Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Divine
Selection
THE Survival of the Useful being a true statement of the law, rather than "survival of the fittest," as Mr. Spencer has called it, suggests that Mr. Darwin's companion phrase, "natural selection," is also wanting. Yet Mr. Darwin's expression is more fitting, for it presents one phase of an undeniable and a fundamental truth. Because the Creator effects His purpose in nature by the instrumentality of nature, it follows that nature appears to do her own selecting.
That distinguished and conscientious scientist, Asa Gray, thus pointedly suggests the wanting factor in natural selection, "Given differences and an internal tendency to differ more, i.e., given variation as an inexhaustible factor, and natural selection should suffice for the preservation and increase of the select few as a consequence of the destruction of the intermediate many. . . . For in each variation lies hidden the mystery of a beginning."[1] Natural law is but the ultimate and external expression of spiritual law. By spiritual law is to be understood the law of the spiritual world, of the soul, and of the mind; the law of true religion; the law that made and governs all things superior to matter. Natural law is a material picture of spiritual law.
The Creator never acts abstractly or arbitrarily. He always secures His purposes in nature through her laws. It may be truly said that natural law is as the body of which spiritual law is the soul. The arm moves from a spiritual power in the will; the countenance smiles from a spiritual power. Man loves, thinks, and performs every act from a spiritual power in the soul. Likewise nature, being the body of which the spiritual world is the soul, performs all her operations in minutest particulars and most general aspect from the forces of the spiritual world, which world the Creator fills with life and power from Himself.
Then Mr. Darwin was, in one sense, right in speaking of natural selection; for, as we have said, when the Creator would effect a purpose in nature, He does it through natural law. Indeed, natural law is the way the Creator acts on the natural plane.
There is yet a more comprehensive view of this fact suggested in the conception that the Creator is fully in spiritual law, just as cause is within effect; hence His purposes must be worked out there. And as natural law is the outward expression of spiritual law, or the spiritual law descended and operative in matter, He is also in natural law, which likewise and as fully serves His will.
Now, since natural law is such ultimate expression of Divine law, natural selection is Divine selection. So, while Mr. Darwin was right in speaking of the creative process as natural selection, he was equally wrong in thinking that the power to select is innate in nature. For natural selection expresses only half the truth—the outward, lower half. For the completion of the truth we must supplement it with the inner and higher half—Divine selection. Natural selection being supplemented by Divine selection, the cloud over the tabernacle lifts and we can see to proceed on our journey. The mystery of creation is largely dispelled, for then it is realized how nature has selected so wisely, why she has never made a mistake, and why she never can err. We can then understand how nature could select to form the seas and the dry land, the simplest forms of primeval flora and fauna, and advance so orderly and surely to the creation of man, and lastly work at every point, besetting man before and behind, to make him righteous and holy as the heir to the wisdom, love, and blessings of Divine life itself.
It is this perception of things commonly felt, though vaguely expressed, that will not permit thought to rest in the inadequate and misleading doctrine of natural selection and survival of the fittest, and that is seeking to give expression to the grander fact of Divine Selection and Survival of the Useful, the perpetual proof and exemplification of which the universe is.
- ↑ "Natural Science and Religion," page 72.