The Old Riddle And The Newest Answer - free ebook by John Gerard

THE OLD RIDDLE AND THE NEWEST ANSWER

BY JOHN GERARD, S.J., F.L.S. FOURTH EDITION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1907 {iv} ROEHAMPTON: PRINTED BY JOHN GRIFFIN. {v}...

10 minute read

Read Chapter

PREFACE

T HE enemies of Science are not the philistines alone—if any still remain—who would muzzle or stifle her. More numerous and dangerous are those—professedly of her own household—who ascribe to her pretensions of which she herself knows nothing, and strive to make her responsible for a philosophy entirely beyond her scope. With this object efforts are assiduously made to popularize the idea that nothing in heaven or earth is beyond her ken, and that she has rendered all such beliefs impossible as

1 minute read

Read Chapter

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I N this edition, which has been thoroughly revised throughout, a few corrections have had to be made, especially in the Index, and in one or two instances alterations or additions have appeared advisable for the sake of clearness or accuracy of expression. Nothing has, however, as yet been brought to the author's notice which affects any substantial point in what he has written. July 28, 1904. {vii}...

21 minute read

Read Chapter

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

T HIS edition has again been thoroughly revised, and some new matter appended which bears on various points raised in the original volume, especially the establishment of the important group of the Cycado-filices , as affecting the succession of plant life on the earth, and recent evidence concerning the pedigree of the horse. December 21, 1906. {viii} {ix} {1}...

38 minute read

Read Chapter

TO BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

T HAT the world as we know it had a beginning is a truth which there is no denying. Not only have philosophers always argued that it must be so: the researches of physical science assure us that it has been so in fact. Astronomy, says Professor Huxley, [1] "leads us to contemplate phenomena the very nature of which demonstrates that they must have had a beginning." The hypothesis that phenomena of Nature similar to those exhibited by the present world have always existed, the same authority assu

2 minute read

Read Chapter

REASON AND SCIENCE

I N studying a question such as this, we must commence by being determined, on the one hand to accept nothing as true but what our reason warrants us in believing, and on the other hand to follow the guidance of reason as far as, rightly used, it will lead us. The principle formulated [5] by Professor Huxley, as the foundation-stone of what he termed "Agnosticism," is that which must needs be adopted, and as a matter of fact has ever been adopted, by rational men. Positively—in matters of the in

2 minute read

Read Chapter

"EVOLUTION"

W E are constantly assured that Science compels us to believe in "Evolution," and that in this doctrine is to be found the explanation of the universe whereof we are in quest. We must however in the first place make sure that we understand what "Evolution" means, and if we look into the question, it speedily appears that the term is very differently understood by those who use it. Some who style themselves "Evolutionists" mean only that, as a matter of established fact, the organic world, the wo

1 minute read

Read Chapter

"THE LAW OF EVOLUTION"

T HAT there is a self-existing and self-sufficing "Law of Evolution" to which everything in the world must be ascribed, is the doctrine of those Evolutionists who are most active in propagating their creed and who most loudly proclaim that it alone is scientific. The great leader and prophet of this school, Professor Ernst Haeckel, assures us [9] that he gives expression, to that rational view of the world which is being forced upon us with such logical rigour by the modern advancements in our k

4 minute read

Read Chapter

WHAT IS A "LAW OF NATURE"?

A S we have seen, the doctrine of Evolution is presented by its advocates as being based upon the existence of a "Law of Evolution," or "Law of Substance," which both brings about evolutionary processes, and certifies us of their occurrence, so that we may appeal to it as an authority for our belief in the facts of evolution themselves. Thus as Professor Milnes Marshall told the British Association, [22] The doctrine of descent, or of evolution, teaches us that as individual animals arise, not s

4 minute read

Read Chapter

"THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE"

W E have just been told by Professor Haeckel, that the means and methods which he has chosen for the establishment of his philosophy are, on the whole, identical with those employed in all purely scientific investigation, namely, first experience, and secondly inference. But here a grave difficulty at once presents itself. How, either by experience or by inference, can we learn anything about the commencements of the universe, as to which we have heard so much? How the first bodies, whether orga

9 minute read

Read Chapter

"THE SEVEN ENIGMAS"

T HE doctrine that the universe is an automatic machine,—self-originated and self-sustained—undoubtedly rests upon a principle formally recognized by some evolutionists, as the "Law of Continuity," and taken for granted by many who do not put it into words. This principle is,—that everything must always have happened according to the same laws of Nature which operate now; that there can never have been a "miracle," understanding by this term whatever is beyond the scope of natural forces; and th

6 minute read

Read Chapter

MATTER AND MOTION

I N the forefront of the problems which have been pronounced to be not only unsolved but insoluble, are the nature and origin of the ultimate factors arrived at by Science in her study of the constitution of the universe,—Matter, Force, and Motion. With the first and last of these alone need we at present concern ourselves, for "Force," as Science knows it, is always associated with Matter, and signifies no more in her terminology than that which produces, or tends to produce Motion. On the othe

10 minute read

Read Chapter

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE

T HE question concerning the origin and nature of Life is of supreme and vital importance not only for those who speak of Evolution as a force or principle by which everything is guided and governed, but also for such as understand by the term no more than a process which they say has actually occurred. Evolutionists of this second class disclaim, with Huxley, any "philosophy of Evolution." They are content to take the world as a going concern, at the farthest point in the past to which, even sp

21 minute read

Read Chapter

ANIMAL AND MAN

L EAVING for later consideration the fourth of Du Bois-Reymond's Unsolved Enigmas, namely the seemingly pre-ordained order of the universe, we may conveniently group together the three which follow it, as much resembling that which has just occupied our attention. These problems, it will be remembered, are ( a ) the origin of simple sensation and consciousness, or, in other words, of the faculties possessed by animals; ( b ) that of rational thought and speech; ( c ) Free-will.—Here again we are

20 minute read

Read Chapter

THE ORDER OF NATURE

T HAT the world which we inhabit is a Cosmos , ruled by law and order, no one has ever attempted to deny. Only because laws are everywhere found awaiting discovery, is natural science a possibility. What such laws really are, we have already considered. They are, as Mr. Lewes puts it, the paths along which the forces of nature travel to their results; and it is only because these forces keep invariably each to its proper path, that we are able to follow them with our minds, either to learn anyth

25 minute read

Read Chapter

PURPOSE AND CHANCE

A N objection is no doubt awaiting us which many consider absolutely fatal to the argument for purpose or design in nature, as above presented. That argument, it will be said, rests entirely upon the assumption that the sole alternative to Purpose is Chance , an assumption which, if not dishonest, betrays ignorance scarcely less discreditable: for men of science constantly warn us that there is no such thing as Chance,—that every occurrence in nature, one as much as another, testifies to the uni

18 minute read

Read Chapter

MONISM

A LL systems of philosophy that reject the idea of an intelligent First Cause, which alone is self-existent, and whose being is of a higher order than that of aught else,—base their denial on the assumption that no such distinction of nature either exists or is possible,—that there is but one reality, namely the substance whereof the sensible world consists,—that this has always existed with the same forces it has now, and that it is the source of all phenomena. This assumption of the unreality

15 minute read

Read Chapter

ORGANIC EVOLUTION

W E have now considered the question of Evolution in the larger and more fundamental signification of the term to which, as we noted at starting, very different meanings are attached; and at this stage of our discussion it will be convenient to sum up the main conclusions at which we have arrived. It is, in the first place, unwarrantable to pretend that the discoveries of modern Science, brilliant and marvellous as they undoubtedly are, have thrown any light upon the origin of the Material Unive

9 minute read

Read Chapter

DARWINISM

I T must first be observed that special consideration of Mr. Darwin's theory is rendered necessary even more imperatively on account of the claims advanced on his behalf by others, than of those to which he himself made any pretence. Without question the idea prevails almost universally, that he has furnished a scientific explanation of all organic phenomena through the operation of purely natural laws, and has thus rendered obsolete the idea that any power beyond Nature is required in order to

24 minute read

Read Chapter

THE FACTS OF EVOLUTION

L EAVING the field of speculation and "ætiology," we have now to enquire, not to what causes organic Evolution may be attributable, but how far it can be shewn to have actually occurred. This can be learnt only from the history of life upon earth as disclosed by the evidence of palæontology, or the geological record, and we are thus brought to the investigation of that evidence, by which alone, as Professor Huxley agrees, can the truth about Evolution be scientifically or satisfactorily establis

36 minute read

Read Chapter

"AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM"

W E have heard Mr. Carruthers' declaration, based upon his survey of palæontological botany, "The whole evidence is against Evolution, and there is none in favour of it." Remarkably enough, at almost the same period [274] Professor Huxley concluded a discussion of palæontological evidence with a precisely contrary pronouncement—"The whole evidence is in favour of Evolution, and there is none against it." On other occasions, also, he distinctly maintained that it is just this line of enquiry whic

30 minute read

Read Chapter

TO SUM UP

I T is time to return to the point from which we started our whole enquiry, and to ask what has been gathered in the course of it towards a solution of the question with which we began. That the Cosmos in which we dwell, the world of law, order, and life, has not existed for ever, we saw to be a truth enforced by the researches of physical Science, no less than by the clear teaching of reason. It certainly had a beginning, and there must be a cause to which that beginning was due,—a cause capabl

11 minute read

Read Chapter

APPENDIX

A. Evolution and the lower forms of life ( p. 165 ). A SINGULARLY instructive field for the study of the mutability or stability of species should be afforded by the lower forms of life, in which organization is reduced to a minimum, they being mere masses of protoplasm without even a containing envelope, while their nourishment is of the simplest. It would therefore appear that environment should be all-potent to modify them and produce specific {280b} modifications, while the extreme rapidity

19 minute read

Read Chapter