The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880Calderwood, Henry
Religion
The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880
Calderwood, Henry
Religion and science
"Biologists turn to the physical organization of man. They examine his
whole structure, his bony frame, and all that clothes it. They resolve
him into the finest particles into which the microscope will enable them
to break him up. They consider the performance of his various functions
and activities, and they look at the manner in which he occurs on the
surface of the world. Then they turn to other animals, and taking the
first handy domestic animal--say a dog,--they profess to be able to
demonstrate that the analysis of the dog leads them, in gross, to
precisely the same results as the analysis of the man; that they find
almost identically the same bones, having the same relations; that they
can name the muscles of the dog by the names of the muscles of the man,
and the nerves of the dog by those of the nerves of the man, and that
such structures and organs of sense as we find in the man, such also we
find in the dog; they analyze the brain and spinal cord, and they find
that the nomenclature which fits the one answers for the other.
Moreover, they trace back the dog's and the man's development, and they
find that at a certain stage of their existence, the two creatures are
not distinguishable the one from the other; they find that the dog and
his kind have a certain distribution over the surface of the world
comparable in its way to the distribution of the human species.... Thus
biologists have arrived at the conclusion that a fundamental uniformity
of structure pervades the animal and vegetable worlds, and that plants
and animals differ from one another simply as modifications of the same
great plan. Again they tell us the same story in regard to the study of
function. They admit the large and important interval which, at the
present time, separates the manifestations of the mental faculties
observable in the higher forms of mankind, and even in the lowest forms,
such as we know them, mentally from those exhibited by other animals;
but, at the same time, they tell us that the foundations or rudiments
of almost all the faculties of man are to be met with in the lower
animals; that there is a unity of mental faculty, as well as of bodily
structure, and that here also, the difference is a difference of degree
and not of kind."--Lecture on "The Study of Biology," by Professor
Huxley, _Nature_, vol. xv. p. 219. Delivered at South Kensington Museum,
London, December 16, 1876. On the grounds here admirably summarized, it
is clear that the whole organism of our world has been constructed on a
common plan. This being true, similarities will appear in process of
development, and in the structure and functions of different orders.
This similarity, however, does not help us to explain "the large and
important interval" which appears when mental characteristics are
considered. It makes the diversity of mental power more difficult to
explain by reference to organism, in fact contributing to the strength
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