the leading scientists
of our time; and the results have been given to the world
in some voluminous and masterly books. “ These volumes,”
says an opponent—Dr. Elam—“ are full of the records of
arduous, thoughtful, and conscientious work, and must ever
retain a conspicuous place in the literature of biological
science.” Dr. Bastian maintains that he has succeeded, in
innumerable instances, in producing living organisms from
non-living matter. Hence the doctrine of Evolution, which
is in accordance with true philosophy, finds its support in
that physical science where we should expect to meet with
it, and to which it really belongs.
The Origin of Man.—It has already been stated that
the remains of man are met with only in the most
recent geological deposits. On this point there will be
no dispute. No doubt human beings have been in
existence for a much longer period than is generally sup
posed ; the short term of six thousand years, which our
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
9
fathers considered to cover man’s entire history, pales into
insignificance before the vast periods which we know to
have rolled their course since human life began. But that
fact in no way affects the question before us. Man was
certainly the last animal that appeared, as he was the
highest. If it be asked, Why highest as well as last ? the
answer is, Because, by the process of evolution, the highest
must come last. This is the law that we have seen operating
all through the physical universe, so far as that universe
has disclosed to us its mighty secrets, hidden for ages, but
now revealed to scientific observation and experiment.
Man came, as other organic bodies came, by no special
creation, but by the great forces of nature, which move
always in the same direction, and work to the same end.
As far as the physical powers are concerned, it will not be
difficult to conceive the same laws operating in his pro
duction as originated the various other forms of organic
beings. His body is built up of the same materials, upon
precisely the same plan : during life he is subject to the
same growth and decay, the same building up and pulling
down of tissues; and it is but reasonable to suppose that
the same forces originated his beginning, as we know they
will some day terminate his existence.
Mr. Darwin made a bold stroke when he gave the world
his “Descent of Man.” In 1859 he had published the first
edition of his work on “ The Origin of Species,” which fell
like a thunderbolt into the religious camp. The commo
tion it caused was tremendous, and the effect can to-day
hardly be imagined; so tolerant have we grown of late, and
such a change has passed over the scene within the past
quarter of a century. The most violent opposition raged
against the new views ; ridicule, denunciation, and abuse
were hurled at the head of the man who had propounded
so preposterous a theory as that all organic things had
sprung from a few simple living forms very low down in
the scale of being. Then came a larger work, entitled
“ Animals and Plants under Domestication,” brimful of
facts of a most startling character, supporting the theory
advanced in the previous book, and challenging refutation
on all hands. In the face of these facts, the public mind
cooled down a little, opposition became milder, some adver
saries were converted, and others manifested indifference.
�IO
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
The major part of those who still adhered to the super
natural and special creations held that, even if the theory of
Evolution turned out to be true, it would not apply to man,
who was a being possessed of an immortal soul, and, there
fore, belonged to a different order of creatures from any
other animals, and that Mr. Darwin never intended to
include human beings in the organic structures thus origi
nated.
In this state the controversy remained until 1872, when
Mr. Darwin took the bull by the horns, and at one stroke
swept away the last stronghold of special creation by showing
that humanity was no exception to the great law of evolu
tion ; for man, like other animals, had originated in natural
selection. The facts given in the book on “The Descent
of Man ” are both powerful and pertinent. This, however,
is not the place to dwell upon natural selection, and it is
only referred to so far as it supports evolution. The diffi
culties that have been placed in the way of the application
of this principle to man have not had much reference to
his bodily organs, but mainly to his mental and moral
powers, his social faculties, and the emotional side of his
nature. True, a controversy raged for a short time between
Huxley and Owen as to whether there was a special
structure in the human brain not to be found in the next
animals lower in the scale of being ; but this contention
has long since died out, and to-day no anatomist of any
note will be found contending for the existence of any such
organ. That the human brain differs considerably from the
brain of any lower animal no one who is at all acquainted
with the subject will deny; but this is difference in degree,
and not arising from the presence of any special structure
in the one which is absent in the other. Man, therefore,
must look for his origin just where he seeks for that of the
inferior creatures.
The science of embryology, which is now much more
carefully studied, and, consequently, much better known
than at any period in the past, lends very powerful support
to evolution, though, perhaps, little to natural selection.
“ The primordial germs,” says Huxley, “ of a man, a dog, a
bird, a fish, a beetle, a snail, and a polyp are in no essential
structural respects distinguishable” (“Lay Sermons”). Each
organism, in fact, commences its individual career at the
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
11
same point—that is, in a single cell. These cells are of the
same chemical composition, approximately of the same size,
and appear to be in all respects identical. Yet the one
developes into a fish, another into a reptile, a third into a
bird, a fourth into a dog, and a fifth into a man. The pro
cess is the same in all up to a certain point. First, the cell
divides into two, then into four, eight, sixteen, and so on,
until a particular condition is reached, called by Haeckel
morula, when a totally different set of changes occur. In
the case of the higher animals the development of the
embryo exhibits, up to a very late period, a remarkable
resemblance to that of man.
The Diversity of Living Things.—A mere glance at the
geological records will show at once that the order in which
animals and plants have appeared on the earth is that which
accords with evolution. The lowest came first, the highest
last, and a regular gradation between the two extremes. In
the early rocks in which life appears we meet with polyps,
coral, sea-worms, etc., and no trace of land animals or plants.
Then, passing upwards, we come upon fishes, then reptiles,
afterwards birds, subsequently mammals, and, last of all,
man. These are undisputed facts, as the most elementary
works on geology, whether written by a professing Christian
or an unbeliever, will clearly show.
The only objection, perhaps, of any weight that can be
urged against the changes which evolution asserts to have
taken place, is the fact that we do not see them occur.
But this, in the first place, is hardly correct, since we see
the tadpole—which is a fish breathing through gills, and
living in the water—pass up into a reptile, the frog, which
is a land animal breathing through lungs, and inhaling its
oxygen from the atmosphere. Secondly, the fact that we
do not see a change actually occur, which took millions of
years to become effected, can surely amount to little.
An ephemeral insect, whose life only lasts for a day, might
object, if able to reason, that an a corn could not grow into
an oak tree, because it had not seen it occur. But the
evidence would be there still in the numerous gradations
that might be seen between the acorn and the sturdy old
tree that had weathered the storms of a century. And in
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
this case we see all the gradations between a monad and a
man in the rocks which furnish us with the history of the
past, although, as our lives are so short, we are not able to
see the whole change effected. Plants were not all suddenly
called into existence at one particular period, and then
animals at another and later time. This we know, because
the remains of plants and animals are found side by side
throughout all the rocks. If there be an exception, it is an
unfortunate one for the Christian supernaturalist, since it
shows that animals were first; for certain it is that animal
remains are met with in the oldest rocks.
The objection to evolution, that no transformation of one
species into another has been seen within recorded history,
is entirely groundless, and betrays utter carelessness
on the part of the objectors. The truth is, such trans
formations have taken place, as mentioned above in reference
to the tadpole. Professor Huxley and other scientists have
proved this to be the case. It should, however, be remem
bered that in most instances these great changes are the
work of time. As Dr. David Page observes : “ It is true
that, to whatever process we ascribe the introduction of new
species, its operation is so slow and gradual that centuries
may pass away before its results become discernible. But,
no matter how slow, time is without limit; and, if we can
trace a process of variation at work, it is sure to widen in
the long run into what are regarded as specific distinctions.
It is no invalidation of this argument that science cannot
point to the introduction of any new species within the
historic era; for till within a century or so science took no
notice of either the introduction or extinction of species, nor
was it sufficiently acquainted with the flora and fauna of
the globe to determine the amount of variation that was
taking place among their respective families. Indeed, in
fluenced by the belief that the life of the globe was the
result of one creative act, men were unwilling to look at the
long past which the infant science of palaeontology was be
ginning to reveal, and never deigned to doubt that the
future would be otherwise than the present. Even still
there are certain minds who ignore all that geology has
taught concerning the extinction of old races and the intro
duction of newer ones, and who, shutting their eyes to the
continuity of nature, cannot perceive that the same course
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
IS
of extinction and creation must ever be in progress ” (“ Man :
Where, Whence, and Whither ?”).
Let us now apply a test to the creative theory with a similar
demand, and what will be the result ? An utter failure on the
part of the creationists to substantiate their dogmatic preten
sions. Suppose we exclaimed, “ Show us a single creative act
of bne species within recorded history.” It would be impos
sible for them to do so, for there is not a shadow of evidence
drawn from human experience in favour of what theologians
call creation. “ We perceive a certain order and certain
method in nature ; we see that under new conditions certain
variations do take place in vegetable and animal structures,
and by an irresistible law of our intellect we associate the
variations with the conditions in the way of cause and
effect. Of such a method we can form some notion, and
bring if within the realm of reason ; of any other plan, how
ever it may be received, we can form no rational conception.”
“ The whole analogy of natural operations,” says Professor
Huxley, “ furnishes so complete and crushing an argument
against the intervention of any but what are called secondary
causes in the production of all the phenomena of the universe
that, in view of the intimate relations between man and the
rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by
the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubt
ing that all are co-ordinated terms of nature’s great progres
sion, from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to
the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will.”
The most that can be said of the creative theory is that it
is a question of belief; but of knowledge never.
Dr. Page observes : “We may believe in a direct act of
creation; but we cannot make it a subject of research.
Faith may accept, but reason cannot grasp it. On the
other hand, a process of derivation by descent is a thing we
can trace as of a kind with other processes; and, though
unable to explain, we can follow it as an indication, at least,
of the method which Nature has adopted in conformity with
her ordinary and normal course of procedure. We can
admit possibilities, but must reason from probabilities, and
the probable can only be judged of from what is already
known. Than this there is clearly no other course for
philosophy.
Everywhere in nature it sees nothing but
processes, means, and results, causes and effects, and it
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EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
cannot conceive, even if it wished, of anything being brought
about unless through the instrumentality of means and pro
cesses.”
To me it has always been a difficulty to understand how
an infinite being could possibly have been the creator of all
things. For this reason : if he is infinite, he is everywhere ;
if everywhere, he is in the universe ; if in the universe now,
he was always there. If he were always in the universe,
there never was a time when the universe was not; there
fore, it could never have been created.
If it be said that this being was not always in the universe,
then there must have been a period when he occupied less
space than he did subsequently. But “ lesser ” and “ greater ”
cannot be applied to that which is eternally infinite. Further,
before we can recognise the soundness of the position taken
by the advocates of special creation, we have to think of a
time when there was no time—of a place where there was
no place. Is this possible ? If it were, it would be interest
ing to learn where an infinite God was at that particular
period, and how, in “no time,” he could perform his creative
act. Besides, if a being really exists who created all things,
the obvious question at once is, “ Where was this being
before anything else existed ?” “ Was there a time when
God over all was God over nothing ? Can we believe that
a God over nothing began to be out of nothing, and to
create all things when there was nothing ?” Moreover, if
the universe was created, from what did it emanate ? From
nothing? But “ from nothing, nothing can come.” Was
it created from something that already was ? If so, it was
no creation at all, but only a continuation of that which was
in existence. Further, “ creation needs action ; to act is to
use force; to use force implies the existence of something
upon which that force can be used. But if that ‘ something ’
were there before creation, the act of creating was simply
the re-forming of pre-existing materials.” Here three ques
tions may be put to the opponents of evolution who affirm
the idea of special creation :—(i) Is it logical to affirm the
existence of that of which nothing is known, either of itself
or by analogy ? Now, it cannot be alleged that anything is
known of the supposed supernatural power of creation. On
the other hand, sufficient is known of the facts of evolution
to prevent the careful student of Nature from attempting to
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
15
rob her of that force and life-giving principle which un
doubtedly belongs to her. (2) Is it logical to ascribe events
to causes the existence of which is unknown, and more
particularly when such events can be reasonably explained
upon natural principles with the aid of “ the science of
probabilities ” ? Dr. Page forcibly remarks : “ Man has his
natural history relations—of that there can be no gainsaying
—and we merely seek to apply to the determination of these
the same methods of research which by common consent
are applied to the determination of the relations of other
creatures............. Scientific research must abide by scientific
methods; scientific convictions must rest on scientific in
vestigations.” To assert that life is associated with some
thing that is immaterial and immortal, and that this force
could only have been brought into existence by a special
act of “the one great creator,” is to prostrate reason and ex
perience before the assumptions of an over-satisfied theology.
To once more use the words of Dr. Page : “ Science knows
nothing of life save through its manifestations. With the
growth of physical organisation it comes ; with the decay of
organisation it disappears. While life endures, mind is its
accompaniment; when life ceases, mental activity comes to
a close. Thus far we can trace; beyond this science is
utterly helpless. No observation from the external world ;
no analogy, however plausible ; no analysis, however minute,
can solve the problem of an immaterial and immortal exist
ence.” (3) Is it logical to urge the theory of special creation
when science proclaims the stability of natural law, and its
sufficiency for the production of all phenomena ? Professor
Tyndall, in his lecture on “ Sound,” remarks that, if there is
one thing that science has demonstrated more clearly than
another, it is the stability of the operations of the laws of
nature. We feel assured from experience that this is so,
and we act upon such assurance in our daily life. The
same errtinent scientist, in his Belfast address, says : “ Now,
as science demands the radical extirpation of caprice, and
the absolute reliance upon law in nature, there grew with
the growth of scientific notions a desire and determination
to sweep from the field of theory this mob of gods and
demons, and to place natural phenomena on a basis more
congruent with themselves.”
Again: “ Is there not a
temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius when he
�i6
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
affirms that ‘ Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously
of herself without the meddling of the gods,’ or with Bruno
when he declares that Matter is not ‘that mere empty
capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but
the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit
of her own womb....... By an intellectual necessity I cross
the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in
that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers,
and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its creator,
have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and
potency of all terrestrial life.”
Psychical Powers.—This is the great stronghold of the
opponents of evolution. They maintain that, whatever may
have taken place with regard to physical powers and bodily
organs, it is clear that the higher intellectual faculties of
man could not so have originated ; that those, at least, must
be the result of a special creation, and must have been
called into existence by some supernatural power when human
beings first appeared upon the stage of life. Such persons
further urge that, even if it could be shown beyond doubt
that the marvellously constructed body of man, with its
beautifully adjusted parts of bone and muscle, nerve and
brain, skin and mucous membrane, had its origin in evolu
tion, yet no light whatever would be thrown upon the
source of the wondrous powers of judgment and memory,
understanding and will, perception and conception. This
argument, no doubt, to some at first appears specious; but
the question is, Is it sound ? The assumption seems to be
that we meet with these powers now for the first time, and
that, therefore, it is here that a special creation must be
called in to account for their origin, their character being
so different from anything that has previously crossed our
path in this investigation. But assuredly this is not correct.
Some of these powers are certainly to be met with in the
lower animals—a few of them low down in the scale—and
for the rest the difference will be one of degree more than
of quality.
It will not surely be maintained that perception is pecu
liar to man; it must exist wherever there are organs of
sense, and these extend in some form or other to the
lowest phase of animal life. Volition is also met with in all
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
17
the higher animals; and memory may be observed in the
dog, horse, elephant, cat, camel, and numerous other
mammals, with whose habits every-day life makes us familiar.
Even judgment in the form of comparison is often displayed
by the domestic animals, the dog in particular. Dr. H.
Bischoff, in his “Essay on the Difference between Man
and Brutes,” says : “ It is impossible to deny the animals,
qualitatively and quantitatively, as many mental faculties as
we find in man. They possess consciousness. They feel,
think, and judge; they possess a will which determines their
actions and motions. Animals possess attachment; they
are grateful, obedient, good-natured; and, again, false
treacherous, disobedient, revengeful, jealous, etc. Their
actions frequently evince deliberation and memory. It is
in vain to derive such actions from so-called instinct, which
unconsciously compels them so to act.” Max Muller also,
in his “ Science of Language,” admits that brutes have five
senses like ourselves ; that they have sensations of pain and
pleasure; that they have memory; that they are able to
compare and distinguish ; have a will of their own, show
signs of shame and pride, and are guided by intellect as
well as by instinct.
With such facts as these before us, what reason have we
for supposing that these psychical powers are not as likely to
have been evolved as the bodily organs ? There is no break
whatever to be seen in the chain at the point of their appear
ance in man. If the mental powers of the lower animals
have come by evolution, there is not a shadow of reason for
supposing that those of man arose in any other way, for
they are all of the same quality, differing only in degree.
No doubt, as Mr. Darwin says, “the difference between the
mind of man and that of the highest ape is immense.” And
yet, as he also remarks, “great as it is, it is certainly one of
degree, and not of kind.” The highest powers of which
man can boast—memory, judgment, love, attention, curiosity,
imitation, emotion—may all be met with in an incipient
form in lower animals. Let any man analyse his mental
faculties one by one—-not look at them in a state of com
bination, for that will be calculated to mislead—and then
say which of them is peculiar to man as man, and not to be
found in a smaller degree much lower in the scale of being.
Even the capacity for improvement—in other words, for pro
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
gress—is not peculiar to man, as Mr. Darwin has shown by
innumerable examples of great force and beauty.
The emotions have often been spoken of as being pecu
liar to man, but evidently with no regard to accuracy.
Terror exists in all the highest of the lower animals as surely
as it does in man, and shows itself in the same way. It
causes the heart to palpitate, a tremor to pass along the
muscles, and even the hair to undergo that change which is
called “ standing on end,” in the horse, the dog, and other
animals, as in the human species. “ Courage and timidity,”
observes Darwin, “are extremely variable qualities in the
individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our
dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily
turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities
are certainly inherited. Everyone knows how liable animals
are to furious rage, and how plainly they show it.” The
love of the dog for his master is proverbial; indeed, this
noble animal has been known to lick the hand of the vivisector while undergoing at his hands the severest torture.
And revenge is often manifested by the lowest animals—not
simply the sudden impulse which revenges itself at the
moment for pain inflicted or wrongs done, but long,
brooding feeling, which may smoulder for months, waiting
for the opportunity for manifesting itself, and, when that
comes, bursting out into a flame violent and hateful. There
are thousands of cases on record in which this has happened,
especially in the case of monkeys which have been kept
tame. And, perhaps, the personal experience of most
persons can furnish an example of the truth of this allegation.
The social instincts are plainly seen in many of the lower
animals; not, of course, in that perfect form in which they
are met with in man ; but the difference here again is one of
degree only. Many animals experience pleasure in the
company of their fellows, and are unhappy at a separation
being effected. They will show sympathy one for another,
and even perform services for each other’s benefit. Some
animals lie together in large numbers, and never separate
except for a very short time, and then only for a purpose
which they clearly understand. This is the case with sheep,
rats, American monkeys, and also with rooks, jackdaws, and
starlings. Darwin observes : “ Everyone must have noticed
-how miserable horses, dogs, sheep, etc., are when separated
�EVOLUTION and special creation.
J9
from their companions, and what affection the two former
kind will show on their re-union. It is curious to speculate
upon the feelings of a dog who will rest peacefully for hours
in a room with his master or any of the family without the
least notice being taken of him, but who, if left for a short
time by himself, barks and howls dismally.” Here we find
the origin of the social faculty in man. It is very easy to
imagine the course of development which this must have
taken in order to have culminated in the highest form
as we see it in the human species. The psychical powers
appear first in an incipient form, and then gradually develop
through a long course of ages, until they attain their height
in humanity.
Other influences, such as the power of
language, further the development, these powers themselves
being the result of the process of evolution. The question
how far language is confined to man is one of great interest
to the student of evolution. In replying to the inquiry,
“ What is the difference between the brute and man ?” Max
Muller says : “ Man speaks, and no brute has ever uttered
a word. Language is our Rubicon, and no brute has ever
crossed it.” Referring to this statement, Dr. Page remarks :
“Are not these powers of abstraction and language a matter of
degree rather than of kind ? Do not the actions of many of
the lower animals sufficiently indicate that they reason from
the particular to the general ? And have they not the power
of communicating their thoughts to one another by vocal
sounds which cannot be otherwise regarded than as lan
guage? No one who has sufficiently studied the conduct
of our domestic animals but must be convinced of this
power of generalisation ; no one who has listened attentively
to the various calls of mammals and birds can doubt they
have the power of expressing their mental emotions in
language. Their powers of abstraction may be limited, and
the range of their language restricted; but what shall we
say of the mental capacity of the now extinct Tasmanian,
which could not carry him beyond individual conceptions,
or of the monosyllabic click-cluck of the Bushman, as
compared with the intellectual grasp and the inflectional
languages of modern Europe ? If it shall be said that these
are matters merely of degree, then are the mental processes
and languages of the lower animals, as compared with
those of man, also matters of degree—things that manifest
�20
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
themselves in the same way and by the same organs, but
differing in power according to the perfection of the organs
through which they are manifested.”
The Doctor's view of this matter receives a striking corro
boration from the following excerpt from the introduction
to Agassiz’s “ Contributions to the Natural History of the
United States ” : “ The intelligibility of the voice of animals
to one another, and all their actions connected with such
calls, are also a strong argument of their perceptive power,
and of their ability to act spontaneously and with logical
sequence in accordance with these perceptions. There is a
vast field open for investigation in the relations between
the voice and the actions of animals, and a still more in
teresting subject of inquiry in the relationship between the
cycle of intonations which different species of animals of
the same family are capable of uttering, and which, so far as
I have yet been able to trace them, stand to one another in
the same relations as the different, so-called, families of
languages.”
The moral powers of man have been evolved in a manner
similar to that in which the other forces belonging to the
human race were evolved. All that we see in the evolution
of human conduct is the result of the great and potent law
of evolution. “ It is said,” writes M. J. Savage in his sug
gestive book, “ The Morals of Evolution,” “ that there can
be no permanent and eternal law of morality unless we
believe in a God and a future life. But I believe that this
moral law stands by virtue of its own right, and would
stand just the same without any regard to the question
of immortality or the discussion between Theism and
Atheism. If there be no God at all, am I not living ? Are
there not laws according to which my body is constructed—
laws of health, laws of life, laws that I must keep in order
to live and in order to be well ? If there be no God at all,
are you not existing ? Have I right to steal your property,
to injure you, to render you unhappy, because, forsooth, I
choose to doubt whether there is a God, or because you
choose to doubt whether there is a God ? Are not
the laws of society existing in themselves, and by their
own nature ? Suppose all the world should suddenly lose
its regard for truth and become false through and through,
so that no man could depend upon his brother, would
�EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
21
not society become disintegrated, disorganised? Would
not all commercial and social life suddenly become im
possible? Would not humanity become a chaos and a
wreck, and that without any sort of regard to the question
as to whether men believed in a God or did not believe in
one ? These laws are essential in the nature of things ; and
they stand, and you live by keeping them, and die by
breaking them, whether there is a God or not.
These are
the accurate and ennobling views of existence born of
minds which evolution has raised from the ignorant depths
of the past to the intellectual heights of the present.
On all sides the candid and impartial observer may be
hold undoubted evidence in favour of the doctrine of evolu
tion. We see it in the various changes of the solar system.
There are (i) fire mists; (2) globes of gas; (3) condensed
oceans; (4) crust formation; (5) mountains and rivers, and
(6) its present phenomena. What is this but evolution ?
Is it not a manifestation of changes from the lower to the
higher, from the simple to the complex, and from the
chaotic to the consolidated ? The same principle is illus
trated, as before indicated, by the science of embryology,
with its clearly-marked stages of development—the fish,
reptile, bird, quadruped, and, finally, the human form. The
relationship of the species gives its proof in favour of the
evolution theory. The different types of to-day had their
one starting point, the variations now seen having been pro
duced by altered conditions. Moreover, we find that in
the process of evolution some organs in animals become
useless, while others change their use, thus proving that the
animal kingdom possess structural affinities, and that the
subsequent differentiation depends upon the opportunity
afforded for evolution.
Then, again, man’s ability, to
divert animal instincts and intelligence from their original
sphere, as shown in the training of certain of the lower
animals; of improving the eye as an optical instrument;
of rendering less antagonistic the natures and instincts we
discover in different species constantly at war with each
other, all point to one process—that of evolution.
There is the old sentimental objection to this theory, that
it is humiliating to think that we have evolved from forms
lower down in the scale of animal life. But, as Dr. Page
points out, there is nothing in this view necessarily degrading
�22
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
11 If, in virtue of some yet unexplained process, man has
derived his descent from any of the lower orders, he is
clearly not of them—his higher structural adaptations and
improvable reason defining at once the specialty of his place,
and the responsibility of his functions. It can be no
degradation to have descended from some antecedent form
of life, any more than it can be an exaltation to have been
fashioned directly from the dust of the earth. There can
be nothing degrading or disgusting in the connection which
nature has obviously established between all that lives, and
those who employ such phrases must have but a poor and
by no means very reverent conception of the scheme of
creation. The truth is, there is nothing degrading in nature
save that which, forgetful of its own functions, debases and
degrades itself. The jibing and jeering at the idea of an
‘ape-ancestry,’ so often resorted to by the ignorant, has in
reality no significance to the mind of the philosophic
naturalist. There is evidently one structural plan running
throughout the whole of vitality, after which its myriad
members have been ascensively developed, just as there is
one great material plan pervading the planetary system;
and science merely seeks to unfold that plan, and to deter
mine the principles upon which it is constructed. If there
be no generic connection between man and the order that
stands next beneath him, there is at all events a marvellous
similarity in structural organisation, and this similarity is
surely suggestive of something more intimate than mere
coincidence.” Evolution, therefore, although unable to
supply the solution to every problem presented to the
student of nature, is, so far as can be discovered at the
present day, the truest theory of man and the universe, and
is sufficient for all practical purposes. Further, it satisfies
the intellect as no other theory does, and is assuredly more
reasonable than that of special creation.
One question of great importance will probably suggest
itself to those who have given the theory of evolution much
consideration. It is this : What is to be the position of
things, and especially of man, in the future ? Will there be
evolved higher beings after him, as he is higher than those
who preceded him ? He stands now as the lord of crea
tion ; but so stood many mighty reptiles of the past in their
day and generation. Could they have reasoned, would they
�'7" '
EVOLUTION1 AND SPECIAL CREATION.
23
not have concluded that they were the final end of creation,
and that all that had gone before was simply to prepare for
their entrance into the world? In that they would have
erred ; and it may be asked, Shall we not equally err if we
hastily decide that no higher being than man can ever come
on earth—that he is, and will ever remain, the highest of
organic existences ? Now, the cases are not quite analogous,
as a little reflection will show. The earlier animals were
entirely the creatures of evolution j man is largely the director
of the process. He can, by his intellect, control the law
itself, just as he bends gravitation to his will, though, in a
sense, he is as much subject to its power as the earth on which
he treads. Before man arose, the animals and plants then
existing were moulded by the great power operating upon
them from within and without; hence the form they took
and the functions they performed. When they had to con
tend with an unfortunate environment they became modi
fied ; or, failing that, they disappeared. Now man, by his
mental resource, can supply natural deficiencies, and thus not
defeat evolution, but direct its current into a new channel.
He can bring his food from a distance, and thus avoid
scarcity in the country where he dwells ; he can successfully
contend against climate, disease, and a thousand other
destructive agencies which might otherwise sweep him away.
It is, therefore, no longer a contest between physical powers,
but between physical and mental. No higher physical
development is likely to occur, because it would not meet
the case, since, however perfect it might be, it could not
hold its own in the struggle for existence against man with
his intellect. The development in the future must be one
of mind, not of body. We do not, consequently, look for
ward to the time when organised beings, higher and more
perfect physically than man, shall take his place on the
earth; but we do believe that a period will arrive when the
intellectual powers shall be refined, expanded, and exalted
beyond anything of which at present we can form a con
ception. The future of man is a topic of all-absorbing
interest, and it needs no prophetic insight to enable us to
form some dim and vague idea of what it will be. Mind
will grapple with the great forces of nature, making them
subservient to man’s comfort and convenience. Virtue
shall array herself more resolutely than ever against vice,
�24
EVOLUTION AND SPECIAL CREATION.
and rid the world of its malignant power. Brother shall
cease slaying brother at the command of kingly despots, and
thus the world shall be crowned with the laurels of peace.
Priestcraft shall lose its power over humanity, and mental
liberty shall have a new birth. The barriers of social caste
shall be broken down, and the brotherhood of man thereby
consolidated. Woman shall no longer be a slave, but
free in her own right. Capital and labour shall cease
to be antagonistic, and shall be harmoniously employed
to enrich the comforts and to augment the happiness of the
race. Education shall supplant ignorance, and justice take
the place of oppression. Then the era shall have arrived
of which the philosopher has written and the poet has sung.
Freedom shall be the watchword of man, reason shall reign
supreme, and happiness prevail throughout the earth.
“ When from the lips of Truth one mighty breath
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze
The whole dark pile of human miseries,
Then shall the reign of mind commence on earth ;
And, starting forth as from a second birth,
Man, in the sunrise of the world’s new spring,
Shall walk transparent like some holy thing.”
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Evolution and special creation
Creator
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Watts, Charles [1836-1906]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 24 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Lacking a title page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot.
Publisher
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[Watts & Co.]
Date
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[1893]
Identifier
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RA1574
N667
Subject
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Evolution
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Evolution and special creation), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Charles Darwin
Creationism
Darwinism
Evolution
NSS