The Heavenly Father Part 10

Recollect, I pray you, that the words 'time' and 'progress' explain nothing. There must have occurred favorable circ.u.mstances to transform the earth's substance into living cellules, and the living cellules into plants clearly marked, and into animals properly so called; and in the same way there must have been a propitious circ.u.mstance to transform the monkey into man. I think so, in fact; and this propitious circ.u.mstance well deserves to be studied with attention.

Man presents characteristics which distinguish him profoundly from the animal races: no one disputes it. He possesses speech; he is capable of religion; he exhibits the varied phenomena of civilization, while the animals succeed one another generations after generations in the unrecorded obscurity of a life for ever the same. Suppose we admit that human phenomena presented themselves at first in a very elementary form; in rudiments of language and rudiments of religion,--although the historical sciences do not quite give this result:--still suppose the case that at a given moment a branch of the monkey species presented the germ, as little developed as you please, but real, of new phenomena. One variety of the monkey species has been endowed with speech, has become religious, capable of civilization, and the other varieties of the species have not offered the same characteristics, although they have had the same number of ages in which to develop themselves. Observe well now my process of reasoning. Remark attentively whether I oppose theories to facts, whether I subst.i.tute oratorical declamations for arguments. I grant the hypotheses best calculated, as commonly thought, to contradict my theses. I a.s.sume that natural history demonstrates by solid proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of a monkey; and I ask: What is the circ.u.mstance which set apart in the animal species a branch which presented new phenomena? What is the cause? That monkey-author of our race which one day began to speak in the midst of his brother-monkeys, amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity; that, looking up to heaven, said, My G.o.d! and that, retiring into himself, said: I!--that monkey which, while the female monkeys continued to give birth to their young, had sons by the partner of his life and pressed them to his heart; that monkey--what shall we say of it? What climate, what soil, what regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what drought, what light, what combination of phosphorus, what disengagement of electricity, separated from the animal races, not only man, but human society? humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again, its sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles; humanity with its arts, its sciences, its religion, its history in short, its history and its hopes of immortality? That monkey, what shall we say of it? Do you not see that the breath of the Spirit pa.s.sed over it, and that G.o.d said unto it: Behold, thou art made in mine image: remember now thy Father who is in heaven? Do you not see that though we grant everything to the extreme pretensions of naturalists, the question comes up again whole and entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature, that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies the real problem. Whether the eternal G.o.d formed the body of the first man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth, by making it pa.s.s through the long series of animality--the question is a grave one, but it is of secondary importance. The first question is to know whether we are merely the ephemeral product of the encounter of atoms, or whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul, a reality in short, with which may connect itself another future than the dissolution of the sepulchre; whether there remains another hope than annihilation as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants after fame, only that evanescent memory which time bears away with everything beside.

This is the question. Do not allow it to be put out of sight beneath details of physiology and researches of natural history, which can neither settle, nor so much as touch the problem. If therefore you fall in with any one of these philosophers of matter, bid him take this for all your answer: "There is one fact which stands out against your theory and suffices to overthrow it: that fact is--myself!" And since, to have the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance of the conscience,--add boldly with Corneille's Medea:

I,--I say,--and it is enough.

In fact, nature does not explain man, and to this conclusion has tended all that I have said to you to-day.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] _Harmonices mundi, libri quinque._

[98] _Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica._

[99]

The whole universe is full of His magnificence.

May this G.o.d be adored and invoked for ever!

[100] _Le Rationalisme_, page 19.

[101] _Force et Matiere_, page 262.

[102] _Les Mondes Causeries astronomiques_ by Guillemin; see p. 122 (3rd edition), where Kepler is described as an intelligence "penetrated by a profound faith in nature and exalted by a n.o.ble pride." See also pages 327 and 336.

[103] The question discussed in these pages must not be confounded with that of the relations between the science of nature and the doc.u.ments of revelation. Whether nature can be explained without G.o.d is one question.

Whether geology is in accordance with the language of the book of Genesis is another question, as regards both its nature and its importance. This latter subject does not come within the scope of these lectures. I will merely call attention to the fact, that if nature and the sacred text are fixed elements, this is not the case with the interpretations of theologians, and the results of geology. It is difficult to p.r.o.nounce upon the exact relation of two quant.i.ties more or less indeterminate.

[104] In the writings of M. de Rougemont, if I am not mistaken.

[105] _Systema naturae._

[106] Ps. civ. 24.

[107] _Biographie universelle._

[108] _A. P. de Candolle_, by A. de la Rive, pp. 12 and 13.

[109] M. Vaucher's princ.i.p.al t.i.tle to scientific distinction is his _Histoire des conferves d'eau douce_, Geneve, an XI (1803), 4.

[110] _Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Sciences_ of 20 April, 1863, page 738.

[111] Exeter Hall Lectures--_The Power of G.o.d in His Animal Creation_, pamphlet in 12mo. This remarkable lecture contains a twofold protest--against the blindness of those savants who fail to recognize the presence of G.o.d in nature; and against the pretensions of those theologians who attack the certain results of the study of nature, relying upon texts more or less accurately interpreted.

[112] _Chemistry applied to Agriculture and to Physiology_ (in German).

Seventh edition. Introd. page 69.

[113] Since these words were spoken, M. de la Rive has been named an a.s.sociated member of the Inst.i.tute of France (Academy of Sciences), and thus elevated to the first of scientific dignities. It might be shown, I believe, that the greater number of the eight a.s.sociates of the Academy of Sciences to be found in the world, make profession of their faith in G.o.d the Creator, the Almighty and Holy One. The silence which others may have preserved on the subject would, moreover, be no authority for concluding that they do not share in beliefs and sentiments which they have not had the occasion perhaps of publicly expressing.

[114] _On the Origin of Species_, page 81. Fifth edition.

[115] _On the Origin of Species_. The text is--"the _necessary_ series of facts;" but it would be to do the writer wrong to impute to him the idea that observation reveals to us what is _necessary_, in the philosophical import of the word.

[116] _On the Origin of Species._

[117] Caro, _L'Idee de Dieu_, page 47.

[118] _Force et Matiere_, page 181.

[119] The Buchner proceeding is found again pretty exactly in _Les Mondes_ of M. Amedee Guillemin. This writer affirms (page 60 of the third edition) that science does not approach metaphysical questions; and a.s.serts in the same page, ten lines further on, that astronomical experience leads our reason to the idea of _the eternity of the universe_. After that, he may laugh, if he will, at _lovers of the absolute_.

[120] See in particular the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, pa.s.sim.

[121] S'enivrait en marchant du plaisir de la voir.

[122] See the lecture above mentioned.

[123] _Lettres sur les Etats-Unis d'Amerique_, by Lieutenant-Colonel Ferri Pisani, page 400.--Letter of 25 Sept. 1861.

[124] On the origin of species, in the _Archives des sciences de la Bibliotheque universelle_, March, 1860.

[125] Vous coulez des moucherons.

[126] In his _Principes de philosophie zoologique_, a collection of answers made by Geoffroy, in the discussions of the _Academie des Sciences_, in 1830.

[127] Voyons, Messieurs, le temps ne fait rien a l'affaire.

[128]

Sur cent premiers peuples celebres, J'ai plonge cent peuples fameux, Dans un abime de tenebres Ou vous disparaitrez comme eux.

J'ai couvert d'une ombre eternelle Des astres eteints dans leur cours.

--Ah! par pitie, lui dit ma belle, Vieillard, epargnez nos amours!

[129] _Esprit des Lois_, Bk. I. chap. 1.

[130] _Lecons sur l'homme_, by Carl Vogt (lectures delivered during the winter of 1862-1863, at Neuchatel and at Chaux-de-Fonds), 1 vol. 8vo.

Paris, 1865.--_L'Homme et le Singe_, by Frederic de Rougemont, pamphlet, 12mo. Neuchatel, 1863.

LECTURE V.

_HUMANITY._

(At Geneva, 1st. Dec., 1863.)