But I may remark that naturalists are far from being agreed on this part of the subject. Agassiz rejects the evolution of man altogether. Mr. St. G. Mivart, while partly admitting, as every one else now does, the doctrine of evolution, denies the descent of man. Mr. Wallace, the great apostle of evolution, opposes Darwin, and will have none of his views on the descent of man; and Professor Huxley himself says that, while the resemblance of structure is such that if any "process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, the process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of man," still he admits that the gulf is vast between civilized man and brutes, and he is certain that "whether from them or not, man is assuredly not of them."
The first difficulty I shall mention is, however, a structural one. Supposing that an ape-like ancestor developed into man, on the principles of natural selection; then his development has taken place in a manner directly contrary to the acknowledged law of natural selection. He has developed backwards; his frame is in every way weaker; he is wanting in agility; he has lost the prehensile feet; he has lost teeth fitted for fighting or crushing or tearing; he has but little sense of smell; he has lost the hairy covering, and is obliged to help himself by clothes.[[30]] If this loss was ornamental it is quite unlike any other development in this respect, since no other creature has the same; for ornamental purposes the fur becomes coloured, spotted, and striped, but not lost. It is easy to reply that man being intelligent, his brain power enables him to invent clothes, arms, implements, and so forth, which not only supply all deficiencies of structure, but give him a great superiority over all creatures. But how did he get that intelligence? By what natural process of causation (without intelligent direction) is it conceivable that, given a species of monkey, all at once and at a certain stage, structural development should have been retarded and actually reversed, and a development of brain structure alone set in? Nor, be it observed, has any trace of man with a rudimentary brain ever been discovered. Savages have brains far in excess of their requirements, and can consequently be educated and improved. The skull of a prehistoric man found in the Neanderthal near Dusseldorf is of average brain capacity, showing that in those remote ages man was very much in capacity what he is at present.
It must, however, be admitted that the special difficulties of the origin of man are not purely structural. We do not know enough of the Divine plan to be able to understand why it is that there is a certain undeniable unity of form, in the two eyes, ears, mouth, limbs and organs generally of the animal and man. Moreover, much is made of the fact, as stated by a recent "Edinburgh Reviewer," that "the physical difference between man and the lowest ape is trifling compared with that which exists between the lowest ape and any brute animal that is not an ape.[[31]]" This fact no doubt negatives the idea put forward by Bishop Temple and others, that if there was an evolution of man, it must have been in a special branch which was foreseen and commenced very far back in the scale of organic being. For the structural difference might not require such a separate origin; while the mental difference, affording objections of a different class, will not allow of any such evolution at all. That there is some connection between man and the animal cannot be denied, and consequently, in the absence of fuller information, very little would be gained by insisting on the purely physical development question. The Bible states positively that the man Adam (as the progenitor of a particular race, at any rate) was a separate and actual production, on a given part of the earth's surface. All that we need conclude regarding that is that there is nothing known which entitles us to say, "This is not a fact, and therefore is not genuine revelation."
Moreover, as to the question of the possibility of human development generally, there are certain considerations which directly support our belief. For example, directly we look to the characteristic point, the gift of intellect, we can reasonably argue that the action of a Creator is indispensable. The entrance of consciousness and of reason, however elementary, marks something out of all analogy with the development of physical structure, just as much as the entrance of Life marked a new departure in no analogy with the "properties" of inorganic matter.
From the first dawn of what looks like will and choice between two things, and something like a reason which directs the course of the organism in a particular way for a particular object, we have an altogether new departure. The difficulty commences at the outset, and even in the animal creation; it is merely continued and rendered more striking when we take into consideration the higher development of intellect into power of abstract reasoning, self-consciousness and God-consciousness.
It is perfectly true that the difference between the "instinct" of animals and the reason and mind of man, is one of degree rather than kind. As Christians, we have no objection whatever to a development of reason from the lowest reason solely concerned with earthly and bodily affairs to the highest powers searching into deep and spiritual truths. But such a development, though it is parallel to a physical development—as spiritual law appears to be always parallel (as far as the nature of things permits) to physical laws—still is a development which cannot under any possible circumstances dispense with an external spiritual order of existence, and one which cannot be physically caused. Nor is it conceivable that man should develop a consciousness of God, when no God really exists externally to the consciousness.[[32]]
The main objection, then, that I would press is, that admitting any possibility of the development of man from a purely physical and structural point of view, admitting any inference that may be drawn fairly from the undoubted connection (increasingly great as it is as we go upwards from the lower animal to the ape) between animals and man, that inference never can touch the descent of man as a whole; because no similarity of bodily structure can get over the difficulty of the mental power of man. We have to deal not with a part of man, but with the whole. The difficulty cannot be got over by denying mind as a thing per se; for all attempts to represent mind as the mere product of a physical structure, the brain, utterly fail.
Nobody wishes to deny what Dr. H. Maudsley and others have made so plain to us, that mind has (in one aspect, at any rate) a physical basis—that is, that no thought, imagination, or combination of thought, is known to us apart from change and expenditure of energy in the brain. Nor can we, by any process of introspection or observation of other subjects, separate the mind from the brain and ascertain the existence of "pure mind," or soul, experimentally. But still, there is no possibility of getting the operations of mind out of mere cell structure, unless an external Power has added the mind power, as a faculty of His endowing; then He may be allowed to have connected that faculty ever so mysteriously with physical structure; we are content. And I must insist on the total failure of all analogy between the development of bones or muscles and the development of mind; and even if we grant a certain stage of instinct to have arisen, we are still in the dark as to how that could develop into intellect such as man possesses, including a belief in God. On this subject let us hear Professor Allman. Between a development of material structure and a development of intellectual and moral features, the Professor says, "there is no conceivable analogy; and the obvious and continuous path, which we have hitherto followed up, in our reasonings from the phenomena of lifeless matter to those of living form, here comes suddenly to an end. The chasm between unconscious life and thought is deep and impassable, and no transitional phenomena are to be found by which, as by a bridge, we can span it over.[[33]]"
There can be life or function without consciousness or thought; therefore, even if we go so far as to admit that life is only a property of protoplasm, there can be no ground for saying that thought is only a property of protoplasm.
"If," says Professor Allman, "we were to admit that every living cell were a conscious and thinking thing, are we therefore justified in asserting that its consciousness with its irritability is a property of the matter of which it is composed? The sole argument on which this view is made to rest is analogy. It is argued that because the life phenomena, which are invariably found in the cell, must be regarded as a property of the cell, the phenomena of consciousness by which they are accompanied must also be so regarded. The weak point in the argument is the absence of all analogy between the things compared: and as the conclusion rests solely on the argument from analogy, the two must fall to the ground together."