Providence

PROVIDENCE By w. R. THOMPSON, ·F.R.s. By Creation we mean, in the last analysis, the total dependence of the universe on God. Providence is, broadly speaking, merely an aspect or consequence of this dependence . But, taken in an exact sense, it refers to the government of the universe. Providence is the arrangement of things with a view to the attainment of future ends. The provident man is one who puts aside a portion of his income, so that he may be able to live through a time when that income fails, making an arrangement that safeguards in advance the wellbeing of himself and his family and insures its maintenance. The necessity of providential action in the universe is much more obvious now than it was a few decades ago. Owing to the in:f:l.uence of evolutionary theory, scientific men were at one time inclined to think that most of the other planets of our solar system were inhabited by intelligent beings, or at least by living organisms of some kind. But now that the delicate and intricate characters of the environmental relations necessary to sustain life have been more fully realized, this view has been very largely abandoned. The predominant opinion now seems to be that the earth probably is the only spot in the universe which is able to support life. The idea that intelligent beings exist elsewhere is considered very improbable. In a remarkable address given to the Zoological Section of the British Association some years ago, Dr. Julian Huxley went so far as to claim that evolutionary progress "could, apparently, have pursued no other course than that which it has historically followed"; that "conceptual thought could only arise in a monocotous mammal of terrestrial habit, but arboreal for most of its mammalian ancestry"; and that " it could not have evolved on earth except in man." He also asserted that if man were wiped out " it is in the highest degree improbable that the step leading to conceptual thought would again be taken, even by his nearest relatives." 230 W. R. THOMPSON The American biochemist, Professor Lawrence J. Henderson, after a careful and detailed study of the physico-chemical properties of the inorganic elements and compounds occurring in the universe, concluded 1 that the connection between certain properties of the elements, " almost infinitely improbable as the result of contingency, can only be regarded, is in truth only fully intelligible even if mechanically explained, as a preparation for the evolutionary process." We are "obliged to regard this collocation of properties," he says, " as in some intelligible sense a preparation for the process of planetary evolution." Nevertheless, Professor Henderson, though recognizing that this brings us "face to face with the problem of design," thought that we must retreat from this problem and seek for safety in employing " the vaguest possible term which can be imagined, from which all implication of design and purpose has been completely eliminated." Dr. Julian Huxley is of the same opinion. " Any purpose we find manifested in evolution is only an apparent purpose. It is we who have read purpose into evolution, as earlier men projected will and emotion into inorganic phenomena like storm and earthquake." The authors we have just quoted are to be complimented on the way in which they have faced and stated the facts-though Dr. Huxley has perhaps gone further than is necessary and justifiable. A good many of their predecessors, like Professor Ernst Haeckel in Germany and Professor Etienne Rabaud in France, have attempted to get around the facts by depreciating or denying the reality of adaptive arrangements, even in the world of life. Dr. Huxley will have none of this. "It has been for some years," he says, " the fashion to decry the study or even to deny the fact of adaptation"; he believes that this is " a passing fashion, and that, both structurally and functionally , every organism is a bundle of adaptations, more or less efficient, coordinated in greater or lesser degree." Nevertheless, the honesty and common sense of these two scientists has led them into a position that is philosophically untenable. 1 The Order of Nature. Harvard Univ. Press, 19~5. PROVIDENCE ~31...