Oct. 



1 1 



1883] 



NA TURE 



575 



more probability of its being abandoned, and the old doctrine of 

 the fixity of species revived, than that we should revert to the 

 old astronomical theories which placed the earth in the centre of 

 the universe, and limited the date of its creation to six ordinary 

 days. 



The question of the fixity or the transmutation of species is a 

 purely scientific one, only to be discussed and decided on scien- 

 tific grounds. To the naturalist, it is clearly one of extreme 

 importance, as it gives him for the first time a key to the inter- 

 pretation of the phenomena with which he has to deal. It may 

 seem to many that a question like this is entirely beside the 

 business of a Church Congress, as it is one with which only those 

 expert in the ways of scientific investigation, and deeply imbued 

 with knowledge of scientific facts, could be called upon to deal. 

 This would cerlainly have been my view, if it had not been that 

 some who, from their capacities and education, should have been 

 onlookers in such a controversy, awaiting the issues of the 

 onflict while the lists are being fought out by the trained 

 knights, have rushed into the fray, and by their unskilful inter- 

 position have only confused the issues, casting about dust instead 

 of light. In the hope of clearing away some of this dust the 

 present discussion has been decided upon. 



It is self-evident that a solid advance of any branch of know- 

 ledge must, in some way or other, and to a greater or less degree, 

 influence many others, even those not directly connected with it, 

 and therefore the rapid simultaneous strides of so many branches 

 of knowledge as may be embraced under the term of "Recent 

 Advances in Natural Science," will be very likely to have some 

 bearing upon theological beliefs. Whether in the direction of 

 expanding, improving, purifying, elevating, or in the direction 

 of contracting, hardening, or destroying, depends not upon those 

 engaged in contributing to the advance of science, but upon 

 those whose special duty it is to show the bearing of these ad- 

 vances upon hitherto received theological dogmas. The scientific 

 questions themselves may well be left to experts. If the new 

 doctrines are not true, there are plenty of keen critics among 

 men of science ready to sift the sound from the unsound. Error 

 in scientific subjects has its day, but it is certain not long to sur- 

 vive the ordeal, yearly increasing in severity, to which it is sub- 

 jected by those devoted to its cultivation. On the other band, 

 the advance- of truth, though they may be retarded, will never 

 be stopped by the opposition of those who are incompetent by 

 the nature of their education to deal with the evidence on which 

 it rests. There is no position so fraught with danger to religion as 

 that which binds it up essentially with this or that scientific 

 doctrine, with which it must either stand or fall. The history of 

 the reception of the greatest discoveries in agronomy and geo- 

 logy, the passionate clinging to the exploded pseudo-scientific 

 views 00 those subjects supposed to be bound up with religious 

 faith, the fierce denunciations of the advocates of the then new, 

 but now universally accepted, ideas, are well-worn subjects, and 

 would not be alluded to but for the repetition, almost literal re- 

 petion in some case-, of that reception which has been accorded 

 to the new views of biology. 



Ought not the history of those discoveries and the contro- 

 versies to which they gave rise to lie both a warning and an en- 

 couragement ? Those who hoped and those who feared that 

 faith would be destroyed by them have been equally mistaken ; 

 and is not probable that the same result will follow the great 

 biological discoveries and controversies of the present day ? 



In stating thus briefly what is the issue of these discoveries, as 

 generally understood and accepted by men of science, I have 

 done all that I promised, and must leave in far more competent 

 hands the part of the subject especially appropriate for discussion 

 at this meeting. I may, however, perhaps be allowed to put a 

 few plain and simple considerations before you, which may have 

 some bearing upon the subject, and which have no pretensions 

 to novelty, though, being often lost sight of, their repetition 

 may do no harm. 



I said at the commencement of this paper that it has long 

 been admitted by all educated person-, whatever their religious 

 faith may be, that that very universal but still most wonderful 

 process, the commencement and gradual development of a new 

 individual of whatever living form, whether plant, animal, or 

 man, takes place according to definite and regularly acting laws, 

 without miraculous interposition. Further than this, I believe 

 that every one will admit that the production of the various 

 races or breeds of domestic animals is brought about by similar 

 means. We do not think it necessary to call in any special in- 

 tervention of creative power to produce a short-horned race of 

 cattle, or to account for the difference between a bulldog and a 



greyhound, a Dorking and a Cochin China fowl. The gradual 

 modifications by which these races were produced, having taken 

 place under our own eyes as it were, we are satisfied that they 

 are the consequence of what we call natural laws, modified and 

 directed in these particular cases by man's agency. We have 

 even gone further, having long admitted, without the slightest 

 fear of producing a collision with religious faith, that variation 

 has taken place among animals in a wild state, producing local 

 races of more or less stable and permanent character, and brought 

 about by the influence of food, climate, and other surrounding 

 circumstances. 



The evidences of the Divine government of the world, and of 

 the Christian faith, have been sufficient for us, notwithstanding 

 our knowledge that the individual was created according to law, 

 and that the race or variety was also created according to law. 

 In what way then can tbey be affected by the knowledge that 

 the somewhat greater modifications, which we call species, were 

 also created according to law ? The difficulties, which to some 

 minds seem insuperable, remain exactly as they were ; the proofs, 

 which to others are = o convincing, are entirely unaffected by this 

 widening of scientific knowledge. 



Even to what i- to many the supreme difficulty of all, the 

 origin of man, the -ame considerations are applicable. Believe 

 everything you will about man in his highest intellectual and 

 moral development, about the nature, origin, existence, and 

 destiny of the human soul — you have long been able to reconcile 

 all this with the knowledge of his individual material origin 

 according to law, in no whit different in principle from that of 

 the beasts of the field, passing through all the phases they go 

 through, and existing long before possessing, except potentially, 

 any 1 f the special attributes of humanity. At what exact 

 period and by what means the great transformation takes place 

 no one can tell. If the most Godlike of men have passed 

 through the stages which physiologists recognise in human deve- 

 lopment without prejudice to the noblest, highest, most divine 

 par: of their nature, why should not the race of mankind, as a 

 •whole, have had a similar origin, followed by similar progress and 

 development, equally without prejudice to its present condition 

 and future destiny ? Can it be of real consequence at the pre- 

 sent time, either to our faith or our practice, whether the first 

 man had such an extremely lowly beginning as the dust of the 

 earth, in the literal sense of the words, or v hether he was 

 formed through the intervention of various prcgrcs-ive stages of 

 animal life ? 



The reign of order and law in the government of the world 

 has been so far admitted that all these questions have really be- 

 come questions of a little more or a little less order and law. 

 Science may well lie left to work out the details as it may. It 

 has thrown >ome light, little enough at present, but ever increas- 

 ing, and for which we should all be thankful, upon the processes 

 or methods by which the world in w hich we dwell has been 

 brought into its present condition. The wonder and mystery of 

 creation remains as wonderful and mysterious as before. Of the 

 origin of the whole, science tells us nothing. It is still as im- 

 possible as ever to conceive that such a world, governed by laws, 

 the operations of which have led to such mighty results, and are 

 attended by such future promise, could have originated without 

 the intervention of some power external to itself. If the succes- 

 sion of small miracles, formerly supposed to regulate the opera- 

 tions of nature, no longer satisfies us, have we not substituted 

 for them one of immeasurable greatness and grandeur ? 



A GREEN SUN IN INDIA 



A17E have received the following communications on this phe- 

 ** nomenon. At the same time we may refer to a passage 

 in one of Mr. Norman Lockyer's papers on " Physical Science 

 for Artists," in which he speaks of the marked effects of aqueous 

 vapour in the atmosphere on the character of the sun's light. 

 He states that he asked Dr. Schuster to trst his theory while in 

 India. "Theory," he states, " had led me to expect that with the 

 enormous thickness of air available there, absorption at the red 

 end of the spectrum by aqueous vapour would be seen as well 

 as the absorption at the blue, which is so common with us. 

 Seeing the sun a vivid green through the steam of the little 

 paddle-boat on Windermere first led me to inquire into the pos- 

 sibility of aqueous vapour following the same law as that which 

 I think we may now accept in the cases of the vapours of metals. 

 As in these experiments with vapours absorption of the red end 

 alone was seen, as well as absorption at the blue end alone, the 



