for generalization, and, but for the vigor which one sees everywhere, might
be taken as an indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of
senility."
This is droll reading, when one considers that the "evolutionist" is the
only sort of naturalist who has much occasion to employ his "capacity for
generalization" upon "the accumulated facts" in their bearing upon the
problem of the origin of species; since the "special creationist," who
maintains that they were supernaturally originated just as they are, by the
very terms of his doctrine places them out of the reach of scientific
explanation. Again, when one reflects upon the new impetus which the
derivative hypothesis has given to systematic natural history, and reads
the declaration of a master in this department (the President of the
Linnean Society) that Mr. Darwin "has in this nineteenth century brought
about as great a revolution in the philosophic study of organic Nature as
that which was effected in the previous century by the immortal Swede," it
sounds oddly to hear from Dr. Dawson that "it obliterates the fine
perception of differences from the mind of the naturalist, . . . . destroys
the possibility of a philosophical classification, reducing all things to a
mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and botany,
which is already very manifest among the disciples of Spencer and Darwin in
England." So, also, "it removes from the study of Nature the ideas of final
cause and purpose"--a sentence which reads curiously in the light of
Darwin's special investigations, such as those upon the climbing of plants,
the agency of insects in the fertilization of blossoms, and the like, which
have brought back teleology to natural science, wedded to morphology and
already fruitful of discoveries. The difficulty with Dr. Dawson here is
(and it need not be underrated) that apparently he cannot as yet believe an
adaptation, act, or result, to be purposed the apparatus of which is
perfected or evolved in the course of Nature--a common but a crude state of
mind on the part of those who believe that there is any originating purpose
in the universe, and one which, we are sure, Dr. Dawson does not share as
respects the material world until he reaches the organic kingdoms, and
there, possibly, because he sees man at the head of them--of them, while
above them. However that may be, the position which Dr. Dawson chooses to
occupy is not left uncertain. After concluding, substantially, that those
"evolutionists" who exclude design from Nature thereby exclude theism, which
nobody will deny, he proceeds (on page 348) to give his opinion that the
"evolutionism which professes to have a creator somewhere behind it . . . .
is practically atheistic," and, "if possible, more unphilosophical than
that which professes to set out from absolute and eternal nonentity," etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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