Part 16

ζ. The Mosaic Account.

As some persons imagine that this hypothesis conflicts with the account of the creation of man given in Genesis, a comparison of some of the points involved is made below.

First: In Genesis i. 26, 27, we read, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” etc. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Those who believe that this “image” is a physical, material form, are not disposed to admit the entrance of anything apelike into its constitution, for the ascription of any such appearance to the Creator would be impious and revolting. But we are told that “God is a Spirit,” and Christ said to his disciples after his resurrection, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” Luke xxiv. 39. It will require little further argument to show that a mental and spiritual image is what is meant, as it is what truly exists. Man’s conscience, intelligence and creative ingenuity show that he possesses an “image of God” within him, the possession of which is really necessary to his limited comprehension of God and of God’s ways to man.

Second: In Genesis ii. 7, the text reads, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The fact that man is the result of the modification of an apelike predecessor nowise conflicts with the above statement as to the materials of which his body is composed. Independently of origin, if the body of man be composed of dust, so must that of the ape be, since the composition of the two is identical. But the statement simply asserts that man was created of the same materials which compose the earth: their condition as “dust” depending merely on temperature and subdivision. The declaration, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” must be taken in a similar sense, for we know that the decaying body is resolved not only into its earthly constituents, but also into carbonic acid gas and water.

When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, we are informed that he became, not a living body, but “a living soul.” His descent from a preëxistent being involved the possession of a living body; but when the Creator breathed into him we may suppose for the present that He infused into this body the immortal part, and at that moment man became a conscientious and responsible being.

II. METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION.

It is infinitely improbable that a being endowed with such capacities for gradual progress as man has exhibited, should have been full fledged in accomplishments at the moment when he could first claim his high title, and abandon that of his simious ancestors. We are therefore required to admit the growth of human intelligence from a primitive state of inactivity and absolute ignorance; including the development of one important mode of its expression—speech; as well as that of the moral qualities, and of man’s social system—the form in which his ideas of morality were first displayed.

The expression “evolution of morality” need not offend, for the question in regard to the laws of this evolution is the really important part of the discussion, and it is to the opposing views on this point that the most serious interest attaches.

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The two views of evolution already treated of, held separately, are quite opposed to each other. The first (and generally received) lays stress on the influence of external surroundings, as the stimulus to and guidance of development: it is the counterpart of Darwin’s principle called Natural Selection in material progress. This might be called the Conflict theory. The second view recognizes the workings of a force whose nature we do not know, whose exhibitions accord perfectly with their external surroundings (or other exhibitions of itself), without being under their influence or more related to them, as effect to cause, than the notes of the musical octave or the colors of the spectrum are to each other. This is the Harmonic theory. In other words, the first principle deduces perfection from struggle and discord; the second, from the coincident progress of many parts, forming together a divine harmony comparable to music. That these principles are both true is rendered extremely probable by the actual phenomena of development, material and immaterial. In other words, struggle and discord ever await that which is not in the advance, and which fails to keep pace with the harmonious development of the whole.

All who have studied the phenomena of the creation believe that there exists in it a grand and noble harmony, such as was described to Job when he was told that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”

α. Development of Intelligence.

If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity differ in number and importance from those achieved by human intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of progress.

What point of progress in such a history would account for this accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled, that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.

The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.

The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some races continued to the present day.

β. Evidence from Archæology.

As the object of the present essay is not to examine fully into the evidences for the theories of evolution here stated, but rather to give a sketch of such theories and their connection, a few facts only will be noticed.

Improvement in the use of Materials. As is well known, the remains of human handiwork of the earliest periods consist of nothing but rude implements of stone and bone, useful only in procuring food and preparing it for use. Even when enterprise extended beyond the ordinary routine, it was restrained by the want of proper instruments. Knives and other cutting implements of flint still attest the skill of the early races of men from Java to the Cape of Good Hope, from Egypt to Ireland, and through North and South America. Hatchets, spear-heads and ornaments of serpentine, granite, silex, clay slates, and all other suitable rock materials, are found to have been used by the first men, to the exclusion of metals, in most of the regions of the earth.

Later, the probably accidental discovery of the superiority of some of the metals resulted in the substitution of them for stone as a material for cutting implements. Copper—the only metal which, while malleable, is hard enough to bear an imperfect edge—was used by succeeding races in the Old World and the New. Implements of this material are found scattered over extensive regions. So desirable, however, did the hardening of the material appear for the improvement of the cutting edge that combinations with other metals were sought for and discovered. The alloy with tin, forming bronze and brass, was discovered and used in Europe, while that with silver appears to have been most readily produced in America, and was consequently used by the Peruvians and other nations.

The discovery of the modes of reducing iron ores placed in the hands of man the best material for bringing to a shape, convenient for his needs the raw material of the world. All improvements in this direction made since that time have been in the quality of iron itself, and not through the introduction of any new metal.

The prevalent phenomena of any given period are those which give it its character, and by which we distinguish it. But this fact does not exclude the coëxistence of other phenomena belonging to prior or subsequent stages. Thus, during the many stages of human progress there have been men more or less in advance of the general body, and their characteristics have given a peculiar stamp to the later and higher condition of the whole. It furnishes no objection to this view that we find, as might have been anticipated, the stone, bronze and iron periods overlaping one another, or men of an inferior culture supplanting in some cases a superior people. A case of this kind is seen in North America, where the existing “Indians,” stone-men, have succeeded the mound-builders, copper-men. The successional relation of discoveries is all that it is necessary to prove, and this seems to be established.

The period at which the use of metallic implements was introduced is unknown, but Whitney says that the language of the Aryans, the ancestors of all the modern Indo-Europeans, indicates an acquaintance with such implements, though it is not certain whether those of iron are to be included. The dispersion of the daughter races, the Hindoos, the Pelasgi, Teutons, Celts, etc., could not, it is thought, have taken place later than 3000 B. C.—a date seven hundred years prior, to that assigned by the old chronology to the Deluge. Those races coëxisted with the Egyptian and Chinese nations, already civilized, and as distinct from each other in feature as they are now.

Improvement in Architecture. The earliest periods, then, were characterized by the utmost simplicity of invention and construction. Later, the efforts for defence from enemies and for architectural display, which have always employed so much time and power, began to be made. The megalithic period has left traces over much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and in Peru at Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex are the great Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ancestors of the Phœnicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find granitic hills shaped or excavated into temples; as, for example, everywhere in Southern India. Near Madura the circumference of an acropolis-like hill is cut into a series of statues in high relief, of sixty feet in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two volcanic cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief on the face of the rock, others in detached blocks removed by human art from their original positions and brought nearer the sea-shore.

Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and complex structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and Egypt, represent the period of greatest display of architectural expenditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never been expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions of beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing intellectuality.

Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is the true disposition of power for “him who builds for aye,” and learn that “spectacle” is often the unwilling friend of progress.

No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities of Central America or the excavations for mica in North Carolina, while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those places flint was exclusively used.

The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and herds. Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these occupations. Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the ground. Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little more intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no employment is capable of higher development. If we look at the savage nations at present occupying nearly half the land surface of the earth, we shall find many examples of the former industrial condition of our race preserved to the present day. Many of them had no knowledge of the use of metals until they obtained it from civilized men who visited them, while their pursuits were and are those of the chase, tending domestic animals, and rudimental agriculture.