The Brute Hypothesis.

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the sciences. Every root of study is lost in the unknown, and every height of knowledge enters a measureless expanse. Scientific men, in course of life, time their opinions as to the agencies and mechanism of the world. It is part of our discipline and faith, that we watch and pray. We are imperfect but progressive beings, and Revelation promotes the study of Nature as an honourable inquiry into the ways of God. The point of time in which it pleased the Eternal to create man cannot be determined, but if man had existed very many thousand years on the earth in brute form, he must have left memorials; yet not a vestige is found of old bestial condition. Flint instruments are accounted for by a reasonable antiquity; the savage forms of life, however degraded, were not brutal; the so-called Palæolithic men possessed great cerebral development; and probably were not in a more degraded condition than the aborigines of Cape York.1 The hypothetical advance of our race through stone, bronze, iron ages, does not fairly illustrate the advance of art; certainly not the growth of mind, nor "progression from blind force to conscious intellect and will." There is accumulated evidence showing that the earliest historical races excelled in many processes of art and kinds of culture. Primitive traditions commence life about the same era. The oldest reliable historical record is the Hebrew. Right interpretation gives high antiquity to the Divine genesis of

man.

Savagery, moreover, is a condition much further advanced from brute life than is the cultured man from the savage. To assume the development of brute into savage, and to endow the brute with those elements which culture develops into the faith and science of a Christian philosopher, take for granted and natural that which is without one example in the whole course of history. The best applied scientific treatment cannot develop a brute into a human being; nor, when we have the savage human being, can we always civilise him-he generally perishes under the operation; nor, having civilised him, can we choose our individuals, and by culture make sure of Homers, Miltons, Shakespeares, Newtons. That man was created with mental and spiritual capacities, contains fewer elements of difficulty than those which cumber the brute hypothesis. We are sure that every

See Moseley, "Notes of the Challenger Expedition."

T

man is sent into the world, not to be like another, but to bear his own burden and do his own work.

Some ancient records tell of our ancestors in caves, clothed with skins, eating raw vegetables; the teeth never exhibit caries, are worn down flat, and therefore roots were as often eaten as flesh. We need not go to Lucretius for a large-boned, hardy, lawless race; nor to poetic traces of culture beginning outside and ending inside the range of human memory; Scripture records that a child-like condition, of fruit and vegetable feeding, was the earliest stage, but the children became men. Prior to the classical age, the civilisation of Egypt culminated; behind it lay the progress of the pyramid kings; and, yet earlier, Scripture record shows considerable culture of that kind which belongs to primitive people. Even if we assume, with those who support the brute theory; that man found out, unaided, all he knows; it is fatal to the theory: for discoverers of the use of fire, of the use of grasses now known as corn, were, as regards their value, splendid men. It were strange indeed if the most useful arts, the grandest moral truths, speech, and its symbols, were discovered by bestial creatures. An Eastern proverb says-" He who takes the raven for his guide shall light on carrion."

Advancing art, if piety is lost, corrupts simplicity. Historical civilisations are notorious for separation of worldly intelligence from piety. The true theory is that both development and degradation have their place in history. Against brutal condition of the primitive race exists the fact—“ No example can be brought forward of an actually savage people having independently become civilised." The result of European intercourse, during the last three or four centuries, has been destruction rather than development of barbarous tribes proof that all we think is known demands more learning.

Ask the counter question-" Is there any recorded instance of a civilised people falling into a savage state?" then reply "Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, tracing civilisation back to a period more than five thousand years in the past, testify of a culture better than that now possessed." It is well known that impurity tends to degradation, and causes the loss of more than was gained by artificial culture. Ancient "Romische Geschichte," part i. p. 88: Niebuhr.

Degenerate Men.

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Grecian genius slumbers, and no cry awakes it. The modern Italian has lost the proud state and place of the old Roman. The Hebrideans were for ages under the influence of comparatively high civilisation. The ancient Irish had a better style than that described by Fynes Morgan, about A.D. 1600. The lords of the wild, or 66 meere" Irish, dwell in poor clay houses, or cabins of boughs covered with turf. In many parts, both men and women have but a linen rag about the loins, and a woollen mantle on their bodies. "It turns a man's stomach before breakfast to see an old woman in the morning." There are instances of civilised men taking to wild life in outlying districts of the world; and degeneration acts more destructively on lower than on higher culture. The small knowledge and few appliances of savage hordes render them peculiarly susceptible of degrading influences, and incapable of efforts necessary to attain high physical and mental state. The colossal figures of hewn stone in Easter Island were shaped by ancestors of men now incapable of such gigantic works. Ancient Negro kingdoms of extended political organisation preceded the existing small communities of blacks who possess little or no tradition of their previous greatness. The Red Indians were surpassed by the Mount-Builders, those former inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley. The Chinese and rude Indian, appealing to the authority of ancestors against modern civilisation and science, testify of a good time that is past. The degradation of Arabian and Spaniard is historic. To learn is the privilege of reason, and not to reason destroys capability.

If it be said "All these have fallen, but none became savage," the reply is crushing-"The miserable Digger Indians of North America, the Bushmen of South Africapersecuted remnants of tribes who have seen better daysare degraded into savage life. The Alonquin Indians look back to golden days, when life was less bitter and manners less rude.1 The rough Kamchadal counts that the world has grown worse and is growing worse.2 The western coast of Greenland has been for ages familiar to seamen and men of science: to civilise the Eskimo is as impossible as to 1 "Schoolcraft Algic Res," vol. i. p. 50; quoted in "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 43: E. B. Tylor.

"Steller Kamtschatka," p. 272; ditto, ditto.

cultivate the country he inhabits. He is an example of degeneracy from a comparatively civilised to an almost savage state. He has fallen into that state which philosophers who explain human progress by evolution have pronounced to be impossible and almost inconceivable. There is abundant evidence of degradation and fall amongst nations. The splendid days of Augustine and Trajan were speedily darkened by clouds of ignorance when barbarians subverted Roman laws and palaces; even as now savages, without the dignity of savages, in the great cities of Europe, are a danger to vaunted refinement. There is proof of degeneration, but not one example of any nation advancing from savagery to civilisation. Modern savages are a degeneration from the old race. Stultify reason, wither up the heart, and you too will degenerate."

Sir Charles Lyell, in his "Antiquity of Man" (cap. xix.), argues that, if the original stock had been endowed with superior powers, inspired knowledge, and the improvable nature of their posterity, we should now, instead of digging up rudest pottery and flint implements, find sculptured forms surpassing in beauty the masterpieces of Phidias or Praxiteles, lines of buried railway and electric telegraphs, with astronomical instruments and microscopes, examples of perfection in art and science. He forgot that Scripture states the high condition was lost, and that men were degraded by iniquity. He forgot that history reveals, and relics from buried cities bring to light, a grand and very ancient civilisation; a civilisation of such splendour and power that we are apt to think the old builders were giants—the modern pigmies. It is not every wise man who has a wiser son.

Those who prefer evolution as a more satisfactory explanation of man's origin, thinking thereby to avoid everything miraculous, do not get rid of mystery, nor of Divine interference; they, indeed, establish mystery and render interference perpetual: for as matter cannot create more matter, nor unintelligence create intelligence, it is equally certain that vegetable life cannot of itself create animal life; nor brutes, by any effort of their own, acquire the intellectual and moral powers of human beings. This is all that Christians contend for: not that men were created mechanics, astronomers, philosophers; but, though having common sense, were childlike and of no experience. The laws of

Organic Advance.

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mind were the same in the days of Abraham's fathers as they are now. There was a making of men, and a marring of men, as they did good or evil-the evil tending to degeneration, the good advancing to civilisation. If civilisation became separated from faith and purity the people perished. We need to realise this, and that man was not necessarily low because he had no temples and no machinery. Nature is higher than fine art. In contemplating Nature, in seeking after God, man had highest teachers. Indeed, highest culture enables us now to see that the primitive refinement was very good. "Heaven brought so near, yet shown to

be so infinite."

The argument seems conclusive, but view it differently. There is definite progress not only in the genesis of the earth, but in the genesis of life. The advance is from darkness and chaos to light and beauty; from low forms of vegetation to higher; from life that swarms in water to fish, reptile, bird; from the living creatures on land to those of increased definite complexity in structure and function; until, in man, we have intellectual and emotional changes. It would be in the highest degree unscriptural and unscientific to deny that progress from the less special to the more specialised may have been wrought by means of natural orderly causes during a long course of time, and by well-nigh insensible gradation. So far, therefore, evolution may be that long creative process of organic advance, by minute increments, which tends to perfection. Why Christ, our Lord, human-more human than any man, yet Divine; grew in wisdom and stature. He was the little child sent to lead us, then the Saviour glorified, God and man all in One. No other like Him, makes far-off things near, and the unseen visible.

Concerning this organic advance, experience shows that out of the general web of existence special threads are drawn and woven into new and peculiar patterns. The elements of new organisms, however differently arranged, are the same as those contained in the original mass; nevertheless, by new grouping surprisingly novel phenomena emerge. We do not think, when the physical motions of molecules are rearranged in chemical actions, that any addition is made to the primitive energies; nor do biologists generally suppose, when physical and chemical forces are specially