Natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology : a free examination of Darwin's treatise On the origin of species, and of its American reviewers / by Asa Gray.

  • Gray, Asa, 1810-1888.
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology : a free examination of Darwin's treatise On the origin of species, and of its American reviewers / by Asa Gray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Mr. Agassiz tells us that the conviction is “ now universal among well- informed naturalists, that this globe has been in existence for innumer- able ages, and that the length of time elapsed since it first became inhabited cannot be counted in years.” Pictet, that the imagination refuses to calculate the immense number of years and of ages during Avhich the faunas of thirty or more epochs have succeeded one another, and developed their long succession of generations. Now the reviewer declares that such indefinite succession of ages is “ virtually infinite,” “ lacks no characteristic of eternity except its name,” — at least, that “ the difference between such a conception and that of the strictly in- finite, if any, is not appreciable.” But infinity belongs to metaphysics. Therefoi’e, he concludes, Darwin supports his theory, not by scientific, but by metaphysical evidence; his theory is “ essentially and com- pletely metaphysical in character, resting altogether upon that idea of ‘ the infinite ’ which the human mind can neither put aside nor compre- hend.” * And so a theory which will be generally regarded as much too physical is transferred by a single syllogism to metaphysics. Well, physical geology must go with it: for, even on the soberest view, it demands an indefinitely long time antecedent to the introduc- tion of organic life upon our earth. A fortiori is physical astronomy a branch of metaphysics, demanding, as it does, still larger “instalments of infinity,” as the reviewer calls them, both as to time and number. Moreover, far the greater part of physical inquiries now relate to molecular actions, which, a distinguished natural philosopher informs us, “ we have to regard as the results of an infinite number of infinitely small material particles, acting on each other at infinitely small dis- tances,” — a triad of infinites, — and so physics becomes the most metaphysical of sciences. Verily, if this style of reasoning is to prevail, “ Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, And naught is everything, and everything is naught.” The leading objection of Mr. Agassiz is likewise of a philosophical character. It is, that species exist only “ as categories of thought,” — that, having no material existence, they can have had no material vari- ation, and no material community of origin. Here the predication is of species in the subjective sense, the inference in the objective sensfe’. Reduced to plain terms, the argument seems to be: Species are ideas; therefore the objects from which the idea is derived cannot vary or blend, and cannot have had a genealogical connection. The common view of species is, that, although they are generaliza- tions, yet they have a direct objective ground in Nature, which genera. * North. American Review, 1. c. p. 487, etpatsim.