A DUAL CENTENARY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14447, 13 February 1909, Page 13

A DUAL CENTENARY.

CUAKLES DARWIN AND ABBAHAM LINCOLN. Br Constant Brabku. 1 am almost, appalled at the task which confronts me, the magnitude whereof is materialised before my "eye* in a huge pile of books; for I have been busily "browsing" for days and week in anticipation of an event which can only happen once in a century. The year 1909, not content with being unique in the number and character of its centenary celebrations, must complicate that uniqueness by celebrating two of the most important of these centenaries upon the same day. Here is the fact that in Shrewsbury, England, Charles Diinvin, and in Larue County, Kentucky, U.S.A., Abraham Lincoln, first saw the light of day on the 12th of February, 1809. The life and work of cither of these men would make material for a series of articles, so wide is the l'uiigo of tlverr iulhience and so universal tlio interest excited in their words and deeds. And when faced with, the necessity of compressing all one, might ami would like to say and quote concerning them in the space of one or, at the most, two briot "browsings,'' my feeling of utter inadequacy is not hard to understand. So despairing of attempting anythig of a connected ov even of a coherent kiwi, I must perforce dip here and there, quoting and commenting as any mood shall aictale. Perhaps, in order to avoid too much confusion, it will be as well to confine myself to Darwin this Saturday, reserving Lincoln until next week. As a first step, therefore, I have resolutely divided the books before me. into two piles, and, labelling the second Lincoln, have placed Ihem on one side.

liven after this division the Darwin heap seems formidable, but it must be attacked. So seizing the volume nearest to hand I open it at a place marked by a. card. The book is Fdmund Gosse's

"Father and Son." The "son" is describing h-nv in " that year of scicntilic crisis, 1857," there rushed tlnoiigh his father's brain "two kinds of truth, each absorbing, each convincing, yet toiafly irreconcilable." Phillip Henry Gosse, the well-known naturalist, born a year later than Charles Darwin, "look one step in the service of truth, and then he drew back in an agony, and accepted the servitude of error." And, his son continues : This was the great moment in the history of thought, when the theory of the mutability of species was preparing to throw a iiood of light upon all departments of human, speculation and action. It was becoming necessary to stand emphatically in cue army or the other. Lyell was surroimdig himself with disciples, who were making strides in tho direction of discovery. Darwin had long been collecting tacts with regard to the variation .if animals and plants. Hooker and Walla.cc, Asa

Cray, and even Agassi/,, each in his own

sphere, were coming closer and closer to'a perception of that secret which was

lirsl- lo reveal itself clearly to the paiient

and humble genius of Darwin. In the year before, in 1856, Darwin, under pressure from Lyell, had begun that modest statement of the new revelation,

that "abstract of an essay" wlueh. de-

veloped so mightily hilo the "Origin of Species." Wollaston's "Variation of Species" had just appeared, and had been a nine days' wonder in the wilderness.

On the other side the reactionaries, although never dreaming of tho fate which hung over them, had not been idle. In 1857 the astounding question had for I lie first time been propounded with contumely. "What then; did we como from an orang-outang!" The famous " Vestiges of Creation " had been supplying a sugar anil water panacea for those who could not escape from the trend of evidence, and yet clung to revelation. Owen was encouraging reaction by resisting, with all the strength of his prestige, the theory of the mutability of species.

I was bom in the very year in which tho lir.-t edition of "The Origin of Species" was published, and therefore my life has been contemporaneous with the revolution in thought ami actum which that l'-nlt ecsituvy represents. Darwin was 50 years of age when he h\<ucd. iris epochmaking work. Grant Allen, in lvis monograph on Darwin in I/>nginnn's " Kn-glish Worthies,'' a handbook which, I value highly both fur it:; conciseness ami the soundness of it* conclusions, thus summarises tho circumstances under which Darwin commenced bis notable career: — On February the 12th, 1809, Charles

Darwin first saw the light of day in his father's house at Shrewsbury. Time and place were both propitious. Born ill a cultivated scientific family, surrounded from his birth hy elevating influences, and secured beforehand from the cramping necessity of earning his own livelihood by his own exertions, tli-a boy was destined to [row up to full maturity in the 21 years of slow de-

velopment that iiiiinediately preceded

the passing of the first Reform Act. The thunder of the great European upheaVal had gi-own silent at Waterloo when he was barely six years old, and his boyhood was passed amid country sights and sounds during that long period of reconstruction and assimilation which followed the fierce volcanic outburst of the French Revolution. Happy in the opportunity of Iris birth, he came upon the world eight years after the first, publication of Lamarck's remarkable speculation-*, and for tho iir.st 22 years of his life he was actually the far younger contemporary of the

great French evolutional:-' philosopher.

Eleven years before his arrival upon the scene Malt bus had set forth his "Prin-

ciple of Population." Charles Darwin thus entered upon a stage well prepared for him, and he entered it with an

idiosyncrasy exactly adapted for making the bast of tho situation. The soil had been thoroughly turned and: dressed heforehand ; Charles Darwin's seed had only to fall upon it in order to spring

up and bear fruit a hundredfold, in

every field of science or speculation. For it was not biology alone .that he was foredoomed to revolutionise, but the wlsofe range of human thought, and perhaps even ultimately of human action.

To return for a moment to Phillip Gof.se and his perplexities. According to l'xlmund Gosso, his father was one of the little group of naturalists who was privately sounded ad to Ids opinions upon the matter, ere the revolutionary doctrine of natural selection was given to tlio world; this being LyeU's idea, a* the safest- course to pursue. And Edmund Gusse writes: "My father's attitude towards the theory of natural selection was critical in his career, and oddly enough itexercised an immense influence on my own experiences as a child. Let- it- bo iMlMiittcu at- once, mournful as the admission is, that every instinct in his intelligence went out at first to moot and greet the new light. Tt had hardly done st) when a recollection of the opening chapter of Genesis checked it- at the outset." This was the beginning of the battle between science and religion so warmly waged for the following five-anil-twent-y years. As Grant Allen puts it:

'• Naturally it was the theological interest that felt itself at tivst- must forei'o'.y assailed. The lirst fe webapterr, of Geiiesis. or rather the belief in their scientific and historical chancier, already sapped by the revelations of geology, seemed to orthodox defenders to be fat-aliy undermined if the Darwinian hypothesis were once to meet with general recognition." Thus the battle- began over the first fow chapters of Genesis, and the stage at present reached is strikingly summed up by Sir Oliver Lodge in his recently-pnbfislied work on "Man and the Universe": — The general religious world has agreed apparently to throw overboard Jonah and the whale, Joshua end the sun, the three children and the fiery furnace; it does aot, seem to take anything in the booh of Judgesa'-thebooLo'frDaniel-

very seriously; and though it still clings _ pathetically to the book of (ienesis, it is willing to relogato so poetry anil to imaginative nivih such legend? as the Creation of the world, Adam anil his rib, Kve and the. apple, Noah and his Ail;, Language and the Tower of Babel, Elijah and'the chariot of lire, and many others. The stock reconciling phrase, applied to the legend of a six days' creation or the Levitical mistakes in natural history—after the strained "day period" mode of interpretation, had been exploded in'"Essays anil Reviews"—used to he that the Bibb was never meant lo Uunh science: ■wherefore, whenever it touches upon any branch of natural knowledge, its statements are to be interpreted in a friendly spirit—i.e., to be glossed over ami in fact disbelieved. But a. book which deals with so prodigious a subject as the origin of all things and the history of the human race cannot avoid a treatment of natural facts amounting to a Reaching of science, whether swell leaching is meant or not; and. inded, the whole idea involved in the word "meant" is repugnant to the conceptions of the biological science, which claims to have (Misled! teleology from its arena.

_ Wlrfeli slows that, thanks to the revolutionary impetus given by Darwin in the " Origin of Species,'' we have travelled far during _ the last half-century. Nor, in■need, is there any sign of 'a halt being called. If or, as Sir Oliver Lodge pertfnontiy proceeds, "Moreover, if religious people go as far as this, where are they to stop? What, then, do they propose lo do witli the turning of water into wine, events attendant on the ejection of devils, the cursing of the fig tree, the feeding of iivo thousand, the raising of Lazarus? 00, lo go deeper still, what do they make of the scene at Iho Baptism, of the Transfiguration, of the signs at the Crucifixion, the appearances after death, the ascension into heaven? On all these joints I venture to say that neither religion nor science has said its last word." It is also indicative of the same trend of thought that so popular a writer as Mr 11. 0. Wells, a man, moreover, who has taken upon himself to frame a, scheme for the reconstruction of society, should, in his latest confession of faith, entitled "M-rsl. and Last Things," declare "/[ do not believe I have any personal immortality. lam part of liu immortality perhaps, but that is different, lam not the continuing thing. I personally am experimental, iiuidttilnl. I feel I have to <V> something, a number of tilings no one else could do, and l then I_ am finished, and iiniskd altogether. Then my substance returns to the common lot. lam a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose: that served, and my skull and my teeth, my idiosyncracy and desire, will disperse, f believe, like the limbers of a. lwoth after a fair." And in rehearsing his beliefs Mr Wells allows himself to write: —

To me the Christian Christ seem.? not so much a- humanised God as an incomprehensibly sinless being, neither God nor liia-n. ' His sinles.sness wears his incarnation like a fancy dress, ail ill's white self unchanged, lie had no petty weaknesses.

Now the essentia! trouble of my life is its petty weaknesses. If lam to have that love, that sense of understanding, which is, I conceive, the peculiar magic ar,d merit- of this idea, of a perserKi! Saviour, then I need sonicone quite other than this image of virtue, this terrible and incomprehensible Galilean with his crown of thorns, his blood-stained hands and foot. I cannot love liim any more than I can love a man upon the lack. Even in the face of torments I do not think I should feel a need for -him. . . I know what love for an idealised person can be. It happens that in my younger days I found a character in the history of literature who had a singular and extraordinary charm for me, of whom the thought Mas tender and comforting, who. indeed, helped me l-luoiigli shames and humiliations as though he held my hand. This person was Oliver Goldsmith. His blunders and troubles, his vices and vanities, seized and still hold my imagination. The slights of Boswetl, the eonl-cmpt of Giof-jn, and all his company save Johnson, the exquisite fineness of his spirit in his vicar of Wakefield, and that green suit of his, and the doctor's cane and the love despised, these things together made him a congenial saint and hero for me, so that I thought of him as others prav. When I think of that youthful feeling for Goldsmith I know what I need in a personal Saviour, as a troglodyte who has seen a candle can imagine the sun. But the Christian Christ in none of his three characteristic phases, neither as the magic babe (from whom I am cut off by the wanton and indecent purity of the Immaculate Conception) nor as the white-robed, spotless miracle-worker, nor as the fierce unreal torment of the cross comes to my soul. I do not undor•stand the agony of in the Garden; to me it is like a scene from a play in an unknown tongue. The last cry of despair is the cue human touch, discordant with all the rest of the story. 0m cry of despair does not sufHos. The Christian Christ is too fine for me, not incarnate enough, not flesh enough, not earth enough. He was never foolish and hot-eared and inarticulate; nevtr vain. lie never i»rgot things, nor tangled his miracles. I could love him, 1 think, mure easily if the dead had not risen, and if he had laid in peace in his sepulchre instead of coming back more cnfialocd and whiter t-lnui ever, as a postscript to his own tragedy.

Now, without staving to discuss whether Sir Oliver lodge or ik 11. G. Wells are competent to deal authoritatively with the sacred mysteries of the Christian faith. 1 ipiotu their statements as showing the current of thought now hWiiiir strmiLdy, and which threatens to submerge allYccepted orthodox belief. For it must be borne in mind that these thwrie: — thev aro scarcely entitled to be dubbed opinions —are oH'crcd not as destructive of belief, but as adjuncts and aids to intelligent taith. iioing hack 50 yew, i fancy I can discern a parallel to'the present position. Tile "Origin of Species" fell like a grain of musiard seed upon good and prepared ground, for the soil had been carefully broken by L.wnrck and St. Ililaire, Spencer, and Chambers, who had ploughed and harrowed with diligence. And tho seed itself, the right germ for the right moment, contained «. vital prinei])le which enstbled it to grow and increase and hear fruit where other "erms had withered away. And directly 0 contributing to this result, as, oamt' Allen writes: —

Darwin himself was a sound mull with an established reputation for solidity and learning. That gained for his theory from tho very iirst outlet universal respect and a fair hearing. Herbert Spencer was known to he a philosopher, and the practical English nation mistrusts philosophers. Those people probe 100 deep and soar t<o high for any sensible person to follow them in all (heir flight?. Robert Chambers, the unknown author of "Vestiges of Creation." was a shallow sciolist. It was whispered abroad that he was even ill-

accurate and slovenly in his facts; and

your scientific plodder detests the very shadow of minute inaccuracy, though i't speak with the tongues of men °ami angels, and ho bound up with all the grasp and power of a Xewton or a IV; he. But Charles Darwin was a known personage—an F.R.S.. a distinguished authority upon coral reefs :u:d barnacles, a great geologist, a great biologist, a great observer and inde-

fatigablo collector. His book came into the public hands stamped with the imprimatur of official recognition. Darwin was the father of the infant theory, Lyell and Hooker skod for its sponsors. The world could not afford to despise its contents. They could not brand its. author offhand as a clever dreamer or a foolish amateur, or consign him to the dreaded English limbo of the "mere theorist."

The thought runs through my ldr.d as I ponder-the lessons ofi.'Vwt, Zither-

given the right man to expound the teaching and lead the revolution, the lime is not ripe for further surrenders. Reflecting upon the prejudices and other obstacles which blocked the way to a genera) acceptance of the principle and doctrine of natural selection, and the fact that these prejudices and obstacles have vanished or been removed, it is not impossible that the time is at hand when the belief in supernatural religion—already on the £&■ dine—will disappear, and its place bo taken by the metaphysical or the mystical. In order to make this thought more clear I shall hope, next Saturday, to refer to the temper and tone of tho controversies engendered by the publication of the "Origin of Species." Which means, of course, that Lincoln and his life must be still further postponed. Un'.ess, indeed, I can crave from the editor some little extension of space.