Part 9 (1/2)

Modern science, as we have said, stops at laws, without troubling itself with causes. The laws which determine the series of facts as they offer themselves to observation express the mode of the action of the causes.

There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and the manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks that his science is everything, he must conclude that we can know nothing beyond the laws, and that an insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power of which they express the action. But he rarely succeeds in keeping this position, and deceives his reason by confounding the laws which he discovers with the causes with which his mind is not able to dispense.

He says first of all with Franchi, ”the universe is what it is”; this is the general formula of all the truths of experience; then he adds with the same author, ”it is because it is.” This _because_ means nothing, or means that laws are their own causes. If it is asked, What is the cause of the motion of the stars? they will give for answer the astronomical formulae which express this motion, and will think that they have explained the phenomena by stating in what way they present themselves to observation. This is a curious example of that confusion of ideas which opens the door to atheism.

An English naturalist, Mr. Darwin, has shown that in the successive life of animal generations, the favorable variations which are produced in the organization of a being are transmitted to its descendants and insure the perpetuity of its race, while the unpropitious variations disappear because they entail the destruction of the races in which they are produced. He tells us: ”This preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.”[114] What does the author understand by law? He answers: ”the series of facts as it is known to us.”[115] Here we have the true definition of law: it is the simple expression of the series of the facts; the cause remains to be sought for. I open the book in another part. The author is speaking of the eye; and his doctrine is that the eye of the eagle was formed by the slow transformations of an extremely simple visual apparatus. There will have been then, in the development of animal existence, first of all a rudimentary eye, then an eye moderately well formed, and then the eye of the eagle, because the favorable modifications of the organ of sight will have been preserved and increased in the course of ages. Such is the series of facts, such is the law; suppose we grant it. What is the cause? The optician makes our spectacles; who made the eye of the eagle, by directing the slow transformations which at length produced it? Let us listen to the author: ”There exists an intelligent power, and that intelligent power is natural selection, constantly on the watch for every alteration accidentally produced in the transparent layers, in order carefully to choose such of those alterations as may tend to produce a more distinct image.... Natural selection will choose with infallible skill each new improvement effected.”[116] Natural selection is a law; a law is the series of facts; it seems that we must seek for the power which directs this series of facts; but, lo, the series of facts itself is transformed into a power--into an intelligent power--into a power which chooses with infallible skill! The confusion of ideas is complete. The mind is on a wrong scent; it concludes that the law explains everything, and has itself no need of explanation. The idea of the cause disappears, and, as Auguste Comte expresses it, ”science conducts G.o.d with honor to its frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services.”[117] This is not perhaps the idea of Mr. Darwin, but it is at any rate the idea of some of his disciples, as we shall see by-and-by.

Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight. Let us now see the fate to which are consigned those other requirements of the reason--the eternal and the infinite. I take up Dr. Buchner's book, and I read: ”We are incapable of forming an idea, even approximately, of the _eternal_ and the _infinite_, because our mind, shut up within the limits of the senses, in what regards s.p.a.ce and time, is quite unable to pa.s.s these bounds so as to rise to the height of these ideas.” I follow the text, and thirteen lines further on, in the same page, I read, ”Therefore matter and s.p.a.ce must be eternal.”[118] Observe well the use which this writer makes of the great ideas of the reason. Is it desired to employ them to prove the existence of G.o.d? He will have nothing to do with them. Is the object in question to deny G.o.d's existence? He makes use of them; and all in the same page. This is coa.r.s.e work, no doubt, and Dr.

Buchner damages his cause; but, under forms, often more subtle and more intelligent, the same sophism turns up in all systems of materialism.[119] It is affirmed that we have no real idea of the infinite, and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need which reason feels of this idea by applying it to matter.

Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the natural sciences, in the interest of metaphysics. I am not attacking but defending them. I am endeavoring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them from the outrages which are offered to them by materialism, while it seeks to cover with their n.o.ble mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on the one hand, and theologians and philosophers on the other, are too often at war. They are men, and as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or with jealous rivalries, or with the miserable struggles of envy: with these things the pa.s.sions are chargeable. But never render the sciences responsible for the errors of their representatives. Take away human frailties, and you shall see harmony established; the study of matter will thus agree with the study of mind, and the idea of nature with the idea of G.o.d. You will see all the sciences rise together in a majestic harmony. I say rise, and I say it advisedly; for the sciences also form a part of that golden chain which should unite the earth to heaven.

The a.s.sertion that the science of nature leads away from G.o.d, expresses nothing but a prejudice. It is not true in fact, and on principles of right reason it is impossible: the demonstration is complete. Atheism is a philosophy for which the natural sciences are in no degree responsible. We shall not undertake here the general discussion of this philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to the examination of the pretence which it puts forward to find a new support in the results of modern science.

The nineteenth century bestows particular attention upon history, and it is not only to the annals of the human race that it directs its investigations. Geology and palaeontology dive into the bowels of the earth in order to ask of the ground which carries us testimony as to what it carried of old. Astronomy goes yet further. It endeavors to conjecture what was the condition of our planet before the appearance of the first living being. It remarks that the sun is not fixed in the heavens, and that our earth does not twice travel over the same line in its annual revolutions. It appears that stars are seen in course of formation; it is suspected that some have wholly disappeared. Nature is not fixed, but is undergoing modifications--lives, in fact. The actual state of the universe is but a momentary phase in a development which supposes thousands of ages in the past, and seems to presage thousands more in the future. These conceptions are the result of solid and incontestable discoveries. They have disturbed men's minds, but what is their legitimate import? Why, Newton's argument receives new force from them. From a blind metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the same, said this great man, no variation could spring. The more it is demonstrated that the universe is in course of development and modification, the more clearly comes into view the necessity of the supreme Power which is the cause of its modifications, and of the Infinite intelligence which is directing them to their end. This appears to be solid reasoning, and nevertheless atheism has endeavored to strike its roots in the ground of modern discoveries. It does this in the following way.

If the universe as it is, with the infinite variety of beings which people it and the marvellous relations which connect these beings mutually together, could be shown to have sprung all at once from nothing, or to have emerged from chaos at a given instant, in its full harmony, the boldest mind would not venture to regard this miracle of intelligence as the product of chance. But modern science, it is said, no longer admits of this simple explanation of things: ”G.o.d created the heavens and the earth.” This phrase is henceforward admissible only in the catechism. We know that all has been produced by slow degrees, starting from weak and shapeless rudiments. This grand marvel of the universe was not made all of one piece. Man is of recent date; quadrupeds at a certain epoch did not exist; animals had a beginning, and plants also. The earth was once bare. Formerly, it was perhaps only a gaseous ma.s.s revolving in s.p.a.ce. In course of time, matter was condensed; in time it was organized in living cellules; in time these cellules became shapeless animals; in time these animals were perfected.

Time appears therefore to be the ”universal factor”; and for the ancient formula, ”the universe is the creation of G.o.d,” we are able to subst.i.tute this other formula, the result, most a.s.suredly, of modern science, ”the universe is the work of time.”

In all this, Gentlemen, I have invented nothing. All I have done has been to put into form the theory, the elements of which I have met with in various contemporary productions.[120] They bewilder us by heaping ages upon ages, and in order to explain nature they subst.i.tute the idea of time for the ideas of power and intelligence. They seem to suppose that what is produced little by little is sufficiently explained by the slowness of its formation.

These aberrations of thought have recently been manifested in a striking manner on the occasion of the publication of Mr. Darwin's book. This naturalist has given his attention to the transformation of organized types. He has discovered that types vary more than is generally supposed; and that we probably take simple varieties for distinct species. His discoveries will, I suppose, leave traces strongly marked enough in the history of science. But Mr. Darwin is not merely an observer; he is a theorist, dominated evidently by a disposition to systematize. Now minds of this character, which render, no doubt, signal services to the sciences of observation, are all like Pyrrhus, who, gazing on Andromache as he walked by her side,

Still quaffed bewildering pleasure from the view.[121]

Their theory is their lady-love; they love it pa.s.sionately, and pa.s.sionate love always strongly excites the imagination. Mr. Darwin then has put forth the hypothesis, that not only all animals, but all vegetables too, might have come from one and the same primitive type, from one and the same living cellule. This supposes that there was at the beginning but one single species, an elementary and very slightly defined organization, from which all that lives descended in the way of regular generation. The oak and the wild boar which eats its acorn, the cat and the flea which lodges in its fur, have common ancestors. The family, originally one, has been divided under the influence of soil, climate, food, moisture, mode of life, and by virtue of the natural selection which has preserved and acc.u.mulated the favorable modifications which have occurred in the organism. Mr. Darwin, I repeat, appears to me a man strongly disposed to systematize, but I do not on this account conclude that he is mistaken. The question is, what opinion we must form of his doctrine on principles of experimental science?

Professor Owen[122] does not appear to allow it any value; M. Aga.s.siz does not admit it at all;[123] and, without crossing the ocean, we might consult M. Pictet,[124] who would reply, that judging by the experimental data which we have at present, this doctrine is an hypothesis not confirmed by the observation of facts. We will leave this controversy to naturalists. What will remain eventually in their science of the system under discussion? The answer belongs to the future enlightened by experience and by the employment of a sage induction.

What is the relation existing between these systematic views and the question of the Creator? This is the sole object of our study.

The opinions of the English naturalist are very dubious as to the vital questions of religious philosophy. I have pointed out to you the confusion of his ideas in the use which he makes of natural selection.

In the text of his book, he admits, in the special case of life, the intervention of the Creator for the production of the first living being, and he does not speak of man, except in an incidental sentence, which only attentive readers will take any notice of. If we do not take the liberty to look a little below the surface, we must say that Mr.

Darwin remains on the ground of natural history. Therefore I spoke to you of the aberrations of philosophic thought which have been produced _on the occasion_ of his book. These aberrations are the following:

First of all, natural selection has been taken for a cause, or rather as dispensing with the necessity for a cause, by means of a confusion of ideas for which the author is responsible. The system has therefore been understood as implying, that organized beings were formed without plan, without design, by the mere action of material causes, and as the result of modifications casual at first, and slowly acc.u.mulated. Divine intelligence and creative power thus seemed to be disappearing from the organization of the universe, and to disappear especially before the lapse of time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes. But while the system was taking wing, and soaring aloft, lo! the Creator at the commencement of things, and man conceived as a distinct being at the highest point of nature, have risen up as two idols and paralyzed its flight. To Mr. Darwin, however, have speedily succeeded disciples compromising their master's authority, and addressing him in some such language as this: ”You, our master, do not fully follow out your own opinions; you strain off gnats,[125] and swallow camels. It is not more difficult to see in the living cellule a transformation of matter, and in man a transformation of the monkey, than to point out in a sponge the ancestor of the horse. Cast down your idols, and confess that matter developed in course of time, under favorable circ.u.mstances, is the origin of all that is.” Matter, time, circ.u.mstances--these things have taken the place of G.o.d.

This, Gentlemen, is a philosophy, properly so called, which vainly pretends to find a support in the observation of facts. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the rival of Cuvier, set forth views a.n.a.logous to those which Mr. Darwin has lately reproduced. But in his replies to the attacks which were made upon his system, he affirmed that his theory offered ”one of the most glorious manifestations of creative power, and an additional motive for admiration, grat.i.tude, and love.”[126] Two different interpretations may therefore be given to the system. I wish to show you that these interpretations proceed in all cases from considerations external to the system. The system in itself, as a theory of natural history, could not in any way affect injuriously the great interests of spiritual truth.

In order solidly to establish this a.s.sertion, I will suppose the hypotheses of the most advanced disciples of Mr. Darwin to have been verified by experimental science. I take for granted that it has been proved that all plants and all animals have descended, by way of regular generation, from living cellules originally similar; and that the material particles of the globe, at a given moment, drew together to form these cellules. And now where do we stand? Will G.o.d henceforward be a superfluous hypothesis? Do the atheistical consequences which it is desired to draw from this doctrine proceed logically from it? Most certainly not!

I observe first of all that there exists a great question relative to the beginning of things. Matter is perfected and organized in process of time--but whence comes matter itself? Is it also formed little by little in process of time? Does non-existence become existence little by little? So it is said in the preface to the French translation of Mr.

Darwin's book. But this appertains to high metaphysics; and I pa.s.s on.

If time is the factor of all progress by a necessary law, this necessity must be everywhere the same. Have the elements of matter all the same age? If so, why have some followed the law of progress, and others not?

Why has this mud and this coal remained mud and coal, age after age, while these other molecules have risen, in the hierarchy of the universe, to the dignity of life? Why have these mollusks remained mollusks throughout the succession of their generations, while others, happily transformed, have gradually mounted the steps of the ladder up to man? Whence comes this aristocracy of nature? Are the beings which we call inferior only the cadets of the universe, and are they too in their turn to mount all the steps of the ladder? Must we admit that there is going on the continual production, not only of living cellules which are beginning new series of generations, but also of new matter, which, setting out from the most rudimentary condition, is beginning the evolution which is to raise it into life? They do not venture to put forth theses of this nature, and, in order to account for the diversity of things, recourse is had to circ.u.mstances. The diversity of circ.u.mstances explains the diversity of developments. But whence can come the variety of circ.u.mstances in a world where all is produced in the way of fatal necessity, and without the intervention of a will and an intelligence? This is the remark of Newton. Study carefully the systems of materialism: their authors declare that to have recourse to G.o.d in order to account for the universe is a puerile conception unworthy of science, because all explanation must be referred to fixed and immutable laws; and then you will be for ever surprising them in the very act of the adoration of _circ.u.mstances_. Convenient deities these, which they summon to their aid in cases which they find embarra.s.sing.