Was Man Created?

by Henry A. Mott

Fig. I.

Fig. I.—Photographically reduced from diagrams of the natural size (except that of the Gibbon, which was twice as large as nature), drawn by Waterhouse Hawkins, from specimens in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. (Huxley's "Man's Place in Nature.")

If, therefore, science makes the "history of creation" its highest and most difficult and most comprehensible problem, it must deal with "the coming into being of the form of natural bodies." Let us look for a minute at Kant's Cosmogony, or, as Haeckel says,[27] Kant's Cosmological Gas Theory: "This wonderful theory," says Haeckel, "harmonizes with all the general series of phenomena at present known to us, and stands in no irreconcilable contradiction to any one of them. Moreover, it is purely mechanical and monistic, makes use exclusively of the inherent forces of eternal matter, and entirely excludes every supernatural process, every prearranged and conscious action of a personal creator." Compare this last statement with the following: "I will, however," says Haeckel,[28] "not deny that Kant's grand cosmogony has some weak points." * * * "A great unsolved difficulty lies in the fact that the cosmological gas theory furnishes no starting-point at all in explanation of the first impulse which caused the rotary motion in the gas-filled universe."

Whewell[29] has pointed out, that the nebular hypothesis is null without a creative act to produce the inequality of distribution of cosmic matter in space.

It is seen, then, that according to Kant's theory we are to suppose that millions of years ago there appeared a nebulous mass possessing a rotary motion, and unequally distributed through space. This is what science calls a beginning, and may assert that every physical event of a hundred million of ages existed potentially in that nebulous mass. But this is really no explanation of the ultimate and real cause of anything. Reason demands the cause of this beginning, the source that gave to the nebulous mass its rotary motion; the power that distributed the matter in space; the antecedents of the cosmical vapor. In absence of antecedents, what was the cause of this fire-mist—of these forces active in it? Reason will never remain satisfied until these questions are answered. But physical science can trace the thread no further back, and must be dumb to all ulterior inquiries. It is true, then, as physicists assert, "that their science does not mount actually to God."

Fig. I.	Fig. II.	Fig. III.
Fig. I.—Represents Man-like Apes (Anthropoides). The Male Gorilla. (Natural History, by Duncan.)	Fig. II.—Represents Ape-like Men (Pithecanthropi). Imaginative. (From Scientific American.)	Fig. III.—Men (Homines). From Woolly-haired Men developed the Papuans. (Scientific American, March 11, 1876.)