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DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS
THOUGHT.
BY
FREDERICK MILLAR.
ISSUED FOR THE
London
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET St.
1
Price One Penny.
��DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS
THOUGHT.
Previous to the year 1859 the state of scientific opinionupon the process of development of the organic world,
was one of chaos; men of science were groping in thedark. Everyone who rejected the special creation hypo
thesis found himself in the curious predicament of being,
unable to propose anything in the shape of a theory
which would be acceptable to reasoning minds. Tothe question asked of the Rationalist by the believer in
special creation, “ What have you to propose that can.
be accepted by any cautious reasoner ?” no satisfactory
answer could be given. Professor Huxley says that in
1857 he had no answer ready, and he does not think
any one else had.
*
Darwin came, and there was light. -- From his quiet
Kentish home he launched upon an astonished world
“ The Origin of Species.” The book was a beacon fire,
dispelling the darkness and guiding the benighted.
Throughout the world it shone, illumining the minds of
men with rays of scientific thought.
- During the thirty years which have elapsed since the
publication of “ The Origin of Species”—since the phi
losophy of Evolution presented itself as claimant to,
and seated itself upon, “ the throne of the world of
thought ”—a most remarkable and far-reaching change
has taken place in the religious views of the thinking
section of Christendom. Indeed, history affords no
parallel to the great revolution in religious thought which
has been effected by Darwinism. But yesterday the
creation story in Genesis was accepted even by educated
�2
DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
men as unquestionably true; to-day it is regarded as an ex
ploded legend. But yesterday a belief in the government
of the world by a special providence received an all but
universal consent; to-day it is rejected by every thought
ful man as a worthless dogma. But yesterday the timehonoured argument from design in nature satisfied the
majority of thinking people; to-day, in the light of the
law of natural selection, it completely fails to do so.
But yesterday God was conceived to be a terrestrial
potentate who governed the world in accordance with
his own caprice, who moved
“....... in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform,”
and who listened to and answered prayer; to-day God
is the inscrutable power by which “ planets gravitate
and stars shine,” who moves in fixed and immutable
natural laws, and who heeds neither the cry of the
oppressed and the down-trodden, the starving widow
and her orphans, nor the death agony of the countless
millions of creatures who perish annually in the in
exorable struggle for existence which is going on in the
animal world.
It is quite true that many persons, indeed the majority,
calling themselves religious continue to believe in the
superstition and the dogma which Darwinism has ex
ploded. By far the larger proportion of those who make
up the various sects and denominations in Christendom
are of the unthinking class. Born of Christian parents
in a country where Christianity is the popular religion,
they are Christian for just the same reason that they
would have been Mohammedan had they been born in
Turkey, Brahman if in Hindustan, Confucian if in
China. Their so-called belief in the Christian faith is
due solely to geographical antecedents, and not to any
well-reasoned conviction. They never think, study, or
inquire for themselves, but remain content in their own
ignorance, and satisfied with their own credulity. Those
of their co-religionists who do think for themselves inev
itably become heterodox upon most, if not upon all, of
the points of Christianity. And nothing has had such a
vast and stimulating effect upon the minds of the
thoughtful members of Christian sects, nothing has so
�DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
3
largely contributed t© the swelling of the ranks of hete
rodoxy, as the theory discovered and popularised by
Darwin, and which bears his name.
Anterior to Darwin the belief that species were realities,
that the various forms of animal and plant life had
always been as distinct and separate as they are now,
and that all originated by special creation, was held
firmly on every hand. Man was regarded as a creature
apart by himself; and the human family was believed
to be a separate family. Christians believed that, at
a period not more remote than six thousand years,
Jehovah, the tribal deity of the Jews, had devoted a
week to creating all things. He said, “ Let us make
man ;” and he made man “ of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man
became a living soul.” To disbelieve the account of
creation given by Moses was at once a crime and a
blasphemy, punishable by imprisonment, at one time
death, in this world, and eternal damnation in the next.
But what a change has taken place ! The whole scien
tific and literary world, which held a belief in special
creation in common with the religious world, even the
whole educated public, now accepts, says Dr. Wallace,
“ as a matter of common knowledge, the origin of species
from other allied species by the ordinary process of
natural birth. The idea of special creation or any alto
gether exceptional mode of production is absolutely
extinct.”*
Man and all the higher forms of life upon our globe
are simply the modified descendants of lower forms.
The belief that man was created in the image of God,
that he was aboriginally placed at the top of the organic
scale, and that God gave to him dominion over the
whole animal world, can no longer be held by anyone
who desires to be considered educated. The relation
of man to what is vulgarly termed the brute creation has
been so conclusively established as to completely dispose
of every argument advanced in favour of his divine
origin. “ The mode of origin,” says Professor Huxley,
“and the early stages of development of man are
* “ Darwinism,” p. 9.
�4
DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
identical with those of the animals immediately below
him in the scale.” The essential features of agreement
between the structure of man’s body, the close corres
pondence of his blood, muscles, nerves, the struc
ture of his heart, its veins and arteries, his lungs
and his whole respiratory and circulatory systems, with
those of other mammals; the fact that his senses are
identical with theirs, and that his organs of sense are the
same in number and occupy the same relative position ;
*
the possession of rudiments of organs which are fully
developed in other mammals ; the fact of certain diseases
being common to man and other mammals, and that
medical treatment produces precisely the same effect
upon us as upon them, thus showing that our whole
nervous system is the same as theirs :f these, and a
thousand and one equally striking facts given by Darwin,
point to but one conclusion—that man, together with
the animals which are most nearly allied to him, have
descended from a common ancestor.
Seeing that Darwinism deliberately cancelled the theo
logical dogma of creation founded upon the story in
Genesis, it would have been strange indeed had not
those who were paid to defend it, and the creed of which
it is the foundation, assailed it in a manner consistent
with the traditions of their cloth. The historic foes of
truth did just that which one would expect of them
in the circumstances. Powerless to deal with Darwin
in true Christian fashion—to throw him into a dungeon
as their predecessors did Galileo, or to burn him at the
stake as in the case of Giordano Bruno—powerless to con
fiscate and burn his book, the representatives of mental
darkness had to content themselves with making every
pulpit in Christendom ring with yells of pious derision.
For discovering the law of natural selection, for proving
the animal origin of man, Darwin was denounced as a
fool and a blasphemer, in just the same way as was
Galileo for teaching that the world was round, and that
it moved, in opposition to the sanctified ignorance of
the Church of Christ, which proclaimed that the world
* Wallace’s “ Darwinism,” pp. 445, 446.
+ “ Descent of Man,” p. 7.
�DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
5
was flat and stationary. As Huxley says, the priests
and parsons eked out lack of reason by superfluity of
railing. The case of the curate who was overheard
roundly abusing Darwin and all his works, and who was
gsked if he had read “ The Origin of Species,” or had
taken the trouble to make himself acquainted with the
theory he abused, replied, with clasped hands and the
whites of his eyes turned in the direction of the empty
part of his head, “ No; and I pray to God that I never
shall,” is a good sample of Darwin’s clerical opponents.
But the yelling and the railing have long ceased.
Confronted by unmistakeable evidence that Darwinism
was being accepted by all educated people—by all who
had brains to think and judgment to decide for them
selves—its impotent priestly detractors thought it best
to see if it were not possible for them to go with the
tide, and to patch up their exploded creed in such a
manner as to enable them to maintain their dominion
over the heads and the pockets of the masses of the
people. They have now taken refuge in one of two
courses, says Huxley : they either deny that Genesis
was meant to teach scientific truth, and thus save the
veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or
they expend their energies in devising the crude in
genuities of the reconciler, and torture texts in the vain
hope of making them confess the creed of science. But
when the peine forte et dure is over, the antique sincerity
of the venerable sufferer always re-asserts itself. Genesis
is honest to the core, and professes to be no more than
it is—a repository of venerable traditions of unknown
origin, claiming no scientific authority, and possessing
*
none.
There is no getting away from the fact that Darwinism
has completely exploded the Christian creed. Upon the
story in Genesis of man’s creation and fall rests the
whole superstructure of the popular religious faith of
Europe. The veracity of that story has been impeached,
and all history and scientific analogy point to its falsity,
.and stamp it as a mere interesting legend, having no
* Vide Huxley’s chapter, “ On the Reception of ‘ The Origin of
Species,”’ in “ Darwin’s Life and Letters.”
�6
DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
further value than to illustrate the manner in which
men in the childhood of the human race explained the
mystery of existence. Take away the story in Genesis,
and the Christian creed becomes at once a huge and ludic
rous imposture. This fact,'however, is far from being
generally realised, even by Darwinians themselves. The
writer recently met with a typical illustration of this;
An enthusiastic disciple of Darwin was still a member
of the sect of Wesleyans, and a regular attendant at.
a Wesleyan chapel. On the manifest incongruity of
Wesleyanism and Darwinism being pointed out to him
—when it was explained to him that, the story of the
creation and the fall of man being false, therefore the
sacrifice of Jesus as an atonement for a sin which was
never committed became a farce, he exclaimed : “ Good
heavens! what a fool I have been not to realise this
before.” And the following week there was a pew to
let in the Wesleyan chapel at which he had been an
attendant and a worshipper.
It is only by grasping the full significance of Darwin
ism that its bearing upon Christianity can be understood.
There are thousands to-day attending so-called places of“
worship and calling themselves orthodox Christians who,
if they would only put this and that together, so to
speak, and compare their scientific convictions with their
theological preconceptions, would find themselves in
the same position as the gentleman referred to above;
Take the case of Darwin himself.
He tells us that during the years 1836 to 1839 he
*
was led to think much about religion. When on board
the Beagle he was quite orthodox. But he gradually
came to see that the Old Testament was no more to be
trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The
question continually arose in his mind, and would not
be banished: Is it credible that, if God were now to
make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it
to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, etc., as
Christianity is connected with the Old Testament?
This appeared to him incredible. By further reflection
upon the matter he saw that the clearest evidence would
* “ Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” vol. i., pp. 304-317.
�DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. ■
7
be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles
by which Christianity is supported, and that the more
men knew of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible
miracles became. He saw that the men who wrote the
Bible were ignorant and credulous to a degree ; that the
gospels upon which the Christian Church placed so
much reliance could not be proved to have been written
simultaneously with the events; and that they differed
in many important details—far too important, it seemed
to him, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye
witnesses. And by such reflections as these, he adds,
“ I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a
Divine revelation.”
It may be well to point out here that the oft-repeated
statement, that Darwin was an Atheist, is untrue. There
is not the smallest ground upon which to justify such a
statement being made. Darwin was never an Atheist,
in the sense of denying the existence of a God. His
attitude towards the question of God was identical with
that of all the leading men in science and philosophy of
the present century : it was Agnostic. “ The mystery
of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us,” said
he; “ and I, for one, must be content to remain an
Agnostic.” He had no sympathy with the intellectually
unsustainable theory of Atheism, and said : “ An Agnostic
would be the most correct description of my state of
mind.” Again : “ The whole subject of the existence
of God is beyond the scope of man’s intellect; but man
can do his duty.”
Darwinism is not Atheistic, as it is often alleged to
be. It is not even antagonistic to Theism, except in so
far as it exposes the absurdity of the theological aspect
of that theory. Moreover, it may be urged that Dar
winism, although essentially Agnostic in regard to the
nature and attributes of God, is distinctly Theistic in
character, inasmuch as Darwinians, with few and for
the most part unimportant exceptions, hold that the
process of evolution is the way in which God (the in
scrutable power which the universe manifests to us) has
made things come to pass, and has brought forth man
as the highest and noblest specimen of its handiwork.
The effect which Darwinism has had upon the central
�8
DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
and vital point of Christianity—the immortality of man’s
soul—is enormous. Theology and metaphysics, both
regarding man as a special creation, as a being with a
distinct nature and attributes, had done something more
than merely affirm the immortality of the soul: they
had insisted upon it as the greatest of facts. That God
had revealed a future life for man was no more doubted
than was the veracity of the multiplication-table.
But in this belief Darwinism does not share. Regard
ing man in his real character, as a highly-developed
animal, whose moral and intellectual attributes are
simply the result of evolution, Darwinism holds out not
even the shadow of a hope that there is anything in
the shape of a conscious existence beyond the grave.
Indeed, the trend of scientific thought upon the question
is distinctly in the direction of declaring the doctrine of
a future life to be at once inconceivable and insup
portable.
There are, it is true, many believers in Darwinism '
who refuse to accept what is called the Materialistic view
of man’s destiny—that the life of the soul ends with the
life of the body. Assuming a purpose in the world—
and the assumption is one not necessarily incongruous
with the doctrine of Evolution—they refuse to believe
that the work which has been done in evolving man
“has been done for nothing;” they refuse, as Professor
Fiske puts it, “ to regard the Creator’s work as like that
of a child who builds houses of blocks, just for the
pleasure of knocking them downand, although they
admit that, for aught Science can tell us, it may be so,
yet they “ see no good reason for believing any such
thing.”*
It must not be understood that Darwinism sanctions
a denial of the immortality of the soul. It only renders
it impossible to dogmatise upon either one or the other
side of the question. As for a revelation, that may be
dismissed as no longer worthy of serious argument, or
of the attention of serious minds. But “ as for a future
life,” says Darwin, “everyman must judge for himself
between conflicting vague probabilities,” No one can
* “ Man’s Destiny,” p. 114.
�DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
9
reasonably object to a man believing in the immortality
of the soul (that is to say, believing that he believes in
the immortality of the soul; for belief properly so-called
in such a thing is absolutely impossible) so long as he
does not insist upon his “belief” being regarded as
anything more than a mere act of faith. The attitude
of the intellectual mind upon the question must ever
remain one of agnosticism.
If Darwinism has robbed man of his hope in a future
life, it has more than compensated him in that it has
given to him a higher hope and a deeper interest in the
present life. It has effectually disposed of the theo
logical dogma of man’s fall—a dogma which was a
wretched libel on humanity; and it has convinced
man that he is a risen and not a fallen creature, a re
generate and not a degenerate being. It has made him
feel that human progress is not a miserable sham, but a
grand reality; and it has shown to him a nobler view of
human existence, and given to him the promise of a
higher destiny in the future.
This essay ought not to close without reference being
made to the new conception of morality introduced by
Darwinism. Morality is so closely identified with re
ligion, if indeed it may not be regarded as inseparable
from religion (using the term “ religion ” in its widest
sense), that it would be strange if the totally-changed
conception of man’s place in nature should not have
produced along with it a corresponding change in man’s
conception of conduct.
The theological conception of morality, a conception
■which was general before the Darwinian era, was that all
human conduct must be regulated in accordance with
the will of a supposed Deity as declared in the Bible.
All mankind were inherently depraved in consequence
of Adam, the first man, disobeying Jehovah’s command.
And the conduct of every man and woman must be
directed, not towards pleasing themselves, not towards
their own happiness, but towards pleasing and gratifying
the Deity who would reward good conduct by everlasting
felicity, and punish bad conduct by eternal misery. A
man was not exhorted to lead a righteous life because
it was to his earthly interest to do so, but because
�IO
DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
righteousness was pleasing in the eyes of the Deity.The same crude ideas of morality and conduct still'
obtain among certain unprogressive religious sects.That portion of the Christian community which believesin moral and religious progress on the lines of Rational
ism has long since abandoned such, as being at once'
childish and incongruous with the established facts of
science and history.
That Christianity exercises an enormous influence in
the interests of morality cannot be denied. There are
hundreds of thousands of men and women living in our
midst to-day the outward morality of whose lives isentirely due to the fact of their minds being under the
influence of Christian dogma. The bribe of an eternal
Paradise on the one hand, and the threat of everlasting
damnation on the other, restrain these men and women
from following their own evil inclinations and adopting
the vices of society. And there can be no doubt that,in the absence of such restraint, the criminality in this
and other civilised lands would be considerably greater
than it is at present. But, while admitting all this, it
remains to be said that the position taken up on the
general question of morality and religion by certain
writers of eminence, who protest that the cancelling of
theological dogmas, and the substitution of a Rationalist
philosophy in the place of a supernatural faith, are
certain to undermine and overthrow morality, is one
w’hich is both absurd and untenable. Morality does
not depend on the acceptance of theological dogmas, or
on a belief in a particular phase of religious faith, but
on the very laws and conditions of life; and while the
observance of these laws and conditions continues it
matters little, if anything, what the religious or theo
logical bias of mankind may be. The laws which govern
the moral life are as eternal and immutable as those
which govern physical being; and in just the same way
as a breach of physical law results in pain or in death,
so also a breach of moral law results in unhappiness and
evil.
Darwinism has placed the whole question of human
conduct upon a firm and comprehensive basis. It has
revealed man in his real character as a social animal,
�DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
11
explained how his progenitors became social, and has
shed a flood of light upon the origin and development
of man’s moral sense or conscience.
*
Moral science
has enabled us to determine with exactness and preci
sion how and why certain conduct is good and certain
other conduct bad. (Good conduct consists in a
course of action which results in the well-being and
happiness of the individual and of the race; bad
conduct consists in a course of action which results
in evil and pain.) It has defined morality as being a
condition which makes social life possible, and it has
enabled us to deduce from the laws of social life and
the conditions of social existence what kinds of action
necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds
to produce unhappiness.f Happiness, considered as
the ultimate aim of human life, has been made more
possible of realisation by the new conception of morality
which Darwinism has introduced. And while the theo
logical dogma of man’s inherent depravity, and his
inability to do good without the help of a Deity who
cursed the human race, has been finally disposed of,
science has clearly demonstrated man’s capacity for
virtue and for moral progress, and has made it possible
to accept as a logical certainty that not only the moral
but also the physical and mental perfectibility of man
will eventually be attained.
There are, of course, those, preferring to dwell in the
realms of illusion and unreality rather than give credence
to the teachings of science, to whom the immeasurable
effect which Darwinism has had upon religious thought
will ever appear as a matter for deep lamentation. But
to thinking men and women, to those who are prepared
to fearlessly embrace the truth and to conform to the
realities of human life, it must always be a subject
for great rejoicing. The theological libel, of man’s hope
less degeneracy, has been exposed and exploded; and
the clarion voice of Science has proclaimed that man
has risen—risen from barbarism to civilisation, from
*
“Descent of Man,” pp. 97-127.
+ Vide Herbert Spencer’s letter to J. S. Mill in Bain’s “ Mental
and Moral Science,” pp. 721, 722.
�12
DARWINISM AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT,
ignorance to enlightenment, from depravity to culture.
And while the past history of man has been revealed to
us, and the present life has been rid of the doubts and
the fears which for ages had overshadowed it, we have
been afforded a glimpse of the hopeful future that
lies before our race. Just as we believe that the
present generation excels in moral dignity and intel
lectual grandeur the generations that preceded it, so
must we believe that, assuming the human race con
tinues and the conditions of life remain the same, future
generations shall excel all that precede them. As
Emerson has said, we are but at the cockcrowing of
civilisation. The day of Humanity has hardly dawned.
In the great light of its glorious noontide, when the
brute inheritance will be finally thrown off, and when
manhood and womanhood shall be developed in all
their fullness and in all their beauty, then will the
religion of human love and human duty, to which the
intellectual movement of the present century has given
birth, find a living utterance in every heart and in everv
mind.
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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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Darwinism and religious thought
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Millar, Frederick [1865-1933]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 12 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Issued for the Propagandist Press Committee. Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. 'The blasphemy depot'. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. Advertisement for the Propagandist Press Committee and the Liberty of Bequests Committee inside back cover. inside back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts & Co.
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[1891]
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N487
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Evolution
Religion
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Darwinism and religious thought), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Darwinism
Evolution-Religious Aspects-Christianity
NSS
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Text
jTfte Atfreistic ^Uniform
III.
THE GOSPEL
OF
EVOLUTION.
BY
EDWARD B. AVELING, D.Sc.
LONDON:
freethought
publishing
63,_ FLEET STREET E.C.
1 8 8 4.
PRICE
ONE
PENNY.
COMPANY,
�THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
------------- ♦-------------
Under this title it is proposed to issue a fortnightly publi
cation, each number of which shall consist of a lecture
delivered by a well-known Freethought advocate. Any
question may be selected, provided that it has formed the
subject of a lecture delivered from the platform by an
Atheist. It is desired to show that the Atheistic platform
is used for the service of humanity, and that Atheists war
against tyranny of every kind, tyranny of king and god,
political, social, and theological.
Each issue will consist of sixteen pages, and will be
published at one penny. Each writer is .responsible only
for his or her own views.
\
I. “ What is the Use of Prayer ?”
By Annie Besant.
II. “ Mind considered as a Bodily’ Function.”
Alice Bradlaugh.
By
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
A new and better Gospel is now preached to men. That
which has for a long time gone by the name of Gospel
(good news) is neither news nor good. It is not news, for
it has been preached for nearly nineteen centuries. Not
that length of time alone could make it old and effete.
But the Gospel of Christianity has not within itself that
inherent and strong life of reality which makes even old
truths to have a perennial freshness, an eternal youth.
Nor is the Gospel of Christianity good. In the tales that
it tells us of the past, in the advice that it gives us for the
present,, and in the hopes and threats it holds out for the
fixture, it is a misleading guide, a poor philosopher, a false
friend.
The legends have it that on the coming of the central
figure of the discredited evangel the angels sang together :
“Peace on earth, good will to men.” It was a false
alarm. Neither peace nor good will Was forthcoming.
But with the advent of this scientific gospel, the Gospel of
Evolution, comes the possibility of “striking a universal
peace through sea and land,” the possibility of the uni
versal brotherhood of man.
Perhaps we are all of us too anxious and too hopeful in
the feeling that some one idea will save the world. The
religious creeds of different races and times are the expres
sion of this anxiety. We that have rejected all belief in
the supernatural must take care that the same fancy that
has spoilt the lives of so many does not mar our own. We
must have a care lest we make too much of some truth ?
•
�36
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
even though it be a scientific conclusion, based on scientific
observation and reasoning. And we must not forget that,
of all the great generalisations, that of Evolution is the one
most likely to be thus regarded, for it is a generalisation
of generalisations. The mind of man is always longing
for some solid resting-place. Man wants to get back and
back, to something certain. He wants to feel that, what
ever happens, some one great principle stands fast. The
children of the decrepit gospel dreamed that this was
found in God. The children of the new Gospel know that
in the indestructibility of matter and of motion, and in the
infinite nature of the transformations of matter and motion,
they have a solid fact on which to fall back when all else
fails. Only it is very important to remember that, great as
any idea may be, the mental effort needed for its under
standing and its acquisition is to the individual of as much
moment as the idea itself. The exercise of our faculties
is of as great value to us as the results attained by the
exercise. The old parental habit of asking of the school
boy or the school-girl : “What prizes have you gained ? ”
is only one form of a general error. The question is not,
‘ ‘ What prizes have you ? ’ ’ but ‘ ‘ What have you learned ? ’ ’
We are doming to recognise this in some measure in our
estimates of grown men and women. Still, however, to the
vulgar, the measure of a man is the banker’s balance.
But the thoughtful, as yet few in number, although the
number grows hourly, and even the commonplace people,
if they are in the unaccustomed atmosphere of culture, are
estimating the value of a human being by that which he
actually does and is, rather than by the magnitude of the
cheques he can draw.
What is, then, this Evolution ? In the asking this ques
tion and in the attempt to answer we see how much happier
is the position of the new gospel as compared with that of
the old. The good news of Christianity, having no scien
tific and indeed no natural basis, has been Protean in its
forms. These have been indefinitely varied according to
the taste and fancy of the age and of the individual. The
Gospel as preached by Messrs. Benson, Booth, Baldwin
Brown, Spurgeon, Liddon, Moody, is somewhat mixed.
But the new evangel is founded wholly on a natural and
scientific basis. There may be slight differences of opinion
as to matters of detail among its apostles and its disciples,
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
37
but the fundamental principles are accepted by all. Upon
these, no doubt, much less any dispute reigns.
Evolution is the name for the idea of the unity and con
tinuity of phenomena. The popular and unscientific
notion was that there was not only an original effort on the
part of the supernatural causing the natural, setting it
going, in fact, but a continual interposition of the super
natural from without, controlling the natural. Evolution
is the doctrine of non-intervention. According to this
gospel, matter and motion are all in all. Matter is the
convenient name for all that which can affect the senses of
man. Motion is change of place, whether it be of large,
palpable masses, as when the arm is raised, or of minute
impalpable molecules, as when heat or electricity is at
work.
The ordinary notion of movement is wholly confined to
that which, is called molar, that is, the motion of masses.
Moles=a mass. Thus the movements of a running man,
or of a football when kicked, or of a railway train when
the engine draws it along, are all cases of molar motion.
But a finer kind of movement has of late years come
within the ken of mankind. It has been at work probably
eternally. It is molecular movement, or movement of
small masses. But only very recently has the mind of
man been able to take cognisance of this form. The
researches of the physicists, the chemists, the biologists
have demonstrated that there is a whole world of move
ments that affect only the minute particles of bodies.
Thus heat is a mode of motion; electricity is another;
magnetism is a third. The familiar phsenomena of light
are no longer regarded as due to any actual matter that has
been thrown from a luminous body. They are the result
of waves of a fluid imponderable and universal called
ether, and there seems every reason to believe that the
phsenomena commonly called vital are of the same or of a
kindred order. Life, it would appear, is but a mode of
motion. And though we know life generally only by its
manifestations of molar motion, as in the blow of the arm,
or the stride of the leg, yet these massive movements are
but the outward representatives of a large number of
internal movements, of chemical nature in digestion, of ner
vous nature in the sense-organs and nerve tissues. Every
bodily movement visible to the ordinary eye is only the
�38
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
obverse aspect of many molecular motions, not as yet
visible to man.
The reasons why we regard matter and motion as allsufficient in the explanation of all the phenomena of the
universe are several. In the first place, no destruction of
matter has ever been witnessed. Second, no destruction of
motion has ever been witnessed. The creation of either
matter or motion has been equally unseen. Transformations
of matter from one of its infinitely many forms to some
other are constantly visible, and they are always unat
tended by the smallest increase or diminution in the actual
quantity of matter. So also with motion—transformations
without any change in quantity are continually occurring.
Thus, we see the rocks disintegrated by the action of
rain and running water, “weathered” by the action of
the air. We see the matter of which they consisted worn
away and carried down by streams and rivers to be de
posited at the mouths of rivers or on the beds of seas. Or
we set fire to a candle and watch its matter combining with
the matter of the air to form the products of combustion,
carbon, dioxide, steam, and their fellows. Or a dead
animal or plant is seen to decay slowly into these same
gases that the burning candle gives forth and into certain
inorganic salts. And these are all cases of the transforma
tion of matter without any creation or destruction.
Or we see the molar motion of a student’s hands
bringing together some acid and two metals. At once
chemical action, a form of molecular motion, is set up.
The molar motion of hands, a piece of silk, and a glass
rod results in electricity, a mode of molecular motion. Or
we apply heat, a mode of molecular motion, to a bar of
metal which expands, to a mixture of hydrogen and
oxygen which unite chemically. Or to a crystal of tourma
line, one end of which becomes positively electric, the other
negatively. These are all cases of the transformation of
motion without any creation or destruction. In all these
cases the amount of matter and the amount of motion
remain unchanged. Only the quantities of particular
kinds vary. The generalisation that the quantity of matter
and motion in the universe is the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever, appears to be thoroughly established.
More than this. Not only is there no scientific basis what
ever for the fancy of a creation or of a destruction of matter
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
39
or of motion. The fancy is unthinkable. No human mind
is capable of picturing to itself the passage from the
material to the immaterial, the moment of time in which
the non-universe began to be the universe.
Yet again. Up to the present time every explanation
of every pheenomenon of the universe has been in terms of
matter and of motion. The law of gravitation, Kepler’s
three great generalisations in astronomy, the phenomena
of attraction and repulsion in electrified and magnetised
bodies, the nature of chemical elements and compounds,
the relation between plants and animals in regard to their
effect on the air, the principles of variation, of natural
selection, of heredity, of adaptation—these and thousands
of other truths that unseal our eyes to the beautiful mean
ing of nature, are all explanations as to how certain forms
of matter are in certain states of motion. And if up to the
present hour all the explanations that have been forth
coming of natural things are in terms of the natural, we
are entitled to conclude that all explanations hereafter will
be in kindred terms.
Or we may look on the question in another way. In the
days of man’s greater ignorance everything was primarily
or ultimately referred to the supernatural. All phenomena
were at first directly due to the action of the supernatural.
But, as time and knowledge advanced, these references
grew fewer and fewer in number. They were replaced by
perfectly natural explanations of events, and we are
entitled to believe that this process of elimination has now
gone on sufficiently far for us to hold that since super
naturalism is unnecessary for the primary explanation of
phaenomena, it is also unnecessary for their ultimate
explanation.
From all that I have just said it will be understood that
the Gospel of Evolution has a wider significance than popu
lar notions imply. The general idea as to Evolution, that
it is synonymous with Darwinism, is not accurate. The
Darwinian teaching is only a part, though in one sense it
is the most important part, of the Evolution truth. Evolu
tion itself means, as we have seen, the unity of phsenomena.
All things are, according to this new principle, one huge
continuity. Whilst Darwinism shows that man is not
distinct from the lower animals, and that all species of
animals, and all species of plants are artificial groups
4
�40
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
gliding one into the other, just as in their gradual de
velopment they glided one out of the other, Evolution goes
further than this and does not fare worse. For the
evolutionist not only believes that which the works of
Darwin have made an assured truth, but he believes that
plants and animals have had a common parentage, that
living matter has originated from the non-living, that
there has been no break in the vast series of phenomena
at any point.
Some of the general grounds for this belief have been
/ven. Let us look rapidly at some of the more special.
The principle of - the conservation of energy already men
tioned indirectly is, in a sense, the starting point of
thought on this subject. Grove’s essay on the “Correla
tion of the Physical Forces,” published a few years since,
was the first clear enunciation of the generalisation towards
which so many observations had led. When he reminded
men that chemical action, electricity, heat, sound, light,
magnetism, and life were all convertible, one into the other,
and thus convertible in definite numerical proportions,
mathematically calculable, the keynote of the idea of
Evolution had been struck.
Harsh as it may seem, an idea in any branch of know
ledge has never attained a sure basis until it is expressible
in terms of mathematics. There was a time when physics
and chemistry were divorced from mathematics to a large
extent. Now even the phenomena of electricity and the
reactions one upon another of chemical bodies are expressed
in algebraical formulae. This is the result of the increased
precision of our knowledge. Following in the footsteps of
physics and chemistry the biological sciences are becoming
every day more mathematical. We have formulae to express
the manner of the arrangement of leaves upon a stem, the
manner of arrangement of the parts of a flower. One of
these days every structural and functional fact in regard
to every living thing will be related to some formula of
mathematics more or less general. We shall not all
become martinets or dryasdusts. There is a beauty in
exactness. I sometimes think that the difference between
the loveliness of our thinking and of our dreaming on
natural phenomena, as compared with that which the older
thinkers and dreamers enjoyed, will be as the difference
between the joy of a game of chess between skilled players
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
t
,
41
or between those that know not even the moves. The
child pushes the kings and queens and rooks and knights
and bishops and pawns about at random, and laughs gaily.
But the master of the game, moving them according to
definite rules, obtains a far higher enjoyment, and produces
a combination that has its poetry.
The very sciences that deal with these different modes
of matter and motion are now by no means as clearly
marked off one from another as their earlier students
thought they were. Physics, chemistry, geology, botany,
zoology, anatomy, physiology, how they all dovetail into,
or actually overlap each other. It is impossible to say
sometimes to which domain of science a particular fact
belongs. The distinctions between the physical and the
chemical properties of bodies are confessedly artificial.
Botany implies a study’of the anatomy and the physiology
of plants. Physiology in its turn becomes only a question
of chemistry; -its phenomena are becoming reduced to
mathematical expressions. We are learning to calculate
the actual amount of work done in the performance of
different functions of the living body, in the same terms
as we calculate the work done by a steam engine. The
respiratory organs or the muscular during the day do so
many foot-pounds of work. The foot-pound is the unit of
measurement employed in the study of work. Work is
done when matter is moved through space. The foot
pound is the amount of work done when the mass of a
pound is raised one foot against the gravitation attraction
of the earth. A steam-engine does per day a certain
number of foot-pounds of work. Its capacity for work is
usually expressed by saying that it is so many horse
power. One horse power is equivalent to 33,000 foot
pounds per minute. The physiologists are, by means of
very intricate and careful calculations, enabled to calculate
with ever - increasing accuracy the equivalent in foot
pounds, i.e., the mechanical equivalent, of each of the
body functions of the average man per diem.
If we turn to any of the special sciences the same dove
tailing and over-lapping appear. In chemistry it is difficult
to mark off any group of bodies from all other groups.
The three sets of bodies that chemistry is supposed to
study are elements, mixtures, and compounds. An element
such as carbon or gold, is a body which has not yet been
�42
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
decomposed. A mixture is that which results from putting
together two or more substances, without those substances
undergoing any change of properties. Thus brandy and
water, or gunpowder is a mixture. The properties of the
brandy and of the water in the one case, and of the char
coal, nitre and sulphur in the other, are unchanged. A
compound is the result of the union of two or more elements
with change of properties; thus water is a compound of
hydrogen and oxygen, and its properties are those of
neither hydrogen nor oxygen. The fundamental distinc
tion supposed to be at the basis of all chemical study,
that between elements and compounds, is found to be in
applicable when we study such bodies as cyanogen, a com
pound of the two elements carbon and nitrogen, that
behaves like an element. Ammonium, a compound of
four atoms of hydrogen and one of nitrogen, also behaves
like an element, taking the place of such metallic elements
as potassium or sodium. In fact all the so-called ‘ ‘ com
pound radicles ” which enter so largely into our study of
organic chemistry are groups of two or atoms of two or
more elements that behave as simple bodies. The metals
and the non-metals are connected by such forms as arsenic
or selenium, placed by one chemist among the metals,
by another among the non-metals. Hydrogen, usually
classed with the non-metals, has the power of replacing
metallic elements. It does this so persistently ihat, on
theoretical grounds, chemists had long spoken of hydrogen
as probably essentially a metal. When the French chemist
Pictet succeeded in liquefying hydrogen, until then only
known in the gas form, the liquid fell upon the floor of the
laboratory with a metallic ring. And who is to say posi
tively whether an alloy of copper and zinc is to be regarded
as a mixture or as a compound of the two metals ?
Still more important is the bridging over the supposed
gulf between the inorganic and the organic chemical sub
stances. A few years back this gulf was supposed to be
great, fixed, impassable. The mineral*or inorganic was
makable by man. The organic was not, and never would
be. The chemist might go on continually manufacturing
hydrogen and oxygen, carbon dioxide, ammonia. But he
was never to hope to make alcohol, sugar, urea, any of the
multitudinous substances called organic. And now all this
folly of forbidding is at an end. The organic bodies are
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
43
manufactured by man. The inorganic and the organic are
no more regarded as clearly distinguishable. Even the
chemistry books by their very titles recognise and proclaim
this fact. We have no longer works on organic chemistry.
We have volumes on the chemistry of carbon compounds.
In geology the different kinds of rocks graduate into
each other. Between the aqueous, or sedimentary, and
the igneous, or those due to the action of fire, range the
metamorphic, i.e., sedimentary rocks that have been after
wards subjected to heat. The various systems of sedi
mentary rocks are known now to be purely artificial if
convenient divisions. From the Laurentian up to the
recent rocks there has never been any real hiatus. No
where is there the slightest evidence of pause or of recom
mencement. Our groups are artificial. Nature is like
Gallio and cares for none of these things.
Whilst rocks thus glide one into the other, the fossil
remains that they contain do likewise. If the view of the
special creationist were accurate we ought to find isolated
forms of dead animals and plants, we ought to find sudden
appearances in the rocks of forms not allied to these already
encountered, we ought not necessarily to find a series of
organic remains ascending in complexity of structure. If
the view of the evolutionist is accurate, we ought to find no .
forms of dead animals or plants isolated ; we ought never
to find a form appearing without preliminary heralds of its
coming in the shape of kindred forms; we ought to find a
series of organic remains whose later members are in ad
vance of the earlier. These latter expectations are realised.
In like manner the gap supposed to exist between the
kingdoms of the non-living and living is closing up. As
long as men had only studied the higher forms of living
things there was no difficulty in defining and distinguishing
living organisms. To define and to distinguish the lowest
forms of those now known is impossible. IIow completely
this is true can only be understood by those who have
studied the protoplasmic masses that hover on the border
line between the organic and the inorganic. But even the
unskilled in microscopic work will be able to grasp some- ,
thing of the great truth if they will take the trouble to
look up the innumerable 'definitions of life that have been
given by various persons, and note how unsatisfactory,
how contradictory and often self-contradictory they are.
�44
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
If we pass up into the kingdoms of the living, and study
plants and animals, the same unity of phsenomena meets
us. Our classification terms—order, genus, species, and
so forth—are as artificial as our names for the geological
systems. No one holds to-day that any single species is
clearly marked off from all others. Connecting links
abound in our vegetable kingdom. The lichens, long
regarded as a separate class of lowly organised plants are
now known to be fungi that are parasitic upon algae. The
higher cryptogams or flowerless plants are found to be at
one in their structure and functions with the lower phsenogams or flowering plants.
The distinctions between plants and animals are found
to have vanished. Once again it is easy enough to dis
tinguish high plants from high animals.. But no man can
satisfactorily draw the line between the lower members of
the two kingdoms. The old definitions of the animal and
the plant given with a suicidal glibness in old books on
botany and zoology, when tried in the balance of criticism,
are found wanting. Even the food-distinction, supposed
to be the best distinction between the two groups, fails.
It is no longer true that plants feed on the inorganic, and
animals on organic substances. The cases of vegetable
parasites and of insectivorous plants give a direct contra
diction to this statement. And it is very interesting to notice
how gradual are the transitions in this as m all cases. A
group of plants known as saprophytes, that feed on decay
ing organic things, is the natural transition between the
ordinary plants that eat inorganic food-stuffs, and those
plants that, like animals, exist on organic substances. So
marked is this difficulty of distinguishing between the
lower plants and the lower animals, that it has been sug
gested that a third kingdom of the living should be con
structed midway .between the two generally recognised.
This is to be called Protista, and is to include all the
doubtful forms that are not clearly members either of the
Kingdom Animalia or of the Kingdom Vegetabilia.
. If the arbitrary nature of all our systems of classifica
tion is understood, this new division will do little harm.
But for the systematist the difficulty is by the establish
ment of this group only doubled. Heretofore he had only
to struggle over a particular living thing, with the view to
determine whether it were plant or animal. Now he will
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLI/TION.
45
have to struggle over it with the view of telling whether
it is Protistic or animal, or Protistic or vegetable. But
the true evolutionist will only look on the group of the
Protista as containing forms that represent the parent con
dition of both vegetables and animals.
The animal kingdom, no less than the vegetable, gives
these results. Amphioxus, the little Mediterranean fish,
links the Vertebrata, or back-boned animals, for ever on
to the Invertebrata. The classes of the Vertebrate sub
kingdom have their connecting links or intermediate forms.
These classes, adopting for popular exposition the old
■classification, are the Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves,
Mammalia.' Whilst Amphioxus at the lower end of the
class of fishes connects these with the soft-bodied animals,
or Mollusca, at the upper end of the Pisces, we have the
Lepidosiren, or mud-fish. It is impossible to say whether
this animal is more of a fish or a reptile. With limbs rather
than fins, with three cavities to its heart, and a swim
bladder that acts as a lung, it has yet so many parts of its
anatomy that are piscine as to lead Professor Huxley still
to place it as a solitary representative of the highest order
■of Pisces.
The class Amphibia is itself a confirmation of the general
truth, for its members, such as the frogs, are in their early
condition fish, and in their adult state reptiles. Ptero
dactyl of the Jurassic strata is the winged lizard.
Its name tells us that we have a form intermediate be
tween the classes Reptilia and Aves. The duck-billed
Platypus, or Ornithorhyncus, of Australia, is a furred
mammal that suckles its young, and yet has a bird’s bill,
a bird’s feet, a bird’s wishing-bone, a bird’s heart, a bird’s
alimentary canal. If we turn to the individual classes, the
same thing obtains. To take but the the highest class, the
Prosimise, or half-apes, among the Mammalia are an order,
that stands centrally to the Insectivora, Rodentia, Cheirop
tera, and Primates. There is no gap between man and
the rest of the Primates. Not a single mark of anatomy,
of physiology, or of psychology, clearly distinguishes man
from the highest apes.
If we study the individual animal, the same fact of the
unity of phsenomena is again borne in upon us. The
bodily functions are by no means so distinct in their nature
as we were wont to think. To take but an illustration.
�46
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
The sense-organs of man are all found to be only so many
modifications of the integument.
The skin or tactile organ is the integument. The tongue
or taste organ is but the integument folded inwards and a
little modified. The nasal cavities are also lined with a
modification of the same tissue, and even the most complex
sense organs that are at tho same time the most important
—that is the eye and the ear—are, as the study of develop
ment or embryology shows us, only the result of a series of
remarkable changes affecting certain parts of the epidermis
of the animal.
Those physiological functions of the human body that
appeal’ to be clearly marked off are really not completely
demarcated. Take as example the excretory action of the
skin, lungs, and the renal organs. The lungs get rid
especially of carbon dioxide; the skin of water ; the renal
organs of the products of nitrogenous decay. But each of
these organs also eliminates those products which are
eliminated by the other two. Thus the lungs, whilst they
get rid principally of carbon dioxide, also get rid of water
in the form of steam and of nitrogenous matter. The skin
gives off a certain quantity of carbon dioxide and nitrogen
excreta. And the renal organs also eliminate all three of
the chief forms of excretory matter. When any one of
these three organs is not functioning at its best, extra work
is thrown upon the others, and' in some extreme cases this
metastasis, or transference of function, is very remarkable.
Thus an ulcer in the human body has been known to
secrete milk.
Try to realise at least something of what all this means.
It is no longer possible to mark off clearly the various
domains of science. Science is one, for it is the study of
nature, and nature is one. In every branch of our know
ledge that daily grows more unified, the transitions are
found to be innumerable and the gradations infinitesimal.
Our chemical groups, our geological rocks and strata, our
inorganic and organic kingdoms, our plants and animals,
our classes, orders, genera, species, all are seen to be
artificial.
Here is then the new message that science is uttering to
man. It is in truth good news. There is no break any
where. The universe is one vast whole. It is true that
at first there seems to be a loss because of the indistinctness
�THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTION.
47
that now veils the old lines of demarcation. At first some
thing of a shock is felt when we realise that the old
definitions and classifications are only matters of con
venience, and really represent nothing in nature. But our
view of the whole gains incomparably. We are led to
take a larger and more true conception of the universe.
If the subdivisions disappear the unity of the whole comes
out with wonderful clearness. We study phenomena from
below upwards, and see something more than an unbroken
series. We see that actually there is no below and no
above. The mineral kingdon of the non-living passes into
the living. This by gradual stages of ascent rises to the
loftiest forms of plants and animals yet known. But these
in their constant decay and in their death once for all as
individuals, return to the mineral kingdom again. If only
we grasp the full meaning of this new gospel founded on
science, all life acquires a new significance. Most of all
our own life, as the highest expression known to us of the
phenomena of matter in motion, becomes more solemn and
more full of hope. In it more than in any other are gathered
together the forces of the universe. The attraction of the
stone for the planet, and of the particles of rock one for
another, the loves and hates of chemical atoms, the
energies of electrified and magnetised bodies, the variations
of innumerable simpler forms of organisms, long chains of
heredity reaching back through incalculable times, myriads
of adaptations, struggles and failures, deaths and lives, all
have met in us. We, more than all others, are the heirs
of the ages. While our less fortunate brethren, the lower
animals, the plants, the minerals, are playing their good
part in the universal history, without the consciousness
in full of the meaning of it all, we read the signs of
the past and of to-day. “We know what we are, but we
know not what we may be,” in all the detail that our
children’s children will see and live. Yet we know that
the race has a future that will transcend its past, as
that past transcended the dark dumb lives of the ancestry
whence our kind has sprung.
The Gospel of Evolution is replacing that of Chris
tianity. Science is taking the place of Religion and yielding
to mankind the poetry that its forerunner missed. Nature
is our all in all. Only the whisper of a secret thought
here and there of hers has yet reached our ears. But
�48
THE ATHEISTIC PLATFORM.
every sound of her voice, faint or thunderous, tells us that
the supernatural is worse than doomed. It does not exist.
The preachers of this new gospel are nature herself and
all her children. Thus the history of man, all science, all
human lives, we that live and love, are the apostles of the
new evangel. And its temples, marred as they are in some
instances by the worship now and again of the dead god,
are the halls of universities, the state-schools, the science
classes for our young men and maidens, the laboratories
and the studies of the philosophers, the hearts of all that
seek for truth.
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, at 63, Fleet
Street, London, E.C.—1884.
�
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The gospel of evolution
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Aveling, Edward B. [1849-1898]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: [35]-48 p. ; 18 cm.
Series title: Atheistic Platform
Series number: 3
Notes: Through-pagination with other pamphlets in Atheistic Platform series. List of other titles in the series inside front cover. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 63 Fleet Street, E.C. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Freethought Publishing Company
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1884
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N1510
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Evolution
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Evolution (Biology)
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Text
B %V I
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
G. W. FOOTE.
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PUBLISHING
COMPANY, .
28 STONECUTTER STREET, KO.
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DARWIN
GOD
BY
G. W. FOOTE.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1889.
�4
LONDON :
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. 57. EOOTE,
AT 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
--------- •----------
Only a few feet from the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton,
in Westminster Abbey, lie the bones of Charles
Darwin. The two men are worthy compeers in the
scientific roll of fame. Newton’s discovery and estab
lishment of the law of Gravitation marked an epoch
in the history of science, and the same may be said
of Darwin’s discovery and establishment of the law
of Natural Selection. The Vrincipia and the Origin
of Species rank together as two of the most memorablemonuments of scientific genius.
In a certain sense, however, Darwin’s achievements
are the more remarkable, because they profoundly
affect our notions of man’s position and destiny in theuniverse.
The great English naturalist was of a.
modest and retiring disposition. He shrank from all
kinds of controversy. He remarked, in one of his
letters to Professor Huxley, that he felt it impossible
to understand how any man could get up and make an
impromptu speech in the heat of a public discussion.
Nevertheless he was demolishing the popular super
stition far more effectually than the most sinewy and
�4
DARWIN ON GOD.
dexterous athletes of debate. He was quietly revolu
tionising the world of thought. He was infusing into
the human mind the leaven of a new truth. And the
new truth was tremendous in its implications. No
wonder the clergy reviled and cursed it.
They did
not understand it any more than the Inquisitors who
burnt Bruno and tortured Galileo understood the
Copernican astronomy; but they felt, with a true
professional instinct, with that cunning of self-preser
vation which nature bestows on every species, including
priests, that the Darwinian theory was fatal to tlieir
deepest dogmas, and therefore to their power, their
privileges, and their profits. They had a sure intuition
that Darwinism was the writing on the wall, announc
ing the doom of their empire ; and they recognised
that their authority could only be prolonged by hiding
the scripture of destiny from the attention of the
multitude.
The popular triumph of Darwinism must be the
death-blow to theology. The Copernican astronomy
destroyed the geocentric 'theory, which made the earth
the centre of the universe, and all the celestial bodies
its humble satellites. From that moment the false
astronomy of the Bible was doomed, and its exposure
was hound to throw discredit on “ the Word of God/’
From that moment, also, the notion was doomed that
the Deity of this inconceivable universe was chiefly
occupied with the fortunes of the human insects on
this little planet, which is but a speck in the infinitude
of space. Similarly the Darwinian biology is a sen
tence of doom on the natural history of the Bible.
Evolution and special creation are antagonistic ideas.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
5
And if man himself has descended, or ascended, from
lower forms of life; if he has been developed through
thousands of generations from a branch of the Simian
family ; it necessarily follows that the Garden of Eden
is a fairy tale, that Adam and Eve were not the
parents of the human race, that the Fall is an oriental
legend, that Original Sin is a theological libel on
humanity, that the Atonement is an unintelligible
dogma, and the Incarnation a relic of ancient
mythology.
Let it not be forgotten, however, that Darwinism
would have been impossible if geology had not pre
pared its way. Natural Selection wants plenty of
elbow-room; Evolution requires immeasurable time.
But this could not be obtained until geology had made
a laughing-stock of Biblical chronology. The record
of the rocks reveals a chronology, not of six thousand,
but of millions of years ; and during a vast portion of
that time life has existed, slowly ascending to higher
stages, and mounting from the monad to man. It was
fitting, therefore, that Darwin should dedicate his
first volume to Sir Charles Lyell.
Darwin was not a polemical writer; on the contrary,
his views w7ere advanced with extreme caution.
He was gifted with magnificent patience. When the
Origin of Species was published he knew that Man
was not exempted from the laws of evolution. He
satisfied his conscience by remarking that “ Much
light will be thrown on the origin of man and his
history,” and then waited twelve years before ex
pounding his final conclusions in the Descent of Man.
This has, indeed, been made a subject of reproach.
�6
DARWIN ON GOD.
But Darwin was surely the best judge as to how and
when his theories should be published. He did his
own great work in his own great way. There is no
question of concealment. He gave his views to the
world when they were fully ripened; and if, in a
scientific treatise, he forbore to discuss the bearing of
his views on the principles of current philosophy and
the dogmas of popular theology, he let fall many
remarks in his text and footnotes which were sufficient
to show the penetrating reader that he was far from
indifferent to such matters and had very definite
opinions of his own. What could be more striking,
what could better indicate his attitude of mind, than
the fact that in the Origin of Species he never men
tioned the book of Genesis, while in the Descent of
Man he never alluded to Adam and Eve
Such con
temptuous silence was more eloquent than the most
pointed attack.
DARWIN’S GRANDFATHER.
Before Darwin was born his patronymic had been
made illustrious. It is a curious fact that both Darwin
and Newton came of old Lincolnshire families. Newton
wras born in the county, but the Darwins had removed
in the seventeenth century to the neighboring county
of Nottingham. William Darwin (born 1655) married
the heiress of Robert Waring, of Wilsford. This
lady also inherited the manor of Elston, which has
remained ever since in the family. It went to the
younger son of William Darwin. This Robert Darwin
was the father of four sons, the youngest of whom,
�DARWIN ON GOD.
7
Erasmus Darwin, was born on December 12, 1731, at
Elston Hall.
The life of Erasmus Darwin has been charmingly
written by his illustrious grandson.1 Prefixed to the
Memoir is a photographic portrait from a picture by
Wright of Derby.
It shows a strong, kind face,
dominated by a pair of deep-set, commanding eyes,
surmounted by a firm, broad brow and finely modelled
head. The whole man looks one in a million. Gazing
at the portrait, it is easy to understand his scientific
eminence, his great reputation as a successful physician,
his rectitude, generosity, and powers of sympathy and
imagination.
Dr. Erasmus Darwin practised medicine at Derby?
but his fame was widespread. While driving to and
from his patients he wrote verses of remarkable polish,
embodying the novel ideas with which his head fer
mented. They were not true poetry, although they
were highly praised by Edgeworth and Hayley, and
even by Cowper; but Byron was guilty of “ the false
hood of extremes ” in stigmatising their author as “ a
mighty master of unmeaning rhyme.” The rhyme
was certainly not unmeaning : on the contrary, there
was plenty of meaning, and fresh meaning too, but it
should have been expressed in prose.
Erasmus
Darwin had a surprising insight into the methods of
nature; he threw out a multitude of pregnant hints in
biology, and once or twice he nearly stumbled on the
law of Natural Selection. He saw the “ struggle for
existence ” with remarkable clearness. “ The stronger
1 Erasmus Darwin. By Ernst Krause. With a Preliminary
Notice by Charles Darwin. London : Murray, 1879.
�8
DARWIN ON GOD.
locomotive animals/’ lie wrote, ii devour the weaker
ones without mercy. Such is the condition of organic
nature I whose first law might be expressed in the
words, ‘ Eat or be eaten/ and which would seem to be
one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of
rapacity and injustice.’’ Mr. G. H. Eewes credits him
with “ a profounder insight into psychology than any
of his contemporaries and the majority of his successors
exhibit,” and says that he <c deserves a place in history
for that one admirable conception of psychology as
subordinate to the laws of life.” Dr. Maudsley bears
testimony to his sagacity in regard to mental disorders ;
Dr. Lauder Brunton shows that he anticipated Rosen
thal’s theory of “ catching cold ” ; and a dozen other
illustrations might be given of his scientific prescience
in chemistry, anatomy, and medicine. He was also a
very advanced reformer. He believed in exercise and
fresh air, and taught his sons and daughters to swim.
He saw the vast importance of educating girls. He
studied sanitation, pointed out how towns should be
supplied with pure water, and urged that sewage
should be turned to use in agriculture instead of being
allowed to pollute our rivers.
He also sketched out a
variety of useful inventions, which he was too busy to
complete himself. Nor did he confine himself to
practical reforms.
He sympathised warmly with
Howard, who was reforming our prison system; and
he denounced slavery at the time when the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel held slaves in the Barbadoes, and absolutely declined to give them Christian
instruction.2
2 Erasmus Darwin, p. 47.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
9
No one will be surprised to learn that Erasmus
Darwin was a sceptic. Indeed there seems to have
been a family tendency in that direction. His sister
Susannah, a young lady of eighteen, writing to him at
school in his boyhood, after some remarks on abstinence
during Lent, said “ As soon as we kill our hog I intend
to take a part thereof with the Family, for I’m in
formed by a learned Divine that Hog's Flesh is Fish,
and has been so ever since the Devil entered into them
and ran into the Sea.” Bright, witty Susannah 1 She
died unmarried, and became, as Darwin says, the
“ very pattern of an old lady, so nice looking, so gentle,
so kind, and passionately fond of flowers.”
Erasmus Darwin’s scepticism was of an early growth.
At the age of twenty-three, in a letter to Dr. Okes,
after announcing his father’s death he professes a firm
belief in “ a superior Ens EntiumJ’ but rejects the
notion of a special providence, and says that “ general
laws seem sufficient ” ; and while humbly hoping that
God will “re-create us ” after death, he plainly asserts
that “ the light of Nature affords us not a single argu
ment for a future state.” He has frequently been
called an Atheist, but this is a mistake ; he was a
Deist, believing in God, but rejecting Revelation.
Even Unitarianism was too orthodox for him, and he
wittily called it “ a feather-bed to catch a falling
Christian.”
His death occurred on April 10, 1802. He expired
in his arm-chair “ without pain or emotion of any
kind.” He had always hoped his end might be painless,
and it proved to be so. Otherwise he was not disturbed
by the thought of death. “ When I think of dying, ”
�10
PARWIN ON GOP.
lie wrote to liis friend Edgeworth, “ It is always without
pain or fear.”
Such a brief account of this extraordinary man
would be inadequate to any other purpose, but it
suffices to show that Darwin was himself a striking
illustration of the law of heredity. Scientific boldness
and religious scepticism ran in the blood of his race. ■
DABWIN’S FATHER.
Darwin’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, the third
son of Erasmus Darwin, settled down as a doctor at
Shrewsbury. He had a very large practice, and was a
very remarkable man. He stood six-feet two and
was broad in proportion. His shrewdness, rectitude
and benevolence gained him universal love and esteem.
He was reverenced by his great son, who always spoke
of him as “ the wisest man I ever knew.’’ His wife
was a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, and her sweet,
gentle, sympathetic nature was inherited by her
famous son.
She died in 1817, thirty-two years
before her husband, who died on November 13, 1848.
There is little, if anything, to be gleaned from any
published documents as to the opinions of Darwin’s
father. Upon this point Mr. Francis Darwin has been
too zealously discreet. Happily I have been furnished
with a few particulars by the Rev. Edward Myers,
minister of the Unitarian chapel at Shrewsbury.
Mrs. Darwin was herself a Unitarian, and she
attended with her family the Unitarian chapel in High
Street, Shrewsbury, of which the Rev. George Case
was then minister. The daughters were all baptised
�DARWIN ON GOD.
11
by Mr. Case and their names entered in the chapel
register; but the sons were for some reason baptised
in the parish church of St. Chad. Charles Darwin
attended Mr. Case’s school, and was by him prepared
for the Shrewsbury Grammar School.
Up to 1825,
when he went to the University of Edinburgh, he,
with the Darwin family, regularly attended the Uni
tarian place of worship. But in 1832, after the erec
tion of St. George’s Church, Frankwell, they left the
chapel and went to church.
“ Dr. Darwin,” says Mr. Myers, who succeeded Mr.
Case, “was never a regular attendant at the Unitarian
chapel, but he went occasionally. Indeed, he never
regularly attended any place of worship, and his
extreme view’s on theological and religious matters
were so well known that he used to be commonly
spoken of as ‘Dr. Darwin the unbeliever,’ and ‘Dr
Darwin the infidel.’ ”
The question naturally arises, how could Dr. Darwin
have seriously intended his son to become a clergy
man'? Mr. Myers offers, as I think, a sufficient
explanation. The Church at that time was looked
upon as simply a professional avenue, like the law or
medicine; and, as Mr. Gladstone remarks in his
Chapter of Autobiography, “ the richer benefices were
very commonly regarded as a suitable provision for
such members of the higher families as were least fit
to push their way in any other profession requiring
thought and labor.” But, the reader will exclaim, how
was it possible to include Charles Darwin in this
category of incapables 1
The answer is simple.
Darwin was not brilliant in his youth. !Iis great
�12
DARWIN ON GOD.
faculties required time to ripen. He failed as a medical
student because lie had an unconquerable antipathy to
the sight of blood, and was so afflicted by witnessing a
bad operation on a child that he actually ran away.
He was always regarded as “ a very ordinary boy/’ to
use his own words; and his father once said to him,
“ You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat
catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and
your family.’’3 It was a singularly infelicitous pro
phecy, but it shows Dr. Darwin’s mean opinion of his
son’s intellect, and enables us to understand how “ Dr.
Darwin the infidel” devoted his unpromising cub to
the great refuge of incapacity.
DABWIN’S EARLY PIETY.
Either the Rev. George Case belonged to the
more orthodox wing of Unitarianism, or the teach
ing at the Shrewsbury Grammar School must have
effaced any sceptical impressions he made on the mind
of Charles Darwin, whose early piety is evident
both from his Autobiography and from several of his
letters. And this fact is of the highest importance,
since it follows that his disbelief in later years was the
result of independent thought and the gradual pressure
of scientific truth.
“ I well remember,” he says, “ in the early part of
my school life that I often had to run very quickly to
be in time, and from being a fleet runner was generally
successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to
3Life and. Letters of Charles Darwin. Edited by his son, Francis
Darwin. Vol. I., p. 32.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
13
God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed
my success to the prayers and not to my quick running,
and marvelled how generally I was aided.
Speaking of himself at the age of twenty or twentyone, he says, “ I did not then doubt the strict and
literal truth of every word in the Bible?’0 When a
little later he went on board the “ Beagle/'’ to take that
famous voyage which he has narrated so charmingly,
and which determined his subsequent career, he was
still “ quite orthodox.’-’ “ I remember/’ he says,
“ being laughed at by several of the officers (though
themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality/’0
Darwin charitably supposes “ it was the novelty of the
argument which amused them/'’ But why was the
argument novel ? Simply because the Bible is a kind
of fetish, to be worshipped and sworn by, anything but
read and followed. As Mill remarked, it furnishes
texts to fling at the heads of unbelievers ; but when the
Christian is expected to act upon it, he is found to
conform to other standards, including his own con
venience. There can be little doubt that the laughter
of his shipmates produced a powerful and lasting effect
on Darwin’s mind. His character was translucent and
invincibly sincere ; and the laughter of orthodox
persons at their own doctrines was calculated to set
him thinking about their truth.
ALMOST A CLERGYMAN.
Being a f allure as a medical student, Darwin received
i Life and Letters, vol. i.. p. 31.
5 Vol. I., p. 45.
' 6 Vol. I., p. 308
�14
DARWIN ON GOD.
a proposal from his father to become a clergyman, and
1 he rather liked the idea of settling down as a country
parson. Fancy Darwin in a pulpit!
The finest
scientific head since Newton distilling bucolic sermons I
What a tragi-comedy it would have been I
Darwin carefully read “ Pearson on the Creed,”
and other books on divinity. £< I soon persuaded my
self,” he says, “ that our Creed must be accepted.”
He went up to Cambridge and studied hard.
“ In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary
to get up'Paley’s Evidences of Christianity and his Moral Philo'
sophy. This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced
that I could have written out the whole of the ‘ Evidences ’
with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language
of Paley. The logic of this book, and, as I may add, of his
Natural Theology, gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The
careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any
part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which,
as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me
in the education of my mind. I did not at that tirqe trouble
myself about Paley’s premises; and taking these on trust, I
was charmed and convinced by the long line of argumentation.”
Darwin probably owed most to the Natural Theology
of Paley. Writing to Sir John Lubbock nearly thirty
years later, he said: “ I do not think I hardly ever
admired a book more.” Perhaps it was less the logic
of the great Archdeacon than his limpid style and in
teresting treatment of physical science which charmed
the young mind of Darwin. He had a constitutional
love of clearness, and his genius was then turning
towards the studies which occupied his life.
Scruples gradually entered Darwin’s mind. He
began to find the creed not so credible. One of his
�DARWIN ON GOD.
15
friends gives an interesting reminiscence of this period.
“We had an earnest conversation,” says Mr. Herbert,
4< about going into Holy Orders; and I remember his
asking me, with reference to the question put by the
Bishop in the ordination service, 4 Do you trust that
you are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit, etc./
whether I could answer in the affirmative, and on my
saying I could not, he said, 4 Neither can I, and there
fore I cannot take holy orders/ ” Still he did not
abandon the idea altogether; he drifted away from it
little by little until it fell out of sight. Fourteen or
fifteen years later, writing to Sir Charles Lyell, he had
gone so far as to speak of 44 that Corporate Animal,
the Clergy.”
Looking back over these experiences, only a few
years before his death, Darwin was able to regard them
with equanimity and amusement. There is a sly
twinkle of humor in the following passage.
“ Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the
orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a
clergyman. Nor was this intention and my father’s wish ever
formally given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving
Cambridge, I joined the 4 Beagle ’ as naturalist. If the
phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect
to be a clergyman. A few years ago the secretary of a German
psychological society asked me earnestly by letter for a photo
graph of myself; and some time afterwards I received the
proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed that
the shape of my head had been the subject of a public discus
sion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the bump of
reverence,developed enough for ten priests.”7
The Rev. Joseph Cook, of Boston, accounts for
7 Vol. I., p. 45.
�16
DARWIN ON GOD.
Matthew Arnold's scepticism by the flatness of the
top of his head. Mr. Arnold lacked the bump which
points to God. But how does Mr. Cook account for
the scepticism of Darwin, whose head was piouslyadorned with such a prodigious bump of veneration ?
ON BOARD THE “ BEAGLE.”
While at Cambridge, studying for the Church,
Darwin made the acquaintance of Professor Henslow
and Dr. Whewell. He read Humboldt “ with care and
profound interest/’ and Herschel’s Introduction to the
Study of Natural Philosophy. These writers excited
in him “ a burning zeal to add even the most humble
contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science.5'
Humboldt’s description of the glories of Teneriffe
made him desire to visit that region. He even “ got
an introduction to a merchant in London to inquire
about ships." Soon afterwards he became acquainted
with Professor Sedgwick, and his attention was turned
to geology. On returning from a geological tour in
North Wales with Sedgwick he found a letter from
Henslow offering him a share of Captain Fitzroy’s
cabin on board the “ Beagle," if he cared to go without
pay as naturalist. The offer was accepted, Dr. Darwin
behaved handsomely, and the young man sailed away
with a first-rate equipment and a pecuniary provision
for his five years' voyage round the world. This
voyage, says Darwin, “ has been by far the most im
portant event in my life, and has determined my whole
career."
Readers of Darwin’s fascinating A Naturalist’s
�DARWIN ON GOD.
17
Voyage8 know that his great powers were matured on
board the “ Beagled’ “ That my mind became deve
loped through my pursuits during the voyage,” he
himself says, “ is rendered probable by a remark made
by my father, who was the most acute observer whom
I ever saw, of a sceptical disposition, and far from
being a believer in phrenology ; for on first seeing me
after the voyage, he turned round to my sisters and
exclaimed, ‘ Why, the shape of his head is quite
altered.’ ”
During the voyage Darwin was brought into close
and frequent contact with “ that scandal to Christian
nations—-Slavery.”9 This was a matter on which he
felt keenly. His just and compassionate nature was
stirred to the depths by the oppression and sufferings
of the American negroes. The infamous scenes he
witnessed haunted his imagination. Nearly thirty
years afterwards, writing to Dr. Asa Gray, he wished,
“though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North
would proclaim a crusade against slavery.” His im
pressions at the earlier date were recorded in his
book, and it is best to quote the passage in full:
“On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil.
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To
this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful
vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco,
I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect
that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was
8 A Naturalist's Voyage. Journal of Researches into the Natural
History and Geology of the Countries visited during the
Voyage of H. M. S. "Beagle” round the World. By Charles
Darwin.
9 Life and Letters,veA, i., p. 237.
�18
DARWIN ON GOD.
as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that
these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that
this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I
lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the
fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a
young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten,
and persecuted, enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal.
I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice
with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head
for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw
his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye.
These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish
colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are better
treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European
nations. I have seen at Rio Janeiro a powerful negro’ afraid
to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was
present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating
for ever the men, women, and little children of a large number
of families who had longed lived together. I will not even
allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authen
tically heard of ; —nor would I have mentioned the above
revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded
by the constitutional gaiety of the negro, as to speak of slavery
as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the
houses of the upper classes,where the domestic slaves are
usually well treated; and they have not, like myself, lived
.amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about
their condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull
who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching
his master’s ears.
It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty;
■as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are
far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of
their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested
against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by
the ever illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to
palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our
�DARWIN ON GOD.
19
poorer countrymen; if the misery of our poor be caused
not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great
is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see ;
as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one
land, by showing that men in another land suffered from
some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave
owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put
themselves- into the position of the latter;—what a cheerless
prospect, with not even a hope of change 1 Picture to yourself
the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little
children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to
call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the
first bidder I And these deeds are done and palliated by men
who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who be
lieve in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth I”1
The sting of this passage is in its tail. Darwin
must have felt that there was something hypocritical
and sinister in the pretensions of Christianity. He
must have asked himself what was the practical value
of a creed which permitted such horrors.
SETTLING AT DOWN.
Darwin married on January 29, 1839. His wife
was singularly helpful, making his home happy, and
subordinating herself to the great ends of his life.
Children grew up around them, and their home was
one of the brightest and best in the world. Here is a
pretty touch in Darwin’s letter to his friend Fox, dated
from Upper Gower Street, London, July 1840 : “He,
(i.e., the baby) is so charming that I cannot pretend to
any modesty. I defy anybody to flatter us on our
baby, for 1 defy anyone to say anything in its praise of*
Pp. 499—500.
�20
DARWIN ON GOD.
which we are not fully conscious ... I hacl not the
smallest conception there was so much in a five-month
baby.'-’ Cunning nature I twining baby fingers about
the big man’s heart. Still the proud father studied
the cherub as a scientist; he watched its mental growth
with the greatest assiduity, and thus began those
observations which he ultimately published in the
Expression of the Emotions.
In September 1842 he went to live at Down, where
he continued to reside until his death. He helped to
found a Friendly Club there, and served as its treasurer
for thirty years.
He was also treasurer of a Coal
Club.
The Rev. Brodie Innes says “ His conduct
towards me and my family was one of nnvarying kind
ness.’"’ Darwin was a liberal contributor to the local
charities, and “ he held that where there was really no
important objection, his assistance should be given to
the clergyman, who ought to know the circumstances
best, and was chiefly responsible.”
He did not, however, go through the mockeyy of
attending church. I was informed by the late head
constable of Devonport, who was himself an open
Atheist, that he had once been on duty for a consider
able time at Down. He had often seen Darwin escort
his family to church, and enjoyed many a conversation
with the great man, who used to enjoy a walkthrough
the country lanes while the devotions were in progress
DEATH AND BURIAL.
Darwin’s life henceforth was that of a country
gentleman and a secluded scientist. His great works,
�DARWIN ON GOD.
21
more revolutionary than all the political and social
turmoil of his age, were planned and written in the
quiet study of an old house in a Kentish village. He
suffered terribly from ill health, but he labored on
gallantly to the end, and died in harness. “ For nearly
forty years,"’ writes Mr. Francis Darwin, “ he never
knew one day of the health ot ordinary men, and thus
his life was one long struggle against the weariness and
strain of sickness.” But no whimperings escaped him,
or petulant reproaches on those around him. Always
gentle, loving and beloved, he looked on the universe
with unswerving serenity. A nobler mixture of sweet
ness and strength never adorned the earth.
In 1876 he wrote some Recollections for his children,
with no thought of publication. “I have attempted,”
he said, “ to write the following account of myself, as
if I were a dead man in another world looking back at
my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life
is nearly over with me.”
He was ready for Death, but they did not meet for
six years. During February and March, 1882, he wa?
obviously breaking. The rest must be told by his son,
‘■No especial change occurred during the beginning of April,
but on Saturday 15th he was seized with giddiness while
sitting at dinner in the evening, and fainted in an attempt to
reach his sofa. On the 17th he was again better, and in my
temporary absence recorded for me the progress of an experi
ment in which I was engaged. During the night of April 18th,
about a quarter to twelve, he had a severe attack and passed
into a faint, from which he was brought back to consciousness
with great difficulty. He seemed to recognise the approach
of death, and said, ‘ I am not the least afraid to die.’ All the
next morning he suffered from terrible nausea, and hardly
�22
DARWIN ON GOD.
rallied, before the end came. He died at about four o’clock on
Wednesday, April 19tb, 1882”2
Thus the great scientist and sceptic went to his
everlasting rest. He had no belief in God, no expec
tation of a future life. But he had done his duty; he had
filled the world with new truth ; he had lived a life of
heroism, compared with which the hectic courage of
battle-fields is vulgar and insignificant; and he died in
soft tranquillity, surrounded by the beings he loved.
His last conscious words were I am not the least afraid
to die. No one who knew him, or his life and work,
could for a moment suspect him capable of fear.
Nevertheless it is well to have the words on record
from the lips of those who saw him die. The carrion
priests who batten on the reputation of dead Free
thinkers will find no repast in this death-chamber.
One sentence frees him from the contamination of
their approach.
Darwin’s family desired that he should be buried at
Down. But the fashion of burying -great men in
Westminster Abbey, even though unbelievers, had
been set by Dean Stanley, whom Carlyle irreverently
called “ the body-snatcher.”
Stanley’s successor,
Dean Bradley, readily consented to the great heretic’s
interment in his House of God, where it is to be
presumed the Church of England burial service was
duly read over the “ remains.” Men like Professor
Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, ind Sir Joseph Hooker
should not have assisted at such a blasphemous farce.
It was enough to make Darwin groan in his coffin.
Well, the Church has Darwin’s corpse, but that is all
2 Li/e and Letters, vol. iii., p. 358.
�DAIDVIN ON GOD.
23
she can boast; and as she paid the heavy price of
telling lies at his funeral, it may not in the long run
prove a profitable transaction.
She has not buried
Darwin’s ideas. They are still at work, sapping and
undermining her very foundations.
PURPOSE OF THIS PAMPHLET.
My object is to show the general reader what were
Darwin’s views on religion, and, as far as possible, to
trace the growth of those views in his mind. I desire
to point out, in particular, how he thought the leading
ideas of theology were affected by the doctrine of
evolution. Further, I wish to prove that there is no
essential difference between his Agnosticism and what
has always been taught as Atheism. Finally, I mean
to give my own notions on evolution and theism. In
doing so, I shall be obliged to consider some points
raised by anti-materialists, especially by Dr. A. B.
Wallace in his recent volume on Darwinism.
SOME OBJECTIONS.
Let me first, however, answer certain objections. It
is contended by those who would minimise the impor
tance of Darwin’s scepticism that he was a scientist
and not a theologian. When it is replied that this
objection is based upon a negation of private judgment,
and logically involves the handing over of society to
the tender mercies of interested specialists, the
objectors fall back upon the mitigated statement that
�24
D ARAVIN ON GOD.
Darwin was too much occupied with science to give
adequate attention to the problems of religion. Now,
in the first place, this is not really true. He certainly
disclaimed any special fitness to give an opinion on such
matters, but that was owing to his exceptional modesty;
and to take advantage of it by accepting it as equiva
lent to a confession of unfitness, is simply indecent on
the part of those who never tire of holding up the
testimony of Newton, Herschel, and Faraday to the
truth of their creed. Darwin gave sufficient attention
to religion to satisfy himself. He began to abandon
Christianity at the age of thirty. Writing of the
period between October, 1836 and January, 1839, he
says “ During those two years I was led to think much
about religion.”3 That the subject occupied his mind
at other times is evident from his works and letters.
He had clearly weighed every argument in favor of
Theism and Immortality, and his brief, precise way of
stating the objections to them shows that they were
perfectly familiar.
True, he says “I have never
systematically thought much on religion in relation to
science,” but this was in ansAver to a request that he
should write something for publication. In the same
sentence he says that he had not systematically thought
much on “ morals in relation to society.” But he had
thought enough to write that wonderful fourth chapter
in the first part of the Descent of Man, which Avas
published in that very year. Darwin was so modest,
so cautious, and so thorough, that “ systematic
thought” meant with him an infinitely greater stress
3 Life and Letters, vol. i., p. 307.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
25
of mind than is devoted to religious problems by one
theologian in a million.
The next objection is more subtle, not to say fan
tastic. In his youth Darwin was fond of music. He
had no technical knowledge of it, nor even a good ear,
but it filled him with delight, and sometimes sent a
shiver down his backbone. He was also fond of
poetry, reading Shakespeare, Coleridge, Byron, and
Scott, and carrying about a pocket copy of Milton.
But in later life he lost all interest in such things, and
trying to read Shakespeare again after 18/0 he found
it “so intolerably dull” that it “nauseated” him.
His intense pre-occupation with science had led to a
partial atrophy of his aesthetic faculties. It was a loss
to him, but the world gained by the sacrifice.
Now upon this fact is based the objection I am
dealing with. In the days of Sir Isaac Newton or
Bishop Butler, when belief was supposed to rest on
evidence, the objection would have seemed pre
posterous; but it is gravely urged at present, when
religion is fast becoming a matter of candles, music,
and ornament, seasoned with cheap sentimentality.
Darwin’s absorption in intellectual pursuits, and the
consequent neglect of the artistic elements in his
nature, is actually held as a sufficient explanation of
his scepticism. His highly-developed and constantlysustained moral nature is regarded as having no
relation to the problem. Religion, it seems, is neither
morality nor logic; it is spirituality. And what is
spirituality ? Why, a yearning aftei' the vague, the
unutterable; a consciousness of the sinfulness of sin;
a perpetual study of one’s blessed self ; a debauch of
�26
DARWIN ON GOD.
egotistic emotion and chaotic fancy; in short, a highlyrefined development of the feelings of a cow in a
thunderstorm, and the practices of a savage before his
inscrutible fetish.
Spirituality is an emoti mal offshoot of religion ; but
religion itself grows out of belief; and belief, even
among the lowest savages, is grounded on evidence.
The Church has always had the sense to begin with
doctrines; it enjoins upon its children to say first of
all “ I believed’ Let the doctrines go, and the senti
ments will go also. It is only a question of time.
Darwin tested.the doctrines. Miracles, special provi
dence, the fall, the incarnation, the resurrection, the
existence of an all-wise and all-good God; all seemed
to him statements which should be proved. He there
fore put them into the crucible of reason, and they
turned out to be nothing but dross. According to the
“ spiritual ” critics this was a mistake, religion being a
matter of imagination. Quite so ; here Darwin is in
agreement with them; and thus again the proverb is
verified that “ extremes meet.”
The last objection is almost too peurile to notice. It
has been asserted that Darwin was an unconscious
believer, after all; and this astonishing remark is
supported by exclamations from his letters. He
frequently wrote “ God knows,” “would to God,” and
so forth. But he sometimes wrote “ By Jove,” from
which it follows that he believed in Jupiter 1 Ou one
occasion he informed Dr. Hooker that he had recovered
from an illness,and could “ eat like a hearty Christian/ ’
from which it follows that he believed in the connection
of Christianity and voracity 1
�DARWIN ON GOD.
27
Mr. F. W. FI. Myers is too subtle a critic to raise
this objection in its natural crudity. He affects to
regard Darwin’s tranquillity under the loss of religious
belief as a puzzle. He asks why Darwin kept free
from the pessimism which “ in one form or other has
paralysed or saddened so many of the best lives of our
time.”
What “ kept the melancholy infection at
bay?”
“ Here, surely, is the solution of the problem. The faculties
of observing and. reasoning were stimulated to the utmost;
the domestic affections were kept keen and strong; but the
atrophy of the religious instinct, of which we have already
spoken, extended yet farther—over the whole range of aesthetic
emotion, and mystic sentiment—over all in us which‘looks
before and after, and pines for what is not.’ ”4
This is pretty writing, but under the form of insi
nuation it begs the question at issue.
Keligious
instinct and mystic sentiment are fine phrases, but they
prove nothing; on the contrary, they are devices for
dispensing with that logical investigation which reli
gion ever shuns as the Devil is said to shun holy water.
DARWIN ABANDONS CHRISTIANITY.
Dr. Buchner, the German materialist, who was in
London in September, 1881, went to Down and spent
some hours with Darwin. Fie was accompanied by
Dr. E. B. Aveling, who has written an account of their
conversation in Darwin’s study.5 This pamphlet is
4 Charles Darwin and Agnosticism. By F. W. H. Myers, “Fort
nightly Review,” January, 1888, p. 106.
5 The Religious Views of Charles Darwin. By Dr. E. B. Aveling.
Freethought Publishing Co.
�28
DARWIN ON GOD.
referred to in a footnote by Mr. Francis Darwin, who
says that “ Dr. Aveling gives quite fairly his impres
sion cf my father’s views.” 6 He does not contradict
any of Dr. Aveling’s statements, and they may there
fore be regarded as substantially correct.
Darwin said to his guests, “ I never gave up Chris
tianity until I was forty years of age.” He had given
attention to the matter, and had investigated the
claims of Christianity. Being asked why he abandoned
it, he replied, “ It is not supported by evidence.”
This reminds one of a story about George Eliot. A
gentleman held forth to her at great length on the
beauty of Christianity. Like Mr. Myers, he was
great at “aesthetic emotion” and “mystic sentiment.”
The great woman listened to him with philosophic
patience, and at length she struck in herself. “Well,
you know,” she said, “ I have only one objection to
Christianity.” “And what is that?” her guest en
quired. “ Why,” she replied, “it isn’t true.”
Dr. Aveling’s statement is corroborated by a long
and interesting passage in Darwin’s chapter of Auto
biography, which the reader shall have in full.
“I had gradually come by this time, that is, 1836 to 1839, to
see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the
sacred books of the Hindoos. The question then continually
rose before my mind and would not be banished,—Is it credible
that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he
would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva,
etc., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament?
This appeared to me utterly incredible.
“ By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be
requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by
0 Vol. I., p. 317.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
29
which Christianity is supported,—and that the more we know
of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles
become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous
to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—'that tho Gospels
cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the
events,—that they differ in many important details, far too
important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual in
accuracies of eye-witnesses;—by such reflections as these,
which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as
they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Chris
tianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions
have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had
some weight with me.
“ But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure
of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day
dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and
manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which
confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in
the Gcspels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free
scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would
suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very
slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that
I felt no distress.”7
Three features should be noted in this striking
passage. First, the order in which the evidences of
Christianity were tried and found wanting; second, the
complete mastery of every important point; third, the
absence of all distress of mind in the process. Darwin’s
mind was, in fact, going through a new development,
and the old creed was got rid of as easily as an old
skin when a new one is taking its place.
For nearly forty years Darwin was a disbeliever in
Christianity. He rejected it utterly. It passed out of
his mind and heart. The fact was not proclaimed
7 Vol. I., pp. 308-309.
�30
DARWIN ON GOT).
from the house-tops, but it was patent to every intelli
gent reader of his works. He paid no attention to the
clerical dogs that barked at his heels, but wisely kept
his mind free from such distractions, and went on his
way, as Professor Tyndall says, with the steady and
irresistible movement of an avalanche.
Much capital has been made by Christians who are
thankful for small mercies out of the fact that Darwin
subscribed to the South American Missionary SocietyThe Archbishop of Canterbury, at the annual meeting
on April 21, 1885, said the Society “ drew the atten
tion of Charles Darwin, and made him, in his pursuit of
the wonders of the kingdom of nature, realise that
there was another kingdom just as wonderful and more
lasting.” Such language is simply fraudulent. The
fact is, Darwin thought the Fuegians a set of hopeless
savages, and he was so agreeably undeceived by the
reports of their improvement that he sent a subscription
of £5 through his old shipmate Admiral Sir James
Sullivan. This gentleman gives three or four extracts
from Darwin’s letters,8 from which it appears that he
was solely interested in the secular improvement of the
Fuegians, without the smallest concern for their pro
gress in religion.
Darwin subscribed to send missionaries to a people
he regarded as “ the very lowest of the human race.”
Surely this is not an extravagant compliment to
Christianity. He never subscribed towards its promo
tion in any civilised country. Those who parade his
“support*” invite the sarcasm that he'thought their
religion fit for savages.
s Vol. III., pp. 127-128.
�DARWIX OX GOD.
o1
Dl
DEISM.
Having abandoned Christianity, Darwin remained
for many years a Deist. The Naturalist’s Voyage was
first published in 1845, and the following passage
occurs in the final chapter :
“ Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my
mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced
by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the
powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego,
where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with
the varied products of the God of Nature :—no one can stand
in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in
man than the mere breath of his body.”9
This is the language of emotion, and no one will be
surprised at Darwin's saying subsequently “ I did not
think much about the existence of a personal God until
a considerably later period of my life/71 How great a
change the thinking wrought is seen, from a reference
to this very incident in the Autobiography, written in
1876, a few years before his death.
“ At the present day the most usual argument for the
existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward
conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons.
Formerly I was led by such feelings as those just referred to
(although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever
strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the exist
ence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal
I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a
Brazilian forest, ‘ it is not possible to give an adequate idea of
the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which
fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction
that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
9 P. 508.
1 Life and Letters, vol. i., p. ,309.
�32
D ARAVIN ON GOD.
But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such con
viction and feelings to rise in my mind.” 2
!
Darwin's belief in a personal God had not per
ceptibly weakened in 1859, when he published the
Origin of Species. He could still speak of “the
Creator’' and use the ordinary language of Deism.
In a letter to Mr. C. Ridley, dated November 28,
1878, upon a sermon of Dr. Pusey’s, he said, “ When
I was collecting facts for the £ Origin ’ my belief in
what is called a personal God was as firm as that of
Dr. Pusey himself."3
It is therefore obvious that Darwin doubted Chris
tianity at the age of thirty, abandoned it before the
age of forty, and remained a Deist until the age of
fifty. The publication of the Origin of Species' may
be taken as marking the commencement of his third
and last mental epoch.
The philosophy of Evolution
took possession of his mind, and gradually expelled
both the belief in God and the belief in immortality.
His development was too gradual for any wrench.
People upon whom his biological theories came as
lightning-swift surprises often fancied that he must
be deeply distressed by such painful truths. Some
times, indeed, this suspicion was carried to a comical
extreme. “Lyell once told me,” says Professor Judd,
“ that he had frequently been asked if Darwin was
not one of the most unhappy of men, it being sug
gested that his outrage upon public opinion should
have filled him with remorse."4 How it would have
astonished these simple creatures to see Darwin in his
2 Vol. I., p. 811.
3 Vol. III., p. 236.
4 Vol. HI., p. 62.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
33
happy home, reclining on the sofa after a hard day’s
work, while his devoted wife or daughter read a novel
aloud or played some music ; or perhaps smoking an
occasional cigarette, one of his few concessions to the
weakness of the flesh.
CREATION.
Evolution and Creation are antagonistic ideas, nor
can they he reconciled by the cheap device of assum
ing their cooperation “ in the beginning.” When the
theologians spoke of Creation, in the pre-Darwinian
days, they meant exactly the same as ordinary people
who employed the term ; namely, that everything in
nature was brought into existence by an express fiat
of the will of God.
The epithet “ special ” only
hides the fate of Creation from the short-sighted. To
say that the Deity produced the raw material of the
universe, with all its properties, and then let it evolve
into what we see, is simply to abandon the real idea of
Creation and to take refuge in a metaphysical dogma.
Creation is only a pompous equivalent for “ God
did it.” Before the nebular hypothesis explained the
origin, growth, and decay of the celestial bodies, the
theologian used to inquire “ Who made the world ? ”
When that conundrum was solved he asked a fresh
question, “ Who made the plants and animals ? ”
When that conundrum was solved he asked another
question, “ Who made man? ” Now that conundrum
is solved he asks “ Who created life 1 ” And when
the Evolutionists reply “ Wait a little ; we shall see,”
he puts his final poser, “ Who made matter ? ”
�34
DARWIN ON GOD.
All along the line he has been saying “ God did it”
to everything not understood ; that is, he has turned
ignorance into a dogma. Every explanation compels
him to beat a retreat; nay more, it shows that
“ making ” is inapplicable.
Nature’s method is
growth. Making is a term of art, and when applied
to nature it is sheer anthropomorphism. The baby
who prattles to her doll, and the theologian who prates
of Creation, have a common philosophy.
When the Origin of Species was published, we have
seen that Darwin firmly believed in a personal God.
Unfortunately he allowed himself, in the last chapter,
to use language, not unnatural in a Deist, but still
equivocal and misleading. He spoke, for instance, of
“ the laws impressed on matter by the Creator.-” This
is perhaps excusable, but there was a more unhappy
sentence in which he spoke of life “having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one.” A flavor of Genesis is in these words,
and the clergy, with their usual unscrupulousness,
have made the most of it; taking care not to read it,
or let their hearers read it, in the light of Darwin’s
later writings.
In a letter to Sir J. D. Hooker, dated March 13,
1863, Darwin writes, “ I had a most kind and delight
fully candid letter from Lyell, who says he spoke out
as far as he believes. I have no doubt his belief
failed him as he wrote, for I feel sure that at times he
no more believed in Creation than you or I.”5 Writing
again to Hooker, in the same month, he said: “ I have
5 Vol. III., p. 15.
The italics are mine.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
35
long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and
used the Pentatcuchal term of creation, by which I
really meant ‘ appeared ’ by some wholly unknown
process/’6
“ Truckling ” is a strong word. I fancy Darwin
was too severe in his self-reproach. I prefer to regard
the unhappy sentences about Creation as the slip-shod
expressions of a roan who was still a Deist, and who,
possessing little literary tact, failed to guard himself
against a misuse of popular language.
The greatest
misfortune was that the book was before the public,
and the expressions could hardly be withdrawn or
altered without a full explanation; from which I dare
say he shrank, as out of place in a scientific treatise.
ORIGIN OF LIFE.
“ Spontaneous generation is a paradoxical phrase,
and it has excited a great deal of unprofitable discus
sion. However the controversy rests between Bastian
and Tyndall, the problem of the origin of life isentirely unaffected.
Nor need we entertain Sir
William Thomson’s fanciful conjecture that life may
have been brought to this planet on a meteoric frag
ment, for this only puts the radical question upon the
shelf. We may likewise dismiss the theory of Dr.
Wallace, who holds that “ complexity of chemical
compounds ” could “ certainly not have produced
living protoplasm.” 7 “ Could not,” in the existing
state of knowledge, is simply dogmatism. Dr. Wallace
has a spiritual hypothesis to maintain, and like the
8 Vol. Ill, p. 18.
7 Darwinism, p. 474.
�36
DARWIN ON GOD.
crudest theologian, though in a superior style, he
introduces his little theory, with a polite bow, to
account for what is at present inexplicable.
The
thorough-going Evolutionist is perfectly satisfied to
wait for information. So much has been explained
already that it is folly to be impatient. The presump
tion, meanwhile, is in favor of continuity.
Argument without facts is a waste of time and
temper. “It is mere rubbish,” Darwin said, “thinking
at present of the origin of life; one might as well
think of the origin of matter.” 8 This was written in
1863, in a letter to Hooker. Darwin could not help
seeing, however, that the conditions favorable to the
origination of life might only exist once in the history
of a planet. A very suggestive passage is printed by
Mr. Francis Darwin as written by his father in 1871.
“ It is often said that all the conditions for the first produc
tion of a living organism are now present which could ever
have been present. But if (and oh ! what a big if!) we could
conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia
and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that
a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo
still more complex changes, at the present day such matter
would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not
have been the case before living creatures were formed.”9
Darwin appears to have felt that life
have
originated naturally. The interposition of an imagi
nary supernatural cause does not solve the problem.
It cuts the Gordian knot, perhaps, but does not untie
it. Nature is full of illustrations of the truth that
“ properties ” exist in complex compounds which do
8^Vol. III., p. 18.
9 Vol. III., p. 18, footnote.
�DABWIN ON GOD.
37
not appear in the separate ingredients.
Huxley
rightly inquires what justification there is for “ the
assumption of the existence in the living matter of a
something which has no representative, or correlative,
in the not living matter which gave rise to it.” 1
There is no more mystery in the origin of life than in
the formation of water by an electric spark which
traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen. Dr.
Wallace appears to see this, and consequently he
ascribes electricity, with gravitation, cohesion, and
chemical force, to the “ spiritual world ! ” 2
ORIGIN OF MAN.
Darwin’s masterpiece, in the opinion of scientists,
is the Origin of Species. But the Descent of Alan is
more important to the general public. As applied to
other forms of life, Evolution is a profoundly inte
resting theory; as applied to man, it revolutionises
philosophy, religion, and morals.
Tracing the development of animal organisms from
the ascidian, Darwin passes along the line of fish,
amphibians, reptiles, birds, marsupials, mammals, and
finally to the simians. “ The Simiadee then branched
off,” he says, “ into two great stems, the New World
and the Old World monkeys ; and from the latter, at
a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the
Universe, proceeded.”3
Notwithstanding that some specimens of the
“ wonder and glory of the universe ” cannot count
1 Lay Sermons, p. 137.
2 Darwinism, p. 476.
3 Descent of Man, p. 165.
�38
DARWIN ON GOD.
above the number of the fingers of one hand, while
some of them live in a shocking state of bestiality,
Darwin's deliverance on the origin of man was greeted
with a storm of execration. “Fancy/’ it was ex
claimed, “ fancy recognising the monkey as our first
cousin, and the lower animals as our distant rela
tions ! Pshaw 1 ” The protesters forgot that there
is no harm in “ coming from monkeys ” if you have
come far enough. Some of them, perhaps, had a shrewd
suspicion that they had not come far enough; and,
like parvenus, they were ashamed to own their poor
relations.
Anticipating the distastefulness of his conclusions,
Darwin pointed out that, at any rate, we were
descended from barbarians; and why, he inquired,
should we shrink from owning a still lower relation
ship ?
' '
“ He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel
much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some
more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I
would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey,
who braved his dreaded enemy to save the life of his keeper,
or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains,
carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his
enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide with
out remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency,
and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.”4
Eighteen years have passed since then, and
Darwin’s views have triumphed. The clergy still
“hum’-’ and “ha'” and shake their heads, but the
scientific world has accepted Darwinism with practical
4 Descent of Man, p. 619.
�39
DARWIN ON GOD.
unanimity. Even Dr. Wallace, who at first hesitated,
is now convinced. “ I fully accept Mr. Darwin’s
conclusions,” he says, “ as to the essential identity of
man’s bodily structure with that of the higher mam
malia, and his descent from some ancestral form
common to man and the anthropoid apes. The evi
dence of such descent appears to me to be overwhelming
and conclusive.”5
Now if Darwin’s theory of the origin of man is
accepted we may bid good-bye to Christianity at once.
But that is not all. The continuity of development
implies a common nature, from the lowest form of life
to the highest. There is no break from the ascidian
to man, just as there is no break from the ovum to the
child; and neither in the history of the race nor in
the history of the individual is there any point at
which natural causes cease to be adequate, and super
natural causes are necessary to account for the pheno
mena. The tendency of Darwinism, says Dr. Wallace,
is to “ the conclusion that man’s entire nature and all
his faculties, whether moral, intellectual, or spiritual,
have been derived from their rudiments in the lower
animals, in the same manner and by the action of the
same general laws as his physical structure has been
derived.” G
Dr. Wallace sees that this is sheer materialism,
and casts about for something to support his
spiritualistic philosophy.
He assumes three stages
at which “ the spirit world ” intervened.
First,
when life appeared; second, when consciousness
began; third, when man became possessed of “ a
3 Darwinism, p. 461.
6 P. 461.
�40
DARWIN ON GOD.
number of his most characteristic and noblest facul
ties.” All this is very ingenious, but Dr. Wallace
forgets two things ; first, that the “ stages ” he refers
to are purely arbitrary, each point being approached
and receded from by insensible gradations; and
second, that his “ Spirit world ” is not a vera causa.
It is, indeed, a pure assumption ; unlike such a cause
as Natural Selection, which is seen to operate, and
which Darwin only extended over the whole range
of organic existence.
With respect to his third “ stage,” Dr. Wallace
contends that Natural Selection does not account for
the mathematical, musical, and artistic faculties.
Were this true, they might still be regarded, in Weismann’s phrase, as “a bye-product” of the human
mind, which is so highly developed in all directions.
But its truth is rather assumed than proved. Taking
the mathematical faculty, for instance, Dr. Wallace
makes the most of its recent developments, and the
least of its early manifestations ; which is a fallacy
of exaggeration or false emphasis. He also under
rates the mathematical faculty displayed even in the
rudest warfare.
There is a certain calculation of
number and space in every instance. It is smaller in
in the savage chief than in Napoleon, but the differ
ence is in degree and not in kind; and as the human
race has always lived in a more or less militant
state, the mathematical faculty would give its posses
sors an advantage in the struggle for existence; while,
in more modern times, and in a state of complex
civilisation, its possessors would profit by what may be
called Social Selection.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
41
Dr. Wallace lias discovered a mare’s nest. He may
rely upon it that the basis of beauty is utility; in the
mind of man as well as in architecture, or the plumage
of birds, or the coloration of flowers. And we may
well ask him these pertinent questions ; first, why did
“ the spirit world ” plant the mathematical, musical,
and artistic faculties in man so ineffectually that, even,
now, they are decidedly developed in less than one per
cent, of the population ; and, second, why are we to
suppose a divine origin for those faculties when the
moral faculties, which are quite as imperial, may be
found in many species of lower animals ?
ANIMISM.
Dr. Tylor is not a biologist, but he is one of the
greatest evolutionists of our age.
His work on
Primitive Culture7 is a monument of genius and re
search. Employing the Darwinian method, he has
traced the origin and development of the belief in the
existence of soul or spirit, from the mistaken interpre
tation of the phenomena of dreams among savages,
who afford us the nearest analogue of primitive man,
up to the most elaborate cultus of Brahmanism.
Buddhism, or Christianity. And as Animism is the
basis of all religion, two conclusions arc forced upon
us ; first, that the supernatural in being traced back to
its primal germ of error, is not only explained but
exploded ; and, second, that religion is a direct legacy
from our savage progenitors.
Religious progress
consists in mitigating the intellectual and moral erudi- «•
7 Primitive Culture. By Edward B. Tylor LL.D. 2 vols.
�42
DARWIN ON GOD.
ties of primitive Animism ; and religion itself, there
fore, is like a soap-bubble, ever becoming more and
more attenuated, until at length it disappears.
Darwin had written the Descent of Man before
reading the great work of Dr. Tylor, and his letter to
the author of the real Natural History of Religion is
worth extracting. It is dated September 24, 1871.
“ I hope you will allow me to have the pleasure of telling you
how greatly I have been interested by your Primitive Culture
now that I have finished it. It seems to me a most profound
work, which will be certain to have permanent value, and to
be referred to for years to come. It is wonderful how you
trace Animism from the lower races up to the religious belief
of the highest races. It will make me for the future look at
religion—a belief in the soul, etc—from anew point of view.’’8
“A new point of view” is a pregnant phrase in
regard to a subject of such importance. What can it
mean, except that Darwin saw at last that religion
began with the belief m soul, and that the belief in
soul originated in the blunder of primitive men as to
the “ duality ” of their nature ?
Darwin has a very interesting footnote on this
subject in his Descent of Man. After referring to
Tylor and Lubbock, he continues—
“ Mr. Herbert Spencer accounts for the earliest forms of
religious belief throughout the world by man being led through
dreams, shadows, and other causes, to look at himself as a
double essence, corporeal and spiritual. As the spiritual being
is supposed to exist after death, and to be powerful, it is
propitiated by various gifts and ceremonies, and its aid invoked.
He then further shows that names or nicknames given from
some animal or other object, to the early progenitors or founders
Life and Letters, vol. III., p.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
43
of a tribe, are supposed after a long interval to represent the
real progenitor of the tribe; and such animal or object is
then naturally believed still to exist as a spirit, is held sacred,
and worshipped as a god. Nevertheless I cannot but suspect
that there is a still earlier and ruder stage, when anything
which manifests power or movement is thought to be endowed
with some form cf life, and with mental faculties analogous
to our own.” 9
This is tracing religion to the primitive source
assigned to it by David Hume—“ the universal tendency
among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves,
and to transfer to every object those qualities with
which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which
they are intimately conscious.”* In other words,
1
Darwin begins a stage lower than Animism, in the con
fusion of subjective and objective such as we see in a
very young child ; although, of course, the worship of
gods could not have obtained in that stage, since man
is incapable of ascribing to nature any qualities but
those he is conscious of possessing, and it is therefore
impossible for him to people the external world with
spirits until he has formed the notion of a spirit within
himself.
Darwin was not attracted by that experiential
Animism which has such a fascination for Dr. Wallace.
In 1870 he attended a seance at the house of his brother
Erasmus in Chelsea, under the auspices of a well-known
medium. His account of the performance is not very
flattering to Spiritualism.
“ We had great fun one afternoon; for George hired a medium
who made the chairs, a flute, a bell, and candlestick, and fiery
Descent of Man, p. 94.
1 Hume, “ Natural History of Religion,” section III.
�44
DARWIN ON GOD.
points jump about in my brother’s dining-room, in a manner
that astounded every one, and took away all their breaths.
It was in the dark, but George and Hensleigh Wedgwood held
the medium’s hands and feet on both sides all the time. I
found it so hot and tiring that I went away before all these
astounding miracles, or jugglery took place. How the man
could possibly do what was done passes my understanding.” 2
The more Darwin thought over what he saw the
more convinced he was that it was “all imposture.”
“ The Lord have mercy on us all,” he exclaimed, “ if
we have to believe in such rubbish.”
Darwin has not left us any emphatic utterance as to
his own belief about soul. “ What Darwin thought.”
says Mr. Grant Allen, “ I only suspect; but if we make
the plain and obvious inference from all the facts and
tendencies of his theories we shall be constrained to
admit that modern biology lends little sanction to the
popular notion of a life after death.” 3
Writing briefly to an importunate German student,
in 1879, he said “ As for a future life, every man must
judge for himself between conflicting vague probabili
ties.”4 This reminds one of Hamlet’s “ shadow of a
shade.” First, you have no certainty, nor even a
probability, but several probabilities ; these are vague
to begin with, and alas! they conflict with each other.
Surely such language could only come from a practical
unbeliever.
Like other men who were nursed in the delusion of
personal immortality, Darwin had his occasional fits
Vol. Ill,, p. 187.
3 The GoKpd A wording to Darwin. By Grant Allen, “ Pall Mall
Gazette,” January, 1888.
4 Vol. I., p. 307.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
45
of dissatisfaction with the inevitable—witness the
following passage from his Autobiography.
“ With respect to immortality, nothing shows me so clearly
how strong and almost instinctive a belief it is, as the consid
eration of the view now held by most physicists, namely, thatthe sun with all the planets will in time grow too coldfoi life?
unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun and thus
gives it fresh life. Believing as I do that man in the distant
future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is
an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings
are doomed to complete annihilation after such long continued
slow progress. To those who fully admit the immoitality of
the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear
so dreadful.”5
Had Darwin been challenged on this passage, I
think he would have admitted its ineptitude, for he
was modest enough for anything. The thought that
every man must die is no more intolerable than the
thought that any man must die, nor is the thought
that there will be a universe 'without the human race
any more intolerable than the thought that there teas
a universe without the human race. On the other
hand, Darwin did not allow for the fact that immor
tality is not synonymous with everlasting felicity.
According to most theologies, indeed, the lot of the
majority in the next life is not one of happiness, but
one of misery; and, on any rational estimate, the
annihilation of all is better than the bliss of the few
and the torture of the many. Nor is it true that
everyone would cheerfully accept the gift of immor
tality, even without the prospect of future suffering.
Every Buddhist—that is, four hundred millions of the
5Vol. I,, p. 312.
�46
PAE WIN ON GOD.
human race—looks forward to “ Nirvana,” the extinc
tion of the individual life, which is thus released
from the evil of existence. Even a Western philo
sopher, like John Stuart Mill, understood this yearning
as appears from the following passage :
“ It appears to me not only possible but probable, that in
a higher, and, above all, a happier condition of human life,
not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea ;
and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and
by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not
sadness in the thought that it is not chained to a conscious
existence which it cannot be insured that it will always
wish to preserve.”8
Mr. Winwood Reade, on the other hand, indulged in
the rapturous prophecy that man will some day grow
perfect, migrate into space, master nature, and invent
immortality.7 It is all a matter of taste and tempera
ment. Both wailings and rejoicings are outside the
scope of philosophy, and belong to the province of light
literature,
A PERSONAL GOD.
We have already seen that Darwin remained a Deist
after rejecting Christianity. Not only in the letter on
Dr. Pusey’s sermon, but in his Autobiography, Darwin
discloses the fact that his belief in a personal God
melted away after the publication of his masterpiece.
Speaking of “ a First Cause having an intelligent mind
in some degree analogous to that of man,” he says,
This conclusion was strong in my mind about the
* Three Euxayx on Reliyion By J. S. Mill, p. 122.
i Martrydom of Man. By Win wood Reade, pp, 51.4, 515.
�DAB WIN ON GOD.
47
time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin
of Species; and it is since that time that it has very
gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker/’'’
By the time he published the Descent of Man, in 1871,
the change was conspicuous. He was then able to treat
religion as a naturalist; that is, as one who stands out
side it and regards it with a feeling of scientific
curiosity. Not only did he trace religion back to the
lowest fetishism, he also analysed the sentiment of
worship in a manner which must have been highly
displeasing to the orthodox.
“ The feeling- of religious devotion is a highly complex one,
consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and
mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear,
reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other
elements. No being coukl experience so complex an emotion
until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least
a moderately high level. Nevertheless, we see some distant
approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his
master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and
perhaps other feelings. The behavior of a dog when returning
to his master after an absence, and, as I may add, of a monkey
to his beloved keeper, is widely different from that towards
their fellows. In the latter case the transports of joy appear
to be somewhat less and the sense of equality is shewn in
every action. Professor Braub ich goes so far as to maintain
that a dog looks on his master as a god.”9
This is not very flattering, for the dog’s attach
ment to his master is quite independent of morality;
whether the dog belongs to Bill Sikes or John
Howard, he displays the same devotion.
Darwin quoted with approval the statement of Sir
John Lubbock that “it is not too much to say that
3 Vol. I., p. 313.
Descent of Man, pp. 95, 96.
�48
DARWIN ON GOD.
the horrible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick
cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure.”1
He also referred to witchcraft, bloody sacrifices, and
the ordeals of poison and fire, cautiously observing
that “ it is well occasionally to reflect on these super
stitions, for they show us what an infinite debt of
gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason
to science, and to our accumulated knowledge ”2—in
short, to the slow and painful civilisation of religion.
That the universal belief in God proves his exist
ence Darwin was unable to admit. “ There is ample
evidence, he says, ££ derived not from hasty travellers
but from men who have long resided with savages,
that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who
have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no
words in their language to express such an idea.”*
On the other hand, as he remarks in the same work—
“ I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has
been used by many persons as an argument for his existence.
But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled
to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits,
only a little more powerful than man ; for the belief in them
is far more general than in a beneficent Deity.’’4
Attention should here be called to a silent correction
in the second edition of the Descent of Man. Defer
ring to the question “ whether there exists a Creator
and Euler of the universe,” he said, ££ this has been
answered in the affirmative by'the highest intellects
that have ever existed.” This was altered into “some
1 Prehistoric Times. By Sir John Lubbock, p. 571.
2 Descent of Man, p. 96.
3 Ibid, p. 93.
4 Ibid, p. 612.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
49
o/the highest intellects.’'’ Darwin had discovered the
inaccuracy of his first statement, and learnt that some
of the highest intellects have been Atheists.
Two important passages must be extracted from hie
Autobiography. After remarking that the grandest
scenes had no longer the power to make him feel that
God exists, he answers the objection that he is “like a
man who has become color-blind/’ which is a favorite
one with conceited religionists.
“ This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races
had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God;
but we know that this is very far from being the case. There
fore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are
of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of
mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which
was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essenti
ally differ from that which is often called the sense of sub
limity ; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis
of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the
existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague
and similar feelings excited by music.’5
Further on in the same piece of writing he deals
with a second and very common argument of Theism.
“ Another source of conviction in the existence of God, con
nected with the reason, and not with the feelings, impresses
me as having much more weight. This follows from the
extreme difficulty, or rather utter impossibility of conceiving
this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his
capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the
result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I
feel compelled to look to a First Cause having, an intelligent
mind in some degree analogous to that of man. Tlii s conclusion
was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can
remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since
3 Vol I., p. 312.
�50
DARWIN ON GOD.
that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations,
become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can the mind of
man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind
as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted
when it draws such grand conclusions ? ” 6
This handling of the matter may be somewhat con
soling to Theists. One can hear them saying, “ Ah,
Darwin was not utterly lost.” But let them see how
he handles the matter in a letter to a Dutch student
(April 2, 1873).
“ I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this
grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose
through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the
existence of God ; but whether this is an argument of real
value I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we
admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it
came, and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from
the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am
also induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of the
many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again
I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion
seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of
man’s intellect; but man can do his duty.’ ‘
“ Man can do his duty ”—a characteristic touch ! The
man who said this did his duty. His scientific achievments were precious, but they were matched by his
lofty and benevolent character.
DESIGN.
Darwinism has killed the Design argument, by
explaining adaptation as a result without assuming
design as a cause.
The argument, indeed, like all
Vol. I., pp. 312, 313.
- Vol. I., pp. 306, 307.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
51
“ proofs” of God’s existence, was based upon
ignorance. It was acutely remarked by Spinoza, in
his great majestic manner, that man knows that he
wills, but knows not the causes which determine his
will. Out of this ignorance the theologians manufac
tured their chaotic doctrine of free-will. Similarly,
out of our ignorance of the caus s of the obvious
adaptations in nature, they manufactured their plausible
Design argument. The “ fitness of things ” was indis
putable, and as it could not be explained scientifically,
the theologians trotted out their usual dogma of “ God
did it.”
Professor Huxley tells us that physical science has
created no fresh difficulties in theology. “Not a
solitary problem,” he says, “ presents itself to the
philosophical Theist, at the present day, which has not
existed from the time that philosophers began to think
out the logical grounds and theological consequenceof Theism.”8 While in one respect true, the states
ment is liable to mislead. Adaptation presents no new
problem—that is undeniable ; but the scientific expla
nation of it Cuts away the ground of. all teleology.
“ The teleology,” says Huxley, “ which supposes that
the'eye, such as we see it in man, or one of the higher
vertebrata, was made with the precise structure it
exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which
possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its deathbloAv.” Yet he bids us remember that “ there is a
wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of
Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental
8Zf/e and Letter?, vol. II., p. 202.
�52
DARWIN ON GOD.
proposition of Evolution. This proposition is that the
whole world, living and not living, is the result of the
mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the
powers possessed by the molecules of which the primi
tive nebulosity of the universe was composed.”0
Theologians in search of a life-buoy in the scientific
storm have grasped at this chimerical support, although
the wiser heads amongst them may doubt whether Pro
fessor Huxley is serious in tendering it. Surely if
eyes were not made to see with the Design argument
is dead. What is the use of saying that the materialist
is still “ at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always
defy him to disprove that the primordial molecular
arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena
of the universe?” The, very word “arrangement”
gives the teleologist all he requires, and the implied
assumption that we are “ at the mercy” of anyone who
makes an assertion which is incapable of proof, simply
because he “ defies ” us to disprove it, is a curious
ineptitude on the part of such a vigorous thinker.
When, in 1879, Darwin was consulted by a German
student, a member of his family replied for him as
follows :—“ He considers that tlie theory of Evolution
is quite compatible with belief in God; but that you
must remember that different persons have different
definitions of what they mean by God.”1 Precisely so.
You may believe in God if you define him so as not to
contradict facts ; in other words, you have a right to a
Deity if you choose to construct one. This is perfectly
harmless, but what connexion has it with the
»Vol. II., p. 201.
1 Vol. I., p. 307.
�DAPAVIN ON GOD.
53
“ philosophy ” of Theism ? There is no definition of
God which does not contradict facts. Why, indeed, is
theology full of mystery? Simply because it is full of
impasses, where dogma and experience are in hopeless
collision, and where we are exhorted to abnegate our
reason and accept the guidance of faith.
Darwin’s attitude towards the Design argument is
definite enough for such a cautious thinker. In one of
his less popular, but highly important works, the first
edition of which appeared in 1868, he went out of his
way to deal with it. After using the simile of an
architect, who should rear a noble and commodious
edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting stones
of various shape from the fragments at the base of a
precipice; he goes on to say that these “ fragments of
stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to
the edifice built by him the same relation which the
fluctuating varieties of organic beings bear to the varied
and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their
modified descendants.” The shape of the stones is not
accidental, for it depends on geological causes, though
it may be said to be accidental with regard to the use
they are put to.
“ Here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to
which I am aware that I am travelling beyond my proper
province. An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every
consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him.
But can itbe reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally
ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain
fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the
builder might erect his edifice ? If the various laws which
have determined the shape of each fragment were not predeter
mined for the builder’s sake, can it be maintained with any
�54
DARWIN ON GOD.
greater probability that He specially ordained for the sake of
the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic
animals and plants ;—many of these variations being of no
service to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to
the creatures themselves ? Did He ordain that the crop and
tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier
might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds ? Did
He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in
order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity,
with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man’s brutal sport?
But if we give up the principle in one case,—if we do not
admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally
guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect
image of symmetry and vigour, might be formed,—no shadow
of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike
in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have
been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation
of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man in
cluded, were intentionally and specially guided. However
much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa
Gray in his belief “that variation has been led along certain
beneficial lines,” like a stream “ along definite and useful lines
of irrigation.” If we assume that each particular variation
was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that
plasticity of organisation, which leads to many injurious
deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of
reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence,
and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the
fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the
other hand, an omnipotent end omniscient Creator ordains
everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought
face te face with a difficulty as insoluble as that of free will
and predestination.2
Darwin protested that this had met with no reply.
What reply, indeed, is possible ? Design covers every2 Farfniwn of Animals and Plants under Domestication.
Charles Darwin. Vol. II., pp. 427, 428.
By
�DARWIN ON GOD.
55
thing or nothing. If the bulldog was not designed,
what reason is there for supposing that man was designed ? If there is no design in an idiot, how can
there be design in a philosopher 1
The Life and Letters contains many passages less
elaborate but more pointed. Here is one.
“ The old argument from Design in nature, as given by
Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now
that'fhe law of natnral selection has been discovered. We can
no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a
bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being like
the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design
in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural
selection, than in the course which the wind blows.”3
The fit survive, the unfit perish; and the theologian is
eloquent on the successes, and silent on the failures.
He marks the hits and forgets the misses. Were
nature liable to human penalties she would have been
dished long ago; but she works with infinite time
and infinite resources, and therefore cannot become
bankrupt.
Here is a passage from a letter to Miss Julia
Wedgwood (July 11, 1861) on the occasion of her
article in Macmillan.
“ The mind refuses to look at this universe, being what it is
without having been designed; yet, where one would most
expect design, namely, in the structure of a sentient being, the
more I think the less I can see proof of design.”4
This reminds one of a pregnant utterance of another
master-mind. Cardinal Newman says he should be an
Atheist if it were not for the voice speaking in his
conscience, and exclaims—“ If I looked into a mirror,
3 Vol. I., p. 309.
4 Vol. I., pp. 313, 314.
�56
DARAVIN ON GOD.
and did not see my face, I should have the sort of
feeling which comes upon me when I look into this
living busy world, and see no reflexion of its
Creator.”5
Here is another passage from a letter (July, 1860)
to Dr. Asa Gray.
“ One word more on ‘ designed laws ’ and 1 undesigned
results.’ I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and
kill it. I do this designedly. An innocent and good man stands
under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you
believe (and I really should like to hear) that God designedly
killed this man ? Many or most persons do believe this; I
can’t and don’t. If yon believe so, do you believe when a
swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particu
lar swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that
particular instant ? I believe that the man and the gnat are
in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor
gnat is designed, I see no reason to believe that their first
birth or production should be necessarily designed.”0
Twenty years later, writing to Mr. W. Graham, the
author of the Creed of Science, Darwin says, “ There
are some points in your book which I cannot digest
The chief one is that the existence of so-called
natural laws implies purpose. I cannot see this.” 7
During the last year of his life a very interesting
conversation took place between Darwin and the Duke
of Argyll. Here is the special part in the Duke’s own
words.
“ In the course of that conversation I said to Mr. Darwin,
with reference to some of his own remarkable words on ‘ Fer
tilisation of Orchids ’ and upon ‘ The Earthworms,’ and
5 Apologia Pro Vita Sua, p. 241.
6 Vol. I., pp. 314, 315.
7 Vol. I., p. 315.
�DARWIN ON GOD.
57
various other observations he made of the wonderful con
trivances for certain purposes in nature—I said it was impos
sible to look at these without seeing that they were the effect
and the expression of mind. He looked at me very hard and
said, ‘Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming
force; but at other times,’ and he shook his head vaguely,
adding, ‘ it seems to go away.’ ’'8
This is a remarkable story, and the point of it is in
the words “ it seems to go away.’; There is nothing
extraordinary in the fact that Darwin, who was a
Christian till thirty and a Theisttill fifty, should some
times feel a billow of superstition sweep over his mind.
The memorable thing is that at other times his free
intellect could not harbour the idea of a God of Nature.
The indications of mind in the constitution of the
universe were not obvious to the one man living who
had studied it most profoundly. Belief in the super
natural could not harmonis 2 in Darwin’s mind with the
facts and conclusions of science. The truth of Evolu
tion entered it and gradually took possession. Theo
logy was obliged to leave, and although it returned
occasionally, and roamed through its old dwelling, it
only came as a visitor, and was never more a resident.
DIVINE BENEFICENCE.
The problem of how the goodness of God can be
reconciled with the existence of evil is at least as old
as the Book of Job, and the essence of the problem
remains unchanged. Many different solutions have
been offered, but the very best is nothing but a
8 Vol. I., p. 816.
�58 '
DARWIN ON GOD.
plausible compromise. Even the Christian theory of
a personal Devil, practically almost as potent as the
Deity, ancl infinitely more active, is a miserable make
shift ; for, on inquiry, it turns out that the Devil is a
part of God’s handiwork, exercising only a delegated
or permitted power. The usual resort of the theo
logian when driven to bay is to invoke the aid of
“ mystery,’7 but this is useless as against the logician,
since “ mystery ” is only a contradiction between the
facts and the hypothesis, and the theologian can hardly
expect to be saved by what is virtually a plea of
“ Guilty.7’
Like every educated and thoughtful man, Darwin
was brought face to face with this problem, and he was
too honest to twist the facts, and too much a lover of
truth and clarity to submerge them in the mysterious.
He preferred to speak plainly as far as his intellect
carried him, and when it stopped to frankly confess his
ignorance.
Writing to Dr. Asa Gray (May 22, 1850), Darwin
puts a strong objection to Theism very pointedly.
“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I
should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all
sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent
God would have designedly created the ichneumonidse with
the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies
of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not be
lieving this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was
expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be
contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the
nature of mar, and to conclude that everything is the result of
brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting
from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left
�DABWIN ON GOD.
59
to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that
this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the
whole subject is too profound for the human intellect.”9
The latter part of this extract about “ designed
laws ” is modified by a subsequent letter, already
quoted, to the same correspondent. The first part is
the one to be dwelt upon in the present connexion.
Dealing with the same subject sixteen years later in
his Autobiography, Darwin gives his opinion that
happiness, on the whole, predominates over misery,
although he admits that this ‘f would be very difficult
to prove.” He then faces the Theistic aspect of the
question.
“ That there is much suffering' in the world no one disputes.
Some have attempted to explain this with reference to man by
imagining that it serves for his moral improvement. But the
number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that
of all other sentient beings, and they often suffer greatly
without any moral improvement. • This very old argument
from the existence of suffering against the existence of an
intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one.”1
Darwin is perfectly conscious that he is advancing
no new argument against Theism. An age of micro
scopical science was, indeed, necessary before the
internal parasites of caterpillars could be instanced;
not to mention the thirty species of parasites that
prey on the human organism. But such larger para
sites as fleas and lice have always been obvious, and
the theologians have been constantly asked why
Almighty Goodness prompted Almighty Wisdom to
provide humanity with such a sumptuous stock of
these nuisances. It may also be observed that while
9 Vol. II., p. 312.
1 Vol. I., p. 311.
�60
DARWIX OX GOD.
cholera, fever, and other germs, are modern discoveries,
such things as tumors, cancers, and leprosy, have
always attracted attention, and they are more telling
instances of malignant “ design ” than the ichneumonidae in caterpillars, as they immediately affect the
gentlemen who carry on the discussion.
Darwinism does, however, present the problem of
evil in a new light. It shows us that evil is not on the
surface of things, but is part of their very texture.
Those who complacently dwell on the survival of the
fittest, and the forward march to perfection, con
veniently forget that the survival of the fittest is the
result. Natural Selection is the process. And if we
look at this more closely we discover that natural selec
tion and the survival of the fittest are the same thing;
the real process being the elimination of the unfit.
Those who survive would have lived in any case ; what
has happened is that all the rest have been crushed out
of existence. Suppose, for instance (to take a case of
artificial selection), a farmer castrates nineteen bulls
and breeds from the twentieth; it makes a great
difference to the result, but clearly the whole of the
process is the elimination of the nineteen. Similarly,
in natural selection, all organic variations are alike
spawned forth by Nature ; the fit are produced and
perpetuated, while the unfit are produced and exter
minated. And hoic exterminated? Not by the swift
hand of a skilful executioner, but by countless varieties
of torture, some of which display an infernal ingenuity
that might abash the deftest Inquisitor. Every disease
known to us is simply one of Nature’s devices for
eliminating hei’ unsuitable offspring, and a cat’s playing
�DARWIN ON GOD.
61
with a mouse is nothing to the prolonged sport of
Nature in killing the victims of her own infinite lust
of procreation. Place a Deity behind this process,
and you create a greater and viler Devil than any
theology of the past was capable of inventing. Accept
it as the work of blind forces, and you may become a
Pessimist if you are disgusted with tlic entire business ;
or an Optimist if you are healthy, prosperous and
callous ; or a Meliorist if you think evolution tends to
progress, and that your own efforts may brighten the
lot of your fellows.
Darwin put the case too mildly in his first great work.
“ When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves
with the full belief, that no fear is felt, that death is generally
prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy
survive and multiply. ’2
Professor Huxley, in liis vigorous and uncompro
mising fashion, has put the case with greater foice and
accuracy
“From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is
;on about the same level as a gladiator’s show, the creatures
are fairly well treated, and set to figlit—whereby the strongest,
the swiftest and cunningest live to fight another day. The
spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarte1'
is given. He must admit that the skill and training displayed
are wonderful. But he must shut his eyes if he would not see
that more or less enduring suffering is the meed of both vanguished and victor.’’3
Dr. Wallace, on the other hand, argues that the
“ torments ” and “ miseries ” of the lower animals are
imaginary, and that “ the amount of actual suffering
- Origin of Species, p, Gl.
3 The Struggle for Existence, “ Nineteenth Century,” February,
1888, p-163.
�62
DARWIN ON GOD.
caused by the struggle for existence among animals is
altogether insignificant?' They live merrily, have no
apprehensions, and die violent deaths which are “ pain
less and easy?’ Really the picture is idyllic I But
Dr. Wallace’s optimism is far from exhausted. Ide
tells us that “ their actual flight from an enemy ” is an
“ enjoyable exercise ” of their powers. This reminds
one of the old fox-hunter who, on being taxed with
enjoying a cruel sport, replied: “ Why the men like
it, the horses [like it, the dogs like it, and, demmc,
the fox likes it too.”
RELIGION AND MORALITY.
Darwin was, of course, a naturalist in ethics, holding
1 hat morality is founded on sympathy and the social
instincts.
There is no more solid and satisfactory
account of the genesis and development of conscience
than is to be found in the chapter on “ The Moral
Sense ” in the Descent of Man. I do not think-, how
ever, that he had given much attention to the relations
between morality and religion, but what he says is of
course entitled to respect.
“ With the more civilised races,” he declares, “ the
conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has
had a potent influence on the advance of morality?’4
He speaks of “ the ennobling belief in the existence
of an Omnipotent God,”5 and again of “the grand
idea of a God hating sin and loving righteousness.”c
These are casual opinions, never in any case elaborated,
so that we cannot tell on what grounds Darwin held
1 Descent of Man, p. 612.
5 Ibid, p. 93.
« Ibid, p. 144.
�63
DARWIN ON GOD.
them. One would have liked to hear his opinion as to
how many people were habitually swat ed bt this
“ grand idea” of God.
AGNOSTICISM AND ATHEISM. '
My views are not at all necessarily atheistical,
wrote Darwin in 1860 to Dr. Asa Gray.7 In the same
strain he wrote to Mr. Fordyce in 1879 :
“ What my own views may he is a question of no conse
quence to anyone but myself. But, as you ask, I may state
that my judgment often fluctuates. ... In my most extreme
fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of
denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and
more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an
Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of
mind.” s
Similarly, he closes a lengthy passage of his Auto
biography—“The mystery of the beginning of all
things is insoluble by us ; and I for one must be con
tent to remain an Agnostic.”9
Let us here recur to the conversation between
Darwin and Dr. Biichner, reported by Dr. Aveling.
Darwin “ held the opinion that the Atheist was a denier
of God,” and this is borne out by the extract just
given from his letter to Mr. Fordyce. His two guests
explained to him that the Greek prefix a was privative
not negative, and that an Atheist was simply a person
without God. Darwin agreed with them on every
point, and said finally, “ I am with you in thought, but
I should prefer the word Agnostic to the word
Atheist.” They suggested that Agnostic was Atheist
“ writ respectable,” and Atheist was Agnostic “ writ
7 Vol. II., p. 312.
8 Vol. I., p. 305.
s Vol. I., p. 313.
�64
DARWIN ON GOD.
aggressive?’ At which he smiled, and asked, “ Whyshould you be so aggressive ? Is anything gained by
trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of man
kind t It is all very well for educated, cultured,
thoughtful people ; but are the masses yet ripe for it ?”1
Mr. Francis Darwin does not dispute this report.
“ My father’s replies implied his preference for the unaggressive attitude of an Agnostic. Dr. Aveling seems to regard the
absence of aggressiveness in my father’s views as distinguish
ing them in an unessential manner from his own. But, in my
judgment, it is precisely differences of this kind which dis
tinguish him so completely from the class of thinkers to which
Dr. Aveling belongs.” 2
This is amusing but not convincing ; indeed, it gives
up the whole point at issue. Mr. Francis Darwin
simply confirms all that Dr. Aveling said. The great
naturalist was not aggressive, so he preferred A gnostic
to Atheist; but as both mean exactly the same, essen
tially, the difference is not one of principle, but one of
policy and temperament.
Darwin prided himself
on having “ done some service in aiding to overthrow
the dogma of separate creations”® Had he gone more
into the world, and seen the evil effects of other dogmas,
he might have sympathised more with the aggressive
attitude of those who challenge Theology in toto as
the historic enemy of liberty and progress. This at
least is certain, that Charles Darwin, the supreme
biologist of his age, and the greatest scientific intellect
since Newton, was an Atheist in the only proper sense
of the word ; the sense supported by etymology, the
sense accepted by those who bear the name.
1 Dr. Aveling’s pamphlet, p. 5.
2 Life and Letters, vol. i., p. 817.
3 Descend of Man, p, 61.
�
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Darwin on God
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
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Place of publication: London
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God
Evolution
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Charles Darwin
Evolution-Religious Aspects-Christianity
God
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