much biased in its favor, by what I conceive to be its relation to the great argument of design.[1]
Not that I share the horror with which some men of science appear to contemplate a multitude of what they term "sudden" acts of creation. All things considered, a singular expression: but one, I suppose, meaning the act which produces, in the region of nature, something not related by an unbroken succession of measured and equable stages to what has gone before it. But what has equality or brevity of stage to do with the question how far the act is creative? I fail to see, or indeed am somewhat disposed to deny, that the short stage is less creative than the long, the single than the manifold, the equable than the jointed or graduated stage. Evolution is, to me, series with development. And like series in mathematics, whether arithmetical or geometrical, it establishes in things an unbroken progression; it places each thing (if only it stand the test of ability to live) in a distinct relation to every other thing, and makes each a witness to all that have preceded it, a prophecy of all that are to follow it. It gives to the argument of design, now called the teleological argument, at once a wider expansion, and an augmented tenacity and solidity of tissue. But I must proceed.
I find Mr. Huxley asserting that the things of science, with which he is so splendidly conversant, are "susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension" (P. S. M. p. 4.'59). Is this rhetoric, or is it a formula of philosophy? If the latter, will it bear examination? He pre-eminently understands the relations between those things which Nature offers to his view; but does he understand each thing in itself, or how the last term but one in an evolutional series passes into and becomes the last? The seed may produce the tree, the tree the branch, the branch the twig, the twig the leaf or flower; but can we understand the slightest mutation or growth of Nature in itself? can we tell how the twig passes into leaf or flower, one jot more than if the flower or leaf, instead of coming from the twig, came directly from the tree or from the seed?
I can not but trace some signs of haste in Professor Huxley's assertion that, outside the province of science (ibid.), we have only imagination, hope, and ignorance. Not, as we shall presently see, that he is one of those who rob mankind of the best and highest of their inheritance, by denying the reality of all but material objects. But the statement is surely open to objection, as omitting or seeming to omit from view the vast fields of knowledge only probable, which are not of mere hope, nor of mere imagination, nor of mere ignorance;
- ↑ "Views like these, when formulated by religious instead of scientific thought, make more of Divine Providence and fore-ordination, than of Divine intervention; but perhaps they are not the less theistical on that account." (From the very remarkable Lectures of Professor Asa Gray on Natural Science and Religion, p. 77. Scribner, New York, 1880.)
