Was Man Created?

by Henry A. Mott

Fig. I.

Fig. I.—The Monkey Men of Dourga Strait. (Natural History, by Rev. Dr. Wood.)

To God then, in strict accordance with our reason, is to be attributed not only the origination of matter, but all its future developments. When I speak of matter, it must be understood that I mean force; for "if matter were not force, and immediately known as force, it could not be known at all, could not be rationally inferred. The operation of force could furnish no evidence of the existence of forceless matter. If force is not matter, then force can exist and operate without matter; its existence and operation are no evidence of the existence of matter. And as matter is forceless, it can itself give no evidence of its own existence, for that would be an exercise of force. If force cannot exist and operate without matter, then force depends for its existence and operation on the forceless, which destroys itself; or force depends for its existence on matter as some property or force, and so matter and force are identified, and force depends on itself only, as it must."[30] The idea, then, that force is an attribute of matter and inherent in it, is absurd, for there is not a shadow of evidence that force is or can be an attribute of matter. We have no knowledge of the origin of any force save of that which emanates from human volition. All our knowledge of force presents it as an effort of intelligent will. "We are driven," says Winchell, "by the necessary laws of thought, to pronounce those energies styled gravitation, heat, chemical affinity and their correlates, nothing less than intelligent will. But as it is not human will which energizes in whirlwind and the comet, it must be divine will." "In all cases, the creative power of God is an act of power, and the power does not perish with its inception, but continues to operate until the act is reversed and undone; so that everything that God has created constitutes a positive and intrinsic force, though borrowed from Him. Every incident runs back to God as its originator and real cause. The true philosophical doctrine makes God distinct from all his works, and yet acting in them. This doctrine has been held by the greatest thinkers the world has ever produced, such as Descartes, Lerbrisky, Berkeley, Herschel, Faraday, and a multitude of others." "It seems to be required," says Dr. McCosh, "by that deep law of causation which not only prompts us to seek for a law in everything but an adequate cause, to be found only in an intelligent mind." "Our greatest American thinker, Jonathan Edwards," says Dr. McCosh, (whom I can claim as my predecessor,) "maintains that, as an image in a mirror is kept up by a constant succession of rays of light, so nature is sustained by a constant forth-putting of the divine power. In this view Nature is a perpetual creation. God is to be seen not only in creation at first, but in the continuance of all things." "They continue to this day according to Thine ordinances."

Returning now to the history of the creation given by Moses, Haeckel says, "Although Moses looks upon the results of the great laws of organic development as the direct actions of a constructing Creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive development and a differentiation of the originally simple matter. We can therefore bestow our just and sincere admiration on the Jewish lawgiver's grand insight into nature, without discovering in it a so-called 'divine revelation.' That it cannot be such is clear from the fact that two great fundamental errors are asserted in it, namely, first the geocentric error, that the earth is the fixed central point of the whole universe, round which the sun, moon and stars move; and secondly, the anthropocentric error that man is the premeditated aim of the creation of the world, for whose service alone all the rest of nature is said to have been created. The former of these errors was demolished by Copernicus' System of the Universe in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the latter by Lamarck's Doctrine of Descent in the beginning of the nineteenth century."

Fig. I.		Fig. II.
Fig. I.—Australian Savage.—Orton.		Fig. II.—Skull of Orang-utan (Simia satyrus).—Orton.
Fig. III.		Fig. IV.
Fig. III.—Skull of Chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger).		Fig. IV.—Skull of Gorilla.—Duncan.
Fig. V.		Fig. VI.
Fig. V.—Skull of European.		Fig. VI.—Skull of Negro.—Orton.