"It occurred to them, after doing a great deal of work upon the evidence for transformism — that is, for the change of one living type into another — that the (to them) impossible idea of Design could be eliminated; and it was under the more or less conscious action of a prejudice against Design that they propounded the theory of Natural Selection."

The author (Wells) becomes deeply concerned with a discussion peculiar to his own local society, and of a sort so childish that a thinking man has difficulty in taking it seriously: the discussion between the old-fashioned Protestant who thinks of creation as a sort of conjuring trick and the new fashioned one who cannot believe in creation at-all because he has discovered (rather late in the day) that things grow.

The old-fashioned Bible Christian thought that the hen appeared mature in a twinkling out of air, like the mango tree of the Indian jugglers. His newly enlightened son has discovered that it comes from an egg. Mr Wells … appears in the role of the newly enlightened, and is most earnest to convince his erring and belated fellows that life can have come into existence as a natural process: an idea which he conceives as "repugnant" to religious minds. It is astonishing that any of these two backwaters of culture should survive: the backwater of the bible Christian enlightened by elementary "science" which gets rid of a creator , and the backwater of the not yet enlightened Bible Christian who can’t think of creation except as the sudden appearance of familiar objects out of surrounding space. ….

(Mr Well’s book) is most readable, and accurately presents the ascending complexity of vegetable and animal life in the past.

But there comes a moment when … (Wells) must face a question which is as old as human enquiry, and which searches the very depth of his own nature and the world around him. It is this:

"Under the action of what force did this difference between various kinds of living things come to be? Under what cause did the organism differentiate and meet its environment, and develop into its myriad forms, each fulfilling a function? What mind was at work, and if no mind, then what?"

That question is the one capital enigma, the pre-eminent riddle of life set to the enquiry of man. For centuries and centuries he has examined it and has found no reply, save in mystery.

A lifetime ago a group of men, intolerant of fundamental philosophical enquiry and intolerant of mystery, thought they had found the answer in a very simple and wholly mechanical method which explained Evolution in a new way. They called this method "Natural Selection" and thereby — as they hoped — all necessity for design in the universe could be eliminated.

What the theory of Natural Selection was, I describe in a moment. It must suffice here to say that it made evolution subject to blind chance — and that today it is quite dead.

It is characteristic of Mr Wells’ work that now, in 1926, he still gives in all simplicity that exploded answer, which was so fashionable in the nineties. Mr Bernard Shaw said the other day, with native charity, that no-one under seventy still believes in Natural Selection. Page 16 of Mr Wells’ book shows that Mr Shaw estimated too highly the intelligence and culture of his contemporaries.

To trot out Natural Selection at this time of day as the chief element of evolution is almost like trotting out the old dead theory of immutable and simple elements in a popular chemistry ... There is still continuing the remains of an obstinate defence, urged by the strongest of human motives, religion: for there are still those who agree with Weissmann that Natural Selection must be maintained at all costs, and with no matter what fantastic affirmations, because "It is the only alternative to Design in the Universe — that is, to God.

But there can be no doubt which way the battle has turned.

When Driesch said, twenty long years ago, "Darwinism is dead," he was hardly premature. To quote him now is to repeat a commonplace.

…

I should not criticise Mr Wells for ignorance if he had written thus: "Many explanations have been given of how Evolution works. The Ancients ascribed it to some inherent power in living things which they called ‘entelechy’ i.e the power to realise an end. The eighteenth Century, led by Lamarck, tended at its close as did the earlier nineteenth century to something similar , but emphasized the will and effort of the organism. In the mid-nineteenth century there was proposed by Darwin and Wallace a new mechanical explanation which got rid of design and of ‘an end’ to which organisms worked. Its authors called it Natural Selection. For a short while it was so completely the fashion that it seemed impregnable. But criticism began, and grew menacing by the end of the century. … Today it seems overwhelming. Nonetheless I hold to those who with many modifications still maintain the old theory."

But Mr Wells did not write thus, with an appreciation of the position as it stands today. He set down Natural Selection in all its crudity as an admitted final truth, a piece of unquestioned modern science, and left his unfortunate readers under that impression.

To do that is morally inexcusable save on the plea of ignorance of all that vast bulk of criticism with which the average educated man is generally acquainted …and if he plead such ignorance … then he admits himself quite unfitted to put forward even the simplest outline of Evolution today.

The point is of first-class importance, for it illustrates at once the fixity and the weakness of that anti-Catholic — and irrational — spirit which will support any thesis however blown upon, so it be still some service against the Christian Faith.

Let me give as briefly as possible the story of this old-fashioned theory of Natural Selection — which seemed so convenient for getting rid of God — and of its breakdown. I will first note the motives under which it arose during the mid nineteenth century; next describe the theory itself; after that give the arguments by which it was more and more shown to be untenable.

Those arguments have long been familiar to all educated Europe.

Organic Genetic Evolution, i.e. the theory that one kind of living being arises from another kind, is as old as human observation and human thought. Common experience suggests it to everyone, because we know of no way in which living beings can appear upon the earth save as the product of other living beings.

When therefore men first took notice of, say, donkeys and horse, or tigers and cats, they naturally said to themselves, "These things look as though they had a common ancestor." The next step is to suppose that there would be a common ancestor to more widely different types. It is even admissible, though not probable, that all life on this earth sprang from one very simple origin. Our old pagan forefathers — those of them who were civilised — discussed all this centuries ago, and the Fathers of the Christian church spoke in the same terms.

In the Middle Ages it reappears, very vaguely, under the conception of Mediate Creation. God is the creator of every living thing. Yet every living thing has a parent or parents. That is an example of Mediate Creation; and it at once suggests the idea that groups as well as individuals might originate in the same way. Indeed, St Thomas, the great teacher of the Middle Ages, by concluding exceptionally that the creation of man was not mediate, but direct, implies the possibility or probability of Mediate Creation for organisms other than man. [NB JB writes; Thomas’ teaching is less cut and dried than that since he was talking of the human being as informed by an immediately created rational soul. He is also quite explicit about the probability of evolving creation generally. "It is unlikely that after the six days of creation anything in existence is entirely new"]

With the growth of modern science in the 18^th century full discussion of the idea was revived, and from a hundred and fifty years ago, Evolution was discussed throughout educated Europe. During the 19^th century a great mass of evidence was accumulated in its favour, and today it is almost, but not quite, universally held by specialists who have authority to speak upon such matters.

It is true that the process of organic evolution may have taken becomes more and more doubtful as modern research and debate advance.

Have the various species of plants and animals branched out from one original living cell or from many? It is uncertain.

Have the new origins of life appeared in succession and separately at long intervals of time? It is possible or probable.

Is transformism, that is, the change of one fully-developed mature and complex type into another, true? For instance, could a reptile have changed into a bird? Half a lifetime ago nearly everybody answered "Yes". Today — especially since the great work of Vialleton — more and more people are answering "No".

These and any number of other doubts and criticisms — some of them disproofs — have arisen in our time, but Evolution in the widest sense of that word — that is, the doctrine that living things are genetically connected — is still the main doctrine taught and held in Biology.

But Evolution in General is not the point. It involves no fundamental issue. It clashes with no theology or philosophy, unless we dignify by those terms an attachment to pictures of ready made beasts in the family bible. It is when men come to discuss how the difference between the varying types arose that we enter at once upon a quarrel between opposing philosophies, Christian and anti-Christian. No Catholic, nor indeed any man possessed of a philosophy, would trouble himself much over the confirmation or disproof of Evolution. Evolution simply means continuous growth; a tree growing from a seedling is an example of evolution; growth is the universal phenomenon apparent in ourselves and all organic life around us, and to discover it generalized is no shock, but rather an extension of the obvious.

But when we come to ask how and why the vast variety of living things past and present grew and differentiated as they did: whether a Spirit is at work or no: whether the process be intended or motiveless — then the essential quarrel is engaged between those for whom the universe is blind and those who see it as the work of God.

That quarrel, which had long ago been acute in the general field of philosophy, became acute in the particular field of biology in the late middle of the nineteenth century — over sixty years ago.

Darwin and Wallace and their school belonged to a generation — lived in a place and a time — to which the mysterious action of Will upon the universe — and indeed any mystery — was incomprehensible. Mystery in any form the typical nineteenth century Liberal rejected; and it has been well said that his very politics were founded on the idea that even human life itself was not mysterious.

At the same time they were in reaction against the old Puritan Bibliolatry, which in their ignorance of Catholic truth, they thought of as Orthodoxy.

It occurred to them, after doing a great deal of work upon the evidence for transformism — that is, for the change of one living type into another — that the (to them) impossible idea of Design could be eliminated; and it was under the more or less conscious action of a prejudice against Design that they propounded this theory of Natural selection.

The process of their prejudice against Design moved as follows:

"We must never have recourse to Mind in order to explain the universe; that would be "unscientific"; for to be "scientific" is to allow for nothing but material causes. Therefore the appearance of separate kinds of living beings must come from blind chance, or at least mechanically. At all costs we must get rid of the idea of Design; of a desired end conceived and maintained in a Creative Will. Here is the theory which will make the whole process entirely mechanical and dead."

Incidentally it made it possible to get rid of the necessity for a Creator. It was upon that aspect and use of the theory that the enemies of religion immediately seized, and it is precisely because it is supposed to get rid of God the Creator (and Judge) that some defence for Natural Selection is being kept up., especially (in part from Patriotism) among Darwin’s fellow citizens, but also from abroad.

Darwin thought (and so did Wallace who was a man of exactly the same type, belonging to the same generation and surroundings) that since the mysterious action of Will in the Universe was out of tune with his own mood, the evident order and purpose of organic life must be explained in another way, by the action of dead, unintelligent forces.

Whether God could create, did He chose, by the action of blind chance, trained theologians must decide. But it is obvious that if a system of blind chance were demonstrably true, those great modern intellects who say in their hearts "There is no God" have a powerful weapon in the Theory of Natural Selection. They seized that weapon with gusto; and they are still desperately clinging to the handle although the business part of the instrument has long been battered shapeless by their conquering opponents.

Here I must pause to make an important point. I have said that the motives which made the first theorizers incline to an atheist solution were not consciously atheist. Indeed it was characteristic of their generation that they could not define their own first principles. Further, they lived at a time when Christian principles were still powerful around them in the Protestant middle classes of England, and probably they honestly desired to combine incompatibles.

Neither Darwin nor Wallace, nor a host of other lesser known people who were all theorizing in much the same way a lifetime ago, were philosophic atheists after the type of the great Lucretius. They were not of that calibre. None of them could think out a consistent philosophical theory, true or false. Most of them would have told you, in a muddle headed sort of way, that they reverently believed in a Creator, while actively preaching the crudely mechanical and accidental processes which alone they could grasp.

But though these men characteristically confused themselves about what they did and did not ultimately believe (or rather feel) in religion — i.e. what their ultimate philosophy really was — any modern reader, especially any reader with the clear intelligence of the Catholic, can see what was running through their emotional brains. The idea of Design was intolerable to them. It was inextricably connected in their minds with what they "thought" creation meant. They had been taught in their childhood that Creation meant millions and millions of quite separate, mature, complicated things appearing suddenly, unconnected one with the other: magic full grown oak trees without acorns to grow from.

To get rid of this folly they took refuge in another, and produced the Theory of Natural Selection which seemed to them to account for the different types of living beings without having to admit a conscious and permanent divine Intention. It seemed to them to solve, in a simple fashion any child could understand, the awful and ancient riddle which has perplexed Europe for at least three thousand years, and perhaps much more. To the question, "How did differentiation among living organisms come to be?" they thought they had got the answer on what was virtually an atheist basis — a getting rid of intelligence from the Universe. They would not admit a Divine plan of the oak tree and an inherent power, tending towards that end implanted in the acorn. They called a profound view of this sort "mysticism" using that word as a term of abuse — and using it of course in a totally wrong meaning. No, they would get their oak and elm out of some general parent tree without an idea being at work, without Fiat, without an underlying Spirit.

So they propounded the idea of Natural Selection.

The Theory of Natural Selection was this:

No living thing can be exactly like its parent; for every organism is individual. The difference may be very slight, but it is always present.

Now, it is obviously true, from experience, that the conditions under which organic beings live — what is called their environment, i.e. surroundings — change unceasingly. That again is necessarily true if the material universe be, as it is, under the condition of Motion. These surroundings are perpetually changing slightly; sometimes they change suddenly and catastrophically, as for instance, when there is a flood.

Now some particular change, as, for instance, the climate getting gradually colder or wetter or dryer — will suit some particular small variation apparent in a certain proportion of any given set of organic beings . For instance, out of a million sheep like animals, ten thousand must in different degrees have very slightly woollier coats than the common run, and if the climate is slowly getting colder, this minority of woollier sheep are better suited to the change.

All organisms die; but those better-suited to a particular surrounding condition have a greater chance of survival than those less suited. (This dreadfully self-evident truth was solemnly set down in an academic formula; it was called "Survival of the fittest", or more clumsily, "Survival of the fitter"!) Bit by bit therefore, through the mechanical process of the slightly less fit dying off more rapidly, and leaving presumably less progeny, while a smaller number of slightly more fit lived longer and presumably left more progeny inheriting their advantages, the type of animal could be, and was, by the blind action of matter and with no necessity for its own or any other will, and with no design in the process at all, adapted to the changing condition. Since conditions are always changing, organic types (i.e. living things, vegetable and animal) were perpetually conforming to their environment by this process of Survival of the Fittest wherein a mechanical process inevitably and blindly picked out — selected — (whence the term Natural Selection) those who were to survive and form a new type. In this fashion all organic things came to be what they are at any particular moment and also to change perpetually into new things.

This doctrine of Natural Selection was thus made to explain the diversity and the unity of the living world.

Let us see how some simple organism living on the tidal belt of the sea-shore (between high and low water mark), and able both to exist in the air and under water will, according to the doctrine of Natural Selection, differentiate out and produce a land animal. Out of a million of these organisms there are perhaps ten thousand in which you can discover some slight superiority, present in varying degrees among them, for standing a long dry spell. There are another ten thousand who show in varying degrees some tiny almost imperceptible superiority of standing a long spell without air under water. Raising of the land or the set of winds gives a season of abnormally low high tides. The animals just on the upper edge of the tidal belt die out for lack of their regular tidal supply of water, except some few who can, having the slight differential advantage apparent among them, stand the strain of living so long in the air. The progeny of these, again, will tend to survive according to the degree in which they can withstand the lack of water about them. The less fit for air life are gradually sifted out by this natural process; the more fit for air-life survive.

There is the theory of Natural Selection in its broadest outline. It was excellently adapted to the generation for which it was produced. It looked as simple as the old theory of Free Trade did in economics, or the old Universal Suffrage in politics, or any other of the old crude mechanical conceptions born in the denial of mystery. It accounted for everything straightforwardly and at a blow. If you used its loose phraseology repeatedly, without ever gripping the full implication of the terms, without the capacity for holding a theory down hard and examining it closely, it seemed perfectly sufficient — and the old riddle was solved.

Natural Selection, the Survival of the fittest, the very gradual and quite blind, purposeless, undesigned forcing of the living organism into correspondence with its material environment, the formation of the living thing by the pressure of the non-living — of death — was sufficiently proved. All the old ideas of Design, the looking for mysterious forces at work in the world to explain the suitability of each organ to its function could be scrapped. There was no Creative God required. Those who wanted to be rid of Him could (and did) say that men had only imagined such a being from an ignorant projection of themselves on to the Universe. It was not life that transformed itself to meet and master matter, but (as Delage admirably put it in his refutation of Darwinism) matter which through death ordered life.

Such was the theory of Natural Selection.

Now, as we are about to examine why this theory of Natural Selection is untenable, and to discover why it burst after so very short a fashionable run, we must by way of preliminary, clearly understand its implications. We must understand — what its original promoters did not — the things which, whether you know it or not — you are accepting when you accept natural selection. After that we can understand the arguments that have destroyed it. … it is only when one looks into what it implies that the old Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection gets shaky.

The Implications of Natural Selection.
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