[BD]Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chap i.
[BD]Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chap i.
Is it true, however, that the modern knowledge of nature tends to rob it of a spiritual First Cause? One can conceive such a tendency, if all our advances in knowledge had tended more and more to identify force with matter in its grosser forms, and to remove more and more from our mental view those powers which are not material; but the very reverse of this is the case. Modern discovery has tended more and more to attach importance to certain universally diffused media which do not seem to be subject to the laws of ordinary matter, and to prove at once the Protean character and indestructibility of forces, the aggregate of which, as acting in the universe, gives us our nearest approach to the conception of physical omnipotence. This is what so many of our evolutionists mean when they indignantly disclaim materialism. They know that there is a boundless energy beyond mere matter, and of which matter seems the sport and toy. Could they conceive of this energy as the expression of a personal will, they would become theists.
Man himself presents a microcosm of matter and force, raised to a higher plane than that of the merelychemical and physical. In him we find not merely that brain and nerve force which is common to him and lower animals, and which exhibits one of the most marvellous energies in nature, but we have the higher force of will and intellect, enabling him to read the secrets of nature, to seize and combine and utilize its laws like a god, and like a god to attain to the higher discernment of good and evil. Nay, more, this power which resides within man rules with omnipotent energy the material organism, driving its nerve forces until cells and fibres are worn out and destroyed, taxing muscles and tendons till they break, impelling its slave the body even to that which will bring injury and death itself. Surely, what we thus see in man must be the image and likeness of the Great Spirit. We can escape from this conclusion only by one or other of two assumptions, either of which is rather to be called a play upon words than a scientific theory. We may, with a certain class of physicists and physiologists, confine our attention wholly to the fire and the steam, and overlook the engineer. We may assume that with protoplasm and animal electricity, for example, we can dispense with life, and not only with life but with spirit also. Yet he who regards vitality as an unmeaning word; and yet speaks of “living protoplasm,” and “dead protoplasm,” and affirms that between these two states, so different in their phenomena, no chemical or physical difference exists, is surely either laughing at us, or committing himself to what the Duke of Argyll calls a philosophical bull; andhe who shows us that electrical discharges are concerned in muscular contraction, has just as much proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the electrician who has explained the mysteries of the telegraph has shown that there can be no need of an operator. Or we may, turning to the opposite extreme, trust to the metaphysical fallacy of those who affirm that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need concern them, for that all are merely states of consciousness in ourselves. But what of the conscious self this self which thinks, and which is in relation with surroundings which it did not create, and which presumably did not create it? and what is the unknown third term which must have been the means of setting up these relations? Here again our blind guides involve us in an absolute self-contradiction.
Thus we are thrown back on the grand old truth that man, heathen and savage, or Christian and scientific, opens his eyes on nature and reads therein both the physical and the spiritual, and in connection with both of these the power and divinity of an Almighty Creator. He may at first have many wrong views both of God and of His works, but as he penetrates further into the laws of matter and mind, he attains more just conceptions of their relations to the Great Centre and Source of all, and instead of being able to dispense with creation, he hopes to be able at length to understand its laws and methods. If unhappily he abandons this high ambition, and contents himself with mere matter and physical force, hecannot rise to the highest development either of science or philosophy.
It may, however, be said that evolution may admit all this, and still be held as a scientific doctrine in connection with a modified belief in creation. The work of actual creation may have been limited to a few elementary types, and evolution may have done the rest. Evolutionists may still be theists. We have already seen that the doctrine, as carried out to its logical consequences, excludes creation and theism. It may, however, be shown that even in its more modified forms, and when held by men who maintain that they are not atheists, it is practically atheistic, because excluding the idea of plan and design, and resolving all things into the action of unintelligent forces. It is necessary to observe this, because it is the half-way evolutionism which professes to have a Creator somewhere behind it, that is most popular; though it is, if possible, more unphilosophical than that which professes to set out from absolute and eternal nonentity, or from self-existent star-dust containing all the possibilities of the universe.
Absolute atheists recognise in Darwinism, for example, a philosophy which reduces all things to a “gradual summation of innumerable minute and accidental material operations,” and in this they are more logical than those who seek to reconcile evolution with design. Huxley, in his “lay sermons,” referring to Paley’s argument for design founded on the structure of a watch, says that if the watch could be conceivedto be a product of a less perfect structure improved by natural selection, it would then appear to be the “result of a method of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as likely as of the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent agent.” This is a bold and true assertion of the actual relation of even this modified evolution to rational and practical theism, which requires not merely this God “afar off,” who has set the stone of nature rolling and then turned His back upon it, but a present God, whose will is the law of nature, now as in times past. The evolutionist is really in a position of absolute antagonism to the idea of creation, even when held with all due allowance for the variations of created things within certain limits.
Perhaps Paley’s old illustration of the watch, as applied by Huxley, may serve to show this as well as any other. If the imperfect watch, useless as a time-keeper, is the work of the contriver, and the perfection of it is the result of unintelligent agents working fortuitously, then it is clear that creation and design have a small and evanescent share in the construction of the fabric of nature. But is it really so? Can we attribute the perfection of the watch to “accidental material operations” any more than the first effort to produce such an instrument? Paley himself long ago met this view of the case, but his argument may be extended by the admissions and pleas of the evolutionists themselves. For example, the watch is altogether a mechanical thing, and thisfact by no means implies that it could not be made by an intelligent and spiritual designer, yet this assumption that physical laws exclude creation and design turns up in almost every page of the evolutionists. Paley has well shown that if the watch contained within itself machinery for making other watches, this would not militate against his argument. It would be so if it could be proved that a piece of metal had spontaneously produced an imperfect watch, and this a more perfect one, and so on; but this is precisely what evolutionists still require to prove with respect both to the watch and to man. On the other hand it is no argument for the evolution of the watch that there may be different kinds of watches, some more and others less perfect, and that ruder forms may have preceded the more perfect. This is perfectly compatible with creation and design. Evolutionists, however, generally fail to make this distinction. Nor would it be any proof of the evolution of the watch to find that, as Spencer would say, it was in perfect harmony with its environment, as, for instance, that it kept time with the revolution of the earth, and contained contrivances to regulate its motion under different temperatures, unless it could be shown that the earth’s motion and the changes of temperature had been efficient causes of the motion and the adjustments of the watch; otherwise the argument would look altogether in the direction of design. Nor would it be fair to shut up the argument of design to the idea that the watch must have suddenly flashed into existencefully formed and in motion. It would be quite as much a creation if slowly and laboriously made by the hand of the artificer, or if more rapidly struck off by machinery; and if the latter, it would not follow that the machine which produced the watch was at all like the watch itself. It might have been something very different. Finally, when Spencer tries to cut at the root of the whole of this argument, by affirming that man has no more right to reason from himself with regard to his Maker than a watch would have to reason from its own mechanical structure and affirm the like of its maker, he signally fails. If the watch had such power of reasoning, it would be more than mechanical, and would be intelligent like its maker; and in any case, if thus reasoning it came to the conclusion that it was a result of “accidental material operations,” it would be altogether mistaken. Nor would it be nearer the truth if it held that it was a product of spontaneous evolution from an imperfect and comparatively useless watch that had been made millions of years before.
We have taken this illustration of the watch merely as given to us by Huxley, and without in the least seeking to overlook the distinction between a dead machine and a living organism; but the argument for creation and design is quite as strong in the case of the latter, so long as it cannot be proved by actual facts to be a product of derivation from a distinct species. This has not been proved either in the care of man or any other species; and so long as it has not,the theory of creation and design is infinitely more rational and scientific than that of evolution in any of its forms.
But all this does not relieve us from the question, How can species be created?—the same question put to Paul by the sceptics of the first century with reference to the resurrection—“How are the dead raised, and with what bodies do they come?” I do not wish to evade this question, whether applied to man or to a microscopic animalcule, and I would answer it with the following statements:—
1. The advocate of creation is in this matter in no worse position than the evolutionist. This we have already shown, and I may refer here to the fact that Darwin himself assumes at least one primitive form of animal and plant life, and he is confessedly just as little able to imagine this one act of creation as any other that may be demanded of him.
2. We are not bound to believe that all groups of individual animals, which naturalists may call species, have been separate products of creation. Man himself has by some naturalists been divided into several species; but we may well be content to believe the creation of one primitive form, and the production of existing races by variation. Every zoologist and botanist who has studied any group of animals or plants with care, knows that there are numerous related forms passing into each other, which some naturalists might consider to be distinct species, but which it is certainly not necessary to regard as distinctproducts of creation. Every species is more or less variable, and this variability may be developed by different causes. Individuals exposed to unfavourable conditions will be stunted and depauperated; those in more favourable circumstances may be improved and enlarged. Important changes may thus take place without transgressing the limits of the species, or preventing a return to its typical forms; and the practice of confounding these more limited changes with the wider structural and physiological differences which separate true species is much to be deprecated. Animals which pass through metamorphoses, or which, are developed through the instrumentality of intermediate forms or “nurses”[BE]are not only liable to be separated by mistake into distinct species, but they may, tinder certain circumstances, attain to a premature maturity, or may be fixed for a time or permanently in an immature condition. Further, species, like individuals, probably have their infancy, maturity, and decay in geological time, and may present differences in these several stages. It is the remainder of true specific types left after all these sources of error are removed, that creation has to account for; and to arrive at this remainder, and to ascertain its nature and amount, will require a vast expenditure of skilful and conscientious labour.
[BE]Mr. Mungo Ponton, in his book “The Beginning,” has based a theory of derivation on this peculiarity.
[BE]Mr. Mungo Ponton, in his book “The Beginning,” has based a theory of derivation on this peculiarity.
3. Since animals and plants have been introduced upon our earth in long succession throughout geologictime, and this in a somewhat regular manner, we have a right to assume that their introduction has been in accordance with a law or plan of creation, and that this may have included the co-operation of many efficient causes, and may have differed in its application to different cases. This is a very old doctrine of theology, for it appears in the early chapters of Genesis. There the first aquatic animals, and man, are said to have been “created;” plants are said to have been “brought forth by the land;” the mammalia are said to have been “made.” In the more detailed account of the introduction of man in the second chapter of the same book, he is said to have been “formed of the dust of the ground;” and in regard to his higher spiritual life, to have had this “breathed into” him by God. These are very simple expressions, but they are very precise and definite in the original, and they imply a diversity in the creative work. Further, this is in accordance with the analogy of modern science. How diverse are the modes of production and development of animals and plants, though all under one general law; and is it not likely that the modes of their first introduction on the earth were equally diverse?
4. Our knowledge of the conditions of the origination of species, is so imperfect that we may possibly appear for some time to recede from, rather than to approach to, a solution of the question. In the infancy of chemistry, it was thought that chemical elements could be transmuted into each other. Theprogress of knowledge removed this explanation of their origin, and has as yet failed to substitute any other in its place. It may be the same with organic species. The attempt to account for them by derivation may prove fallacious, yet it may be some time before we turn the corner, should this be possible, and enter the path which actually leads up to their origin.
Lastly, in these circumstances our wisest course is to take individual species, and to inquire as to their history in time, and the probable conditions of their introduction. Such investigations are now being made by many quiet workers, whose labours are comparatively little known, and many of whom are scarcely aware of the importance of what they are doing toward a knowledge of, at least, the conditions of creation, which is perhaps all that we can at present hope to reach.
In the next chapter we shall try to sum up what is known as to man himself, in the conditions of his first appearance on our earth, as made known to us by scientific investigation, and explained on the theory of creation as opposed to evolution.
CHAPTER XV.
PRIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN THEORIES AS TO HIS ORIGIN (continued).
Inthe previous chapter we have seen that, on general grounds, evolution as applied to man is untenable; and that the theory of creation is more rational and less liable to objection. We may now consider how the geological and zoological conditions of man’s advent on the earth accord with evolution; and I think we shall find, as might be expected, that they oppose great if not fatal difficulties to this hypothesis.
One of the first and most important facts with reference to the appearance of man, is that he is a very recent animal, dating no farther back in geological time than the Post-glacial period, at the close of the Tertiary and beginning of the Modern era of geology. Further, inasmuch as the oldest known remains of man occur along with those of animals which still exist, and the majority of which are probably not of older date, there is but slender probability that any much older human remains will ever be found. Now this has a bearing on the question of the derivation of man, which, though it has not altogether escaped the attention of the evolutionists, has not met with sufficient consideration.
Perhaps the oldest; known human skull is that which has been termed the “Engis” skull, from the cave of Engis, in Belgium. With reference to this skull, Professor Huxley has candidly admitted that it may have belonged to an individual of one of the existing faces of men. I have a cast of it on the same shelf with the skulls of some Algonquin Indians, from the aboriginal Hochelaga, which preceded Montreal; and any one acquainted with cranial characters would readily admit that the ancient Belgian may very well have been an American Indian; while on the other hand his head is not very dissimilar from that of some modern European races. This Belgian man is believed to have lived before the mammoth and the cave bear had passed away, yet he does not belong to an extinct species or even variety of man.
Further, as stated in a previous chapter, Pictet catalogues ninety-eight species of mammals which inhabited Europe in the Post-glacial period. Of these fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and the remainder have disappeared. Not one can be shown to have been modified into a new form, though some of them have been obliged, by changes of temperature and other conditions, to remove into distant and now widely separated regions. Further, it would seem that all the existing European mammals extended back in geological time at least as far as man, so that since the Post-glacial period no new species have been introduced in any way. Here we have a series of facts of the most profound significance.Fifty-seven parallel lines of descent nave in Europe run on along with man, from the Post-glacial period, without change or material modification of any kind. Some of them extend without change even farther back. Thus man and his companion-mammals present a series of lines, not converging as if they pointed to some common progenitor, but strictly parallel to each other. In other words, if they are derived forms, their point of derivation from a common type is pushed back infinitely in geological time. The absolute duration of the human species does not affect this argument. If man has existed only six or seven thousand years, still at the beginning of his existence he was as distinct from lower animals as he is now, and shows no signs of gradation into other forms. If he has really endured since the great Glacial period, and is to be regarded as a species of a hundred thousand years' continuance, still the fact is the same, and is, if possible, less favourable to derivation.
Similar facts meet us in other directions. I have for many years occupied a little of my leisure in collecting the numerous species of molluscs and other marine animals existing in a sub-fossil state in the Post-pliocene clays of Canada, and comparing them with their modern successors. I do not know how long these animals have lived. Some of them certainly go far back into the Tertiary; and recent computations would place even the Glacial age at a distance from us of more than a thousand centuries. Yet after carefully studying about two hundred species, and, of someof these, many hundreds of specimens, I have arrived at the conclusion that they are absolutely unchanged. Some of them, it is true, are variable shells, presenting as many and great varieties as the human race itself; yet I find that in the Post-pliocene even the varieties of each species were the same as now, though the great changes of temperature and elevation which have occurred, have removed many of them to distant places, and have made them become locally extinct in regions over which they once spread. Here again we have an absolute refusal, on the part of all these animals, to admit that they are derived, or have tended to sport into new species. This is also, it is to be observed, altogether independent of that imperfection of the geological record of which so much is made; since we have abundance of these shells in the Post-pliocene beds, and in the modern seas, and no one doubts their continued descent. To what does this point? Evidently to the conclusion that all these species show no indication of derivation, or tendency to improve, but move back in parallel lines to some unknown creative origin.
If it be objected to this conclusion that absence of derivation in the Post-pliocene and Modern does not prove that it may not previously have occurred, the answer is, that if the evolutionist admits that for a very long period (and this the only one of which we have any certain knowledge, and the only one which concerns man) derivation has been suspended, he in effect abandons his position. It may, however,be objected that what I have above affirmed of species may be affirmed of varieties, which are admitted to be derived. For example, it may be said that the negro variety of man has existed unchanged from the earliest historic times. It is carious that those who so often urge this argument as an evidence of the great antiquity of man, and the slow development of races, do not see that it proves too much. If the negro has been the same identical negro as far back as we can trace him, then his origin must have been independent, and of the nature of a creation, or else his duration as a negro must have been indefinite. What it does prove is a fact equally obvious from the study of Post-pliocene molluscs and other fossils, namely, that new species tend rapidly to vary to the utmost extent of their possible limits, and then to remain stationary for an indefinite time. Whether this results from an innate yet limited power of expansion in the species, or from the relations between it and external influences, it is a fact inconsistent with the gradual evolution of new species. Hence we conclude that the recent origin of man, as revealed by geology, is, in connection with the above facts, an absolute bar to the doctrine of derivation.
A second datum furnished to this discussion by geology and zoology is the negative one that no link of connection is known between man and any preceding animal. If we gather his bones and his implements from the ancient gravel-beds and cave-earths, we do not find them associated with anycreature near of kin, nor do we find any such creature in those rich Tertiary beds which have yielded so great harvests of mammalian bones. In the modern world we find nothing nearer to him than such anthropoid apes as the orangs and gorillas. But the apes, however nearly allied, cannot be the ancestors of man. If at all related to him by descent, they are his brethren or cousins, not his parents; for they must, on the evolutionist hypothesis, be themselves the terminal ends of distinct lines of derivation from previous forms.
This difficulty is not removed by an appeal to the imperfection of the geological record. So many animals contemporary with man are known, both at the beginning of his geological history and in the present world, that it would be more than marvellous if no very near relative had ere this time been discovered at one extreme or the other, or at some portion of the intervening ages. Further, all the animals contemporary with man in the Post-glacial period, so far as is known, are in the same case. Discoveries of this kind may, however, still be made, and we may give the evolutionist the benefit of the possibility. We may affirm, however, that in order to gain a substratum of fact for his doctrine, he must find somewhere in the later Tertiary period animals much nearer to man than are the present anthropoid apes.
This demand I make advisedly—first, because the animals in question must precede man in geologicaltime; and secondly, because the apes, even if they preceded man, instead of being contemporary with him, are not near enough to fulfil the required conditions. What is the actual fact with regard to these animals, so confidently affirmed to resemble some not very remote ancestors of ours? Zoologically they are not varieties of the same species with man they are not species of the same genus, nor do they belong to genera of the same family, or even to families of the same order. These animals are at least ordinally distinct from us in those grades of groups in which naturalists arrange animals. I am well aware that an attempt has been made to group man, apes, and lemurs in one order of “Primates,” and thus to reduce their difference to the grade of the family; but as pat by its latest and perhaps most able advocate, the attempt is a decided failure. One has only to read the concluding chapter of Huxley’s new book on the anatomy of the vertebrates to be persuaded of this, more especially if we can take into consideration, in addition to the many differences indicated, others which exist but are not mentioned by the author. Ordinal distinctions among animals are mainly dependent on grade or rank, and are not to be broken down by obscure resemblances of internal anatomy, having no relation to this point, but to physiological features of very secondary importance. Man must, on all grounds, rank much higher above the apes than they can do above any other order of mammals. Even if we refuse to recognise all higher groundsof classification, and condescend, with some great zoologists of our time, to regard nature with the eyes of mere anatomists, or in the same way that a brick-layer’s apprentice may be supposed to regard distinctions of architectural styles, we can arrive at no other conclusion. Let us imagine an anatomist, himself neither a man nor a monkey, but a being of some other grade, and altogether ignorant of the higher ends and powers of our species, to contemplate merely the skeleton of a man and that of an ape. He must necessarily deduce therefrom an ordinal distinction, even on the one ground of the correlations and modifications of structure implied in the erect position. It would indeed be sufficient for this purpose to consider merely the balancing of the skull on the neck, or the structure of the foot, and the consequences fairly deducible from either of them. Nay, were such imaginary anatomist a derivationist, and ignorant of the geological date of his specimens, and as careless of the differences in respect to brain as some of his humanconfrères, he might, referring to the loss specialised condition of man’s teeth and foot, conclude, not that man is an improved ape, but that the ape is a specialised and improved man. He would be obliged, however, even on this hypothesis, to admit that there must be a host of missing links. Nor would these be supplied by the study of the living races of men, because these want even specific distinctness, and differ from the apes essentially in those points on which an ordinal distinction can be fairly based.
This isolated position of man throughout the whole period of his history, grows in importance the more that it is studied, and can scarcely be the result of any accident of defective preservation of intermediate forms. In the meantime, when taken in connection with, the fact previously stated, that man is equally isolated when he first appears on the stage, it deprives evolution, as applied to our species, of any precise scientific basis, whether zoological or geological.
I do not attach any importance whatever, in this connection, to the likeness in type or plan between man and other mammals. Evolutionists are in the habit of taking for granted that this implies derivation, and of reasoning as if the fact that the human skeleton is constructed on the same principles as that of an ape or a dog, must have some connection with a common ancestry of these animals. This is, however, as is usual with them, begging the question. Creation, as well as evolution, admits of similarity of plan. When Stephenson constructed a locomotive, he availed himself of the principles and of many of the contrivances of previous engines; but this does not imply that he took a mine-engine, or a marine-engine, and converted it into a railroad-engine. Type or plan, whether in nature or art, may imply merely a mental evolution of ideas in the maker, not a derivation of one object from another.
But while man is related in his type of structure to the higher animals, his contemporaries, it is undeniable that there are certain points in which he constitutesa new type; and if this consideration were properly weighed, I believe it would induce zoologists, notwithstanding the proverbial humility of the true man of science, to consider themselves much more widely separated from the brutes than even by the ordinal distinction above referred to. I would state this view of the matter thus:—It is in the lower animals a law that the bodily frame is provided with all necessary means of defence and attack, and with all necessary protection against external influences and assailants. In a very few cases, we have partial exceptions to this. A hermit-crab, for instance, has the hinder part of its body unprotected; and has, instead of armour, the instinct of using the cast-off shells of molluscs; yet even this animal has the usual strong claws of a crustacean, for defence in front. There are only a very few animals in which instinct thus takes the place of physical contrivances for defence or attack, and in these we find merely the usual unvarying instincts of the irrational animal. But in man, that which is the rare exception in all other animals, becomes the rule. He has no means of escape from danger, compared with those enjoyed by other animals no defensive armour, no natural protection from cold or heat, no effective weapons for attacking other animals. These disabilities would make him the most helpless of creatures, especially when taken in connection with his slow growth and long immaturity. His safety and his dominion over other animals, are secured by entirely new means,constituting a “new departure” in creation. Contrivance and inventive power, enabling him to utilise the objects and forces of nature, replace in him the material powers bestowed on lower animals. Obviously the structure of the human being is related to this, and so related to it as to place man in a different category altogether from any other animal.
This consideration makes the derivation of man from brutes difficult to imagine. None of these latter appear even able to conceive or understand the modes of life and action of man. They do not need to attempt to emulate his powers, for they are themselves provided for in a different manner. They have no progressive nature like that of man. Their relations to things without are altogether limited to their structures and instincts. Man’s relations are limited only by his powers of knowing and understanding. How then is it possible to conceive of an animal which is, so to speak, a mere living machine, parting with the physical contrivances necessary to its existence, and assuming the new role of intelligence and free action?
This becomes still more striking if we adopt the view usually taken by evolutionists, that primitive man was a ferocious and carnivorous creature, warring with and overcoming the powerful animals of the Post-glacial period, and contending with the rigours of a severe climate. This could certainly not be inferred from his structure, interpreted by that of the lower animals, which would inevitably lead to the conclusionthat he must Lave been a harmless and frugivorous creature, fitted to subsist only in the mildest climates, and where exempt from the attacks of the more powerful carnivorous animals. No one reasoning on the purely physical constitution of man, could infer that he might be a creature more powerful and ferocious than the lion or the tiger.
It is also worthy of mention that the existence of primitive man as a savage hunter is, in another point of view, absolutely opposed to the Darwinian idea of his origin from a frugivorous ape. These creatures, while comparatively inoffensive, conform to the general law of lower animals in having strong jaws and powerful canines for defence, hand-like feet to aid them in securing food, and escaping from their enemies, and hairy clothing to protect them from cold and heat. On the hypothesis of evolution we might conceive that if these creatures were placed in some Eden of genial warmth, peace, and plenty, which rendered those appliances unnecessary, they might gradually lose these now valuable structures, from want of necessity, to use them. But, on the contrary, if such creatures were obliged to contend against powerful enemies, and to feed on flesh, all analogy would lead us to believe that they would become in their structures more like carnivorous beasts than men. On the other hand, the anthropoid apes, in the circumstances in which we find them, are not only as unprogressive as other animals, but little fitted to extend their range, and less gifted with the power of adaptingthemselves to new conditions than many other mammals less resembling man in external form.
On the Darwinian theory, such primitive men as geology reveals to us would be more likely to have originated from bears than apes, and we would be tempted to wish that man should become extinct, and that the chance should be given to the mild chimpanzee or orang to produce by natural selection an improved and less ferocious humanity for the future.
The only rational hypothesis of human origin in the present state of our knowledge of this subject is, that man must have been produced under some circumstances in which animal food was not necessary to him, in which he was exempt from the attacks of the more formidable animals, and in less need of protection from the inclemency of the weather than is the case with any modern apes; and that his life as a hunter and warrior began after he had by his knowledge and skill secured to himself the means of subduing nature by force and cunning. This implies that man was from the first a rational being, capable of understanding nature, and it accords much more nearly with the old story of Eden in the book of Genesis, than with any modern theories of evolution.
It is due to Mr. Wallace—who, next to Darwin, has been a leader among English derivationists—to state that he perceives this difficulty. As a believer in natural selection, however, it presents itself to his mind in a peculiar form. He perceives that so soon as, by the process of evolution, man became a rationalcreature, and acquired his social sympathies, physical evolution must cease, and must be replaced by invention, contrivance, and social organisation. This is at once obvious and undeniable, and it follows that the natural selection applicable to man, as man, must relate purely to his mental and moral improvement. Wallace, however, fails to comprehend the full significance of this feature of the case. Given, a man destitute of clothing, he may never acquire such clothing by natural selection, because he will provide an artificial substitute. He will evolve not into a hairy animal, but into a weaver and a tailor. Given, a man destitute of claws and fangs, he will not acquire these, but will manufacture weapons. But then, on the hypothesis of derivation, this is not what is given us as the raw material of man, but instead of this a hairy ape. Admitting the power of natural selection, we might understand how this ape could become more hairy, or acquire more formidable weapons, as it became more exposed to cold, or more under the necessity of using animal food; but that it should of itself leave this natural line of development and enter on the entirely different line of mental progress is not conceivable, except as a result of creative intervention.
Absolute materialists may make light of this difficulty, and may hold that this would imply merely a change of brain; but even if we admit this, they fail to show of what use such better brain would be to a creature retaining the bodily form and instinctsof the ape, or how such better brain could be acquired. But evolutionists are not necessarily absolute materialists, and Darwin himself labours to show that the reasoning self-conscious mind, and even the moral sentiments of man, might be evolved from rudiments of such powers, perceptible in the lower animals. Here, however, he leaves the court of natural science, properly so called, and summons us to appear before the judgment-seat of philosophy; and as naturalists are often bad mental philosophers, and philosophers have often small knowledge of nature, some advantage results, in the first instance, to the doubtful cause of evolution. Since, however, mental science makes much more of the distinctions between the mind of man and the instinct of animals than naturalists, accustomed to deal merely with the external organism, can be expected to do, the derivationist, when his plea is fairly understood, is quite as certain to lose his cause as when tried by geology and zoology. He might indeed be left to be dealt with by mental science on its own ground; and as our province is to look at the matter from the standpoint of natural history, we might here close our inquiry. It may, however, be proper to give some slight notion of the width of the gulf to be passed when we suppose the mechanical, unconscious, repetitive nature of the animal to pass over into the condition of an intellectual and moral being.
If we take, as the most favourable case for the evolutionist, the most sagacious of the lower animals—thedog, for example—and compare it with the least elevated condition of the human mind, as observed in the child or the savage, we shall find that even here there is something more than that “immense difference in degree” which Darwin himself admits. Making every allowance for similarities in external sense, in certain instinctive powers and appetites; and even in the power of comparison, and in certain passions and affections; and admitting, though we cannot be quite certain of this, that in these man differs from animals only in degree; there remain other and more important differences, amounting to the possession, on the parfc of man, of powers not existing at all in animals. Of this kind are—first, the faculty of reaching abstract and general truth, ind consequently of reasoning, in the proper sense of the term; secondly, in connection with this, the power of indefinite increase in knowledge, and in deductions therefrom leading to practical results; thirdly, the power of expressing thought in speech; fourthly, the power of arriving at ideas of right and wrong, and thus becoming a responsible and free agent. Lastly, we have the conception of higher spiritual intelligence, of supreme power and divinity, and the consequent feeling of religious obligation. These powers are evidently different in kind, rather than in degree, from those of the brute, and cannot be conceived to have arisen from the latter, more especially as one of the distinctive characters of these is their purely cyclical, repetitive, and unprogressive nature.
Sir John Lubbock has, by a great accumulation of facts, or supposed facts, bearing on the low mental condition of savages, endeavoured to bridge over this chasm. It is obvious, however, from his own data, that the rudest savages are enabled to subsist only by the exercise of intellectual gifts far higher than those of animals; and that if these gifts were removed from them, they would inevitably perish. It is equally clear that even the lowest savages are moral agents; and that not merely in their religious beliefs and conceptions of good and evil, but also in their moral degradation, they show capacities not possessed by the brutes. It is also true that most of these savages are quite as little likely to be specimens of primitive man as are the higher races; and that many of them have fallen to so low a level as to be scarcely capable, of themselves, of rising to a condition of culture and civilisation. Thus they are more likely to be degraded races, in “the eddy and backwater of humanity” than examples of the sources from whence it flowed. And here it must not be lost sight of, that a being like man has capacities for degradation commensurate with his capacities for improvement; and that at any point of his history we may have to seek the analogues of primeval man, rather in the average, than the extremes of the race.
Before leaving this subject, it may be well to consider the fact, that the occurrence of such a being as man in the last stages of the world’s history is, initself, an argument for the existence of a Supreme Creator. Man is himself an image and likeness of God; and the fact that he can establish relations with nature around him, so as to understand and control its powers, implies either that he has been evolved as a soul of nature, by its own blind development, or that he has originated in the action of a higher being related to man. The former supposition has been above shown to be altogether improbable; so that we are necessarily thrown back upon the latter. We must thus regard man himself as the highest known work of a spiritual creator, and must infer that he rightly uses his reason when he infers from nature the power and divinity of God.
The last point that I think necessary to bring forward here, is the information which geology gives as to the locality of the introduction of man. There can be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate regions of the old continent belongs the honour of being the cradle of humanity. In these regions are the oldest historical monuments of our race; here geology finds the most ancient remains of human beings; here also seems to be the birthplace of the fauna and flora most useful and congenial to man; and here he attains to his highest pitch of mental and physical development. This, it is true, by no means accords with the methods of the derivationists. On their theory we should search for the origin of man rather in those regions where he is most depauperated and degraded, and where his strugglesfor existence are most severe. But it is surely absurd to affirm of any species of animal or plant that it must have originated at the limits of its range, where it can scarcely exist at all. On the contrary, common sense as well as science requires us to believe that species must have originated in those central parts of their distribution where they enjoy the most favourable circumstances, and must have extended themselves thence as far as external conditions would permit. One of the most wretched varieties of the human race, and as near as any to the brutes, is that which inhabits Tierra del Fuego, a country which scarcely affords any of the means for the comfortable sustenance of man. Would it not be absolutely impossible that man should have originated in such a country? Is it not certain, en the contrary, that the Fuegian is merely a degraded variety of the aboriginal American race? Precisely the same argument applies to the Austral negro and the Hottentot. They are all naturally the most aberrant varieties of man, as being at the extreme range of his possible extension, and placed in conditions unfavourable, either because of unsuitable climatal or organic associations. It is true that the regions most favourable to the anthropoid apes, and in which they may be presumed to have originated, are by no means the most favourable to man; but this only makes it the less likely that man could have been derived from such a parentage.
While, therefore, the geological date of the appearanceof man, the want of any link of connection between him and any preceding animal, and his dissimilar bodily and mental constitution from any creatures contemporary with him, render his derivation from apes or other inferior animals in the highest degree improbable, the locality of his probable origin confirms this conclusion in the strongest manner. It also shows that man and the higher apes are not likely to have originated in the same regions, or under the same conditions, and that the conditions of human origin are rather the coincidence of suitable climatal and organic surroundings than the occurrence of animals closely related in structure to man.
Changes of conditions in geological time will not meet this difficulty. They might lead to migrations, as they have done in the case of both plants and animals, but not to anything further. The hyena, whose bones are found in the English caves, has been driven by geological changes to South Africa, but he is still the same hyena. The reindeer which once roamed in France is still the reindeer in Lapland; and though under different geological conditions we might imagine the creature to have originated in the south of Europe, a country not now suitable to it, this would neither give reason to believe that any animal now living in the south of Europe was its progenitor, nor to doubt that it still remains unchanged in its new habitat. Indeed, the absence of anything more than merely varietal change in man and his companion-animals, in consequenceof the geological changes and migrations of the Modern period, furnishes, as already stated, a strong if not conclusive argument against derivation; which here, as elsewhere, only increases our actual difficulties, while professing to extricate us from them.