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ROBERT BROWNING.

allow man to rest in his present state: he craves a state more righteous, more permanent, more pure than his present one.

Now, who can deny that this disquietude of man's is a power? All great reforms have sprung out of impatience and indignation.

I find tokens everywhere that the impulses which stir the creature are providential in their character. The first thing we find in the living substance is, motion

IN answer to the question, Where is God the maker? I have replied - it is no new fashioned answer-"I find him in I find supports furnished by the great my own dissatisfaction." I find in man, naturalists to a belief I have held for not only the recurrence of certain peri- thirty years that man's disquietude, to odical dissatisfactions which impel him which he owes his morality and religion, to do what is needful for the maintenance is a natural development of that vital of himself and his race; but I find also motion or disquietude to which are due -deepening as thought expands a all the living forms, animal or vegetable, permanent dissatisfaction with his social, which cover the face of the earth, so that and I may add, with his mortal condi- this disquietude presents itself to me as tion. With his social condition. He can- the impulse that has made man, and it not rest in the presence of injustice or gives this token that it has not done makoppression, and he craves a state where ing him, that it will not allow him to rest justice reigns- where men are done jus- | in his present state. tice to, and treated with due consideration and sympathy. And he is dissatisfied with his mortal condition. He craves "a state that hath foundations," a communion with his fellows that is not a de-in a structureless fluid. This motion is lusive shadow of communion to vanish at there seen pushing out portions of the the touch of death. There is also a third, living substance, and using them as exrarer and nobler dissatisfaction, thor- tempore organs for grasping food, and oughly awakened only in the few, but subsequently, to all appearance making potential enough among the many to give the organs they need. From the most those few a strong hold over them. I structureless to the most highly organmean man's dissatisfaction with his pres-ized creature we see all living things iment animal nature. He complains that pelled to what is needed for their mainhis own selfish lusts and appetites have tenance and preservation, and also for an undue ascendency over him: that that of their race, and we find them all at he is not pure. The inspired teacher of first apparently unconscious of the provimen gets glimpses now and then - seen | dential nature of the impulses that move in the lull of carnal appetite — of a bright- them. er and nobler life. He finds that the appetites and lusts of his lower nature mix themselves up inextricably with these visions, and obscure them, and stand as barriers to hinder his entrance on that better life that awaits the conqueror. Hence the doctrine of original sin: hence the traditions of the fall. Nothing brings I think the reason why the doctrine of home to me the reasonableness of Dar- a providence has been discredited is that win's view so much as the reluctance of men have looked for the first manifestaman's lower nature which Paul, with mar- tions of it in the wrong place. They vellous felicity, calls "the old man." Ori- have sought it in the accidents of life, ginal sin is that obstinate tendency to whereas, it is to be seen first as a proprevert to a lower state, which the wisest erty of life. Life makes its children, and men feel most intensely. moves them to do what is needed for These three dissatisfactions will not their maintenance, and the perpetuation

Now, if this is true if the impulses that move every creature are providential in their character- then we may read in man's permanent dissatisfaction an evidence of the direction in which he is being led, of the shape into which he is being transformed.

of their kind, and subsequently shows | manifested in every storm or frost or them what she is doing, and awakens shower, or in every law of nature. We their sympathy with her purposes so that must be thankful if we can find some they feel her impulses as their own de- clear indications of a providence above sires. and beyond ours.

We have such clear indications. And

Finding the providential purposes of life in every creature so incomparably the reason they have been so much overdeeper than the creature's consciousness -finding that the creature is saved by obeying these impulses — finding man under the same natural régime as all other creatures I consider that true wisdom consists in submitting to the guidance of those impulses which have made and are still making us. These impulses will not allow us to rest but in seeking — I will not say a better country, or a better world, for those expressions are metaphorical a better state.

The callow swifts hatched in July under our eaves do not know or criticize the call that comes to them the first week in August, and bids them seek another country. Why should we criticize our call? Is not our knowledge like theirs -infinitesimal. What does all the old talk about the Kantean imperative mean, but that man is under the same régime as other creatures, and that his salvation lies in obedience to impulses which he feels he must obey, but whose purposes he cannot fathom?

If I succeed in showing that the creature is everywhere led by impulses whose providential meaning it cannot fathom, towards those things which it needs for the preservation of its race; and if man appears to be under the same régime as other creatures, then man's efforts and prayers will appear to indicate his real needs and his needs to indicate his destiny, if, — and this "if" is indeed a great deduction-if outward circumstances allow his vital tendencies to develop themselves.

looked is that men have looked for them where they are not to be found, that is, in the accidents of life; whereas providence is a property of life, each living thing is first passively provided for by the mother life of which it forms a part, and is also impelled to provide for itself: in due time it feels the impulse as its own desire or will. It observes the results of the acts which it finds itself impelled to do, and acts in conscious anticipation of these results. We see in all vital activity that same providential character which man's actions display when he makes arrangements for future contingencies. The recognition of this is a great aid to faith. It is a great encouragement to a man to obey impulses whose authority he feels though he cannot explain its grounds; when he finds that all other creatures find their safety in obeying impulses which they cannot fathom.

I do not say, mind, that we need these manifestations of a providence as the basis of our faith. God forbid the basis of that faith which makes the new fledged swallow venture out across the trackless deep does not rest on appearances, neither does ours, but the power that has made us, has made us parasitic plants, so that we crave outward supports to sustain our instinctive faith, and if we lack these supports it droops and trails along the ground.

DARWIN.

I trust to show that there is nothing in Darwin's teaching that excludes this doctrine of a providence, though he uses expressions sometimes that seem as if he almost overlooked its existence.

The believer will say, naturally enough, "What is faith worth that rests on such a contingency? My belief is not in a Creator who is trying to accomplish certain At the end of his "variations of plants ends if outward chances favour him, but and animals under domestication," he asin one to whom all chances are alike." serts, "No shadow of reason can be asAnd so is mine. But you will agree with signed for the belief that variations . . . me that we do not find indications of de- which have been the groundwork through sign everywhere; we cannot see purpose | natural selection of the formation of the

most perfectly adapted animals in the probable), I see in all living things a real world, man included, were intentionally oneness of character. Everywhere I see and specially guided." The one expression in this passage against which I protest is, that man owes his formation to variation and natural selection, or that these are the groundwork of his forma

tion.

I have every inclination to believe that they have formed man in the same way that variation and man's selection have formed the double blossoming garden rose. But I ask, can man be said to have formed the rose? No, he has only modified it. So natural selection and variation, as the Duke of Argyll says,* need something to work on, something to modify, something to select from. Natural selection and variation, whether they are the result of chance or design, are the accidents of life.

There may be no visible design in the accidents of life, and yet life may display providence as its own property. And so it does. In every living thing, whether labelled conscious or unconscious, sentient or non-sentient, we find an indwelling providence, an impulse that makes it provide for its own maintenance, and that of its kind, and to use the things which chance throws in its way as instruments for the work. Out of this impulse I find all that we call good or divine ultimately disclosing itself: as I shall hope to show.t

I would grant (what Mr. Darwin is far more competent to judge of than I am) that variation and natural selection in which no providential purpose can be ccrtainly traced, have caused the diversity of all the living forms we see, out of a living matter originally everywhere identical in its properties. I find the germ of this idea in Hunter, who says that the principle of life is everywhere the same, and partially illustrates it by reference to the phenomena of grafting.

But whether it is the fact that different species are inalienably endowed with certain diverse habits and organific powers, or whether accident imposes on them their diversity (which last seems to me most

• "Reign of Law."

↑ See Murphy's "Habit and Intelligence."

providential impulses; I see every living thing moved, by impulses which it apparently cannot at first the least understand, to do what is needed for its own preservation and that of its race. And (as I have said that I hope to show), I find that all we worship as morally good or adorable, appears to be involved in these providential impulses, to be evoked in time in opposition to the pressure of adverse circumstances. What Edmund Burke said of the British nation, that I think may be said of all life, "Its antagonists are its helpers." "In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men." I shall attempt to show then that everything which we call good or divine exists as a latent property of life, to be evoked, if not directly "ætatis accessu," yet by those antagonisms that time is sure to bring.

Holding, as a matter of vital faith which it is spiritual death to let go of, the Christian's presentiment that all things willingly or unwillingly, as antagonists or allies, will be found to do the work of God; I think at the same time that this work of God presents itself to us as an organizing power that overrules things antagonistic or indifferent, and compels them to minister to its purpose.* It seems to me puerile to deny that the very ideas of love, and goodness, and God, postulate separation and evil and chaos as the groundwork of their manifestation; nay, as the only things that can give these sacred words any meaning whatsoever. Life is organific power; Heaven itself is spoken of as an organism- a kingdom. Now casualties are precisely what life needs to manifest itself as an organizing power-an organon is a tool, a thing that existed for its own end, overruled and made to minister to ends which are not in its own programme at all. It is something adapted to a different use from that which brought it into existence.

The true Christian assertion of the noncasual character of the divine purpose seems to me to be this—not that there

* In opposition to the idea of one who has originally made all things with an express view to all the ends to which they are intended to subserve.

are no casualties (such may be the case, lief from pain, which they bring. It is as but such is not the view that our Maker yet simply the creature of impulse moved has caused us to see)—but that to Divine omnipotence all casualties are the SAME: all seeming diversities are ONE.

by a power whose ends it does not sympathize with, to provide for its own preservation and growth. It is learning to work in anticipation of results, but present relief or satisfaction are all the results which it has observed to follow from certain acts, and are still its only motives.

They can only help divine omnipotence by giving fresh aspects to its power. This is contained in the old assertion, "All things work together for good to them that love God.' And this is the only We find in this child traces of a still sense in which the following old proverb earlier stage. It is now eating, drinking, need be accepted, "oi kuẞol Aç deì tvíπ- and breathing for itself: there was a time TOVOL." It need not mean that the dice when another ate and drank and breathed of God are always loaded, but only that for it. It is still protected and nursed all throws of the dice are one and the by its mother, so that the providence to same to the Maker. Casualty cannot which it owes its life is still in some possibly exclude the idea of Divine Om-measure outside of it: this is the survival nipotence, for this idea will vanish into thin air if we attempt to make it mean more than this; namely, that it is a power which will in time conquer all antagonists.

THE PLACE OF PROVIDENCE.

of a still earlier stage in which it was in its parent; wholly formed and cared for by its parent; dependent on her acts for its maintenance. The mother is in this stage the wholly unconscious agent of the providence that is perpetuating her race by forming her child within her. She only gradually comes to sympathize with the providential meaning of her own maternal acts. At first she is wholly uncon

Darwin's philosophy may greatly help the cause of Natural Theology, if it leads men to look for a providence not in the things which surround and press on the life, but in the reaction to the pressure.scious. We are not authorized by what has been shown us to call the pressure "God's will." That way lies Moloch worship and every enervating superstition.

If we look for providence, not first in the adverse circumstances that press on the life, and vary the forms and habits it assumes in order to accomplish its ends; but in the living impulse itself, the method has this incalculable advantage, that we are beginning from things within the scope of our vision. Here at least we may see a providence whose existence no one can deny, however much they may limit its sphere. No one can deny that man exercises providence. I trust further to bring my readers to admit that providence cannot be said to begin with man, or with any creature's consciousness. The first dawn of consciousness is practical, and it consists in noticing the results of our own acts.

Then there comes a stage, seen especially in birds and insects, when she is impelled to seek a suitable deposit for her coming eggs thence in due time, in higher stages of life, she learns to know and love her offspring.

Reader: Does the providence that feeds the embryo, and that makes the embryo appropriate what it needs, originate in the creature's consciousness? To ask the question is sufficient. Everyone must answer, No. The embryo is first preserved by an impulse of which neither itself nor its parent knows or understands anything.

Parent and child are alike preserved and the race perpetuated by a providence which is not their own in any sense, but is a property of the life by which they live. Are these assertions too obvious to need making? I declare that I could show, if needed, the necessity of repeating these obvious truths.

A child becomes aware of itself and I think there is great danger that folfinds itself already performing certain lowers of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, natural acts by which its life is sustained lacking the wide circumspection of their and developed, such as breathing, eating, teachers, may be thoughtless enough to drinking, &c. Nature is already doing speak as if all instinct was at first expefor it what it will presently in some meas-rience, and that the innate instinct of the ure learn to do for itself. It does not young was always and entirely inherited perform these acts for the sake of life and experience that had passed into mechandevelopment, but for the pleasure, or re-ical habit. Such persons might say, "It is true that the young of each generation do instinctively many of those natural acts which they subsequently learn to do

Χαρκτέον ουν ἴσως απο των ήμιν γνωρίμων. ARISTOTLE.

consciously with a sense of their meaning | nourished, not by its own acts, but by its parent's acts. Often before it is born nay, in the case of birds and insects before it is even enclosed in a shell-provision is made to secure a deposit for the egg when it is laid.

and purpose: but though the unconscious stage precedes the conscious one in each generation, yet those things which the young do unconsciously and mechanically their ancestors first learnt to do purposely." They might add, "just as an indi- That the bird's or insect's provident vidual comes through long practice to preparation for its coming eggs is simply perform unconsciously movements that a fortunate casual impulse seems to me at first it could only achieve by great effort absolutely incredible. Look at the variand attention; so it is with a race." Un-ous kinds of bots or gadflies, at the dordoubtedly this tendency of effort to be- beetle, or at the Egpytian Scarabæus sacome unconscious is the very warp of cer. Take these as casually mentioned progress, or the basis on which it rests. representatives of a whole host of insects. Undoubtedly in a progressive race, or in a growing child, much conscious effort is continually passing into unconscious instinct; but consciousness on the other hand presupposes an unconscious state; acts done with the conscious purpose of attaining certain results implies experience. We must have seen the result follow the act. And how is a creature to be made and sustained while it is getting its experience? We are reminded of the old proverb, “While the grass grows the horse starves." From the earliest dawn of living creation there must have existed the same necessity that exists now: every fresh creature would need to be provided for while it was learning its experience, or else it would starve before it had learnt how to live.

And then again the first creature that was capable of learning from experience how to maintain itself, would be unable actually to learn because it would have no such materials at hand as those from which living creatures draw all their experience. For each creature's experience comes by observing the results of those acts to which it finds itself impelled, and those acts which it sees done by its fellows.

Witness the adroitness, the fertility of device, or in some cases the elaborate preparation, with which these and other insects provide places of deposit for eggs which when once deposited they will never see again. Notice how they make arrangements, not only for their protection and the temperature for hatching, but often also for the sustenance of grubs which they will never know. Here is providence; but on the other hand, can it be said that they act in anticipation of results, or know the providential meaning of their own acts? How can they anticipate results which not only they have never seen, but which their ancestors have never seen?

That ancestral associations recur in new generations in a way that when noticed throws quite a new significance on the theory of reminiscence, is indeed a fact that I cannot but recognize with the deepest interest. What is it in the structureless albumen of a duck's egg hatched in an oven or under a hen, which impels it to move after the ancestral habit of its kind, and so make organs after the ancestral type? What gives it its connate discerning power, and its connate practical power, so that it at once recognizes in the water a friendly element, and the day after it is born may be seen swimming and springing up from the water to snap at flies in the evening sunshine?

Taking these considerations into account, I do not see how we can possibly find supports to enable us to rise above this view; namely, that the creature is first moved by impulses of which it does not understand the providential meaning, to do these things which are needed for the preservation of itself and its race. I find providence to be the leader, and the living creature the thing led. I think the only report which the present aspects of nature justify us in making is this: namely, that each young creature which comes into the world is first provided for, and is subsequently taught, chiefly by the provisions which it finds made for it, how to provide for itself. First it is engendered. Next, while in the parent's substance it is | bæus.

What makes the lamb, within five minutes of its birth, rise on its legs and stagger tremblingly up to the first grown sheep it sees, seeking a mother in it; trying to suck it? The thing that draws it is not any animal magnetism that attracts it to its own mother. It does not know its mother for two or three days sometimes. It is attracted by a physical impulse, but an ideal one. It has inherited an innate idea of the mother: its state of helpless

See Wood, "Strange Dwellings." Index, Scara

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