Part 6 (2/2)
”Taken as a whole, the feather is one of the most perfect products of nature because the material used is the one best thing throughout, the engineering principles involved are without fault, the mathematical plan is precise, the construction is perfect, the coloring and artistry are flawless, and there is not one single point about it that can be constructively criticized.
”This short article can only hint at the wonderful things one may find in a single feather, and it is something well worth not an hour, but weeks or months of the most painstaking and careful study, for it covers an amazing field.”
The electric battery in certain fishes is so palpable a case of design that Charles Darwin admitted his inability to account for it by Natural Selection. The electric ray, or torpedo, for instance, has been provided with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and compactness of its structure, it greatly exceeds the batteries by which man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like those of a bee's comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates, which appear to be a.n.a.logous to the plates of the batteries used in automobiles. The whole is supplied with an enormous amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as the animal's spinal cord, and these spread out in a mult.i.tude of thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pa.s.s into all the cells. ”A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure.” Well may Mr. Darwin say, ”It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the purpose--that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have not the remotest notion of the means employed. Yet we can see so much as this, that here again, other laws, belonging altogether to another department of nature--laws of organic growth--are made subservient to a very definite and very peculiar purpose.' [tr. note: sic on punctuation]
”The new-born kangaroo,” says Professor Owen, ”is an inch in length, naked, blind, with very rudimental limbs and tail; in one which I examined the morning after the birth, I could discern no act of sucking; it hung, like a germ, from the end of the long nipple, and seemed unable to draw sustenance therefrom by its own efforts. The mother accordingly is provided with a peculiar adaptation of a muscle (_cremaster_) to the mammary gland, by which she can inject the milk from the nipple into the mouth of the pendulous embryo. Were the larynx of the creature like that of the parent, the milk might, probably would, enter the windpipe and cause suffocation: but the larynx is cone-shaped, with the opening at the apex, which projects, as in the whaletribe, into the back aperture of the nostrils, where it is closely embraced by the muscles of the 'soft palate.' The air-pa.s.sage is thus completely separated from the fauces (mouth), and the injected milk pa.s.ses in a divided stream, on either side the base of the larynx, into the oesophagus. These correlated modifications of maternal and foetal structures, _designed_ with especial reference to the peculiar conditions of both mother and off-spring, afford, as it seems to me, irrefragable evidence of _creative forsight_. The parts of this apparatus cannot have produced one another; one part is in the mother, another part in the young one; without their harmony they could not be effective; but nothing except design can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention when the facts first come before us.”
We cannot stop to pa.s.s in review the structural marvels of the human eye and ear, of the digestive organs, and circulatory system of animals, of adaptations of fishes to the watery element. But we must mention an outstanding feature of all animal life, the evident likeness of plan upon which the _entire kingdom_ of sentient life is constructed. From amoeba and other infusorial animals of simplest structure, through coral and oyster, bird, reptile, to mammals, there is an evident gradation, many structures being represented in entire great groups of living beings, such as the air-breathing lung. Here is a grand plan of animal life, which permits us to cla.s.sify all living things into a system.
There are cla.s.ses and subcla.s.ses, orders or families, suborders, tribes, sub-tribes, genera, species, and varieties, just as in the world of plants and even, according to their atomic weight, among the elements.
We see in all this, Creative Design. The evolutionist believes that he can percive [tr. note: sic] stages of progress. Similarity of plan is interpreted as proof that there is a common origin. Are we to admit, in the face of all that has been said about the fixity of species (to mention only this), the reasonableness of such an a.s.sumption? Does orderliness and plan argue for development? The steam-engine is a machine of remarkable structure. It has had, in one sense of the term, a wonderful ”evolution.” It is based on certain principles, the foundation one of which is the expansibility of steam, and its ability, when confined in a cylinder, to give motion to a piston. The steam-engine was first used for pumping, then for turning machinery, then for propelling boats, and now its crowning department is seen in the locomotive. There is a plan, a likeness, a similarity, which runs through all steam-engines, whether they be found in the mine, in the mill, beneath the deck of the steams.h.i.+p, or on the railroad track. But the locomotive is not formed from the mine engine; it is made new, and is a distinct type. And yet, the same principles are seen in both. Even so it is with the genera of animals. The whale and the elephant both have backbones, jointed limbs, warm blood, and a hundred h.o.m.ologous organs. They are both mammals, both are sagacious, and are gifted with acute senses. But otherwise they are unlike as the monster locomotive that pulls the heavy train over the Sierras, and the compound engines of the _Vaterland_. Similarity of structures argues powerfully for unity of plan, but by no means proves ident.i.ty of origin.
The evidence of design in nature conflicts with the idea that all things in the organic domain have come to be what they are by chance. But it agrees perfectly with the Christian view of animal nature. What is that?
It is that G.o.d created the different cla.s.ses of existences in the strict sense; that is, that he created them separate cla.s.ses and species, each with its own peculiarities and habits, while, at the same time, they rise one above the other in general and steady order, with certain general organs and functions, which run through nearly all except the lowest cla.s.ses, each higher cla.s.s having also some distinct and additional peculiarities not found in those below it. In other words, to the Christian the steadily ascending scale in the work of creation is only the unfolding or development of the great plan of creation that was in the mind of G.o.d. He believes that G.o.d did not create one or more simple cells or germs, and cause all higher forms to be evolved from them, interfering only once or twice (when the backbone appeared, the nouris.h.i.+ng breast, the mind of man, etc.), but that he, in the execution of his plan, created successively as distinct orders and species those things and beings which now exist as distinct orders and species, and many of which have become extinct. This is the Story of Creation as given in Genesis: Each plant, each animal, created in its own place in the scale of living thing, but each created as a species,--”after their kind,” the phrase repeated after each creative act of the third, fifth, and sixth day, except with reference to man, who was not created as a ”species” but after the image of G.o.d.
But the evidences of design are yet of a higher nature than we have so far considered. There is not only Creative Intelligence at work in the pollen of flowers, the breathing of sponges, and the eagle's...o...b..of vision; Mind dominates _the universe as a whole_. Everywhere there is law and periodic, rhythmical motion. The Lord, speaking to Job, refers to the ”measures” of the earth, the ”lines” which He has stretched upon it. He asks, concerning the heavenly bodies: ”Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?” And Job answers: ”I know that Thou canst do everything.”
And so there is a Reign of Law in the dew on the gra.s.s (Job 38, 28), and in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. The Universe is ruled by Mind.
Professor Koelliker (Leipsic) says in his work _”Ueber die Darwinsche Schoepfungstheorie”_ (1904): ”The development theory of Darwin is not needed to enable us to understand the regular harmonious progress of the complete series of organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect.
The existence of general laws of nature explains this harmony, even if we a.s.sume that all beings have arisen separately and independent of one another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in which there can be no thought of a genetic connection of forms,” that one form of crystal, for instance, arose out of another, ”exhibits the same regular plan, as the organic world (of plants and animals), and that, to cite only one example, there is as much a natural system of minerals as of plants and animals.” We can go a step farther and say that there is system and orderly design even in the position and movements of the stars,--which certainly have not been evolved one from the other.
More marvellous still, we are permitted to believe that there is an ident.i.ty of plan connecting the arrangement of atoms in a molecule and the position of the stars and planets. Dr. Charles Young, Professor of Astronomy in Princeton College, says in his larger text-book upon his special theme that ”our planetary system (the sun and planets) is not a mere accidental aggregation of bodies,” that ”there are a mult.i.tude of relations actually observed which are wholly independent of gravitation.”
In other words, in the position and motions of the planets there are evidences of design which cannot be accounted for by natural law. We shall point out an instance of such arrangement,--the progressive distance of the planets from the sun, as first discovered by t.i.tius of Wittenberg, and later (in 1772) brought to the attention of the scientific world, by Johann Bode, the celebrated German astronomer. It is exhibited by writing a line of nine 4's and then placing regularly increasing numbers under the several 4's, beginning with the second.
Thus 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, and 384, each increased by 4, will give the resultant series, 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100, 196, 388. These numbers divided by 10 are approximately the true distance of the planets from the sun in terms of the radius of the earth's...o...b..t, with the exception of Neptune. Hence there is, in the arrangmeent of the planets, as orderly a system as we have noted with reference to the leaves on a plant. Any rational man on earth, finding an orderly system of materials arranged in such relation by such means, would instantly conclude that it must be due to intelligence and not to mere chance.
Now, it is a remarkable fact that in the so-called Periodic Law of the elements const.i.tuting matter the same relation is observed. Of the eighty elements, no two now known have exactly the same capacity to resist heat, and no two atoms of the same elements have the same weight as compared with an atom of hydrogen. But these differences in resistance to heat and in weight, are not haphazard, but are so regularly progressive that they can be arranged in a series of regularly progressive increasing intervals. Most marvellous of all, however, when these differences in specific gravity are examined, we find that they bear a close resemblance to the arrangement of the planets in progressive distances from the sun. ”There appears to be one law for atoms and for worlds.”
Again we ask, when there is such orderly arrangement and plan throughout nature, should the orderly plan of plant and animal life be regarded as a proof of evolution? Certainly, atoms have not evolved from atoms, nor planets from planets.
And again, since omnipotence alone can account for the ”sweet influences of the Pleiades,” the ”bringing forth of Mazzaroth”--the constellations of the heavens in their nightly revolutions,--why resist the conviction that omnipotence, voiced forth in the beginning, accounts for the life on earth that now exists?
One more consideration, and we have done. Life on earth exists only through a combination of very complex physical conditions. These conditions are such as cannot, in their combination, be referred to chance, Fairhurst says, in his _”Organic Evolution Considered:”_ ”The simple substances which const.i.tute the earth are of such kinds and are found in such relative quant.i.ties as not only to render life possible, but also to contribute to the well-being of man as an intelligent and moral agent. I look upon the concurrence of all these things, according to any theory of _chance,_ as being entirely impossible. The conditions that must be fulfilled before living beings are possible are so complex that _nothing short of the wisdom of a Supreme Intelligence could have produced them.”_ (cf. Rom. 1, 20.)
This view has found support in a most unexpected quarter. No less a person than Alfred Russel Wallace, famed as the discoverer, independently of Darwin, of the principle of Natural Selection, in his last book, _”Man's Place in the Universe,”_ (1903) defended a position so subversive of every cherished belief (or unbelief) of scientists that it easily ranks as the greatest literary sensation, in the domain of natural science, of the century. Wallace a.s.sembled all the latest astronomcial [tr. note: sic] and other scientific discoveries and all knowledge bearing on the subject announced in his t.i.tle. He deduces therefrom the theory:--First, that the earth or solar system is the physical center of the stellar universe. Second, _that the supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of a living soul in the perishable body of man._
”Modern skeptics,” says Wallace, ”in the light of accepted astronomical theories (which regard our earth as uttterly insignificant compared with the rest of the universe) have pointed out the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable vastness of suns and systems should have any special interest in so pitiful a creature as man, an imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of the smaller planets attached to a second or third rate sun, while that He should have selected this little world for a scene so tremendous and so necessarily unique as to sacrifice His own son in order to save a portion of these miserable sinners from the natural consequences of sins, is in their view a crowning absurdity, not to be believed by any rational being.”
We cannot follow Mr. Wallace's argument in detail. Suffice to say, that he adduces a vast amount of data showing, first, that the universe is not infinite, but has certain bounds, and that our earth and its system are in the center of it, and, secondly, that the entire purpose of the production of the universe is the human race. The earth, says Wallace, is the only body capable of sustaining life. Life is not possible on any of the planets, because they are either too close or too far distant from the sun; some are probably composed of gas. He proves, on the basis of accepted calculations, that of all the stars in the heavens there is not even a remote probability that any are attended by bodies which can provide the elements of life. Now, he says, this very peculiar position of the earth cannot have been due to accident. He refuses to believe that the earth should occupy this favored position ”as the result of one out of a thousand million chances.”
”On the other hand,” he says, ”those thinkers may be right who, holding that the universe is a manifestation of mind, and that the orderly development of living souls supplies an adequate reason why such a universe should have been called into existence, believe that we ourselves are its sole and sufficient result and that nowhere else than near the central position in the universe which we occupy could that result have been attained.”
This conclusion of Mr. Wallace has, indeed, not found acceptance among scientists. Naturally not. If a materialistic conception of the universe is to prevail, if evolution in some form is to be accepted, we must have a universe of chance, not of a plan which spans the remotest star and the soul of the new-born infant in one tremendous arc. But it is highly instructive to observe how the scientists in 1903 met Wallace's argument.
One very distinguished reviewer said:
_”Too little is known,_ the most essential astronomical theories are too much _a matter of conjecture,_ to give much strength to a theory built up entirely of _such conjectural materials_. The argument from _probabilities_ can easily be turned against the author, for when a chain of reasoning depends upon _a long series of problematic premises,_ the doubt of these premises increases in a mathematical ratio. Weakness in an argument is as c.u.mulative as strength and while such of Dr.
Wallace's conclusions taken separately may receive the support of eminent scientists, hardly any of them has received such demonstration as to ent.i.tle it to unreserved credence.”
This, at last, is a frank admission. Wallace quoted the generally accepted results of scientific calculation and research. On the basis of these results he demonstrates that the entire object of Evolution (to demonstrate the development of all things by natural causes, without a directing intelligence), is negatived by a proper consideration of ”ascertained data,”--since these data, taken all together, prove a stupendous plan behind all natural phenomena, and the end of this plan, the human soul. In reb.u.t.tal we are now told that ”the most essential astronomical theories”--as e.g. the Copernican System, Herschel's laws, the Newtonian theory of gravitation,--”are matter of conjecture” (in plain English, are blind guesses), are ”problematic,” and ”hardly any ent.i.tled to unreserved credence.”
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