While, therefore, the geological date of the appearance of man, the want of any link of connection between him and any preceding animal, and his dissimilar bodily and mental constitution from any creatures contemporary with him, render his derivation from apes or other inferior animals in the highest degree improbable, the locality of his probable origin confirms this conclusion in the strongest manner. It also shows that man and the higher apes are not likely to have originated in the same regions, or under the same conditions, and that the conditions of human origin are rather the coincidence of suitable climatal and organic surroundings than the occurrence of animals closely related in structure to man.
Changes of conditions in geological time will not meet this difficulty. They might lead to migrations, as they have done in the case of both plants and animals, but not to anything further. The hyena, whose bones are found in the English caves, has been driven by geological changes to South Africa, but he is still the same hyena. The reindeer which once roamed in France is still the reindeer in Lapland; and though under different geological conditions we might imagine the creature to have originated in the south of Europe, a country not now suitable to it, this would neither give reason to believe that any animal now living in the south of Europe was its progenitor, nor to doubt that it still remains unchanged in its new habitat. Indeed, the absence of anything more than merely varietal change in man and his companion-animals, in consequence of the geological changes and migrations of the Modern period, furnishes, as already stated, a strong if not conclusive argument against derivation; which here, as elsewhere, only increases our actual difficulties, while professing to extricate us from them.
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The arguments in the preceding pages cover only a small portion of the extensive field opened up by this subject. They relate, however, to some of the prominent and important points, and I trust are sufficient to show that, as applied to man, the theory of derivation merely trifles with the great question of his origin, without approaching to its solution. I may now, in conclusion, sketch the leading features of primitive man, as he appears to us through the mist of the intervening ages, and compare the picture with that presented by the oldest historical records of our race.
Two pictures of primeval man are in our time before the world. One represents him as the pure and happy inhabitant of an Eden, free from all the ills that have afflicted his descendants, and revelling in the bliss of a golden age. This is the representation of Holy Scripture, and it is also the dream of all the poetry and myth of the earlier ages of the world. It is a beautiful picture, whether we regard it as founded on historical fact, or derived from God Himself, or from the yearnings of the higher spiritual nature of man. The other picture is a joint product of modern philosophy and of antiquarian research. It presents to us a coarse and filthy savage, repulsive in feature, gross in habits, warring with his fellow-savages, and warring yet more remorselessly with every living thing he could destroy, tearing half-cooked flesh, and cracking marrow-bones with stone hammers, sheltering himself in damp and smoky caves, with no eye heavenward, and with only the first rude beginnings of the most important arts of life.
Both pictures may contain elements of truth, for man is a many-sided monster, made up of things apparently incongruous, and presenting here and there features out of which either picture may be composed. Evolutionists, and especially those who believe in the struggle for existence and natural selection, ignore altogether the evidence of the golden age of humanity, and refer us to the rudest of modern savages as the types of primitive man. Those who believe in a Divine origin for our race, perhaps dwell too much on the higher spiritual features of the Edenic state, to the exclusion of its more practical aspects, and its relations to the condition of the more barbarous races. Let us examine more closely both representations; and first, that of creation.
The Glacial period, with its snows and ice, had passed away, and the world rejoiced in a spring-time of renewed verdure and beauty. Many great and formidable beasts of the Tertiary time had disappeared in the revolutions which had occurred, and the existing fauna of the northern hemisphere had been established on the land. Then it was that man was introduced by an act of creative power. In the preceding changes a region of Western Asia had been prepared for his residence. It was a table-land at the head waters of the rivers that flow into the Euxine, the Caspian, and the Persian Gulf. Its climate was healthy and bracing, with enough of variety to secure vigour, and not so inclement as to exact any artificial provision for clothing or shelter. Its flora afforded abundance of edible fruits, and was rich in all the more beautiful forms of plant life; while its clear streams, alluvial soil, and undulating surface, afforded every variety of station and all that is beautiful in scenery. It was not infested with the more powerful and predacious quadrupeds, and its geographical relations were such as to render this exemption permanent. In this paradise man found ample supplies of wholesome and nutritious food. His requirements as to shelter were met by the leafy bowers he could weave. The streams of Eden afforded gold which he could fashion for use and ornament, pearly shells for vessels, and agate for his few and simple cutting instruments. He required no clothing, and knew of no use for it. His body was the perfection and archetype of the vertebrate form, full of grace, vigour, and agility. His hands enabled him to avail himself of all the products of nature for use and pleasure, and to modify and adapt them according to his inclination. His intelligence, along with his manual powers, allowed him to ascertain the properties of things, to plan, invent, and apply in a manner impossible to any other creature. His gift of speech enabled him to imitate and reduce to systematic language the sounds of nature, and to connect them with the thoughts arising in his own mind, and thus to express their relations and significance. Above all, his Maker had breathed into him a spiritual nature akin to His own, whereby he became different from all other animals, and the very shadow and likeness of God; capable of rising to abstractions and general conceptions of truth and goodness, and of holding communion with his Creator. This was man Edenic, the man of the golden age, as sketched in the two short narratives of the earlier part of Genesis, which not only conform to the general traditions of our race on the subject, but bear to any naturalist who will read them in their original dress, internal evidence of being contemporary, or very nearly so, with the state of things to which they relate.
“And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the herbivora, and over all the land.’ And God blessed them, and said unto them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’
“And the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden, eastward in Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and parted from thence, becoming four heads (of great rivers). The name of the first is Pison, compassing the whole land of Chavila, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; there is (also) pearl and agate.... And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to cultivate it and to take care of it.”
Before leaving this most ancient and most beautiful history, we may say that it implies several things of much importance to our conceptions of primeval man. It implies a centre of creation for man, and a group of companion animals and plants, and an intention to dispense in his case with any struggle for existence. It implies, also, that man was not to be a lazy savage, but a care-taker and utiliser, by his mind and his bodily labour, of the things given to him; and it also implies an intelligent submission on his part to his Maker, and spiritual appreciation of His plans and intentions. It further implies that man was, in process of time, from Eden, to colonise the earth, and subdue its wildness, so as to extend the conditions of Eden widely over its surface. Lastly, a part of the record not quoted above, but necessary to the consistency of the story, implies that, in virtue of his spiritual nature, and on certain conditions, man, though in bodily frame of the earth earthy, like the other animals, was to be exempted from the common law of mortality which had all along prevailed, and which continued to prevail, even among the animals of Eden. Further, if man fell from this condition into that of the savage of the age of stone, it must have been by the obscuration of hi s spiritual nature under that which is merely animal; in other words, by his ceasing to be spiritual and in communion with God, and becoming practically a sensual materialist. That this actually happened is asserted by the Scriptural story, but its details would take us too far from our present subject. Let us now turn to the other picture—that presented by the theory of struggle for existence and derivation from lower animals.
It introduces us first to an ape, akin perhaps to the modern orang or gorilla, but unknown to us as yet by any actual remains. This creature, after living for an indefinite time in the rich forests of the Miocene and earlier Pliocene periods, was at length subjected to the gradually increasing rigours of the Glacial age. Its vegetable food and its leafy shelter failed it, and it learned to nestle among such litter as it could collect in dens and caves, and to seize and devour such weaker animals as it could overtake and master. At the same time, its lower extremities, no longer used for climbing trees, but for walking on the ground, gained in strength and size; its arms diminished; and its development to maturity being delayed by the intensity of the struggle for existence, its brain enlarged, it became more cunning and sagacious, and even learned to use weapons of wood or stone to destroy its victims. So it gradually grew into a fierce and terrible creature, “neither beast nor human,” combining the habits of a bear and the agility of a monkey with some glimmerings of the cunning and resources of a savage.