state their opinion. There is "The body being formed by some earlier common stock, to "The soul did but mean the breath, It knew no more; ' then came the Divine gift of immortality by means of endowing the (sáp) flesh, with (πvɛúμa) the spirit; thus the (cua) body, dwelt in by the (ux") life, became, through (vúμa) the spirit, a Divine man." Hence, though descended from the brute, man is immortal by the birth of a spirit in him which bridged the gulf between meanness and majesty. Since which time it has ever been "More upward, working out the beast ; As for ourselves, we are in no hurry to solve every difficulty. All the sciences, even those professing most accuracy, are surrounded by many and great mysteries. Theology is one of the sciences. Every root of study is lost in the unknown, and every height of knowledge enters a transcendental expanse. All scientific men, in the course of life, change their opinions as to the mysterious agencies and complex mechanism of the world. It is well to accept as part of our discipline, and an exercise of faith, that we must watch and wait. We are imperfect but progressive beings, and Revelation not only promotes the study of Nature, but renders it honourable as an inquiry into the ways of God. The exact 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, whether in brute form or rational image, he must have left memorials; yet not a vestige is found of that assumed ancient life-not a relic of old bestial condition. All flint instruments are accounted for by a reasonable antiquity; and 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. The hypothetical advance of our race through stone, bronze, iron ages, ? See Moseley, "Notes of the Challenger Expedition." 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 in many kinds of culture. All primitive traditions commence life about the same era, and the oldest reliable historical record is the Hebrew, the right interpretation of which gives high antiquity to the genesis of man. Savagery, moreover, is a condition much further advanced from brute life than is the cultured man from the savage; therefore, savagery and civilisation must be taken as lower and higher stages of the same formation. To assume the development of brute into savage, and to endow the brutal original with all 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, however extended and systematic, 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 higher culture develop Homers, Miltons, Shakespeares, Newtons. The Divine narrative, that man was created with mental and spiritual capacities, contains fewer elements of real difficulty than those which cumber the brute hypothesis. Some ancient records tell of our ancestors in caves, clothed with skins, eating raw vegetables. The teeth in old skulls never exhibit caries. They are worn down flat, and therefore roots may have been 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 childlike condition was the earliest stage; but the children soon 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 a primitive people. Even if we assume, with those who support the savage theory, Degenerate Man. 305 that man found out, unaided, all that he knows; it is fatal to the savage theory: for discoverers of the use of fire, of the use of grasses now known as corn, were, as regards their value, the most splendid of men. It were strange indeed if the most useful arts, and the grandest moral truths, were not only discovered in primeval times, but by men only a little removed from savagery. Advancing art, if piety is lost, corrupts simplicity. All historical civilisations are, indeed, notorious for the separation of worldly intelligence from piety; so that the true theory of mankind is that both development and degradation have their place in history; but against the brutal or even savage condition of the primitive race exists the fact-"No example can be brought forward of an actually savage people having independently become civilised;"1 and the result of European intercourse, during the last three or four centuries, has been the destruction rather than the development of barbarous tribes. If we ask the counter question-"Is there any recorded instance of a civilised people falling into a savage state?" the answer is "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 Grecian genius slumbers, and no cry can awake it. The modern Italian has long lost the proud state and place of the old Roman. The Hebrideans were for ages under the influence of comparatively high civilisation, yet they lost it. The ancient Irish had a better style than that described by Fynes Morgan, about A.D. 1600. The lords of the wild, or 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 66 1 "Romische Geschichte," part i. p. 88: Niebuhr. X than on higher culture. The small knowledge and the few appliances of savage hordes render them peculiarly susceptible of degrading influences, and incapable of the efforts necessary to attain and maintain 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 which 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 Arabians and Spaniards is historic. 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 days -are degraded into savage life. The Algonquin Indians look back to golden days, when life was less bitter and manners less rude. The rough Kamchadal counts that the world has grown worse and is growing worse. 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 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, indeed, 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 1 "Schoolcraft Algic Res," vol. i. p. 50; quoted in "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 43, E. B. Tylor. 2 "Steller Kamtschatka," p. 272; ditto, ditto. Evolution may be a Divine Process. 307 not one example of any nation advancing from savagery to civilisation. If, moreover, modern savages are direct descendants of the primitive race—no man of science regarding them as a late development from brutes-they must be a degeneration from the old race." 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. 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 can 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 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 |