i. Man was originally a Brute. For a long time we counted ourselves of ancient and honourable family; but now, because the beaver builds, architects are beavers; the ladies who sing in our drawing-rooms have been taught by the birds, and their sighing swains are descendants of grotesque creatures anciently crossed in love; probably the Australian and Papuan are the stuff of which future men must be built; even as the present originated from those yet lower. These statements, which shock our best feelings, are so far true that some people have an uneasy feeling that scientific discovery is at war with religious convictions, and is removing primæval inspiration from the circle of facts. A brief, yet sufficiently accurate inquiry as to the whole subject, will probably dissipate that fear.

We know from the Divine Narrative, as to the creation of man, of other animals, and of plants, by means of the Earth, that all present life is descended from ancient forms. We also know that all the forms of life, animal and plant, complex or simple, high or low, are a marvellous variation, adaptation and extension of one scheme, plan, or formula of universal comprehension. This fact, obtained by comparison of the whole, is confirmed by particular examination of every individual: nevertheless, anatomy of the embryonic vesicle in higher plants and of ova in animals reveals a difference. The unicellular plants and animals are from small masses of protoplasm, and probably each has a nucleus-extreme simplicity is found only in the lowest forms. The germs proceed from pre-existent living creatures; every germ só alike that the microscope detects little difference; every germ so essentially unlike that one becomes a fungus, another a lizard, another a bird, another a man, no one knowing why; but there is no advance into man through the fungus, lizard, bird, as if human life were a series of Chinese boxes, completely but differently shaped in every feature, shut up one within another; though man's embryo does advance to perfection through invertebrate, reptile, bird, and mammal stages.

Seeing that existing men are thus proved to be human offspring, the argument is now to be carried into a region altogether beyond human ken; and forgetting the fact that all

U

living things proceed from other living things, we are to find whether the ranks of the living may be recruited from the not living. All existing organisms, it is inductively proved, arise from other organisms; but there was a time when life must have begun in an assemblage of unorganised materials. That an organism which is to any extent specialised in structure could arise directly from an union of unorganised elements is ruled out of court. We are to think as if we saw, by chemical experiment, specks of living protoplasm precipitated from a solution containing the not-living ingredients of protoplasm; and we may regard this initial life as the effect, of which the assignable cause is the chemical affinity exerted between the enormously complex molecules which go to make up the protoplasm. This process helps us to imagine how nature long ago, by Divine appointment, gave to life its beginning; or, speaking more freely, gave beginning to life. Then, we further suppose, that from those specks proceeded the first or unancestral organisms; and that these unancestral organisms did, in some way or other, transmit ancestral peculiarities; so that out of no definite tendency came definite structure exquisitely adapted to function. The origin of protoplasm, thus guessed at, the association of vital properties with protoplasm remains unsolved, and organic construction is still an insoluble mystery.

The man of science thus trying to show how life may have originated, contents in some degree the curiosity of the religious man who knows, from Scripture, why life was originated. The supposed initial germ is multiplied and magnified, into the manifold series and gradations of terrestrial existence; and the whole process is exemplified and accomplished in every case of individual progression.

To account for the maintenance of life during the infancy of primeval existences; to be rid of the difficulty as to untold millions of organic molecules all rushing together at some appointed instant to form adult organisms; and to show that no new energies have appeared at any period of the earth's history; the doctrine of evolution affirms that the quick progression in the individual was not realised until one, somewhat analogous, had been accomplished in and during the evolution

Man not of Brutal Origin.

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of a long series of individuals, from lower life to the brute, and from brute to man. In the brute the process was chiefly by physical changes; but, so soon as sufficient intelligence was acquired to chip a stone into a tool and hurl a weapon, growth of intelligence being of more use than variations in physical structure, intellectual and emotional powers developed with greater comparative rapidity. This was the all essential crisis and step in psychical progress, and explains why there is so little difference in general physical structure between man and the gibbon.

Testing such a statement by common experience, and throwing the light of Scripture on it, there is no more ground for supposing that man grew out of brute in old time than that he does now. The definite order and progress in creation by which not living matter became that vital substance, with which a mysterious power-for life precedes organism, not organism life-constructed all living things and bound them together; not making porcupine father to pig, nor monkey parent of man; but presenting in every one an exemplification of similarity in construction with essential variety; in nowise weakens but confirms the teaching of Scripture ; "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree. . . . . God made the beast of the earth after his kind . . . . and the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground."

Further, there appears to be no essential advantage in the gratuitous assumption of an infinite series of developments during incalculable time; seeing that a real development is exemplified and completed in the course of one individual's existence. There has also been the introduction of new energies; assuredly there was something fresh in the first form of vegetable life; for there is no possible conceivable combination of inorganic energies that are equivalent to the actions of a living animal organism; life has no physical correlative.

Passing from the phenomena of life to those of mind, the region is still more profoundly mysterious; and, whether as to consciousness or volition, we have absolutely no reason, however vague, for classifying them under the head of physics. Physical energies represent a closed curve or cycle continually

returning upon itself; the introduction of organic energy carries the line into infinitude, and the curve is as incapable of closure as a parabolic projection. It is also to be observed, as to physical energies, that some are of higher order than others; and from the higher we can obtain the lower; but the reverse is attended by extraordinary difficulties"facilis descensus Averno;

noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis:

sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,

It is, therefore, unwise and unscientific to endue all matter with the mysteries, qualities, and occult powers of mind; and we may count it an evidence of incapacity and scientific impurity to endow the physical atom with "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." Nor are those less blamable who, knowing that the sacred account is figurative, use their science not for explanation but misrepresentation. Take example"The Hebrew writer presents us with a concrete picture of the creation of man, according to which a homogeneous clay model of the human form is, in some inconceivable way, at once transmuted into the wonderfully heterogeneous combination of organs and tissues, with all their definite and highly specialized aptitudes, of which actually living man is made up. But I suppose there are few scientific writers at the present day who would be found willing to risk their reputation for common-sense by attempting to defend such a conception." It is really puerile to charge Moses with the folly of the Negro, who thought that God made a clay model, leaned it against a tree to dry, and then breathed life into it. Why not say that Moses attributed sex to God? for he says -"God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." Irreligious persons generally charge their own shallow and erroneous views of Scripture on the sacred writers; but advanced scholars who, with piety and prudence, ascertain all that can be ascertained of the way in which man was created, are conscious that scientific interpretation of the ancient words reveals divinity of meaning.

1 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 440: John Fiske.

Withering Branches.

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Our reverence for Scripture, and our own self-respect, lead to the belief that low races of men, ancient and modern, are the withered foliage of a degenerate stock. Inclemency of climate, barrenness of land, which made existence an exhaustive and losing fight, may have worn out the frame, left neither time nor will for intellectual advance, and rendered the brain of a savage what it is-nearly thirty per cent. less than the brain of an Anglo-Saxon. It is not generally known, that Negro babes, and especially Malay infants, are born white; they assume a dark hue after ten days. Dark nations count the white skin superior, and destined to rule. The legends of some savages assert that their ancestors were white people; and the Fetish images of the Congo natives have broad foreheads, white complexion, and hooked noses. Degeneracy lowers both the moral and physical state; as a rule, the worst men are of the worst colour. Malte Brun says-" Our body depends on our intelligence." M. Maire says-" The more the organization of the animal is perfected, the more the spiritual element produced by the action of the various functions is itself perfected." If we take history and experience, apart from sheer hypothesis, it is more probable that brute men are not a generation advancing to higher life, but a degeneration from life.

The marvellously gifted Attic race were the cleverest and most beautiful of men; but, becoming impure, they degenerated. In fact, the corruption of one generation suffices to effect a degeneracy which ends in moral death-mental death. -material death. This accounts for the low intelligence of persons long addicted to immorality, the almost impossibility -when anyone has put away thought, love, and knowledge of God-of quickening sacred reverence in him. The vicious and godless, becoming spiritless and sensual, cease to have a true conception of Divinity. They are the violent, criminal, dangerous classes in our cities; amongst whom the shrewd, sharp demagogue is supreme; and to whom the atheist, with the arrogance of a god, asserts-"There is nothing better or greater than myself." To them belong the roughs who inhumanly abuse defenceless women; and from them proceed the hopeless and helpless weaklings who are born paupers,