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Show 274 DARWINIAN A. but he is bound to expect them all to fall within the category of what he calls natural selecti?n ~a most e:r-, pansible principle), or to be congruous w1th 1t-that 1s, that they shall be natural causes. A:-lso~and . this is the critical point-he is bound to mamta1n theu suffi-ciency without intervention. . . Here, at length, we reach the essent1.al difference between Darwin, as we understand h1m, and Dr. ~odge. The terms which ?arwin sometimes uses, and doubtless some of the 1deas they represent, are not such as we should adopt or like to defend; and we may say once for all-aside though it be from the present issue-that, in our opin~on, the adequacy of the assigned causes to the explanatwn of the phenomena has not been made out. But we do. not understand him to deny "purpose, intention, or the coo~eration of God" in Nature. This would be as gratmtous as unphilosophical, not to ~ay unsCientific: When he speaks of this or that particular or phase 1n the course of events or the procession of organic forms as not intended he seems to mean not specially and disjunctivelyin; ended and not brought about by intervention. Purpose in the· whole, as we suppose, is not denied but implied. And when one considers how, under. whatever view of the case, the designed and the contmgent lie inextricably commingled in this world of ours, ~ast man's disentanglement, and into what metaphysical dilemmas the attempt at unraveling them l~ads, we cannot greatly blame the naturalist for relegat~g such problems to the philosopher and the theologian. If charitable these will place the most favorable construction ~pon attempts to ext~nd and unify the opera- WHAT IS DARWINISM'! 275 tion of known secondm-y causes, this being the proper business of the naturalist and physicist; if wise, they will be careful not to predicate or suggest the absence of intention from what comes about by degrees through the continuous operation of physical causes, even in the organic world, lest, in their endeavor to retain a probable excess of supernaturalism in that realm of Nature, they cut away the grounds for recognizing it at all in inorganic Nature, and so fall into the same condemnation that some of them award to the Darwinian. Moreover, it is not certain that Mr. Darwin would very much better his case, Dr. Hodge being judge, if he did propound some theory of the nexus of divine causation and natural laws, or even if he explicitly adopted the one or the other of the views which he is charged with rejecting. Either way he might meet a procrustean fate ; and, although a saving amount of theism might remain, he would not be sound or comfortable. For, if he predicates "the constant and everywhe!e operative efficiency of God," he may "lapse into the same doctrine" that the Duke of Argyll and Sir John Herschel "seem inclined to," the latter of whom :is blamed for thinking "it but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or will existing somewhere," and the former for reg~rding "it unphilosophical 'to think or speak as if the forces of Nature were either independent of or even separate from the Creator's power'" (page 24): while if he falls back upon an "original intention of the divine mind," endowing matter with forces which he foresaw and in- |