The Problem of Species

Article 2. The Problem of Species

c) Origin of Species

a) Terms of the Problem

We find on earth the wondrous thing called life. We see life manifested in living bodies. We notice a gradation, a scale of degrees, in living things, and we discern three essentially different grades of life and living bodies, viz., plants with vegetal life, animals with sentient life, and human beings with rational life. Further, we notice grades within the two lower essential grades; we find a graduated scale of types of organisms; these organisms are grouped into species, and each species appears to keep stubbornly within its own set limits, and yet the various species seem to be connected steps of one stupendous plan,— steps that lead from the least perfect sentient organism (if not from vegetal organisms) up to the higher animals, and even to man, considering man merely in his bodily structure and functions.

Now, out of the fact of life and its existing grades; out of the scale of specific types within the lower grades, comes the problem we are now to discuss. There is the preliminary problem of life, and there is the problem of species or of life in specific types of organisms. The preliminary problem must be solved before the other problem,—which is here our direct concern,—can be fairly attacked. We must discuss the origin of life on earth, before we attempt to understand the origin of species. And so we ask: how did life originate on earth, and how does it happen that living bodies are arranged in specific groups which seem to be related as the steps of a ladder or even the links of a chain?

b) First Origin of Life

Scientists have long ago come to the conclusion that a living thing comes only from a living thing. True, there are a few who hold stubbornly to the utterly indefensible view of the Materialists that there is no essential difference between living and lifeless bodies; that life is to be explained in terms of physical, mechanical, and chemical activity; and that differences among existing organisms is merely a matter of the degree of complexity and intensity in such lifeless activity. We have seen that this view is not only unfounded but is flatly in conflict with reason and the facts of experience (Cf. Chap. I, Art, 2, b). Life is essentially different from non-life, and life does not come from non-life. The great majority of scientists are quite agreed on the point. They accept as axiomatic the phrases: omne vivum ex vivo “every living thing from a living thing”; omne ovum ab ovo “every egg,—or vitalized germ,—from an egg”; omnis cellula ex cellula “every cell from a cell”; omne protoplasma ex protoplasmate “all protoplasm from protoplasm.”

We have all heard the famous question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg ?” It is an interesting question, but it is not a basic question. Granted that either the chicken or the egg had to come first in that particular chicken-and-egg series, the fundamental question is this: “Whence did the first chicken,—or first egg,—have life and the power to start this ap-patently unending chicken-and-egg series ?” Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in one of his entertaining yet penetrating essays, says that it is more exciting to have a nose than to have a Norman nose. Similarly, it is more exciting, and vastly more important to the serious investigator, to find life than to find life in this or that organism. Tell us first where life came from, and we shall then take up the minor question of the various manifestations of life. We must face the problem of life,—i. e., of organic life on earth,—before we face the problem of species.

We have seen that life is essentially different from non-life. It follows at once that life cannot have originated in non-life. An effect must find explanation in its adequate cause, which will be one cause or a sum of contributing causes. True, a capable agent can use inferior materials to make a superior product, but in this case the power of the agent and the agent’s own perfection which is back of the power, enter into the sum of causes which account for the product. We do not say that bricks make a wall, and exclude the builder and the planner of the wall. Mr. Dooley remarks in one of his more caustic moments: “It was discovered that ink and pa-aper wud projooce wurrds, and thin the printin’-press was invinted.” We all catch and enjoy the point of the remark, but our very enjoyment comes partly from the absurdity of the notion that ink and paper of themselves, without thinker, and writer, and compositor, and pressman, could produce words. For nothing can of itself produce an effect which is superior to itself. Now, a living body is unquestionably superior to a non-living body. The living body has a constitution that is wondrously more complex, amazingly more balanced, and inexpressibly more unified than a non-living body. And the operations of a living body are of immeasurably greater variety and power than those of lifeless bodies. The living body is the superior thing, and the lifeless body the inferior. And hence the non-living body cannot of itself have produced the living body. An agent cannot give what he does not possess; he cannot do what is manifestly beyond his power to accomplish. You cannot pay a bill of one dollar with a single dime. You cannot lift the Pyramid of Cheops with three fingers. Neither can non-living matter give what it does not possess, i. e., life; nor can lifeless bodies do what is manifestly beyond their power to accomplish, i. e., confer life with its wondrous capacity for immanent operation. To say that life comes from non-life is to enunciate an absurdity; there is an obvious lack of essential proportion between life and non-life; viewed as cause and effect, with non-life in the role of cause, these items do not meet the requirements of reason or fact; they do not, as the schoolboy says, “add up right.” If we find life in matter, as we manifestly do, there is only one possible conclusion that will satisfy reason, and this is that life was put into matter, and has not come from matter itself. This conclusion of sound reason is backed by the whole history of experimental science.

A while ago it was the opinion of some scientists that the more imperfect animal organisms were generated by non-living bodies. It was found, for example, that water, completely sterilized and free from every form of life, would, in the course of a few hours, contain microscopic organisms. It seemed to the scientists in question that reason would have to surrender to stubborn fact and admit that life had come from non-life. Either that, or the old doctrine of a living universe (hylozoism) would have to be revived as the true philosophy of this bodily world. But the difficulty was only a seeming one. A few experiments, notably those of the great French chemist, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), solved it completely and finally. These experiments showed that the organic life found in the water came there from the atmosphere, which is literally filled with tiny organisms or living germs. When the air was scientifically strained to prevent the infiltration of germs, the water was found to remain perfectly sterile. Further, it was discovered that when the water was left open to the air of the crowded city (with its hundreds of breathing beings, and its unavoidable accumulations of filth and decaying organic matter) it was soon filled with organisms, while water left exposed to the clear air of a mountain-top remained comparatively free from them. Thus was the death-blow administered to a theory called,—somewhat inaccurately,—the theory of spontaneous generation, that is, the theory that matter can, of itself, “come alive” or can germinate living bodies. We are all so familiar nowadays with processes of sterilization and pasteurization (which latter term is a perpetuation of the name of Pasteur) that we can hardly believe that, not very long ago, solemn scientists and serious philosophers found a baffling problem in the fact that exposed foodstuffs will “breed” maggots, and that the apparently solid apple has a wiggling worm in its heart. We know,—and accept the knowledge as a thing almost self-evident,—that infected foods take their infection from the germ-laden air, and that the worm in the apple was first a tiny egg deposited by a winged creature in the apple-blossom. And we prevent infection of foods by pasteurizing milk and by placing edibles into our refrigerators; we secure a crop of wormless apples by repeated and rightly timed spraying of our orchards. We know, in a word, that the organisms here considered come from other organisms; we know that life comes from life; we know that lifeless matter does not “breed” living things.

Now, even if matter could give life,—which it cannot do,—the basic question of the origin of life on earth would not be answered by this fact. For the question would at once revert to this: whence came the original matter, and whence came its power to give life? It would not do to say that matter came from other matter which existed, perhaps, in the form of a primal mist or nebula. Such an answer would only delay the solving of the problem presented by matter as a source of life. Matter from matter, and this from other matter, and this from still other matter, and so on until the primal nebula is reached, and behold, this is still matter! The problem is not solved; the question is not answered. Not a single step, not the shortest distance, not an inch, not the breadth of a hair, has been traversed in any advance upon the problem. After considering all the long series of phases of matter, one has not yet even come to grips with the problem. The problem is precisely what it was at the outset; the question remains the same: where did the first matter come from and how did matter get the power to develop into living bodies ? Now, it does not signify whether matter has undergone many changes or passed through many remarkable phases of existence. If matter is to be regarded as the source of life there must have been a first quantity of matter endowed with the power of producing a chain of material things which would eventually bud forth life. And our question is concerned with this first matter. The subsequent development of matter does not concern us at all until the fundamental question is answered, the question of where the original life-bearing matter came from and where it got its cargo of transmissible life. The Materialists have always dodged this issue. They have not even had the grace of the politician in inventing some cloak or cover for their twisted and broken chain of ostensible reasoning. Some of them have explained life on earth by saying that it must have come from some other planet; which, as Mr. Chesterton points out, is like explaining the ghost in the village churchyard by saying that it must have come from a neighboring village. In a word, the explanation does not explain; it merely shifts the problem, leaving it completely unsolved and even unattacked. Other Materialists have dwelt, almost lovingly, upon the vast reaches of time during which matter has been developing, and they offer that as the explanation of life on earth; which is like explaining the character and personality of your guest by telling what a roundabout journey he made to reach your house. No; if matter is in any sense the source of life, it somehow and somewhere got the power to give life. That is the fact to be faced. That is the issue that cannot be ignored, for it is the issue upon which depends the whole philosophy of life in living bodies.

Matter, then, could not of itself have produced life. For matter, far from explaining the existence of living bodies, does not even explain its own existence. But there must be an explanation for everything. “Nothing exists,” says the axiom, “without a sufficient reason for existing.” Now, the sufficient reason for an existing thing must be found in the thing itself, or in something else. If it exists in the thing itself, that thing is a being which must exist, a being of such character that it cannot be non-existent: otherwise, the being is not self-explanatory, but finds its explanation in something else, viz., in its causes. A being which explains itself, which is its own sufficient reason for existing, must be self-existent, must be uncaused. And such a being must, in the fullest sense, be self-sufficient. It must be boundless in perfection and absolutely infinite; for, not having to submit to the action of any causes (of things other than itself), there is no conceivable thing which could limit it or accidentally qualify it. In a word, a self-explanatory being must be infinite, eternal, all-perfect.

Now, there actually must be such a self-explanatory being. Why? Because all other things are inevitably traced back to it and require it as their ultimate explanation. For other things are explained in their producing causes; and these causes are explained by their causes, and so on. But there is an end to this; there is an end which is The Beginning. Things which do not explain themselves point inevitably back to something which does explain itself. To put the matter in a more technical way, contingent beings (beings which are dependent on, or contingent on, the action of their causes, and which would not be here if those causes did not operate) indicate infallibly the existence of a necessary being (a being which is of such essence that it must exist; which is so limitlessly perfect that its very essence involves its existence and is identified with its existence). Contingent beings presuppose a necessary being. Caused beings presuppose an existing First Cause.

The necessary, uncaused Being which is the great source of all being, cannot be matter. And why? Because matter is not necessary, but contingent. Matter is manifestly subject to the action of causes; matter is changeable; matter can be shaped and moulded and formed and transformed. We see evidence for this statement all about us every day and hour. Material things, living and lifeless, come into existence and pass out of it; they are born and they die; they wax.and they wane; they ripen, and rot, and decay, and disappear; they are in process of continuous change.and movement. Now, if matter were a necessary thing; if matter were self-explanatory and self-existent; if matter had to exist, it would not be subject to the action of any causes, and would perforce he changeless. But matter is far from changeless; on the contrary, it is continually changed. If the.ancient lush vegetation of the earth had to exist changelessly, how could it pass from its proper existence and become coal? If coal had to exist unchanged, how could it be transformed into ashes and smoke? If the baby must be what it is, unaffected by any causes, how does it presently become a man or woman ? Where there is change, there is contingency, for change is due to causes and is contingent upon their action. But the self-existent First Cause is not subject to causes; it is the First Cause; there exists no other cause which, from the beginning, could have had an influence upon it. The First Cause is necessary, and not contingent. Hence it is clear that matter, which is contingent, cannot be the necessary First Cause.

The First Cause which accounts for itself, for its own existence and that of all other things, must be infinite (for no cause exists to limit it), eternal (for time is the measure of creatural things that change), all-perfect (for it is subsistent being itself, boundlessly existing, purely actual and not potential). We call this one necessary Being by the name God. And if matter is in any sense the bearer of life, it is because God has made matter, and endowed it with the form of an organism and given it power to propagate. All life in organisms is, directly or indirectly, created life. And all created life comes, immediately or ultimately, from the Creator, God. It signifies nothing where you begin your investigation of life and its origin; it is of no consequence what preconceived notions you are pleased to entertain,—be they as materialistic as you will,—you must, if you keep open eyes and a clear mind, come at last to the conclusion, as inevitably as you come to the conclusion of a rightly solved problem in mathematics, that life comes from the Author of Life; that life comes, in last analysis, from God.

Life does not come from non-life. Life comes from life. Ultimately, life comes from Life. Living bodies can be explained only by reasoning back to the Creator and First Cause of all, Himself uncaused, God the All-Living. This is the true, the inescapable first origin of life on earth. And notice carefully that this is not a postulate of faith or religion; this is a conclusion of cold, scientific reason.

b) Origin of Species

Organic life has its first origin in the creative act of God. We must now ask about the different types of living things which have organic life. Did the Creator put life into only one or a few organisms and empower these to develop into all the types of organisms now existing? Or did the Creator make each and every specific type as we now know it? Or did the Creator make certain species and afterwards allow them to become extinct on earth and then replace them by other newly created species? These questions express the problem which is indicated in the phrase, “the origin of species.”

All the theories propounded to explain the origin of species may be reduced to two: the theory of changeless species, and the theory of transformed or derived species. The last named theory is known as transformism, although it is commonly called, by laymen and scientists alike, by its less accurate name of evolutionism or simply evolution. We shall make a brief study of these two types of theory.

1. The Theory of Changeless Species—Species are stable. Of themselves, they are changeless. One species has no inherent and connatural tendency to develop into another species; on the contrary, each species, while admitting varieties, clings stubbornly to its type and shows a fixed tendency to maintain it. God created the various changeless species, and this in one of three ways: (a) by successive independent creations; (b) by a single creation of all types of organisms (species) which implanted them, so to speak, in the world, each to appear at a suitable time; similarly, a gardener might sow at one time the seeds of many kinds of flowers, some of which would appear sooner, others later; (c) by creating a certain number of species, changeless in themselves, but specially endowed with a power, over and above their specific capacities, of developing into other species. We shall pause a moment upon these possibilities.

(cr) God created the various types of organisms directly, each at the moment it appeared on earth. Certainly, this theory involves no self-contradiction. It proposes something entirely possible. And there is much to be said for it. It explains satisfactorily the constancy of species, for, in spite of all the scientistic talk about one species being transformed into another, not one example of it has ever been found and verified. Species hold fast to their type, and when a departure from specific type seems to be begun, as in the birth of a hybrid, it stops at once; either the hybrid is without issue, or its offspring pops back into one of the parent species, utterly refusing to carry forward any evolution or to establish a change of specific type. Nay, even among varieties within a species, there is a tendency to hold the original natural types; and when artificial pressure is removed from a cultivated variety, the variety slips back into the state in which it formerly was. The theory of successive independent creations squares well enough with this constancy of fixed types or changeless species. The theory is an explanation that does explain. That it is the only explanation, or the true explanation, we dare not assert.

(b) St. Augustine, in his commentary on the Scriptural account of creation says, “In all the elements of the bodily world there are certain seed-essences which, when time and conditions are suitable, come to fruitfulness as species… As a seed contains invisibly what will in time become a tree, and contains it from the first, so the world, which God created all at one time, must be regarded as containing from the first all that was created in it and with it.” This theory of rationes seminales (or seed-essences) would make the bodily world a kind of fertile field in which the Creator sowed, at the beginning, the seeds which would appear, each at its own time, as species of living things. This theory, like the foregoing, is a theory that does explain. It takes account of the stubborn constancy of species, and it recognizes,—what so many modern scientists are apt to overlook,—the fact that in the marvellously graduated scheme and scale of species there are real fixed differentiations as well as real resemblances; there are missing links by the million as well as nicely graduated organic types. It is truly strange that more modern scientists do not adopt a view somewhat akin to that of St. Augustine (who lived from 354 to 430) and see in the beautiful gradation of organisms, not an argument for evolution, but the manifestation of one Builder’s magnificent and orderly plan.

(c) Some scientists feel that the theory of successive independent creations does not meet the requirements of the boundless wisdom of the Creator. How, they ask, could the all-wise God have made species simply to destroy them ? No, they say, the first things He made served Him in the forming of those that came later. He modified the earlier organisms bit by bit, and with wondrous skill, to build up the variety of specific forms which have appeared in the successive geological stages of the world’s development. In other words, while species have no connatural tendency to transform themselves into different species (and this self-destructive tendency is nowhere observed in the universe), the Creator has imparted to species a special power so to develop; more accurately, He has successively intervened directly, not to create new species, but to make essential modifications in the old. Here again, we have a theory which explains the origin of species in a manner entirely possible. It does, however, seem a bit unfair to say that the theory of successive new creations is in conflict with divine wisdom. Might it not be that the extinct species served their turn and their time, and were of benefit to the rounded welLbeing of the world while they were here, and that afterwards they were allowed to disappear? And would their existence and disappearance then be in conflict with the divine wisdom ? It seems not.

2. The Theory of Transformed or Derived Species—This theory, is, as we have said, called the theory of evolution; sometimes it is called the theory of descent or _derivation_x since it holds that qne species is descended from, or is derived from, other species. There are several types of evolution, chief of which are the following: (a) Monistic Evolution; (&) Darwinian Evolution; (c) Christian Evolution.

(a) Monistic Evolution—The name of this type of evolution is derived from the Greek word monos “alone; only.” The theory holds that there is only one kind of substance in the universe, and that all things, living and lifeless, are made of it. Monism, in the very words of its founder, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), “conceives all nature as a single whole, and recognizes the existence of mechanical causes only.” In other words, the world and all things in it are composed of a single sort of substance, which, since the world is bodily, must be a material substance, although Haeckel expressly denies that a spiritual element is excluded from the common world-stuff. Things differ by reason of the action of mechanical causes working on the world-stuff, and mechanical causes are those that produce local motion; thus things differ only by the direction and intensity of the movement of their atomic parts, and also, perhaps, by the number and arrangement of such parts in so far as number and arrangement could be the effect of mechanical causes. The world, originally a whirling mass of atoms of the world-stuff, has, through its mechanical activity, worked itself out or has evolved itself into its present state of order and regularity.

We cannot accept Haeckelian monism as a satisfactory explanation of the origin of species. First of all, it proposes a material substance as the self-existing, self-explanatory First Cause; we have seen that this cannot be. Matter (even though mingled with some spiritual element) is not necessary being, but contingent being. It cannot be the first being. Haeckelism therefore is a theory which does not account for the facts it is meant to explain; it does not say where the world-stuff came from; it leaves us to accept, as a basic principle, the absurdity of unproduced matter. Secondly, this type of monism leaves us to suppose that the orderly universe came to its present state and condition by pure chance. No one who observes the great cosmic movements or who looks at the delicate order and balance of the tiniest organism can accept such a suggestion for a moment. Throw a handful of type on the ground and expect it to print a perfect sonnet in the dust; toss a pinch of finely ground iron-ore into the air and wait for it to form itself into a perfectly constructed chronometer; plant a bit of stone and look for the growth of a majestic building,—do these absurd things if you will, but refrain from that absolute nadir of insanity which looks upon world and life and murmurs “Chance!” Chance is never a cause; chance is indicative of something unexpected or unforeseen in an effect. The type-slugs cast on the ground might chance to print a sonnet, but the sonnet has still its cause in the type-slugs and the thrower. The thrown dust may form itself into a watch, and this effect may be regarded as a chance effect, but there was no chance about the cause; the dust had to be thrown, there had to be someone to throw it. Thirdly, Haeckel’s monism proposes uncaused mechanical motion as the basic actuality of things. Yet mechanical motion is not» and cannot be, self-originating. Mechanical motion is transient motion, and not immanent activity; and even if it were immanent activity, which it is not, it would, as we have seen, have to be infinite, and therefore subsistently independent of the finite universe which it actuates, in order to qualify as the ultimate reason and explanation of the world. Yet Haeckel explains the universe as the product of mechanical causes working within its own limits and existing only there. Fourthly, the monism of Haeckel recognizes no essential difference between life and non-life, and assumes the absurdity that matter can produce life which matter itself does not possess. But we have seen that there is a demonstrable essential difference between life and non-life; we have also noticed a simple requirement of reason in the principle that an effect cannot exceed the sum of its causes, and has nothing which the causes did not first possess and then bestow upon it. Fifthly, Haeckelism supposes that organisms, having come alive through the mechanical motion of the world-substance, can change themselves, and do change themselves, into organisms essentially different from themselves and of a higher grade. This doctrine is in manifest conflict with both the principle of causality and the principle of sufficient reason. Besides, the theory ignores the constancy of species, and leaves unexplained their stubborn tendency to hold their proper nature and not to destroy it even for the sake of having it transformed into something superior. Such a suicidal tendency as the Haeckelian theory attributes to organisms is nowhere found in the universe. Organisms do tend to develop to the perfect znd mature form of their own type; they never tend to lose their identity and become something specifically new a id different. Nor may it be objected that Haeckel denied the essential difference of species; we admit that he did, but we are not discussing his opinion on the point; we are dealing with objective fact in the light of his doctrine of monistic evolution. Sixthly, the doctrine of Haeckel would make human life in all its manifestations a matter of mere mechanical motion. Thought, ideals, reasoning, willing, virtue, civilization, culture, and every phase of human action and achievement would be expressions or effects of such activity as one observes in water running down hill or in a kite that floats aloft on the summer wind. All the products of men’s minds, all the science, all the philosophy, all the poetry, all the art, would be the product of mechanical action,—of action like the turning of a wheel, of action no whit different from that which is observed in the ticking watch or the throbbing motor. The patriot’s devotion, the mother’s self-sacrifice, the child’s trusting love, the student’s interest and tireless effort, the honest man’s earnest practice of religion, the statesman’s careful planning, the humble laborer’s submission to endless fatigue in the work of earning bread for his family,—all these would be manifestations of activity like that which sends the waves upon the beach or drives the raindrops down upon the earth.—For all these reasons we reject monistic evolution as the explanation of life and the origin of species. We find the theory utterly inadequate, utterly contradictory of reason, of fact, and of its own postulates.

(&) Darwinian Evolution—Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), an English naturalist, taught that all species of animals,—including man,—have come from one or two types of the lowest form of sentient organisms. The original parent-types tended to change and vary (as animals still do); the variations were transmitted to offspring, and these, in their turn, tended to add their own variations. So races were multiplied, and the changes eventually carried the varying races across the line of their specific nature, and new species appeared. The species that have endured and have held their place as lasting stages in the evolutionary process, are those which were found best qualified to meet the strain of the struggle for existence; other species, unequal to the struggle, have died out and become extinct. We may notice the struggle for existence, and the survival of the qualified, even in the individual animals of a litter, or in groups of animals that prey upon one another. The stronger manage to live; the weak and incompetent perish. In a word, the history of species, as of individual animals and groups of animals, manifests a struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. Now, the survival of the fittest is a natural process inasmuch as nature has equipped the survivors with those individual or specific superiorities (variations) which brought them victory, and hence the survivors may rightly be said to be selected by nature to endure. Existing species, therefore, are the conquering heroes of the struggle, and victory came to them by way of natural selection. Man is developed, by force of natural selection, from the higher apes.

We cannot accept Darwinian evolution as the explanation of the origin of species. We find it in contradiction with reason and with experience.

(r) Darwinian evolution contradicts reason. It makes natural selection the motive power which differentiates species, and natural selection is nothing more nor less than chance selection. In other words, Darwin, like Haeckel, proposes a universe of organisms evolved by chance. Reason cannot accept chance as a cause, for it is never a cause; chance presupposes a cause, for chance is only a quality in an effect; it is not the producer of an effect. Again, Darwinian evolution contradicts reason in assigning tremendous effects to trifling causes, after giving the causes existence by mere chance. To say that racial variations, when long sustained and amplified through generations of animals, will avail at last to change the very nature of the animals concerned and turn them into new species of organisms, is as fatuous as saying that if a man wears brighter and brighter clothing, and instills into his children a love for more and more colorful attire, one of his descendants may eventually become a rainbow. Indeed, it is as silly as to say that the rainbow may eventually become a brightly clothed child; for the evolutionary drive (by force of pure chance or, if you prefer the synonym, by natural selection) is ever upward, from the lower type of being towards the higher. Reason demands a proportion between an effect and its adequate cause,—that is, the sum-total of causes which contributed to its being. Reason requires a measure and balance in things. Reason cannot conceive of a cause which confers what it does not possess, and of an effect which exceeds in perfection the total perfection of all the causes which contributed to its production. Darwinian evolution ignores this requirement of sane reason. The theory, therefore, is in conflict with reason; it contradicts reason; it must, in consequence, be rejected. Now, it will not do to say that Darwinian evolution is a development like that of a seed or germinated cell into the mature organism. The evolution of the seed or cell is not the evolution of one species into another by force of accidental variation which unaccountably becomes, on a sudden, essential variation. The evolution of the seed or cell is the growing-up of a specific organism to full stature. Specific life, and specific drive for development, were present in the cell from the first, and the species of the seed or cell and of the mature organism which develops from it is one and the same species. Nothing is left for natural selection in the development of the germinated cell; the type of organism to be evolved is already predetermined.

(rr) Darwinian evolution is in conflict with experience. This type of evolution conceives species as ever varying, ever reaching out by countless variations towards the borderland of higher species. In consequence, species are not clearly defined. But modern experimental science presents us with litanies of species perfectly defined and clearly differentiated. The clear-cut character and stability of species is the very foundation of botanical and biological science. Again, the best of scientists freely confess that all the efforts of experimenters, gardeners, breeders, biologists, have not succeeded in driving an organism out of its species into another of either higher or lower type. Varieties are produced in almost countless numbers; a new species, never. Finally, the attempt to “cross” species directly by interbreeding (the process is called hybridization) has always failed to produce a new species. The hybrid is usually sterile, and when fertile, its offspring or descendants invariably revert to the species originally crossed. Thus is Darwinian evolution found to be in conflict with experience. For these reasons, therefore,—viz., that the theory contradicts reason and is in conflict with experience,— we reject Darwinian evolution as inadequate. We do not find in this theory an explanation of the origin of species.

Before passing on to consider Christian Evolution, we pause momentarily to inspect the Theory of Mutations proposed by the famous Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries (1848-). This theory explains the origin of species by asserting the occurrence of sudden “jumps” in the evolutionary process. It does not admit the steady variations and gradual adaptations and over-lappings which link up all species of animals in the Darwinian scheme. It asserts a series of sudden changes or mutations each of which introduced new species. In criticism of this theory, we may only say that if it attributes the “jumping power” to organisms themselves, without the intervention of an extrinsic controlling force (which is, ultimately, divinely applied), it fails by the same reasons which condemn Darwinism. If it means that God directly intervenes to produce the mutations, the theory is not essentially different from the third type of theory which supposes species to remain naturally changeless (Cf. supra p. 137, c).

(c) Christian Evolution—There exists to-day a mistaken attitude of mind on the subject of evolution, —an attitude so common as to be almost universal, even among students and professors of the natural sciences,—which should be firmly and uncompromisingly corrected wherever it is encountered. It consists in the notion that evolution and religion are subjects inevitably, and even inextricably, intertwined. In many minds the notion is extended to include the conviction that an evolutionist is a man without belief in God. Now, the fact is that evolution, taken simply as a hypothesis, has nothing whatever to do with religion, nor has religion anything to do with evolution. It is a further fact that many professed evolutionists have been,—as many now are,—men of markedly religious life and abounding faith. Evolution cannot dispense with God, and even the monistic scheme ignores God rather than denies Him. For the rest, the universe is God’s; if He choose to create it and have it go through a slow process of development and growth rather than to create it in full and complete and final form, it is still a creature-world and God is still its Creator. As a fact, we know that this earth of ours has gone through a long progress involving many changes. There was a time when life did not, and could not, exist on the earth. There was a later time when organisms existed in species which are now no longer found. There are now in existence organic bodies of species which were unknown in an earlier time. And, for the matter of that, Holy Scripture itself tells us that there was a process and a progress in the creation of the world; God created all things in six periods or stages, which, we may well believe, were of immensely protracted duration, since geology seems to indicate as much, and there is nothing whatever in Revelation to suggest an idea of their length. Taken simply as an hypothesis, that is, as a provisional explanation assumed to be tested and tried in an effort to get at the truth of the world’s history, evolution is a subject of purely scientific character and does not touch religion at all. In our rejection of monistic evolution and Darwinian evolution we have not invoked religion. We have found these systems in conflict with reason, with facts, and with experience, and so we have been compelled to reject them as inadequate and untrue. We have thrown aside these faulty theories, not because they are irreligious (as, indeed, in their practical effects upon human life they would undoubtedly be), but because they are utterly unreasonable and therefore manifestly false. But there is one point upon which many evolutionists bring their hypothesis into conflict with religion, and it is the evolutionists themselves that cause the conflict, like a mad motorist who deliberately swerves his car out of line and drives it full tilt into another. The point is this: these mistaken evolutionists unwarrantedly teach that man, body and soul, with all his elements, faculties, and powers, is a pure product of animal evolution. This doctrine no Christian can accept; nay, no sane man can accept it, for reason recognizes the fact that the chasm between animal life in brutes and rational life in men is unbridgeable by any organic development, no matter to what lengths of complexity and refinement that development may be carried. For man’s rational life is not organic at all, and therefore cannot find its origin or explanation in organic development. Man’s rational life, as its operations testify (and operations indicate nature; function follows essence) is _supra-organic _; it is spiritual in character. This is a point we shall study in detail in another part of this book. The Christian, therefore, must reject any theory of evolution which brings man, body and soul, into the scheme of organic development. Notice, however, that the Christian is not compelled to make the rejection by religion alone; he makes it also on the authority of reason which finds the theory wholly unacceptable. In a word, the Christian rejects human evolution not only because he is a Christian, but because he is a man; not only because he has faith, but because he has a mind which can tell a hawk from a handsaw. Man is simply outside any evolutionary theory or scheme. This being once admitted, the Christian may (since Christianity is utterly reasonable and is the fostering mother and guide of right reason) accept evolution as the explanation of the world and of the origin of species, if he finds the evidence satisfactory. We have seen that the evidence is not satisfactory (for Christian or non-Christian) in the case of the two special theories of evolution called respectively monistic and Darwinian evolution. Any evolutionary scheme, to be acceptable to reason, must recognize the following facts: (r) Matter is not self-existent nor self-explanatory. Matter requires a producer, and, ultimately, a Creator. For matter is contingent, and the existence of a contingent being demands, as its explanation and sufficient reason, the existence of a necessary being, an infinite being, God. (ii) Matter is not, of itself, immanently active; matter is not, of itself, alive. If matter have life, as it has in organisms, its capacity for vital functions was conferred upon it, was put into it,—ultimately, by the Creator, —and is not to be explained in mechanical or physicochemical terms, (iii) If organisms have really the power to transform themselves into other, and specifically superior, organisms, this power must have been conferred upon them by the Creator who wills to have organic life so manifested and so developed; but, of themselves, and without specially conferred power, organisms cannot tend to become things essentially different than they are in their own mature and rounded constitution, (w) Man is outside the field of any evolutionary development in nature, and the human soul is, in each individual instance, created immediately and directly by Almighty God.

Once all these requirements of reason (as well as of religion) are met, the Christian may, without let or hindrance from his faith, accept an evolutionary doctrine as the origin of species.

Let us now round out our position on this subject of evolution by a series of questions and answers:

Is it possible for a Christian to accept evolution as the explanation of the origin of species, if man is excluded from the evolutionary scheme?—Yes.

Is not evolution already utterly condemned in the condemnation of the Haeckelian and Darwinian systems?—No; two special theories on the manner in which evolution is supposed to carry on have been rejected; evolution as a possible fact has not been denied.

Is evolution, excluding man, really a fact?—It has not been proved so, even for the lowest of organisms. It seems probable enough. It may well be a fact. Again, it may not. We await further evidence for one conclusion or the other.

Are not all scientists avowed champions of the evolutionary theory or hypothesis?—No, but many are. Yet it is not the function of a scientist to champion any cause or to promote any enthusiasm; his work is to discover the facts in the field which he investigates. What any scientist believes is of small importance for science; true science, as Ruskin says, “does not speak until it knows” and can establish knowledge by inescapable proof.

Is not one out of tune with the scientific mood and trend if one withholds full assent to the evolutionary idea?—The scientistic mood, yes. There is no scientific mood. Science is not a matter of moods and trends, of styles and fashions; scientism is. And even in many seats of learning scientism holds, by usurpation, the place which belongs to science. Scientism is incompetence, insincerity, or chicanery, wearing the mask of science.

Do not many people,—even learned people,—believe that the Catholic Church is the bitter foe of any evolutionary doctrine, and are not these persons therefore convinced that the Church stands opposed to science?—Yes. And many persons believe that the earth is flat. And some persons believe that a Catholic pays to have his sins forgiven. If people will not face facts, if people will not read history, if people will insist upon explaining what they do not begin to know, what shall be done about it? The fact that some persons of this stamp are regarded as “learned” and can show university degrees, is only an additional cause for tears—and the tears are not shed for the Catholic Church, the mother and promoter of true science. Fatuity, and mental vacuity, and charlatanism, are, like poverty, always with us, nor are the “learned” free from these lamentable ills.

Could a Christian hold the theory that man’s body has an animal origin, that is, that the body of one single individual animal was developed through organic stages, after being first formed from the slime of the earth, until it was adequately prepared for God’s purpose of infusing a human soul into it, and so creating our first father, Adam?—There is absolutely no evidence for this belief. On the other hand, the notion in itself does not appear to conflict with reason or with the revealed account of man’s creation.

Could a Christian accept the theory that many, or at least several, animals were thus prepared for elevation to the human status by the creation and infusion of souls?—Absolutely no. The best scientific study as well as clearly revealed truth combine to inform us that mankind is descended from a single pair of parents, and we have it as a truth divinely revealed that the body of the first woman was formed from the body of the first man.

When all demands of reason are met in elaborating a scheme of evolution, excluding man, what has religion to say for or against the possibility or probability of such a scheme as the statement of fact? —Nothing whatever.

What has philosophy to say of such a scheme ?— Nothing whatever.

Summary of the Article

In this lengthy Article we have learned many important things. We have stated the problem of the origin of life on earth, and that of the origin of species. We have found that the first origin of life is the creative act of an infinite and necessary First Being and First Cause, God. We have seen that matter does not explain its existence, nor can it explain the fact that material bodies possess organic life. Spontaneous generation we have found inadequate to explain the origin of life, and indeed we have seen that it is impossible. We have reduced to two general classes the systems which attempt to explain the origin of species: the theory of changeless species, and the theory of transformed or derived species. Under the first head, we have discussed the theories of independent successive creations, of seed-essences, of essences changed by a specially communicated power for specific modification. Under the second head, we have grouped the evolutionary theories, and have discovered that Haeckelian evolution (or monistic evolution) and Darwinian evolution (or the evolution of natural selection) fail to square with reason, with facts, with experience, and are therefore to be rejected as false doctrine. We have explained Christian evolution and have admitted its possibility, although we are forced to acknowledge that it is an unproved hypothesis.