Chapter XV (1)

PRIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN THEORIES AS TO HIS ORIGIN (continued).

In the 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 then 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 then a thousand centuries. Yet after carefully studying about two hundred species, and, of some of 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 any creature 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 then 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 then 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 then are the present anthropoid apes.

This demand I make advisedly--first, because the animals in question must precede man in geological time; 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 then they can do above any other order of mammals. Even if we refuse to recognise all higher grounds of 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 human _confrères_, 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 constitutes a 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 then 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 conclusion that 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 then 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 then 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 adapting themselves to new conditions then 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 then 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 then 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, then 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 rational creature, 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 instincts of 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 then 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--the dog,--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 then 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 part 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 then 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 then 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" then 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, then 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, in itself, 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 struggles for 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 appearance of 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 then 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 then merely varietal change in man and his companion-animals, in consequence of 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.

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The arguments in the preceding pages cover only a small portion of the extensive field opened up by this subject. They relate, however, to some of the prominent and important points, and I trust are sufficient to show that, as applied to man, the theory of derivation merely trifles with the great question of his origin, without approaching to its solution. I may now, in conclusion, sketch the leading features of primitive man, as he appears to us through the mist of the intervening ages, and compare the picture with that presented by the oldest historical records of our race.

Two pictures of primeval man are in our time before the world. One represents him as the pure and happy inhabitant of an Eden, free from all the ills that have afflicted his descendants, and revelling in the bliss of a golden age. This is the representation of Holy Scripture, and it is also the dream of all the poetry and myth of the earlier ages of the world. It is a beautiful picture, whether we regard it as founded on historical fact, or derived from God Himself, or from the yearnings of the higher spiritual nature of man. The other picture is a joint product of modern philosophy and of antiquarian research. It presents to us a coarse and filthy savage, repulsive in feature, gross in habits, warring with his fellow-savages, and warring yet more remorselessly with every living thing he could destroy, tearing half-cooked flesh, and cracking marrow-bones with stone hammers, sheltering himself in damp and smoky caves, with no eye heavenward, and with only the first rude beginnings of the most important arts of life.

Both pictures may contain elements of truth, for man is a many-sided monster, made up of things apparently incongruous, and presenting here and there features out of which either picture may be composed. Evolutionists, and especially those who believe in the struggle for existence and natural selection, ignore altogether the evidence of the golden age of humanity, and refer us to the rudest of modern savages as the types of primitive man. Those who believe in a Divine origin for our race, perhaps dwell too much on the higher spiritual features of the Edenic state, to the exclusion of its more practical aspects, and its relations to the condition of the more barbarous races. Let us examine more closely both representations; and first, that of creation.

The Glacial period, with its snows and ice, had passed away, and the world rejoiced in a spring-time of renewed verdure and beauty. Many great and formidable beasts of the Tertiary time had disappeared in the revolutions which had occurred, and the existing fauna of the northern hemisphere had been established on the land. Then it was that man was introduced by an act of creative power. In the preceding changes a region of Western Asia had been prepared for his residence. It was a table-land at the head waters of the rivers that flow into the Euxine, the Caspian, and the Persian Gulf. Its climate was healthy and bracing, with enough of variety to secure vigour, and not so inclement as to exact any artificial provision for clothing or shelter. Its flora afforded abundance of edible fruits, and was rich in all the more beautiful forms of plant life; while its clear streams, alluvial soil, and undulating surface, afforded every variety of station and all that is beautiful in scenery. It was not infested with the more powerful and predacious quadrupeds, and its geographical relations were such as to render this exemption permanent. In this paradise man found ample supplies of wholesome and nutritious food. His requirements as to shelter were met by the leafy bowers he could weave. The streams of Eden afforded gold which he could fashion for use and ornament, pearly shells for vessels, and agate for his few and simple cutting instruments. He required no clothing, and knew of no use for it. His body was the perfection and archetype of the vertebrate form, full of grace, vigour, and agility. His hands enabled him to avail himself of all the products of nature for use and pleasure, and to modify and adapt them according to his inclination. His intelligence, along with his manual powers, allowed him to ascertain the properties of things, to plan, invent, and apply in a manner impossible to any other creature. His gift of speech enabled him to imitate and reduce to systematic language the sounds of nature, and to connect them with the thoughts arising in his own mind, and thus to express their relations and significance. Above all, his Maker had breathed into him a spiritual nature akin to His own, whereby he became different from all other animals, and the very shadow and likeness of God; capable of rising to abstractions and general conceptions of truth and goodness, and of holding communion with his Creator. This was man Edenic, the man of the golden age, as sketched in the two short narratives of the earlier part of Genesis, which not only conform to the general traditions of our race on the subject, but bear to any naturalist who will read them in their original dress, internal evidence of being contemporary, or very nearly so, with the state of things to which they relate.

"And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the herbivora, and over all the land.' And God blessed them, and said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'

"And the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and parted from thence, becoming four heads (of great rivers). The name of the first is Pison, compassing the whole land of Chavila, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; there is (also) pearl and agate.... And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to cultivate it and to take care of it."

Before leaving this most ancient and most beautiful history, we may say that it implies several things of much importance to our conceptions of primeval man. It implies a centre of creation for man, and a group of companion animals and plants, and an intention to dispense in his case with any struggle for existence. It implies, also, that man was not to be a lazy savage, but a care-taker and utiliser, by his mind and his bodily labour, of the things given to him; and it also implies an intelligent submission on his part to his Maker, and spiritual appreciation of His plans and intentions. It further implies that man was, in process of time, from Eden, to colonise the earth, and subdue its wildness, so as to extend the conditions of Eden widely over its surface. Lastly, a part of the record not quoted above, but necessary to the consistency of the story, implies that, in virtue of his spiritual nature, and on certain conditions, man, though in bodily frame of the earth earthy, like the other animals, was to be exempted from the common law of mortality which had all along prevailed, and which continued to prevail, even among the animals of Eden. Further, if man fell from this condition into that of the savage of the age of stone, it must have been by the obscuration of his spiritual nature under that which is merely animal; in other words, by his ceasing to be spiritual and in communion with God, and becoming practically a sensual materialist. that this actually happened is asserted by the Scriptural story, but its details would take us too far from our present subject. Let us now turn to the other picture--that presented by the theory of struggle for existence and derivation from lower animals.

It introduces us first to an ape, akin perhaps to the modern orang or gorilla, but unknown to us as yet by any actual remains. This creature, after living for an indefinite time in the rich forests of the Miocene and earlier Pliocene periods, was at length subjected to the gradually increasing rigours of the Glacial age. Its vegetable food and its leafy shelter failed it, and it learned to nestle among such litter as it could collect in dens and caves, and to seize and devour such weaker animals as it could overtake and master. At the same time, its lower extremities, no longer used for climbing trees, but for walking on the ground, gained in strength and size; its arms diminished; and its development to maturity being delayed by the intensity of the struggle for existence, its brain enlarged, it became more cunning and sagacious, and even learned to use weapons of wood or stone to destroy its victims. So it gradually grew into a fierce and terrible creature, "neither beast nor human," combining the habits of a bear and the agility of a monkey with some glimmerings of the cunning and resources of a savage.

When the Glacial period passed away, our nameless simian man, or manlike ape, might naturally be supposed to revert to its original condition, and to establish itself as of old in the new forests of the Modern period. For some unknown reason, however, perhaps because it had gone too far in the path of improvement to be able to turn back, this reversion did not take place. On the contrary, the ameliorated circumstances and wider range of the new continents enabled it still further to improve. Ease and abundance perfected what struggle and privation had begun; it added to the rude arts of the Glacial time; it parted with the shaggy hair now unnecessary; its features became softer; and it returned in part to vegetable food. Language sprang up from the attempt to articulate natural sounds. Fire-making was invented and new arts arose. At length the spiritual nature, potentially present in the creature, was awakened by some access of fear, or some grand and terrible physical phenomenon; the idea of a higher intelligence was struck out, and the descendant of apes became a superstitious and idolatrous savage. How much trouble and discussion would have been saved, had he been aware of his humble origin, and never entertained the vain imagination that he was a child of God, rather then a mere product of physical evolution! It is, indeed, curious, that at this point evolutionism, like theism, has its "fall of man;" for surely the awakening of the religious sense, and of the knowledge of good and evil, must on that theory be so designated, since it subverted in the case of man the previous regular operation of natural selection, and introduced all that debasing superstition, priestly domination, and religious controversy which have been among the chief curses of our race, and which are doubly accursed if, as the evolutionist believes, they are not the ruins of something nobler and holier, but the mere gratuitous, vain, and useless imaginings of a creature who should have been content to eat and drink and die, without hope or fear, like the brutes from which he sprang.

These are at present our alternative sketches: the genesis of theism, and the genesis of evolution. After the argument in previous pages, it is unnecessary here to discuss their relative degrees of probability. If we believe in a personal spiritual Creator, the first becomes easy and natural, as it is also that which best accords with history and tradition. If, on the contrary, we reject all these, and accept as natural laws the postulates of the evolutionists which we have already discussed, we may become believers in the latter. The only remaining point is to inquire as to which explains best the actual facts of humanity as we find them. This is a view of which much has been made by evolutionists, and it therefore merits consideration. But it is too extensive to be fully treated of here, and I must content myself with a few illustrations of the failure of the theory of derivation to explain some of the most important features presented by even the ruder races of men.

One of these is the belief in a future state of existence beyond this life. This belongs purely to the spiritual nature of man. It is not taught by physical nature, yet its existence is probably universal, and it lies near the foundation of all religious beliefs. Lartet has described to us the sepulchral cave of Aurignac, in which human skeletons, believed to be of Post-glacial date, were associated with remains of funeral feasts, and with indications of careful burial, and with provisions laid up for the use of the dead. Lyell well remarks on this, "If we have here before us, at the northern base of the Pyrenees, a sepulchral vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion, the cave bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of 'noble,' which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race."[BF]

[BF] "Antiquity of Man," p. 192

In like manner, in the vast American continent, all its long isolated and widely separated tribes, many of them in a state of lowest barbarism, and without any external ritual of religious worship, believed in happy hunting-grounds in the spirit-land beyond the grave, and the dead warrior was buried with his most useful weapons and precious ornaments.

"Bring here the last gifts; and with them
The last lament be said.
Let all that pleased and yet may please,
Be buried with the dead"

was no unmeaning funeral song, but involved the sacrifice of the most precious and prized objects, that the loved one might enter the new and untried state provided for its needs. Even the babe, whose life is usually accounted of so small value by savage tribes, was buried by the careful mother with precious strings of wampum, that had cost more months of patient labour then the days of its short life, that it might purchase the fostering care of the inhabitants of that unknown yet surely believed-in region of immortality. This

"--wish that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?"

Is it likely to have germinated in the brain of an ape? and if so, of what possible use would it be in the struggle of a merely physical existence? Is it not rather the remnant of a better spiritual life--a remembrance of the tree of life that grew in the paradise of God, a link of connection of the spiritual nature in man with, a higher Divine Spirit above? Life and immortality, it is true, were brought to light by Jesus Christ, but they existed as beliefs more or less obscure from the first, and formed the basis for good and evil of the religions of the world. Around this idea were gathered multitudes of collateral beliefs and religious observances; feasts and festivals for the dead; worship of dead heroes and ancestors; priestly intercessions and sacrifices for the dead; costly rites of sepulture. Vain and without foundation many of these have no doubt been, but they have formed a universal and costly testimony to an instinct of immortality, dimly glimmering even in the breast of the savage, and glowing with higher brightness in the soul of the Christian, but separated by an impassable gulf from anything derivable from a brute ancestry.

The theistic picture of primeval man is in harmony with the fact that men, as a whole, are, and always have been, believers in God. The evolutionist picture is not. If man had from the first not merely a physical and intellectual nature, but a spiritual nature as well, we can understand how he came into relation with God, and how through all his vagaries and corruptions he clings to this relation in one form or another; but evolution affords no link of connection of this kind. It holds God to be unknowable even to the cultivated intellect of philosophy, and perceives no use in ideas with relation to Him which, according to it must necessarily be fallacious, It leaves the theistic notions of mankind without explanation, and it will not serve its purpose to assert that some few and exceptional families of men have no notion of a God. Even admitting this, and it is at best very doubtful, it can form but a trifling exception to a general truth.

It appears to me that this view of the case is very clearly put in the Bible, and it is curiously illustrated by a recent critique of "Mr. Darwin's Critics," by Professor Huxley in the _Contemporary Review_. Mr. Mivart, himself a derivationist, but differing in some points from Darwin, had affirmed, in the spirit rather of a Romish theologian then of a Biblical student or philosopher, that "acts unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will" are "absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of goodness." Huxley well replies, "It is to my understanding extremely hard to reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with that noble summary of the whole duty of man, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' According to Mr. Mivart's definition, the man who loves God and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love and affection for both, does all he can to please them, is nevertheless destitute of a particle of real goodness." Huxley's reply deserves to be pondered by certain moralists and theologians whose doctrine savours of the leaven of the Pharisees, but neither Huxley nor his opponent see the higher truth that in the love of God we have a principle far nobler and more God-like and less animal then that of mere duty. Man primeval, according to the doctrine of Genesis, was, by simple love and communion with his God, placed in the position of a spiritual being, a member of a higher family then that of the animal. The "knowledge of good and evil" which he acquired later, and on which is based the law of conscious duty, was a less happy attainment, which placed him on a lower level then that of the unconscious love and goodness of primal innocence. No doubt man's sense of right and wrong is something above the attainment of animals, and which could never have sprung from them; but still more is this the case with his direct spiritual relation to God, which, whether it rises to the inspiration of the prophet or the piety of the Christian, or sinks to the rude superstition of the savage, can be no part of the Adam of the dust but only of the breath of life breathed into him from above.

That man should love his fellow-man may not seem strange. Certain social and gregarious and family instincts exist among the lower animals, and Darwin very ably adduces these as akin to the similar affections of man; yet even in the law of love of our neighbour, as enforced by Christ's teaching, it is easy to see that we have something beyond animal nature. But this becomes still more distinct in the love of God. Man was the "shadow and likeness of God," says the old record in Genesis--the shadow that clings to the substance and is inseparable from it, the likeness that represents it visibly to the eyes of men, and of the animals that man rules over. Primeval man could "hear in the evening breeze the voice of God, walking to and fro in the garden." What mere animal ever had or could attain to such an experience?

But if we turn from the Edenic picture of man in harmony with Heaven--"owning a father, when he owned a God"--to man as the slave of superstition; even in this terrible darkness of mistaken faith, of which it may be said,

"Fear mates her devils, and weak faith her gods,
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust,"

we see the ruins, at least, of that sublime love of God. The animal clings to its young with a natural affection, as great as that of a human mother for her child, but what animal ever thought of throwing its progeny into the Ganges, or into the fires of Moloch's altar, for the saving of its soul, or to obtain the favour or avoid the wrath of God? No less in the vagaries of fetichism, ritualism, and idolatry, and in the horrors of asceticism and human sacrifice, then in the Edenic communion with and hearing of God, or in the joy of Christian love, do we see, in however ruined or degraded condition, the higher spiritual nature of man.