“WHAT AN IMAGINATION GOD HAS,” SAID POET

Hokitika Guardian, 29 August 1929, Page 2

“WHAT AN IMAGINATION GOD HAS,” SAID POET

MORE KINDS OF INSECTS THAN

OF OTHER CREATION

“Let us look out on the world, through the eyes of the naturalist and tty to envisage the world of life—the domain of organisms,, the plants and animals, both great, and small. Our question is: Do they throw, any light on the meaning of the world?” (writes Professor J. A. Thomson in “John o London’s Weekly.”)

One sta'rt differs from another in glory, and there are said to be eight different kinds of lead; but these is far greater specificity and individuality among living creatures. • It is not merely that life is abundant, what strikes us is its manifoldness. There are over 26,000 backboned animals, named and known, and the most conservative estimate for backboheless animals is ten times as many. In all probability there are half a million different species of living creatures, each itself and no other.

• A TENNYSON STORY. Whatever we make of the world in our philosophical-religious interpretation, we must include the impression of prodigal resources, of lavish expression of what in a human artist we should call creative genius. We like the story of Tennyson peering into the crowded life in the wayside brook, and rejoining his companions with the words “What an imagination God has I” In the multudinous manifoldness cf life there- is spmething' suggestive of tlhe sideral galaxies, something astounding (thoumaston, as Aristotle said), something “numinous” to use a favourite word of to-day. To avoid the error of mystery-mon-gering we may note that there are more different kinds of insects than there are of all other kinds of animals ppt tpgptherV and that it is possible to 'point ter three or four causes of the embarrassing . number; but our point jg 'rather the range of the gamut of ijfe, . from /midge to mammoth, from snail to bird, from amoeba, to chimpanzee. What ah imagination!

- THE MELODY OF LIFE. Behind all the diversity and individuality there is filiation. The common properties ■ of protoplasm made all the world akin. The naturalist works out his.orderly classification; he even constructs a genealogical tree; with Emerson lie . “sees the worm mounting through all the spires of form, striving to be man.” There are blind alleys and blackslidirigs,' "but"if there is-riot iri Organic Evolution a general progress then we must invent some other word to denote what the physiological philosopher Lotze discerned- as ‘'‘an on-ward-advancing melody.” Not only is there an ascending hierarchy in the realm of organisms there is a system. One life is interlinked with another ; there is a Balance on Nature a coherent framework ; or, Better, an effective modus vivendi. No doubt some branches of the genealogical tree have withered away ; many promising types have passed without leaving and .descendants —just as was probably the case with Neanderthal Man; new ideas, lie that expressed in the extinct Flying Dragons‘or Pterodactyls, have utterly perished—every careful student admits that Animate Nature is sometimes puzzling—but the maj or fact is that for hunderds of millions of years there has been an advancing Systema Naturae.

NATURE’S PURPOSE. Broad foundations have made stable superstructures possible. It looks as if it had been well thought out. It looks as if Nature were Nature ifor a purpose. There is here a scientific suggestion of a trans-scientific conclusion. Hundreds of millions of years ago there were intricate corals and almost fiorally beautiful sea-lilies and hundreds or animals “no less than the journey work of the stars” but the urge of evolution had only begun to express itself. Throughout the geological ages we see life slowly creeping upward. Finer and finer animals emerge, marking the epochs. For a long stretch of years, among Backboned Animals, creation had its crown in Fishes. Towards the end of the old Red Sandstone period there emerged Amphibians, the first animals with fingers and toes with a voice and moveable tongue, with lungs and limbs for walking with. They colonised the' Dry Land and led on to Reptiles whence sprang Birds and Mammals. There has been a gradual advance in quality, for as'age succeeded age there was increased mastery of the environment and a growing freedom enhanced by greater fullness of life. It seems to us that the biggest fact in Organis Evolution is the gradual emancipation of mind, which has its present climax—who dare says its zenith? —in Man.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Whatever we think about the meaning of the Universe, we must see the long process of Organic Evolution in the light of Man. That is to say, we must recognise that the process has been such that it has led to the emergence of a creature who has at any rate made some sense of the long-drawn-out Becoming. The physiologist deals with the 'of life, the psychologist with its

heights ,and the naturalist with its breadth; and our position is that the scientific description they give of the various aspects cf reality which they study are sucli that the world becomes not only more orderly, intelligent, and significant, but more suited for the religious spirit to breathe in. And v»*+ gone as far as we can with “colloidal” protoplasm” “irritability” ‘‘enregistration of experience” “variation,” “heredity”, “selection,” and so forth mysteriousnes, . which suprarationalljy we call divine. As Coleridge said “ All knowledge begins and ends with wonder but the first wonder is the child of ignorance, while the second is the parent of adoration.” THE FEELING OF AWE.

No doubt there are shadows and perplexities in Animate Nature, which we cannot deal with now. Thus the door of parasitism is wide open; magnificent types are oast as rubbish to the void; there is sometimes a strange diablerie; reversion occasionally drags evolution in the mud, as Tennyson said. But the general picture is illuminating—full of beauty, of fitnesses, of health,’ of joy. There are great trends in. Organic Evolution, the momentum of which works hopefully in man, trends towards beauty and healthfulness, trends towards clearer minds and stronger virtues; and who dare say that this evolution to stop ? In any case, we claiiri that the naturalist’s outlook leads to that “ awe ” which Goethe calls “the best of man.”