II.

We must now say something about the great facts of evolutionary philosophy which have shattered dogmatic Christianity to pieces, and have made it impossible for any sincere man to remain a Christian. To say that Mr. Laing is absolutely certain of the all-sufficiency of evolutionism to explain everything that is knowable to the human mind, that he does not hint for a moment that this philosophy is found by the "bell-wethers" of science to be every day less satisfactory as a complete rationale of the physical cosmos; is really to understate the case for sheer lack of words to express the intensity of his conviction. His fundamental fact is that, however theologians may shuffle out of the first chapter of Genesis by converting days into periods, when we come to the story of the Noachean Deluge, we are confronted with such a glaring absurdity that we must at once allow that the Bible is full of myths. For history and science show that man existed probably two hundred thousand years ago, at all events not less than twenty thousand; also that five thousand B.C., a highly organized civilization existed in Egypt, whose monuments of that date give evidence to the full development of racial and linguistic differences as now existing among men; that this plants the common stem from which these have branched off, in an indefinitely remote pre-historic period; that to suppose that the present races and tongues are all derived from one man (Noe), who lived only two thousand B.C., is a monstrous impossibility; still more so, to believe that the countless thousands of species of animals which populate the world were collected from the four quarters of the globe, were housed and fed in the Ark, landed on Mount Ararat, and thence spread themselves out over the world again regardless of interjacent seas. Hence the Bible story of human origins is a mere myth; man has not fallen, but has risen by slow evolution from some ancestor common to him and apes, at a remote period, long sons prior even to the miocene period, which shows man to have been then as obstinately differentiated from the apes as ever. Therefore "all did not die in Adam," and seeing this is the foundation of the dogmatic Christianity invented by Paul, the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. [45]

And indeed, given that the Bible means what Mr. Laing says it means, and that science has proved what he says it has proved, that the two results are incompatible, few would care to deny. As regards the latter condition, let us see some of his reasonings. We are told that "modern science shows that uninterrupted historical records, confirmed by contemporary monuments, carry history back at least one thousand years before the supposed creation of man … and show then no trace of a commencement, but populous cities, celebrated temples, great engineering works, and a high state of the arts and of civilization already existing." [46] Strange to say, Mr. Laing developes a sudden reverence for the testimony of priests at the outset of his historical inquiries, and finds that history begins with "priestly organizations;" [47] that the royal records are "made and preserved by special castes of priestly colleges and learned scribes, and that they are to a great extent precise in date and accurate in fact." Of course this does not include Christian priests, but the priests of barbarous cults of many thousand years ago, who, as well as their royal masters, are at once credited with all the delicacy of the accurate criticism which we boast of in these days—how vainly, God knows. We are told one moment that Herodotus "was credulous, and not very critical in distinguishing between fact and fable," that his "sources of information were often not much better than vague popular traditions, or the tales told by guides;" [48] and yet we are to lay great stress on his assertion that the Egyptian priests told him "that during the long succession of ages of the three hundred and forty-five high priests of Heliopolis, whose statues they showed him in the Temple of the Sun, there had been no change in the length of human life or the course of nature." [49] A valuable piece of evidence if Herodotus reports rightly, and if the priest was not like the average guide, and if the statues answered to real existences, and if each of the three hundred and forty-five high priests made a truthful assertion of the above to his successor for the benefit of posterity.

Manetho's History is, however, the chief source of our information as to the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. He was commissioned to compile this History by Ptolemy Philadelphus, "from the most authentic temple records and other sources of information," [50] whose infallibility is taken for granted. He was "eminently qualified for such a task, being," as Mr. Laing will vouch, [51] "a learned and judicious man, and a priest of Sebbenytus, one of the oldest and most famous temples." Let us by all means read Manetho's History; but where is it? It is "unfortunately lost, … but fragments of it have been preserved in the works of Josephus, Eusebius, Julius Africanus, and Syncellus…. With the curious want of critical faculty of almost all the Christian Fathers" [52] (so different from the learned, judicious, upright priests of the sun), "these extracts, though professing to be quotations from the same book, contain many inconsistencies and in several instances they have been obviously tampered with, especially by Eusebius, in order to bring their chronology more in accordance with that of the Old Testament, … but there can be no doubt that his original work assigned an antiquity to Menes of over 5500 B.C." [53] "On the whole, we have to fall back on Manetho as the only authority for anything like precise dates and connected history."

Manetho, however, needed confirmation against the aspersions of the orthodox, who thought he might be deficient in critical delicacy, and prone to exaggerate as even later historians had done. Their casuistic minds also suggested that his list comprised Kings who had ruled different provinces simultaneously. But this "effugium" was cut off by the witness of contemporary monuments and manuscripts. "This has now been done to such an extent that it may be fairly said that Manetho is confirmed, and it is fully established, as a fact acquired by science, that nearly all his Kings and dynasties are proved by monuments to have existed, and that, successively." [54]

What is needed for the validity of this argument is a concurrence, which could not possibly be fortuitous, between the clear and undoubted testimony of Manetho and of the monuments. But first of all, what sort of probability is there left of our possessing anything approximately like the results of Manetho: and if we had them, of their historical accuracy? Secondly, is it at all credible that so fragmentary and fortuitous a record as survives in monuments (allowing again their very dubious historical worth) should just happen to coincide with the surviving fragments of our patch-work Manetho, king for king and dynasty for dynasty, as Mr. Laing would have us believe? On the contrary, nothing would throw more suspicion on the interpretation of these monuments than the assertion of such an improbable coincidence. What, then, is the force of this argument from Egyptology? If the records from which Manetho compiled were historically accurate; if he was perfectly competent to understand them; if he was scrupulously honest and critical; if from the tampered-with fragments in the Christian Fathers we can arrive at a reliable and accurate knowledge of his results; and if the Bible in the original text—whatever that may be—undoubtedly asserts that man was not created till 4000 B.C., then according to certain Egyptologists (Boeck), Menes reigned fifteen hundred years previously, and according to others (Wilkinson), one thousand years subsequently. Similarly as to the argument from coincidence: if, as before, we possess Manetho's genuine list intact, and if we have the clear testimony of the monuments giving a precisely similar record, this coincidence, apart from all independent value to be given to Manetho or to the monuments, is an effect demanding a cause, for which the most probable is the objective truth from which both these veracious records have been copied. But the monuments are not written in plain English, and need a key; and we must be first assured that Manetho's list has not been used for this purpose. We are told; for example, [55] that the name "Snefura," deciphered on a tablet found at the copper-mines of Wady Magerah, is the name of a King of the third dynasty, who reigned about 4000 B.C. Now if there were no doubt about the reading of this name on the tablet, and if his date and dynasty were as plainly there recorded, and if all this tallies exactly with equally precise particulars in Manetho's list, it would indeed be a remarkable coincidence and would imply some common source, whether record or fact. But if having credited Manetho with the record of such a name and date, one tortures a hieroglyph into a faintly similar name, and concludes at once that the same name must be the same person, and that therefore this is the oldest record in the world, the confirmation is not so striking. That it is so in this instance we do not affirm; but we should need the assertion of a man of more intellectual sobriety than Mr. Laing to make it worth the trouble of investigating.

Passing over the confirmation which he draws from the "known rate of the deposit of Nile mud of about three inches a century," which would give a mild antiquity of twenty-six thousand years to pottery fished up from borings in the mud, since he admits that "borings are not very conclusive," we may notice how he deals with evidence from Chaldea on much the same principles. Here, again, the source had been till lately only "fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of Berosus. Berosus was a learned priest of Babylon, who … wrote in Greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the temples and from the oldest traditions." [56] Still this "learned priest," though antecedently as competent a critic as Manetho, is so portentously mythical in his accounts, that "no historical value can be attached to them," which must be regretted, since he pushes history back a quarter of a million years prior to the Deluge, and the Deluge itself to about half a million years ago. Here, therefore, we are thrown solely upon the independent value of the monumental evidence, and must drop the argument from coincidence. This evidence, we are told, "is not so conclusive as in the case of Egypt, where the lists of Manetho, &c…. The date of Sargon I. [57] (3800 B.C.) rests mainly on the authority of Nabonidus, who lived more than three thousand years later, and may have been mistaken." "The probability of such a remote date is enhanced by the certainty that a high civilization existed in Egypt as long ago as 5000 B.C." If the evidence for the antiquity of Chaldee civilization is "less conclusive" than that for Egyptian, and rests on it for an argument à pari, it cannot be said in any way to strengthen Mr. Laing's position.

These strictures are directed chiefly to showing Mr. Laing's incapacity for anything like coherent reasoning in historical matters. Subsequently he uses these most lame and impotent conclusions as demonstrated certainties, without the faintest qualification, and builds up on them his refutation of dogmatic Christianity.

However, it is only in his more recent work on Human Origins that he thus comes forward as an historian, in preparation for which he seems to have devoted himself to the study of cuneiform and hieroglyphs and mastered the subject thoroughly and exhaustively, before bursting forth from behind the clouds to flood the world with new-born light.

It is deep down in the bowels of the earth, at the bottom of a geological well, that he has found not only truth but, also man—among the monsters,

Dragons of the prime
Who tare each other in their slime,

and has hauled him up for our inspection. Mr. Laing is before all else an evolutionist, with an unshaken belief in spontaneous generation. He is quite confident that force and atoms will explain everything. He seems to mean force, pure and simple, without any intelligent direction; atoms, ultimate, homogeneous, undifferentiated. No doubt, if the subsequent evolution depends on the kind and direction of force, or on the nature of the atoms; then there is a remoter question for physics to determine; but if, as he implies, force and atoms are simple and ultimate, then evolution is as fortuitous as a sand-storm, or more so. All prior to force and atoms is "behind the veil." "The material universe is composed of ether, matter, and energy." [58] Ether is a billion times more elastic than air, "almost infinitely rare," [59] its oscillations must be at least seven hundred billions per second, "it exerts no gravitating or retarding force;" in short, Mr. Laing has to confess some uncertainty about his original dogma as to the triple constituents of the universe, and say "that it may be almost doubted whether such an ether has any real material existence, and is anything more than a sort of mathematical [why 'mathematical'?] entity." [60] "It is clear that matter really does consist of minute particles which do not touch," and even these we must conceive of as "corks as it were floating in an ocean of ether, causing waves in it by their own proper movement," [61]—an explanation which loses some of its helpfulness when we remember that the ethereal ocean is only a mathematical entity. "A cubic centimetre contains 21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules," "the number of impacts received by each molecule of air during one second will be 4,700 millions. The distance traversed between each impact averages 95/1000000 of a millimetre," and so on with lines of ciphers to overawe the gaping millions with Mr. Laing's minute certainty as to the ultimate constitution of matter. [62]

As to how atoms came into existence, he can only reply, "Behind the veil, behind the veil;" for it is at this point at last that he becomes agnostic.[63] The notion of creation is rejected (after Spencer) as inconceivable, because unimaginable, as though the origination of every change in the phenomenal world were not just as unimaginable; we see movement in process, and we see its results, but its inception is unimaginable, and its efficient cause still more so.

The evolution of man is practically taken for granted, the only question being the when.

We have the old argument from embryonic transformism brought forward without any hint that later investigation tends to show differentiation further and further back, prior to segmentation and, according to some, in the very protoplasm itself. Nothing could be more inaccurate than to say "every human being passes through the stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of a mammal and finally of man." [64] All that can be truly said is that the embryonic man is at certain stages not superficially distinguishable from the embryonic fish—quite a different thing, and no more significant than that the adult man possesses organs and functions in common with other species of the animal genus.

Mr. Laing's own conclusions from skulls and human remains which he takes to be those of tertiary man, show man to be as obstinately unlike the "dryopithecus" as ever, in fact, the reputedly oldest skulls [65] are a decided improvement on the Carnstadt and Neanderthal type. Even then man seems to have been the same flint-chipping, tool-making, speaking animal as now. So convinced is he of this essential and ineradicable difference in his heart, that seeing traces of design in palaeolithic flint flakes, and so forth, he has "not the remotest doubt as to their being the work of human hands,"—"as impossible to doubt as it would be if we had found clasp-knives and carpenters adzes." [66] Perhaps Professor Boyd-Dawkins, who credits the "dryopithecus" with these productions, is a more consistent evolutionist; but at present Mr. Laing is defending a thesis as to man's antiquity. Yet he has just said that these flint instruments are "only one step in advance of the rude, natural stone which an intelligent orang or chimpanzee might pick up to crack a cocoa-nut with." Truly a very significant step, though it be only one. How hard this is to reconcile with what Mr. Laing ascribes to dogs and ants elsewhere, or with what he says on page 173, "These higher apes remain creatures of very considerable intelligence…. There is a chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens … which can do all but speak" [either it speaks, or it does not. It is precisely a case of the "only one step" quoted above. Here if anywhere a "miss is as good as a mile">[, "which understands almost every word the keeper says to it, and when told to sing will purse out its lips and try to utter connected notes." [How on earth do we know what it is trying to do?] "In their native state they (apes) form societies and obey a chief." [The old fallacy of metaphors adverted to in relation to ants and dogs.] Yet "no animal has ever learned to speak," "no chimpanzee or gorilla has ever been known to fashion any implement." [67] Their nearest approach to invention is in the building of huts or nests, in which they "are very inferior to most species of birds, to say nothing of insects." On the other hand, "as regards tool-making, no human race is known which has not shown some faculty in this direction." [68] "The difference is a very fundamental one," and "may be summed up in the words 'arrested development.'" Words, indeed! but what do they mean? They mean that these animals have not developed the faculties of speech and tool-making, which would have been most useful to them in the struggle for existence, the reason being that they did not; and this reason is exalted into a cause or law of "arrested development." Who or what arrested it? The advantage of the term is that it implies that they were on the point of developing, that they could "all but speak," were "trying to utter connected notes," were "but one step" behind flint axes, when some cosmic power said, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further."

If the dog had organs of speech or an instrument like the hand by which to place himself in closer relation to the outer world, he would doubtless be on a footing of mental equality with man, according to Mr. Laing. [69] The elephant's trunk accounts for his superior sagacity, and the horse suffers by his hoof-enclosed forefoot. [70] "Given a being with man's brain, man's hand, and erect stature, it is easy to see how intelligence must have been gradually evolved." [71] Now honestly it seems to us that many animals are as well provided as man is with a variety of flexible organs of communication with the outward world (for example, the antennae of insects, the prehensile tails of some monkeys, whose hands are as lithe as man's and articulated bone for bone and joint for joint). But letting this pass, we thought evolutionists allowed that structure is determined by function, rather than the converse; and so the confession that "it is not so easy to see how this difference of the structure arose," [72] surprises us, coming from Mr. Laing; though why this difference should exist at all, on evolution principles, is a far greater difficulty. Yet he confesses that "the difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the highest existing ape, [73] is too great to admit of one being possibly the direct descendant of the other." The ape, then, is not a man whose development is arrested. "The negro in some respects makes a slight approximation, … still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee or gorilla. Even the idiot is … an arrested man and, not an ape." [74]

Nearly all these (higher intellectual and moral) faculties appear in a rudimentary state in animals…. Still there is this wide distinction that even in the highest animals these faculties remain rudimentary and seem incapable of progress, while even in the lowest races of man they have reached a much higher level [75] and seem capable of almost unlimited development. [76] Why does he not seek out the reason of this, or is he satisfied with the words "arrested development"? If I find a child who can repeat a poem of Tennyson's, am I to be puzzled because it cannot originate one as good, or go on even to something better? Am I to ascribe to it a rudimentary but arrested poetic faculty? Surely the same poem proceeding from the lips of the poet and of the child he has taught, are essentially different effects, though outwardly the same. If there were a true living germ, it would most certainly develope. If the savage developes through contact with the civilized man after centuries of degradation, why have not domesticated dogs, who are, according to Laing, their intellectual and moral equals, developed long ago?

However, as "evolution has become the axiom of science and is admitted by every one who has the slightest pretensions to be considered a competent authority," [77] it is preposterous to suppose man an exception, whatever be the difficulties. [78] And so Mr. Laing, assuming axiomatically that man and the ape have a common ancestor, is interested to make the differences between them deeply marked, and that, as far back as he can, for thereby "Human Origins" are pushed back by hundreds of thousands of years. If miocene man is as distinct from the ape as recent man, the inference is that we are then as far from the source as ever. Hence it is to geology he looks for the strongest basis of his position. One thought till lately that geology was a tentative science, hardly credited with the name of science, but Mr. Laing wisely and boldly classes it among the "exact sciences," whose subject-matter is "flint instruments, incised bones, and a few rare specimens of human skulls and skeletons, the meaning of which has to be deciphered by skilled experts." [79] "The conclusions of geology," up to the Silurian period, "are approximate facts, not theories." [80]

If he means that the only legitimate data of geologists are facts of observation, classified and recorded, well and good; but to deny that they deal largely in hypotheses, and use them constantly as the premisses for inferences which are equally hypothetical, is palpably absurd. First of all we are to "assume the principle of uniformity" which Lyell is said to have established on an unassailable basis and to have made the fundamental axiom of geological science. He "has shown conclusively that while causes identical with … existing causes will, if given sufficient time, account for all the facts hitherto observed, there is not a single fact which proves the occurrence of a totally different order of causes." [81] This, however, is (1) limited to the period of geology which gives record of organic life, and not to the earlier astronomical period; nor (2) does it exclude changes in temperature, climate, distribution of seas and lands; nor (3) does it "affirm positively that there may not have been in past ages explosions more violent than that of Krakatoa; lava-streams more extensive than that of Skaptar-Jokul, and earthquakes more powerful than that which uplifted five or six hundred miles of the Pacific coast of South America six or seven feet." [82] Now, seeing that all these cataclysms have occurred within the brief limits of most recent time, compared with which the period of pretended uniformity is almost an eternity, what sort of presumption or probability is there that such occurrences should have been confined to historical times; and is not the presumption all the other way? Again, it is largely on the supposition of this antecedently unlikely uniformity, that Mr. Laing argues to the antiquity of life on earth; whereas Lyell's conclusion warrants nothing of the kind, being simply: that present causes, "given sufficient time," would produce the observed effects. [83]

Our tests of geologic time are denudation and deposition. We are told "the present rate of denudation of a continent is known with considerable accuracy from careful measurements of the quantity of solid matter carried down by rivers." [84] Now it is a considerable tax on our faith in science to believe that the débris of the Mississippi can be so accurately gauged as to give anything like approximate value to the result of one foot of continental denudation in 6,000 years. We cannot of course suppose this to be the result of 6,000 years registered observations, but an inference from the observations of some comparatively insignificant period; and we have also to suppose that the very few rivers which have been observed form a sufficient basis for a conclusion as to all rivers. In fact, a more feebly supported generalization from more insufficient data it is hard to conceive. To speak of it as "an approximation based on our knowledge of the time in which similar results on a smaller scale have been produced by existing natural laws within the historical period," [85] is a very inadequate qualification, especially when we have just been told that "here, at any rate, we are on comparatively certain ground, … these are measurable facts which have been ascertained by competent observers." [86]

Assuming this rate of denudation as certain, and also the estimate of the known sedimentary strata as 177,000 feet in depth, we are to conclude that the formation took 56,000,000 years. A mountain mass which ought to answer to certain fault 15,000 high, and therefore is presumed to have vanished by denudation, points to a term of 90,000,000 years as required for the process. [87]

"Reasoning from these facts, assuming the rate of change in the forms of life to have been the same formerly, Lyell concludes that geological phenomena postulate 200,000,000 years at least," [88] "to account for the undoubted facts of geology since life began." [89] On the other hand, mathematical astronomy, [90] on theories which Mr. Laing complains of as wanting the solidity of geological calculations (yet which do not involve more, but fewer assumptions), cannot allow the sun a past existence of more than 15,000,000 years. [91] "It is evident that there must be some fundamental error on one side or the other," [92] "for the laws of nature are uniform, and there cannot be one code for astronomers, and one for geologists." But while modestly relegating this slight divergency among the "bell-wethers of science" (bell-wethers, I presume, because the crowd follow them like sheep), to the "problems of the future," Mr. Laing is quite confident that we should "distrust these mathematical calculations," and rely on conclusions based on ascertained facts and undoubted deductions from them, rather than on abstract and doubtful theories, "which would so reduce geological time as to negative the idea of uniformity of law and evolution, and introduce once more the chaos of catastrophes and supernatural interferences."[93] As regards the ice-age, Mr. Laing is professedly interested in putting it as far back as possible, since "a short date for that period shortens that for which we have positive proof of the existence of man, and … a very short date … brings us back to the old theories of repeated and recent acts of supernatural interference." [94] Strange, that in the same page he should refer to Sir J. Dawson as an "extreme instance" of one who approaches the question with "theological prepossessions;" and of course in complete ignorance of Mr. Laing's indubitable conclusions about the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. Unfortunately, even the best scientists have not that perfect freedom from bias, which gives Mr. Laing such a towering advantage over them all. "An authority like Prestwich," who "cannot be accused of theological bias," influenced, however, by a servile astronomical bias, "reduces to 20,000 years a period to which Lyell and modern geologists assign a duration of more than 200,000 years;" [95] which "shows in what a state of uncertainty we are as to this vitally important problem;" for this time assigned by Prestwich "would be clearly insufficient to allow for the development of Egyptian civilization, as it existed 5,000 years ago, from savage and semi-animal ancestors; as is proved to be the case with the horse, stag, elephant, ape," and so on. [96] Now Prestwich, we are told elsewhere, is "the first living authority on the tertiary and quaternary strata." [97] If, then, astronomical prepossession can reduce 200,000 to 20,000 years, the sin of theology, which reduces 20,000 to 7,000 is comparatively venial. Prestwich's two objections are (1) the data of astronomy, and (2) "the difficulty of conceiving that man could have existed for 80,000 or 100,000 years without change and without progress." The former is "only one degree less mischievous than the theological prepossession." However, Prestwich has some "facts" as well as prepossessions, such as "the rapid advance of the glaciers of Greenland,"[98] which does not accord with the generalization from the Swiss glaciers;[99] and the quicker erosion of river valleys, due to a greater rainfall; facts which, however, are met by "a minute description of the successive changes by which in post-glacial time the Mersey valley and estuary were brought into their present condition, with an estimate of the time they may have required;" which is "in round numbers 60,000 years," as opposed to Prestwich's 10,000 or 8,000. [100] The 200,000 years for the ice-age depends chiefly on Croll's theory of secular variation of the earth's orbitular eccentricity; but we are told it is open to the "objection that it requires us to assume a periodical succession of glacial epochs" of which two or three "must have occurred during each of the great geological epochs. [101] This is opposed to geological evidence." "'Not proven' is the verdict which most geologists would return." "The confidence with which Croll's theory was first received has been a good deal shaken." "We have to fall back, therefore, on the geological evidence of deposition and denudation … in any attempt to decide between the 200,000 years of Lyell and the 20,000 years of Prestwich." [102]

As to his arguments based on ancient human remains, their value depends first on the accuracy of his geological conclusions, and then on preclusion of all possibility of the conveyance of the remains from upper strata to lower; on the certainty, moreover, of traces of design in many of the would-be miocene or tertiary flint instruments (which Prestwich is doubtful about).[103] He takes care not to tell us that the Carstadt skull which gives name to a race, is a very doubtfully genuine relic of one hundred and thirty years old, whose history is most dubious. His evidence for the absence of the slightest approximation to the simian type even in the oldest relics is cheering to the theologian, though it loses its value when we know it is in the interests of his foregone conclusions as to the unspeakable antiquity of man. The Nampe image, the oldest relic yet discovered, "revolutionizes our conception of this early palaeolithic age," being a "more artistic and better representation of the human form than the little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people," very like those in Mexico, "believed to be not much older than the date of the Spanish conquest"—"and in truth, I believe, contemporaneous." [104]

As to his treatment of the Bible, it evinces everywhere the crudest anthropomorphic method of interpretation such as we should expect to find in a child or very ignorant person. In truth, Mr. Laing is in a perfectly childish state of mind both as regards the Christian religion and as regards philosophy, sciences, and all the subjects he dabbles with.

For our own part we have at most a general idea as to what exactly the Church does teach or may teach with regard to the interpretation of the Scripture. That she has so far acquiesced in the larger interpretation of Genesiacal cosmogony, that now the literal six-day theory would be very unsafe, forbids us to judge any present interpretation of other parts by the number, noise, or notoriety of its adherents. The universality of the Deluge is by no means the only tolerable interpretation now; though the doctrine of a partial deluge would have been most unsafe a century ago. All this does not mean giving up the inspiration of the record, but determining gradually what is meant by inspiration and the record. What could be less important to Christian dogma than the date of the Deluge or of Adam's creation? If it were proved that the original text in this point had been hopelessly corrupted, as the discrepancies between the LXX. numbers and the Hebrew hint to be true to some extent, it would not touch the guaranteed integrity of Christian dogma. If Christ is the "son" of David, and Zachæus is "son" of Abraham, what period may not an apparent single generation stand for, especially in regard to the earlier Patriarchs? As far as the prophetic import of the Deluge is concerned, a very small local affair might be mystically large with foreshadowings, as we see with regard to the enacted prophecies of the later prophets. For the rest, we are quite weary of Mr. Laing, and are content to have shown that everywhere he is the same biassed, inconsequent, untrustworthy writer. His only power is a certain superficial clearness of diction and brilliancy of style, and this is brought to bear on a mass of information drawn confessedly from the labours of others, and selected in the interest of a foregone conclusion, without a single attempt at a fair presentment of the other side.

Here, then, we have a very fair specimen of the pseudo-philosophy which is so admirably adapted to captivate the half-informed, wholly unformed minds of the undiscriminating multitudes who have been taught little or nothing well except to believe in their right, duty, and ability to judge for themselves in matters for which a life-time of specialization were barely sufficient. A congeries of dogmatic assertions and negations raked together from the chief writers of a decadent school, discredited twenty years ago by all men of thought, Christian or otherwise; a show of logical order and reasoning which evades our grasp the instant we try to lay critical hands on it; a profuse expression of disinterested devotion to abstract truth, an occasional bow to conventional morality, a racy, irreverent style, an elaborate display of miscellaneous information; good paper, large type, cheap wood-cuts, and the work is done.

Oct. Nov. 1895.

[Footnote 1: M.S. 319.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. 319.]

[Footnote 3: M.S. 229, 230.]

[Footnote 4: P.F. 279.]

[Footnote 5: P.F. 280]

[Footnote 6: Ibid.]

[Footnote 7: P.F. 281, 282.]

[Footnote 8: Ibid.]

[Footnote 9: Ibid. 210.]

[Footnote: 10 M.S. Preface]

[Footnote 11: "These subjects … have been to me the solace of a long life, the delight of many quiet days, and the soother of many troubled ones … a source of enjoyment.

"'The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.'" (H.O. 3.)]

[Footnote: 12 M.S. 319.]

[Footnote: 13 Ibid. 320.]

[Footnote: 14 Cf. Ibid. 104, 282.]

[Footnote 15: This expression seems inconsistent with his here and elsewhere explicit maintenance of the hereditary transmission of gathered moral experiences. He means here to exclude innate ideas of morality as explained by Kant and by other intuitionists.]

[Footnote 16: M.S. 180.]

[Footnote 17: M.S. 285.]

[Footnote 18: M.S. 216.]

[Footnote 19: M.S. 294.]

[Footnote 20: M.S. 298, 299.]

[Footnote 21: P.F. 297. "The truth is that morals are built on a far surer foundation than that of creeds, which are here to-day and gone to-morrow. They are built on the solid rock of experiences, and of the 'survival of the fittest,' which in the long evolution of the human race from primeval savages, have by 'natural selection' and 'heredity' become almost instinctive." (How careless is this terminology. In the previous page he denies morality to be a matter of hereditary instinct.)]

[Footnote 22: P.F. 206.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid. 207.]

[Footnote 24: P.P. 204.]

[Footnote 25: M.S. Preface.]

[Footnote 26: H.O. 3.]

[Footnote 27: P.P. 3.]

[Footnote 28: "The simple undoubting faith which for ages has been the support and consolation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the weak, the humble, the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving for a time a great blank behind." (M.S. 284.)]

[Footnote 29: xxxiii.]

[Footnote 30: M.S. 261.]

[Footnote 31: P.F. 176.]

[Footnote 32: P. 177.]

[Footnote 33: P.F. 192.]

[Footnote 34: P. 245.]

[Footnote 35: P.F. 222.]

[Footnote 36: Thus he assumes Mr. Spurgeon's definition of inspiration as the basis of operations (See H.O. 189), and says, "It is perfectly obvious that for those who accept these confessions of faith … all the discoveries of modern science, from Galileo and Newton down to Lyall and Darwin, are simple delusions.">[

[Footnote 37: M.S. 215.]

[Footnote 38: Ibid. 251.]

[Footnote 39: "The simplest straightforward evidence of the earliest Christian writer who gives any account of their origin, viz., Papias." (P.F. 236.) "What does Papias say? Practically this: that he preferred oral tradition to written documents…. This is a perfectly clear and intelligible statement made apparently in good faith without any dogmatic or other prepossession…. It has always seemed to me that all theories … were comparatively worthless which did not take into account the fundamental fact of this statement of Papias." (238.) "The clear and explicit statement of Papias." (250.)]

[Footnote 40: PP. 258—260.]

[Footnote 41: P. 262.]

[Footnote 42: P.F. 266.]

[Footnote 43: With regard to this "very precise statement," it is noticeable that Matthew speaks of "Mary the mother of James and Joses;" Mark, of "Mary the mother of James the less and of Joseph and Salome," but not "of Salome." If Mr. Laing's precise mind had looked for a moment at the text he was criticizing he would have seen that Salome is a common name in the nominative case. St. Luke does not give the names of the women at all. These points are trifling in themselves, but important as evidencing Mr. Laing's standard of intellectual conscientiousness.]

[Footnote 44: P.F. 235]

[Footnote 45: M.S. 332 ff.]

[Footnote 46: H.O. 2.]

[Footnote 47: H.O. 8.]

[Footnote 48: H.O. II]

[Footnote 49: H.O. 9 and 199.]

[Footnote 50: H.O. 10.]

[Footnote 51: This seems, later, to be an inference, not an assertion. "Manetho was a learned priest of a celebrated temple, who must have had access to all the temples and royal records and other literature of Egypt, and who must have been also conversant with foreign literature to have been selected as the best man to write a complete history of his native country." (H.O. 22.)]

[Footnote 52: He seems to think that Josephus was a Christian, and Syncellus a "Father." We might mention that from the fragments of Africanus' Pentabiblion Chronicon, preserved in Eusebius, the author places the Creation at 5499 B.C., which is certainly hardly compatible with his giving such fragments of Manetho as would place Menes one year before that date. If we know nothing of Manetho's results except through these "orthodox" sources, it is inconceivable that Mr. Laing's version of them should have any historical basis whatever. It comes in fine to this, that because their report of Manetho does not give Mr. Laing what he wants, they have been tampered with.]

[Footnote 53: H.O. 11.]

[Footnote 54: H.O. 22.]

[Footnote 55: H.O. 17.]

[Footnote 56: H.O. 42.]

[Footnote 57: "There can be no doubt, moreover, that this Sargon I. is a perfectly historical personage. A statue of him has been found at Agade." (H.O. 55.)]

[Footnote 58: M.S. 50.]

[Footnote 59: Ibid.]

[Footnote 60: P.F. 28.]

[Footnote 61: M.S. 61.]

[Footnote 62: "Matter is made of molecules; molecules are made of atoms; atoms are little magnets which link themselves together and form all the complex creations of an ordered cosmos [an ordered order] by virtue of the attractive and repulsive forces which are the result of polarity." (P.F, 223.)]

[Footnote 63: We suppose he has a right to call himself agnostic as being a disciple of Professor Huxley, who, we believe, started or revived the term in our own times. Of course he is also a dogmatic materialist, and by no means an "agnostic" in the wider sense of general scepticism.]

[Footnote 64: M.S. 171.]

[Footnote 65: "Not only have no missing links been discovered, but the oldest known human skulls and skeletons, which date from the glacial period and are probably at least one hundred thousand years old, show no very decided approximation towards any such pre-human type. On the contrary," &c. (M.S. 181.) He replies (H.O. 373) that "five hundred thousand years prior to these men of Spy and Neanderthal, the human race has existed in higher physical perfection, nearer to the existing type of modern man," (Cf. P.F. 158.)]

[Footnote 66: M.S. 112, 114.]

[Footnote 67: P.F. 154.]

[Footnote 68: P.F. 154.]

[Footnote 69: M.S. 175.]

[Footnote 70: The horse "may be taken as the typical instance of descent by progressive specialization. What is a horse? It is essentially an animal specialized for … the rapid progression of a bulky body over plains or deserts" it is evident that one strong and long toe, protected by a solid hoof, was more serviceable than four short and weak toes." [But why should it gallop more than other animals; or why on the hard ground in the deserts and plains; or would not four strong and long toes have been better than one?] "The coalescence of the toes is the fundamental fact in the progress … by which the primitive bunodont was converted into the modern horse." But we thought evolution was a change from the homogeneous, incoherent to the heterogeneous and coherent: surely the change from five toes to one must have been a misfortune on the whole, if the flexibility of the human hand accounts for man's intellect. The advantages of a convenient gallop over occasional oases of hard ground in the desert would hardly balance that of being able to climb trees. (P.F. 143.)]

[Footnote 71: Cf. P.F. 151.]

[Footnote 72: M.S. 180.]

[Footnote 73: "A wide gap which has never been bridged over." (Huxley,
P.F. 150.)]

[Footnote 74: But cf. M.S. 181. "Attempt after attempt has been made to find some fundamental characters in the human brain, on which to base a generic distinction between man and the brute creation." (P.F. 149.)]

[Footnote 75: Cf. "It is probable, therefore, that this (drill-friction) was the original mode of obtaining fire, but if so it must have required a good deal of intelligence and observation, for the discovery is by no means an obvious one." (M.S. 204.)]

[Footnote 76: P.F. 153.]

[Footnote 77: P.F. 135.]