ILF B 3 370 CIS AND THEORIES SIR BERTRAM WiNDLE THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID FACTS & THEORIES BEING A CONSIDERATION OF SOME BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTIONS OF TO-DAY BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE M.A., M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., K.S.G. PRESIDENT OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, CORK LONDON CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY 69 SOUTHWARK BRIDGE ROAD, S.E. 1912 THE REV. P. A. ROCHE, ADM. SS. PETER AND PAUL, CORK, IN RECOGNITION OF MANY ACTS OF KINDNESS SHOWN BY HIM TO THE WRITER PREFACE A CONSIDERABLE amount of the matter which makes up this little volume has already appeared in the pages of the Catholic World ; and to its editor, the Rev. J. J. Burke, C.S.P., I must return my thanks for his kind permission to reproduce it here. To this I have added about an equal amount of fresh matter if, indeed, that can be called fresh which has in part already appeared in other pamphlets and books of mine. These pages are intended to present a popular account of certain fundamental biological problems and conceptions as they stand at the moment, and an appreciation of their bearing upon the beliefs of Catholics indeed, I think I might say of all persons holding the main doctrines of Christianity, for it is against these main doctrines that the attack is being made to-day. The old form of polemic is, if not dead, at least on its death-bed, and no longer affects intelligent and thinking people. It is, therefore, quite possible, and in my opinion most advisable, for those interested in Christianity, however they may differ on other points, at least to unite in defence of the fundamental doctrines on 5 6 Facts and Theories which all persons to whom the term " Christian *' can, in any legitimate manner, be applied, are agreed. It may perhaps be thought by some that I have omitted a number of points which I might have included in this book such, for example, as that of the question of poly- or mono-phyletic evolution. To this I can only reply that it seemed to me to be better to confine myself to a few of the greater problems, and this lest I should obscure the main trend of my argument. The thesis discussed in this book is made plain enough, I hope, in its pages. What I have been concerned to show is that scientific opinion is by no means unanimous on most of the points perhaps not on any of the points discussed in this book ; and that, until it is unanimous or some- thing like it, non-scientific persons need not trouble their minds, except through intellectual curiosity, about such questions. Further, that where there is unanimity, or even an approach to it, the views of scientific men in no way come into contest with the faith of Catholics. Of course it may be urged that such is not the picture displayed by many of the manuals which issue from the press. I agree ; and I have dealt at some length with that point in the course of the discussion which follows. Still, I will here say that the writers of at least some of these Preface 7 manuals, though believed by the ignorant public to be great lights of science and quoted by them as such, would not be recognized as scientific persons at all by those qualified to express an opinion on the point, but would be placed amongst those enterprising journalists whose function in life is to startle the mind of the public. No one denies the influence which their writings exercise on the ignorant ; it is just that influence which we have to combat. But, without naming names, I can at this moment recall some half- dozen persons whom I have seen alluded to in newspapers, and I think, in the writings of one or another of the group, as luminaries of science, none of whom, I also think, has ever contributed one single fact or original line to the treasure-house of science. In conclusion, I should like to thank my friends, Dr. G. A. Boulenger, F.R.S., Mr. J. Britten, F.L.S., and Fr. M. Maher, S.J., D.Litt. (Lond.), for their kindness in reading the MS. of this book and for the valuable suggestions which they have made. BERTRAM C. A WINDLE. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, CORK. iith Sept. 1912. CONTENTS CHAP. PACK 1. ON "BIAS" . . .11 2. ON "DOGMA" AND "DOGMATISM" . . 28 3. ON "NATURE" AND SCIENCE/' AND ON "FACTS," "LAWS," AND "HYPOTHESES" . 41 4. ON LIFE AND THE EXPLANATIONS OFFERED THEREON 54 5. ON THE ORIGINATION OF LIFE I BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS . 7 2 6. ON THE VARIABILITY OF LIVING THINGS, AND ON "DARWINISM" 88 7. WHAT DARWIN HIMSELF HELD ... 98 8. THE ORIGIN OF MAN . . . . Il8 9. "DARWINISM" AND CERTAIN SUPERSTRUC- TURES MORALITY AND MORALS . . 135 10. SOME OTHER " ISMS " . -144 INDEX . . . . . l6l FACTS AND THEORIES CHAPTER I ON "BIAS" WHEN anyone professing Christianity, and still more when any Catholic, sits down to criticize prevalent scientific ideas, he well knows the battery which will be unmasked upon him and the kind of missiles which it will discharge, even though he may never mention the name of religion in his criticisms. Every gun which is fired will roar out the word " bias," and the gunners will entertain no doubt that they have pierced his protective armour and disabled his ship when they make use of that explosive. And there is no doubt that the force of such arguments as the critic whose position we are considering may bring forward is very consider- ably weakened in the minds of quite a large number of persons by this counter-statement that his views are "biased." Nor is the reason for this very far to seek. Everybody knows of the old lady and the "blessed word Mesopotamia " ; but everybody ii 12 Facts and Theories does not know, or at least does not reflect upon, what Bacon called " Idols of the Market-Place," i.e. the habit of using terms the meaning of which we do not clearly understand or have not distinctly agreed upon. The mere verbal explanation, especi- ally when it is in a dead language, amply satisfies hosts of people the kind of people who would be greatly edified and perfectly contented if it was explained to them that it was its poluphloisboiosity which accounted for the noise made by the sea. I do not think that Bacon ever described the " Idol of the Customary Epithet," but he might have done, and might also have lingered in considera- tion over the fact that it exercises almost magic influence over the minds of many people. " The Church is biased ! Catholics are biased ! Does not everybody know it ? Let us pass on and waste no time over such pestilent persons ! " Such, then, is the initial difficulty which the Catholic writer meets, and that it is a real one can easily be shown by a few quotations. I saw not long ago, in a careful and very admirable sketch of the history of the Darwinian controversy, 1 a state- ment that Mivart's criticism " was regarded as negligible, since he evidently held a brief for a party standing outside the scientific world." In other words, he was "biased," and therefore you need not waste any time over him or his views. 1 Introduction to S. Butler's Unconscious Memory, Fifield (1910), p. x. On "Bias" 13 Perhaps, however, it may not be amiss to consider this case for a moment. I am not at all sure that Mivart's views were regarded as negligible at the time ; in fact, I think it might be shown that his criticism had more influence upon Darwin's mind than perhaps many suspect. But let that pass. The point which I want to make is this : if it was disregarded for the reason given, such neglect, in the light of present-day controversies, is about as disgraceful a confession as could possibly be made with respect to a scientific man and his theories. For what are the facts of the case ? What Mivart contended for is thus summed up by the writer of his obituary notice for the Royal Society : l he "steadfastly opposed the subsidiary doctrines of Darwinism, and the theory of 4 Natural Selection ' in particular ; and further, remaining an Evolutionist, for the rest of his life [he] defended with reiterated emphasis the argument that evolution proceeds from some internal force directed towards definite ends, and that it is due to processes which are definite and distinct, and not to gradual changes." In a word, as will be seen by anyone who takes the trouble to read the pages of this book, he stead- fastly put forward views which are being proclaimed to-day by many writers : views which still are the 1 Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased, 1900-1901. It may be added that the tone of the notice and the initials of its writer prove conclusively that he was not a person with any "bias" in favour of the Catholic religion. 14 Facts and Theories subject of most active controversy and experiment. If they were disregarded in Mivart's day because the person who put them forward was a Catholic, the fact is scarcely to the credit of the disregarders. I turn to another and a living example in the case of the well-known man of science, Fr.Wasmann, S.J., who is, I may explain to those unfamiliar with the paths of science, one of the greatest living authorities, it might even safely be said the greatest living authority, on the subject of ants and termites and their inquilines or commensals. Yet when this distinguished man ventures to criticize certain ideas fashionable at the moment, and even to criticize them in the light of the researches which have made his reputation, he is at once told that, as a Catholic, and, still more, as a Jesuit, he must necessarily be a biased person. One scientific wag has even emitted the brilliant theory that the letters " S.J." after the Father's name proclaim his dual personality, and that Wasmann the Scientist is at times eclipsed by Wasmann the Jesuit. The retort is obvious. The wag being a German is doubtless a Ph.D. Might it not be said that this proclaims his dual capacity, and that Wag the Philosopher is at times eclipsed by Wag the Darwinian ? The suggestion, doubtless, is puerile : is it more so than the other ? Yet one more instance. A writer, explaining to his public how great had been his efforts to collect all the On "Bias" 15 possible literature concerning his subject (and the result is worthy of all praise), says, inter alia, that he has " perused the original pourings-forth of criticism and vilification even" ("even" what a delightful touch ! ) " to the reading of some matter by certain Roman Catholic priests with a con- siderable amateur interest in natural history and a strong professional interest in anti-Darwinism." 1 Why does he not add, as he might have done, that he had also waded through the works of certain pontiffs of Materialism with a " consider- able amateur interest in Philosophy and a strong professional interest in Darwinism " ? The answer is plain : the Catholic is " biased," but the Material- ist is not. Could there be a better response ? In his delightful little book on Blake, Mr. Chesterton gives a reason rhetorical, no doubt, to some extent, but with a large germ of truth in it for this attitude. Discussing the question of the specialist and the expert, he says : 2 "The trouble with the expert is never that he is not a man ; it is always that wherever he is not an expert he is too much of an ordinary man. Wherever he is not exceptionally learned, he is quite casually ignorant. This is the great fallacy in the case of what is called the impartiality of men of science. If scientific men had no ideas beyond their scientific 1 Kellogg, Darwinism To-day, p. 30. a P. 56. 1 6 Facts and Theories work it might be all very well that is to say, all very well for everybody except them. But the truth is that beyond their scientific ideas, they have, not the absence of ideas, but the presence of the most vulgar and sentimental ideas that happen to be common to their social clique. If a biologist had no views on art or morals, it might be all very well. The truth is that a biologist has all the wrong ideas of art and morals that happen to be going about in the smart set in his time." Amongst the ideas which are going about are those that all Catholics are "biased," that they care nothing about truth, but are only desirous of bolstering up their own tottering cause at all hazards and at all sacrifices ; and biologists as well as other excellent people are sometimes at least in- fected by the ideas in the midst of which they live. But this does not prove that the ideas are true. Humanly speaking, even a biologist may be wrong. At any rate it is undoubtedly true that some biologists live in such an atmosphere of what is called " Darwinism " that they seem to imagine it to be impossible that anyone can doubt the views which they hold unless he is biased ; nor do they ever seem to suspect that there may be such a thing as scientific bias as well as the religious bias to which they object. In fact, they wholly forget the ancient fable of the pot and the kettle. In all fairness it must be admitted that it is not On "Bias" 17 only the Catholic who comes in for the kind of argument to which I have been alluding: others are beaten with the same rod if they venture to run counter to the opinions of the hierophant of the moment. I have elsewhere (see note, p. 18) alluded to the case of Virchow and Haeckel, but it is so apposite that I must again make use of it. Virchow, I must be allowed to premise, was unquestionably one of the greatest men of science of the nine- teenth century : nobody will deny that. He made a revolution in medicine by the publication of his Cellular Pathology \ his Archiv has for many years held a foremost place in the literature of science; his compeers showered on him every honour which they had to confer, and, amongst other things, made him President of the German Anthropological Society. I mention this for reasons which will shortly appear. As to Haeckel well, this is not a book on Haeckel. If it were, it would not be hard to show that whilst the world of science respects many of his discoveries, it does not look with a very favourable eye on certain methods of his which have been exposed in various works, nor upon his divagations into the paths of what he and his disciples imagine to be philosophy. J 1 Those who desire to pursue this matter further may consult the following, amongst other works: A. R. Wallace, F.R.S., O.M., The World of Life, in which the author says that, whilst having sympathy with Haeckel's dislike of theological dogma, he has " none 2 1 8 Facts and Theories Virchow was not a Catholic : as far as I am aware, he was not even a Christian. He was, how- ever, a man of very independent mind, and he won a fame which will endure and which has never been tarnished by the accusations which have been made against his opponent. The attack of which I speak was made, after Virehow's death, in the Festschrift published by the University of Cam- bridge at the Darwin Centenary. 1 Virchow, as already indicated, had an indepen- dent mind, and was not prepared to utter the shibboleth of the day unless at the dictates of his own reason. And because he was not prepared jurare in verba Haeckelii, he becomes the target with his unfounded dogmatism of combined negation and omni- science, and more especially when this assumption of superior knowledge seems to be put forward to conceal his real ignorance of the nature of life itself"; Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., Life and Matter: "He (i.e. Haeckel) writes in so forcible and positive and determined a fashion from the vantage-ground of scientific know- ledge, that he exerts an undue influence on the uncultured amongst his readers, and causes them to fancy that only benighted fools or credulous dupes can really disagree with the historical criticisms, the speculative opinions, and philosophical, or perhaps unphilo- sophical, conjectures thus powerfully set forth" (p. 135). For an account of Haeckel's falsifications of figures, see Brass and Gemelli, LtOrigine delFUomo e le Falsificazioni di E. Haeckel ; also Wasmann, Modern Biology and the Problem of Evolution (inter alia, pp. 511 seq. ). See also Gerard, The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer ; and D wight, Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist. 1 Darwin and Modern Science, art., "Charles Darwin as an Anthropologist." The remarks which follow are taken from the present writer's little pamphlet on Thomas Dwight, published by the Catholic Truth Society (id.). On "zas" 19 for the remarks of that luminary. It was not dangerous for Haeckel to enter the lists against Virchow when he did, for Virchow was no longer alive. The courageous Haeckel entered the lion's den " knowing the lion was not there, but dead." What is remarkable is that such statements as those I am now about to quote should have been allowed to appear where they did appear. Virchow, according to his critic, lacked " a broad equipment in comparative anatomy and ontogeny," in other words, he did not subscribe to Haeckel's views on those subjects, nor admit the correctness of his diagrams and the infallibility of his ideas as to the pedigree of man. " In earlier years, and especially during his splendid period of activity at Wiirzburg (1848-1856), he had been a consistent, free-thinker, and had in a number of able articles (collected in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen) upheld the unity of human nature, the inseparability of body and spirit. In later years at Berlin, where he was more occupied with political work and sociology (especially after 1866), he abandoned the positive monistic position for one of agnosticism and scepticism, and made concessions to the dualistic dogma of a spiritual world apart from the material frame." On this passage it may be observed how Haeckel calmly assumes that his monistic theories are the one true faith, and that a departure from such views is a plunge into " agnos- 2O Facts and Theories ticism and scepticism? the latter word being a peculiarly choice example of his adoring attitude towards his own theories. But let us proceed with our subject. In 1877 Haeckel tells us that he came into sharp conflict with Virchow. Haeckel had given an address in which he sought to prove that man, including his mental qualities, had been derived from those of his extinct primate ancestor. Virchow replied to this by an address on " The Freedom of Science in the Modern State." In this "he spoke of the theory of evolution as an unproved hypothesis, and declared that it ought not to be taught in the schools, because it was dangerous to the State. ' We must not,' he said, ' teach that man has descended from the ape or any other animal.'" Let it be observed that at this very time Virchow was President of the German Anthropological Society, that is, that he held the highest position in connection with the study of man which his scientific compeers had it in their power to confer on him. " Numbers of journals and treatises repeated his dogmatic statement : 'It is quite certain that man has descended neither from the ape nor from any other animal.' In this he per- sisted till his death in 1902." Now, what is the conclusion of the whole of this matter ? Obviously that Virchow was wrong and Haeckel was right. And why ? Because Haeckel says so a con- On "Bias" . 21 elusion very unlikely to be accepted as convincing by any person who is in any way familiar with the work and merits and estimation amongst their scientific brethren of the two persons, But the point to which I particularly wish to call attention is that the attempt to belittle the opinion of Virchow on these matters is made not on scientific grounds, but on the excuse that his mind had become tainted by the "dualistic dogma of a spiritual world apart from the material frame" in other words, that long thought had led him to the conclusion that there was more in heaven and earth than finds a place in the Haeckelian philosophy. ON SCIENTIFIC BIAS It is urged, as we have seen in the preceding section, that there is such a thing as Catholic bias against Darwinism. Without at present discuss- ing this question further, one may pertinently ask whether there is no such thing as bias in favour of Darwinism, or what is called Darwinism, on the part of many modern writers. " Darwinism " is so much in the air that it is quite likely that this bias is not perceived, but it is there. I once lent a friend Zahm's very interesting book Evolution and Dogma. He returned it with many expressions of interest, but added, " You can see he has a strong bias against Darwinism." I asked him whether he had never read any books which had a strong bias 22 Facts and Theories in favour of Darwinism, and his reply was, " Do you know, that didn't strike me before." That is just it. What " Darwinism " is will receive some con- sideration in later pages of this little book. Mean- time it may be useful to give one or two examples of what may fairly be called biased opinions, and before doing so let us first consider the dictionary meaning of that word. " BIAS : a one-sided tendency of the mind ; undue propensity towards an object ; a particular leaning or inclination." So says the Century Dictionary, and no one will quarrel with its definition. And now for the examples. A number of observers, having arrived at the conclusion that external surroundings are not sufficient to account for the variations which ad- mittedly occur in living things, have postulated an internal tendency towards progress in the organism. The argument in favour of this is mainly on eliminative lines, but here is the reply to it which I find in a respectable manual of science : " Such an assumption of a mystic, essentially teleologic force wholly independent of and dominating all the physico-chemical forces and influences that we do know, and the reactions and behaviour of living matter to these influences which we are beginning to recognize and understand with some clearness and fullness such a surrender of all our hardly won actual scientific knowledge in favour of an unknown, unproved, mystic vital force we are not On "Bias" 23 prepared to make." 1 As to the question under- lying this statement, the reader may be referred to the section on Vitalism (Chap. IV.). Meantime, for our present purpose, let us see what it comes to in plain language. " I am not going to believe that there is anything else in living things but chemical and physical phenomena." Well, it may be magnificent, but it can hardly be called science ; at ^ least it is not the science which, as Ruskin puts \ it, does not speak until it knows. Or, again, let us turn to Weismann, of whose hypotheses, once so captivating, the scientific world is getting a little tired, and more than a little sceptical. Like some of his congeners, Weismann is the victim of dipartipris, and like all such victims everything must be so adjusted as to fit in with his preconceptions. In the case in question he is quite clear, as is the witness just cited, that there is nothing in life that cannot be explained in terms of chemistry and physics. But he has shown as far as such a thing can be shown and it will be an undying claim to distinction for him that mutilations cannot be inherited, and that it is at least doubtful whether acquired modifications of any kind can be inherited. But, if environment is not to come into play, what then ? Are we to be driven to the frightful alternative of an internal law, and perhaps even, still worse, actually to that 1 Kellogg, op. cit. supra, p. 278. 24 Facts and Theories of a Law-giver ? Never while assertion can stand for argument and invention aid it! And so we have the whole edifice of germinal selection reared to stand between us and such evils, the one weak- ness of the edifice being that it has no foundations, since it is unsusceptible of proof. Let us select a few examples,.and in the outraged name of science protest against such statements going out as her sober voice. (i) On the question of the possession of selection- value by small variations. 1 " To this question even one who, like myself, has been for many years a convinced adherent of the theory of selection can only reply : We must assume so, but we cannot prove it in any case." 2 And yet we are told that science does not speak until it knows ! (ii) In the same candid address (p. 61) he tells us that we " must assume selection." " We must accept it because the phenomena of evolution and adaptation must have a natural basis, and because it is the only possible explanation of them," i.e. the only one possible to Weismann, since others who also have been students of biology have found other explanations. Because an explanation explains it is not necessarily a correct explanation. But let that pass. The important thing to note in the above 1 See Chap. X. a Darwin and Modern Science, p. 25. On "Bias" 25 quotation is that we are to believe something, not because it can be proved, but because Professor Weismann is unable to see any other way in which things can be explained. (iii) Or rather, because he is unwilling to accept that way, for he is well aware of its existence. In the course of a long-ago controversy with Herbert Spencer, Weismann gave his reason for believing in natural selection. " We must assume," he wrote and one may note his fatal fondness for the word "assume" since it has appeared in all three quotations " we must assume natural selection to be the principle of the explanation of the meta- morphoses, because all other apparent principles of explanation fail us, and it is inconceivable that there should be another capable of explaining the adaptation of organisms without assuming the help of a principle of design" And, in order that there may be no mistake about the matter, he puts the words into italics as he put other words in the first quotation. Put into a nutshell, what he says is : " I will not believe in a Creator, and, as I must find another explanation, I pin my faith to Natural Selection," which, by the way, explains nothing ; J "and here is another hypothesis and a splendid and unprovable theory or two which you must accept, since a belief in God is the only other alternative." Well, again, this may be magnificent, 1 Seep. 112. 26 Facts and Theories but it is not science : at least it is not the science which does not speak until it knows. In one of his works Fr. Wasmann l deplores the fact that "in many scientific circles there is an absolute theophobia, a dread of the Creator " ; and he continues, " I can only regret this, because I believe that it is due chiefly to a defective knowledge of Christian philosophy and theology." Plenty of examples of this theophobia might be cited : I will quote only one, because it is really humorous in its way. Alluding to the theories of Mendel, 2 in which the writer quoted is a firm believer, he says that " with the experimental proof that variation consists largely in the unpacking and repacking of an original complexity, it is not so certain as we might like to think that the order of these events is not predetermined." " As we might like to think " I have ventured to italicize these words myself, for they illustrate just what has been said. If the events were predetermined, someone must have predetermined them. Science, amongst other things, is supposed to be coldly indifferent to everything but absolute truth. Then why on earth should we "like to think that the order of these events is not predetermined " ? Surely looking at the thing from the standpoint of pure science we 1 The Problem of Evolution, p. 47. 2 Darwin and Modern Science, p. 101. See a further reference to this quotation on p. 156. On "Bias" 27 should not " like to think " anything but the truth when we can arrive at it. Enough has now been said to show that bias is not wholly a characteristic of Catholic or anti- materialistic writers ; it only remains to be added that there are biases and biases, and that some biases may be quite proper biases, even though they offend against the dearest convictions of some people. For instance, most of us have a bias against murder which must have appeared quite unreasonable to the simple Thug when first he became acquainted with it. No doubt, if he had been in the habit of writing books, he too would have denounced his opponents as being " biased " and not having their knowledge "built on any broad basis of comparative anatomy and ontogeny." The world at large is not with the Thug in this matter, and some day it may not be with the people who now call us biased because we believe in a Creator of the universe. CHAPTER II ON "DOGMA" AND "DOGMATISM" OF all the grievances against the Catholic Church, the most burning in the eyes of many writers is that she is dogmatic. What is a dogma? " DOGMA : a principle or doctrine proposed or received on authority, as opposed to one based on experience or demonstration ; specifically, an authoritative religious doctrine " again the Century Dictionary. Now, dogmatism when practised by the Church of God which, if it is what it claims to be and what we believe it to be, certainly has the right to be dogmatic is just the thing which excites the righteous wrath of the kind of writers of whom I have been speaking. "Enslaving the minds of men " " blinding the intellect " " interfering with scientific progress," one knows the whole litany, "bobs (I think the ringers call them), bobs and bobs-royal, and triple-bob-majors and grandsires to the extent of their compass and the full ring of their metal," as Cardinal Newman remarked con- 28 On "Dogma" and "Dogmatism" 29 cerning another anti-Catholic litany, now become somewhat musty. On this point of dogmatism one or two observa- tions must be made : (i) In limine, as indicated above, we come up against the whole question of the Church to dogmatize. If she is what she professes herself to be and has always claimed to be namely, the living oracle of God she clearly has every right to be dogmatic in religious matters and to set forth authoritative religious doctrines. If she is not what she claims to be, but merely a marvellous edifice reared by human beings, then she has no such right, and her dogmata are worthy of as much respect and no more than those of the Ulema or the Assembly of Latter-Day Saints. It is no part of the scope of this book to debate the claims of the Church ; those who wish to pursue that line of argument will find no lack of literature awaiting their investigation. For present purposes I assume it to be true, as I myself believe it to be true, that the Church is all that she claims to be and that she has the rights which belong to her if that claim be true. (ii) But, in the next place, no one ever claimed for the Church the right to dogmatize as to physical facts, and it is with such facts that science is supposed to concern itself. No one can conceive a quarrel between the Church and an anatomist as to The Varieties of the Omo-Hyoid amongst the 30 Facts and Theories Mammalia, or between the Church and a chemist as to The Nature and Properties of Ortho-Foito-Suko - Phanto-Dikaio-Talaiporic Acid. Such absorbing lines of investigation leave the Fathers of the Church quite cold. And so it is with facts generally. There can be no conflict over such things as these. As a subsequent section will show, scientific men are in the habit quite legitimately of putting forward hypotheses to account for what they have discussed, and this with a view of giving continuity and explanation to their facts. These hypotheses, being philosophical or quasi-philosophical in their nature, may cut across dogmata of the Church ; but then they are hypotheses and not facts. For the present I must leave this point where it is. (iii) Again we turn to the fable of the pot and the kettle, and ask whether the accusation of dogmatism may not be made against at least certain men of science or persons who so consider themselves. Further we may ask, quite legitimately, on what grounds they set themselves up as the authority capable of proposing a principle or doctrine. At any rate the Catholic Church is an organization of respectable antiquity and experience, and the repository of a good deal of learning, much of which is quite unknown to most of those outside her walls. She has been, and is, the trusted adviser of all sorts and conditions of men, from the learned On "Dogma" and "Dogmatism" 31 to the ignorant. She has her credentials. What are those of the scientific dogmatizers ? Before considering this it may be well to touch upon three questions. (a) What has Science to say to Dogma at all? We have just admitted that religion has no concern with scientific facts as such ; what concern can science have with dogma, if dogma be an opinion not based on experience or demonstration ? " In science," says Ruskin, " you must not talk before you know." The restriction is rather too stringent, for science would make but poor progress without the aid of working hypotheses, as we shall shortly see. But at any rate science deals with ascertained facts as her true business, and if she emits hypo- theses she has no right to put them forward as dogmata. You may or may not agree with a hypothesis : nothing happens either way. But you must either believe a dogma or abandon your belief in the authority which lays down that dogma. (b) Are Dogmata put forward in the name of Science ? No person whose reading leads him in the direction of the study of current scientific litera- ture can return other than an affirmative answer to this inquiry; yet, lest this may be thought to be a prejudiced statement, let me support it by two quotations, both of them from non-Catholic authors. In the last quarter of the last century when materialism was fighting what was thought to be a 32 Facts and Theories final conflict, and was flushed with full certainty of victory, two very prominent men of science, now both dead, rose up to do battle on the opposite side. 1 They were, of course, attacked from many sides that was to be expected ; but what they evidently most objected to was being denounced as dog- matizers, and in the preface to their third edition they claim that it is not they " who are the dog- matists, but rather that school of scientific men who assert the incompatibility of science with Christianity." That is a dogma, perhaps the leading dogma of a certain school of writers at the present day ; and we style it a dogma, because, as we shall hope to show, it is "propounded" by "authority" and by what kind of authority we shall also see and is not " based on experience or demonstration." But to my second quotation. I shall have occasion at various points to quote from the Gifford Lectures of Professor Driesch delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the years 1907 and 1908,2 and may, for the sake of those readers who are not conversant with scientific literature, once and for all say that their author stands in the first rank of scientific workers. In his first course of lectures Professor Driesch 1 Professors Balfour Stewart and P. G. Tait, The Unseen Uni- verse. My quotations are from the seventh edition, published in 1878. 2 The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, A. & C. Black. On "Dogma" and "Dogmatism" 33 devotes some space to a consideration of the principles of Darwinism, and points out that " Dar- winism and the opinion of Charles Darwin about the descent of organisms are two different things." " Darwin," he continues, " the very type of a man devoted to science alone and not to personal interests, Darwin was anything but dogmatic, and yet Darwinism is dogmatism in one of its purest forms." After developing this statement a little, he proceeds to state that " Darwin's polemics never left the path of true scientific discussions, that he never in all his life abused anyone who found reason to combat his hypotheses, and that he never turned a logical problem into a question of morality." And he concludes, " How different is this from what many of Darwin's followers have made out of his doctrines, especially in Germany ; how far is ' Darwinism ' removed from Darwin's own teaching and character ! " One may ask of scientific men of middle age, with all respect, whether there was no such thing as dogmatism when Weismannism was at its zenith. And, further, one may point to the observations of Weismann himself, as quoted a few pages back (pp. 23 seq.) t and ask what they are but dogmata propounded on the authority of Weismann alone. Then, if scientific dogmata are propounded, we have every right to ask : (c) WhoJare the propounders^ and what authority 3 34 Facts and Theories have they for propounding ? This brings us to the question of works on science, a question which will bear a little consideration. Anyone who has de- voted a good deal of time to scientific study will agree with me that there are various classes of such books. I will take three groups of these works, and endeavour to explain what I mean by examples taken from each category. In the first place, then, there are books written by men of science for men of science to read. These form the basis of all knowledge, but to most persons they fall into the category of biblia abiblia^ being even less readable than Kelly's Directory. Let any ordinary person take down from the shelves a volume of the Proceedings of the Zoo- logical Society a collection of learned discourses over which I have spent many hours of my life, and to which I may confess that I have contributed a good many pages wholly unintelligible to the ordinary reader. He will be delighted with the splendid illustrations with which the Society so lavishly decorates its volumes ; but when he begins to try and read the papers, he will soon find himself sorely puzzled. And why ? Because he is trying to read a work written by specialists for specialists. It is the same with all such writings. Huxley once boasted that he plucked the heart out of the works of Suarez in a summer afternoon spent in the library of a Scotch University. He plucked On "Dogma" and "Dogmatism" 35 just about as much real information out of them as Suarez would have plucked in the same period of time out of Huxley's paper " On the Dentition of the Wild Canidae " in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society and that is practically nothing. Every science speaks in its own language, and those who do not know that language are beating the air when they try to read the literature if indeed it can be called literature which it enshrines. But there is one thing which may be said of all such writings, and that is, that, taking them in the mass, they are models of humility and modesty. " I have found such and such a thing" that is a statement of positive fact and need not be expressed otherwise than positively. But, when it comes to a matter of opinion, it is " It seems to me," or " The facts suggest such and such an explanation," or " It may well be argued," or some such phrase. Caution, scientific caution, is the rule in works of this kind ; but again remember they are the works which are never read by the general reader, and for the very sufficient and excellent reason that he could not understand three consecutive lines in them. The second group comprises the serious works on biological philosophy or on biology philosophically considered ; works in which it is endeavoured to link fact with fact and bring them into harmony ; to elicit the laws of life, development, variation, and the like. Such were the works of Darwin ; at 36 Facts and Theories least most of them. Such are such books as Professor Morgan's Evolution and Adaptation, to mention the first which rises in my mind. These books, whose authors are genuine men of science, as a general rule exhibit the same laudable caution and the same restraint which I have alluded to as marking for the most part those of the first group. Most of them are intended for readers with some knowledge of science indeed often a very consider- able knowledge is presupposed and, except in rare cases, none of them influence the general public except indirectly and a long time after their publication, and then only through the medium of what are commonly called " works of vulgariza- tion." And the reason is quite obvious : it is because they appeal to an audience different from the ordinary public. Thirdly, and finally, we come to books of vulgariza- tion^ as to which I have in the first place to say that, if properly done and done by the fitting man, such pieces of work are worthy of high praise. For the unreadable facts of the first class and the hard sayings of the second are here translated into language understanded of the people, and matters of which they would otherwise have remained ignorant are brought within their ken. But in the case of these books, almost everything depends upon the person who carries out the work of vulgarization. On "Dogma" and "Dogmatism" 37 And here I am going to lay down a principle, which I think would be agreed to by most persons who have spent any considerable time in working at science. It is this : that no person who has not devoted a certain number of years to really hard original research in some line of biology, is fit to estimate the value of many of the theories which are daily put forward. And further, that manuals written by those who have not gone through such a discipline and received some measure of acknowledgement from their scientific compeers, are very often not worth the paper which they are written on. Tried by this test, a large percentage of the manuals and articles which appear in such large numbers may be ruled out of court at least such of them as are compiled by writers who are not, so it would appear, fully conversant with recent scientific opinion, for the use of those even less well-informed than them- selves. It is this back- wash of the last half of the nineteenth century and its effect upon the un- instructed reading population, and not the opinions of the really great exponents of, and workers at, science, that those engaged in combating anti- religious argument have to meet. It is impossible to pursue these points much further; but a most interesting catena of misleading statements might be made from some of the manuals of the day. An equally interesting and much more convincing 38 Facts and Theories catena might also be made of the admissions the honest admissions the doubts, the hesitations of genuine men of science in putting forward their theories for the consideration of their compeers. I may perhaps be permitted to take two examples from the works of vulgarization of which I am speaking, in order to contrast their methods of dealing with the theories which they are concerned in expounding. In one of them the author, a man of genuine reputation, in dealing with certain facts and seeking for their explanation, says, " It looks as if man," etc. But he hastens to add, " Until we have facts whereon to build, however, it would be as unpardonable to lay down the law on these matters as it is permissible to fill up the blank by guesswork." That is a truly scien- tific attitude and one which might well be com- mended for adoption to the manual-makers in general. With these we may contrast some statements taken from another book, as a sample of the kind of assertion which is made, without, as I submit, due weight being given to the real trend of contemporary scientific opinion. " Concerning the action of natural selection and sexual selection no one now doubts." x Well, that 1 On these statements see pp. 107 seq. and 113 seq. of this work respectively. As these and the preceding passages are samples only, it is not necessary to give references. On "Dogma" and "Dogmatism" 39 simply is not so. I shall give abundant evidence in subsequent pages that it is not true. Observe the statement is not that the factors named are what they claim to be, but that no one doubts that fact. As a matter of mere, common, ordinary, everyday truth, there are quite competent persons who do rightly or wrongly doubt the reality of these factors. But how is the general reader who takes up the book from which I have been quoting to know that ? Or, again, how is he to be able to estimate the truth of the following further state- ment : " The fact of organic evolution is at least as certain a part of knowledge as the law of universal gravitation"? As a matter of fact again, that statement is not accurate. I shall shortly (p. 103) be dealing with Morgan's estimate of Fleischmann's writings, and it will there be seen that the former writer admits that, " however probable the theory may appear {i.e. of organic evolution], the evidence is indirect and exact proof is still wanting." Just so : " exact proof is still wanting." Yet our writer assures us that this theory of which " exact proof is wanting" is at least as certain and definite a possession of science as is the law of universal gravitation. Again, how is the ordinary reader to know where he is ? For one person who reads, or would trouble to read, Professor Morgan's erudite work, hundreds will read the smaller manuals written in easy language and with every appear- 40 Facts and Theories ance of comprehensive knowledge. And even if the ordinary person does read both, how is he to decide which of his two authors is right ? At the best he will probably ask, like "jesting Pilate," " What is Truth ? " and will not " stay for a reply." As far as Catholics are concerned and these pages are written primarily for them, though indeed their author hopes that they may be of interest to many other men of good-will it may be pointed out that it is not necessary to believe in every hypothesis of science. Still less is it necessary to believe that all the things put forward as facts or unassailable dogmata of science in manuals and magazine articles, are really true or even really held by any respectable number of scientific men. Like the " Fat Boy," the writers of such publications desire above all things to make people's flesh creep, and their statements need not necessarily be taken as gospel truth. 1 1 Fr. Gerard's admirable Essays in Unnatural History (published by the Catholic Truth Society), may be consulted as an exposition of and a corrective to the kind of manual here alluded to. CHAPTER III ON "NATURE" AND "SCIENCE," AND ON "FACTS," "LAWS," AND "HYPOTHESES" MYRIADS of misleading articles, as we have just been reading, pour forth from the press, professing to teach the public all that is to be known about the world and how it comes to be as it now appears to us. Anyone who reads this kind of literature will find it full of such magistral statements as these : " Nature tells us," and " Science teaches us," as if " Nature " and " Science " were real personages uttering solemn and infallible allocutions instead of being mere abstractions, as of course they are. It is often a useful practice to put high-sounding phrases into ordinary popular language and see how they then appeal to one's mind. What the above phrases really mean is that " ' Scientific men/ or ' Some scientific men,' or again and too frequently ' I ' think that things are as I am now about to state them to be." That puts the matter on a different basis, for, instead of being infallible, the statement in question may be merely the 41 42 Facts and Theories guess, and perhaps the very unscientific guess, of a quite imperfectly instructed person. Everybody knows about Spenlow and Jorkins and the use which the former made of the latter : well, " Nature " and " Science " are the Jorkinses behind which the Spenlows who write the manuals modestly hide their personalities. Are there, then, no facts ? Plenty of them, but a good many of the things put forward as such are doubtful facts, and some of them are not facts at all, but merely surmises. This statement must now be more fully developed. In the first place, there are obvious, incontro- vertible facts, which, unless the whole of mankind is mad and blind, can never be anything else than facts, such as the observation that man has a bony vertebral column and that the jelly-fish has not. With facts of this kind, with facts of any kind (of course scientific facts are understood, for it is science and not history with which we are dealing here), with scientific facts religion has nothing what- ever to do, except to make such use of them as she sees fit in her philosophical discussions. Then, besides these positive, isolated facts, there are deduc- tions drawn from the observation of facts which are called laws of Nature, and respecting these several things have to be said. In the first place, we must be careful to try and understand what is meant by a "law of Nature," and I will set On "Nature" and "Science" 43 down here what I have said elsewhere on this subject. 1 " The word ' law ' has two distinct meanings not unfrequently confounded. Sometimes the term stands for a decree or command, expressed by a sentence in the imperative mood. The Ten Commandments and Acts of Parliament are ' laws ' in this sense. At other times the term denotes some observed uniform mode of action or behaviour in phenomena which is signified by a general proposition in the indicative mood. The laws of chemistry and astronomy are examples. Now, it cannot be too clearly kept in mind that the ' laws of Nature ' are of this latter class. The term simply expresses our appreciation or conception of an orderly or supposed orderly sequence of events in the natural world. Viewed strictly from the standpoint of science, as Huxley was careful to point out, there are no such things as laws in the ordinary sense of precepts or decrees, in the processes of Nature. What we do know is that there are certain observed sequences of events, and that these do actually present to us a picture of a uniform nature. But this is a different thing from assuming, as many without any evidence are prone to do, that these sequences are the result of some inexorable compulsion or some intrinsic and absolute necessity emerging out of the nature of 1 What is Life ? pp. 126 seq. 44 Facts and Theories the universe, and that in no other way could things take place than that in which, as a matter of fact, we are accustomed to find that they do take place. "At the same time, for those who accept the theistic position the rationale of the whole matter is this. The observed course of Nature is due to the action of divine power, which, having certain ends in view, attains them in the most suitable way. So long, therefore, as the ends in view remain the same, the means adopted for their attainment will not vary ; and a slight or infinit- esimal variation in the ends will bring about a precisely corresponding variation in the means. But the ends to be secured by the course of Nature are always the same ; or if they vary, do so by an infinitesimal gradation. The sensible world consequently presents, so far as the general ex- perience of mankind goes, the appearance of strict regulation. Futhermore it is to be remembered that our conception of these uniformities or laws of Nature are based on our present experience, and that the extension of that experience may require us to introduce modifications into our expression of the facts as they appear to us or in other words, may lead to a change in the formulation of the law. In fine, there is nothing sacrosanct about the laws of Nature which forbids criticism or denies the possibility of error in our comprehension of them." On "Nature" and "Science" 45 After this general consideration of the subject it may be well to take a case or two. We may begin with the law of gravitation, which the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us we may consider "as the broadest and most funda- mental one which Nature makes known to us." Here we have to do with an observed sequence of results which can be verified at any time by experiment, and which may, therefore, be regarded as definitely proved. At the same time, no one knows what the " force " of gravitation is : that is to say, no one knows what it is that produces the attraction between bodies which the law formulates. There are theories more or less fitting in with the facts, theories with which we have nothing to do here; but no one of these, I believe, is accepted by all or perhaps even by a majority of physicists. Let us next consider the so-called law of the conservation of energy. Here is a law or general- ization which was admittedly, though partially, and usefully true even in its imperfect condition, which was in that imperfect condition up to recently to our certain knowledge, and which may still be in an imperfect condition (though still useful and applicable), as some think, at the present day. Sir Oliver Lodge says of this law : * c< The term ' energy ' itself, as used in a definite 1 Life and Matter^ p. 21. 46 Facts and Theories sense by the physicist, rather involves a modern idea, and is itself a generalization. Things as distinct from each other as light, heat, sound, rotation, vibration, elastic strain, gravitative separa- tion, electric currents, and chemical affinity, have all to be generalized under the same heading (of the conservation of energy) in order to make the law true. Until ' heat ' was included in the list of energies, the statement could not be made ; and a short time ago it was sometimes discussed whether ' life ' should or should not be included in the category of energy. I should give the answer decidedly No, but some might be inclined to say Yes ; and this is sufficient as an example to show that the categories of energy are not necessarily exhausted ; that new forms may be discovered; and that if new forms exist, until they are discovered, the law of conservation of energy, as now stated, may in some cases be strictly untrue, though partially and usefully true ; just as it would be untrue, though partially and usefully true, in the theory of machines, if heat were unknown or ignored." Now, it may be noted with regard to these and other "laws" that they are susceptible of proof completely or up to a point by experiment, but we shall find other things claimed as such which have not as yet been proved by experiment. For example, as we have seen, it has been stated On "Nature" and "Science" 47 and most incorrectly stated that the truth of evolution is at least as definitely settled as the truth of gravitation, i.c. that there is a "law of evolution." It is inaccurate to state the case in these terms, for at present there is no direct evidence for the truth of the evolutionary theory, all the evidence there is being indirect. As will be shown, most scientific men accept this theory, but every scientific man would admit it with the limitation which I have just laid down. If claimed as a law of Nature, it would have to be claimed with many more reservations than would apply to the law of gravitation. Vet a law of transformation might be quite true and quite tenable without a full explanation of how the law effects its operations, just as we believe in gravitation though we do not know how that force acts. We must now return to the question of facts. How far can we credit what are put forward as objective scientific facts? As to many of these it is safe to say that we need have no sort of doubt, but as to quite a number of others we must always believe, if we do believe, with the reser- vation that the fact may prove to be no fact but the result of incorrect observation. Take, for example, the case of the so-called Bathybius Haeckelii, discovered by Huxley and supposed to be a diffused protoplasmic mass, living and representing the lowest form of life, 48 Facts and Theories which, though described as living and provided with the name appropriate to it if it had been living, turned out to be nothing more than a chemical compound and was, at once and with complete honesty, abandoned by its parent Huxley though not for some time, if ever, by its imaginative god-parent Haeekel. 1 But a so-called fact may have a much, longer life than this and yet turn out not to be a fact at all. Take, for example, the case of the so-called chemical " elements," as to which, except perhaps in the minds of certain philosophers, there was scarcely any sort of doubt expressed even at so recent a date as that at which I was taught chemistry. The old alchemists and the scholastic philosophers believed that there was a common matter which assumed different forms and was then known under the name of gold, iron, lead, and the like ; and they argued from this that, if one could only find the proper way to do it, it would be quite possible to transmute one of the more common and less valuable metals, such as lead, into gold. Robert Boyle, in his Skiptical Chymist, propounded the theory that these things were all ab initio and fundamentally distinct, and that an " element " was a thing which could not be broken up or resolved into anything more simple, or, of 1 For a full account of this matter see Huxley's Life and Letters, vol. i. pp. 295 seq. , and vol. ii. pp. 5 seq. On "Nature" and "Science" 49 course, transmuted into any other kind of element. It seems now that this was all wrong and that the alchemists were right in their fundamental conceptions, for we know, or we think we know, that one metal is being slowly transmuted into another metal as time goes by ; and that the prob- ability is that there is a materia prima, protyle, or primitive underlying stuff or matter, 1 whatever its nature may be, capable of assuming the form of specifically diverse substances. No doubt our knowledge on all these points is very inchoate, but this statement does not affect the truth of what I have said namely, that what was for centuries believed to be a fact has, so we now think, turned out to be a phantasm. This " fact " ought to have been called an " hypo- thesis," and an excellent working hypothesis it actually was. This brings me to the subject of hypotheses. Scientific workers accumulate by patient observa- tion huge cairns of facts, indisputable facts, such, for example, as the characters of the common primrose facts which anybody with very slight 1 Materia prima is a very subtle metaphysical conception it cannot exist as such but always under some specific form ; it, there- fore, differs from the modern conception of ' ' protyle " [ether or whatever it may be] which is materia with a form. The modern view approximates to the alchemist's conception rather than to the metaphysician's notion. 4 50 Facts and Theories knowledge and with very modest powers of observation can go out and verify for themselves. They accumulate other facts which can only be verified by skilled workers and by careful ex- periment. Still, the skilled workers are there, and the careful experiments are made ; and, as Huxley once said in his incisive way, "There is one thing about us men of science, and that is, no one who has the greatest prejudice against science can venture to say that we ever conceal each other's mistakes." And after all this testing and criticiz- ing, it seems that the observation was correct and the statement is accepted as a fact, an ob- jective fact, and as such the non-scientific person may certainly also accept it. But all these cairns of fact would be, though no doubt more or less interesting in themselves, exceedingly meaningless if there were no method of linking them together. And the real interest of scientific men lies in this direction, explaining their relationships, drawing deductions, forming hypotheses. All these operations of the mind for that is what they are : operations of the mind as opposed to the observations by which the facts are brought to light all these operations of the mind are not only perfectly legitimate but ab- solutely essential if science is to make the slightest progress. All the words in the English language are to be found in dictionaries, but they do not On " Nature " and " Science " 51 become literature until the operations of the mind have woven them into consecutive passages. The facts are mere bricks ; the hypothesis, if a true hypothesis, builds an edifice out of them. Further, a hypothesis or a theory, for we may regard the words as convertible, may be exceedingly useful and exceedingly fruitful and yet be inaccurate. It may be only a partial statement of truth, as was remarked respecting the law of the conservation of energy, and yet be a most valuable statement. It may even be an inaccurate statement, as we now think the eighteenth-century idea of the immutability of the chemical elements to have been, and yet at the same time, as what is called " a working hypothesis," may have been valuable beyond words to the progress of science. 1 The lesson which we have to learn is that a 11 fact " and a " hypothesis " are not the same thing. A hypothesis may break down altogether at the very outset thousands do. It may persist for a long time as a " working hypothesis" and be very useful as such, and yet in the end prove to have been incorrect or partially incorrect which is not an uncommon fate. It may go on for years, for anything we can tell, to the end of time, as nothing more than a "working hypothesis" and be very 1 Of course it should be added that the theory now in question does contain the half-truth that the so-called elements are far less susceptible of mutation than the compounds which they form. 52 Facts and Theories useful as such. Some genius may arise, some fortunate experiment may be made which converts the hypothesis into well-established theory or even a recognized fact the fate of a very small minority of hypotheses. What we have always to keep before our minds is that, until this last-mentioned event occurs, if it ever does occur, we are dealing with a hypothesis, the idea of some man's mind, and not with an objective fact. We are dealing with a thing which may quite as likely even be wrong as right and not with a thing like an objective fact, which no one but an idiot would doubt. This is the kind of distinction which is never made by the misleading manuals of which I spoke at the beginning of this section. They mix up facts and hypotheses into one confused dish, put- ting, for example, the existence of the peacock's markings and their attempt to explain how they came to be, on the same plane of certainty and reality, and present the same to their readers without in any way distinguishing between the two. Yet, as I have tried to show, the distinction between them is very definite and very real. It is especially definite and real as far as Theology goes. Theology, as has been pointed out already, has nothing to do with observed objective facts ; they are out of her sphere of operations. On the other hand, a hypothesis, especially when it is of a philosophical character On " Nature " 0rf " 5V^ " 53 and based on biological facts, may seriously cut across the track of a theological dogma. When this occurs, a Catholic may pursue his way with complete calmness, for he will reflect that hundreds and hundreds of hypotheses have been propounded and "scrapped," and that it is quite clear that unless everything which, for reasons quite other than any alluded to in these pages, he holds to be true is untrue, either the hypothesis is false and will in time be shown to be false, or it is partially true, and in so far as it is true can be shown not to be in conflict with theological teachings. CHAPTER IV ON LIFE AND THE EXPLANATIONS OFFERED THEREON MANY are the definitions which have been offered of the thing known as " Life," yet no one of them seems completely to cover perhaps no definition can cover the vast field of activities embraced under that name. We know that we are alive ourselves. We recognize, or think we recognize, certain very definite lines of distinction between the things which we call living and the things which we call not-living. Let us approach the question from the standpoint of that "rule-of- thumb" knowledge. We say that a man or a horse is alive : we say that the sea is not alive. Both have their motions, both their internal currents. Is there any real difference between them ? that is, is the difference between them one of degree or of kind ? Here we arrive at the heart of the con- troversy with which this chapter is concerned, a vast controversy over which much ink has been 54 On Life and the Explanations Offered 55 shed and concerning which it would be more than rash to say that the last word has been uttered. Let us look for a moment at the two opposing views. The materialistic school holds that there is no difference but one of degree between living and not-living things, or, in other words, that a chemico-physical explanation is capable of covering the whole realm of nature. Le Dan tec states that "between life and death the difference is of the same order as that which exists between a phenol and a sulphate, or between an electrified body and a neutral body. In other words, all phenomena which we study objectively in living beings can be analysed by the methods of physics and chemistry." 1 This remark may be taken to sum up the creed of the anti-vitalistic school, and it may be supple- mented by Huxley's well-known dictum that " the whole world, living and not-living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe consisted." 2 Now, with regard to this idea of life I may here set down a comment which I have made elsewhere, since it lays down the results which must follow from the acceptance of any theory of this kind. 3 " We can now clearly see the meaning of this 1 The Nature and Origin of Life, p. 5. 2 Belfast Address, 1874. 8 Whatis Life? ?. 8. 56 Facts and Theories explanation of life. It teaches that all the pheno- mena exhibited by living bodies, including the poetry of Shakespeare and Wordsworth, the pro- found reasonings of Aristotle or Sir Isaac Newton, the generous instincts of a Fry or a Howard, these and all minor manifestations of life are explicable, and may, therefore, some day be explained in terms of chemical equations and physical experiments. It seems a hard saying, and one thing is clear, namely, that if it is true, there is an end to biology as a science, an end also to psychology, an end to all branches of science dealing with living things, since all these must resolve themselves into branches of the two only sciences of chemistry and physics." Not only this, but there must also be an end of all morality and of any idea of charity between human beings or of altruism or consideration for another's interests. " How could I feel ' morally ' towards other individuals, if I knew that they were machines and nothing more? machines, which some day I myself might be able to construct like a steam- engine ! To a convinced theoretical materialist, to whom his neighbour is a real mechanical system, morality is an absurdity. This is equally true, whether materialism is held as a doctrine about nature from a point of view which is idealistic and phenomenological at bottom, or professed in the crudest uncritical metaphysical manner. In either case the mechanical theory of life is incompatible On Life and the Explanations Offered 57 with morality." 1 This gloomy outlook, which would cause one to look upon the complete destruction of the entire universe as by far the happiest solution of matters, goes far to disprove the materialistic hypo- thesis ; indeed, Driesch, in continuation of the re- marks just quoted, adds as his opinion, "There might be vitalism without morality ; but the cate- gorical existence of morality implies vitalism as an axiom, even if it were not yet established by other proofs" The other view of life, commonly called " vital- istic," does not exclude chemical and physical explanations. Quite the contrary : it admits, as all must do, that in living things hosts of processes take place which can be explained on chemico- physical lines and can to some extent at least be reproduced in the laboratory. But, according to this view, there is something else in living things, a something over which does not exist in non-living things, and it is just this "something over" which makes the difference a difference of kind and not merely of degree between living and non-living things. I am not now going to enter into a dispute as to the nature of this " something over " ; still less am I going to quarrel as to the name which we are to use for it. " Vital force " or " principle " was the old term. Others nowadays prefer the terms 1 Driesch, Science and Philosophy of the Organism, ii. 358. Italics as in original. 58 Facts and Theories "biotic energy" (a translation into Greek) or " bathmic force" or "entelechy." It matters little what we call it so long as we agree that it is there, and it is more important to recognize that it is there than to be able to say exactly what it is. But is it there? When Huxley wrote the address from which quotation has just been made, at the com- mencement of the last quarter of the last century, the materialistic explanation was in its hey-day. Men of science then really did dream that they might, like Wagner in Faust, produce a Homunculus in a retort, and were certain that they had seen the dawn of the day in which life would be produced in the laboratory from non-living matter. But a great change has come over things in the thirty-odd years which have passed since Huxley made the state- ment just quoted. The current of scientific opinion , especially in Germany and in the United States, sets in just the opposite direction, and it is clear that the same thing is happening in England. To give chapter and verse for these statements would occupy greater space than can here be afforded, but one or two quotations will establish what has been said and will stand as examples of others which might be cited. Dr. Haldane, F.R.S., says, " To any physiologist who candidly reviews the progress of the last fifty years it must be perfectly evident that, so far from having advanced towards a physico-chemical explanation of life, we On Life and the Explanations Offered 59 are in appearance very much farther from one than we were fifty years ago." 1 Professor Wilson : " The study of the cell has on the whole seemed to widen rather than to narrow the enormous gap that separates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic world." 2 Professor B. Moore, F.R.S., speaks of the " mischievous view " that " no form of energy whatever is present in living cells save such as is seen in the case of non-living matter." 3 But by far the most important contribution to this side of the controversy is the great work of Driesch from which quotation has already been made. The two volumes containing the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen for the years 1907 and 1908, which their erudite author devoted to the establish- ment of the vitalistic theory, may be taken as offer- ing the most complete argument in favour of that explanation of life, and to them readers in quest of fuller knowledge may with confidence be referred. 4 We must not, however, pass away from this point without offering some arguments in favour of the vitalistic theory, difficult though it be to make 1 Nineteenth Century, 1898, ii. 400. * The Cell in Development and Inheritance, 2nd edition, 1900, P- 434- 3 Recent Advances in Physiology and Bio-Chemistry, 1906. 4 The present writer may perhaps be permitted also to call attention to his own book, What is Life ? published by Sands and Co, in 1908 as containing an account of the controversy and some of the leading arguments in favour of the vitalistic theory and written for a more popular audience than that contemplated by Driesch's works. 60 Facts and Theories those arguments comprehensible to persons who have had no training in biology. Let us take two or three cases for examination. (i) As Wilson tells us, the vast amount of know- ledge which has been accumulated respecting the living cell has not tended to simplify our conception of life and to unify living and non-living things, but quite the contrary. The cell is almost always a very tiny object, generally microscopic in size. In general plan it may be said that all cells more or less agree with one another, since as a rule each possesses a wall, a nucleus, and cell-contents ; yet there is an extraordinary diversity in their opera- tions. Still more there is an extraordinary evidence of a teleological character, of means to an end, which cannot be accounted for, so most observers now think, on purely physico-chemical lines. Further, the processes of cell-division, too complicated for description here, which were once thought to be explicable in a mechanical manner, have now been shown to be susceptible of no such explanation. In a word, all that we know about the cell goes to show that in that tiny object there is a "something over" which does not exist in a particle of stone or in any " not- living" object. (ii) Experimental Embryology tells the same tale. In this branch of science the eggs of various lower forms of life are set to develop, after fertilization, On Life and the Explanations Offered 61 under various conditions, not those of ordinary existence, devised by the experimenter. For example, " frog-spawn " that is, the fertilised ova of the frog from which the tadpole comes forth on the road to be a frog as a rule develops freely in water and without other pressure than that exer- cised by one egg upon another in a very yielding medium. The experimenter in his search after truth has obliged these eggs to develop under all sorts of strange conditions. For example, instead of permitting them to develop under the spherical form which is their natural contour, he has made them develop between two sheets of glass and consequently assume a figure with plane instead of spherical surfaces. What happened ? As soon as the egg got a chance it reconstructed itself, so to speak, and went on to regular development, pursuing thus and this is the really important point a path towards development never before trodden by any egg. " It almost seems," exclaims a very distinguished observer, " as if every egg was a law unto itself." x A law unto itself ! surely this is a convincing argument. Nothing is more clear in chemistry and physics than that identical results follow upon identical causes. Introduce a disturb- ing element, even a small one, into your experiment, and that experiment will fail. Such is not the case with the developing egg. Of course if the 1 Wilson, The Cell in Development and Inheritance^ p, xii. 62 Facts and Theories disturbance be too great, the egg will be killed and all development come to an end. But even a relatively considerable disturbance will not prevent it from fulfilling its end. Forced on by the " some- thing over," as we believe, it will, if at all possible, attain its end, and in order to do this it will do things which it may safely be said no egg ever did before. The most unscientific mind will have no difficulty in seeing that in this respect at least the living thing wholly differs from the machine. A machine will do what it is made to do and nothing else. A bicycle will not wash clothes and a sewing-machine will not function as a steam-navvy, nor can it sew in any way but in that for which it was constructed. Some sewing-machines have two spools of thread, some have or had only one. Take away one of the spools from the two-spool variety, and the labour of the sewer is in vain. The egg arrives at its end after encountering difficulties relatively as great as that of the sewing-machine deprived of one of its spools. (iii) Physiological processes in the body, once thought to be easily explicable in terms of a machine, have now been shown not to be susceptible of such an explanation. Take, for example, the case of the secretion by glands for instance, that of the saliva. This fluid is formed in various glands and poured into the mouth through larger or smaller conduits, On Life and the Explanations Offered 63 called ducts. Now it used to be thought that the glands acted more or less as filtering mechanisms and, therefore, in a passive and inert manner. Or it was thought that they might act as membranes possessing constant permeabilities for different dissolved substances in the plasma, or as media in which different substances possess different solu- bilities. These ideas are now known to be in- correct " That the rate of secretion is not merely passively dependent upon blood pressure and blood supply (although under normal conditions it is subject to variations corresponding to changes in these physical factors) is shown by the observation of Ludwig that the secretion pressure in the sub- maxillary salivary gland when the outflow is resisted by fluid in a manometer, may rise much above the arterial pressure ; and also by the observation that after administration of a drug, such as atropin, the blood supply may be increased as much as before administration of the drug on stimulation of the secretory nerve, without, how- ever, calling forth any flow of secretion." x There are other examples, though this must serve for the present, which show that things go on in the physiological processes of the body which are not only not explicable by ordinary mechanical explanations but which run more or less contrary to such explanations. Here, again, we find a 1 Moore, op. cit. 64 Facts and Theories radical difference between living and non-living things. A machine must act according to mechanical principles ; it cannot possibly do otherwise. The living organism can and does act in a way not to be explained by mechanics. (iv) In the phenomena of Regeneration, however, as Driesch has shown, the materialistic explana- tion of life finds its complete refutation. Without reproducing his very complicated and, as the present writer thinks, irrefutable arguments, a short time may well be devoted to the considera- tion of this part of our subject. When we cut one of our fingers so as to make a deep and gaping wound, there is a good deal of bleeding, perhaps some pain, and subsequently a certain amount of inability to use the member for a longer or shorter period of time ; but by degrees the wound heals up and nothing is left but a scar to remind us of the injury from which we have suffered. In this process we are witnessing re- generation to the extent that it is possible in the human body. If no regeneration were possible, the wound must have remained permanently open ; nay, the blood-vessels must have gone on bleeding, in fact, the function of the part, if not of the whole organism, must have been permanently interfered with. Regeneration takes place, and we are as well as ever we were. Let us remember that even this very minor form of regeneration is not to be On Life and the Explanations Offered 65 found in a machine. Knock a hole in the petrol pipe of a motor-car, and all the bandages and ointments in the pharmacopoeia will not cause it to heal up or regenerate. But this very minor form of regeneration is very much surpassed in some lower forms of life, yet forms which are relatively highly placed, even vertebrates. The salamander, for example, can regenerate its tail if it is cut off nay more, it can regenerate a leg, or even all four legs if they are amputated and can do this time and again. Spallanzani, 1 whose experiments in this direction were amongst the first to be undertaken, six times in the course of three summer months removed all four legs and the tail from the same salamander, yet the tireless beast six times repaired its frame and presented itself as a complete animal, its last reconstruction being completed as rapidly as its first. The same observer found that the animal could even re- generate its jaws. It is obvious that here we are on ground unreached by any machine. But there is a still more wonderful example which seems, when it is carefully considered, to clinch the matter and leave little room for argument in favour of the chemico-physical explanation. There is a creature called Clavellina lepadiformis, which belongs to the order of ascidians. This order is at the top of the invertebrate group, if indeed it be not a lowly 1 Who, by the way, was a Catholic priest. s 66 Facts and Theories member of the vertebrates or a link between the two divisions at any rate, zoologists would put it higher than a crab or a fly. The Clavellina is about an inch in length, and its body is divided into three portions ; the uppermost of which forms an extraordinarily large, basket-like gill, provided with an entrance and an exit for the water. To this succeeds a small connecting body portion which contains part of the intestines, and finally there is the so-called intestinal sac with stomach, intestines, heart, reproductive organs, etc. Now, if we divide the body of a Clavellina at the level of the connecting portion, so that the gill- basket and the intestinal sac are separated from one another, either or both of these two portions can in three or four days complete itself into an entire new Clavellina, since, by means of true regeneration proceeding from the incision, the gill- basket makes itself an intestinal sac and the in- testinal sac makes itself a new gill-basket. This is a wonderful thing, and is much as if a loco- motive engine, split into two halves immediately in front of its " cab," were to remake two engines one out of the old boiler and pistons and drivers, and one out of the old cab, and did this out of its own material and without obtaining fresh metal except from the circumambient air. But it is a process with which zoologists are quite familiar in the earthworm, the hydra, and other living things. On Life and the Explanations Offered 67 But sometimes Clavellina, and this is especially the case when smaller individuals are operated upon, does a much more remarkable thing than this. It reconstructs itself not by direct regenera- tion, as in the case mentioned above, but by a process commencing by one of regression. The organization of the gill-basket, its ciliated clefts, its openings, all the other parts of which it consists gradually disappear. At the end of five or six days no more organization is to be seen in these parts, which appear like white spheres : in fact, the describer states that, when he first saw this condi- tion, he came to the conclusion that the Clavellina was either dead or on the way to death. It was not so, however, for though the creature remains or may remain in this condition for two or three weeks, at last the day comes when it begins to lose its turbidity and stretch, and then after the end of two or three days it is found that the amorphous mass has once more become a complete ascidian with gill-basket and intestinal sac. It has become a perfectly new organism which has no continuity with the parts of the earlier organization, though it has with its material. Its gill-basket is not a derivative of the old one ; it is very much smaller and has fewer and smaller openings. What has happened is that the old organized gill- basket has returned to an indifferent substance and then, from this indifferent substance on embryo- 68 Facts and Theories logical lines, a new smaller individual has been constituted. But this is not the whole story, for it is not merely the isolated gill-basket which can restore itself by means of this roundabout process, but, after having isolated the basket, it can itself be divided either into an upper and lower portion or into an anterior and a posterior bit, and each of these portions will then go through the same process that is, each of them will first of all return to the indifferent condition and then from that re- constitute itself into a new small ascidian. Let us for a moment endeavour to transmute this into terms of an ordinary machine. We shall then have to suppose that the locomotive " cab " gradually loses all semblance of a "cab." Its levers and its gauges all melt into a shapeless, homogeneous mass, and thus it lies for a week or weeks. Suddenly one bright day the mass begins to move and differentiate itself, and lo ! in two or three days a new locomotive fit for a toy-railway, but complete and capable of drawing small wag- gons along a diminutive line. Of course it may be urged that such comparisons are altogether crude and rough. I admit it ; but they may fairly be urged when on the other hand we have it claimed that processes such as those which we have studied in Clavellina can be explained on purely mechanical lines. To the present writer, at any rate, such happenings seem to be On Life and the Explanations Offered 69 wholly inexplicable except in terms of a vitalistic philosophy. This "something over," the principle of life in the lower animals at least, "was held by the schoolmen to be an example of a simple principle which is nevertheless not spiritual, since it is altogether dependent upon the organism, or, as they said, completely immersed in the body. St. Thomas accordingly speaks of the corporeal souls of brutes." x The vegetative and sensitive " souls " assigned by the scholastic philosophy to vegetables and the lower animals are other terms for the " vital principle " or whatever other name we like to give to the "something over" which distin- guishes the Amceba, a mere drop of living matter, from the most complicated crystal of the inorganic world. And in using this word " crystal " I will for a moment allude to the arguments against vitalism based on crystals, their behaviour, and particularly their power of regenerating. The matter cannot be pursued further here, and I only mention it lest it should be urged that I have neglected it. A fuller discussion of this question will be found in my book, as cited above. Let us now try to clear up the position so far as this part of the subject is concerned. It is not true that all biologists think that the phe- nomena of life can be explained in terms of 1 Maher, Psychology, 5th edition, p. 469. 70 Facts and Theories chemistry and physics. A large, an important, and a growing number believe that there is a "something over" the "corporeal soul" of St. Thomas, though many of them would perish rather than give it such a dreadfully antiquated name as that of a soul. Moreover, they believe that it is this something over which controls the operations of the living thing and that it has a teleological significance : that is, it is pursuing its course towards a definite end. It is quite clear what such an explanation entails, that is, a Framer of the purpose towards which the organism is making. It is not necessary or advisable in a book such as this, even were its writer capable of such a task, to deal with theological questions respecting the human soul and its relation to the body and its operations. What I am trying to establish is the existence of another and a non-material factor in living matter, a factor which is not existent in non-living matter, and that it is just the existence of this factor which differentiates the one from the other. Confident writers sometimes maintain that there is no such factor. There is good evidence to show that they are wrong in this view, though it would be absurd to say that the whole biological world is at one on the question. But when confident and ignorant persons state, as they sometimes do, that the biological world is at one On Life and the Explanations Offered 7 1 in agreeing upon a chemico-physical explanation of life, they state a thing that is not true, as has been, I hope, abundantly shown by the quotations introduced into this chapter. From our point of view as Catholics we may claim that the attempt to show that life, as we know it, is a chemico-physical phenomenon or set of phenomena, that there is no higher or other factor in living than there is in not-living matter, has so far completely failed ; and that the number of authorities believing in such an explana- tion year by year decreases. Still more then does the attempt made to show that there is no soul, no higher or other factor in man than those of chemistry and physics, fail along this line of attack. CHAPTER V ON THE ORIGINATION OF LIFE: BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS THE next question which we have to discuss is the manner in which this " something over " which we have been dealing with in the last chapter origin- ated. It is a thing sui generis ; that we have been trying to prove. Does it arise from pre-existing life, or can it originate from not-living matter? To put the matter in scientific language is bio- genesis the proper explanation of the origin of life, or may we hold by abiogenesis? For long ages the latter theory held the field ; nor is it wonderful that it should have done so. There was no micro- scope to reveal the wonders of the infinitely small. All around them men saw decomposing flesh swarming with maggots, cheeses developing mites, the waters apparently producing all sorts of living things. It would have been wonderful indeed if they had formed any other conception than that which they did form. There is a celebrated controversy on record which took place between 72 On the Origination, of Life 73 St. Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna, the purport of which is sometimes misrepresented. St. Thomas was opposed to Avicenna's view of spontaneous generation, not because he was opposed to spon- taneous generation in se, but because Avicenna held that matter inanimate matter, of course produced life by its own inherent powers, whereas St. Thomas held, as we should hold now in a similar controversy, that if inanimate matter does produce life, it is because the Creator has given it power to do so. 1 It may be convenient to add a further remark upon this matter. There are some persons who imagine that if spontaneous generation were actually to become a proved fact, as is, of course, within the bounds of possibility ; if a chemist were actually to produce living matter in a test-tube in his laboratory ; that then and there the whole system of Christianity, not to say of Catholicity, would immediately collapse, leaving not a wrack behind. Well, in the first place it may be said that, as the later pages of this chapter will show, it is eminently improbable that any such discovery will be made. But suppose it were made, Christianity and the Catholic Church would be just where they were in the days of St. Thomas, and as they are to-day. " If," says Father Sharpe, 2 "against all probability, 1 Summa Theol, I. p.q, 71, art. i, ad. I um. 2 The Principles of Christianity, 1906, p. 56. 74 Facts and Theories life could be shown to be spontaneously generated from matter, this would merely mean that the sentient or vegetative soul (which one may also speak of as the vital principle or under any other term which connotes the existence of an extra- physical agency in living matter) is a resultant from certain chemical combinations, and not as has been supposed, the direct work of the Creator. But there is no more inherent impossibility in holding that animal life is brought into being by a certain combination of chemical substances than in the converse belief, which is incontestable, that it is brought to an end by the dissolution, natural or artificial, of that combination. If we can destroy an animal's soul, as we certainly can, there is no a priori reason why we should not be able to make one." Returning from this digression to the main stream of history, we find that spontaneous generation continued to be taught until the seventeenth century. Harvey, that great glory of the English school of biologists, was opposed to it ; but it was Redi, an Italian physician, who, in 1698, first showed by experiment the unstable ground on which the theory of spontaneous generation rested. In his book he proved that if meat were covered with gauze, no maggots formed in it, and that the reason of this was that the gauze kept blow-flies from depositing the eggs from which the maggots arose. On the Origination of Life 75 For a time this disposed of the question, but it arose again with the discovery of the microscope and the knowledge of the otherwise invisible world of life which was furnished by that instrument. During the eighteenth century an active controversy took place on this subject, the protagonists on both sides being Catholic priests. Needham (1713- 1781) held that spontaneous generation did occur ; Spallanzani (1729-1799) held that it did not. Spallanzani again appealed to experiment, and showed this is still the crucial and capital experiment in the matter that if infusions, which if left open to the air would develop life, were suffi- ciently sterilized by boiling and then hermetically sealed up, no life would appear. Again the question seemed to be settled in favour of biogenesis ; but in 1858, Pouchet, a French observer, declared that he had seen infusoria spontaneously produced in sterilized fluids which had only been exposed to sterilized air. The French Academy in 1860 offered a prize for the solution of this question, and Pasteur appeared upon the scene. He repeated Spallanzani's experiments and showed that they were correct. But, it was argued, of course no life is produced in the fluid, because you deprive it of fresh air. Fresh air will do the fluid no harm was, in effect, Pasteur's reply, so long as it is clean air ; and to show that this was so, he placed his fluid in a bottle corked with a mass of cotton-wool, which 76 Facts and Theories allowed the entrance and exit of air but filtered it as it passed through. Further, he even allowed air to enter freely, so long as it entered through a tube bent into a number of zigzags. In neither of these cases did life originate in the sterilized fluid. The explanation of all this is very simple now that we know it. The air all around us is full of minute plants, called bacteria, which are visible, most of them, only under the highest powers of the microscope. When these little plants fall on to a suitable soil they begin to grow, and sometimes their growth is accompanied by the direst results to the object furnishing the soil on which they flourish. For example, the bacilli of consumption (tuberculosis) are all around us, and probably every one of us has swallowed and breathed in millions upon millions of them during our lifetime. Fortunately for the public health, most people are strong enough to resist these bacteria, or, in other words, the soil is not favourable. Where it is favour- able the bacteria grow, and the characteristic disease is the result. Now, the sterilised meat-juice, or whatever other substance is being used for the purposes of the experiment, is a soil much beloved by many kinds of bacteria. Leave this fluid open to the air, and the tiny plants of which I have been speaking will be deposited upon it and will set up their characteristic growth with the results with On the Origination of Life 77 which we are all familiar. Filter the air, and you keep out the plants. Let the air in by a narrow, devious path, and the plants will be intercepted and never reach the fluid. In either case the result will be the same ; no life will appear in the fluid. The scientific world was convinced, after long dis- cussions had taken place, that Pasteur was right ; and his view still holds the field. Let us, however, be quite clear in our minds what Pasteur did actually prove. Many persons hastily conclude that Pasteur has proved that living matter never comes from not-living matter. They forget the impossibility of proving a universal negative. What Pasteur actually did prove at least so practically every man of science believes was that by taking certain precautions, things which would otherwise become the prey of the tiny, invisible plants of the air, can be kept safe from their ravages. But then, it must be remembered, it was precisely the effects of these tiny plants (and in earlier days of other and coarser agencies, such as flies) which had led people to suppose that spontaneous genera- tion did take place. Consequently the elimination of this factor from the controversy was the elimination also of almost all the arguments which could be brought forward in favour of abiogenesis. It must be admitted that Pasteur's views have even to-day their opponents, few though they be. There was, for example, Mr. Burke's effort 78 Facts and Theories to prove that his radiobes were a kind of half- way house between living and not-living matter. These, however, have been proved to be of a chemical character, and to have no bearing upon the question. Of greater importance are the statements of Dr. Charlton Bastian. He holds that it is over- sterilization which is responsible for the non- appearance of life in suitable fluids when excluded from the air. To this it may be replied that the effect of under-sterilization is to leave in existence the spores of the plants which it is desired to kill, and that in that very fact is found the complete refutation of his theory which, by the way, has, I believe, no upholder but himself. At the present day, moreover, there is an over- whelming argument in favour of Pasteur's views, and that is the fact that the whole of the vast bottling and canning trades depend upon its validity. Securus judicat orbis terrarum. Millions upon millions of tins of meat and bottles of soup and cans of fruit are put up annually and annually eaten, none of which could have thus been dealt with had Pasteur been wrong. " Sterilize and exclude bacteria " were Pasteur's lessons, and the Chicago tinner acts upon them with the results with which we are all familiar. Hence, it may be said that, if there is any one subject on which scientific opinion is unanimous On the Origination of Life 79 at this moment it is that there is no proof that life can come from anything but life. Tyndall said in 1874 : 1 "If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence to prove that any form of life can be developed out of matter without demon- strable antecedent life, my reply is ... men of science frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed save from demonstrable antecedent life " ; and four years later : 2 "I affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent life." Virchow, in i887, 3 said: "Never has a living being, or even a living element let us say, a living cell been found of which it could be pre- dicated that it was the first of its species. Nor have any fossil remains ever been found of which it could ever be likely that it belonged to a being the first of its kind, or produced by spontaneous generation." To come nearer to our own times, two further witnesses may be cited. Hertwig : 4 " In the existing condition of science there is little hope that any worker will be able to produce the simplest manifestation of life in any artificial 1 Belfast Address to British Association. 2 Nineteenth Century, 1878. 3 Address at Wiesbaden. 4 Allgem, Biologie^ 2 Aufl., s. 263. 8o Facts and Theories way from non-living matter. He has certainly no more chance of success in his endeavours than Wagner, in Goethe's Faust, had of brewing a Homunculus in his retort." Professor B. Moore, F.R.S., 1 writes : " The mode of production of living matter is characteristic, and cannot be brought about by the action solely of inorganic forms of energy. Living matter is pro- duced only by the action of other living matter upon the materials and forms of energy of the non-living world. In the process the matter in- volved is built up into substances of great chemical complexity, and it has been supposed that this is the essential portion of the process of production of a living structure ; but it must be noted that even this very production of complexity of structure from simple inorganic bodies at the expense of the solar rays takes place and can only take place in a living structure itself. The very building up of the machine or transformer in which the manifesta- tions of biotic energy are subsequently to take place is then a cogent argument that here we are dealing with a type of energy which is not met with elsewhere. For nowhere else in Nature does a similar process appear to that of the production of living structure, and by no combination or application of the forms of energy apart from life can it be repeated or simulated." 1 Recent Advances t eic., p. 7. On the Origination of Life 81 We may take it, then, that life does not originate except from life; where then did life originally come from? What started the operations which have been going on for so many millenniums upon this earth ? There are three theories which may briefly be considered. It has been suggested that the germs of life were introduced to this planet from some other by a meteor. To this it may be replied, first, that science has no evidence of anything of the kind, for nothing in the shape of life has, so far as I am aware, ever been discovered on any meteor. Secondly, it may fairly be doubted whether any- thing in the shape of living matter could possibly stand the intense heat which is engendered in a meteoric fragment by its passage through our atmosphere. Thirdly and finally, and most con- clusively, if it could be proved that life was from time to time introduced on to our earth in this way, it would not help us one little bit in our difficulty. Suppose a new island to arise in the Pacific Ocean, it begins by being lifeless ; then life appears upon it. I am asked how it has arisen, and I reply that it has been introduced by birds from some other island. Have I answered the question as to the origin of life? If life per impossibile did come to us from another planet, we still should have to ask how it originated on that planet. 6 82 Facts and Theories Of this theory it may be said, " Doubtless God could have introduced life in this way, but doubtless God never did." In fact, Reinke, the botanist, says on this point that the idea would never have been devised if spontaneous generation had not been regarded "as lost beyond all hope of re- covery." 1 A second view which has been seriously put forward, and is from time to time put forward to-day, may be summarized as follows : " I am willing to admit that spontaneous generation does not occur to-day ; that seems to be pretty well proved. But I feel perfectly certain that it did take place in former ages before there was any man on the earth to observe it, and I hold this certainty though there is not one single scientific fact which points in this direction." Huxley 2 thought that if it were given to him " to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time" which, parenthetically it may be added, it certainly was not, he might "expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not-living matter." Yes; but why? He admitted 3 that in the controversy between bio- genesists and abiogenesists the former were 1 Teste Wasmann, Modern Biology, etc. , p. 204. 2 Critiques and Addresses ) p. 239. 3 In his Presidential Address to the British Association. The second quotation is in a letter to Charles Kingsley, Life and Letters, i. 352. On the Origination of Life 83 "victorious all along the line," yet he held that spontaneous generation was " a necessary corollary from Darwin's views if legitimately carried out " ; and consequently, as he could not claim or hope to claim that spontaneous generation takes place to-day, he set it back to a period of which we have and can have no sort of knowledge. This is hardly a good example of the science which does not speak until it knows. Herbert Spencer's observation on the subject is well worthy of quotation, if only to show what nebulous theories can be put before the public in the outraged name of science. He says : 1 " At a remote period in the past, when the temperature of the surface of the earth was much higher than at present, and other physical conditions were unlike those we know, inorganic matter, through successive complications, gave origin to organic matter." There are apparently people so constituted as to be hollow enough to swallow such remarks as this without seeing that in the nebulous phrase "through successive complications " lies the whole begging of the question. It is just those "successive complications" which Spencer postulated, but of which science knows nothing, at least as yet, which form the centre and kernel of the whole question. At least these things are clear: that there is no evidence whatsoever for any such occurrence in 1 Nineteenth Century, May 1886. 84 Facts and Theories past ages as that postulated in the above attempt to explain the origin of life ; further, that there is no reason to suppose that there is any single condition or combination of conditions under which the earth may have existed in those bygone ages which cannot be perfectly and successfully reproduced in our laboratories to-day ; yet. as we have seen, there is no expectation on the part of men of science that the result postulated by Huxley and Spencer is in the least likely to be obtained. Sir Henry Roscoe, whose word may be taken as final on this matter in chemistry, says : 1 "It is true that there are those who pro- fess to foresee that the day will arise when the chemist, by a succession of constructive efforts may pass beyond albumen, and gather the ele- ments of lifeless matter into a living structure. Whatever may be said of this from other stand- points, the chemist can only say that at present no such problem lies within his province. Proto- plasm, with which the simplest manifestations of life are associated, is not a compound, but a structure built up of compounds. The chemist may successively synthesize any of its component compounds, but he has no more reason to look forward to the synthetic production of the structure than to imagine that the synthesis of gallic acid leads to the artificial production of gall-nuts." 1 Presidential Address, British Association, 1887. On the Origination of Life 85 On this theory Reinke remarks that "just as at no stage of the earth's cooling was it possible for two lines to form a triangle, so was it never possible for an organism of the most primitive kind to be produced by the forces and combina- tions of inorganic matter." x There remains the third theory a simple theory in its way, and one which has held the field for a good many years. It is the theory that God Almighty created life. Reinke, the botanist just quoted, says : 2 "If we agree that living matter has at some time come from inorganic substances, then, in my opinion, the Creation hypothesis is the only one which meets the necessities of logic and of causality and therewith answers to the needs of a prudent seeker after Nature." From our standpoint as Catholics it is not necessary to bring forward any arguments in favour of a theory which we hold as of faith, namely, that God is the origin of life. At the same time it is instructive to find that by a process of elimination others come back to that view, having previously, to all appearance, exhausted the possibilities of the problem. If spontaneous genera- tion is to account for things and it can only ac- count for them up to a point, for we should still have to account for spontaneous generation itself 1 Teste Wasmann, Modern Biology ', etc. , p. 204. 2 Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie> s. 559. 86 Facts and Theories it must either have occurred at some distant period or it must occur to-day and have always occurred. There is no kind of proof for either of these views ; rather all the proof is the other way. Then we come back to the old Christian hypothesis. Let us look for a moment before this chapter terminates at the position held by the present opponents of this theory. We may sum them up in the statement of Weismann, who, as we have seen, has a way of blurting out the truth : l " Spontaneous generation, in spite of all vain efforts to demonstrate it, remains for me a logical necessity." Well, a logical necessity presupposes some sort of syllogistic treatment. Weismann's major premise is perfectly clear : " There is no such thing as a Creator." His minor term is, " So life was not created ; " and his conclusion, which follows, it is claimed, from the premises is "therefore spontaneous generation takes place." Many a false conclusion has followed from false premises. But what is to be said of the arguments of a man of science who is capable of putting forward, in effect, a syllogism of this kind where the major premise begs the whole question at issue ? On the subject of the origin of life, then, the Catholic mind may be at peace. There is no proof that it has ever originated independently, 1 Essays, Poulton's translation, p. 34. On the Origination of Life 87 and so long as that state of affairs remains we are nearer to the Creator, so to speak, than we should otherwise be. But, suppose for a moment that spontaneous generation were actually to be proved, we should only be one stage further off from Him, for it would then be impossible to explain how spontaneous generation came to pass unless, as St. Thomas argued against Avicenna, it was because the Creator gave matter, under certain conditions, the power of spontaneously generating life. NOTE. When the last proof-sheets of this book were in the writers hands, the report of Professor Schafer's Presidential Address to the British Association appeared in the papers. Under these circumstances it would have been quite impossible to have entered into any detailed consideration of the views put forward therein ; but fortunately there is no need to pursue any such course, for, though the presentation is new, the ideas put forward are not, as, indeed, may be seen by a perusal of the preceding chapters, where they have all been dealt with by anticipation. The scientific reputation of the Professor entitles all that he says to respectful con- sideration, and certainly no one would be so foolish as to deny the possibility of the artificial or even the spontaneous production of living from not-living matter ; but it is per- missible to doubt whether the discovery is as near at hand as he believes. Should it ever take place and be sub- stantiated, the Catholic position, as set out on p. 73, will remain absolutely unchanged. CHAPTER VI ON THE VARIABILITY OF LIVING THINGS, AND ON "DARWINISM" WE see around us a great variety of living things belonging to the animal and vegetable kingdoms. How did this variety come about ? This question brings us in contact with two theories those of permanence and of evolution. The former maintains the absolute invariability of the systematic species ; the latter avers that organic species have been evolved from earlier forms which belonged to previous ages. Several subsidiary questions come under consideration in connection with this latter hypothesis, amongst which are : (i) Is evolution to be considered as having taken place on mono- or poly-phyletic lines? In other words, are we to believe that all things, animal and vegetable, are the product of a single original living cell, the descendants of which branched off into two directions, plants and animals, each again sub- dividing into numerous species ; or are we to think of separate origins for plants and animals and 88 On the Variability of Living Things 89 perhaps also for the chief phyla or lines of each of these ? Darwin himself, as we shall see, seemed to hesitate upon this point, and there is some diversity of opinion concerning it amongst scientific writers at the present day. We cannot spare space to deal with this question here, but must pass on to the second. (ii) What were and are the causes and methods of evolution ? Under this heading is included the whole mass of hypotheses compendiously included under the title of " Darwinism," with which the remainder of this book is concerned. As it is not intended here to discuss and contrast the two hypotheses above alluded to, the attention of readers may be directed to the fact that they will find the whole matter most fully dealt with by one who is an authority both on theology and on science, in Fr. Wasmann's Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution a work which should be in the hands of everyone interested in the consideration of questions such as those dealt with in these pages. Meantime, as some at least seem to imagine that acceptance of the hypothesis of evolution does away with the necessity for belief in a Creator or detracts from His powers and dignity, it may be well, before passing to a detailed consideration of the views of Darwin and his followers, to cite two or three quotations from Catholic writers in order go Facts and Theories to show that " Transformism," which, as we shall see, has been discussed by several of the Doctors of the Church, is not in conflict with Catholic Faith, does not derogate from the dignity and greatness of the Creator, and is very far indeed from doing away with the necessity for a belief in such a Being. Fr. Wasmann says (p. 300) : " If the theory of descent holds its ground, and takes the place of the old theory of permanence, the theory of crea- tion, and with it the Christian cosmogony, remains as firmly established as ever. Indeed, the Creator's wisdom and power are revealed in a more brilliant light than ever, as this theory shows the organic world to have assumed its present form, not in consequence of God's constant interference with the natural order, but as a result of the action of those laws which He Himself has imposed on nature." And again : " The Christian cosmogony, that accords with the theory of evolution, reduces the history of animal and vegetable life upon our planet (though it covers hundreds of thousands of years) to a mere line in the book of the natural evolution of the whole cosmos ; but on this book's title-page stands written in indelible characters : ' IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND EARTH.'" In further chapters of this book the matter just alluded to will receive fuller attention and St. On the Variability of Living Things 91 Augustine's views on it will be cited; but before passing to the next section one more quotation from a modern theologian may be permitted. Fr. von Hammerstein 1 says: " If the Creator did not create each single species of animal in its present form, but caused it to acquire its present appearance and instincts by means of an inde- pendent evolution, carried on through a long line of ancestry, His wisdom and power are mani- fested the more clearly. Therefore if the theory of evolution is proved to be true within definite limits, it by no means sets aside the Creator, but, on the contrary, an all-wise and all-powerful Creator becomes the more necessary and indis- pensable, as the First Cause of the evolution of the organic species. A simile will bring out the truth of this very clearly. A billiard player wishes to send a hundred balls in particular directions; which will require greater skill to make a hundred strokes and send each ball separately to its goal, or, by hitting one ball, to send all the ninety-nine others in the direction which he has in view ? " Perhaps in connection with this simile we may recall Kingsley's parable in the Water-Babies in which Mother Carey says to Tom, "Know, silly child, that anyone can make things if they will take time and trouble enough : but it is not every one who, like me, can make things make them- 1 Gottesbeweise, Treves, 1903, p. 150, teste Wasmann. 92 Facts and Theories selves." And there with all reverence the matter may be left for the moment. "DARWINISM" Those whose business or hobby it is to read the almost innumerable manuals, pamphlets, and maga- zine articles dealing with what is compendiously called " Darwinism," cannot fail to be struck with the fact that the diverse, and not infrequently con- flicting, opinions, put forward under that title are not merely advanced as biological theories, but that they are also, more often than not, set forward with more than pontifical dignity, as a complete philosophy of life on a monistic basis, as a sound substructure for educational and even for far- reaching political theories, and, in fact, one might almost say, as a kind of new gospel wherein may be found help and direction in all the changes and chances of life. It is a bold claim ; and our object must now be to see how far it is justifiable. To those at any rate who have really studied Darwin's works, and especially those works as illustrated and commented on by his Life and Letters, and who consequently know something of what his real views were, the glosses to use no stronger term which are put upon his theories must often cause astonishment. Not less astonish- ing is the calm way in which opinions put forward by Darwin in a very tentative manner and opinions " Darwinism " 93 founded upon these, which were quite unknown to that author are now enunciated as the last and infallible word of science, which whoever denies will without doubt be scientifically damned. We have seen how Driesch complains of " Darwinian " dogmatism, and how he complains that Darwin's followers, especially in Germany, have altered their master's doctrine. " How far," he exclaims, " is ' Darwinism ' removed from Darwin's own teaching and character ! " We have now to consider what is meant by " Darwinism " and how far it is related to or arises from Darwin's own teachings, and further we have to try and form some kind of opinion as to how it stands in scientific estimation at the present day. But before doing this we must endeavour to arrive at some general rule respecting the evidence which should be offered to a non-scientific reader in order to induce him to give in his adhesion to a scientific theory or hypothesis. He cannot, ex hypothesi, go into the laboratory or dissecting-room himself and find out for himself whether the facts on which the hypotheses are based are as they are stated to be ; and, if he could, from want of wider knowledge and a scientific training, he would find it difficult or impossible to arrive at any certain conclusion on the matter. What then has he to do ? What kind of evidence is he to expect ? Well, I think we might put it somewhat in the following manner 94 Facts ana Theories without placing ourselves in the position of those who demand too much or are unduly sceptical. The ordinary non-scientific person cannot be expected to embrace, and ought not to be expected to embrace, any scientific opinion until it may be asserted of that opinion that the genuine scientific world is fairly unanimous in giving its adherence to it. It may be claimed that this is the minimum of evidence on which a doctrine should be received as coming with authority. Tried by this test, how very few of the theories of to-day would stand any chance of survival ! The following remarks in a review of some works on evolution, by a witty writer in the literary supplement of the Times} sum the situa- tion up rhetorically, perhaps, but not inaccurately, and much more graphically than is within the power of the present writer : " No one possessed of a sense of humour can con- template without amusement the battle of evolution, encrimsoned (dialectically speaking) with the gore of innumerable combatants, encumbered with the corpses of the (dialectically) slain and resounding with the cries of the living, as they hustle together in the fray. Here are zoologists, embryologists, botanists, morphologists, biometricians, anthro- pologists, sociologists, persons with banners and persons without ; Darwinians and neo-Darwinians 1 June 9, 1905. "Darwinism" 95 (what a name !) Lamarckians and neo-Lamarck- ians, Galtonians, Haeckelians, Weismannians, de Vriesians, Mendelians, Hertwigians, and many more whom it would be tedious to enumerate. Never was seen such a melee \ The humour of it is, that they all claim to represent ' Science,' the serene, the majestic, the absolutely sure, the un- divided and immutable, the one and only vice- gerent of Truth, her other self. Not theirs the weakness of the theologians or the metaphysicians, who stumble about in uncertainty, obscurity, and ignorance, with their baseless assumptions, flimsy hypotheses, logical fallacies, interminable dis- sensions, and all the other marks of inferiority on which the votaries of science pour ceaseless scorn. Yet it would puzzle them to point to a theological battlefield exhibiting more uncertainty, obscurity, dissension, assumption and fallacy than their own. For the plain truth is that, though some agree in this and that, there is not a single point in which all agree ; battling for evolution, they have torn it to pieces ; nothing is left, nothing at all on their showing, save a few fragments strewn about the arena." "Exaggerated," you say. Well, read Professor Kellogg's work Darwinism To-day. The Professor is a man who has won his spurs in original re- search ; he has a very wide acquaintance with the literature of evolution, and he gives his summaries 96 Facts and Theories of it with scrupulous honesty at least that is my judgement. He cannot be accused of anti-Dar- winian bias, and he does not conceal his contempt for the poor deluded Catholic. But read his book, and particularly read the excellent summaries appended to the chapters, and then ask yourself the question, "Is the man in the Times so great an exaggerator as I thought ? " If further evidence on this point is desired or necessary, I appeal to the following extract from the prospectus of a publication called Bedrock^ which appears under the editorship of a body of scientific men. The extract deplores, and the periodical is intended to remedy, the very state of confusion and uncertainty to which allusion has been made above. " At the present day, although it is admitted that the subject-matter of Biology does come within the province of Natural Law, and also that the true method of dealing with it is the universally accepted Newtonian method of applying Induction, Deduction, and Verification to ascertained facts, nevertheless among biologists confusion reigns. This is but a further conse- quence of the complexity of the subject-matter, which renders the application of the Newtonian method so much more difficult in this case than in that of physics, chemistry, or astronomy. Induc- tions may be made on insufficient data; the instances chosen to serve as tests may be a priori ' ' Darwinism " 97 ineffective; the process of verification may be scamped and inexhaustive. At any rate, Biology to-day teems with mutually incongruous opinions (e.g. those held by Mendelians, Mutationists, Biometricians, Selectionists, etc.), all of which are conceivably incorrect. This diversity of opinion as to the most vital problems now confronting humanity can have none but the most paralyzing effects, Statesmanship is left without authoritative guidance. Empiricism remains its only refuge." I began by saying that a scientific theory, if it is to command the respect of the unscientific (let alone the scientific) reader, should have something like general consent behind it. If that proposition is unassailable, then there are very few of the theories grouped under the name of " Darwinism " which occupy such a position or anything like such a position, and this statement I now proceed to elaborate and justify. CHAPTER VII WHAT DARWIN HIMSELF HELD IT has already been pointed out that what Darwin held is not exactly the same in some cases by no means the same as what is commonly called " Darwinism." It may, therefore, be well to take a few points seriatim with the intention of dis- covering what Darwin himself thought about them and what is thought about them to-day. (i) In the first place, then, it is quite clear that Darwin held that Transformism was the explana- tion of the world of life as we know it that is, that all living things came from one or more forms and were thus genetically related to one another. But he did not commit himself absolutely, in The Origin of Species, to either a mono- or a poly- phyletic scheme of Transformism, for in the celebrated passage which occurs at the end of that book he alludes to "life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one," and it may be noted that the words " perhaps into only one," which represent What Darwin himself Held 99 those quoted in the latest draft, were actually written into it in pencil, as if they were an after- thought. 1 (ii) Darwin also believed that Natural Selection which unlike Transformism, an old theory (as we shall see) of which he made use, was his own original idea was a very potent agent of Trans- formism. It was to prove this that his most celebrated work was written, as its title often ignored by persons who ought to be familiar with it quite clearly shows: "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." (iii) Darwin further put forward a theory of Sexual Selection, as an adjunct factor of Trans- formism. According to this theory, the struggle on the part of male members of a species to secure the most desirable females also produces a form of selection by which Transformism may be brought about. (iv) Darwin put forward the theory of Pan- genesis, which is difficult to define as briefly as must be done here, but which may be described as a means of accounting for heredity by postulating an accumulation in the germ from which the scion is to arise, of small particles representing each heritable factor in the parental body. 1 Origin of Species, etc. , 6th edition, p. 429 ; and see The Founda- tion of the Origin of Species, 1909, pp. 52 note 2, and 254 note 4. ioo Facts and Theories (v) Darwin held that Man, body and all, includ- ing mental characteristics, was developed from some lower form. (vi) Darwin held doubtfully and tentatively to various other matters, or perhaps it would be fairer to say that he kept an open mind upon them, such as Lamarckianism (now held by the neo-Darwinians to be utterly opposed to his views), " He was Lamarckian to a very far-reaching extent," says Driesch. 1 Again, he does not make it absolutely clear as to what he believed respecting the im- portance of small and great variations respectively in the process of evolution, which is, no doubt, largely to be accounted for by the fact that this point, now one of crucial importance, had been but little discussed in his own time. At any rate his own commentators of to-day seem uncertain as to how his views are to be interpreted on this matter. 2 (vii) Darwin's attitude towards the idea of a Creator is a little difficult to define, but as he has been claimed by Haeckel as a monist, something should be said upon this point. As will be gathered from the quotation given above, Darwin in the Origin acknowledged the existence and work of a Creator, and what is rather remarkable, actually 1 Op. cit. y vol. i. p. 260. 2 See the discussion on pp. 70 and 7 1 of Darwin and Modern Science. What Darwin himself Held 101 added the words " by the Creator " in the second edition. There they remained till the end, in spite of any changes which took place in Darwin's own opinions. These, as he himself admitted, became more and more agnostic towards the end. In one of his letters he states his " inward conviction " that " the Universe is not the result of chance " ; but, he continues, (< with me the horrid doubt always arises, whether the convictions of man's mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy." This attitude of despair with regard to the intellectual powers, it may be remarked incidentally, like solipsism, must logically lead to a complete paralysis of thought. 1 This change of mind may perhaps be in part attributed to the Zeitgeist, for materialism was then in the air far more than it is now ; partly to the unkind, unfair, and unreasonable things said about Darwin himself and his views, by some of his religious, but imperfectly instructed, opponents; and partly perhaps one may even think largely, to the strange atrophying effect upon a large part of his intellect caused by too great absorption in scientific questions. It is well known that Darwin admitted that whilst he had once loved poetry, pictures, and music, he had lost all these tastes, could not 1 See Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. i. p. 316. Further statements respecting his religious attitude at same place. IO2 Facts and Theories "endure to read a line of poetry," found Shake- speare " so intolerably dull that it nauseated me," and so on with other artistic pleasures. " My mind," he says, "seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot con- ceive." l These points have been briefly mentioned here because, from the paeans uttered by some, it might be taken that Darwin himself had led an anti-religious campaign ; whereas the fact seems to have been that his interests were not vividly excited in this direction at all, and that in his " most extreme fluctuations " he had " never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God." 2 The above selection of opinions is (need it be said ?) by no means exhaustive, but some of them will suffice as a groundwork for the historical criticism which has now to be attempted. More- over, they will, in some measure, indicate what Darwin's own views were and in what measure they correspond with the thing called <( Darwinism " at the present day. We shall take up the various points seriatim, before proceeding to the consideration of some 1 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. i. pp. loo-ioi. 2 Ibid., p. 304. What Darwin himself Held 103 general matters which arise in connection with the subject of Darwinism as a whole. I. TRANSFORMISM Transformism is the theory which teaches that one living form or species is derived from another and not specially created. ' * The fact of organic evolution is at least as certain a part of knowledge as the law of universal gravitation." 1 I have already set down and commented on this amazing quotation. As a mere matter of fact the theory of Transformism or organic evolution is not proved ; it may never be proved ; it is perhaps incapable of complete demonstration. That this statement is not merely the biased expression of opinion of a mere Catholic can be proved by a quotation from the work of a master of science I allude to Professor T. H. Morgan. In a most admirable and careful discussion of the whole question of so-called "Darwinism," 2 after discussing Fleischmann's views on evolution, and deciding that his arguments have not seriously weakened the theory, he con- tinues : " He has done, nevertheless, good service in recalling the fact that, however probable the theory (i.e. of evolution) may appear, the evidence is indirect and an exact proof is still wanting." 1 cf. P . 39- 2 Evolution and Adaptation^ Macmillan Co., New York, 1903, P. 57. 104 Facts and Theories There is the sober word of true science as opposed to less responsible utterances. Let us now try to estimate temperately the position held by the transformist theory to-day. (i) Unquestionably the overwhelming majority of biologists would accept some doctrine of Trans- formism, however much they may and do differ as to details. Fleischmann, whose name has just been mentioned, is perhaps the only biologist of position who has taken up an attitude opposed to the theory, and it cannot be said that his arguments have produced any impression on scientific opinion. In fact, it may be said, quite fairly and definitely, that Transformism or organic evolution holds the field as the working hypothesis generally adopted. (ii) The evidence on which it is based is, as has been said, not completely convincing, and certain pieces of evidence brought forward, and formerly considered as conclusive, have not now the weight which they once possessed. Two examples may be cited : (a) The so-called recapitulation theory of Fritz Miiller and Haeckel (which teaches that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that is to say, that the life-history of the individual portrays that of the species) is, I see, described in a translation lately published in America, 1 " established, now perhaps 1 On the Inheritance of Acquired Characters, Rignano, Open Court Publishing Co., 1911, p. n. What Darwin himself Held 105 irrefutably." Professor Dendy 1 thinks that the facts he cites leave "no doubt as to the general truth of the recapitulation hypothesis." Yet, on the other hand, Professor Kellogg 2 says of this same theory, that it "is chiefly conspicuous now as a skeleton on which to hang innumerable exceptions." And further: "the recapitulation theory is mostly wrong ; and what is right in it, is mostly so covered up by the wrong part, that few biologists longer have any confidence in discovering the right." With this uncertainty on the question it would appear that the evidence for Transformism founded on this doctrine has at least been weakened. (b) The whole intermediate link evidence is not as strong as, during earlier days, it was expected that it would become. Further, some parts of it do not hold as strong a position as they did when the field of geology had been less explored. For example, the well-known and oft-cited case of the horse's foot is still claimed by some as a "conclusive proof" 3 of the truth of organic evolu- tion. Yet, as a master of zoology points out, 4 "there are flaws in the chain of evidence, which require careful and detailed consideration " ; and, after pointing out some of these flaws and difficul- ties, he adds, " It is possible that these difficulties, 1 Outlines of Evolutionary Biology ', 1912, p. 281. 2 Op. '/., pp. 1 8 and 21. 3 Saleeby, Organic Evolution, pp. 56 seq. 4 Sedgwick, Text- Book of Zoology, 1905, p. 600. io6 Facts and Theories and others of the same kind, will be overcome with the growth of knowledge, but it is necessary to take note of them, for in the search after truth, nothing is gained by ignoring such apparent dis- crepancies between theory and fact." This guarded statement is worthy of careful attention, for it shows that further observations have not always confirmed the impressions of the earlier writers. (iii) Transformism in its simplest terms has been a theory put forward by many writers prior to Darwin, and by quite a number of Catholic writers of the first authority. Not to labour this point, the following quotation from Fr. Wasmann's work may suffice : l " Even to St. Augustine it seemed a more exalted conception, and one more in keeping with the omni- potence and wisdom of an infinite Creator, to believe that God created matter by one act of creation, and then allowed the whole universe to develop automatically by means of the laws which He imposed upon the nature of matter. God does not interfere directly with the natural order when He can work by natural causes : this is a funda- mental principle in the Christian account of nature, and was enunciated by the great theologian Suarez, whilst St. Thomas Aquinas plainly suggested it long before, when he regarded it as testimony to the greatness of God's power, that His providence 1 Modern Biology, 1910, p. 274. What Darwin himself Held 107 accomplishes its aims in nature not directly but by means of created causes." l (iv) From what has been said it follows quite clearly that a belief in Transformism in no way leads up to a monistic philosophy. It may be looked upon as a method of creation, but it does not in any way explain the origin of things, or the origin of life, nor does it in any kind of way help us to do without an Author and Designer of the laws whatever they may be under which it works. These statements cannot be further dealt with here ; they form part of quite another line of discussion, but since it has been claimed that a monistic philosophy logically follows from Darwin's theories, it may be said that from this one of his beliefs, no such conclusion follows, Transformism may be looked at from a Christian or an anti- Christian point of view. The former at least offers an explanation of matters left wholly unexplained by the latter. II. NATURAL SELECTION Natural Selection is the great contribution to theory made by Darwin. I emphasize the word theory because one must never forget the great additions to positive science which were made by him, additions which must always remain a glory to 1 The reader desirous of following this matter further may be referred to the concluding portion of Mivart's Genesis of Species. io8 Facts and Theories him, even if some of his hypotheses disappear under the destructive criticism of more widely-informed ages. As we have seen, Transformism as a theory did not owe its origin to Darwin, though it un- questionably did owe to his writings its sudden rise to popularity and to that general acceptance which it has obtained. Transformism, so to speak, was in strong solution at the time that Darwin published his greatest work. That work was like the added crystal which causes the whole fluid contents of the vessel to become crystalline. But the crystal added was the theory of the origin of species by Natural Selection^ and hence it will be necessary to devote some little space to the consideration of this matter. The theory is based on the knowledge which we possess that the offspring of all living things, whilst generally resembling their parents, still differ more or less from them : in other words, it is based on the observed fact that variations do occur. Darwin concluded that some at least of these variations would be of such a character as to make their possessor a more successful combatant in the battle of life, and thus more likely to be the progenitor of a strong and vigorous race. The perpetuation and intensification of such variation might in time lead to the formation of a new and distinct species. " Can we doubt/' he says (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive), " that individuals having any advantage, What Darwin himself Held 109 however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving, and of procreating their kind ? " 1 Since the theory was first brought before the public it has been subjected to every kind of criticism, favourable and unfavourable, and it may be said that scientific opinion at this moment is much divided as to the real value which is to be given to this supposed factor in the process of Transformism. There are those who stand by it even more strongly than did its author, if that be possible. Lankester, for example, says, " in looking back over twenty- five years, it seems to me that we must say that the conclusions of Darwin as to the origin of species, by the survival of selected races in the struggle for existence, are more firmly established than ever." 2 On the other hand there are writers of equal weight who will have nothing whatever to do with the theory. I take the most extreme expression of this form of opinion that has come under my notice, that of Korschinsky, a Russian botanist, who says that " the struggle for existence, and the selection that goes hand in hand with it, constitute a factor which limits new forms and hinders further variation, and is, therefore, in no way favourable to the origin of new forms. It is a factor inimical to evolution." 3 1 Origin of Species, 6th edition, p. 63, 2 The Kingdom of Man, 1907, p. 124. 3 As quoted by Kellogg, op. cit., p. 333. no Facts and Theories Then, finally, there is the middle and much the largest group of those who, while holding that Natural Selection is a factor, even a very potent factor, in the process of Transformism, hold it with greater or less modifications ; and all of whom agree in believing that it is only a partial explanation of the process and not, as Darwinian extremists would argue, a complete key to the secrets of Nature's operations. Even in Darwin's own time the view was put forward that Natural Selection was the cause of the variations which it was sup- posed to control. Darwin himself comments on this view and disclaims it : " Some have even imagined that Natural Selection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life." l This makes Darwin's attitude quite clear, and probably the prevalent opinion of to-day would be in accordance with the views of de Vries when he says : 2 " Natural selection acts as a sieve ; it does not single out the best variations, but it simply destroys the larger number of those which are, 1 Origin of Species, p. 63. 2 Darwin and Modern Science^ p. 70. The reader who is desirous of studying a close criticism of the present position of the theory of Natural Selection may be referred to Driesch's Science and Philosophy of the Organism, pp. 261 et seq., from which a quotation is here given, and the very full account of modern writings on this point in Kellogg. What Darwin himself Held 1 1 1 from some cause or another, unfit for their present environment. In this way it keeps the strains up to the required standard, and in special circum- stances may even improve them." It is quite clear that a great many people who write and talk about Natural Selection have a most confused idea of its possible functions. This confusion is so well explained and confuted by Driesch x that I quote his statement at length : "It must be certain from the very beginning of analysis that Natural Selection, as defined here, can only eliminate what cannot survive, what cannot stand the environment in the broadest sense, but that Natural Selection never is able to create diversities. It always acts negatively only, never positively. And therefore it can ' explain ' if you will allow me to make use of this am- biguous word it can ' explain ' only why certain types of organic specifications, imaginable a priori, do not actually exist, but it never explains at all the existence of the specifications of animal and vegetable forms that are actually found. In speaking of an ' explanation ' of the origin of the living specific forms by Natural Selection one therefore confuses the sufficient reason for the non-existence of what there is not, with the sufficient reason for the existence of what there is. To say that a man has explained some organic 1 Op, cit. vol. i. p. 262. 1 1 2 Facts and Theories character by Natural Selection is, in the words of Naegeli, the same as if someone who is asked the question, ' Why is this tree covered with these leaves ? ' were to answer, ' Because the gardener did not cut them away.' Of course that would explain why there are no more leaves than those actually there, but it never would account for the existence and nature of the existing leaves as such. Or do we in the least understand why there are white bears in the Polar Regions if we are told that bears of other colours could not survive ? " Natural Selection, at any rate, is no proof of monism ; for this excellent reason, that it explains nothing. For nothing is explained until the origin of variation is explained. What makes the living organism vary ? That is the question of questions. To that question science so far has no certain reply, as might be shown were it possible to devote more space to the point. Vitalists and neo-vitalists say that it is the entelechy or principle of life, a factor wholly different from the material factor of the organism, which causes variation, and, as many of them, and these not Catholics, would also say, causes variation along fixed and predeterminate lines. Naegeli, for example, be- lieved in a " principle of progressive development, a something inherent in the organic world which makes each organism in itself a force or factor What Darwin himself Held 1 1 3 making towards specialization, adaptation, that is, towards progressive evolution." x Most persons of ordinary common-sense would agree that if a principle of this far-reaching character is found to be inherent in the organic world, that inherent principle must have been put into the organic world by someone or by something. We Catholics say that it was put in by the Creator of all things, and the only reply that we meet with on the part of our opponents is that no one can know who put it in. I am now, of course, speaking of those opponents who believe in an inherent tendency : those who do not have still to meet the initial difficulty of explaining how variations occur. As one further development of Naegeli's views may be cited his statement that " animals and plants would have developed about as they have, even had no struggle for existence taken place, and the climatic and geologic conditions and changes been quite different from what they have been." 2 It is pretty obvious that views such as these do not compel a monistic explanation : most persons would say that they run directly contrary to it. III. SEXUAL SELECTION This was another very attractive theory put forward side by side with that just discussed, 1 Kellogg, p. 277. 2 Ibid., p. 278. H4 Facts and Theories and intended to assist in the explanation of Transformism. Darwin thought that the brilliant colours, and many other characteristics which sometimes but by no means always distinguish the males of a species from the females, might be accounted for by the fact that these secondary sexual characters were pleasing to the female, and that those males whose variations had been in the direction of an acquisition of, or an intensification of, these characters would be most likely to secure the most desirable females. Now this theory was, of course, more or less vitiated by the underlying fallacy that it depends upon an anthropomorphic interpretation of the animal mind. There is little proof that brightly coloured members of one sex do, by that fact, attract members of the other. As a matter of fact, actual experiment has shown that amongst insects where coloration may be said to reach its maximum dyeing of the wings with strange colours does not seem to have made any difference in the sexual relations between changed and unchanged specimens. And other experiments seem to prove that, again amongst insects, it is scent and not sight which attracts the sexes towards each other. One must bear in mind that just as it has been said (by Wundt) that the reason that animals do not talk is because they have nothing to talk about, so also it may What Darwin himself Held 1 1 5 be said, with good reason, that they do not admire the points in their kind which seem to us so exquisitely beautiful, for the simple reason that they have no aesthetic sense and admire nothing. Kipling and others write charming books in which animals talk to one another, and reason as if they were human beings. We must beware of taking these things seriously, and of reasoning from our own ideas of which we know something, though perhaps not much, to those of animals of which we know just nothing. One need not delay long over the theory of Sexual Selection. It was never adopted by Wallace, Darwin's great com- panion in broaching the theory of Natural Selection, and it has steadily declined in popularity since it was first formulated. The balance of the tendencies of later days, as the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says, 1 " has been against the attachment of great importance to Sexual Selection," and there we may leave the matter with this final remark, that if it is a factor, it is only a factor and is no more but rather much less an explanation than is Natural Selection. IV. PANGENESIS Strictly speaking, this theory was not original with Darwin, for Buffon had suggested something of a similar character long before. But Darwin's 1 Art. "Evolution," p. 34. 1 1 6 Facts and Theories hypothesis was the first attempt to grapple with the physical explanation of heredity which gained any great amount of public attention. An explana- tion is needed of why the child resembles its parents, and resembles them sometimes too in the smallest points, such as a birth-mark, a dimple, a curious arrangement of the eyebrows not less, of course, why it resembles its parents at all. This, again, is a matter which cannot possibly be dealt with here, but it may be said that Darwin's theory and that of the other micromerists, if one may use Delage's convenient term to group them together, however those theorists may differ in detail, is governed by the idea that in the tiny germ are still tinier infinitely tinier they must needs be re- presentatives of every variable portion of the body, by the development of which representatives the new body is built up with the necessary resem- blances. Of course, this theory is one which never could be scientifically demonstrated. The germ is often far more often than not a microscopic object, and it has been calculated that some trillions of the minor elements in it would be required to meet the necessities of the case. These could never, it may safely be said, be demonstrated by the microscope, or by any other means conceivable to our present knowledge of science and scientific methods. The weakness of this theory is in its amazing complexity, a complexity which goes What Darwin himself Held 1 1 7 beyond the bounds of belief when it is carefully studied. " Any theory which involves the assump- tion of morphological units as representing char- acters must bring us to an impasse in a very few generations, as is demonstrated by the working out of such a theory to comparatively few degrees upward from offspring to parents, grandparents, and so on." x It cannot be said that the theory of Pangenesis and others of its kind have secured any firm hold on scientific opinion ; rather must it be said that they are losing what hold they once possessed. 2 1 Walker, Hereditary Characters and Their Mode of Transmis- sion^ 1910, p. 121. 2 See the criticism of Pangenesis in Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation, pp. 233 et seq. CHAPTER VIII THE ORIGIN OF MAN THIS vast and important subject cannot receive full treatment in so small a book as this, but some attempt must be made to sketch the outlines of the controversy as it now stands and to indicate further sources of information. As we have seen, Darwin believed that man, body and soul (if we may be permitted to use the latter term in such a connection) was developed from some lower form, and we have also seen the result which this conviction produced in his own mind. This result, one would have thought, should have led him to doubt the certainty of his own conclusions as to the spiritual relationship of man and apes, rather than to doubt the dependability of human reasoning. Now, in considering this question we must separate the two aspects of the case. There is a clear separation in the Biblical account of the creation of man. " Man was made rational after he was made ' corporeal.' The Lord Eli The Origin of Man 1 1 9 God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became ' a living soul ' (Gen. ii. 7). Here are two acts on the part of the Creator the forming the dust and the breathing the life." l Let us dis- cuss from a purely scientific standpoint the two separately, and let us commence with the inferior. (a) The Body of Man. Unquestionably, in a general way, it may be said that the anatomical outlines of the human body closely resemble those of the higher apes. There are differences, of course, but the resemblances are far more numerous. This at least suggests a genetic connection through some common ancestor, and some would say like Schwalbe 2 that the experiments of Friedenthal and others as to the behaviour of the blood of man and other mammals strengthened this probability. This particular point is at present in too inchoate a condition to be dealt with otherwise than tenta- tively, and those who desire to know more about it may be referred to the account of the discussion between Friedenthal and Wasmann, where it would appear to be admitted that no relationship in the sense of community of origin is claimed to have been proved by this method. 3 But a suggestion is 1 Newman, Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day, 1869, sermon viii., p. 101. 2 In his article in Darwin and Modern Science , p. 129. 3 Wasmann, Problem of Evolution, pp. 67 and 139. I2O Facts ana Theories not a proof. There may be a score of ways of explaining the likeness between two things, all or at least nineteen of which may be wholly illusory. Let us look at certain points of difficulty. In the first place, it may be said as will be gathered from a previous section that the recapitulation or bio- genetic theory has proved to be a doubtful aid, and that the arguments once adduced from it with regard to the descent of man can only be accepted with great caution and with many reservations. And here a word may usefully be said on the subject of " phylogeny," for which so much import- ance has been claimed ; and here, once more, I will call to my aid Professor Driesch 1 and give a somewhat lengthy statement of his views on the subject which will show that here also we have the utmost divergence of opinion and that complete uncertainty exists even as to any probable line of descent. "The philosopher Liebmann," he says, " complained of phylogeny that it furnishes nothing but a 'gallery of ancestors/ And this gallery of ancestors set up in phylogeny is not even certain ; on the contrary, it is absolutely uncertain, and very far from being a fact. For there is no sound and rational principle underlying phylogeny ; there is mere fantastic speculation. How could it be otherwise where all is based upon suppositions which themselves have no leading principle at 1 Op. cit,> vol. i. p. 256. The Origin of Man 1 2 1 present ? I should not like to be misunderstood in my polemic against phylogeny. I fully grant you that it may be possible in a few cases to find out the phylogenetic history of smaller groups with some probability, if there is some palaeontological evidence in support of pure comparative anatomy ; and I also do not hesitate to allow that such a statement would be of a certain value with regard to a future discovery of the ' laws ' of descent, especially if taken together with the few facts known about mutations. But it is quite another thing with phylogeny on the larger scale. Far more eloquent than any amount of polemics is the fact that vertebrates, for instance, have already been ' proved ' to be descended from, firstly, the amphioxus; secondly, the annelids; thirdly, the Sagitta type of worms; fourthly, from spiders; fifthly, from Limulus, a group of crayfishes; and sixthly, from echinoderm larvae. That is the extent of my acquaintance with the literature, with which I do not pretend to be specially familiar. Emil du Bois-Raymond said once that phylogeny of this sort is of about as much scientific value as are the pedigrees of the heroes of Homer, and I think we may fully endorse his opinion on this point." These remarks may serve in some sort as a corrective to the " ancestral trees " which flourish with such luxuriance in the works of certain writers on biological subjects. 122 Facts and Theories Then, in the next place, there is the question of the missing link or links. "There is not, as is often assumed, one ' missing link ' to be discovered, but at least a score of such links, to fill adequately the gap between man and apes ; and their non- discovery is now one of the strongest proofs of the imperfection of the geological record." l What an amazing non sequitur \ Surely it might be claimed with at least equal justice, that the fact that the " missing links " have not turned up is some sort of proof that they do not exist. See the force of a parti pris \ The venerable writer of the lines just quoted has in a paragraph almost immediately preceding stated that " all evolutionists are satisfied that the common ancestor of man and the anthro- poid apes must [his italics] date back to the Miocene, if not to the Eocene, period." So that the line of argument is this : Although no one has ever seen any trace of him, man and the apes must have had a common ancestor at the time mentioned ; nothing has ever been found of that ancestor ; therefore the geological record is imperfect. It does not need any profound acquaintance with logic to see through that syllogism. At any rate Wallace admits that there are a number of missing links, and Branco, who, as Director of the Geological and Palaeontological Institute of the Berlin University, may be accepted 1 Wallace, The World of Life, 1911, p. 247. The Origin of Man 123 as a competent authority, tells us that in the history of our planet man appears as a genuine Homo novus. It is possible, he says, to trace the ancestry of most of our present mammals among the fossils of the Tertiary period, but man appears suddenly in the Quaternary period, and has no Tertiary ancestors as far as we know. Human remains of the Tertiary period have not yet been discovered, and the traces of human activity, which have been referred to that period, are of a very doubtful nature, but Diluvial remains abound. Man of the Diluvial epoch, however, appears at once as a complete Homo sapiens. 1 And further to the question, " Who was the ancestor of man ? " he replies, " Palaeontology tells us nothing of the subject it knows no ancestors of man." Let us glance for a moment at what is known at present with regard to the earliest remains of man. There are two anomalous and puzzling examples, and then something like a definite series. The first of the former group is the collection of bones found near Trinil, in Java, by Dubois, and some- times alluded to as Pithecanthropus erectus. With regard to these it may be said that (i) there is some doubt as to whether the objects discovered viz., the top of the skull, the tooth, and the thigh- 1 Wasmann, Modern Biology, p. 477. The address was given in 1901. Since then the " traces of human activity" in the Tertiary period have been practically abandoned by authorities. Cf. Sollas, Ancient Hunters. See note at end of chapter. 124 Facts and Theories bone, all belonged to the same individual, since they were found at some little distance from one another ; (2) the careful explorations made by an expedition conducted by Mme. Selenka to the same place, which have lately been made public, 1 have failed to reveal any further remains of a similar kind, or any evidence of implements or such traces of human activity ; (3) there is the widest difference of opinion as to the kind of animal to which the top of the skull belonged, some holding it to have been an ape, others an ape-like man, others an individual half-way between the two. It must be obvious that at present it would be very dangerous to build up any theory on such a basis of sand, though, to judge from what one sees in some manuals and pamphlets, we might know Pithecanthropus as well as we know the Gorilla or the Macaque. The other case is that of the Heidelberg lower jaw. Of this curious and most interesting relic, all that can be said at present is that the bony part is more monkey-like than that of any human jaw so far examined, whilst, on the other hand, the teeth are less monkey-like than those of some undoubtedly human examples of the present day. Here again it is impossible to build a theory on a single lower jaw, and especially on one with such anomalous characteristics. 1 V Anlhropologie, 1911, p. 551. The Origin of Man 125 Passing away from these puzzling specimens, the significance of which may be cleared up some day, we come to the first race of man of whom we have something like definite information, those of Le Moustier, to which it would appear that the much-disputed Neanderthal skull belongs. And what do we know about them ? In the first place, we know that they were men in every sense of the word, and big-brained men too, since the cubic capacity of their skulls is greater than that of the average European of the present day. In the second place, we know that they had the hands of men, since they fashioned, with the utmost skill, wonderful implements of flint. And in the third place, we know that they believed in a soul and a future life for that soul, for the very earliest inter- ment known, that of the valley of the Chapelle-aux- Saints, is one with those "accompanying gifts" which all the world over have but one significance : namely, a belief in the after-life and a desire to provide the spirit of the dead person with objects useful to it in that life. No wonder that Professor Sollas should say that it gives one something like a shock to run up against this world-wide custom during the disappearance of the Great Ice Age. 1 It would appear then from the most recent dis- 1 For a careful discussion of the matters just alluded to, see Sollas, Ancient Hunters^ 1911 ; the Professor of Geology in Oxford is admittedly a first-rate authority on these matters. 126 Facts and Theories coveries that Wallace has very good reason for admitting the need of the missing links and for acknowledging their present absence. As regards the extraordinary persistence of type of the human species no more remarkable facts can be imagined than those which Professor Elliot Smith, F.R.S., has recorded concerning the ancient inhabitants of Egypt. " The hot, dry sands of Egypt," he tells us, 1 " have preserved through a span of more than sixty centuries the remains of countless multitudes of the earliest people known to have dwelt in the Nile Valley ; and not the mere bones only, but the skin and hair, the muscles and organs of the body; and even such delicate tissues as the nerves and brain, and, most marvel- lous of all, the lens of the eye, are available for examination to-day. Thus we are able to form a very precise idea of the structure of the body of the Proto-Egyptian." Many of the bodies of these Pre- Dynastic people of the Stone Age and prior to what has generally been considered, up to recent years, to be the earliest civilization of Egypt, were examined by Elliot Smith, himself a distinguished anatomist. Not only this, but the nature of their food was determined from the contents of their stomachs. What was the result obtained from all these in- vestigations ? That the Pre-Dynastic Egyptian can " be found re-incarnated in his modern descendants 1 The Ancient Egyptians, p. 41. The Origin of Man 1 2 7 with surprisingly little change, either in physical characteristics or mode of life, to show for the passage of six thousand years " (p. 43). Of course it may be argued that the persistence of type here is due to the persistence of environment, even to the form of food used. Further, some at least would argue that six thousand years is but a short period. Whatever force there may be in these statements, the facts I have just quoted are more than remarkable and, so far as they go, do not make, at any rate, for the view that evolution proceeds by means of minute variations. Lastly, so far as this imperfect sketch is con- cerned, there is the exceeding great difficulty of explaining how man came to be evolved, and how it was that he was not exterminated during the process. It is held by most Darwinians that it is by the slow accumulation of small variations that evolution works its way. One of the greatest difficulties set in the way of Darwin's theories was that which pointed out that for a time every such small variation, before it could get far enough to be of advantage to its possessor, would or might be a positive disadvantage as requiring greater strength to carry it, greater nutriment to provide for it, and the like. Now in the case of man it would seem that every step in the direction of evolution, and that perhaps for long ages, must have made him less able to contend with his environment, must in 128 Facts and Theories fact have placed him in a position in which nothing could have saved him from destruction. The late Professor Dwight, whose lamented death has deprived America of a distinguished man of science and the Church of a most loyal son, sums this argument up most pithily in his last work. 1 Speaking of man, he says : " Not very strong of arm, not very swift of foot, without a well-developed hairy hide, or large teeth, or strong claws, he seems as a mere animal, an exceedingly unfortunate one, good neither for attack nor defence, in short, very unfit for the struggle for existence, in that imaginary period of half-fledgedness between brute and man. His instincts and his senses, that of touch perhaps excepted, though in the savage state undoubtedly greater than those of civilized man, are by no means remarkable. Take him as a mere animal, what is he but an egregious failure? By what kind of evolution could such a creature rise who shows throughout his body only instances of the survival of the unfittest ? Let us try to imagine him rising in the scale according to the dogmas of evolution. Let us watch the arboreal monkey well-fitted for his surroundings gradually losing all that fits him for them. We see his coat grow- ing thinner, his arms shorter, so that he loses his ' reach/ his legs longer, so that climbing becomes 1 Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist ', 1911, p. 158. The Origin of Man 129 harder, and at the same time his brain growing in some incomprehensible way, and for no good reason, excepting that it is necessary for the theory to believe that the brain-development went on so swimmingly that it compensated for the physical degeneration." So far as I am aware there has been no successful attempt to get out of this dilemma, nor do I see any way out of it, except by assuming under the Mutation theory that a great and wonderful change was made, and made suddenly, by which the brute became corporeally man. This is scientifically tenable, and would avoid the difficulty raised by Professor Dwight, but it must candidly be admitted that there is no direct evidence for it, and indeed it is hard to see how there could be any evidence for such a thing. Meantime this question may be asked, still from the standpoint of science : Suppose such a great and sudden mutation to have occurred, and suppose that this corporeally developed being became man, as we know him, by the inbreathing of an immortal soul ; is there any great difference between that series of events and the special creation of man at which some scientific men look so much askance ? But apart from this surmise, for it can be no more, looking fairly at all the facts, can it really be claimed that the origin of man is a question on which science has said the last word or, indeed, has any 9 130 Facts and Theories right to express anything but the most guarded hypothesis? He would be a hardy man who claimed that the subject of the origin of man's corporeal part was resjudicata. Yet we have this very theory of the evolution of man's body laid down as a proved fact time after time in the manuals and articles to which I have so often alluded. We have Darwin doubting his own competence to form any opinion, because he was so sure of that one opinion that his brain had come from that of an ape, and by his brain he meant his sentient part. Finally, we have all sorts of theories of education, and what not else, built up on a foundation which surely is not strong enough to carry the edifice which has been erected upon it. To what these lead we shall later on refer. (b) The Soul of Man. Here I must be much more brief, for here we are in contact with a psychological argument which it is impossible for me to develop here, and here too we are in contact with a question which is a settled one for Catholics, namely, the existence of a soul and its attributes and origin. All that I propose to do here is to set down a few observations by non-Catholics, which at least show that our Catholic view is not the hopelessly anti- quated and discredited thing that many would like to make out. I will take four instances, and they shall all be recent ones, The Origin of Man 1 3 1 (i) Dr. McDougall, F.R.S., is Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford. He has recently published a book, in the preface of which he says that "to many minds it must appear nothing short of a scandal that anyone occupying a position in an academy of learning, other than a Roman Catholic seminary, should in this twentieth century defend the old-world notion of the soul of man." 1 Scandal or no scandal, after a lengthy consideration of what is to be said on the other side and in spite, so it would appear, of some preliminary prejudice against the view, he does come to a conclusion not markedly different from that which we hold as to the existence of the soul of man. (ii) Driesch I have already quoted from, and I will once more quote from him to show his opinion with respect to the fact that the difference mentally between man and apes is one of kind and not of degree : " Darwinism and phylogeny laid stress on man's affinity to animals, and with justice in respect to most details of his organization ; that was all right so far, though there was always a difficulty with regard to the hemispheres of the brain. In agree- ment with this particular, the experiments of the last few years, carried out by English and American authors (Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike, 1 Body and Mind) 1911. 132 Facts and Theories Hobhouse, Kinnamann), have shown that as far as the degree of acting is the point of comparison, there is a difference between man and even the highest apes which is simply enormous; man, f.fter all, remains the only 'reasoning' organism, in spite of the theory of descent." l (iii) A. R. Wallace, F.R.S., was the co-emitter of the theory with which Darwin's name came to be chiefly connected. In his last work, from which I have already quoted, he considers the question of man's position present and future, and says that the glory and distinction of man is "that he is continually and steadily advancing in the know- ledge of the vastness and mystery of the universe in which he lives ; and how any student of any part of that universe can declare, as so many do, that there is only a difference of degree between himself and the rest of the animal-world that, in Haeckel's forcible words, 'our own human nature sinks to the level of a placental mammal, which has no more value for the universe at large than the ant, the fly of a summer's day, the microscopic infu- sorium, or the smallest bacillus' is altogether beyond my comprehension." 2 (iv) Professor Sedgwick, F.R.S., of the Royal College of Science, London, is the author of a well-known text-book of zoology. The terminat- 1 Op. cit., ii. p. 1 06. 2 The World of Life, p. 374. > The Origin of Man 133 ing words of the second volume shall be my last quotation under this heading : l 11 The mental qualities which are so characteristic of the genus Homo have led many naturalists to create a special family (Anthropidce) or even order (Bimana) for its reception. But in this work we are concerned with man from the standpoint of morphology, and in assigning him his position in the system we can only take into consideration the facts of his bodily structure, as we have done in the case of the other animals. If psychical char- acters were taken into account in zoology, the whole of classification would be thrown into con- fusion ; and in the case of man how should we define the position to be assigned to him? For what a piece of work is a man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite infacultv ! inform and moving how express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god 7 And again : Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels and hast crowned him with glory and honour \" Of course, in making these quotations I am not to be taken as trying to prove from them that our Catholic view is correct. The position, as I should put it, is something like this. We Catholics believe in the existence of an immortal soul, created by God Almighty Himself and temporarily occupying 1 Sedgwick, Text-book of Zoology ', vol. ii. p. 665. Italics as in original. 134 Facts and Theories a human body. In connection with this view we can bring forward psychological arguments, not unworthy of attention but not to be attempted here. For holding this view we have been much contemned by some scientific and many pseudo- scientific men in the past. Here I produce for you four men of science, none of whom are Catholics and all of whom are emphatically men who must be listened to when they speak, yet all of whom support more or less the thesis which we have always held. I submit that this is worthy of consideration and that we may feel some satisfac- tion at finding science in the way of reverting to the position which we have always occupied. If I wanted further to emphasize this point I would ask readers to note that the most powerful modern non-Catholic philosophy of to-day, that of M. Bergson, is far away from us, no doubt, and from our traditional philosophy ; but it is at least non- materialistic and emphasizes free-will, and is, there- fore, much more remote from the materialistic philosophies of yesterday. NOTE to p. 123. Sir E. R. Lankester's paper in Phil. Trans., 202, appeared whilst these pages were passing through the press. It does not modify the conclusion mentioned in this chapter, since the Red Crag deposits are accepted by him as Pleistocene. But it undoubtedly seems to set back the date of the first appearance of man in what is now Britain. CHAPTER IX "DARWINISM" AND CERTAIN SUPERSTRUCTURES MORALITY AND MORALS WE are now at an end of this brief consideration of the points which we laid down, and may rapidly summarize the conclusions arrived at : (i) Transformism, though widely accepted, is not proved to a demonstration. It is an excellent work- ing hypothesis, and, as such, need not disturb the mind of a Catholic in the smallest possible degree. (ii) Natural Selection is held by some and denied by others. In any case it is only a means to an end, and in no sense a cause. (iii) Sexual Selection is much less widely and definitely held than it once was. It also, if it exists, is only a means to an end. (iv) Pangenesis is more than doubtful, and is abandoned by most biologists. (v) However indications may seem to point to the development of man's body from that of some lower form, there is at present no sufficient evidence to prove anything of the kind. All psychological evi- dence goes to prove that man's spiritual part differs in kind as well as in degree from that of the beast. 136 Facts and Theories (vi) That there is a drift of opinion unfavourable to many of the views called " Darwinism," some of which were Darwin's own, some not, is clear from what has been said, and I may sum up the matter by a further quotation from Kellogg, 1 who says : " Such older biologists and natural philosophers as von Baer, von Kolliker, Virchow, Nageli, Wigand and Hartmann, and such others writing in the nineties and in the present century as von Sachs, Eimer, Delage, Haacke, Kassowitz, Cope, Haberlandt, Henslow, Goette, Wolff, Driesch, Packard, Morgan, Jaeckel, Steinmann, Korschinsky, and de Vries, are examples which show the dis- tinctly ponderable character of the anti-Darwinian ranks. Perhaps these names mean little to the general reader; let me translate them into the professors of zoology, of botany, of palaeontology, and of pathology, in the universities of Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Strassburg, Tubingen, Amsterdam, Columbia University, etc." Is it putting it too high to conclude that there is an air of great uncertainty about many or all of the above-mentioned theories when they are dispassionately examined in the light of modern opinion ? I admit that no trace of this uncertainty is allowed to appear in the little cock-sure manuals which I have so often alluded to, but the uncertainty is there all the same, and no one can carefully study 1 Op. cit., p. 26. Monism and Morality 137 the literature of science without becoming aware of it. Indeed, no scientific man would hesitate to admit, at least as much as has been stated in these pages, as to the differences of opinion which exist amongst the exponents of evolution. Yet it is on this uncertain and shifting sand that we are asked to build up an impregnable and unshakeable edifice of monism and morality. " We have now," says the late Professor Dwight, "the remarkable spectacle that just when many scientific men are of accord that there is no part of the Darwinian system that is of any very great influence, and that as a whole the theory is not only unproved but impossible, the ignorant half-educated masses have acquired the idea that it is to be accepted as a fundamental fact. Moreover, it is not to them an academic question of biology, but, as the matter has been presented to them, it is a system : to wit, the monistic system of philosophy. Thus presented it undeniably is fatal not only to all religion but to any system of morals founded on a supernatural basis." 1 "Thus presented" that is exactly the point. It is thus presented, because those who thus present it are either blinded by their own prejudice, or deliberately desire to blind others so that they may not perceive the real bearings of these biological hypotheses and discus- sions upon religious and moral questions. 1 op. tit., p. 6. 138 Facts and Theories It is not possible to discuss the questions of monism and morality here with any completeness, but it will be well to glance for a moment at the matter and see what is entailed by an acceptance of the views of a man like Haeckel. Haeckel's "monism" is something like the old and well- known doctrine of hylo-zoism, but, as the last edition of the Encyclop&dia Britannica says, " it is materialism dignified by a higher title." This theory implies that " matter," i.e. the material universe, is infinite, that so is the "ether," that they fill infinite space, and that both are " eternal," and both are " alive." So Wallace sums it up, and continues that " none of these things can possibly be known,) yet he states them as positive facts" Further, that these assertions are " surely not science, and very bad philosophy." x As has been already said, we cannot here discuss the question of whether the universe itself is eternal and alive, but it may just be mentioned that this alternative to their view was suggested by the learned authors of The Unseen Universe in the preface to their second edition, where they seem to anticipate the very words of Haeckel : " To reduce matters to order, we may confidently assert that the only reasonable and defensible alternative to our hypothesis (or, at least, some- thing similar to it) is the stupendous pair of 1 World of Life ', p. 7. Italics as in original. Monistic Philosophy 139 assumptions that visible matter is eternal, and that IT is ALIVE. If anyone can be found to uphold notions like these (from a scientific point of view), we shall be most happy to enter the lists with him." In this passage, the italics and capitals of which are those of the authors, it is clear that they consider that they have proved their view by a reductio ad absurdum, yet this absurdum is the theory which Haeckel and his followers would have us accept. The real fact is that Haeckel advances the theory that " Darwinism " is the main weapon in the fight for monism, because he means by " Darwinism " his own monistic paraphrase of that collection of hypotheses. From what has been said it is abundantly clear that Darwin's views and the views of his predecessors in teaching Trans- formism do not compel the acceptance of a monistic philosophy of life. That it does compel such an acceptance is the Haeckelian statement, but it is absolutely and demonstrably false. It cannot be too frequently pointed out that Darwin and Darwinism as expounded by Darwin and not as "glossed" by his followers provide no explana- tion of the start of things, though they may or may not provide an explanation of how things went on once they had been started. Haeckel says that they never were started, but that they were always going and always alive, but that view is no part of the depositum of Darwinism as 140 Facts and Theories enunciated by Darwin : it is a Haeckelian gloss. It is unnecessary for us to explain here the Christian attitude towards the question, and it must be left to the candid reader to consider which view is intrinsically the more likely to be true, and whether the idea that all matter is alive and sentient is really one to commend itself to a sane consideration of things as they are. MORALITY AND MORALS Meantime, before passing to the last section of this book, it may be well to say a few words as to the bearing of this question on that of morality and morals. If Darwinism, as expounded by its wilder prophets, is to be a rule of life, a guide in education and a general gospel, we should at least take a look at the road along which it is likely to lead us. Now, as we have seen, of all the items included in the creed of Darwinism, that of Natural Selection is the most important. It was set in the forefront of his theories by Darwin himself, and is extolled by his most faithful followers as being a process of the highest importance in connection with evolution. If Darwinism, then, is to be taken as a rule of life, it behoves us to assist and co-operate with the process of Natural Selec- tion as it applies to our own species, which, we learn from the same teaching, differs only in degree and not in kind from other species in the animal Morality and Morals 141 kingdom. Very well ; but Natural Selection im- plies the Survival of the Fittest, and, if we consider for one moment, that implies the Eradication of the Un fittest. If, therefore, we are to carry out our Darwinian principles to their logical end, we must ruthlessly condemn to the lethal chamber every weak and sickly member of our race ; the consumptive and the feeble-minded must be exterminated as soon as their condition is conclusively determined ; charity must come to an end, and rigid justice demand the abolition of all human beings who are not likely to conduce to the production of a strong, healthy, and, if possible, improved race of human beings. In a sense this is the view which underlies a certain amount of what is now called Eugenics, though it must at once be admitted that the pro- fessors of this doctrine are only very tentatively approaching any such extreme measures. How- ever, once we accept a rule of life, we must have done with picking and choosing ; we must follow that rule ; and we see what a logical following of the Darwinian theory as a rule of life a thing never contemplated by Darwin himself would lead us to. The fact is that it is impossible to deduce a moral code from a purely materialistic philosophy of life. Let me remind my readers of Driesch's observations on this point (see p. 56), and let me quote another writer in continuation of this train of thought : " There is no such thing as ' natural religion ' or 142 Facts and Theories 1 natural ethics,' if we understand by these terms a religion or an ethical code derived from ' Nature.' Nature is not a moral entity ; there is no morality in Nature. And if we profess to derive an ethical law from Nature, we are deriving this law, not from Nature as she is, but from Nature as we see her, and this is an entirely different thing. When we set about to discover a foundation for the moral law which is to be purely rationalistic, and when we think to discover this foundation in Nature herself, we are crediting Nature with qualities she does not possess, we are reading into the book of Nature metaphysical conceptions of our own, whether we will it or not. As soon as an appeal is made to a moral law, appeal is made to something surpassing the individual, to something the validity of which we assume quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus. Consequently, this ' something ' cannot be contained in the individual reason, the validity of which is purely personal ; it must of necessity transcend individual reason; or, in other words, it must be supra-rational. Rational moralists, once they at- tempt to discover the categorical imperative, appeal to the supra-rational." x We do not propose to discuss hie et nunc the question of what the world would do without a system of morality. But what we are advancing here is the theory that no such thing as a scheme 1 Chatter ton- Hill, Heredity a nd Selection in Sociology ^ 1907, p. xxvi. Morality and Morals 143 of morality which would be recognizable as such by ordinary decent-minded people can be deduced from external Nature ; and that the scheme of life, morally and socially, which would follow upon a close copy of Nature of Nature " red in tooth and claw" as we see it around us, would be one which could not be contemplated without horror even by the most thoughtless and debauched human being. The choice, then, is placed before us : a materialistic world with no moral sanction or a world on principles taught by Christianity, and we may ask ourselves which picture most commends itself to all that is best in our natures ? And before passing away from this part of our subject let us once more impress on our readers that " Darwinism," falsely so called by many of its prophets of to-day, and Darwinism as propounded by Darwin, are two wholly different things; that Darwin never pro- posed to explain the origin of things or to establish a rule of life, and that whatever may be said of the truth of his theories and it must be admitted that many of them crumble away more or less under criticism, they in no way warrant many of the con- clusions which his followers have drawn from them. It may seem like vain repetition once more to enunciate this opinion, but it can scarcely be urged too often : at least so one has to conclude from the ignorance still shown on the point by so many writers and readers. CHAPTER X SOME OTHER " ISMS " DARWIN chiefly allowed for evolution through the operation and accumulation of small variations. No doubt the question of small versus great variations had not in his time assumed anything like the importance which it now has, and no doubt also he did in some measure allow for major variations, as, for example, in the well-known case of Pavo nigripennisl But in the main it is clear that Darwin chiefly relied upon small variations. Indeed, Huxley, his prophet, says that Darwin had embarrassed himself by his adhesion to the aphorism Natura non facit saltum. Huxley him- self was tentatively at least of another mind, for he says, " We greatly suspect that she " (sc. Nature) "does make considerable jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms." 2 1 Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2nd edition, i. 305. J Lay Sermons, p. 342. 144 Some Other "Isms" 145 Huxley very clearly saw that the past picture of Nature, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the picture of Nature in the past as known to us, is a discontinuous picture, just as the picture of Nature all round us is also a discontinuous picture. If evolution is still going on, as is assumed, and if it is being carried out by the constant accumulation of minute variations, as Darwin taught, it would appear as if the picture, if not absolutely continuous, ought to be much more continuous than it actually is. By this is meant that there ought to be a good deal less sharpness of interval between species and species, and much more merging of one into another, than is actually the case either in Nature at present or in that record of Nature, though no doubt somewhat imperfect, which we possess. How is this discontinuity to be accounted for? This is a question which has engaged the attention of various writers, and was brought forcibly under the notice of the scientific world by Bateson in his great work, Materials for the Study of Variation. x Here he calls special attention to the discontinuous picture of Nature, to which we have been alluding, and asks the question which we have just asked. Then he gives the reply made by Lamarck and that made by Darwin. Both of these, he shows, make specific diversity of form consequent upon 1 Macmillan, 1894. IO 146 Facts and Theories diversity of environment, diversity of environment being thus the ultimate measure of diversity of specific form. But this reply is met at once by the overwhelming difficulty that diverse environ- ments often shade into one another insensibly and form a continuous series, whereas the specific forms of life, which are subject to them, on the whole form a discontinuous series. Many of the vast collection of facts contained in his work go to prove the point just stated. Bateson asks whether if the discontinuity is not in the environment, it may not be in the living thing itself. Here we approach the heart of the whole controversy. It is, as already urged, the origin of variations which we are really in search of: if these origins are not external they must be internal, and we may go a stage further and argue that if they are internal, they must have been put into that interior by the Supreme Power which was the ultimate source of Life, for in no other way can their presence be accounted for. And, further, since according to the evolution theory this capacity for variation contained within it the future plumage of the peacock, the vocal machinery of the nightingale, the optical instrument called the eye, and a myriad other things of beauty and utility, it will be difficult to doubt that that Power must also be Supremely Intelligent. Hence the violent struggle of the materialist to show that environment is the factor Some Other "Isms" 147 an argument which would not serve him much, were it true, for it still would fail to account for the power possessed by the organism to respond to the environment. And the environmental theory having largely broken down, hence also Weismann's now considerably discredited attempt to build up a vast edifice of theories of biophores and germinal variation and selection. The suggestions at which we have now arrived are that the variations come from within, and that they are discontinuous, that is to say, that they are considerable and sudden. Now, these are views which have been put forward tentatively by various writers previous to our own immediate period. Huxley, as we have seen, was inclined to agree that Nature did at times make a leap. But the first important attempt to deal with the point was that made by the late Sir Francis Galton, 1 in his celebrated polygon. This was a polygonal slab, which could be made to stand on anyone of its various-sized edges on a level table. A push will disturb it so that it may rest in quite a different position from that at first assumed, yet in a stable position. Yet the figures presented in the one and in the other position are wholly different. To put the matter into other language, the change from one species to another has been sudden and obvious. Now, such sudden changes have long 1 Natural Inheritance, Macmillan, 1889, p. 27. 148 Facts and Theories been recognized and spoken of by breeders as " sports." Of late years they have been more care- fully considered, and the facts dealing with them have been woven into a theory under the name of the Mutation theory, a mutation being understood to mean a considerable change, as opposed to a Variation which is an alteration of a minor character. DE VRIES AND THE MUTATION THEORY The theory of Mutations is mainly associated with the name of the Professor of Botany in Amsterdam, who first laid it before the public, in its complete form, in a course of lectures delivered in the University of California. 1 De Vries saw the difficulty of accounting for variation by the Lamarckian or the Darwinian theory, but he also saw, as Lock puts it, 2 that " if, at this point, we find that in Nature a co-ordinated set of structures can and does arise in an already perfected condition at a single step, and that such phenomena take place with sufficient frequency to give ample oppor- tunities for the survival of the new type so arising, we have at once discovered an alternative way out of the difficulty." No doubt ; but the question now before us is whether there is real evidence that such events 1 Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation , Chicago, Open Court Publishing Co., 1905. 2 Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity, and Evolution, Murray, 1906, p. 115. Some Other "Isms" 149 actually do take place in Nature. De Vries relies, as indeed is quite natural, seeing the position which he occupies, chiefly upon botanical evidence. He cites the case of Chelidonium laciniatum, which apparently suddenly appeared in the garden of Sprenger, an apothecary in Heidelberg, in 1590, as a " sport " or " mutation " from Chelidonium majus, the well-known Greater Celandine. Then there is the case of the Shirley Poppy, and finally there are the series of cases in connection with (Enothera Lamarckiana (the Evening Primrose), on which de Vries himself mainly relies. Now, with regard to all these cases, it must be confessed that scientific opinion is at present in no way satisfied that they establish the theory in question. Take the case of GELnothera, on which de Vries built his theory. It is not clear that this is really a wild type. It may be a hybrid, and, if so, the forms which de Vries saw may merely represent a process of disintegration or splitting up of the hybrid into its original types, perhaps even on Mendelian lines. 0. Lamarckiana^ it is clear, does generally breed true, but perhaps that is because the form has existed so long that it has got rid of most of the possible hybrid combinations which it could produce. Further, it has been urged that most mutations with which we are acquainted are due to losses of one, or perhaps even more than one, of the characters of the wild 150 Facts and Theories type. These retrogressive mutations, as de Vries calls them, follow Mendel's law of heredity. Yes, but all these are losses, and we are looking for something which will give us gains or additions to the older type. Are such things due to muta- tions ? The question is made even more complex when we consider that some of the things which look like additions, in domesticated forms, are really due to the loss of something which in the past has inhibited the appearance of the new feature. But then these, too, are retrogressive mutations. On the whole, then, it may be said that whilst the theory of mutations would really explain the discontinuity of Nature by exhibiting for us a discontinuous method of evolution in actual operation, it does not follow, therefore, that it must necessarily be true. It is a fascinating theory, but we must wait for further information before we can consider it to be scientifically estab- lished. Meantime we may say that the Darwinian theory within the limits above stated we may call it the Darwinian theory that small variations are to be relied upon for the processes of evolution, has, in the opinion of a large number, possibly the overwhelming majority, of scientific men, com- pletely broken down. De Vries's view may also break down, and what then has to be said ? Only that we shall be completely in the dark as, indeed, it may be said that we are at this moment in the Some Other "Isms" 151 dark as to the real method of evolution, suppos- ing that evolution does exist. And here once more we may call the attention of our readers to the series of assumptions upon which the whole of the stupendous edifice of Darwinism, as it now stands, has been reared. At the risk of being accused of vain repetitions, let us once more urge that whilst there is a good deal of indirect evidence in favour of Transformism, there is not much really direct evidence for it, and it remains a theory still unproved. Further, that if it exists or existed, we are still absolutely in the dark as to the methods by which it came to pass. And, finally, that this is no foundation upon which to build up theories, philosophical, educational, or political. And now we may ask ourselves, Is there anything taught by science which is likely to survive the destructive criticism, which, as has been shown, has been fatal to so many fair theories of the past ? Some at least would point to the theories of Mendel as occupy- ing such a position, and to them we must at any rate devote some small amount of attention. MENDEL'S THEORY OF INHERITANCE The story of Gregor Mendel, Abbot of the Augustinian Abbey of Brunn, has been told so often of recent years that it need only be repeated here in mere outline. 1 His remarkable observa- 1 See sketch of his life by Father Ellington, O.P. (C.T.S., id.). 152 -Facts and Theories tions were made at about the time that Darwin's views were being given to the world. The Abbot hid his paper in the pages of a not very well- known journal. It excited no attention at the time, though its author was always sure that in due course it would do so. He was right, for some- fifty years after its publication his paper was un- earthed by several men of science, and Mendel and his theories now occupy the premier position, for the time at any rate, in the biological arena. It would be absurd to pretend that scientific opinion is at one on this matter, but undoubtedly the Mendelian view has gained ground since it was first made known to the world, and would appear to be still gaining ground. Its adherents extol its im- portance in the highest terms, and one of the most recent writers on the subject has not hesitated to claim that the results which have been obtained by work on Mendel's lines have been sufficient in themselves to show that his discovery " was of an importance little inferior to those of a Newton or aDalton." 1 The fundamental feature of Mendel's method is the directing of attention to single characters of the organism, not to the organism as a whole, and to the observation of the behaviour of these isolated characteristics. When this is done it is found that these characters, under processes of breeding, 1 Lock, op. cit., p. 164. Some Other "Isms" 153 behave not haphazard, but according to a very definite law. Let us take the best-known example perhaps of his theory, that of the tall and short peas. Mendel took two varieties of peas, which he had already found to breed true, as regards height. The normal height of one was six feet (tall), and of the other one and a half (dwarf). These two strains were crossed with one another, sometimes the pollen of the tall being used, sometimes that of the dwarf. The results were the same in both cases. In all cases the result was that the offspring were all "tails," some of them even taller than the parent " tall." Mendel, therefore, called " tallness," in this instance, the dominant^ and " dwarfishness " the recessive character. It might have been thought by the hasty observer that dwarfishness had been wiped out, but what was the result of the sow- ing of the seeds of the self-fertilized hybrids ? A mixed generation consisting of "tails" and "dwarfs," but most significant fact of no in- termediate forms. Further, it was found that the "tails" were to the "dwarfs" as three is to one. The seeds of this second hybrid generation were also saved, those from each individual plant being carefully harvested and separately sown. What was the result? The seeds of the "dwarf" re- cessives bred perfectly true, none but " dwarfs " resulting. But not so the " tails." Some of these bred true, producing only "tails," 154 Facts and Theories but some of them acted like the first hybrid genera- tion of " tails," and produced a generation of" tails " and "dwarfs" in the proportion of three of the former to one of the latter. Further experiments with other pairs of characteristics, such as yellow and green colour, etc., led Mendel to lay down the law that "in every case where the inheritance of an alternative pair of characters was concerned, the effect of the cross in successive generations was to produce three, and only three, different sorts of individuals, viz., dominants which bred true, dominants which gave both dominant and recessive offspring in the ratio of three to one, and recessives which always bred true." l Of his further deductions it is not possible to say more here ; inquirers will find all that they require in the works of Bateson, Punnett, and Lock on the subject. But this may be said, that, in spite of much even acrid criticism, the result of the vast amount of work which has been done during the past ten years on these lines has tended to confirm rather than to shake the belief in Mendel's views. "The scheme of inheritance, which he was the first to enunciate, has been found to hold good for such diverse things as height, hairiness, and flower colour and flower form in plants, the shape of pollen grains, and the structure of fruits; while 1 Punnett, Mendelism, 3rd edition, Macmillan, 1911, p. 18. Some Other "Isms" 155 among animals the coat colour of mammals, the form of the feathers and of the comb in poultry, the waltzing habit of Japanese mice and eye colour in man, are but a few examples of the diversity of characters which all follow the same law of transmission." l But, after all, from the point of view of the present series of articles, the really important fact which emerges from a consideration of Mendel's views is that, if they are true, as would certainly appear to be the case, they reveal a definite, orderly law, and that such a law clamours aloud for the necessity of a Lawgiver. Professor Plate, who cannot be arraigned either for ignorance of science or any partiality for the idea of a Creator, in his speech at the Berlin discussion, 2 said, " Personally, I always maintain that, if there are laws of Nature, it is only logical to admit that there is a Lawgiver." True, he proceeds : " But of this Lawgiver we can give no account, and any attempt to give one would lead us into unfounded speculations. It is there that faith begins, and many of us have given up all faith." With this latter part of the speech this series of papers cannot deal ; what we are concerned with is the admission surely no sane person could really doubt it that if we 1 Punnett, op. at., p. 26. 2 Problem of 'Evolution , p. 108. 156 Facts and Theories find a law, that is a regular, orderly uniformity, we must postulate a Lawgiver. Further, the question also arises : If variation is in any way definite, may it not, nay, must it not, also be definite in its direction ? Bergson, 1 whilst urging the essential difference between spirit and matter, and thus wholly dissenting from a material ex- planation of the universe, seems to postulate a blind God, inherent in Nature, driving it on to an end unknown to Himself. With all respect to this most brilliant and fascinating writer, such a conclusion seems to be little other than an appeal to that blind chance which has long seemed so unsatisfactory to anyone who dis- passionately considers the question. At any rate quite a number of scientific writers, from Lamarck, through Naegeli and Eimer and others, down to the present day, have believed, wholly apart from any religious bias, that variation was guided in some way, that is, have accepted a teleological explanation of Nature. That the Mendelian laws may drive even unwilling converts to the same view, may be seen from the following quotation, part of which has already been cited, from a very candid man of science : " With the experimental proof that variation consists largely in the unpacking and repacking of an original complexity, it is not so certain, as 1 Creative Evolution, Macmillan, 1911. Some Other "Isms" 157 we might like to think, that the order of these events is not predetermined. For instance, the original 'pack' may have been made in such a way that at the #th division of germ- cells of a sweet pea a colour-factor might be dropped, and that at the n-\-n division the hooded variety be given off, and so on. I see no ground whatever [he hastens to add] for holding such a view, but in fairness the possibility should not be forgotten, and in the light of modern research it scarcely looks so absurdly improbable as before." 1 In the earlier portion of this book this quotation has been considered in connection with the subject of dogmatic Darwinism. We have now arrived at a point where we may try to sum up what this account of modern-day Darwinism has tried to bring out. Such summaries have been made up to the point then reached more than once in the course of these pages. But they may be set together once more here, at the conclusion of our matter, in order that the various points brought forward may be welded as far as possible into one continuous argument. (i) The main doctrine of Transformism is one which has not been proved, and perhaps never can be proved to a demonstration. There is a good deal of indirect evidence for it, but not 1 Bateson, in Darwin and Modern Science, p. 101. 158 Facts and Theories much direct evidence, It, therefore, remains and must remain, perhaps forever, a theory and not a proved fact. (ii) Since Darwin brought it into prominence, this doctrine of Transformism has taken stronger and stronger hold of the scientific world, and it would not be unfair to say that in some form or another it is held as the best working hypothesis by the vast majority of scientific men, however much they may differ and they do differ pro- foundly as to the method by which Transformism has taken place. (iii) This doctrine was, in all its essential features, recognized as acceptable by St. Augustine, by St. Thomas Aquinas, by Suarez, and by other authoritative Catholic writers. If true, it offers, therefore, no difficulties to Catholic thinkers. (iv) Whether true or not, the hypothesis in no way demands or necessitates a monistic or materialistic explanation of the universe. On the contrary, it would seem to entail the existence of a code of laws which have directed the trans- formations, and this code of laws would seem to demand the existence of a Lawgiver. (v) Further, whether true or not, this theory gives us, and can give us, no information as to the beginning of things, or how the transformistic process started its operations. It had a beginning, as to which the theory admittedly can tell us nothing. Some Other "Isms" 159 (vi) Darwin's various theories as apart from his re-exposition of Transformism and his positive additions to scientific knowledge do not hold to-day the position that they did towards the latter end of the nineteenth century. Many would agree with this statement so far as Natural Selection is concerned, and most so far as Sexual Selection and Pangenesis are concerned. (vii) Even if they were all proved up to the hilt, none of them would afford real proof of a monistic or materialistic explanation of the universe, since, again, none of them throw the slightest light on the beginning of things. (viii) With regard to the case of the theory of man's descent. Many non-Catholic men of science would accept the theory that man's body was developed perhaps by a "mutation" from that of some lower form, though there is very little positive evidence to prove this descent. Many also are prepared to accept the development of his spiritual characters, but the psychological argument against this development forces at least some of them to believe that the theory is impossible and untenable. For Catholics the latter question is, of course, settled, but it is open to them to show, as they can show, that their view is identical with the view of ordinary common-sense. (ix) It is impossible to derive a moral law from external Nature, and no one can contemplate, 160 Facts and Theories without horror, a return to the principles of the Struggle for Existence and of Sexual Selection on the part of the human race. The very fact that all the efforts of man of the better nature of man and of the best races of man are at this moment being directed to frustrate the efforts of Nature, shows that " Nature's insurgent son " is actuated and directed by something of a higher origin than mere matter. (x) The views of Mendel, which are rapidly gaining ground, point towards a law and an order in variation and development which can only be accounted for on the hypothesis that they are the outcome of the idea of an Omnipotent Lawgiver. (xi) The glib and often most ill-informed utterances of the writers of too many pamphlets, articles, and popular manuals may be very largely discounted, and persons reading them should always keep before their mind's eye the difference between a scientific fact and a scientific hypothesis. The former, if really a fact, cannot affect religion in any way. The latter is only the thought of some man's mind, and may take its place any day, as many and many a theory has done, on the scientific scrap-heap. INDEX Abiogenesis, 72. Accompanying gifts, 125. Acquired modifications, 23. Ancestral trees, I2O. Anthropomorphic interpretation of animals, 114. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 69, 73, 106. Assumptions, Weismann's, 24, 25- Augustine, St., 106. Avicenna, 73. Bacilli, 76. Bacteria, 76. Bastian, 78. Bateson, 145, 154, 156. Bathybius Hacckelii, 47. Bedrock, 96. Bergson, 134, 156. Bias, ii, 22, 27. scientific, 21. Biogenesis, 72. Blood of man and mammals, 119. Books, scientific, their varieties, Boyle, Robert, 48. Branco, 122. Buffon, 115. Celandine, 149. Cell, the living, 60. Chance, blind, 156. Chapelle-aux-Saints, 125. Chesterton on specialists, 15. Church, the, and dogma, 29 Clavellina lepadiformis , 65. Coloration of insects, 114. Corporeal souls, 69. Creation, 85, 107. Creator, the, 90, 100, 107, 113, H9, 133, J 46, 155- Darwin, opinions on religion, lOt. Darwin and Modern Science, 1 10. .Darwinism, 33, 92, 136, 143. Darwinism To-day % 95. Dendy, 105. de Vries, no, 148. Discontinuous nature, 145. Dogma, 28. scientific, 31. and Darwin, 33. Driesch, 32, 56, 59, 93, IOO, 111, 120, 131. Dubois, 123. Dwight, 128, 137. **"^ Egyptians, pre-dynastic, 126. Elements, chemical, 48, 51. Embryology, experimental, 60. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 115. Energy, conservation of, 45. Entelechy, 112. Environment, effect of, 23. Eradication of the unfittest, 141. Eugenics, 141. Evening primose. 149. Evolution, 88. 161 II 162 Facts and Theories Evolution, law of, 47. Experimental embryology, 60. Facts, scientific, 42. Fleischmann, 39, 103, 104. Friedenthal, 119. Frog-spawn, 61. Gallon's polygon, 147. Generation, spontaneous, 73. Gravitation, law of, 45. Haeckel, 17, 104, 138, Haldane, 58. Hammerstein, von, 91. Harvey, 74. Heidelberg jaw, 124. Hertwig, 79. Horse's foot, 105. Huxley, 34, 43, 47, 50, 55, 82, 144- Hypotheses, 49, 51. Idol of the customary epithet, 12. Idols of the market-place, 12. Insects, coloration of, 114. Intermediate links, 105. Kellogg, 15, 22, 95, 105, 136. Kingsley, C., 91. Korschinsky, 109. Lamarckianism, 100. Lankester, 109, 134. Laws of Nature, 42. Le Dantec, 55. Le Moustier, 125. Life, explanations of, 54. Links, missing, 122. Lock, 148, 152. Lodge, Sir Oliver, 18, 45. McDougall, 131. Maggots, 74. Maher, 69. MaR, origin of, 100, 118, 135. Materia prima, 49. Mendel, 151. Meteor, introduction of life by, 81. Micromerism, 116. Missing links, 122. Mivart, 12, 107. Modifications, acquired, 23. Monistic philosophy, 107, 139. Moore, 59, 80. Morality and mechanism, 56. Morals, 137, 140. Morgan, 36, 39, 103. Moustier, Le, 125. Miiller, Fritz, 104. Mutations, 129, 148. Naegeli, 112, 113. Natural selection, 13, 24, 99, 107, no, 135. " Nature," 40. Neanderthal skull, 125. Needham, 75. Newman, 119. (Enothera, 149. Origin of Species, The, 98, 100. Pangenesis, 99, 115, 135. Pasteur, 75. Peacock, the, 52. Peas, 153. Permanence, 88. Phylogeny, 120. Physiological processes, 62. Pithecanthropus erectus, 123. Plate, Prof., 155. Poppy, Shirley, 149. Pouchet, 75. Radiobes, 78. Recapitulation theory, 104. Redi, 74. Regeneration, 64 Reinke, 82, 85. Roscoe, Sir Henry, 84. Ruskin on science, 30. Salamander, regeneration in, 65. Saliva, secretion of, 62. Saltations, 144. Index 63 Schafer, 87. Scientific books, 34. Secretion of saliva, 62. Sedgwick, 132. Sexual selection, 99, 113, 135. Sharpe, Father, 73. Shirley Poppy, 149. Small variations, selective value of, 24, 127, 144. Smith, Elliot, 126. Sollas, 123, 125. Soul, 129, 130, 133. corporeal, 69, Spallanzani, 65, 75. Spencer, Herbert, 83. Spontaneous generation, 73, 87. Stewart and Tait, 32, 138. Suarez, 106. Tait and Stewart, 32, 138. Theophobia, 26. Theories, uncertain, 94, 144. Thomas Aquinas, St., 69, 73, 106. Times, 94. Tinned meats, 78. Transformism, 98, 103, 108, 135. Trinil, 123. Tyndall, 79. Uncertain theories, 94. Unseen universe, 32, 138. Variations, origin of, 146. small, 24, 127, 144. Virchow, 17, 79. Vitalism, 57. Vulgarization, books of, 36. Walker, 117. Wallace, A. R., 17, 122, 132, 138. Wasmann, 14, 26, 89, 90, 123. Weismann, 23, 33, 86, 147. Wilson, 59, 60. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON. N. Sept. 1912. -ss3Sgw LD2lA-6m-7 f '75 (S7525L.) University ol J-a Berkeley