The Story of the Earth and Man

by Sir John William Dawson

It is also worthy of mention that the existence of primitive man as a savage hunter is, in another point of view, absolutely opposed to the Darwinian idea of his origin from a frugivorous ape. These creatures, while comparatively inoffensive, conform to the general law of lower animals in having strong jaws and powerful canines for defence, hand-like feet to aid them in securing food, and escaping from their enemies, and hairy clothing to protect them from cold and heat. On the hypothesis of evolution we might conceive that if these creatures were placed in some Eden of genial warmth, peace, and plenty, which rendered those appliances unnecessary, they might gradually lose these now valuable structures, from want of necessity, to use them. But, on the contrary, if such creatures were obliged to contend against powerful enemies, and to feed on flesh, all analogy would lead us to believe that they would become in their structures more like carnivorous beasts than men. On the other hand, the anthropoid apes, in the circumstances in which we find them, are not only as unprogressive as other animals, but little fitted to extend their range, and less gifted with the power of adapting themselves to new conditions than many other mammals less resembling man in external form.

On the Darwinian theory, such primitive men as geology reveals to us would be more likely to have originated from bears than apes, and we would be tempted to wish that man should become extinct, and that the chance should be given to the mild chimpanzee or orang to produce by natural selection an improved and less ferocious humanity for the future.

The only rational hypothesis of human origin in the present state of our knowledge of this subject is, that man must have been produced under some circumstances in which animal food was not necessary to him, in which he was exempt from the attacks of the more formidable animals, and in less need of protection from the inclemency of the weather than is the case with any modern apes; and that his life as a hunter and warrior began after he had by his knowledge and skill secured to himself the means of subduing nature by force and cunning. This implies that man was from the first a rational being, capable of understanding nature, and it accords much more nearly with the old story of Eden in the book of Genesis, than with any modern theories of evolution.

It is due to Mr. Wallace—who, next to Darwin, has been a leader among English derivationists—to state that he perceives this difficulty. As a believer in natural selection, however, it presents itself to his mind in a peculiar form. He perceives that so soon as, by the process of evolution, man became a rational creature, and acquired his social sympathies, physical evolution must cease, and must be replaced by invention, contrivance, and social organisation. This is at once obvious and undeniable, and it follows that the natural selection applicable to man, as man, must relate purely to his mental and moral improvement. Wallace, however, fails to comprehend the full significance of this feature of the case. Given, a man destitute of clothing, he may never acquire such clothing by natural selection, because he will provide an artificial substitute. He will evolve not into a hairy animal, but into a weaver and a tailor. Given, a man destitute of claws and fangs, he will not acquire these, but will manufacture weapons. But then, on the hypothesis of derivation, this is not what is given us as the raw material of man, but instead of this a hairy ape. Admitting the power of natural selection, we might understand how this ape could become more hairy, or acquire more formidable weapons, as it became more exposed to cold, or more under the necessity of using animal food; but that it should of itself leave this natural line of development and enter on the entirely different line of mental progress is not conceivable, except as a result of creative intervention.

Absolute materialists may make light of this difficulty, and may hold that this would imply merely a change of brain; but even if we admit this, they fail to show of what use such better brain would be to a creature retaining the bodily form and instincts of the ape, or how such better brain could be acquired. But evolutionists are not necessarily absolute materialists, and Darwin himself labours to show that the reasoning self-conscious mind, and even the moral sentiments of man, might be evolved from rudiments of such powers, perceptible in the lower animals. Here, however, he leaves the court of natural science, properly so called, and summons us to appear before the judgment-seat of philosophy; and as naturalists are often bad mental philosophers, and philosophers have often small knowledge of nature, some advantage results, in the first instance, to the doubtful cause of evolution. Since, however, mental science makes much more of the distinctions between the mind of man and the instinct of animals than naturalists, accustomed to deal merely with the external organism, can be expected to do, the derivationist, when his plea is fairly understood, is quite as certain to lose his cause as when tried by geology and zoology. He might indeed be left to be dealt with by mental science on its own ground; and as our province is to look at the matter from the standpoint of natural history, we might here close our inquiry. It may, however, be proper to give some slight notion of the width of the gulf to be passed when we suppose the mechanical, unconscious, repetitive nature of the animal to pass over into the condition of an intellectual and moral being.

If we take, as the most favourable case for the evolutionist, the most sagacious of the lower animals—the dog, for example—and compare it with the least elevated condition of the human mind, as observed in the child or the savage, we shall find that even here there is something more than that “immense difference in degree” which Darwin himself admits. Making every allowance for similarities in external sense, in certain instinctive powers and appetites; and even in the power of comparison, and in certain passions and affections; and admitting, though we cannot be quite certain of this, that in these man differs from animals only in degree; there remain other and more important differences, amounting to the possession, on the parfc of man, of powers not existing at all in animals. Of this kind are—first, the faculty of reaching abstract and general truth, ind consequently of reasoning, in the proper sense of the term; secondly, in connection with this, the power of indefinite increase in knowledge, and in deductions therefrom leading to practical results; thirdly, the power of expressing thought in speech; fourthly, the power of arriving at ideas of right and wrong, and thus becoming a responsible and free agent. Lastly, we have the conception of higher spiritual intelligence, of supreme power and divinity, and the consequent feeling of religious obligation. These powers are evidently different in kind, rather than in degree, from those of the brute, and cannot be conceived to have arisen from the latter, more especially as one of the distinctive characters of these is their purely cyclical, repetitive, and unprogressive nature.

Sir John Lubbock has, by a great accumulation of facts, or supposed facts, bearing on the low mental condition of savages, endeavoured to bridge over this chasm. It is obvious, however, from his own data, that the rudest savages are enabled to subsist only by the exercise of intellectual gifts far higher than those of animals; and that if these gifts were removed from them, they would inevitably perish. It is equally clear that even the lowest savages are moral agents; and that not merely in their religious beliefs and conceptions of good and evil, but also in their moral degradation, they show capacities not possessed by the brutes. It is also true that most of these savages are quite as little likely to be specimens of primitive man as are the higher races; and that many of them have fallen to so low a level as to be scarcely capable, of themselves, of rising to a condition of culture and civilisation. Thus they are more likely to be degraded races, in “the eddy and backwater of humanity” than examples of the sources from whence it flowed. And here it must not be lost sight of, that a being like man has capacities for degradation commensurate with his capacities for improvement; and that at any point of his history we may have to seek the analogues of primeval man, rather in the average, than the extremes of the race.

Before leaving this subject, it may be well to consider the fact, that the occurrence of such a being as man in the last stages of the world’s history is, in itself, an argument for the existence of a Supreme Creator. Man is himself an image and likeness of God; and the fact that he can establish relations with nature around him, so as to understand and control its powers, implies either that he has been evolved as a soul of nature, by its own blind development, or that he has originated in the action of a higher being related to man. The former supposition has been above shown to be altogether improbable; so that we are necessarily thrown back upon the latter. We must thus regard man himself as the highest known work of a spiritual creator, and must infer that he rightly uses his reason when he infers from nature the power and divinity of God.

The last point that I think necessary to bring forward here, is the information which geology gives as to the locality of the introduction of man. There can be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate regions of the old continent belongs the honour of being the cradle of humanity. In these regions are the oldest historical monuments of our race; here geology finds the most ancient remains of human beings; here also seems to be the birthplace of the fauna and flora most useful and congenial to man; and here he attains to his highest pitch of mental and physical development. This, it is true, by no means accords with the methods of the derivationists. On their theory we should search for the origin of man rather in those regions where he is most depauperated and degraded, and where his struggles for existence are most severe. But it is surely absurd to affirm of any species of animal or plant that it must have originated at the limits of its range, where it can scarcely exist at all. On the contrary, common sense as well as science requires us to believe that species must have originated in those central parts of their distribution where they enjoy the most favourable circumstances, and must have extended themselves thence as far as external conditions would permit. One of the most wretched varieties of the human race, and as near as any to the brutes, is that which inhabits Tierra del Fuego, a country which scarcely affords any of the means for the comfortable sustenance of man. Would it not be absolutely impossible that man should have originated in such a country? Is it not certain, en the contrary, that the Fuegian is merely a degraded variety of the aboriginal American race? Precisely the same argument applies to the Austral negro and the Hottentot. They are all naturally the most aberrant varieties of man, as being at the extreme range of his possible extension, and placed in conditions unfavourable, either because of unsuitable climatal or organic associations. It is true that the regions most favourable to the anthropoid apes, and in which they may be presumed to have originated, are by no means the most favourable to man; but this only makes it the less likely that man could have been derived from such a parentage.