The Portland daily press., 1882-05-25
London Daily News.l
The Clergy and Evolution,

The Clergy and Evolution.
The remains of Mr.. Darwin are to be buried
in Westminster Abbey. The Abbey is not ex-
actly Campo Santo, but it holds the graves of
many of the greatest Englishmen. Among
these Mr.. Darwin is numbered, and probably
will always be reckoned His noble qualities,
in which the originality of intellectual genius
was blended with and balanced by steadfast-
ness, modesty and patience, have been univer-
sally acknowledged. The world has not been
led away by Mr.. Carlyle's theory that Darwin
ism is stupid and uninterestipg People who
remember what fiery arrows of the orthodox
were cast at Mr.. Darwin, and at his books when
they first appeared, will be pleased to see that
the clergy can now speak of the philosopher
with tolerance and equaniminity. 1t seems to
have been thought at first that if man were
developed out of lower life, and not fashioned
(as in the Australian, Greek and Maori legends)
out of clay, then man ought to behave like the
animals which are his distant relatives. In
I'm Memoriam' written long before the pub
lication of the "Origin of Spccies.0 Mr.
Tennyson said that the sages of the future
might "shape their action like the greater ape,"
but that ne was born with different concep-
tion of good manners. This way of looking at
evolution was not unpopular, and many re-
spectacle people said If monkeys were our fore
fathers why should we be any more moral than
monkeys? The obvious answer was, Because
you are not monkeys, but men, whatever your
ancestors mao have been" 1t would be as
reasonable for member of the Stock Ex-
change or . solicitor to tattoo himself, and
walk about with battle-axe, because his FORE
bears did so, as for men to reject morality be-
cause monkeys are not moral
Another objection made to Mr.. Darwin's
views was that, on his hypothesis, there was no
room for spiritual element in man. If man
was descended from an ape, it was urged, how
could he have obtained soul? But it is just
as impossible for us to solve this psychological
problem on anyother theoryof the developement
of each individual human being. These are
ultimate matters on which experimental
science can never throw any certain light. Her
methods and researches suggest one presump-
tion to one set of minds, others to Others
Science cannot answer the questions OF whence
and whittier; these riddles can never be mas
tered; the truth remains beyond mans power
to discover; he can only believe, or doubt, or
deny. Know he cannot, and no scientific re-
search can reveal more than physical facts.
All this Canon Liddon acknowl lodged in the
sermon on Mr.. Darwin's death which he
preached in st. Paul's Cathedral. There is
nothing new, as we said lately, in the general
idea of evolution, as opposed TO instantaneous
creation. There is no new theory of the future
life, or Of the present. Hope. belief, dread,
blank denial have all been familiar to men, as
far as mans history can be traced by science.
And science nowhere finds man existing, nor
can she even infer from his in stitutions that he
ever lived in such way as was not already
truly human. Everywhere he had a hand to
fashion tools, and to represent in rude art the
word he saw; and usually he had mind to
speculate ON the future of the dead He is
always and everywhere a tool-constructing
animal, and almost everywhere a drawing
animal, and an animal who has shown, by his
treatment of the bodies of the dead, that his
mind has been busted with the eternal problem
of consciousness persisting after death. The
gap between such an animal and the highest
ape is indeed great gulf, and evolution has
still to explain how it was crossed. But if the
explanation were given and verified, hope and
faith would be more imperilled than BEFORE
and perplexities about the soul would not be
unravelled. Canon Liddon seems to have
adopted this position, and to have recognized
the right of man to speculate as Mr.. Darwin
speculated, and to look for scientific truth by
the only methods that make it attainable
This tolerance is tho latest evolved and not the
least satisfactory mode of clerical thought
There are men who, on what they believe to be
the evidence of science, 'infate themselves
with some insane delight" in their presumed
mortality and hopelessness. But Mr.. Darwin
was not one of these rash and intolerant