Evolution delights to compare savage peoples alternately with present civilized races and with the brute. Prof. Conn says, "There is a greater difference between a Newton and a Hottentot, than between the Hottentot and the orang-outang." He fails to notice, or state, that the first is a difference of degree only, and the latter a difference of kind. It would be possible to develop a Hottentot into a philosopher, but no attempt is ever dreamed of, to change an orang-outang into a Hottentot. On the other hand, the lowest savages have under culture shown their human inheritance of faculties beyond the brute. Two pigmies taken to Italy learned to speak Italian in two years with fluency. They showed themselves superior to many European children, and one became proficient in music. The skill of this race with poisoned arrows, pits for game, and cultivation of various kinds, is well known.
The savage races show the opposite of evolution. They are races in ruins. Max Mueller says, "What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter in their history? They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive may be for all we know a relapse into savagery, or corruption of what was something more rational and intelligible in former ages." This estimate of this great scholar is attested by facts. Where to-day is the Hindu race that could build the Taj Mahal? What Greek race to-day could reproduce the architecture or statuary of their ancestors? The ruins of all eastern and many western lands point to fallen races as well as ruined structures. The world's history is that of the fall of great nations such as Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, in all of which are sad examples of architecture and peoples alike in decay.
13. THE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY.
History is appealed to to show the progress of man and his continuance in the evolutionary line since his origin in the brute. Our present civilization is pointed to and compared with the past and we are told that this is the result of evolution.
Some remarks of a preliminary kind are called for here. It is to be remembered that history does not cover a very long period, that the record is often broken, and that the facts are often very uncertain. Large sections of the world we know historically nothing or little of, such as Asia and Africa. We must remember that progress is confined mostly to Europe and America and these form but a third of the population of the world. Also that European progress is a comparatively recent matter. We are now considering the entire history of the race and must take in these vast outside regions to arrive at correct conclusions. To judge the entire progress of mankind from a short-sighted view of a limited portion is as unscientific as it is unscriptural.
We must also remember that Europe owes its progress to the influence of Christianity. For to-day it is the Christian nations only that have progress and the most Christian have the most progress. No fact is better seen or proven. Lange states, "Among human tribes left to themselves, the higher man never comes out of the lower. Apparent exceptions do ever, on close examination, confirm the universality of the rule in regard to particular peoples, while the claim, as made for the world's general progress, can only be urged in opposition by ignoring the supernal aids of revelation that have ever shown themselves directly or collaterally on the human path." (Commentary on Genesis, p. 355.) We have seen that so far as present savage races are concerned they have made no progress, and semi-civilized races, such as the Egyptians, Chinese and Hindus have retrograded.
We need also to consider the vast and great civilizations which existed in remote antiquity as is now revealed by archaeology. The recent discoveries in Assyria and Babylonia and Egypt show vast empires of culture as well as national extension and power, and that their earlier culture was the greatest. So Prof. Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania, testifies of Babylonia: "The flower of Babylonian art is found at the beginning of Babylonian history." (Recent Researches in Bible Lands, p. 88.) Horace Bushnell tells us, "All great ruins are but a name for greatness in ruins."
It is to Egypt we must go for the earliest records of human civilization. Here the account of Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, gives us the facts: "The earliest culture and civilization to which the monuments bear witness was in fact already perfect. It was full-grown. The organization of the country was complete. The arts were known and practiced. Egyptian culture as far as we know at present has no beginning." (Recent Researches in Bible Lands, pp. 101, 102.) "The older the culture, the more perfect it is found to be. The fact is a very remarkable one, in view of modern theories of development and of the evolution of civilization out of barbarism. Whatever may be the reason, such theories are not borne out by the discoveries of archaeology. Instead of the progress one should expect, we find retrogression and decay. Is it possible the Biblical view is right after all and that civilized man has been civilized from the outset?" (Homiletic Review, June, 1902.) Prof. Flinders Petrie tells us that the Great Pyramid bears on its stones the marks of the solid and tubular drill, edged with stone as hard as diamond, and cutting one-tenth of an inch at a revolution, and showing no sign of wear. They had also straight and circular saws. The same building reveals scientific and astronomical knowledge equal in some respects to modern science.