OCR Text |
Show 248 DARWINIAN A. apparatus of whjch. is perfected or evolved in the. course f Nature-a common but a crude state of mmd on ~he part of those who believe that there is. any originating purpose in the universe, and one whiCh, we are sure, Dl.. Dawson does not share as re. spe.c ts the mate-rial world until he reaches the orgamc k1ngdoms, and there, possibly, because he sees man at the head of them...:..-of them, while above them. I-Iowever that may be, the position which Dr. Dawson c~ooses to occupy is not left uncertain. After concludmg, substantially that those "evolutionists" who exclude design from' Nature thereby exclude theism, which nobody will deny, he proceeds (on page 348) to give his opinion that the "evolutionism which professes to have a creator somewhere behind it. . . . is practically atheistic," and, " if possible, more unphilosophical than that which professes to set out from absolute and eter-nal nonentity," etc. There are some sentences which might lead one to suppose that Dr. Dawson himself admitt.ed o~ ~~ evolution " with a creator somewhere behmd It. He offers it (page 320) as a permissible alternative that even man "has been created mediately by the operation of forces also concerned in the production of other animals ; " concedes that a just theory " does not even exclude evolution or derivation, to a certain extent" (pag_e 341); and that" a modern man of sC.i ence " may safely hold "that all things have been produced by the Supreme Creative Wil1, acting either directly or through the agency of the forces and materials of his own production." Well, if this be so, why denounce the modern man of science so severely upon the other ATTITUDE OF WORKING NATURALISTS. 249 page merely for accepting the permission~ .At first si?ht, it .might be thought that our author is exposing himself m one paragraph to a share of the condemnati~ n whi~h he deals out in the other. But the permitted VIews are nowhere adopted as his own· the evolution is elsewhere restricted "within specific u:nits. and as t o " me d1' ate creation," althouO'h we cannot' divine what is here meant by the term, ~here is reason to think it does not imply that the several species of a genus were mediately created, in a natural way, through the supernatural creation of a remote common ancestor. So that his own judgment in the matter is probably more correctly gathered from the extract above referred to and other similar deliverances such as that in which he warns those who "endeav~r to steer a middle course, and to maintain that the Creator has pro.ceeded by way of evolution," that "the bare, hard logiC ?f Spencer, the greatest English authority on evolutwn, leaves no place for this compromise, and shows that the theory, Cl:!-rried out to its legitimate consequences, excludes the knowledge of a Creator and the possibility of his work." Now, this is a dangerous line to take. Those defenders of the faith are more zealous than wise who must needs fire away in their catapults the very bastions of the citadel, in the defense of outposts that have become untenable. It has been and always will be possible to take an atheistic view of Nature, but far more reasonable from science and philosophy only to take a theistic- view. Voltaire's saying here holds true: that if ~here were no God known, it would be necessary to mvent one. It is the best, if not the only, hypothesis |