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CHAPTER IV.

MAN'S INTELLECTUAL NATURE.

It is more particularly as it relates to the origin of man's moral, intellectual, and religous nature, that the christian has to do with the theory of evolution. The idea of a relationship between man and the lower animals is conceivable, as far as the mere animal frame is concerned. Confessedly, there are many close resemblances in anatomical structure; indeed, there is nearly absolute identity, bone for bone, muscle for muscle-some muscles occurring in man which are of no use, though of use in apes. Similar organs perform like functions. The apes, as well as man, love and hate, perceive and feel, remember and imagine, will and reason, have definite ideas and the means of communicating them. Professor Agassiz attributes to animals "an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man above animals." When we are asked to believe, however, that our mental faculties, which are capable of such improvement, have been evolved from those of the simiadæ, too heavy a tax is laid upon our credulity. Most persons, even those who do not believe in the christian religion, are disposed to accept the account given in the Bible, one of the crowning glories of which is that it recognizes, in all its fullness, the essential dignity of the human family. It presents God as the Author of our being, and the Preserver of our existence, our Strength

in the struggle with sin, our Comfort in sorrow, and our Hope in death.

We should err were we to confine this ennobling conception of the Fatherhood of God to those who possess His revealed Will. It has found a place in many systems of faith. Elsewhere than under the influence of Hebrew forms of philosophy, even in nations less cultured than the Greeks and less intellectual than the Romans, has the peasant boasted of a divine parentage. To others, as well as to the Athenians, Paul might have said, "As certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are his offspring.""

A theory of man's origin therefore which is honorable and ennobling, and which comes to us sacred with years and consecrated by the faith of generations, may be expected to be so entrenched within our affections that powerful arguments will be needed to shake the conviction that we are made in God's image-our intellectual faculties being a copy, faint though real, of God's unclouded intelligence-our moral nature a transcript, dim indeed but genuine, of God's approbation of right and His condemnation of wrong. It would seem as though the unbiased investigator must accept the affirmation of M. Quatrefagas, as given in his work on the Unity of the Human Species: "Man must form a kingdom by himself if once we permit his moral and intellectual endowments to have their due weight in classification."

Does the theory in question possess arguments sufficiently potent to counteract these predilections?

it satisfactorily account for man's higher nature? It is conceded that here the theory is weak. Professor Huxley himself admits that the difference between man and the lower animals ainounts to an enormous gulf," to "a divergence immeasurable—practically infinite." Those

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therefore who are inclined to believe that the theory of evolution may be so stated as to contain nothing necessarily antagonistic to Revelation will be disposed to limit it to man's physical nature, maintaining that in other respects at least he was not only made in God's image, but was created without the intervention of natural causes: and since the possibility of the mutation of species is as yet unestablished, and man's descent even in his bodily organism from the monkey rests on inconclusive testimony, most persons will also deem it unnecessary to assume two origins, one for the lower, the other for the higher nature.

Unless God is our Creator how shall we account for that subtle force we denominate mind? To say nothing of the difficulty of accounting for the origin of the mind. of brutes of perceiving how intellectuality can be evolved from matter how shall we be put in possession of evidence sufficient to induce the belief that "the human mind has gradually developed in the course of millions of years from the mind of the lower-skulled animals"? How is it possible to believe that from sources so inadequate those faculties could have been evolved which have compelled nature to unlock her storehouses, affording clothing of every variety and food in abundance; faculties, which have devised means of protection against beasts whose fleetness, strength, and agility surpass those of man, thus giving the weak an easy dominion over the strong; which have made nature man's servant, controlling her actions or bringing his into harmony with hers? Improvable reason is man's peculiar and exclusive endowment.

The dominion of mind over matter, however, marvelous as it is, is not the strongest proof of man's supernatural origin. The wonderful creations of the human intellect, in musical harmony, in poetry, in painting, in sculpture,

in architecture; its marvelous powers, of induction, analysis, synthesis, generalization; its ability to form abstract ideas-space, goodness, sin, immensity, truth, honor, eternity, the absolute and the unconditioned,-infinite conceptions struggling for expression in human language, -these testify to the existence of faculties which it is almost impossible to conceive could have been developed from lower animals. In like manner, the capability of receiving pleasure from mathematical demonstrationsin fact the ability to prosecute them-and the perception of cogency and beauty in an argument felicitously expressed, certainly afford evidence of an immense chasm between man and the most gifted of the inferior animals. This "immeasurable divergence" becomes even more apparent as we contemplate the achievements of the astronomer, who, in his study of the systems of worlds which move through the unheralded pathways of a universe, has ascertained facts and established laws which reason seems to say must forever have remained beyond the grasp of a being whose mind was evolved from "the medullary tube of the lancelet." To measure the distances, to estimate the size, and to determine the movements of bodies so far distant as to appear mere specks in the depths of immensity is quite manifestly a task too great for any brain that could have been developed from that of the lowest vertebrate. As in imagination we place ourselves at the center of the solar system, seeing the planets as they move in their noiseless pathways; as in fancy we station ourselves at Alcyone, the apparent center of our nebulous system, ascertaining the length of time required for its revolution and learning that it burns with a brilliancy twelve thousand times greater than that of our sun, it will require a logic trenchant indeed to convince us that man owes his origin to anything less than

the direct volition of an Infinite Intelligence. Wondering at the conquests of the human intellect we instinctively exclaim, "It is the handiwork of God."

The mind of man is capable of yet greater triumphs. With the assistance of the largest telescope-itself a marvel of mechanical and scientific genius-the beholder can number, it is said, eighty million suns; some of which are so far distant that the light which they reflect requires more than a million years to reach the eye; nay, burning specks have been resolved into suns, each shining with splendor equaling that of our sun. Furnished with a knowledge of the higher mathematics, it is even possible to measure their distances from each other, their distance from the earth, and their periods of revolution. As we concentrate our thoughts upon these and similar displays of mental power the overawed soul asks with the emphasis of a well-founded faith, Can man be less than the direct creation of an Omniscient Intellect? Most persons would no doubt concur in the opinion that it requires no small measure of credulity to believe that the “survival of the fittest" of monkeys could have evolved an intellect capable of such mental processes, even though the survival should have been uninterruptedly carried on during four hundred millions of years; that the intellect of him who has weighed the stars and compelled the lightning to transmit his thoughts has been developed from that of the silly brute which wanders in the forests of tropical countries and obtains a precarious subsistence by feeding upon the uncultivated products of the soil; that because man's framework approaches that of the apefamily, therefore his intellectual faculties are the same in kind, differing only in degree. Assuredly it is easier to believe the declarations, "God made man in his own image:" "The Lord formed man of the dust of the

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