DR. TEMPLE'S BAMPTON LECTURES.*
Tux Bishop of Exeter's Bampton Lectures for 1884 form a most useful manual for the assistance of those who are troubled in mind by the speculations of the modern evolutionist Agnostics, and who need a clear and succinct statement of the shortcomings of these writers, so far as their works profess to overthrow the truths of natural religion and Christianity. We say advisedly a " manual," became one of the distinctive merits of the book lies in its form. It is eminently well " turned out " and readable ; and without saying that there is no new matter in it—for so thoughtful a writer could not adopt the thoughts of others without assimilating them and impregnating them with the colouring of his own mind—the great merit and peculiar opportuneness of the book consists in its skilful adaptation to the needs of the time. Mr. Percy Greg has recently said, with much truth, that one of the chief causes of the modern irreligious movement is to be found in a general impression, based upon nothing but hearsay, that the doctrine of Evolution, which is the boasted discovery of the present century, discredits the old arguments for natural religion, and overthrows the authority of the Bible. Again and again has it been pointed out that those prophets of Agnosticism who were in the outset responsible for this assertion were making an appeal ad ignorantiam. The limits of evolution, so far as it has as yet been established, its failure to explain the origin of life, the grotesquely inadequate account it gives of the nature of the Moral Law, and the inaccuracy of the assertion that it lessens the cogency of the design argument,—these, and other considerations, have been again and again insisted on. But a popular difficulty needs an answer in a popular form ; and the book
before us, in presenting shortly and concisely the results of the Bishop's own reading an i thought on these matters, in presenting them likewise in the form of lectures, which must be clearly intelligible at first hear:ng if they deserve the name, has gone far to suPply the need.
As an excellent specimen of the author's style, we will cite, before going more deeply into the topics he discusses, a happy analogy with which he disposes of the peinui-facie presumption —far more influential with many than they themselves suppose —that men of science have common-sense on their side in dis paiaging the unique character of the spiritual part of our nature and the evidence it affords of a kind of truth differing wholly from scientific truth. This assumption men of science often disparage, as being. on the face of it, an unwarrantable interference with the completeness of a philosophy which appeals to its symmetry as proof of its soundness. The Bishop, in refuting this position, speaks of the sense of responsibility, and the obstinacy with which it refuses to be accounted for by the operation of the laws of evolution :—
" Men are so constituted that completeness gives a special kind of satisfaction not to be got in any other way. If Science could but be complete, it would seem to gain in dignity if it gained in nothing else. And it is easy to foster a kind of passion for this completeness until every attempt to question it is resented. I have seen a boy first learning mechanics show a dislike to consider the effect of friction as marring the symmetry and beauty of mechanical problems; too vague, too uncertain, too irregular to bo allowed any entrance into a system which is so rounded and so precise without it. And something of the same temper can sometimes be seen in students of science at the very thought of there being in the world anything not under the dominion of the great scientific postulate. The world, which thus contains something which science cannot deal with, is pronounced forthwith to be not the world that we know, not the world with which we are concerned ; a conceivable world, if we choose to indulge our imagination in such dreams, but not a real world, either now or at any time before or after. And yet the freedom of the human will, and the sense—which cannot be eradicated—of the responsibility attaching to all human conduct, perpetually retorts that this world in which we live contains an element which cannot be subdued to obedience to the scientific law, but will have a course of its own. The sense of responsibility is a rock which no demand for completeness in science can crush. All attempts at reconciling the mechanical firmness of an unbroken law of uniformity with the voice within that cannot be silenced, telling us that we must answer for our actions, have failed, and we know that they will ever fail."
This is, to our mind, very suggestive, not more iu the analogy it presents than in other analogies to which it may be readily extended. Truth as it is seen by the human mind when it looks at the universe, and not merely at some infinitesimal portion of it, is essentially fragmentary ; and once it is recognised that, under these conditions, perfect completeness in the application of known laws is a reason, not for believing that all the facts
are known, but rather for suspecting that some facts are left out of sight ; that completeness of theory is a very rare concomitant of the greatest care taken to secure a full knowledge of facts; that a neat scientific formial which professes to explain the universe, though the foratula be derived only from the facts within
the observation of our own planet, bears on the face of it signs that it has left out of account the friction of the world of spirits ; once, we say, this general principle is realised, much is done to counteract the vague fear which leads so many to be almost convinced beforehand that the marvels of the spiritual world will not stand investigation.
Parallel to the sense of responsibility in its iron resistance to all attempts to bring it under purely physical laws is the first commencement of life. And on this, too, Dr. Temple's remarks are very forcible. Laplace's nebular theory, which explained the evolution of the inorganic world, and that in the course of stages in which life was impossible, is, as it were, the prelude to Darwin's theory of evolution of orgatic matter—of living beings. But how did life first come ? This question cannot be too deeply pondered by the student, or too clamorously insisted on by critics of the irreligious philosophy. The introduction of life was, so far as all scientific knowledge enables men to speak, the work of some Power unknown to science. It was, as Dr. Temple says, a miracle. And those who attribute it to physical causes as yet undiscovered, are making an assertion contrary to analogy, and dogmatising, instead of giving proof in a matter in which the burden of proof lies clearly with them. Here are the Bishop's words:
" First, then, at the very meeting-point of these two evolutions we have the important fact that all the evidence that we possess up to the present day negatives the opinion that life is a mere evolution from inorganic matter. We know perfectly well the constituents of all living substances. We know that the fundamental material of all plants and all animals is a compound called protoplasm, or that, in other words, organic matter, in all its immeuso variety of fol ins, isnothing but protoplasm variously modified. And we know the constituent elements of this protoplasm and their proportions, and the temperature within which protoplasm as such can exist. But we are quite powerless to make it, or to show how it is made, or to detect. nature in the act of making it. All the evidence we have points to one conclusion only,—that life is the result of nntccedent life, and is producible on no ether conditions. Repeatedly have scientific observers believed that they had come on instances of spontaneous generation ; but further examination has invariably shown that they have been mistaken. We can put the necessary elements together, but we cannot supply the necessary bond by which they are to be made to live. Nay, we cannot even recall that bond when it has once been dissolved. We can take living protoplasm, and we can kill it. It will be protoplasm still, so far as our best chemistry can discover; but it will be dead protoplasm, and we cannot make it live again ; and, so far ns we know, Nature can no more make it live than we can. It can be used as food for living creatures, animals, or plants, and so its substance can be taken up by living protoplasm, and made to share iu the life which thus consumes it ; but life of its own it cannot obtain. Now here, us it seems, the acceptance of the two evolutions lands us iu acceptance of a miracle. The creation of life is unaccounted for, and it much more exactly answers to what we mean by a miracle than it did under the old theory of creation before evolution was math, a scientific doctrine. For under that old theory the creation of living creatures stood on the same footing as the creation of metals (mother inorganic substances. It was a part of that beginning which had to be taken for granted, and which for that reason lay outside of the domain of science altogether. But if we accept the two evolutions, the creation of life, if unaccounted for, presents itself as a direct interference in the actual history of the world. There could have been no life when the earth was nothing but a mass of intenselyheated fluid. There came a time when the earth became ready for life to exist upon it, and the life came, and no laws of inorganic matter can account for its coming Nor, if it was a miracle, can we deny that there was a purpose in it worthy of miraculous interference. For what purpose can rank side by side with the existence and development of life, the primary condition of all moral and spiritual existence and action in this world ? The infinite superiority, not in degree only but in kind, of the living to the lifeless, of a man to a stone, justifies us in believing that the main purpose of the creation that we see was to supply a dwelling-place nud a scene of action for living beings."
We have not left ourselves space to quote at as great a length as we could wish the Bishop's remarks on that distinctive part of the spiritual faculty which, though allied with emotions explicable by evolution, refuses to be so explained itself. We must content ourselves with the following example :
" Nothing in this evolution ever rises to the height of a law which shall bind even God himself, and enable Abraham to say, ' Shall not the judge of all the earth do right ?' The very word right in this, its fulness of meaning, cannot be used. Evolution may lead the creature to say what is hateful and what is loveable, what is painful and what is delightful It may develop the sentiment which conies nearest of all to the sentiment of reverence, namely, the sentiment of shame ; but it cannot reveal the eternal character of the distinction
between right and wrong. Nay, there may be en evolution in our knowledge of the moral law, just us there is an evolution in our knowledge of mathematics. The fulness of its meaning can become clearer and ever clearer as generation learns from generation. But the principle of the Moral Law, its universality, its supremacy, cannot come out of any development of human nature any more than the necessity of mathematical truth can so come ?"
Here we have once again Kant's categorical imperative, and his doctrine of synthetic d iwiori truths,—the two great levers of modern religious philosophy. We wish we had space to pursue further Dr. Temple's exposition of their full significance, but it would carry us beyond the limits at our disposal.
We conclude by expressing a hope that Dr. Temple's book will be widely read, and by repeating our opinion that over and above the speculative interest of the topics be discusses, he has given to those who care to make use of it, a powerful and effective antidote against the operation of those microbes which are now threatening us with intellectual cholera.
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