The Theistic Conception of the World / An Essay in Opposition to Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought

by B. F. Cocker

Such, then, is clearly the law of the physical world. "Nature goes on adding perfection to perfection from the polar regions to the Temperate Zone, and from the Temperate Zone to the region of the greatest heat." Animal life increases in strength and development; the types are improved; intelligence enlarges; the form approaches nearer the human figure; the ourang-outang occasionally stands erect; and the presence of the mastoid and styloid processes, the development of the heel-bone, and the form of the pelvis, together with the shape of the ears and a higher frontal development, give the gorilla a startling resemblance to man. Following, then, the ascending series (especially if man be regarded as the lineal descendant of the anthropomorphic apes), we might reasonably suppose that here would be found the proper home and habitat of man, and that the tropical man would be the highest type of humanity, and, physically speaking, the most beautiful of the species.

But this, as every one knows, is not the case. While all the types of plants and of animals go on increasing in perfection from the polar to the equatorial regions in proportion to the increase of temperature, "man presents to our view his purest, his most perfect type at the very centre of the temperate continents, at the centre of Asia-Europe, in the region of Iran, of Armenia, and of the Caucasus;, and, departing from this geographical centre in the three grand directions of the lands, the types gradually lose the beauty of their forms in proportion to their distance, even to the extreme points of the southern continents, where we find the most deformed and [physically] degenerated races, and the lowest in the scale of humanity."[391]

The distribution of the human race over the face of the earth has thus been governed by a different law from that which has governed the distribution of plants and animals.

In the latter case, the degree of perfection of the types is exactly proportional to the intensity of heat and other material conditions favorable to the development of physical life. This is the law of a physical order.

In the former case, in man, the degree of perfection of the types is in proportion to the degree of intellectual and moral improvement, and to the physical conditions favorable to intellectual and moral development. This is the law of a moral order.

This difference between the two laws has its ground and reason in the essential difference between the nature and destination of these different orders of being. The plant and the animal are not destined to become a different thing from what they already are. The end of their existence is already attained. The development of each individual is bound to an immutable necessity of nature. Therefore vegetable life and organization are ceaselessly uniform; there are always the same cellular structures and the same morphological forms. Unreasoning and instinctive life never leaves its sphere. The beaver builds its dam, lives, and dies, just as it did six thousand years ago. The bee builds the same hexagonal cell she built before the flood. There is an all-pervading order in the physical world, But with man it is quite otherwise. Man, created in the image of God, is a free moral being. He is not solely under the dominion of mere nature-conditions, and he is therefore a progressive being. The physical man is not the true man; the body is not an end, but a means. There is another man—the intellectual, the moral, the spiritual man—which grows up with the body, and to which the physical man is a servant and minister. The unfolding, the development, the perfection of this spiritual nature is the grand end of man. This development can only take place under freedom; this nature be unfolded only by education; the maturity and the perfection of man secured only by the exercise and discipline of his spiritual powers.[392]

Who does not see a plan, a purpose, a Providence in this fact that the cradle of the human race was placed in the midst of the continents of the north and not at the centre of the tropical regions? The balmy but enervating atmosphere of the equatorial regions would have lulled man to sleep, and he would have made no progress. With an abundant supply for his natural wants, there would have been no motive to industry, to enterprise, and to the development of his intellectual powers. Unable to endure the rigors of a colder climate, and to live on a less luxuriant soil, he could not have been induced to migrate to less favorable regions, and, crowded on a narrow area, the race must have been finally exterminated. But planted in the Temperate Zone, in the midst of the continents of the North, so well adapted by their forms, their highly articulated peninsulas, and their climate to stimulate the active powers of man, to promote enterprise, to favor commerce, and hasten individual development and social organization, he was surrounded by conditions most favorable to the fulfillment of his destiny.

It is also worthy of being noted that Western Asia was not only the geographical centre of the human race, but also the grand centre of religious light—the cradle of man's spiritual nature. It was here in the midst of the six great nations of antiquity—the Babylonians, the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians—that for ages "the living oracles" proclaimed the "Truth of God," and patriarchs and prophets and seers were received into intercourse with the higher world. And it was in Palestine, the centre of the three continents of the Old World, and near five great seas—the highways of the world's travel and commerce—that Jesus of Nazareth taught "the glad tidings of great joy" for the nations, and sent forth his apostles "into all the world to preach that Gospel to every creature."

2. Another important fact which history enables us very distinctly to recognize is that those epochs of civilization which represent the highest degree of culture attained by man at different periods in his history have not succeeded one another in the same place, but have passed from one country to another.

It is an undoubted historic fact, as we have already seen, that Asia was the cradle of the human race. Western Asia is the theatre of the earliest civilization of which we have any historic records. Then a newer and higher form appears on the peninsula of Greece. The centre of civilization again changes place, and Rome embraces and improves upon that of the ancient world. Then passing the Alps, still further to the west, it spreads over France and Germany and the British Isles, and assumes a nobler form; and finally it crosses the Atlantic Ocean, and develops its highest type in the New World. This order may be called the geographical march of civilization.