EVOLUTION.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19156, 12 November 1927, Page 23

EVOLUTION.

1 ■ DARWIN SUPPORTED. DR. BARNES ON RELIGION AND SCIENCE. "WHOLE THEOLOGICAL SCHEME DESTROYED."

(from oub- ovtk coßßßsro!fD£:rr.) LONDON, September 30. The Bishop of Birmingham, preaching in Westminster Abbey on the test, ''Walk as children of Light" (Ephesians v. 8.), discussed the present relations between religion and science. He said that that morning the boys of Westminster school had come tor the first Sundav service since the vacation. He prophesied that among them there were not a few who wouiu pass through periods when they distrusted and disputed the religious message which the Abbey existed to proclaim. "What advice shall I give to boys born to live in such an era. Shall I sav: 'Cling to the old ia\th ? I say rather: "Seek truth. Rejoice that "you live in one of the greatest eras of scientific progress in the history of humanity. Welcome new discoveries with an open mind. Reverence the great men who make them. But remember that behind all the new knowledge the fundamental issues of life will remain veiled.'" What, he continued, should be our attitude to the biological dectrine ot evolution? Should we falsify Christian history and use the falsification to commend Darwinism as though it were no novelty? Or should we honestiy welcome new knowledge and admit that some traditional dogmas ol Christian belief must be changed? Today there was, among competent men of "science, unanimous agreement that man had been evolved from an apelike stock. Darwin's assertion had stood the test of more than half -i century of critical examination. As a result'the stories of the creation of Adam and Eve,, of their primal innocence, and of their fall, had become for us folklore. But by the men who built up Catholic theology they were acepted as solid fact. Man's special creation was one of the primary assumptions of the Catholic system. Darwin's triumph had destroyed the whole, theological scheme. When so much of Catholic theology had been dissolved the Church which accepted it could hardly claim to be free from error. Man an Animal Evolving. But naturally, there were those who would rescue from the havoc wrought by Darwin and his followers something by which to justify pretensions to doctrinal infallibility. They pressed new claims and theories. Some ere toying with the idea of a pre-nmn-dane fall, for which there was not a jot of evidence. Others who , shrank from such flights of fancy were suggesting that, while man was physiologically a descendant of the apes, his mind was due to a special Divine act of creation. Such a contention could not be upheld. The human mind had been derived by evolution.from the intelligence of lower animals just as the human body had been evolved from the body of some primitive vertebrate. In fact, man was not a being.who had fallen from an ideal state of perfect innocence; he was an animal slowly gaining spiritual understanding and with the gain rising far above his distant ancestors. Union of Faith and Eeason. Christians who were not obsessed, by traditional theology realised that the doctrine of evolution left Christ's teaching unaffected. If there was a God behind Nature, He could show His creative activity through tho process of emergent evolution just as definitely as by special creation. We ■ could not believe that mind was merely a by-product of physio-chemical actions. Life apparently could only exist on the semi-moribund matter which results from the degeneration or break-up of a star. It was absurd to imagine that such matter should be able to produce either thought or beings who think. So we concluded that when life and mind emerged on the cooling earth they were new factors : products of a creative activity continuous since the first primitive organisms arose, as it would seem, from colloidal substances. Such a union of faith and reason was needed when we were asked whether the soul was immortal. In regard to personality we admitted with the man of science that it grew as the body developed. We were what we were by virtue of our parents and surroundings: and tho classical researches of Professor Karl Pearson showed that the forces of heredity were far stronger than those of circumstance. Yet as all those forces came ultimately from God, it was He Who shaped us, and if in the personality thus made there was something of eternal value, might wc not reasonably hold that it would have an eternal existence? Agreement with Christ's Teaching"So I would conclude," ho said, "that on the whole the modern scientific view of the origin of man's body and mind agrees well with Christ's teaching. But it cannot be reconciled with certain statements of St. Pa.ui : nor with a belief in the infallibility either of the Bible or the Church, noi with the acceptance of some of the main strands of traditional Catholic theology. Yet are these facts of anj importance? Why do men desire sc often to preserve old-errors?" Naturally, the men of science to whom th« quest of truth was one of life's greatest joys were contemptuous of such ignorance, magic, and fear. We whe professed to follow Christ ought tc share their contempt. The Right Rev. K. W. Barnes is th< only Bishop in the Church of Englanc who is a Fellow of the Royal Society After a brilliant university career In became first Smith's Prizeman in 1898 taking Orders in 1902.

Sir Arthur Keith's Views. The "Morning Post" has seen in Dr. Barnes's sermon the opportunity for a newspaper "stunt," and has encouraged the expression of views on the subject- One or two of these opinions are worth quoting. Sir Arthur Keith, the great anthropologist, is naturally delighted at the line that has been taken by the Bishop of Birmingham. "It is," he said, "in my view, absolutely the right line to- take, and it shows the influence that science is exorcising over the minds of churchmen. ! What one has to remember is that even-thing is changing and that it is inconceivable for them to stand still. It follows from this that there is no such thing that we can recognise as absolute truth. "Applying the general principle to churches and sects and creeds, I feel it necessary to emphasise that no church ! or creed can possibly be permanent. Man I is changing from day to day, and has 1 changed from century to century and from millennium to millennium. It is not conceivable that a creed which satisfied him many thousands and tens of thousands of years ago could be satisfactory to him to-day. "To realise the position one has only to consider the extraordinary difference existing between the small Jewish tribe, living in a atate of very little

advanced civilisation, with civilisation ;is we know it to-day. "Looking at thu history of man from the standpoint of evolution,. I fail to see any evideuce of a Fall. Man is rising from a lower to a higher state. So far as the question of the soul is concerned, I can only regard this as a function of the brain." We arc unable, as men of science, to submit it to any test of evidence, and.l believe it was the same force which caused the lower monkeys to develop into the anthropoid that caused the brain of the anthropoid to rise to the human level. "What has to be remembered is that as men of science we are trying to find out the nature of the world in which we live. The leaders of the Church are rapidly coming to take the view that if they also want to know the nature of the world in which wc live. They must study and appreciate the facts which have been collected and correlated by men of science- The change in atittude is a welcome one, and should help to bring us within reach of our common objective. We both seek for the truth, though we may look at it from different viewpoints."

Sir A. Conan Doyle's Eeply. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle very politely, but none the less tirnily, puts both the Bishop and the scientist in the category to which they belong—material scientists. ''l hesitate to join in a discussion which is in the hands of experts like Sir Arthur Keith and Bishop Barnes," he writes, "'and yet as 1 read their dignified utterances there are one or two thoughts which will rise in my mind and take a little from the value of their words. "Both of these gentlemen say with splendid virility: 'Why should we not face fresh facts however they may lead? Is it not the duty of scienco to examine fearlessly and as fearlessly n'ccept or reject?' Those are brave, strong words. But, alas, it so happens that both of these gentlemen have been challenged by me upon the facts of psychic research—facts endorsed by names like Lodge. Crookes, Loinbroso, Richet, Itnssel Wallace, and so many others, and both have treated them with a contemptuous incredulity because they did not happen to fit in with their own preconceived ideas of what was .probable or fitting. As I know that these facts are fa'cts, since I have studied them for forty years, and all my own senses have attested them, I feel that both the scientist and the Bishop have obviously broken the very law which they publicly acclaim, and have judged a most importtant matter by their prejudices and not by their knowledge. Soul an Independent Thing. "I might add a word upon the spiritualistic view of evolution as laid down by that superman, Andrew Jackson Davis, many years before Darwin wrote jipon the subject. Davis wrote under psychi'c inspiration, for he was an uneducated youth at the time, and his conclusions certainly do not represent anything which could possibly have come from his own normal human brain. They are to be found in full in that marvellous book, . 'Nature's Divine Revelations,' dating from 1847. "His teaching—or rather, the teaching of those who used him as an instrument—was that man did descend not from the present apes, but from primitive ape forms. He described lowly forms of humanity, corresponding roughly with those Java, Heidelberg, and Neanderthal types which were afterwards discovered. He held, how* ever, that, while instinct and the j lower functions of mind came to us ! through the animals, there came a period in evolution when an entirely new factor of soul was introduced from without, and that this introduction marked the dividing line between human and animal. "According to his views—and it is generally adopted by philosophic Spiritualists—the soul is not an emanation of the brain, but is an independent thing, which partially and imperfectly expresses itself through the brain, bearing the relation to it which the performer bears to the violin. When the violin is out of order, the performer seems to fail, and so the soul, intact in itself, 'can only express; itself indifferently through a faulty machine." ' v