On the Genesis of Species | Page 9

if Mr. Darwin had dealt in the same manner with some
of his assailants, and shown the futility of certain of their objections
when {16} viewed from a more elevated religious standpoint. Instead
of so doing, he seems to adopt the narrowest notions of his opponents,
and, far from endeavouring to expand them, appears to wish to endorse
them, and to lend to them the weight of his authority. It is thus that Mr.
Darwin seems to admit and assume that the idea of "creation"
necessitates a belief in an interference with, or dispensation of, natural
laws, and that "creation" must be accompanied by arbitrary and
unorderly phenomena. None but the crudest conceptions are placed by
him to the credit of supporters of the dogma of creation, and it is
constantly asserted that they, to be consistent, must offer "creative
fiats" as explanations of physical phenomena, and be guilty of
numerous other such absurdities. It is impossible, therefore, to acquit
Mr. Darwin of at least a certain carelessness in this matter; and the
result is, he has the appearance of opposing ideas which he gives no
clear evidence of having ever fully appreciated. He is far from being
alone in this, and perhaps merely takes up and reiterates, without much
consideration, assertions previously assumed by others. Nothing could
be further from Mr. Darwin's mind than any, however small, intentional
misrepresentation; and it is therefore the more unfortunate that he
should not have shown any appreciation of a position opposed to his
own other than that gross and crude one which he combats so
superfluously--that he should appear, even for a moment, to be one of
those, of whom there are far too many, who first misrepresent their
adversary's view, and then elaborately refute it; who, in fact, erect a
doll utterly incapable of self-defence and then, with a flourish of
trumpets and many vigorous strokes, overthrow the helpless dummy
they had previously raised.
This is what many do who more or less distinctly oppose theism in the
interests, as they believe, of physical science; and they often represent,
amongst other things, a gross and narrow anthropomorphism as the
necessary consequence of views opposed to those which they
themselves advocate. {17} Mr. Darwin and others may perhaps be
excused if they have not devoted much time to the study of Christian
philosophy; but they have no right to assume or accept, without careful

examination, as an unquestioned fact, that in that philosophy there is a
necessary antagonism between the two ideas, "creation" and
"evolution," as applied to organic forms.
It is notorious and patent to all who choose to seek, that many
distinguished Christian thinkers have accepted and do accept both ideas,
i.e. both "creation" and "evolution."
As much as ten years ago, an eminently Christian writer observed: "The
creationist theory does not necessitate the perpetual search after
manifestations of miraculous powers and perpetual 'catastrophes.'
Creation is not a miraculous interference with the laws of nature, but
the very institution of those laws. Law and regularity, not arbitrary
intervention, was the patristic ideal of creation. With this notion, they
admitted without difficulty the most surprising origin of living
creatures, provided it took place by law. They held that when God said,
'Let the waters produce,' 'Let the earth produce,' He conferred forces on
the elements of earth and water, which enabled them naturally to
produce the various species of organic beings. This power, they thought,
remains attached to the elements throughout all time."[10] The same
writer quotes St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to the effect that,
"in the institution of nature we do not look for miracles, but for the
laws of nature."[11] And, again, St. Basil,[12] speaks of the continued
operation of natural laws in the production of all organisms. [Page 18]
So much for writers of early and mediæval times. As to the present day,
the Author can confidently affirm that there are many as well versed in
theology as Mr. Darwin is in his own department of natural knowledge,
who would not be disturbed by the thorough demonstration of his
theory. Nay, they would not even be in the least painfully affected at
witnessing the generation of animals of complex organization by the
skilful artificial arrangement of natural forces, and the production, in
the future, of a fish, by means analogous to those by which we now
produce urea.
And this because they know that the possibility of such phenomena,
though by no means actually foreseen, has yet been fully provided for
in the old philosophy centuries before Darwin, or even before Bacon,

and that their place in the system can be at once assigned them without
even disturbing its order or marring its harmony.
Moreover, the old tradition in this respect has never been abandoned,
however much it