VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION

(From the Scottish Christian Instructor and Monthly Magazine for the Church of Scotland.)

We give the following excellent and thoroughly philosophical article from the December number of this periodical. The strictures on the wild, unphilosophical, and even infidel theories contained in the work entitled Vestiges of Creation, will be appreciated by our readers. That a publication so startling should obtain a factitious notoriety is not wonderful; its popularity in certain quarters is a strong reason for devout men of science exposing the fallacies with which it is crowded:—

The author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is a theorist in the strictest sense of the term. The whole book is eminently an hypothesis. It cannot be said to be a purely philosophical work, or, strictly speaking, scientific—but rather a mixture of metaphysics and of natural science; the whole held together by a thread of the writer’s own weaving. The whole, therefore, depends upon the thread holding the several parts together. The author tries, on more occasions than one—we speak most advisedly—to throw dust into the eyes of the Christian reader, by seemingly acknowledging, in this sublunary state of things, the existence and presence of a God; but all beyond this is gross materialism, supported by a train of false reasoning, and the whole based on mistaken and perverted views of philosophy. We have said that the work is not philosophical. The great object of the author seems to have been to clothe his false views in philosophy in a popular dress. His aim, notwithstanding his pretensions to the contrary, is evidently to do damage to the moral constitution of man—and, instead of a moral being, to reduce him so as to be nothing else but the earthly descendant of a cyclo-neura or diplo-neura, a polypifera, or a snail. Such is the moral and elevating object which this author has in view; but his lucubrations possess neither novelty nor truth, and we have no doubt will soon sink to the level out of which he would have himself and others to have originated. But let us take the account that this author gives of himself and of his production.

In a “note conclusory,” he informs us his work was “composed in solitude.” Let it ever be borne in mind, that the objects this work embraces includes the whole “field of nature,” and objects scattered throughout almost every country on the face of the globe, which ought to be visited and judged of by personal inspection, before one is entitled to theorise and dogmatise upon them to the extent of unsettling the whole moral and spiritual framework on which society for the present hinges. Certain remarks of Cuvier, in his Theory of the Earth, apply exactly to such an author as this. Having declared his opinion in so many words, that there is a “want of sufficient evidence” to enable us as yet to “explain the causes of the presently existing state of our globe,” this Newton of the natural sciences goes on to state, that hitherto “naturalists seem to have scarcely any idea of the propriety of investigating facts before they construct their systems.” The cause of this strange fact he ascribes to the fact, that “all geologists hitherto have either been mere cabinet naturalists, who had themselves hardly paid any attention to the structure of mountains, or mere mineralogists, who had not studied in sufficient detail the innumerable diversity of animals, and the almost infinite complication of their various parts and organs.” The consequence has been, that the “former of these have only constructed systems—while the latter have made excellent collections of observations, and have laid the foundations of true geological science—but have been unable to raise and complete the edifice.” Here we have a theorist, who aspires to none of these characters, inadequate or insufficient as they may be, for the accomplishment of so great an end. He professes to be nothing more than a “solitary” earth-worm, and goes on coolly and systematically to turn up the foundations of the earth from her inmost roots, and to lend a strong hand in the formation of the universe itself. And all this he accomplishes, as he supposes, with the most perfect facility, without communicating his plan to a “single fellow-being,” and that too, by his own confession in “solitude,” or without leaving his “easy-chair.” We conceive these remarks to be of some importance, or we would not have dwelt so long upon them. This regenerator or inventor of a new system of nature is not even a practical naturalist. He is not known to the world as such; his book gives no evidence of it. Of course we can have no confidence in the reasonings or conclusions he draws from objects in nature, few of which he has perhaps ever seen, and far less inspected, either in the cabinet, or in situ.

The object of this work may be stated in a few words. It is an “attempt to connect the sciences into a history of creation, and thence to eliminate a view of nature as one grand system of causation.” The author supposes that the whole of our firmament, all space, was at one time a diffused mass of nebulous matter, or what in one place he terms a “fire-mist,” extending through the space it still occupies. Such was our system once, such also were the other astral systems, such as the Milky Way and other nebulae, now resolved by our larger and more powerful telescopes into masses of suns or fixed stars. The causation of change he ascribes to a general law implanted on nature or matter, at first by the Deity himself, and left afterwards to the machinery of its own self-acting operations, without any special interference of a creative superior power. He, in fact, represents all things as if left to themselves, as the ostrich leaves its eggs in the sands, and to the operation of a certain law. God is not represented as creating all things, but having imposed the general law, he is represented as waiting upon them till they create themselves.

Thus (p. 373) he argues on such a theme—“The chronology of God is not as our chronology. See the patience (yes, the patience of an ostrich) of waiting evinced in the slow development of the animated kingdoms through the long series of geological ages. Nothing is it to him that an entire goodly planet should, for an inconceivable period, have no inhabiting organisms superior to reptiles. Nothing is it to him that whole astral systems should be for infinitely longer spaces of time in the nebular embryo, unfit for the reception of one breathing or sentient being out of the myriad multitudes who are yet to manifest his goodness and his greatness. Progressive, not instant effect is his sublime rule. What then can it be to him that the human race goes through a career of impulsive acting for a few thousand years? The cruelties of ungoverned anger, the tyrannies of the rude and proud over the humble and good, the martyr’s pains and the patriot’s despair, what are all these but incidents of an evolution of superior being, which has been pre-arranged and set forward in independent action, free within a certain limit, but in the main constrained, through primordial laws, to go on ever brightening and perfecting, yet never, while the present dispensation of nature shall last, to be quite perfect!”

In this medley, we can call it nothing else, what have we but the old doctrines of fatalism, called here “primordial laws,” constrained within a “certain limit,” all things going on from first to last under these laws, God meanwhile regarding only the general results, and caring nothing for the particular instances. In plain terms there is, according to this author, no particular providence—God cares nothing about us as individuals, not even as the human race, but only looks upon us as parts of a great whole—looking not to the individual but to the general result, and that result is not connected with us or about us, but is to go on “brightening and brightening” future races of beings surpassing us as much as we surpass reptiles. Now this progression must be infinite—so we may expect the fabled “race of gods” to be surpassed by a brighter and still more superior race. All this and more than this he attempts to prove from the connection of the “natural sciences,” and forming out of them a “history of creation.”

To return to the nebulae or fire-mist of our author, he makes the whole depend upon the law of attraction, although we know that the law of repulsion prevails where there is heat or fire. The nebulous matter, he says, begins to collect around nuclei, by “virtue of the law of attraction.” The agglomeration brings into operation another physical law, by force of which the “separate masses of matter are either made to rotate singly, or, in addition to that single motion, are set into a coupled revolution in ellipses.” “Next,” continues our author, “the centrifugal force comes into play, flinging off portions of the rotating masses, which become spheres by virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in orbits of revolution round the central body by means of a composition between the centrifugal and gravitating forces.” All this, of course, is done by certain “laws of matter,” and not by any direct interference of the Almighty. The sun throws off the planets and the earth the moon, each of a proper size, and each to its proper place and distance in the planetary system.

Here this theoretical writer falls into the great blunder, and most unphilosophical idea, that matter considered in general, or any part, portion, or smallest particle of matter, has essential separate qualities, by which one part acts upon another. It is the essential property of no one wheel of a machine to move its fellow, though in consequence of its being placed in the station it is fitted for, it acts upon its fellow, because it is acted upon. If you interrupt the contact in a machine, you destroy the motion in all those parts where the communication is destroyed. It is just the same with the whole system of nature; you cannot take up any parcel of matter and say of it, this has essential properties which empowers it to be a natural agent. A philosopher ought to consider it as a concrete with a certain disposition of parts liable to be acted upon, but he is not entitled to consider it both as active and passive—as the thing acting, and the thing acted upon, or in plain terms, as at once cause and effect. To set his matter in motion, our author is first obliged to invent nuclei, or centres of attraction, to which other particles gravitate. Now he is entitled to assume nothing; and, above all, he is not entitled to receive one law of nature to serve a purpose, and to reject another law of nature to serve the same purpose. If attraction be an inherent property of matter, so also is it an equally well established and essential law that a body in a state of rest would remain so for ever in that condition till there was some cause to set it in motion. To say that the nebulous matter, which is also a fiction of the brain, “began to collect around nuclei,” only provokes the question, how did it begin to move, to collect in one place rather than in another? This author says by “virtue of the law of attraction.” In reply we assert that, with respect to attraction, it cannot produce, and in that sense account for the phenomena, being one of the phenomena produced, and therefore itself to be accounted for. What is said of forces residing in bodies, whether attracting or repelling, will not explain a first cause, because they themselves are only an effect; indeed attraction itself can only be considered as a mathematical hypothesis, not as anything real and existing per se in nature. Instead of attraction, why not rather take the Newtonian theory, and content himself with an investigation of the laws observed in the agency of the causes of the motion of common heavy bodies, viz., gravity? We suppose the particles of his nebulae were not heavy enough to venture on such dangerous grounds, and therefore he overlooks gravitation, and contents himself with attractions and repulsions. How detrimental is it to the increase of knowledge in the powers and agency of nature to have the most curious productions of these powers reduced, as this author does, to unintelligible laws, characterised by words without meaning, and which render the inventors wiser than the heedless and inattentive.

Having collected his thin vapour around nuclei, he forms them into a globe or ball, and by another physical law, makes them to begin to rotate, or whirl round. Where he gets this whirling law we cannot say. We had always thought with Kepler and others, that in consequence of the inertia of matter, all motion is considered as equable, and rectilineal, and as being in a straight line with the direction of the moving force, and as preserving this direction until it be hindered or put out of its way by some extrinsic cause. A curvilineal motion is always a compound motion; there must necessarily be two powers acting upon all such bodies, or partake of and persevere in such motions—one impelling them to move in a straight line, the other deflecting or bending them continually towards a centre. We may, therefore, always consider deflecting forces as directed to, or from a point. In the first case, they are called centripetal forces; in the second case, they are called centrifugal forces. In general they are termed central forces; and the point through which their direction passes is called the centre of the forces. It is an easy matter to sit in an arm-chair, and talk of the earth, when once set in motion by her centrifugal force, throwing off a mass like the moon, and keeping it in its place and in motion by a “composition between the centrifugal and gravitating forces.” How was the centrifugal force generated? If it once threw off the moon, why not throw off our thin and light atmosphere, the clouds, St. Peter’s or St. Paul’s, or the Himalaya Mountains, or the Andes themselves? The one supposition is just as good as the other. But philosophy teaches that all these forces have a centre, and are directed to a point, or from a point. Whereas, if this author’s theory be true, the present system begins in nucleus by the force of attraction, therefore attraction is the first, the original cause of all the motions we see. Repulsion or the centrifugal tendency to fly off from the main body is one of them, therefore must attraction be the cause of repulsion, and that which began in a nucleus was at length the means of throwing off the moon. Religion, we think, has surely nothing to fear from such childish and improbable dreams.

While we offer these remarks, we at the same time are perfectly alive to the fact that there is nothing new in this author’s speculations, although with a little pardonable vanity he terms them a “first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of creation.” It has long been known that Encke’s comet is a mere body of vapour, of extraordinary tenuity, floating around the sun in about 3.5 years. Still a comet is not a planet—at the same time we admit that there is no argument a priori against the hypothesis that the matter composing our globe may once have existed in a gaseous state, and in that state have revolved round the sun. We all know the views of La Place on this subject—and the evidence adduced by Sir John Herschel on the same subject, especially in the Philosophical Transactions, 1833, and in his Treatise on Astronomy. But these all treat of such a matter with becoming modesty and circumspection. They speculate on the possibility of such a state of things—but they do not show, as this author does, how they came about. Here lies the difference between a true philosopher and a mere speculatory. The former proceeds only upon data given—the latter assumes his data, and argues as if they were true. We are not injuring our author by this comparison. For example, he talks of nuclei and attraction, but he does not tell us what would be the effects of these attractions in pleno and in vacuo, i. e. in a void, or in a space filled with matter. He makes no allowance for the presence of heat—does not take into account the laws of chemistry at all, upon which he is perfectly silent—he does not even inform us whether his original matter or “fire-mist” was homogeneous or aggregate—and yet these, and many more, are all conditions that must be well established and ascertained before we are entitled to draw any conclusions from them, and far less to dogmatise as this author has done, as if he were really proceeding upon solid and substantial grounds. How much more truly modest and philosophical the admission of that scientific naturalist, De La Beche, in his Theoretical Geology, where he at once admits that the “probable effects resulting from a mixture of all terrestrial matter in the state of gas or vapour, it would be exceedingly difficult to appreciate, inasmuch as we are unacquainted with the matter beneath the crust of the globe, and even if we were, the necessary calculations would be so intricate, that it is extremely doubtful if our actual knowledge could carry us to the end desired.” Our speculator, however, sees no such difficulties, and at once boldly enters in where “angels fear to tread.”

But this fanciful and most obnoxious theorist goes much farther than this. Our elements, he supposes, are only modifications of what he calls a “primordial form of matter,” of which he knows nothing, or can know nothing, for he cannot prove it to exist. He imagines that gases, metals, earths, and other so-called elements, as simple substances, still exist, or are liable to come into existence under proper conditions in all parts of the universe. “Matter,” he says, “whether it consists of about fifty-five ingredients, or only one, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under different circumstances, or, to speak more philosophically, under different laws. As a familiar illustration, water, when subjected to a temperature under 32° Fahrenheit, becomes ice—raise the temperature to 212°, and it becomes steam.” This is a poor argument for a world-maker—and betrays great ignorance in science. He lays down the above rule with regard to the freezing and evaporation of water as usual as a law. But only a law under certain conditions, and of all men living, a world-maker should be constantly alive to, and aware of those conditions. It is admitted, on all hands, that the same body becomes solid, fluid, or aeriform, according to the quantity of caloric by which it is penetrated; or, as Lavoisier says, “more strictly, according as the repulsive force exerted by the caloric is equal to, stronger or weaker, than the attraction of the particles of the body it acts upon.” Here lies the foundation of our author’s blunder in his theory of world-framing. If the only two powers he seems to be aware of, attraction and repulsion, existed, bodies would become liquid at an indivisible degree of the thermometer, and would almost instantaneously pass from the solid state of aggregation to that of aeriform elasticity. Thus water, for instance, at the very instant it ceases to be ice, would begin to boil, and would be transformed into an aeriform fluid, having its particles scattered indefinitely through the surrounding space. That this does not happen must depend upon the action of some third power. The pressure of the atmosphere prevents this separation, and causes the water to remain in the liquid state until raised to the temperature indicated by 212 degrees on the scale of Fahrenheit’s thermometer. “It is therefore evident that without this atmospheric pressure,” says Lavoisier, “we should not have any permanent liquid, and should only see bodies in that state of existence at the very instant of melting, for the smallest additional caloric would then instantly separate their particles, and dissipate them through the surrounding medium. Besides, without this atmospheric pressure, we should not even have any proper aeriform fluids, because the moment the force of attraction is overcome by the repulsive power of the caloric, the particles of bodies would separate themselves indefinitely, having nothing to give limits to their expansion, unless their own gravity might collect them together, so as to form an atmosphere.” Such are the views of science; they are fatal to our author’s argument. He pretends that the “nebulous matter of space, previously to the formation of stellar and planetary bodies, must have been a universal fire-mist, an idea which we can scarcely comprehend, though the reasons for arriving at it seem irresistible.” He could scarcely have hit upon a more unfortunate comparison. How could any one of his conditions take place without an atmosphere? Let him settle that point with Lavoisier and we are satisfied.

Having made the world out of a mist, and formed the elements out of primordial matter, he goes on forming, out of the same materials, the whole visible creation—mineral, vegetable, and animal. In fact, he considers the whole as an immense electro-chemical machine, and speaks largely of the “development of organisms along geological lines.” His general conclusions in the geography of organic nature may be thus stated: 1. That there are numerous distinct foci (of course) of organic production throughout the earth. 2. These have everywhere advanced in accordance with the local condition of climate, &c., as far as, at least, the class and order are concerned, a diversity taking place in the minor gradations. 3. This development is still going on. But we will allow this writer to explain himself. To the question, In what way was the creation of animated beings effected? He replies, “The ordinary notion may, I think, be described as this: that the Almighty author produced the progenitors of all existing species, by some sort of personal or immediate exertion. But how does this notion comport with what we have seen of the gradual advance of species, &c.?” The author then goes on to show that, as the world was not formed directly by God, but only under the influence of general laws, “what,” says he, “is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws?” He admits that God created the laws of matter; but this is a mere shifting of the question, seeing matter and the laws of matter are the same. If matter at first existed without God, so did its laws; and, of course, by such an argument as this, a God is merely a superfluity—a something supernumerary, for which we can see no possible use. This author teaches that organised bodies and mind are formed by certain laws out of dead, inert matter. Let him disguise it as he may, it is just an old song to a new tune—it is nothing more nor less than materialism.

So far as general laws are concerned, we see that one plant produces another plant of its own class, order, genus, and species, and that one animal produces another animal of a like kind; but that mere matter produces organisms, or life in any shape, we have no proof whatsoever. To draw any argument for a progression of animal life up from the lowest mollusc to man, from such an argument as that the “human embryo passes through the whole space representing the invertebrate animals in the first month,” (printed by our author in marked letters,) is mere trifling—and is almost on a par with the wits of a mere embryo. Because a human foetus, at a certain stage of its being, resembles an oyster or a mussel, is that any reason for arguing that man himself may have once been a mussel, or that both arose out of certain conditions of the air and elements? Our author would do well to remember the remark of Plato, that while we are in this state of existence, slumbering and, as it were, dreaming, we cannot see the truth of things except by shadows, as we see them in our sleep; and it is a certain truth, that we do not know the substance or essence of any of the works in nature, but only some of their qualities and properties. For example, all that we know of an animal or a vegetable is, that it has such or such qualities, and by these we define it; but what is the substance of it, and what is the hidden essence producing all these hidden qualities, we cannot tell.

Then as to body—what do we know of it? We see merely the outward cover—and as to the origin of things, all else is mere guess-work. To form any tolerable theory at all, we must imagine a primary or primordial matter common to all visible things, and becoming the subject of the natural or sublunary elements. The conception of this original matter, to which we must assign a capacity or aptitude to receive all forms, are essentials, and although the obscurest and least visible or tangible of all things, are still postulates which must be taken as granted, before we can even begin to speculate on the present constitution of things. Having thus created our primordial matter and our elements, to these principles we must next add form, which draws matter, as it were, out of its chaotic state, or nebulous state, impresses it with a distinctive character, and renders it an object of the senses. We do not mean to say that there ever was actually any matter without body, or body without quality, but they may be so separated by the mind for the better contemplation of the well-ordered generation of things. But to proceed in our analysis—the first form that matter assumes is extension, by which its parts become continuous and contiguous,—that is, are joined to one another, and have one common boundary, which is threefold—length, breadth, and depth. This trinity of extension, so to speak, is the only conception we can form of what may be called “pure and original body.” Extension enters into the primary conception of it. But extension, although the inseparable quality of all objects or bodies, is itself preceded by something as its source or initial education, without which it would not exist. A point, or unity, is the essential constituent of a line, the line of a superficies, the superficies of a solid—so that unity is the essential principle of extension. But even here, body is too vague for scientific contemplation. Its extension must be bounded, but the bound or limit of body is figure; but even this in its turn is still something vague and indefinite, scarcely an object for the natural philosopher. It is only body mathematical—but this not being sufficient for the purposes of nature, it must be invested with other forms—not only the external form must be duly bounded, but the internal parts must be duly organised,—that is, the materials must be properly adjusted, disposed, and arranged, which give rise to body physical. Now, here lies the great difficulty;—Are organic, living sentient beings, the mere results of the “general laws” of matter acting upon matter, and God only present as the framer of the laws by which it acts? or does this state of sublunary things clearly indicate the presence of a Divine Mind—in their contrivance, order, regularity, utility, and beauty? We are all agreed that, although the common subject matter of all external forms or beings be in itself boundless and void of all form, yet the question comes to be—Has matter certain laws within itself capable of proceeding from the inert chaotic mass to the formation of man, and, for aught we know, still higher beings may be in store in the elements of matter? or were they impressed with form from the First Great Cause of all things, from whom proceeds every form, the bound of every destined being, and the whole of its essence or essential nature? This is too large a field to enter upon at present. We shall not fail, however, to pursue the author of this very dangerous and fanciful book to the ultimate conclusions on which all his principles, which are neither new nor ingenious, ultimately rest, and to prove that religion can receive no damage from such pretensions. This we shall leave till another number.