86 



KNO^A^LEDGE ♦ 



[February 1, 1888. 



tions of the nebular theory and of the successive advance in 

 life-forms in the first chapter of Genesis, and in the prepara- 

 tion for Christianity in Judaism, the more liberal among 

 them welcomed the new evangel, and told us in their artless 

 way that they knew it all before 1 Well had they kept the 

 secret. 



It is often said that a man's religion concerns him- 

 self only. So far as the value of the majority of people's 

 opinions on such high matters goes, this is true ; but it is 

 a very shallow sa\ing when applied to men whose words 

 carry weight, or whose discoveries cause us to ask what is 

 their beai'ing on the larger questions of human relations 

 and destinies to which past ages have given answers that no 

 longer satisfy us, or that are not compatible with the facts 

 discovered. Whatever silence Darwin maintained in his 

 books as to his religious opinions, intelligent readers would 

 see that unaggressive — and wisely so, for the immediate work 

 in hand — as was the mode of presentment of his theory, it 

 undermined current beliefs in special providence, with its 

 special creations and contrivances, and therefore in the inter- 

 mittent interference of a deity, excluding that supernatural 

 action of which miracles are the decaying stock evidence. 



Nor could they fail to ask whether the theory of 

 natural selection by " descent with modification " was to 

 apply to the human species. And when Darwin, already 

 anticipated in this application by his more daring disciples. 

 Professors Huxley and Haeckel, pubhshed his " Descent of 

 Man," with its outspoken chapter on the origin of con- 

 science and the development of belief in spiritual beings, a 

 belief subject to periodical revision as knowledge increased, 

 it was obvious that the bottom was knocked out of all 

 traditional dogmas of man's fall and redemption, of human 

 sin and divine forgiveness. Therefore, what Darwin him- 

 self believed was a matter of moment, and his answers to 

 inquiries which were made public during his lifetime told 

 us what we expected, that while the vai-ying circumstances 

 and modes of life made his judgment often fluctuate, and 

 that while he had never been an atheist in the sense of 

 denying the existence of a God, " I think," he says, " that 

 generally (and more and more as I grow older) but not 

 always, an agnostic would be the most correct description of 

 my state of mind." The chapter on " Religion," which, 

 although a part of the autobiography, is printed separately, 

 adds little to this bit of information — we were about to say 

 this confessio fidei; but it is, as the following quotation 

 shows, interesting as detailing a few of the steps by which 

 Darwin reached that suspensive stage. 



Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember 

 being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though them- 

 selves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority 

 on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the 

 argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this 

 time — i.e. 1836 to 1839— to see that the Old Testament was no more 

 to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question, 

 then, continually rose before my mind, and would not be banished 



is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the 



Hindoos he would permit it to be connected with the belief in 

 Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testa- 

 ment ? This appeared to me utterly incredible. 



By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite 

 to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity 

 is supported — and that the more we know of the tixed laws of 

 nature the more incredible do miracles become — that the men at 

 that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incom- 

 prehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been 

 written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many 

 important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be 

 admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; by such 

 reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or 

 value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve 

 in Christianity as a divine revelation. The faot that many false 

 religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire 

 had some weight with me. 



But I was very unwilling to give up my belief ; I feel sure of 

 this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-di'eams 

 of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being 

 discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most 

 striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found 

 it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, 

 to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus dis- 

 belief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. 

 The rate was so slow that I felt no distress. 



Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal 

 God until a considerably lat er period of my life, I will here give the 

 vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument 

 from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to 

 me so conclusive, faUs, now that the law of natural selection has been 

 discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beauti- 

 ful hinge of a bivalve sheU must have been made by an intelligent 

 being, like the hinge of a door b_v a man. There seems to be no 

 more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action 

 of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. 

 But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the 

 " Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants," and the argu- 

 ment there given has never, as far as 1 can see, been answered. 



Without doubt, the influence of the conclusions deducible 

 from the theory of evolution are fatal to belief in the super- 

 natural. When we say the supernatural, we mean that 

 great body of assumptions out of which is constructed all 

 theologies the essential element in which is the intimate 

 relation between spiritual beings, of whom certain qualities 

 are predicated, and man. These beings have no longer any 

 place in the efl'ective belief of intelligent and unprejudiced 

 men, because they are found to have no correspondence with 

 the ascertained operations of nature, which may or may not 

 be the vehicles of Mr. Spencer's " Infinite and Eternal 

 Energy," but which are not due to the fictitious demiurges 

 of the type created by Kepler to account for the movements 

 of the planets. The supernatural, or the natural — for from 

 our standpoint the term matters little — remains unex- 

 plained. Darwin says, " I cannot pretend to throw the 

 least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery is 

 insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain 

 an Agnostic." In the chapter already referred to, Professor 

 Huxley says, " In respect of the great problems of philo- 

 soph)', the post-Darwinian generation is, in one sense, 

 exactly where the praj-Darwinian generations were. They 

 remain insoluble. But the present generation has the 

 advantage of being better provided with the means of free- 

 ing itself from the tyranny of certain sham solutions."* 

 Science may borrow the Apostle's words, " Behold ! I show 

 you a mystery," and give to them a profounder meaning 

 as it confesses that the origin and ultimate destiny 

 of matter and motion ; the causes which determine the 

 behaviour of atoms, whether they are arranged in the 

 lovely and varying forms which mark their crystals, 

 or whether they are quivering with the life which is 

 common to the amoeba and the man ; the conversion of the 

 inorganic into the organic by the green plant, and the 

 relation between nerve-changes and consciousness ; are alike 

 impenetrable mysteries. 



There is no finality in science, but when we reflect 

 how the major numlier of problems suggested by the 

 universe, regarded only from a mechanical standpoint, 

 have one by one been solved by the intelligence of man, 

 the thought sometimes arises that the limits of know- 

 ledge may be reached, and that little remains to be dis- 

 covered within the domain of the phenomenal beyond the 

 fiUing-in of details; that, as an eminent astronomer who 

 has proved the star-depths, and read the message of the 

 most distant light- bringers known, remarked some time ago 

 to the present writer, " the cream has been skimmed." The 

 discoveries of the law of gravitation, of the distribution 



J * Vol. ii. p. 204. 



