On Darwinism and Mystery

by G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News August 21, 1920

Mr. Edward Clodd [Footnote 1], the distinguished student of Folklore, has asked me a question touching a passage which appeared in this paper. He was writing with reference to the larger question of Darwinism, to which I may return more fully at some other time. But as the sentence he quoted from these columns stands somewhat separate it may be proper to treat it separately. The words he wishes more fully explained are: "Even the Evolutionist is now shy of explaining Evolution. To-day the scientific temper is... scientific doubt of science, not scientific doubt of religion.e He especially wishes to know what I mean by the phrase "scientific doubt of religion.e

Now I take it that my negative statement at least is evident enough; I mean that the most recent revolutionary scientific suggestions do not happen to throw any doubt on any religion. The Book of Genesis does not say that God formed the substance of the world out of atoms, and therefore a scientist cannot be rebuked as a Bible-smasher if he says it is formed not of atoms, but of electrons. The Council of the Church which laid down the dogma of the Co-eternity of Father and Son did not lay down any dogma on the Conservation of Energy. Therefore Mme. Curie [Footnote 2] could not be burned as a heretic even if, as some said, her discovery disturbed our ideas about the Conservation of Energy. The Athanasian Creed does not say that parallel straight lines never meet, so it would be unaffected by Professor Einstein saying, if he does really say, that they are not parallel or even straight. The prophets did not prophesy that a man would never fly, and are, therefore, not discredited when he does fly. The saints certainly never said there was no such thing as wordless talking, and therefore have nothing to retract if there is such a thing as wireless telegraphy. In many ways it would be far easier to maintain that the modern inventions have verified the ancient miracles. Now in these technical and utilitarian examples it is still true to say that, if they do not disturb religious doctrines, they also do not disturb scientific doctrines. But the former class of more theoretic discoveries do disturb scientific doctrines. It is the doctrines about gravity and energy, about atoms and ether, about the very foundations of the purely scientific universe, that have been affected or threatened by purely scientific research.

Hence I was led to say that the scientific men are pulling to pieces their own scientific universe. It was something relative to this that I said they were not primarily concerned now with doubt about religion. The phrase (in a positive as distinct from a relative sense) refers, of course, to various spiritual and teleological ideas that were supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be disturbed by an earlier phase of science. Some seem to suppose that I am here arguing for these doctrines; but that is a complete mistake. Of the pre-Darwinian doctrines of the popular Protestantism in England, there are some that I believe and some that I heartily disbelieve; but none that I have made the basis of my remarks on Darwinism. They are based on the inconsistencies and illogicalities of the Darwinians themselves. Many sincere critics seems to find it very difficult to believe this. One of them asked me quite sharply why the wing of the bat had not been divinely designed with feathers like the wings of the owlalmost as if I myself had culpably neglected to provide the animal with proper plumage. All this is to miss my whole purpose in this particular discussion. If I do personally believe in design, it is for somewhat deeper reasons which have nothing to do with the wings of bats; and certainly I never dreamed of demonstrating it from the wings of bats. I never professed to trace the causes of these things at all. I have not written a book called "The Origin of Species.e I have not conducted detailed researches or proclaimed dogmatic conclusions. I do not know the true reason for a bat not having feathers; I only know that Darwin gave a false reason for its having wings. And the more the Darwinians explain, the more certain I become that Darwinism was wrong. All their explanations ignore the fact that Darwinism supposes an animal feature to appear first, not merely in an incomplete stage, but in an almost imperceptible stage. The member of a sort of mouse family, destined to found the bat family, could only have differed from his brother mice by some minute trace of membrane; and why should that enable him to escape out of a natural massacre of mice? Or even if we suppose it did serve some other purpose, it could only be by a coincidence; and this is to imagine a million coincidences accounting for every creature. A special providence watching over a bat would be a far more realistic notion than such a run of luck as that.

But as for the positive conclusions to be drawn, I am perfectly content to accept Mr. Clodd's basis of "an area of the unknowne where, as he quotes from George Eliot, "men grow blind, though angels know the rest.e But I still think that the Darwinians, being men, were blind leaders of the blind. There must have been a real greatness about Darwin's science, of the detailed accumulations of which I should not claim to judge. There certainly was a real greatness about Huxley's literature, of which I can judge rather better. Nobody says that either was not a great man, but merely that he made a great mistake. And as to what remains when that mistake is admitted, I repeat that I am content with Mr. Clodd's phrase. It is not my theology, or the old Puritan theology any more than the old Darwinian biology. What remains is mysteryan unfathomed and perhaps unfathomable mystery. What remains after Darwin is exactly what existed before Darwin a darkness which I, for quite other reasons, believe to be divine. But whether or no it is divine, it is certainly dark. What is the real truth, what really happened in the variations of creatures, must have been something which has not yet suggested itself to the imagination of man. I for one should be very much surprised if that truth, when discovered, did not contain at least a large element of evolution. But even that surprise is possible where everything is possible, except what has been proven to be impossible.

For the first time, in short, the agnostics will become agnostic. That is the point of my reply to Mr. Clodd's question about the "scientific doubt of religion.e The doubt to-day is a real doubt; before it was an inference from some dogma like Darwinism. The Victorian agnostics were not really agnostics. At the back of their minds was a materialistic, or at least a monistic, universe. But that monistic universe is in its turn becoming mystical, or at least very mysterious. The next time of transition will probably be one of real agnosticism, or of more or less exciting ignorance. And Mr. Clodd and I can than agree about the borderland in which men are blind and angels know the rest, though he may be more content to rest in the blindness of men, and I in the knowledge of the angels. But I never advanced this argument as a way of being on the side of angels. I am so far merely on the side of men; of the great mass of reverent and reasonable human beings, who would rather admit that they are blind in the dark than be burdened in the dark with old-fashioned scientific spectacles, and told by a quack that they can see.

[Footnote 1: Edward Clodd (1840-1930) was the author of a number of books on primitive religions, myth, comparative religion, folklore, and philosophy. He also wrote several books on science and evolution.]

[Footnote 2: Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) was a Polish scientist who won two Nobel prizes, one in 1903 for her discovery of radioactivity and one for her discovery of radium and polonium.]

The Advantages of having One Leg

G.K.Chesterton

[From: Tremendous Trifles, 1909]

A friend of mine who was visiting a poor woman in bereavement and casting about for some phrase of consolation that should not be either insolent or weak, said at last, "I think one can live through these great sorrows and even be the better. What wears one is the little worries." "That's quite right, mum," answered the old woman with emphasis, "and I ought to know, seeing I've had ten of 'em." It is, perhaps, in this sense that it is most true that little worries are most wearing. In its vaguer significance the phrase, though it contains a truth, contains also some possibilities of self-deception and error. People who have both small troubles and big ones have the right to say that they find the small ones the most bitter; and it is undoubtedly true that the back which is bowed under loads incredible can feel a faint addition to those loads; a giant holding up the earth and all its animal creation might still find the grasshopper a burden. But I am afraid that the maxim that the smallest worries are the worst is sometimes used or abused by people, becasue they have nothing but the very smallest worries. The lady may excuse herself for reviling the crumpled rose-leaf by reflecting with what extraordinary dignity she would wear the crown of thornsif she had to. The gentleman may permit himself to curse the dinner and tell himself that he would behave much better if it were a mere matter of starvation. We need not deny that the grasshopper on man's shoulder is a burden; but we need not pay much respect to a gentleman who is always calling out that he would rather have an elephant when he knows there are no elephants in the country. We may concede that a straw may break the camel's back, but we like to know that it really is the last straw and not the first.

I grant that those who have serious wrongs have a real right to grumble, so long as they grumble about something else. It is a singular fact that if they are sane they almost always do grumble about something else. To talk quite reasonably about your own quite real wrongs is the quickest way to go off your head. But people with great troubles talk about little ones, and the man who complains of the crumpled rose leaf very often has his flesh full of the thorns. But if a man has commonly a very clear and happy daily life than I think we are justified in asking that he shall not make mountains out of molehills. I do not deny that molehills can sometimes be important. Small annoyances have this evil about them, that they can be more abrupt because they are more invisible; they cast no shadow before, they have no atmosphere. No one ever had a mystical premonition that he was going to tumble over a hassock. William III. died by falling over a molehill; I do not suppose that with all his varied abilities he could have managed to fall over a mountain. But when all this is allowed for, I repeat that we may ask a happy man (not William III.) to put up with pure inconveniences, and even make them part of his happiness. Of positive pain or positive poverty I do not here speak. I speak of those innumerable accidental limitations that are always falling across our pathbad weather, confinement to this or that house or room, failure of appointments or arrangements, waiting at railway stations, missing posts, finding unpunctuality when we want punctuality, or, what is worse, finding punctuality when we don't. It is of the poetic pleasures to be drawn from all these that I singI sing with confidence because I have recently been experimenting in the poetic pleasures which arise from having to sit in one chair with a sprained foot, with the only alternative course of stinding on one leg like a stork. A stork is a poetic simile; therefore I eagerly adopted it.

To appreciate anything we must always isolate it, even if the thing itself symbolises something other than isolation. If we wish to see what a house is it must be a house in some uninhabited landscape. If we wish to depict what a man really is we must depict a man alone in a desert or on a dark sea sand. So long as he is a single figure he means all that humanity means; so long as he is solitary he means sociability and comradeship. Add another figure and the picture is less humannot more so. One is company, two is none. If you wish to symbolize human building draw one dark tower on the horizon; if you wish to symbolize light let there be no star in the sky. Indeed, all through that strangely lit season which we call our day there is but one star in the sky a large, fierce star which we call the sun. One sun is splendid; six suns would be only vulgar. One Tower of Giotto is sublime; a row of Towers of Giotto would be only like a row of white posts. The poetry of art is in beholding the single tower; the poetry of nature in seeing the single tree; the poetry of love in following the single woman; the poetry of religion in worshipping the single star. And so, in the same pensive lucidity, I find the poetry of all human anatomy in standing on a single leg. To express complete and perfect leggishness the leg must stand in sublime isolation, like the tower in the wilderness. As Ibsen so finely says, the strongest leg is that which stands most alone.

This lonely leg on which I rest has all the simplicity of some Doric column. The students of architecture tell us that the only legitimate use of a column is to support weight. This column of mine fulfils its legitimate function. It supports weight. Being of an animal and organic consistency, it may even improve by the process, and during these few days that I am thus unequally balanced the helplessness or dislocation of the one leg may find compensation in the astonishing strength and classic beauty of the other leg. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson in Mr. George Meredith's novel might pass by at any moment, and seeing me in the stork-like attitude would exclaim, with equal admiration and a more literal exactitude, "He has a leg." Notice how this famous literary phrase supports my contention touching this isolation of any admirable thing. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, wishing to make a clear and perfect picture of human grace, said that Sir Willoughby Patterne had a leg. She delicately glossed over and concealed the clumsy and offensive fact that he had really two legs. Two legs were superfluous and irrelevant, a reflection, and a confusion. Two legs would have confused Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson like two Monuments in London. That having had one good leg he should have anotherthis would be to use vain repetitions as the Gentiles do. She would have been as much bewildered by him as if he had been a centipede.

All pessimism has a secret optimism for its object. All surrender of life, all denial of pleasure, all darkness, all austerity, all desolation has for its real aim this separation of something so that it may be poignantly and perfectly enjoyed. I feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realize how very much otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than we ever know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realize how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realize the splendid vision of all visible things wink the other eye.