Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
Dr. Taylor's reasons for believing that the appearance of fossil
horses with a diminishing number of toes is caused by the creation
at separate periods of a four-, a three-, a two-, and a one-toed
horse are, he says, "personal, philosophical, historical," and he
opposes them with the utmost apparent sincerity to Huxley's
assertion that "there can be no scientific evidence" of such
creation. The "personal reason" for believing in successive
creations of sets of horses with a varying number of toes can,
of course, only be the reason so often urged in ball-room
disputation--that "I _feel_ it must be so;" the "philosophic reason"
can only be the one with which those who have frequented the society
of metaphysicians are very familiar, namely, a deduction from some
eminent speculator's opinion about the nature of the Supreme Being,
the conclusion being apparently that if the Creator wished to
diminish the number of a horse's toes, it would not do for him to
let one drop into disuse and so gradually disappear, but he would
have to make a new horse, on a new design. What Dr. Taylor means by
the "historical reason" we can only conjecture from his saying that
it is of the same order as his historical reason for believing "that
the Bible is the Word of God." The historical reason for this, we
presume, is that there are various literary and traditional proofs
that the Old Testament was held to be the Word of God by the Jewish
nation at a very early period, and was by them transmitted as such
to the modern Christian world, and that many of the prophecies
contained in it have received partial or a complete fulfilment. But
how by a process of this kind, partly literary and partly
conjectural, and attended by great difficulties at every step, he
would reach a fact of _prehistoric times_ of so much gravity as
creation in series, we think it would puzzle Dr. Taylor to explain.
Indeed, the mere production in a controversy of this nature of these
vague fancies, half pious, half poetical, conjured up in most cases
as a help to mental peace, by a leading minister in the character of
a logician, is a very remarkable proof of the extent of those
defects in clerical education to which we recently called attention.
TYNDALL AND THE THEOLOGIANS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account