Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chapter 18)
by Robert Chambers
Purpose and General Condition of the Animated Creation
e have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and
origin of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his
relation to supra-mundane things.
That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence
is pressed upon us by all that we see and all we experience. Everywhere we
perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of
enjoyment. Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying of which is
gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is pleasurable. When
we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of a healthy
performance of all the functions of the animal economy, God has furnished us
with an innocent and very high enjoyment. The mere quiet consciousness of a
healthy play of the mental functions—a mind at ease with itself and all
around it—is in like manner extremely agreeable. This negative class of
enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more extensively
experienced by the lower animals than by man, at least in the proportion of
their absolute endowments, as their mental and bodily functions are much less
liable to derangement than ours. To find the world constituted on this
principle is only what in reason we would expect. We cannot conceive that so
vast a system could have been created for a contrary purpose. No averagely
constituted human being would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of
producing a similar system upon an opposite principle. But to form so vast a
range of being, and to make being everywhere a source of gratification, is
conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom we are constantly discovering
traits of a nature, of which our own is but a faint and far-cast shadow at
the best.
It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea
the many miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included,
occasionally enduring. How, the sage has asked in every age, should a Being
so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of evil in the
condition of his creatures? Do we not at length find an answer to a certain
extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been given of the constitution
of nature? We there see the Deity operating in the most august of his works,
fixed laws, an arrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and
primary results being good, but disregards exceptions. Now the mechanical
laws are so definite in their purposes, that no exceptions ever take place in
that department; if there is a certain quantity of nebulous matter to be
agglomerated and divided and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be
so with hair's-breadth accuracy, and cannot be otherwise. But the laws
presiding over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less definite, as
they have to produce a great variety of mutually related results. Left to
act independently of each other, each according to its separate commission,
and each with a wide range of potentiality to be modified by associated
conditions, they can only have effects generally beneficial: often there must
be an interference of one law with another, often a law will chance to
operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus evil will be produced.
Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways, and the sea is useful as a
means of communication between one country and another; but the natural laws
which produce winds are of indefinite range of action, and sometimes are
unusually concentrated in space or in time, so as to produce storms and
hurricanes, by which much damage is done; the sea may be by these causes
violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives perish. Here, it is
evident, the evil is only exceptive. Suppose, again, that a boy, in the
course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall which injures
his spine, and renders him a cripple for life. Two things have been concerned
in the case: first, the love of violent exercise, and second, the law of
gravitation. Both of these things are good in the main. In the rash
enterprises and rough sports in which boys engage, they prepare their bodies
and minds for the hard tasks of life. By gravitation, all moveable things,
our own bodies included, are kept stable on the surface of the earth. But
when it chances that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the
branch of a tree, and has no solid support immediately below, the law of
gravitation unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is hurt. Now
it was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys; but gravitation
could not but operate in the circumstances, its nature being to be universal
and invariable. The evil is, therefore, only a casual exception from
something in the main good.
The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous
of the evils which afflict society. War, it may be said, and said truly, is a
tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human life, and
mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions. But what is it that
produces war? Certain tendencies of human nature, as keen assertion of a
supposed right, resentment of supposed injury, acquisitiveness, desire of
admiration, combativeness, or mere love of excitement. All of these are
tendencies which are every day, in a legitimate extent of action, producing
great and indispensable benefits to us. Man should be a tame, indolent,
unserviceable being without them, and his fate would be starvation. War,
then, huge evil though it be, is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casual
misdirection of properties and powers essentially good. God has given us the
tendencies for a benevolent purpose. He has only not laid down any absolute
obstruction to our misuse of them. That were an arrangement of kind which he
has nowhere made. But he has established many laws in our nature which tend
to lessen the frequency and destructiveness of these abuses. Our reason comes
to see that war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror. Benevolence
interposes to make its ravages less mischievous to human comfort, and less
destructive to human life. Men begin to find that their more active powers
can be exercised with equal gratification on legitimate objects; for example,
in overcoming the natural difficulties of their path through life, or in a
generous spirit of emulation in a line of duty beneficial to themselves and
their fellow-creatures. Thus, war at length shrinks into a comparatively
narrow compass, though there certainly is no reason to suppose that it will
be at any early period, if ever, altogether dispensed with, while man's
constitution remains as it is. In considering an evil of this kind, we must
not limit our view to our own or any past time. Placed upon the earth with
faculties prepared to act, but inexperienced, and with the more active
propensities necessarily in great force to suit the condition of the globe,
man was apt to misuse his powers much in this way at first, compared with
what he is likely to do when he advances into a condition of civilization. In
the scheme of providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the
so-called glories which fill history, may be only exception to the general
rule.
The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but
the evils are only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with
this affection. Providence has seen it necessary to make very ample provision
for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all species. The aim
seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as possible, to fill up every
vacant piece of space with some sentient being to be a vehicle of enjoyment.
Hence this passion is conferred in great force. But the relation between the
number of beings, and the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of
general law. There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws operating
for the multiplication of individuals, and the laws operating to supply them
with the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured in consequence, even
in our own highly favoured species. But against all these evils, and against
those numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from the attachment
of the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which is derived from this
source—the basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the
sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous feelings,
and even of our most virtuous resolves—and every ill that can be traced
to it is but as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must be on our guard
against judging from what we see in the world at a particular era. As reason
and the higher sentiments of man's nature increase in force, this passion is
put under better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected with
it. The civilized man is more able to give it due control; his attachments
are less the result of impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and
offspring. There are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early
society with love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and jealousy, which
almost disappear in an advanced stage of civilization. The evils springing,
in our own species at least, from this passion, may therefore be an exception
mainly peculiar to a particular term of the world's progress, and which may
be expected to decrease greatly in amount.
With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of
suffering to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated but regular
process in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source of
continual gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere with it
injuriously, but which is liable every moment to be deranged by various
external agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be
severe, ceases to be capable of retaining life. It may be readily admitted
that the evils experienced in this way are very great; but, after all, such
experiences are no more than occasional, and not necessarily
frequent—exceptions from a general rule of which the direct action is to
confer happiness. The human constitution might have been made of a more hardy
character; but we always see hardiness and insensibility go together, and it
may be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this immunity
from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which
lie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might have been
restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of
the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the
aberrations which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been
incapable of acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the many
high enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties places in our power:
we should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a level with
the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man's
constitution, that which places him in such a high relation to the mundane
economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely delightful
sensations—it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings of
disease. It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of the
agencies producing disease might have been diminished or extinguished; but
the probability is, that this could not have been done without such a
derangement of the whole economy of nature as would have been attended with
more serious evils. For example—a large class of diseases are the result
of effluvia from decaying organic matter. This kind of matter is known to be
extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in favouring the process of
vegetation. Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution done away
with, might we not also lose that important quality which tends so largely to
increase the food raised from the ground? Perhaps (as has been suggested) the
noxiousness is even a matter of special design, to induce us to put away
decaying organic substances into the earth, where they are calculated to be
so useful. Now man has reason to enable him to see that such substances are
beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other. He is, as it
were, commanded to take the right method in dealing with it. In point of
fact, men do not always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxious
matter to gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and
agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a temporary exception from
the operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which is to make men
adopt the proper measures. And these measures will probably be in time
universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases will be
altogether or nearly abolished.
Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement
of our personal economy. Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is
noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for the right
action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for the supply of the
lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence of the mental affections,
are all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement of the system
in which disease consists. Here also it may be said that a limitation of the
mental faculties to definite manifestations (vulgo, instincts) might
have enabled us to avoid many of these errors; but here again we are met by
the consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we should have been only
as the lower animals are, wanting that transcendently higher character of
sensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made so much greater. In
making the desire of food, for example, with us an indefinite mental
manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it is amongst the lower
animals, the Creator has given us a means of deriving far greater
gratifications from food (consistently with health) than the lower animals
appear to be capable of. He has also given us reason to act as a guiding and
controlling power over this and other propensities, so that they may be
prevented from becoming causes of malady. We can see that excess is
injurious, and are thus prompted to moderation. We can see that all the
things which we feel inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus
exhorted to avoid what are pernicious. We can also see that a cleanly skin
and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the proper performance of
some of the most important of the organic functions, and thus are stimulated
to frequent ablution, and to a right ventilation of our parlours and sleeping
apartments. And so on with the other causes of disease. Reason may not
operate very powerfully to these purposes in an early state of society, and
prodigious evils may therefore have been endured from disease in past ages;
but these are not necessarily to be endured always. As civilization advances,
reason acquires a greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and
avoided; end disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass. The
experience of our own country places this in a striking light. In the middle
ages, when large towns had no police regulations, society was every now and
then scourged by pestilence. The third of the people of Europe are said to
have been carried off by one epidemic. Even in London the annual mortality
has greatly sunk within a century. The improvement in human life, which has
taken place since the construction of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price,
is equally remarkable. Modern tables still shew a prodigious mortality among
the young in all civilized countries—evidently a result of some
prevalent error in the usual modes of rearing them. But to remedy this evil
there is the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense to adopt any reformed
plans which may be shewn to be necessary. By a change in the management of an
orphan institution in London, during the last fifty years, an immense
reduction in the mortality took place. We may of course hope to see measures
devised and adopted for producing a similar improvement of infant life
throughout the world at large.
In this part of our subject, the most difficult point
certainly lies in those occurrences of disease where the afflicted individual
has been in no degree concerned in bringing the visitation upon himself.
Daily experience shews us infectious disease arising in a place where the
natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then spreading into
regions where there is no blame of this kind. We then see the innocent
suffering equally with those who may be called the guilty. Nay, the
benevolent physician who comes to succour the miserable beings whose error
may have caused the mischief, is sometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while
many of his patients recover. We are also only too familiar with the
transmission of diseases from erring parents to innocent children, who,
accordingly suffer, and perhaps die prematurely, as it were for the sins of
others. After all, however painful such cases may be in contemplation, they
cannot be regarded in any other light than as exceptions from arrangements,
the general working of which is beneficial.
With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties,
there is one important consideration which is pressed upon us from many
quarters, namely—that moral conditions have not the least concern in the
working of these simply physical laws. These laws proceed with an entire
independence of all such conditions, and desirably so, for otherwise there
could be no certain dependence placed upon them. Thus it may happen that two
persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one a virtuous, the other a
vicious man, the former, being the less cautious of the two, ventures upon an
insecure place, falls, and is killed, while the other, choosing a better
footing, remains uninjured. It is not in what we can conceive of the nature
of things, that there should be a special exemption from the ordinary laws of
matter, to save this virtuous man. So it might be that, of two physicians,
attending fever cases, in a mean part of a large city, the one, an excellent
citizen, may stand in such a position with respect to the beds of the
patients as to catch the infection, of which he dies in a few days, while the
other, a bad husband and father, and who, unlike the other, only attends such
cases with selfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out of the
stream of infection, and accordingly escapes. In both of these cases man's
sense of good and evil—his faculty of conscientiousness—would
incline him to destine the vicious man to destruction and save the virtuous.
But the Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such principles. He has
established laws for the operation of inanimate matter, which are quite
unswerving, so that when we know them, we have only to act in a certain way
with respect to them, in order to obtain all the benefits and avoid all the
evils connected with them. He has likewise established moral laws in our
nature, which are equally unswerving, (allowing for their wider range of
action,) and from obedience to which unfailing good is to be derived. But the
two sets of laws are independent of each other. Obedience to each gives only
its own proper advantage, not the advantage proper to the other. Hence it is
that virtue forms no protection against the evils connected with the physical
laws, while, on the other hand, a man skilled in and attentive to these, but
unrighteous and disregardful of his neighbour, is in like manner not
protected by his attention to physical circumstances from the proper
consequences of neglect or breach of the moral laws.
Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for
the faults of a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is
evidently a consideration quite apart from that suffering.
It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural
laws, that the individual, as far as the present sphere of being is
concerned, is to the Author of Nature a consideration of inferior moment.
Everywhere we see the arrangements for the species perfect; the individual is
left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the mêlée of the
various laws affecting him. If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls
him, there was at least no partiality against him. The system has the
fairness of a lottery, in which every one has the like chance of drawing the
prize.
Yet it is also to be observed that few evils are
altogether unmixed. God, contemplating apparently the unbending action of his
great laws, has established others which appear to be designed to have a
compensating, a repairing, and a consoling effect. Suppose, for instance,
that, from a defect in the power of development in a mother, her offspring is
ushered into the world destitute of some of the most useful members, or
blind, or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be found in the
parents and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with
the sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in the
long run not much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence implanted in our nature
seems to be an arrangement having for one of its principal objects to cause
us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably suffered by
our fellow-creatures in the course of the operation of the other natural
laws. And even in the sufferer himself, it is often found that a defect in
one point is made up for by an extra power in another. The blind come to have
a sense of touch much more acute than those who see. Persons born without
hands have been known to acquire a power of using their feet for a number of
the principal offices usually served by that member. I need hardly say how
remarkably fatuity is compensated by the more than usual regard paid to the
children born with it by their parents, and the zeal which others usually
feel to protect and succour such persons. In short, we never see evil of any
kind take place where there is not some remedy or compensating principle
ready to interfere for its alleviation. And there can be no doubt that in
this manner suffering of all kinds is very much relieved.
We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres
designed for the residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with
this as their first and most obvious purpose—namely, to be sensible of
enjoyments from the exercise of their faculties in relation to external
things. The faculties of the various species are very different, but the
happiness of each depends on the harmony there may be between its particular
faculties and its particular circumstances. For instance, place the
small-brained sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys this harmony
of relation; but man, having many more faculties, cannot be thus contented.
Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have
entertainment for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the
domestic and social affections, objects for the sentiments. He is also a
progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not please him to-morrow;
but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate conditions in order to
be happy. By virtue of his superior organization, his enjoyments are much
higher and more varied than those of any of the lower animals; but the very
complexity of circumstances affecting him renders it at the same time
unavoidable, that his nature should be often inharmoniously placed and
disagreeably affected, and that he should therefore be unhappy. Still
unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception from the rule of their
condition, and an exception which is capable of almost infinite diminution,
by virtue of the improving reason of man, and the experience which he
acquires in working out the problems of society.
To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem
to be necessary for men first to study with all care the constitution of
nature, and, secondly, to accommodate themselves to that constitution, so as
to obtain all the realizable advantages from acting conformably to it, and to
avoid all likely evils from disregarding it. It will be of no use to sit down
and expect that things are to operate of their own accord, or through the
direction of a partial deity, for our benefit; equally so were it to expose
ourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion that we shall, for some
reason, have a dispensation or exemption from them: we must endeavour so to
place ourselves, and so to act, that the arrangements which Providence has
made impartially for all may be in our favour, and not against us; such are
the only means by which we can obtain good and avoid evil here below. And, in
doing this, it is especially necessary that care be taken to avoid
interfering with the like efforts of other men, beyond what may have been
agreed upon by the mass as necessary for the general good. Such
interferences, tending in any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a
neighbour, or to the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect
evil upon ourselves, through the re-action which they produce in the feelings
of our neighbour and of society, and also the offence which they give to our
own conscientiousness and benevolence. On the other hand, when we endeavour
to promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we
produce a re-action of the contrary kind, the tendency of which is towards
our own benefit. The one course of action tends to the injury, the other to
the benefit of ourselves and others. By the one course the general design of
the Creator towards his creatures is thwarted; by the other it is favoured.
And thus we can readily see the most substantial grounds for regarding all
moral emotions and doings as divine in their nature, and as a means of rising
to and communing with God. Obedience is not selfishness, which it would
otherwise be—it is worship. The merest barbarians have a glimmering
sense of this philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more clearly
in the public mind, as a nation advances in intelligence. Nor are individuals
alone concerned here. The same rule applies as between one great body or
class of men and another, and also between nations. Thus if one set of men
keep others in the condition of slaves—this being, a gross injustice to
the subjected party, the mental manifestations of that party to the masters
will be such as to mar the comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters
themselves will be degraded by the association with beings so degraded; and
thus, with some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, there will
be in a far greater degree an experience of evil. So also, if one portion of
a nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp at some
advantages injurious to the other sections of the people, the first effect
will be an injury to those other portions of the nation, and the second a
re-active injury to the injurers, making their guilt their punishment. And so
when one nation commits an aggression upon the property or rights of another,
or even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious policy, the effects are
sure to be redoubled evil from the offended party. All of these things are
under laws which make the effects, on a large range, absolutely certain; and
an individual, a party, a people, can no more act unjustly with safety, than
I could with safety place my leg in the track of a coming wain, or attempt to
fast thirty days. We have been constituted on the principle of only being
able to realize happiness for ourselves when our fellow creatures are also
happy; we must therefore both do to others only as we would have others to do
to us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as our own, in order
to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field of existence. These are
words which God speaks to us as truly through his works, as if we heard them
uttered in his own voice from heaven.
It will occur to every one, that the system here unfolded
does not imply the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the
Deity towards his creatures. Constituted as we are, feeling how vain our
efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and knowing that
much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault of ours, we are apt to
feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine economy; and before we have
looked farther, we might be tempted to say, Far rather let us cling to the
idea, so long received, that the Deity acts continually for special
occasions, and gives such directions to the fate of each individual as he
thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us, we shall have at least the
consolation of believing that it is imposed by a Father who loves us, and who
seeks by these means to accomplish our ultimate good. Now, in the first
place, if this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it can be of no
real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper to inquire if there be
necessarily in the doctrine of natural law any peculiarity calculated
materially to affect our hitherto supposed relation to the Deity. It may be
that while we are committed to take our chance in a natural system of
undeviating operation, and are left with apparent ruthlessness to endure the
consequences of every collision into which we knowingly or unknowingly come
with each law of the system, there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the
screen of nature, which is to make up for all casualties endured here, and
the very largeness of which is what makes these casualties a matter of
indifference to God. For the existence of such a system, the actual
constitution of nature is itself an argument. The reasoning may proceed thus:
The system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading principle in
the divine mind. But that system is at the same time deficient in a means of
making this benevolence of invariable operation. To reconcile this to the
recognised character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the
present system is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and
that the Redress is in reserve. Another argument here occurs—the economy
of nature, beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does not
satisfy even man's idea of what might be; he feels that, if this multiplicity
of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena as we see on earth were
to go on for ever unchanged, it would not be worthy of the Being capable of
creating it. An endless monotony of human generations, with their humble
thinkings and doings, seems an object beneath that august Being. But the
mundane economy might be very well as a portion of some greater phenomenon,
the rest of which was yet to be evolved. It therefore appears that our
system, though it may at first appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem
amongst mankind, tends to come into harmony with them, and even to give them
support. I would say, in conclusion, that, even where the two above arguments
may fail of effect, there may yet be a faith derived from this view of nature
sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, the
calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere of being. For let us but fully
and truly consider what a system is here laid open to view, and we cannot
well doubt that we are in the hands of One who is both able and willing to do
us the most entire justice. And in this faith we may well rest at ease, even
though life should have been to us but a protracted disease, or though every
hope we had built on the secular materials within our reach were felt to be
melting from our grasp. Thinking of all the contingencies of this world as to
be in time melted into or lost in the greater system, to which the present is
only subsidiary, let us wait the end with patience, and be of good cheer.
[ Robert Chambers,
Vestiges of the
Natural History of Creation, 1st edition, 1844; James Secord,
ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 361-386. ]
Home Page |
Further Reading |
Site Map |
Send Feedback
