The attempt (already alluded to) to separate moral and spiritual, to imagine something that is ethical, apart from the religious idea, has lent some strength to these ideas of the moral sense; but in fact, the moral sense is inseparably connected with the idea of God, and His approval and disapproval. The idea of God may be obscured and lost, but conscience is the surviving trace of it; the circumference that accounts for the broken arc.
CHAPTER VIII.
FURTHER DIFFICULTIES REGARDING THE HISTORY OF MAN.
There are, however, some other matters connected with the history of man on the globe, unconnected with psychological development, but which demand notice, as making the argument against an undesigned, unaided development of man a cumulative one. It is urged that whatever may be thought of the connection of man with the animal creation, at any rate the received Christian belief regarding the origin of man—especially his late appearance on the scene—is contrary to known facts, and that we have to mount up to a vast geologic antiquity to account for what is known from exhumed remains in caves and lake dwellings, and the like.
Now no one pretends that the history of man is free from doubt and difficulty, but the doubt and difficulty are not confined to the "orthodox." For the inferences to be drawn from the exhumed remains are equally doubtful whatever views be adopted.
I shall not go into great length on this subject, partly because some recent popular tracts of Canon Rawlinson, Mr. R.S. Pattison, and others, have already made the ordinary reader familiar with the main outlines of the subject; and still more because, be the views of archaeologists what they may, it is impossible for any rational person to contend either that they can be reduced to anything like unity among themselves, or that they lead to any conclusion favourable to the belief in the self-caused and undesigned evolution of man.
It may be regarded as known, that at the dawn of history, mankind was passing through what may be called a Bronze age, in which weapons of bronze were used before tools of iron were invented. But this age was preceded by one in which even bronze was unknown. Stone implements, and some of bone and horn, were alone used. It is also well ascertained that there were two widely divided stone ages. The latter, distinguished by the polishing of the stones, is described as the neolithic; the former, in which flint and other hard stone fragments were merely chipped or flaked to an edge, is called the palaeolithic.