1 DARWIN ONE OF THE BEST OF MEN. 325 Darwin was one of the best of men. As son, brother, husband, father, friend, as servant or master, as simple citizen, that man was, as is well possible here, perfect. It is to be understood, then, that, if I have to refer at any time to Mr. Darwin's religious opinions, I do so only in the regard that my subject compels. That subject at present is, specially, the negative of the proofs for the being of a God, and in Mr. Darwin's reference, that negative is secluded and confined to the argument from design. To this argument his peculiar theory is fatal; and Mr. Darwin himself is not only aware of this, but in express terms acknowledges it. And that for me is enough, that for me is all. I have to do with Mr. Darwin in this respect alone. I know that in regard to the theory in question-Natural Selection-there are in existence all manner of views I know that there are those to whom this theory has extended the satisfaction and consolation of universal uniformity and enlightened law; but with these views or representations of views, I have, in any way whatever, no call to intromit. In fact, I may say at once in regard to uniformity, that it is not its presence, but its absence, that I find in the theory of Mr. Darwin. He who does not see-who does not know and proclaim that this world is dependent on ideas, is hung on ideas, is instinct with ideas-he to me has no true word to say for uniformity. I refuse to acknowledge uniformity in mere matter that is figured in mere mechanical play from beyond the Magellan clouds to within the indivisible unit of every living soul. My uniformity is the uniformity, not of matter, but of mind; and that is the uniformity which I precisely fail to find in the theory of Mr. Darwin. He himself, as I say, acknowledges this. He doubts the existence of God; he denies design. What I have first to do here, then, is to lead evidence in proof of the allegations made. So far as these allegations concern design, that is the direct interest; in other respects they concern only an indirect implication in consequence of necessary quotation. I desire Mr. Darwin to be regarded only with respect-or, in truth and sincerity, only with love. It was in this spirit that, in the first place here, I contemplated a psychological inquiry, not only into the life and character of Mr. Darwin himself, but into those of his father, and specially of his grandfather, the celebrated Dr. Erasmus Darwin of Zoonomia and the Botanic Garden. In these references I collected largely. I ransacked the two lives of Dr. Erasmus, that of Miss Seward and that of Ernst Krause, as also that remarkable book of Miss Meteyard's, A Group of Englishmen, in which we are introduced to the enormous bulk of Mr. Darwin's father, "the largest man whom" the son "ever saw," "about six feet two inches in height, with broad shoulders and very corpulent," "twenty-four stone in weight, when last weighed, but afterwards much heavier," a man represented by Miss Meteyard as "eating a goose for his dinner as easily as other men do a partridge." Charles denies this: we must be cautious in receiving such reports; others, he says, "describe his father as eating remarkably little." Evidently that goose is not to the stomach of the family. I read and made large extracts also from the various works of Dr. Erasmus, from the Zoonomia and the Botanic Garden. And it is possible that were I to apply all the material collected, I might be able to realize some not altogether uninteresting psychological characterization which might even have its bearing on the peculiar theories of the son and grandson; but this would lead me much too far at present, and I am reluctantly compelled to turn to what my space alone allows me, the theory itself of Charles Darwin, and in so far as it concerns design. MR. DARWIN'S OWN EXPRESSIONS. 327 ... adduce in evidence a great variety of expressions of Mr. Darwin's own. Such expressions are principally to be found in the letters to Mr. Asa Gray, and in the chapter entitled "Religion," which occur in the work already referred to. From the latter, the eighth chapter, namely, of the first volume, I quote, for example, this: "The old argument from design in Nature fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings than in the course which the wind blows." Now, these are only a few words; but they are unmistakable. They are crucial as to this, That, to Mr. Darwin, there is no more design in organic variation, than in the course of the wind, That, consequently, the argument from design fails, and That this failure of said argument is to be attributed to the law of natural selection. By implication we see that Mr. Darwin's general doctrine, is this, The varied organizations in nature are due, not to design, but to natural selection; or, as we may put it reverse-wise, natural selection accounts for all organic variation in nature, and any reference to a so-called principle of design is unwarranted, groundless, and gratuitous. Of course it cannot be said that Mr. Darwin exactly triumphs in this supposed destruction of the argument from design. Mr. Darwin is a most amiable man. He was ever courteous in expression-whether by letter or by word of mouthalmost to a fault; "he naturally shrank," as his son says, "from wounding the sensibilities of others in religious matters." So it is that in his letters to Asa Gray-an earnest-minded man all that he has to say on design is mitigated ever by gentle words in regard to theology. With respect "to the theological view of the question. This," he says, " is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance." It is ever thus in meek conciliant vein he writes concessively to all his intimate friends,even to Hooker and to Lyell, who were his most intimate. An element in this was, of course, the desire that was ever present to him of winning his way for his theory into the conviction of his correspondents, and of softening the opposition which he constantly encountered from them. It is rather amusing to watch his shrewd manœuvres in this reference both with Hooker and Lyell, especially the latter, whom he is always reminding of his own eminence and of his own teaching in his geology! At times he even gets humorously cross with his own self when consciousness of this his concessive attitude has come upon him, as in reference to his having "put in the possibility of the Galapagos having been continuously joined to America," though, "in fact convinced, more than in any other case of other islands, that the Galapagos had never been so joined." At such instance of concessiveness as this, I say, he gets humorously cross with himself, and exclaims, "It was mere base subservience and terror of Hooker & Co." With all softness of expression, however, Mr. Darwin's candour is never for a moment in doubt. He says himself that he "does not think that the religious sentiment 1 "Designed laws:" Mr. Darwin has just denied design; there is no law for Mr. Darwin, but natural law, as of "the course of the wind," natural mechanics! The "working out" of the law, "good or bad," is left indifferently to "chance." The word is the inadvertence for the moment of unpremeditated writing; -or is Mr. Darwin in it only conciliant to Mr. Asa Gray? was ever strongly developed in him;" and he writes with perfectly conscious unreserve of his unbelief in a revelation whether of or by God, - writes quite jokingly at times, indeed, with reference to articles of faith and the priests that teach them. But it is only in what regards design that there is any interest in Mr. Darwin for us at present; and we are happily spared here, consequently, all citation and any further reference to the subject of religion, so far as Mr. Darwin is concerned. The result before which we stand now, then, is this : If natural selection is true, design is false. That, at least, is the conclusion of Mr. Darwin; and Mr. Darwin it was who, in regard to natural selection, first made current the phrase and held valid the doctrine. Evidently, then, Mr. Darwin being right, our whole enterprise is brought to a very short issue. There is an end to the whole interest of Natural Theology-an end to all our relative declamation-an end to all our arguments for the existence of God, in so far, namely, as, to the general belief of the modern world, all these arguments concentrate themselves in design. Design, namely, is the product of ideas; but there can be no ideas to begin with on the footing of natural selection. Natural selection being true, ideas are not producers, but produced. What alone results in that case is that materialism is all, and that ideas only issue from the order and arrangement which things themselves simply fall into. The immediate question that presses on us, consequently, is, What is natural selection? And for an answer to this question I confine myself to the same work already spoken ofThe Life and Letters. I am not unacquainted with the other relative writings of Mr. Darwin; but I find no answers to all my questions in these references so simple and direct as those suggested in the three volumes of the book I have named |