behold were undirected and undesigned, or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is atheistic." No argument, after what has been said above, can be needed to show that Mr. Darwin does teach that natural causes are " undirected," and that they act without design or reference to an end. This is not only explicitly and repeatedly asserted, but argued for, and the opposite view ridiculed and rejected. His book was hailed as the death-blow of teleology. ^ Darwin, therefore, does teach precisely what Dr. Gray pronounces atheism. A man, it seems, may believe in God, and yet teach atheism.
The anti-theistic and materialistic character of this theory is stiL further shown by what Mr. Darwin says of our mental powers " In the distant future," he says, " I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new founda- tion, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power anc. capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." ^ Of this prediction he has himself attempted the verification in his recent work on the " Descent of Man," in which he endeavours to prove that man is a developed ape. The Bible says ; Man was created in the image of God.
It is a mere Hypothesis.
A fourth remark on this theory is that it is a mere hypothesis, from its nature incapable of proof. It may take its place beside the nebular hypothesis as an ingenious method of explaining many of the phenomena of nature. We see around us, in the case of domestic animals, numerous varieties produced by the operations of natural causes. In the vegetable world this diversity is still greater. Mr. Darwin's theory would account for all these facts. It accounts, moreover, for the unity of plan on which all animals of the same class or order are constructed ; for the undeveloped organs found rudimentally in almost all classes of living creatures ; for the different forms through which the embryo passes before it reaches maturity. These and many other phenomena may be accounted for on the assumption of the derivation of species. Admitting all this and much more, this does not amount to a proof of the hypoth- esis. These facts can be accounted for in other ways ; while thert are, as Darwin himself admits, many facts for which his theory wi.
1 Three articles in the July, August, and October numbers of the Atlantic Monthly for tl year 1860 were reprinted with the name of Dr. Asa Gray as their author.
2 Origin of Species, p. 577.
20 PART n. ch. I. — origin of man.
not account. Let it be borne in mind what the theory is. It is not that all the species of any extant genus of plants or animals have been derived from a common stock ; that all genera and classes of organized beings now living have been thus derived ; but that all organisms from the earliest geological periods have, by a process requiring some five hundred million years, been derived from one primordial germ.^ Nor is this all. It is not only that material organisms have thus been derived by a process of grada- tion, but also that instincts, mental and moral powers, have been derived and attained by the same process. Nor is even this all. We are called upon to believe that all this has been brought about by the action of unintelligent physical causes. To our apprehen- sion, there is nothing in the Hindu mythology and cosmology more incredible than this.
It is hazarding little to say that such a hypothesis as this cannot be proved. Indeed its advocates do not pretend to give proof. Mr. Wallace, as we have seen, says, " Mr. Darwin's work has for its main object, to show that all the phenomena of living things, — all their wonderful organs and complicated structures, their infinite variety of form, size, and colour, their intricate and involved rela- tions to each other, — may have been produced by the action of a few general laws of the simplest kind." May have been. There is no pretence that this account of the origin of species can be dem- onstrated. All that is claimed is that it is a possible solution. Christians must be very timid to be frightened by a mere " may have been.'"
Mr. Huxley says, " After much consideration, and with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature,
1 Sir William Thompson, of England, had objected to the theory that, accnrding to his calculations, the sun cannot have existed in a solid state longer than five hundred millions of years. To tiiis Mr. Wallace replies, that that period, he thinks long enough to satisfy the demands of the hypothesis. Mr. J. J. Murphy, however, is of a contrary opinion. He saj's that it is probable that it required at least five hundred years to produce a greyhound — Mr. Darwin's ideal of s}'mmetry — out of the original wolf-like dog, and that certainly it would require more than a million times longer period to produce an elephant out of a Protozoon, or even a tadpole. Besides, Sir William Thompson allows in fact onh- one, and not five, hundred millions of years for the existence of our earth. In the Transactions of Geological Society of Glas(jow, vol. iii., he saj's: " When, finally, we consider under-grnund tempera- ture, we find ourselves driven to the conclusion that the existing state of things on the earth, life on the earth, all geological history showing continuity of life, must be limited within some such period of past time as one hundred million years." See Habit and Inlelli' gence, by J. J. Murphy, London, 1869, vol. i. p. 349.