THE DEVIL'S CHAPLAIN, by Cal Frye

My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old, and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her.... In the spring of this same year I was sent to a day-school in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year. I have been told that I was much slower in learning than my younger sister Catherine, and I believe that I was in many ways a naughty boy.

So begins a curious sequence of descriptions from what one might call Charles Darwin’s religious autobiography, written for his children when they were grown and published first by his son Francis in 1887, and subsequently expanded and reissued by his granddaughter Nora Barlow in 1958.

I would like to tell most of my story this morning in Darwin’s words and only later fit him into a bit of a framework and draw my conclusions at the end. Mrs. Darwin was a Unitarian, and attended the Rev. G. Case’s chapel in High Street, Shrewsbury. Charles and his elder sisters went there when he was a little boy, and it was there that the day-school was kept. It is tempting to claim Darwin as a Unitarian on this basis, but in the words of his son Francis, “both he and his brother were christened and intended to belong to the Church of England; and after his early boyhood he seems usually to have gone to church and not to Mr. Case's. It appears (St. James' Gazette, Dec. 15, 1883) that a mural tablet has been erected to Darwin’s memory in the chapel, which is now known as the 'Free Christian Church.'” Let us return to the young Charles…

By the time I went to this day-school my taste for natural history, and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brother ever had this taste.

In the summer of 1818 I went to Dr. Butler's great school in Shrewsbury, and remained there for seven years till Midsummer 1825, when I was sixteen years old. I boarded at this school, so that I had the great advantage of living the life of a true schoolboy; but as the distance was hardly more than a mile to my home, I very often ran there in the longer intervals between the callings over and before locking up at night. This, I think, was in many ways advantageous to me by keeping up home affections and interests. I remember in the early part of my school life that I often had to run very quickly to be in time, and from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided.

Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.

Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the previous day; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of Virgil or Homer, whilst I was in morning chapel; but this exercise was utterly useless, for every verse was forgotten in forty-eight hours. [suggesting what a good Anglican he was!]

When I left the school I was for my age neither high nor low in it; and I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." But my father, who was the kindest man I ever knew and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words.

As I was doing no good at school, my father wisely took me away at a rather earlier age than usual, and sent me (Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh University with my brother, where I stayed for two years or sessions. My brother was completing his medical studies, though I do not believe he ever really intended to practise, and I was sent there to commence them.

I also attended on two occasions the operating theatre in the hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two very bad operations, one on a child, but I rushed away before they were completed. Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly any inducement would have been strong enough to make me do so; this being long before the blessed days of chloroform. The two cases fairly haunted me for many a long year.

Cambridge 1828-1831.—After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, my father perceived that I did not like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination. …I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care 'Pearson on the Creed,' and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formerly given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the Beagle as naturalist. If the phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be a clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of myself; and some time afterwards I received the proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a public discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the bump of reverence developed enough for ten priests.

During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and at school.

Again, in my last year I worked with some earnestness for my final degree of B.A., and brushed up my Classics, together with a little Algebra and Euclid, which latter gave me much pleasure, as it did at school. In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary to get up [William] Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity,' and his 'Moral Philosophy.' This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the 'Evidences' with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his 'Natural Theology,' gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley's premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed and convinced by the long line of argumentation. By answering well the examination questions in Paley, by doing Euclid well, and by not failing miserably in Classics, I gained a good place among the oi polloi or crowd of men who do not go in for honours.

But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them, and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me thirty miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose. [Captain FitzRoy felt the shape of Darwin’s nose extremely inauspicious, but his reservations were overcome. This was nearly as widespread a belief as phrenology]. I have always felt that I owe to the voyage the first real training or education of my mind; I was led to attend closely to several branches of natural history, and thus my powers of observation were improved, though they were always fairly developed.

During these two years I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (although themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose, before my mind and would not be banished,--is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me utterly incredible.

"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,--and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,--that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us,--that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,--that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses;--by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.

I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine.

Of the religious scientists of Darwin’s day, none is perhaps more famous nor as influential as William Paley’s 1802 book Natural Theology, in which the famous illustration of the watch made its appearance. The good reverend, crossing a heath on shank’s mare, stubs his toe against a stone but learns nothing about the origin of rocks because the object is too simple and too disordered to reveal a source of production. But if he should then kick a watch, he would surely know that the timepiece had been fashioned by a purposeful agent:

“When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day… The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker, that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificiers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.”

Many of the arguments familiar today regarding the adaptation of organisms to their surroundings would have fit comfortably with Paley, for the superb adaptation of a feature to it’s function was evidence of the Designer once more revealed. Thus we see the idea of Intelligent Design is really nothing new. And it is against this sense of adaptation Darwin labored. Again, in his words,

“Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being. like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.”

Louis Agassiz, the dean of American natural history of the day, for all that he was a European immigrant, approached natural theology from the opposite direction, from taxonomy. The catalog and classification of species was the first grand research plan of natural history. Viewing the natural distinctions between species, family, and class or organism, he was to ask, “are these divisions artificial or natural? Are they the devices of the human mind to classify and arrange our knowledge in such a manner as to bring it more readily within our grasp and facilitate further investigations, or have they been instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking?” (published in 1857, two years before the Origin) “To me it appears indisputable, that this order and arrangement of our studies are based upon the natural primitive relations of animal life, those systems [of classification] being in truth but translations, into human language, of the thoughts of the Creator.”

But Darwin counters, “I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. [But] The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me. and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music.

Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason, and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the 'Origin of Species;' and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt;-- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience?

"I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

Darwin straddles, indeed embodies, the “paradigm shift” taking place in Science at his time. Earlier scientists, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, to cite two famous examples, were informed by idealism wherein the ultimate goal of the scientific endeavour was to discover the mind of God within the natural world, expressed commonly as determining the Laws of Nature the Deity had laid down at the Creation. The shift toward the naturalism of the 19^th century began with the mechanistic insights of the early scientists, and built upon their success. Indeed, the growing body of refined practice and successful science through the 18^th century and into the Victorian era led scientists to the feeling that theology was not only less relevant to their work, but an actual obstacle to the full development of scientific knowledge. With notable exceptions such as Thomas Huxley, the Victorians were not hostile to religion, but neither were they comfortable with a role for religion within the practice of science. Methodological naturalism, seeking answers within the natural world alone, had become philosophical naturalism, with no place left for the supernatural.

In contrast to Paley, and to a lesser degree Agazziz, Darwin was one of the first of his day to accept the great gift of geology, that John McPhee famously called “deep time.” It’s going to take supernatural assistance to produce the broad diversity of life on this planet within a mere 6000 years! The gradual accumulation of beneficial adaptations, along with the baggage of maladaptations, vestigal features, and exaptations we observe in the rather less-than-perfect real world organisms, can accomplish wonders, but only when given a broad sweep of time in which to play. And the attempt to understand events in the “deep past” led to increased reliance on naturalism, often called uniformitarianism, the term introduced by Darwin’s geologist mentor, Charles Lyell.

Thomas S. Kuhn and Michel Foucault, philosophers and historians of science, have suggested the “paradigm shift” or change in episteme that marks scientific revolutions is an abrupt alteration in thought, often pitting one generation of scientists against the next. But Neal Gillespie, in his analysis of Darwin and the Problem of Creation, suggests that “…epistemes and paradigms are not discontinuous. .... Men are not in one episteme and then in another with no independent judging activity; rather , they move from one mode of discourse or from one paradigm to another as the change meets the needs of their work. Ideas are changed and judgements validated in the course of working out a new way of doing science. Scientists do not believe one episteme is superior to another because they are in it, rather, they are in it because they believe is is superior, and this belief is a product of their experience.” Darwin himself recounts a steady though gradual transition in thought from idealism to naturalism, in his case illustrated in his approach to both science and theology.

But it is not a diminution of the Universe nor the observer to so remove the Divine from intimate involvement in the daily operation of the natural world. The sense of awe still to be found in Darwin is precisely located in the uncertainty and random nature of the evolution of life on Earth. It is the continual novelty of the development of life that allowed him to continue to find wonder in a Universe with no certain beginning, and no preordained conclusion.

If this understanding, anti-Calvinist and anti-predestinationist and so in parallel with the path of American Unitarianism through transcendentalism and beyond is holding service for the Devil, then I embrace it. I conclude, once more with Darwin, and his conclusion of The Origin of Species, 6^th ed., even with it’s nod to Deism:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. …

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.