The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"

Our fabulist warns "those who in quarrels interpose" of the fate which is probably in store for them; and, in venturing to place myself between so powerful a controversialist as Mr. Gladstone and the eminent divine whom he assaults with such vigour in the last number of this Review, [1] I am fully aware that I run great danger of verifying Gay's prediction. Moreover, it is quite possible that my zeal in offering aid to a combatant so extremely well able to take care of himself as M. Reville may be thought to savour of indiscretion.

Two considerations, however, have led me to face the double risk. The one is that though, in my judgment, M. Reville is wholly in the right in that part of the controversy to which I propose to restrict my observations, nevertheless he, as a foreigner, has very little chance of making the truth prevail with Englishmen against the authority and the dialectic skill of the greatest master of persuasive rhetoric among English-speaking men of our time. As the Queen's proctor intervenes, in certain cases, between two litigants in the interests of justice, so it may be permitted me to interpose as a sort of uncommissioned science proctor. My second excuse for my meddlesomeness is, that important questions of natural science--respecting which neither of the combatants professes to speak as an expert--are involved in the controversy; and I think it is desirable that the public should know what it is that natural science really has to say on these topics, to the best belief of one who has been a diligent student of natural science for the last forty years.

The original "Prolegomenes de l'Histoire des Religions" has not come in my way; but I have read the translation of M. Reville's work, published in England under the auspices of Professor Max Muller, with very great interest. It puts more fairly and clearly than any book previously known to me, the view which a man of strong religious feelings, but at the same time possessing the information and the reasoning power which enable him to estimate the strength of scientific methods of inquiry and the weight of scientific truth, may be expected to take of the relation between science and religion.

In the chapter on "The Primitive Revelation" the scientific worth of the account of the Creation given in the book of Genesis is estimated in terms which are as unquestionably respectful as, in my judgment, they are just; and, at the end of the chapter on "Primitive Tradition," M. Reville appraises the value of pentateuchal anthropology in a way which I should have thought sure of enlisting the assent of all competent judges, even if it were extended to the whole of the cosmogony and biology of Genesis:--

As, however, the original traditions of nations sprang up in an epoch less remote than our own from the primitive life, it is indispensable to consult them, to compare them, and to associate them with other sources of information which are available. From this point of view, the traditions recorded in Genesis possess, in addition to their own peculiar charm, a value of the highest order; but we cannot ultimately see in them more than a venerable fragment, well-deserving attention, of the great genesis of mankind.

Mr. Gladstone is of a different mind. He dissents from M. Reville's views respecting the proper estimation of the pentateuchal traditions, no less than he does from his interpretation of those Homeric myths which have been the object of his own special study. In the latter case, Mr. Gladstone tells M. Reville that he is wrong on his own authority, to which, in such a matter, all will pay due respect: in the former, he affirms himself to be "wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his rebuke is administered in the name and by the authority of natural science.

An air of magisterial gravity hangs about the following passage:--

But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skilfully constructed narrative: it is whether natural science, in the patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts, finds that the works of God cry out against what we have fondly believed to be His word and tell another tale; or whether, in this nineteenth century of Christian progress, it substantially echoes back the majestic sound, which, before it existed as a pursuit, went forth into all lands.

First, looking largely at the latter portion of the narrative, which describes the creation of living organisms, and waiving details, on some of which (as in v. 24) the Septuagint seems to vary from the Hebrew, there is a grand fourfold division, set forth in an orderly succession of times as follows: on the fifth day

1. The water-population; 2. The air-population; and, on the sixth day, 3. The land-population of animals; 4. The land-population consummated in man. "Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural science, that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." (p. 696).

"Understood?" By whom? I cannot bring myself to imagine that Mr. Gladstone has made so solemn and authoritative a statement on a matter of this importance without due inquiry--without being able to found himself upon recognised scientific authority. But I wish he had thought fit to name the source from whence he has derived his information, as, in that case, I could have dealt with [143] his authority, and I should have thereby escaped the appearance of making an attack on Mr. Gladstone himself, which is in every way distasteful to me.

For I can meet the statement in the last paragraph of the above citation with nothing but a direct negative. If I know anything at all about the results attained by the natural science of our time, it is "a demonstrated conclusion and established fact" that the "fourfold order" given by Mr. Gladstone is not that in which the evidence at our disposal tends to show that the water, air, and land-populations of the globe have made their appearance.

Perhaps I may be told that Mr. Gladstone does give his authority--that he cites Cuvier, Sir John Herschel, and Dr. Whewell in support of his case. If that has been Mr. Gladstone's intention in mentioning these eminent names, I may remark that, on this particular question, the only relevant authority is that of Cuvier. But great as Cuvier was, it is to be remembered that, as Mr. Gladstone incidentally remarks, he cannot now be called a recent authority. In fact, he has been dead more than half a century; and the palaeontology of our day is related to that of his, very much as the geography of the sixteenth century is related to that of the fourteenth. Since 1832, when Cuvier died, not only a new world, but new worlds, of ancient life have been discovered; and those who have most faithfully carried on the work of the chief founder of palaeontology have done most to invalidate the essentially negative grounds of his speculative adherence to tradition.

If Mr. Gladstone's latest information on these matters is derived from the famous discourse prefixed to the "Ossemens Fossiles," I can understand the position he has taken up; if he has ever opened a respectable modern manual of palaeontology, or geology, I cannot. For the facts which demolish his whole argument are of the commonest notoriety. But before proceeding to consider the evidence for this assertion we must be clear about the meaning of the phraseology employed.

I apprehend that when Mr. Gladstone uses the term "water-population" he means those animals which in Genesis i. 21 (Revised Version) are spoken of as "the great sea monsters and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind." And I presume that it will be agreed that whales and porpoises, sea fishes, and the innumerable hosts of marine invertebrated animals, are meant thereby. So "air-population" must be the equivalent of "fowl" in verse 20, and "every winged fowl after its kind," verse 21. I suppose I may take it for granted that by "fowl" we have here to understand birds--at any rate primarily. Secondarily, it may be that the bats and the extinct pterodactyles, which were flying reptiles, come under the same head. But whether all insects are "creeping things" of the land-population, or whether flying insects are to be included under the denomination of "winged fowl," is a point for the decision of Hebrew exegetes. Lastly, I suppose I may assume that "land-population" signifies "the cattle" and "the beasts of the earth," and "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth," in verses 25 and 26; presumably it comprehends all kinds of terrestrial animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, except such as may be comprised under the head of the "air-population."

Now what I want to make clear is this: that if the terms "water-population," "air-population," and "land-population" are understood in the senses here defined, natural science has nothing to say in favour of the proposition that they succeeded one another in the order given by Mr. Gladstone; but that, on the contrary, all the evidence we possess goes to prove that they did not. Whence it will follow that, if Mr. Gladstone has interpreted Genesis rightly (on which point I am most anxious to be understood to offer no opinion), that interpretation is wholly irreconcilable with the conclusions at present accepted by the interpreters of nature--with everything that can be called "a demonstrated conclusion and established fact" of natural science. And be it observed that I am not here dealing with a question of speculation, but with a question of fact.

Either the geological record is sufficiently complete to afford us a means of determining the order in which animals have made their appearance on the globe or it is not. If it is, the determination of that order is little more than a mere matter of observation; if it is not, then natural science neither affirms nor refutes the "fourfold order," but is simply silent.

The series of the fossiliferous deposits, which contain the remains of the animals which have lived on the earth in past ages of its history, and which can alone afford the evidence required by natural science of the order of appearance of their different species, may be grouped in the manner shown in the left-hand column of the following table, the oldest being at the bottom:--

Formations First known appearance of Quaternary. Pliocene. Miocene. Eocene. Vertebrate _air_-population (Bats). Cretaceous. Jurassic. Vertebrate _air_-population (Birds and Pterodactyles). Triassic. Upper Palaeozoic. Middle Palaeozoic. Vertebrate _land_-population (Amphibia, Reptilia [?]). Lower Palaeozoic. Silurian. Vertebrate _water_-population (Fishes). Invertebrate air and _land_- population (Flying Insects and Scorpions). Cambrian. Invertebrate _water_-population (much earlier, if Eozoon is animal).

In the right-hand column I have noted the group of strata in which, according to our present information, the land, air, and water populations respectively appear for the first time; and in consequence of the ambiguity about the meaning of "fowl," I have separately indicated the first appearance of bats, birds, flying reptiles, and flying insects. It will be observed that, if "fowl" means only "bird," or at most flying vertebrate, then the first certain evidence of the latter, in the Jurassic epoch, is posterior to the first appearance of truly terrestrial Amphibia, and possibly of true reptiles, in the Carboniferous epoch (Middle Palaeozoic) by a prodigious interval of time.