The world and the Logos
Thompson, Hugh Miller, 1830-1902
**V*'?. •ft mir ^ i ‘ vl r n\ ~c\ »V "^irV ' *'• v Ui ^ytvfW Jk .4* vpkVK;3«U>. ■ , fe -s$: A /$&% sSivAi:,: •_ f- $\ *S%*§. ’r \* 1 '^sJSSN^ ■ ■ ’*• y«*> -;: • ?►, 4? i /fee*' ;■ : v ;-i < <*>' 3 1.* ; Wj£?i \ !A^L W COT* . >&■$} &/ '■ l«5 r •— - .ift. fc”a - W# >wslsipb' 'lPK'%%Fi &7\ ._ _•* 1: >\ ... ... ,. ot H« 8te»l»9<«i * ijjtf8®4 "'%<), C? PRINCETON, N. J. BT 712 . T46 1886 Thompson, Hugh Miller, 1830 1902. The world and the Logos 'rflAj ' mm <5TJs£<-* K3$£-s «^v (J; - Jr t ■-.;. •VY^S wmM m& £#'?, vS&; ( : / •*. -- - JtjM ■ £?•* i-' pp. lSw * > •• ,< - •v ygjf \ ' ; %L’. , .a L- -V - >•'- ;' [A“* t--.v V 'J k ._ ... |_J f *:« • £s:£«^:£* . .. ... gj |J5f fo*f w&t «ea |K| m « 4?. « / THE BEDELL LECTURES Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/worldlogosOOthom BEDELL LECTURES on the Evidences of Religion. I. The World’s Testimony to Jesus Christ ; or, The Power of Christianity in Developing Modern Civilization. By the Rt. Rev. John Williams, D.D., Bishop of Connecticut. Svo, cloth extra ....... $1.00 “Contains more than can often be found in ten times the space . . . An historical argument, so clear and so powerful that nothing beyond the stating of it is needed.” — The Churchman. “The argument is massive and simple.” — Stand¬ ard of the Cross. II. Revealed Religion Expounded by its Relations to the Moral Being of God. By the Rt. Rev. Henry Cotterill, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. Svo, cloth extra . . . $1.00 “Dr. Cotterill is a profound theologian, a ripe scholar, and an eminent preacher. His lecture con¬ denses the highest results of ancient and modern thought on the subject, and is the best argument possible against the spirit of unbelief which is so rapidly spreading over the Christian world.” — Com¬ mercial Advertiser. III. The World and the Logos. By the Rt. Rev. Hugh Miller Thompson, D.D., Asst. Bishop of Mississippi. 8vo, cloth . . . $1.00 G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, Publishers, New York. THE BEDELL LECTURES, 1885 THE World and the Logos HUGH MILLER THOMPSON, S.T.D., LL.D. Assistant Bishop of Mississippi NEW YORK & LONDON G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS ^nicKerbocktr |)rtss 1 886 COPYRIGHT BY G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 1886 Press of G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York EXTRACTS From the communication of the donors to the Board of Trustees of the Theological Semi¬ nary of the Diocese of Ohio and Kenyon Col¬ lege. Cleveland, June 21, 1880. Gentlemen: We have consecrated and set apart for the service of God the sum of $5,000, to be devoted to the estab¬ lishment of a lecture or lectures in the Institutions at Gambier on the Evidences of Natural and Re¬ vealed Religion; or the Relations of Science and Religion. We ask permission of the Trustees to establish the lecture immediately, with the following provisions: The lecture or lectures shall be delivered bien¬ nially on Founders’ Day (if such a day shall be established), or other appropriate time. During our lifetime, or the lifetime of either of us, the nomination of the lectureship shall rest with us. The interest for two years on the fund, less the sum necessary to pay for the publication, shall be paid to the Lecturer. The Lecturer shall also have one half of the net profits of the publication during the first two years after the date of publication. All other profits shall EXTRACTS. be the property of the Board, and shall be added to the capital of the lectureship. We express our preference that the lecture or lectures shall be delivered in the Church of the Holy Spirit, if such building be in existence; and shall be delivered in the presence of all the members of the Institutions under the authority of the Board. We ask that the day on which the lecture or the first of each series of lectures shall be delivered, shall be declared a holiday. We wish that the nomination to this lectureship shall be restricted by no other consideration than the ability of the appointee to discharge the duty to the highest glory of God in the completest presentation of the subject. We desire that the lectures shall be published in uniform shape, and that a copy of each shall be placed in the libraries of Bexley Hall, Ken¬ yon College and of the Philomethesian and the Nu Pi Kappa Society. Asking the favorable consider¬ ation of the Board of Trustees, We remain with great respect, G. T. Bedell, Julia Bedell. The Board accepted the gift, approved the terms, named All Saints’ Day, November the first, as Founders’ Day, and made it a holi¬ day. LECTURE FIRST. “ IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD.” St. John’s Gospel, i., i. The New Testament, like the Old, begins with beginnings. Both, also, begin with Rea¬ son .T Each introduces us into an ordered universe — a kosmos, forming or formed out of a chaos. In each, also, this kosmos is crowned, as by the highest creative activity of the Eternal Logos, by a rational being, a finite Logos, breathed out from the Infinite One, and made in the image and the likeness of that. And for this finite Logos all the kosmos exists. He is, in a sense, its lord, the viceroy over it, and has it in charge to render it more 1 Whatever we may conclude with regard to the Mosaic account of creation, so-called, this is to be said for it : that it is plain, coherent, logical in itself, accounting for all the facts, — and that, so far, it is the only cosmogony of which this can be said. The mythical cosmogonies of India or Scandinavia, with their sup¬ porting Tortoises or Life-Trees, are clearly poetical escapes from difficulties. The doctrine of evolution, so-called, does not deal with the question of creation at all — dodges, that is, all the difficulties. I 2 BEDELL LECTURES. orderly, more cosmical, more rational during its continuance. There are voices called scientific, which deny all this and more. How profoundly contra¬ dictory to the utterance of St. John in the fourth gospel, these voices are, few have per¬ haps considered. That science is opposed in some way to the first chapter of Genesis, is more or less clear in the minds of intelligent believers. But that it is, in its latest reaches, opposed quite as irreconcilably, and on pro¬ founder philosophy, to the Gospel of St. John, is not so commonly understood. For in this first chapter there is a method of creation stated, and a philosophy of creation as well. The philosophy is this : Eternal Reason existed antecedent to all else. This Eternal Reason was with God, was God, and created all things. In this Reason was life, independent existence, and light, all illumination material and immaterial, and the Eternal Reason made a reasonable, rational world, a kosmos. The purpose of this making was so definite, had so clear an end and meaning, that to carry it out fully when due time came, the Eternal Reason put Himself under the conditions of HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 3 humanity, which He had made in His own image : “ The Word became flesh and tented2 among us.” Now the latest voices of science join issue with all this. They declare that there are no beginnings, that beginnings are “ unthinkable.” They tell us that nothing was made, that all things have just grown. They insist that there was no reason in the making, and that there is no reason in the continuance, that there is no purpose anywhere, no end for which any thing exists, and that a purposeless world glimmers upon its little road for a few years, more or less, with its little population of insects and fishes, birds and reptiles, worms and men, till it swings back into the fire-mist and weltering chaos out of which it was once shot, red-hot, by some accident, some where, and at some time, of which when and where we are and must be entirely ignorant.3 2 e(dktjvgo6ey. 3 Evolution necessarily begins with something already existing. It leaves the question of creation and its purposes untouched as insolu¬ ble. In the philosophy of Mr. Spencer, matter is self-existent, and the universe, or parts of it, vibrate forth from the fire-mist of the supposed nebulae into plants, animals, men, governments, religions, and philosophies, and then back into fire-mist again. Mr. S. says : “The absolute commencement (Anglice, beginning) of organic life on the globe I distinctly deny. The affirmation of universal evolution is, in itself, the negative of an absolute commencement of any thing.” 4 BEDELL LECTURES. Between these two conceptions of the world’s cause and meaning no reconciliation is possi¬ ble. I want you to understand this at the threshold. There is a vague idea that “science,” as it is called, is opposed to religion, that it has en¬ dangered our faith, and that religion needs to be reconciled with it. There is a notion com¬ mon, too, that the reconciliation is possible, that we only need to find some new explana¬ tion for some chapters in Genesis, make some trifling changes of readings in our Bibles, and a reconciliation between science and religion will follow. To effect this desirable end many simple- minded and honest men are at work on both sides, with various results. But let us understand at the beginning, that what arrogates for itself to-day the name of science as its special own — the theory of evo¬ lution, namely, and, in biology, the theory of descent — prides itself on a denial of any begin¬ nings, a denial of any rational continuance or intelligent purpose, a denial of any making, and a denial of any intended end. It is not a dealing with the Mosaic account of the creation. It is a theory which denies all HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 5 creation and compels you to assert that there is not, and never was, a Logos at all, and that Jesus Christ was, like all other men as well as all organized things, an outcome of Bathybi- an slime ! Across the iron working of me¬ chanic fatalism can come no reason, either of God or men, either finite or infinite. One act of self-centred will, one stroke of resolute self¬ organizing purpose would annihilate the entire philosophy of evolution, as the discovery of a star whose motion is upon right angles, would destroy the Newtonian theory. That science and revealed religion are not antagonistic, we are fond here of believing. That seeming contentions can be reconciled, we feel certain. But let us understand what we say. Here, as in so many cases, we need definitions. If by science we mean theories based, not on demonstration, but on assumptions made a priori , on inferences, not from facts, but from words and formulas ; if, in short, we allow a metaphysics to be imposed upon us as natural science, we shall find the reconciliation impos¬ sible, and useless, if it were not impossible. Let us define science. If we understand by science ordered human knowledge, we shall not be far wrong. 6 BEDELL LECTURES. In science, therefore, are two things : the facts, and the ordering of the facts. There is a possibility of error about both. 1. The fact may not be truly ascertained. 2. The inference drawn from the fact, the meaning we find in it, the story it tells us, may be mistaken/* The collector of facts exercises one set of human faculties. The organizer of the facts into their place in a logical science, exercises quite another and a higher. The first needs, mainly, quick, correct perceptions. The other requires a trained, logical intellect. Farther still. The fact-collector may be of the highest excellence in his department, and a Sir Charles Lyell (“Antiquity of Man”) has some discussions upon a human pelvic bone, found in Mississippi mud near Natchez* and on a human skeleton found in the same mud near New Orleans, sixteen feet below the surface. Dr. Dowling, a New Orleans physi¬ cian of some note, assigned to this skeleton, from calculations of the mud deposit of the Delta, an antiquity of 50,000 years ; other geolo¬ gists give it 100,000. Sir Charles gives 100,000 years to the formation of the Delta, from a calculation of the annual mud deposit. During this autumn (1885) while sinking an artesian well for a “ Cold Storage Warehouse ” in New Orleans, the head of a child's china doll was brought up from a depth of tzventy-five feet below the sur¬ face of the most solid ground, on which heavy buildings stand in the city of New Orleans ( New Orleans' Picayune, Sept. 18, 1885). What has been said of medicine may be said of other sciences, espe¬ cially geology. “ There is nothing so uncertain as scientific theories, except scientific facts." HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 7 quite useless in the logical dealing with his discoveries. And the intellect best trained and fitted to see the meaning, bearing, and classification of facts may really never have discovered one ! There can be, in true science, also, no authorities. Names in science have no weight. The facts themselves are sacred. Being genu¬ ine facts, no denial, no ignorance, no sophistry touches them. But the uses made of them in any theory, the conclusions drawn from them, and the place, in any system, assigned them, are always subject to revision ; because, while the fact itself is infallible, the reasoning about it is always fallible, and often, as the event has shown, very fallible and blundering indeed.4 In the widest sense we are compelled to say that, the facts set aside, science has in it that element of human fallibility which makes it quite impossible to assert that any of its con¬ clusions may not require re-examination. 4 The history of the various editions of Sir Charles Lyell’s “ Prin¬ ciples of Geology ” is a striking illustration. The amiable naturalist with precisely the same facts before him, through eight editions taught the permanency of species and the doctrine of specific crea¬ tion. In the tenth, without a solitary new fact, he proclaims his adherence to the theory of evolution. The change was subjective, and accidentally shows a man’s responsibility for his faith — how en¬ tirely his scientific faith even is of his own making. 8 BEDELL LECTURES. It is no presumption, on the part of any thinking man, to take the sceptical position with regard to even the best-established con¬ clusion of science, and call upon it again to give a reason for its existence. We understand, of course, that, in the larger definition of science, theories must come in, working hypotheses, which are understood to be tentative, although assumed for the time as certain. But how effectual a theory may be as working hypothesis, and how absurdly false in fact, is shown in this, that the Ptolemaic theory served for ages for the working of all problems in practical astronomy. But a “ work¬ ing hypothesis ” is not a part of science, though it may explain many things, and help in the discovery of genuine fact. From what I have said, you will perceive that I decline to be overawed by names in science, and I decline also to accept conclusions, derived from facts, the validity of which de¬ pends upon the correctness of human reason, as being necessarily infallible or not amenable to my own re-examination, and to be accepted or rejected by my own judgment. And just here all of us have the right, and I believe it is our duty, to protest respectfully HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 9 but firmly against the tone assumed by some scientific men. That tone is thoroughly un¬ scientific, dogmatic, and intolerant. There is, for instance, no measure to the contempt and scorn which such a writer as the German Os¬ car Schmidt treats those who hold to the doc¬ trine of design, who claim to see any purpose or meaning in any thing whatever in the universe.5 Such a temper unfits a man for scientific dis¬ cussion, and its manifestation puts him outside the bounds of that comity which is the law be¬ tween thinking and serious men. And yet, though this writer is peculiarly of¬ fensive, he only goes a little beyond what is the common attitude of many '‘scientific” men, so-called, towards believers in God, and especially believers in revelation. Dogma¬ tism, intolerance of contradiction, assertion to be taken without reasoning, sneers at religion and religious ideas as blindness, childishness, and superstition, the assumption that a Chris¬ tian believer cannot understand science, and is ruled out of scientific discussion, — all this is il¬ lustrated in the writings of men of a certain school, too commonly to need citations here in 6 “ The Doctrine of Descent, and Darwinism,” by Oscar Schmidt. IO BEDELL LECTURES. proof, and this, in the face of that bede-roll of splendid names which have adorned science and religion equally. We owe it to ourselves to resent this un¬ scientific and even insulting attitude. No attainments in science make a man in¬ fallible. No name, in that field at least, is sacred. No work done within it but lies open to the cold irreverent criticism, and the passion¬ less judgment, of any man who insists on doing his own thinking and is competent to the doing it. Because “ I believe in God the Father Al¬ mighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,” I shall not allow myself to be warned off the study of that Fath¬ er’s works and worlds, because some modern scientist has concluded, since he finds not that Maker in his crucible nor under his microscope, that therefore there is no Maker at all, or, if there be, that, as Mr. Spencer majestically in¬ forms me, nobody can know any thing about Him. One is tempted to put together just here the names of the scientific thinkers, beginning with Bacon, who have been and are Christians, and the names of those who hold that the HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. I 1 world has no maker, and ask the latter if they rule Bacon and Newton out. One, at all events, can well afford to sit in their unscientific and superstitious company. But I have set myself to call no man Rabbi here, and to bring no authority from a name. There is nothing in the history of science, considering its theories and hypotheses as a part of science, which entitles it to stand upon the certainty of any theory of to-day. When one considers the theories that have perished in chemistry, until the new chemistry, with the hypothesis of unitary structure, has seated itself amid the ruins of the old ; in geology, from the theories of the Plutonists and Neptunists to the evolutionary, — a man like Sir Charles Lyell going through them all in his own lifetime, and the successive editions of one book ; in biology, the corpuscular, the fluid, the chemical theories, and now the con¬ tending material and psychical ; the emission and undulatory theories of light, the vortices of Descartes, and the attraction of Newton ; the Ptolemaic “cycles and epicycles, orb in orb,” and the Copernican central sun in astronomy ; the phlogistic, caloric, and molecular theories of heat ; in view, in short, of explanatory 12 BEDELL LECTURES. theories painfully wrought out, painfully de¬ fended, universally accepted as sufficient, and universally exploded at last, he is a very rash man who will dare to assert that any existing theory is a finality, and a very irrational and impertinent man who, assuming its infallibility, will insist that I must deny the existence of God, because his personal scientific theory does not need a God ! But if one goes behind the theory, be it what it may, to the very facts on which the theory is supposed to be founded, he finds himself in a mist of uncertainty. This Pro¬ teus matter, with which natural science deals, and which alone, some wise men say, is worth our study, is not to be measured, weighed, seen, nor bounded. It forever eludes us. We have no instruments to gauge it. There is no absolute measure or weight in nature. There is a variable in all our calculations. Never yet had we an exact pound, an exact foot, or yard ; and no man, with most perfect instru¬ ments, ever drew an exact circle, or an exact square. Keplers laws are ideal, not actual. Newton’s calculations are true in the heavens of the intellect, and not in the heavens of our stars. There is no perfect ellipse, no exact HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 13 orbit, no equal movements among the stars in their courses. On matter everywhere, and all its doings, is the stamp of uncertainty, and an allowance for error must come into every experiment, and be admitted in our best tested and most assured fact. No man knows, better than the scientific man, the element of error which underlies our most careful and conscientious dealing with matter. It plays us tricks con¬ tinually, and at last modern science, in despair of it, has relegated it, under the name of atom, (if it really admit of existence at all), into the infinite dark of blank agnosticism, where no sense can test it, no microscope detect it, but where, at all events, it has the certainty of an ideal. For, as a matter of fact, when it comes to the last issue, the only real things, the only true and abiding things, the only measurable and weighable things, are things ideal. The mathematical line of Euclid is straight. No line drawn by man ever was. Euclid’s point existed and forever exists, but only in the thought of the thinker. The line, the point, the angle are abiding and eternal, for they belong to thought. But we must tell our 14 BEDELL LECTURES. naturalists they cannot play fast and loose with us in this business of atoms. One in¬ genious scientist6 has told us, to explain how small they are, that if a drop of water were made as large as the earth, the atoms compos¬ ing it would be larger than marbles, but not quite as large as cricket-balls ! And these atoms are the ultimate and indivisible. We must really recall our atomistic friends to clear thinking. Just as long as the atom can be conceived at all, whether as ‘‘marbles” or “ cricket-balls,” it must be conceived capable of division into halves, quarters, or any num¬ ber of fractions. Just as long as the atom is that protean thing, matter, at all, just so long will it play them the tricks of matter. They must put the atom, as the last result, into the realm of the ideal, — a thing which be¬ longs to the pure intellect ; so only can they be certain of keeping it an atom, in that great day when a drop of water becomes as large as a world ! But why should I dwell upon the uncertain¬ ties of material science, when its latest teachers themselves are uncertain whether matter exists at all, when, at all events, even granting its 6 Sir William Thompson. HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 15 existence, it is out of our power to know any thing about it or even its qualities ; for are we not in a world where we can have only sensa¬ tions, where all we know are our sensations, and where, at best, we have only a faint sort of right to infer that there may be some thing outside answering to those sensations ? — a “ permanent possibility of sensation ” at best ? Indeed, in the elaboration of the latest think¬ ing in this direction, the distinguished author7 seems to be uncertain whether he himself exists, or rather is quite certain he does not. The only thing he is sure of, appears to be, that “ the Power behind phenomena is in¬ scrutable.” One therefore may come, I think, without any restraining awe, certainly without any con¬ ceited presumption, to ask again of a theory that leads to such uncertain results — whether it is absolutely true, and covers and accounts for all the facts, so that the world just made itself, and keeps on making and unmaking itself, without any maker, and without any reason ? For this, as I said at the beginning is what now claims to be regarded as science : that is, that something which is known. 7 Mr. Herbert Spencer. 1 6 BEDELL LECTURES. It is called evolution in physics, and nat¬ ural selection, or “ survival of the fittest,” in biology. Now let me say just here that it is folly, and worse, to speak lightly or disrespectfully of Mr. Darwin, the keen, careful observer, the delightful reporter of discoveries, the amiable, kindly gentleman. That Mr. Spencer, who is the author of a philosophy which under¬ takes to explain the universe by evolution, and who has formulated a series of “ laws ” by which the universe makes and unmakes itself, is the peer of any man living for abstruse thinking and metaphysic speculation, goes without saying. How inconclusive I believe Mr. Darwin’s reasoning from his facts, how wide the gaps he leaves unexplained, how gal¬ lantly he imagines where facts fail him, and how easily he gives up his theory in later edi¬ tions, or bolsters it with new inventions, do not, in the slightest, lesson my admiration for the enthusiastic student of orchids and pigeons, and the delightful naturalist of the Beagle. That Mr. Spencer reasons most perversely, as it seems to me ; is confused and confusing, invents a new language, and gives new mean¬ ings to old English words ; that his conclusions HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 17 are irrational and sometimes “ unthinkable ” (to use a word of his own) ; that he deals freely in “ pseud-ideas,” and facts which are not facts, does not make him any the less a man of great ability, honest, and honestly working, according to his lights, at explaining, after his fashion, a theory of the universe which he is trying to make coherent, and which will have its day, and pass away among other equally fantastic theories of the universe, which have faded into Prof. Tyndall’s “ infi¬ nite azure of the past.” We have no disrespect for either of these gentlemen when we decline to accept their theories as science, and we beg to say that when their names are mentioned, as they sometimes are, as if that should end all dis¬ cussion, our awe is not awakened at the sound, nor our opinion of the intellectual capacity of the namers greatly elevated. The question simply is, Does the theory of evolution account for all the facts ? There is not a man among you, trained to any clear logical thinking, who is not as capable of an¬ swering that question as either of these gentle¬ men. They have no data which you do not possess. The dealing with the data is just 1 8 BEDELL LECTURES. a matter of sound thinking — belongs entirely to the realm of logic. But what is the theory ? Not merely evolu¬ tion. In an evolution in nature all students of nature recognize a familiar fact. Every sprout¬ ing seed reveals it. But such evolution is from the potential to the actual. Every acorn is an oak in germ. The evolution is by a fixed law towards a fixed end, according to a fixed purpose. On definite lines clearly settled by some intelligence, all things develop or evolve from the germ. The germ contains the prod¬ uct in potency — contains it perhaps, in fact, had we eyes to see it. Under the idea that this is what is meant by evolution, many Christian men have the no¬ tion that they may be evolutionists and Chris¬ tians also. If God made the world a living world, a seminarium and seed-bed of things, in which all things were potentially and to appear actually in their time, it is about what St. Au¬ gustine held, and a goodly catena of the Schol¬ astics, including Aquinas. If this were the reconcilement meant, it might not seem hard to reconcile science and religion. As the late Charles Kingsley put it : “ We knew of old that God was so wise that He could make all HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 19 things, but behold He is so much wiser than even that, that He can make all things make themselves.” But the doctrine of evolution, as “ science ” puts it before us, is another thing altogether. According to this, which now calls itself sci¬ ence, and is so understood as an unassaila¬ ble, determinate conclusion by most ignorant readers, we are required to hold that there is no God to begin with, that there is no Rea¬ son and no Will, that no operation in nature has any intelligence or any purpose, that all these makings, and evolutions, so-called, and developments, are merely the surgings and rhythmical heavings of brute matter and brute force, signifying nothing. The human eye, while being far from per¬ fect, is yet a wonderful and admirable instru¬ ment, in comparison with which the most per¬ fect telescope or microscope is a poor clumsy contrivance. But how came the human eye, and for what purpose was it intended ? You and I would say, the eye was constructed for the purpose of seeing. That seems to be the only conclusion for sane common-sense, and the healthy action of non-crazy human think¬ ing. But the system which insists upon itself 20 BEDELL LECTURES. as “ science, ” which demands that we shall ac¬ cept more wonders than all the miracles of all religions, true and false, ancient or modern, upon the word of one Englishman, tells us no ! The eye was not made to see by ! There was no purpose of the sort governing its development ! Matter, in an infinite num¬ ber of trillions of years, by infinite trillions of happy chances, preserving the beneficial varia¬ tions, and letting the unbeneficial die, gradu¬ ally kept on developing, not knowing what it wanted, having no sense more than any lump of mud, until it developed — never mean¬ ing to do so — the eye of a philosopher or the eye of an eagle ! I might be willing to grant Mr. Darwin’s theory as sufficient for the eye of a philoso¬ pher, if his theory be philosophy, but I decline to accept it for the eye of the eagle.8 I have not misrepresented nor exaggerated. The theory of evolution which insists that it is “ science ” has to face, among other things, the question of the eye. It is not by any means its most puzzling question. But such is the way it meets it : the eye was not made for 8 See Mr. Darwin’s account of the origin of the eye, “Origin of Species,” pp. 222, 226. HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 21 the purpose of seeing. That would concede reason, purpose, a brain, and sense in the making of the world, and would annihilate the whole “ science,” which requires us to believe that in matter alone is the power, potency, and sufficiency of all life and all thought.9 I cannot here quote, our time is too short. I just state what is familiar to all readers of what calls itself “ science,” that the dogma taken for granted, insisted upon as needing no proof, offered for our acceptance as the first step in wisdom, is that there is no meaning, no purpose, no aim, and no end — in short, no sense in the universe ! The whole system of Mr. Spencer, for instance, formally drawn out and stated, only pretends, in its long-winded Greek compounds, to register what is. For myself I do not believe, of course, that it does that, nor anywhere near that. But its foundation prin¬ ciple is that ; at its best, that is all it can do. It is precluded from undertaking to tell us the by whom and the why ! undertakes to tell us of the how only, and blunders and stutters about that, because it fetters its movement with the two balls and chains of its slavery — there is no who, and there is no Why ! 9 Mr. Darwin, again and again, admits that if any purpose were discoverable — if, for instance, even flowers were intended to be beau¬ tiful, it would destroy his theory. 22 BEDELL LECTURES. Let us clearly understand that before we go one step farther. The thing that calls itself “science,” that arrogates that magnificent name in our day, begins with the magisterial assertion that the how alone is within our power, and bounds the limit of our thought. H ow the thing is, it is “ scientific ” to enquire. Who made it, what is it, and why it is what it is, we are told are illegitimate questions. It is a waste of time to ask them. They lead to the inscrutable. That is the only thing certain. Now with the utmost required and becoming respect for Mr. Spencer, am I to be shut up to the bounds he arbitrarily assigns to human thinking ? The very questions which he puts aside as impossible and senseless — the “ from what ” and the “ why ” of things — have been the central questions of thinkers (compared to whom, with all respect to him, he is a babe in arms) since the dawn of recorded thought, and are the central and main questions yet. The how is the question of the artist, the arranger, the tabulator, the “ scientist ” at best ; the “by what ” and the “ for what ” are the ques¬ tions of the common heart, and the common sense, and the common need, as they are of the deepest philosophy. HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 23 But here we touch a very strange fact. The system of evolution, like every other system of philosophy, is an attempt to explain the rationale of things. It arises, as all do, from an innate and ever-present demand of the in¬ tellect for reasons, for causes, for an order. The principle of causality is imperative in human thinking. There is nothing more so. Consciously or unconsciously it is at work. The boor’s mind asserts it, as does the phil¬ osopher’s. There is no difference, in the begin¬ ning, between them. The only difference is in the rationality and sense of the conclusions reached. The crudest human thinking turns to the universe about it, and to itself and its life, and demands a whence, a why, and a how. A cause for an effect. The constitution of man is such that he requires a reason for things, and it is to that imperative requirement that he owes all his advancement in knowledge. It is the parent of all his philosophies, sciences, and theologies. The apple falls. But why does it fall ? Not merely, mark you how? for the answer then would simply register a pro¬ cess without satisfactory reason. But why ? by what cause, and for what purpose ? And here is the great and fatal lack in the 24 BEDELL LECTURES. entire system of evolution as a philosophy.10 In England alone, possibly, and in shop-keep¬ ing England, not the England of Bacon or Shakespeare, but the England of Cobden and Bright, could such a system have ventured to assume the name of philosophy. True or false, it is a mere registering of the how — the man¬ ner of the process. It scornfully scouts the idea that we can know the whence or the why, the cause and the meaning. There is that sort of shallow practicality about it which belongs to buyers and sellers, to the men of cotton- mills and spinning-jennies, and a farthing bet¬ ter on a bolt of calico and a farthing less on a cotton bale, to whom no thinking which does not think out profit is of any use. And yet, though the master of the system tells us that there is nothing so certain as that the by what and the why are utterly inscruta¬ ble, and the pupils tell us that to inquire about them is a childish waste of time, we are here met by the curious fact (for human nature is a 10 The evolution philosophy is like the philosophy of the locomotive which would tabulate the revolution of the wheels, the pressure of the steam, the consumption of the coal, the number of pieces in the machinery, while resolutely insisting that the questions “ Who made it?” and “ What was it made for?” are quite impractical — in fact, “unthinkable.” There is no doubt but a very practical knowledge — sufficient to run the engine — would be thus acquired. HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 25 persistent affair, and cannot be choked by- philosophers), that still the old questions are put ; that even they themselves, whether or no, must put them ; and that their en¬ tire philosophies are attempts to make the universe an ordered kosmos, to make it respectably sensible and rational to human thought. And first of all, if the philosophy be true ; if, by the blind working of blind force, man and man’s brain and man’s sense and reason come out of slime without any purpose ; if in all the infinite ages past there was no sense and no aim, but only an infinite set of chances ; how comes it that this senseless and purpose¬ less power evolves a being who turns round and demands of it how it came to do this, and by what power and for what end ? How came a senseless force to evolve a sensible man ? An irrational brute movement to create a reason ? A thing that cannot put two and two together to evolve a creature who turns round on this thing, criticises its action, blames its processes, demands to know its meaning, writes “ First Principles ” and other philo¬ sophic books about it, drags it bound to his bar of judgment, and when its workings do 26 BEDELL LECTURES. not suit him, checks or upsets those workings at his will ? For you understand, of course, that by this philosophy there is but one force in heaven above or earth beneath ; that it is the same force driving on to mad ruin in the cyclone of the western prairie, and in the mother’s voice singing her babe to sleep in the cottage in its path ; that in the rotting swamp that breeds the pestilence, where foul things twist and crawl, and the heavy air bears poisonous death, the force is just the same as that which weaves the lofty measures of “ The Idyls of the King,” or writes Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “ First Principles,” — as much sense and purpose in it at one time as another. I fail to see how the rational can come out of the irrational. To me the conception is “ unthinkable ” — an utterly “ pseud-idea,” to use pet phrases. I simply cannot commit the intellectual suicide which requires me to believe that a thing like the eye of an eagle was not made, but produced through trillions of years by millions of happy chances, which chanced to survive, and that it was not intended in any of those millions of years as a thing to see by. I must decline to be scolded out of my com¬ mon-sense in the name of “ science.” HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 27 If I find a piece of chipped flint, a poor, clumsy little bit of stone hacked into a rude triangular form, there is not a living scientist that will not tell me “ that was made by a man, a rational man, and it had a final end ; it was meant for shooting with.” Yet I find so mar¬ vellous a structure as the human eye, and a great scientist has a great intellect so twisted by the worship of his “ idols of the cave,” that he tells me it was never made, and it certainly was not evolved for the purpose of seeing ! I think no reflecting man can fail to be struck with the position man occupies upon the earth in regard to this matter. He de¬ mands that the world shall give an account of itself — shall be a sane world. By his mental constitution he is compelled to believe there is a cause for what he sees and a purpose in things. The world is not a mad-house. Things go by rule. And on that conviction man masters the world. For, when he finds things unreasonable, he sets to work rationaliz¬ ing them. He dikes in the river; he drains the marsh ; he fells the forest ; he walls out the sea. He blasts the hills open and bursts his way into the mine. He removes moun- 28 BEDELL LECTURES. tains, as was promised, by faith — faith in his own sense, and in the world’s sense also. He has modified the face of the earth in the his¬ toric period — that is, in the time in which we know any thing about him, or the world either — more than all blind forces, tides, winds, earthquakes, together.11 Every step he takes is based upon the conviction that there is sense in things which will answer to his sense, that the world made by a Logos will respond to the dealings of a Logos, that brains somehow fit in with the management of the world, and that its force, in any shape, can be understood by brains, managed and even mastered by brains. The poets, who express the inmost heart and root of things, by that insight which makes them seers, and with the central truth which makes them teachers and sages, have never doubted about a world with sense, a world made for something, good for something. In every drama of Shakespeare the scene is in a world where the laws are laws with a meaning and laws with an end. From Sopho¬ cles and Euripides to Alfred Tennyson, the 11 See “ The Earth as Modified by Human Action,” by George P. Marsh. HUGH MILLER THOMPSON. 29 poets, like the real philosophers, do not fear to tell us of a world that has a meaning. That “ one increasing purpose runs Through all the circles of the suns,” has been the faith of all the intellectual guides of men. The mind rejects the teachers of blindness, senselessness, and chaos coming again. I stand in amazement, at times, before the attitude of these men, who demand of me intellectual suicide in this matter of final causes. Such a man as Sir Henry Thompson, for instance, is so paralyzed by the temporary scientific fashion, so stands in awe of a form of words, that he feels compelled to apologize, because, in a late article, he ventures to suggest that the decay of the teeth in old age might signify that the old man need not eat so much beef and mutton as formerly ! Here, in an institution of liberal learning, I may surely plead for intellectual liberty, against the fetters of a system which would impose itself under the name of science without scien¬ tific proof. Mr. Darwin finds that under domestication and the care of men, plants and animals, pi- 30 BEDELL LECTURES. geons especially, will take on peculiar forms. At the same time the pigeons are always pigeons, never become eagles, nor even geese. Also, as soon as this intelligent oversight is removed, the evidence is, that, left to his own devices, all the peculiarities will disappear, and tumbler and fantail and pouter will become rock pigeons like their grandmothers. So far science . That much we know. 