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Christoph Martin Wieland - "Geschichte des Agathon, Teil 1"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Hermann und Dorothea"

Henry Drummond - "Addresses"

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History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A >> Andrew Dickson White >> History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom




In 1813 Dr. Wells developed a theory of evolution by natural
selection to account for varieties in the human race. About 182O
Dean Herbert, eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his
conviction that species are but fixed varieties. In 1831 Patrick
Matthews stumbled upon and stated the main doctrine of natural
selection in evolution; and others here and there, in Europe and
America, caught an inkling of it.

But no one outside of a circle apparently uninfluential cared for
these things: the Church was serene: on the Continent it had
obtained reactionary control of courts, cabinets, and
universities; in England, Dean Cockburn was denouncing Mary
Somerville and the geologists to the delight of churchmen; and
the Rev. Mellor Brown was doing the same thing for the
edification of dissenters.

In America the mild suggestions of Silliman and his compeers were
met by the protestations of the Andover theologians headed by
Moses Stuart. Neither of the great English universities, as a
rule, took any notice of the innovators save by sneers.

To this current of thought there was joined a new element when,
in 1844, Robert Chambers published his Vestiges of Creation.
The book was attractive and was widely read. In Chambers's view
the several series of animated beings, from the simplest and
oldest up to the highest and most recent, were the result of two
distinct impulses, each given once and for all time by the
Creator. The first of these was an impulse imparted to forms of
life, lifting them gradually through higher grades; the second
was an impulse tending to modify organic substances in accordance
with external circumstances; in fact, the doctrine of the book
was evolution tempered by miracle--a stretching out of the
creative act through all time--a pious version of Lamarck.

Two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to
serious thought. The amusing result was that the theologians
were greatly alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it
promoted atheism. Looking back along the line of thought which
has since been developed, one feels that the older theologians
ought to have put up thanksgivings for Chambers's theory, and
prayers that it might prove true. The more serious result was
that it accustomed men's minds to a belief in evolution as in
some form possible or even probable. In this way it was
provisionally of service.

Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay contrasting
the theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great
force in favour of the latter, showing that species had
undoubtedly been modified by circumstances; but still only few
and chosen men saw the significance of all these lines of
reasoning which had been converging during so many years toward
one conclusion.

On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linnaean Society at
London two papers--one presented by Charles Darwin, the other by
Alfred Russel Wallace--and with the reading of these papers the
doctrine of evolution by natural selection was born. Then and
there a fatal breach was made in the great theological barrier of
the continued fixity of species since the creation.

The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart:
how Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of
Cambridge to fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831
to go upon the scientific expedition of the Beagle; how for five
years he studied with wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems
of life as revealed on land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral
reefs, in forests and on the sands, from the tropics to the
arctic regions; how, in the Cape Verde and the Galapagos
Islands, and in Brazil, Patagonia, and Australia he interrogated
Nature with matchless persistency and skill; how he returned
unheralded, quietly settled down to his work, and soon set the
world thinking over its first published results, such as his book
on Coral Reefs, and the monograph on the Cirripedia; and,
finally, how he presented his paper, and followed it up with
treatises which made him one of the great leaders in the history
of human thought.

The scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of
character shown by Darwin in all this great career; the faculty
of silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great
thought--his idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent
study and meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of
it to the world at large, but working in every field to secure
proofs or disproofs, and accumulating masses of precious material
for the solution of the questions involved.

To one man only did he reveal his thought--to Dr. Joseph Hooker,
to whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of
his conclusions. Not until fourteen years later occurred the
event which showed him that the fulness of time had come--the
letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, to whom, in brilliant
researches during the decade from 1848 to 1858, in Brazil and in
the Malay Archipelago, the same truth of evolution by natural
selection had been revealed. Among the proofs that scientific
study does no injury to the more delicate shades of sentiment is
the well-known story of this letter. With it Wallace sent Darwin
a memoir, asking him to present it to the Linnaean Society: on
examining it, Darwin found that Wallace had independently arrived
at conclusions similar to his own--possibly had deprived him of
fame; but Darwin was loyal to his friend, and his friend
remained ever loyal to him. He publicly presented the paper from
Wallace, with his own conclusions; and the date of this
presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the history,
not merely of natural science, but of human thought.

In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his
work in its fuller development--his book on The Origin of
Species. In this book one at least of the main secrets at the
heart of the evolutionary process, which had baffled the long
line of investigators and philosophers from the days of
Aristotle, was more broadly revealed. The effective mechanism of
evolution was shown at work in three ascertained facts: in the
struggle for existence among organized beings; in the survival
of the fittest; and in heredity. These facts were presented
with such minute research, wide observation, patient collation,
transparent honesty, and judicial fairness, that they at once
commanded the world's attention. It was the outcome of thirty
years' work and thought by a worker and thinker of genius, but it
was yet more than that--it was the outcome, also, of the work and
thought of another man of genius fifty years before. The book of
Malthus on the Principle of Population, mainly founded on the
fact that animals increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore,
if unchecked, must encumber the earth, had been generally
forgotten, and was only recalled with a sneer. But the genius of
Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning, and now the thought of
Malthus was joined to the new current. Meditating upon it in
connection with his own observations of the luxuriance of Nature,
Darwin had arrived at his doctrine of natural selection and
survival of the fittest.

As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of
the universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring
over the world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every
field of research and reasoning: edition after edition of the
book was called for; it was translated even into Japanese and
Hindustani; the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle,
only a few years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a
widespread and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated
observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made
alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their
interpretation. Under this new influence an army of young men
took up every promising line of scientific investigation in every
land. Epoch-making books appeared in all the great nations.
Spencer, Wallace, Huxley, Galton, Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock,
Bagehot, Lewes, in England, and a phalanx of strong men in
Germany, Italy, France, and America gave forth works which became
authoritative in every department of biology. If some of the
older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the authority
of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.

One source of opposition deserves to be especially
mentioned--Louis Agassiz.

A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble
man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation
which he could not readily change. In his heart and mind still
prevailed the atmosphere of the little Swiss parsonage in which
he was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beautiful to
all who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry
evolutionists, who, in their zeal as neophytes, made
proclamations seeming to have a decidedly irreligious if not
immoral bearing. In addition to this was the direction his
thinking had received from Cuvier. Both these influences
combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view.

He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a
barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in
the second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first
half, and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth--all made
the same effort. Each remains great; but not all of them
together could arrest the current. Agassiz's strong efforts
throughout the United States, and indeed throughout Europe, to
check it, really promoted it. From the great museum he had
founded at Cambridge, from his summer school at Penikese, from
his lecture rooms at Harvard and Cornell, his disciples went
forth full of love and admiration for him, full of enthusiasm
which he had stirred and into fields which he had indicated; but
their powers, which he had aroused and strengthened, were devoted
to developing the truth he failed to recognise; Shaler, Verrill,
Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, with a multitude of others, and
especially the son who bore his honoured name, did justice to his
memory by applying what they had received from him to research
under inspiration of the new revelation.

Still another man deserves especial gratitude and honour in this
progress--Edward Livingston Youmans. He was perhaps the first in
America to recognise the vast bearings of the truths presented by
Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer. He became the apostle of these
truths, sacrificing the brilliant career on which he had entered
as a public lecturer, subordinating himself to the three leaders,
and giving himself to editorial drudgery in the stimulation of
research and the announcement of results.

In support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those
which Darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization
of plants, and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way,
and these were followed by the discoveries of Wallace, Bates,
Huxley, Marsh, Cope, Leidy, Haeckel, Muller, Gaudry, and a
multitude of others in all lands.[22]

[22] For Agassiz's opposition to evolution, see the Essay on
Classification, vol. i, 1857, as regards Lamark, and vol. iii, as
regards Darwin; also Silliman's Journal, July 1860; also the
Atlantic Monthly, January 1874; also his Life and Correspondence,
vol. ii, p. 647; also Asa Gray, Scientific Papers, vol. ii, p.
484. A reminiscence of my own enables me to appreciate his deep
ethical and religious feeling. I was passing the day with him at
Nahant in 1868, consulting him regarding candidates for various
scientific chairs at the newly established Cornell University, in
which he took a deep interest. As we discussed one after another
of the candidates, he suddenly said: "Who is to be your Professor
of Moral Philosophy? That is a far more important position than
all the others."



IV. THE FINAL EFFORT OF THEOLOGY.

Darwin's Origin of Species had come into the theological world
like a plough into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely
awakened from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth
angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy,
came flying at the new thinker from all sides.

The keynote was struck at once in the Quarterly Review by
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was
guilty of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that
"the principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible
with the word of God"; that it "contradicts the revealed
relations of creation to its Creator"; that it is "inconsistent
with the fulness of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring view
of Nature"; and that there is "a simpler explanation of the
presence of these strange forms among the works of God": that
explanation being--"the fall of Adam." Nor did the bishop's
efforts end here; at the meeting of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science he again disported himself in the tide
of popular applause. Referring to the ideas of Darwin, who was
absent on account of illness, he congratulated himself in a
public speech that he was not descended from a monkey. The reply
came from Huxley, who said in substance: "If I had to choose, I
would prefer to be a descendant of a humble monkey rather than of
a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence in misrepresenting
those who are wearing out their lives in the search for truth."

This shot reverberated through England, and indeed through other
countries.

The utterances of this the most brilliant prelate of the Anglican
Church received a sort of antiphonal response from the leaders of
the English Catholics. In an address before the "Academia,"
which had been organized to combat "science falsely so called,"
Cardinal Manning declared his abhorrence of the new view of
Nature, and described it as "a brutal philosophy--to wit, there
is no God, and the ape is our Adam."

These attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion
for several years. One distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite
of Darwin's thirty years of quiet labour, and in spite of the
powerful summing up of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying
that Darwin "might have been more modest had he given some slight
reason for dissenting from the views generally entertained."
Another distinguished clergyman, vice-president of a Protestant
institute to combat "dangerous" science, declared Darwinism "an
attempt to dethrone God." Another critic spoke of persons
accepting the Darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration
of the inhaler of mephitic gas," and of Darwin's argument as "a
jungle of fanciful assumption." Another spoke of Darwin's views
as suggesting that "God is dead," and declared that Darwin's work
"does open violence to everything which the Creator himself has
told us in the Scriptures of the methods and results of his
work." Still another theological authority asserted: "If the
Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework
of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to
man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare."
Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing
naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a huge imposture from
the beginning."

Echoes came from America. One review, the organ of the most
widespread of American religious sects, declared that Darwin was
"attempting to befog and to pettifog the whole question";
another denounced Darwin's views as "infidelity"; another,
representing the American branch of the Anglican Church, poured
contempt over Darwin as "sophistical and illogical," and then
plunged into an exceedingly dangerous line of argument in the
following words: "If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible
an unbearable fiction;...then have Christians for nearly two
thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie....Darwin requires
us to disbelieve the authoritative word of the Creator." A
leading journal representing the same church took pains to show
the evolution theory to be as contrary to the explicit
declarations of the New Testament as to those of the Old, and
said: "If we have all, men and monkeys, oysters and eagles,
developed from an original germ, then is St. Paul's grand
deliverance--`All flesh is not the same flesh; there is one kind
of flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and
another of birds'--untrue."

Another echo came from Australia, where Dr. Perry, Lord Bishop
of Melbourne, in a most bitter book on Science and the Bible,
declared that the obvious object of Chambers, Darwin, and Huxley
is "to produce in their readers a disbelief of the Bible."

Nor was the older branch of the Church to be left behind in this
chorus. Bayma, in the Catholic World, declared, "Mr. Darwin is,
we have reason to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter
of that infidel clique whose well-known object is to do away with
all idea of a God."

Worthy of especial note as showing the determination of the
theological side at that period was the foundation of
sacro-scientific organizations to combat the new ideas. First to
be noted is the "Academia," planned by Cardinal Wiseman. In a
circular letter the cardinal, usually so moderate and just,
sounded an alarm and summed up by saying, "Now it is for the
Church, which alone possesses divine certainty and divine
discernment, to place itself at once in the front of a movement
which threatens even the fragmentary remains of Christian belief
in England." The necessary permission was obtained from Rome,
the Academia was founded, and the "divine discernment" of the
Church was seen in the utterances which came from it, such as
those of Cardinal Manning, which every thoughtful Catholic would
now desire to recall, and in the diatribes of Dr. Laing, which
only aroused laughter on all sides. A similar effort was seen in
Protestant quarters; the "Victoria institute" was created, and
perhaps the most noted utterance which ever came from it was the
declaration of its vice-president, the Rev. Walter Mitchell,
that "Darwinism endeavours to dethrone God."[23]

[23] For Wilberforce's article, see Quarterly Review, July, 1860.
For the reply of Huxley to the bishop's speech I have relied on
the account given in Quatrefages, who had it from Carpenter; a
somewhat different version is given in the Life and Letters of
Darwin. For Cardinal Manning's attack, see Essays on Religion
and Literature, London, 1865. For the review articles, see the
Quarterly already cited, and that for July, 1874; also the North
British Review, May 1860; also, F. O. Morris's letter in the
Record, reprinted at Glasgow, 1870; also the Addresses of Rev.
Walter Mitchell before the Victoria Institute, London, 1867; also
Rev. B. G. Johns, Moses not Darwin, a Sermon, March 31, 1871.
For the earlier American attacks, see Methodist Quarterly Review,
April 1871; The American Church Review, July and October, 1865,
and January, 1866. For the Australian attack, see Science and
the Bible, by the Right Reverand Charles Perry, D. D., Bishop of
Melbourne, London, 1869. For Bayma, see the Catholic World, vol.
xxvi, p.782. For the Academia, see Essays edited by Cardinal
Manning, above cited; and for the Victoria Institute, see
Scientia Scientarum, by a member of the Victoria Institute,
London, 1865.


In France the attack was even more violent. Fabre d'Envieu
brought out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series
of elaborate propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine
than that of the fixity and persistence of species is absolutely
contrary to Scripture. The Abbe Desorges, a former Professor of
Theology, stigmatized Darwin as a "pedant," and evolution as
"gloomy". Monseigneur Segur, referring to Darwin and his
followers, went into hysterics and shrieked: "These infamous
doctrines have for their only support the most abject passions.
Their father is pride, their mother impurity, their offspring
revolutions. They come from hell and return thither, taking with
them the gross creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept
them."

In Germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe.
Catholic theologians vied with Protestants in bitterness. Prof.
Michelis declared Darwin's theory "a caricature of creation."
Dr. Hagermann asserted that it "turned the Creator out of doors."

Dr. Schund insisted that "every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from
the first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to
the Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of
the development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible
teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont in
Switzerland called for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine.
Luthardt, Professor of Theology at Leipsic, declared: "The idea
of creation belongs to religion and not to natural science; the
whole superstructure of personal religion is built upon the
doctrine of creation"; and he showed the evolution theory to be
in direct contradiction to Holy Writ.

But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the
theological camp: Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of living
geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceedingly
cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of Lamarck
and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations,
then published his work on the Antiquity of Man, and in this and
other utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling
convert to the fundamental ideas of Darwin. The blow was serious
in many ways, and especially so in two--first, as withdrawing all
foundation in fact from the scriptural chronology, and secondly,
as discrediting the creation theory. The blow was not
unexpected; in various review articles against the Darwinian
theory there had been appeals to Lyell, at times almost piteous,
"not to flinch from the truths he had formerly proclaimed." But
Lyell, like the honest man he was, yielded unreservedly to the
mass of new proofs arrayed on the side of evolution against that
of creation.

At the same time came Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, giving new
and most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural
selection.

In 1871 was published Darwin's Descent of Man. Its doctrine had
been anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made,
none the less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped
forth, though evidently with much less heart than before. A few
were very violent. The Dublin University Magazine, after the
traditional Hibernian fashion, charged Mr. Darwin with seeking
"to displace God by the unerring action of vagary," and with
being "resolved to hunt God out of the world." But most notable
from the side of the older Church was the elaborate answer to
Darwin's book by the eminent French Catholic physician, Dr.
Constantin James. In his work, On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape,
published at Paris in 1877, Dr. James not only refuted Darwin
scientifically but poured contempt on his book, calling it "a
fairy tale," and insisted that a work "so fantastic and so
burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge joke, like Erasmus's
Praise of Folly, or Montesquieu's Persian Letters. The princes
of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop of Paris
assured the author that the book had become his "spiritual
reading," and begged him to send a copy to the Pope himself. His
Holiness, Pope Pius IX, acknowledged the gift in a remarkable
letter. He thanked his dear son, the writer, for the book in
which he "refutes so well the aberrations of Darwinism." "A
system," His Holiness adds, "which is repugnant at once to
history, to the tradition of all peoples, to exact science, to
observed facts, and even to Reason herself, would seem to need no
refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning toward
materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all this
tissue of fables....And, in fact, pride, after rejecting the
Creator of all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing
him to be his own king, his own priest, and his own God--pride
goes so far as to degrade man himself to the level of the
unreasoning brutes, perhaps even of lifeless matter, thus
unconsciously confirming the Divine declaration, WHEN PRIDE
COMETH, THEN COMETH SHAME. But the corruption of this age, the
machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand
that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are,
should--since they borrow the mask of science--be refuted by true
science." Wherefore the Pope thanked Dr. James for his book, "so
opportune and so perfectly appropriate to the exigencies of our
time," and bestowed on him the apostolic benediction. Nor was
this brief all. With it there came a second, creating the author
an officer of the Papal Order of St. Sylvester. The cardinal
archbishop assured the delighted physician that such a double
honour of brief and brevet was perhaps unprecedented, and
suggested only that in a new edition of his book he should
"insist a little more on the relation existing between the
narratives of Genesis and the discoveries of modern science, in
such fashion as to convince the most incredulous of their perfect
agreement." The prelate urged also a more dignified title. The
proofs of this new edition were accordingly all submitted to His
Eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as Moses and Darwin: the Man
of Genesis compared with the Man-Ape, or Religious Education
opposed to Atheistic. No wonder the cardinal embraced the
author, thanking him in the name of science and religion. "We
have at last," he declared, "a handbook which we can safely put
into the hands of youth."

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