Chapter XI: The Higher Animals and Man

"And God said, Let the land bring forth animals after their
kinds; the herbivora, the reptiles, and the carnivora, after
their kinds; and it was so. And God made carnivorous mammals
after their kinds, and herbivorous mammals after their
kinds, and every reptile of the land after its kind; and God
saw that it was good.

"And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our
likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the
birds of the air, and over the herbivora and over all the
land. So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him; male and female created he them. And God
blessed them; and God said, Be fruitful and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over
every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing
seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree
in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it
shall be for food, and to every beast of the earth and to
every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon
the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green
herb for meat; and it was so. And God saw every thing that
he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And evening and
morning were the sixth day."--Genesis i., 24-31.

The creation of animals, unlike that of plants, occupies two days. Here our attention is restricted to the inhabitants of the _land_, and chiefly to their higher forms. Several new names are introduced to our notice, which I have endeavored to translate as literally as possible by introducing zoological terms where those in common use were deficient.

1. The first tribe of animals noticed here is named _Bhemah_, "cattle" in our version; and in the Septuagint "quadrupeds" in one of the verses, and "cattle" in the other. Both of these senses are of common occurrence in the Scriptures, cattle or domesticated animals being usually designated by this word; while in other passages, as in 1 Kings iv., 33, where Solomon is said to have written a treatise on "_beasts_, fowls, creeping things, and fishes," it appears to include all the mammalia. Notwithstanding this wide range of meaning, however, there are passages, and these of the greatest authority in reference to our present subject, in which it strictly means the herbivorous mammals, and which show that when it was necessary to distinguish these from the predaceous or carnivorous tribes this term was specially employed. In Leviticus xi., 22-27, we have a specification of all the Bhemoth that might and might not be used for food. It includes all the true ruminants, with the coney, the hare, and the hog, animals of the rodent and pachydermatous orders. The carnivorous quadrupeds are designated by a different generic term. In this chapter of Leviticus, therefore, which contains the only approach to a system in natural history to be found in the Bible, _bhemah_ is strictly a synonym of _herbivora_, including especially ungulates and rodents. That this is its proper meaning here is confirmed by the considerations that in this place it can denote but a part of the land quadrupeds, and that the idea of cattle or domesticated animals would be an anachronism. At the same time there need be no objection to the view that the especial capacity of ruminants and other herbivora for domestication is connected with the use of the word in this place.

2. The word _remes_, "creeping things" in our version, as we have already shown, is a very general term, referring to the power of motion possessed by animals, especially on the surface of the ground. It here in all probability refers to the additional types of terrestrial reptiles, and other creatures lower than the mammals, introduced in this period.

3. The compound term (_hay'th-eretz_) which I have ventured to render "carnivora," is literally animal of the land; but though thus general in its meaning, it is here evidently intended to denote a particular tribe of animals inhabiting the land, and not included in the scope of the two words already noticed. In other parts of Scripture this term is used in the sense of a "wild beast." In a few places, like the other terms already noticed, it is used of all kinds of animals, but that above stated is its general meaning, and perfectly accords with the requirements of the passage.

The creation of the sixth day therefore includes--1st, the herbivorous mammalia; 2d, a variety of terrestrial reptilia, and other lower forms not included in the work of the previous day; 3d, the carnivorous mammalia. It will be observed that the order in the two verses is different. In verse 24th it is herbivora, "creeping things," and carnivora. In verse 25th it is carnivora, herbivora, and "creeping things." One of these may, as in the account of the fifth day, indicate the order of _time_ in the creation, and the other the order of _rank_ in the animals made, or there may have been two divisions of the work, in the earlier of which herbivorous animals took the lead, and in the later those that are carnivorous. In either case we may infer that the herbivora predominated in the earlier creations of the period.

It is almost unnecessary to say this period corresponds with the Tertiary or Cainozoic era of geologists. The coincidences are very marked and striking. As already stated, though in the later secondary period there were great facilities for the preservation of mammals in the strata then being deposited, only a few small species of the humblest order have been found; and the occurrence of the higher orders of this class is to some extent precluded by the fact that the place in nature now occupied by the mammals was then provided for by the vast development of the reptile tribes. At the very beginning of the tertiary period all this was changed; most of the gigantic reptiles had disappeared, and terrestrial mammals of large size and high organization had taken their place. Perhaps no geological change is more striking and remarkable than the sudden disappearance of the reptilian fauna at the close of the mesozoic, and the equally abrupt appearance of numerous species of large mammals, and this not in one region only, but over both the great continents, and not only where a sudden break occurs in the series of formations, but also where, as in Western America, they pass gradually into each other. During the whole tertiary period this predominance of the mammalia continued; and as the mesozoic was the period of giant reptiles, so the tertiary was that of great mammals. It is a singular and perhaps not accidental coincidence that so many of the early tertiary mammals known to us are large herbivora, such as would be included in the Hebrew word _bhemah_; and that in the book of Job the hippopotamus is called _behemoth_, the plural form being apparently used to denote that this animal is the chief of the creatures known under the general term _bhemah_, while geology informs us that the prevailing order of mammals in the older tertiary period was that of the ungulates, and that many of the extinct creatures of this group are very closely allied to the hippopotamus. Behemoth thus figures in the book of Job, not only as at the time a marked illustration of creative power, but to our farther knowledge also as a singular remnant of an extinct gigantic race. It is at least curious that while in the fifth day great reptiles like those of the secondary rocks form the burden of the work, in the sixth we have a term which so directly reminds us of those gigantic pachyderms which figure so largely in the tertiary period. Large carnivora also occur in the tertiary formations, and there are some forms of reptile life, as, for example, the serpents, which first appear in the tertiary.

I may refer to any popular text-book of geology in evidence of the exact conformity of this to the progress of mammalian life, as we now know it in detail from the study of the successive tertiary deposits. The following short summary from Dana, though written several years ago, still expresses the main features of the case:

"The quadrupeds did not all come forth together. Large and powerful herbivorous species first take possession of the earth, with only a few small carnivora. These pass away. Other herbivora with a larger proportion of carnivora next appear. These also are exterminated; and so with others. Then the carnivora appear in vast numbers and power, and the herbivora also abound. Moreover these races attain a magnitude and number far surpassing all that now exist, as much so indeed, on all the continents, North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, as the old mastodon, twenty feet long and nine feet high, exceeds the modern buffalo. Such, according to geology, was the age of mammals, when the brute species existed in their greatest magnificence, and brutal ferocity had free play; when the dens of bears and hyenas, prowling tigers and lions far larger than any now existing, covered Britain and Europe. Mammoths and mastodons wandered over the plains of North America, huge sloth-like Megatheria passed their sluggish lives on the pampas of South America, and elephantine marsupials strolled about Australia.

"As the mammalian age draws to a close, the ancient carnivora and herbivora of that era all pass away, excepting, it is believed, a few that are useful to man. New creations of smaller size peopled the groves; the vegetation received accessions to its foliage, fruit-trees and flowers, and the seas brighter forms of water life. This we know from comparisons with the fossils of the preceding mammalian age. There was at this time no chaotic upturning, but only the opening of creation to its fullest expansion; and so in Genesis no new day is begun, it is still the _sixth day_."

The creation of man is prefaced by expressions implying deliberation and care. It is not said, "Let the earth bring forth" man, but let us form or fashion man. This marks the relative importance of the human species, and the heavenly origin of its nobler immaterial part. Man is also said to have been "created," implying that in his constitution there was something new and not included in previous parts of the work, even in its material. Man was created, as the Hebrew literally reads, the shadow and similitude of God--the greatest of the visible manifestations of Deity in the lower world--the reflected image of his Maker, and, under the Supreme Lawgiver, the delegated ruler of the earth. Now for the first time was the earth tenanted by a being capable of comprehending the purposes and plans of Jehovah, of regarding his works with intelligent admiration, and of shadowing forth the excellences of his moral nature. For countless ages the earth had been inhabited by creatures wonderful in their structures and instincts, and mutely testifying, as their buried remains still do, to the Creator's glory; but limited within a narrow range of animal propensities, and having no power of raising a thought or aspiration toward the Being who made them. Now, however, man enters on the scene, and the sons of God, who had shouted for joy when the first land emerged from the bosom of the deep, saw the wondrous spectacle of a spiritual nature analogous to their own, united to a corporeal frame constructed on the same general type with the higher of those irrational creatures whose presence on earth they had so long witnessed.

Man was to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the _bhemah_ or herbivorous animals. The carnivorous creatures are not mentioned, and possibly were not included in man's dominion. We shall find an explanation of this farther on. The nature of man's dominion we are left to infer. In his state of innocence it must have been a mild and gentle sway, interfering in no respect wilts the free exercise of the powers of enjoyment bestowed on animals by the Creator, a rule akin to that which a merciful man exercises over a domesticated animal, and which some animals are capable of repaying with a warm and devoted affection. Now, however, man's rule has become a tyranny. "The whole creation groans" because of it. He desolates the face of nature wherever he appears, unsettling the nice balance of natural agencies, and introducing remediless confusion and suffering among the lower creatures, even when in the might of his boasted civilization he professes to renovate and improve the face of nature. He retains enough of the image of his Maker to enable him to a great extent to assert his dominion, and to aspire after a restoration of his original paradise, but he has lost so much that the power which he retains is necessarily abused to selfish ends.

Man, like the other creatures, was destined to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. We are also informed in chapter second that he was placed in a "garden," a chosen spot in the alluvial plains of Western Asia, belonging to the later geological formations, and thus prepared by the whole series of prior geological changes, replenished with all things useful to him, and containing nothing hurtful, at least in so far as the animal creation was concerned. These facts, taken in connection, lead to grave questions. How is the happy and innocent state of man consistent with the contemporaneous existence of carnivorous and predaceous animals, which, as both Scripture and geology state, were created in abundance in the sixth day? How, when confined to a limited region, could he increase and multiply and replenish the earth? These questions, which have caused no little perplexity, are easily solved when brought into the light of our modern knowledge of nature. 1. Every large region of the earth is inhabited by a group of animals differing in the proportions of identical species, and in the presence of distinct species, from the groups inhabiting other districts. There is also sufficient reason to conclude that all animals and plants have spread from certain local centres of creation, in which certain groups of species have been produced and allowed to extend themselves, until they met and became intermingled with species extending from other centres. Now the district of Asia, in the vicinity of the Euphrates and Tigris, to which the Scripture assigns the origin of the human race, is the centre to which we can with the greatest probability trace several of the species of animals and plants most useful to man, and it lies near the confines of warmer and colder regions of distribution in the Old World, and also near the boundary of the Asiatic and European regions. At the period under consideration it may have been peopled with a group of animals specially suited to association with the progenitors of mankind. 2. To remove all zoological difficulties from the position of primeval man in his state of innocence, we have but to suppose, in accordance with all the probabilities of the case, that man was created along with a group of creatures adapted to contribute to his happiness, and having no tendency to injure or annoy; and that it is the formation of these creatures--the group of his own centre of creation--that is especially noticed in Genesis ii., 19, _et seq._, where God is represented as forming them out of the ground and exhibiting them to Adam; a passage otherwise superfluous, and indeed tending to confuse the meaning of the document. 3. The difficulty attending the early extension of the human race is at once obviated by the geological doctrine of the extinction of species. We know that in past geological periods large and important groups of species have become extinct, and have been replaced by new groups extending from new centres; and we know that this process has removed, in early geological periods, many creatures that would have been highly injurious to human interests had they remained. Now the group of species created with man being the latest introduced, we may infer, on geological grounds, that it would have extended itself within the spheres of older zoological and botanical districts, and would have replaced their species, which, in the ordinary operation of natural laws, may have been verging toward extinction. Thus not only man, but the Eden in which he dwelt, with all its animals and plants, would have gradually encroached on the surrounding wilderness, until man's happy and peaceful reign had replaced that of the ferocious beasts that preceded him in dominion, and had extended at least over all the temperate region of the earth. 4. The cursing of the ground for man's sake, on his fall from innocence, would thus consist in the permission given to the predaceous animals and the thorns and the briers of other centres of creation to invade his Eden; or, in his own expulsion, to contend with the animals and plants which were intended to have given way and become extinct before him. Thus the fall of man would produce an arrestment in the progress of the earth in that last great revolution which would have converted it into an Eden; and the anomalies of its present state consist, according to Scripture, in a mixture of the conditions of the tertiary with those of the human period. 5. Though there is good ground for believing that man was to have been exempted from the general law of mortality, we can not infer that any such exemption would have been enjoyed by his companion animals; we only know that he himself would have been free from all annoyance and injury and decay from external causes. We may also conclude that, while Eden was sufficient for his habitation, the remainder of the earth would continue, just as in the earlier tertiary periods, under the dominion of the predaceous mammals, reptiles, and birds. 6. The above views enable us on the one hand to avoid the difficulties that attend the admission of predaceous animals into Eden, and on the other the still more formidable difficulties that attend the attempt to exclude them altogether from the Adamic world. They also illustrate the geological fact that many animals, contemporaneous with man, extend far back into the Tertiary period. These are creatures not belonging to the Edenic centre of creation, but introduced in an earlier part of the sixth day, and now permitted to exist along with man in his fallen state. I have stated these supposed conditions of the Adamic creation briefly, and with as little illustration as possible, that they may connectedly strike the mind of the reader. Each of these statements is in harmony with the Scriptural narrative on the one hand, and with geology on the other; and, taken together, they afford an intelligible history of the introduction of man. If a geologist were to state, _a priori_, the conditions proper to the creation of any important species, he could only say--the preparation or selection of some region of the earth for it, and its production along with a group of plants and animals suited to it. These are precisely the conditions implied in the Scriptural account of the creation of Adam.[99] The difficulties of the subject have arisen from supposing, contrary to the narrative itself, that the conditions necessary for Eden must in the first instance have extended over the whole earth, and that the creatures with which man is in his present dispersion brought into contact must necessarily have been his companions there. One would think that many persons derive their idea of the first man in Eden from nursery picture-books; for the Bible gives no countenance to the idea that all the animals in the world were in Eden. On the contrary, it asserts that a selection was made both in the case of animals and plants, and that this Edenic assemblage of creatures constituted man's associates in his state of primeval innocence.

The food of animals is specified at the close of the work of this day. The grant to man is every herb bearing seed, and every fruit-tree. That to the lower animals is more extensive--every green herb. This can not mean that every animal in the earth was herbivorous. It may refer to the group of animals associated with man in Eden, and this is most likely the intention of the writer; but if it includes the animals of the whole earth, we may be certain, from the express mention of carnivorous creatures in the work of the fifth and sixth days, that it indicates merely the general fact that the support of the whole animal kingdom is based on vegetation.

A most important circumstance in connection with the work of the sixth day is that it witnessed the creation both of man and the mammalia. A fictitious writer would probably have exalted man by assigning to him a separate day, and by placing the whole animal kingdom together in respect to time. He would be all the more likely to do this, if unacquainted, as most ignorant persons as well as literary men are, with the importance and teeming multitudes of the lower tribes of animals, and with the typical identity of the human frame with that of the higher animals. Moses has not done so, we are at liberty to suppose, because the vision of creation had it otherwise; and modern geology has amply vindicated him in this by its disclosure of the intimate connection of the human with the tertiary period; and has shown in this as in other instances that truth and not "accommodation" was the object of the sacred writer. While, as already stated, many existing species extend far back into the tertiary period, showing that the earth has been visited by no universal catastrophe since the first creation of mammals; on the other hand, we can not with certainty trace any existing species back beyond the commencement of the tertiary era. Geology and revelation, therefore, coincide in referring the creation of man to the close of the period in which mammals were introduced and became predominant, and in establishing a marked separation between that period and the preceding one in which the lower animals held undisputed sway. This coincidence, while it strengthens the probability that the creative days were long periods, opposes an almost insurmountable obstacle to every other hypothesis of reconciliation with geological science.

At the close of this day the Creator again reviews his work, and pronounces it good. Step by step the world had been evolved from a primeval chaos, through many successive physical changes and long series of organized beings. It had now reached its acme of perfection, and had received its most illustrious tenant, possessing an organism excelling all others in majesty and beauty, and an immaterial soul the shadow of the glorious Creator himself. Well might the angels sing, when the long-protracted work was thus grandly completed:

"Thrice happy man,
And sons of men, whom God hath thus advanced,
Created in his image, there to dwell
And worship him, and in reward to rule
Over his works in earth, or sea, or air,
And multiply a race of worshippers
Holy and just; thrice happy, if they know
Their happiness and persevere upright."

The Hebrew idea of the golden age of Eden is pure and exalted. It consists in the enjoyment of the favor of God, and of all that is beautiful and excellent in his works. God and nature are the whole. Nor is it merely a rude, unintelligent, sensuous enjoyment. Man primeval is not a lazy savage gathering acorns. He is made in the image of the Creator; he is to keep and dress his garden, and it is furnished with every plant good for food and pleasant to the sight. In the midst of our material civilization we need to disabuse ourselves of some prejudices before we can realize the fact that man, without the arts of life or any need of them, is not necessarily a barbarian or a savage. Yet even Adam must have been an agriculturist with strong and willing hands, and must have had some need of agricultural implements such as those with which the least civilized of his descendants have been wont to till the soil. Still, without art or with very little of it, he could enjoy all that is beautiful and grand in nature, and could rise from the observation of nature to communion with God. We need the more to realize this, inasmuch as there seems so strong a tendency to confound material civilization with higher culture, and to hold that man primeval must have been low and debased simply because he may have had no temples and no machinery. We must remember that he had nature, which is higher than fine art, and that when in harmony with his surroundings he may have had no need either of exhausting labor or of mechanical contrivances. Farther, in the contemplation of nature and in seeking after God, he had higher teachers than our boasted civilization can claim.

Alas for fallen man, with his poor civilization gathered little by little from the dust of earth, and his paltry art that halts immeasurably behind nature. How little is he able even to appreciate the high estate of his great ancestor. The world of fallen men has worshipped art too much, reverenced and studied God and nature too little. The savage displays the lowest taste when he admires the rude figures which he paints on his face or his garments more than the glorious painting that adorns nature; yet even he acknowledges the pre-eminent excellence of nature by imitating her forms and colors, and by adapting her painted plumes and flowers to his own use. There is a wide interval, including many gradations, between this low position and that of the cultivated amateur or artist. The art of the latter makes a nearer approach to the truly beautiful, inasmuch as it more accurately represents the geometric and organic forms and the coloring of nature; and inasmuch as it devises ideal combinations not found in the actual world; which ideal combinations, however, are beautiful or monstrous just as they realize or violate the harmonies of nature. It is only the highest culture that brings man back to his primitive refinement.

Art takes her true place when she sits at the feet of nature, and brings her students to drink in its beauties, that they may endeavor, however imperfectly, to reproduce them. On the other hand, the student of nature must not content himself with "writing Latin names on white paper," wherewith to label nature's productions, but must rise to the contemplation of the order and beauty of the Cosmos as a revelation of Divinity. Both will thus rise to that highest taste which will enable them to appreciate not only the elegance of individual forms, but their structure, their harmonies, their grouping and their relations, their special adaptation, and their places as parts of a great system. Thus art will attain that highest point in which it displays original genius, without violating natural truth and unity, and nature will be regarded as the highest art.

Much is said and done in our time with reference to the cultivation of popular taste for fine art as a means of civilization; and this, so far as it goes, is well; but the only sure path to the highest taste-education is the cultivation of the study of nature. This is also an easier branch of education, provided the instructors have sufficient knowledge. Good works of art are rare and costly; but good works of nature are everywhere around us, waiting to be examined. Such education, popularly diffused, would react on the efforts of art. It would enable a widely extended public to appreciate real excellence, and would cause works of art to be valued just in proportion to the extent to which they realize or deviate from natural truth and unity. I do not profess to speak authoritatively on such subjects, but I confess that the strong impression on my mind is that neither the revered antique models, nor the practice and principles of the generality of modern art reformers, would endure such criticism; and that if we could combine popular enthusiasm for art with scientific appreciation of nature, a new and better art might arise from the union.

I may appear to dwell too long upon this topic; but my excuse must be that it leads to a true estimate both of natural history and of the sacred Scriptures. The study of nature guides to those large views of the unity and order of creation which alone are worthy of a being of the rank of man, and which lead him to adequate conceptions of the Creator; but the truly wise recognize three grades of beauty. First, that of art, which, in its higher efforts, can raise ordinary minds far above themselves. Secondly, that of nature, which, in its most common objects, must transcend the former, since its artist is that God of whose infinite mind the genius of the artist is only a faint reflection. Thirdly, that pre-eminent beauty of moral goodness revealed only in the spiritual nature of the Supreme. The first is one of the natural resources of fallen man in his search for happiness. The second was man's joy in his primeval innocence. The third is the inheritance of man redeemed. It is folly to place these on the same level. It is greater folly to worship either or both of the first without regard to the last. It is true wisdom to aspire to the last, and to regard nature as the handmaid of piety, art as but the handmaid of nature.

Nature to the unobservant is merely a mass of things more or less beautiful or interesting, but without any definite order or significance. An observer soon arrives at the conclusion that it is a series of circling changes, ever returning to the same points, ever renewing their courses, under the action of invariable laws. But if he rests here, he falls infinitely short of the idea of the Cosmos, and stands on the brink of the profound error of eternal succession. A little further progress conducts him to the inviting field of special adaptation and mutual relation of things. He finds that nothing is without its use; that every structure is most nicely adjusted to special ends; that the supposed ceaseless circling of nature is merely the continuous action of great powers, by which an infinity of utilities are worked out--the great fly-wheel which, in its unceasing and at first sight apparently aimless round, is giving motion to thousands of reels and spindles and shuttles, that are spinning and weaving, in all its varied patterns, the great web of life.

But the observer, as he looks on this web, is surprised to find that it has in its whole extent a wondrous pattern. He rises to the contemplation of type in nature, a great truth to which science has only lately opened its eyes. He begins dimly to perceive that the Creator has from the beginning had a plan before his mind, that this plan embraced various types or patterns of existence; that on these patterns he has been working out the whole system of nature, adapting each to all the variety of uses by an infinity of minor modifications. That, in short, whether he study the eye of a gnat or the structure of a mountain chain, he sees not only objects of beauty and utility, but parts of far-reaching plans of infinite wisdom, by which all objects, however separated in time or space, are linked together.

How much of positive pleasure does that man lose who passes through life absorbed with its wants and its artificialities, and regarding with a "brute, unconscious gaze" the grand revelation of a higher intelligence in the outer world. It is only in an approximation through our Divine Redeemer to the moral likeness of God that we can be truly happy; but of the subsidiary pleasures which we are here permitted to enjoy, the contemplation of nature is one of the best and purest. It was the pleasure, the show, the spectacle prepared for man in Eden, and how much true philosophy and taste shine in the simple words that in paradise God planted trees "pleasant to the sight," as well as "good for food." Other things being equal, the nearer we can return to this primitive taste, the greater will be our sensuous enjoyment, the better the influence of our pleasures on our moral nature, because they will then depend on the cultivation of tastes at once natural and harmless, and will not lead us to communion with and reverence for merely human genius, but will conduct us into the presence of the infinite perfection of the Creator.

The Bible knows but one species of man. It is not said that men were created after their species, as we read of the groups of animals. Man was made, "male and female;" and in the fuller details afterwards given in the second chapter--where the writer, having finished his general narrative, commences his special history of man--but one primitive pair is introduced to our notice. We scarcely need the detailed tables of affiliation afterward given, or the declaration of the apostle who preached to the supposed autochthones of Athens, that "God has made of one blood all nations," to assure us of the Scriptural unity of man. If, therefore, there were any good reason to believe that man is not of one but several origins, we must admit Moses to have been very imperfectly informed. Nor, on the other hand, does the Bible any more than geology allow us to assign a very high antiquity to the origin of man relatively to that of the earth on which he dwells. The genealogical tables of the Bible may admit of some limits of difference of opinion as to the age of the human world or aeon, and also of that of the deluge, from which man took his second point of departure; but they do not allow us to put the origin of man farther back than that of the present or modern condition of our continents and the present races of animals. They therefore limit us to the modern or quaternary period of geology. The question of man's antiquity, so much agitated now, demands, however, a separate and careful consideration; but we must first devote a few pages to the simple statements of the Bible respecting the Sabbath of creation and its relation to human history.