This intelligence, however, Mr. Murphy considers may be unconscious, a conception which it is exceedingly difficult to understand, and which to many minds appears to be little less than a contradiction in terms; the very first condition of an intelligence being that, if it knows anything, it should at least know its own existence.
Surely the evidence from physical facts agrees well with the overruling, concurrent action of God in the order of nature; which is no miraculous action, but the operation of laws which owe their foundation, institution, and maintenance to an omniscient Creator of whose intelligence our own is a feeble adumbration, inasmuch as it is created in the "image and likeness" of its Maker.
This leads to the final consideration, a difficulty by no means to be passed over in silence, namely the Origin of Man. To the general theory of Evolution, and to the special Darwinian form of it, no exception, it has been shown, need be taken on the ground of orthodoxy. But in saying this, it has not been meant to include the soul of man.
It is a generally received doctrine that the soul of every individual man is absolutely created in the strict and primary sense of the word, that it is produced by a direct or supernatural[[298]] act, and, of course, that by such an act the soul of the first man was similarly created. It is therefore important to inquire whether "evolution" conflicts with this doctrine.
Now the two beliefs are in fact perfectly compatible, and that either on the hypothesis—1. That man's body was created in a manner different in kind from that by which the bodies of other animals were created; or 2. That it was created in a similar manner to theirs.
One of the authors of the Darwinian theory, indeed, contends
that even as regards man's body, an action took place different from that by which brute forms were evolved. Mr. Wallace[[299]] considers that "Natural Selection" alone could not have produced so large a brain in the savage, in possessing which he is furnished with an organ beyond his needs. Also that it could not have produced that peculiar distribution of hair, especially the nakedness of the back, which is common to all races of men, nor the peculiar construction of the feet and hands. He says,[[300]] after speaking of the prehensile foot, common without a single exception to all the apes and lemurs, "It is difficult to see why the prehensile power should have been taken away" by the mere operation of Natural Selection. "It must certainly have been useful in climbing, and the case of the baboons shows that it is quite compatible with terrestrial locomotion. It may not be compatible with perfectly easy erect locomotion; but, then, how can we conceive that early man, as an animal, gained anything by purely erect locomotion? Again, the hand of man contains latent capacities and powers which are unused by savages, and must have been even less used by palæolithic man and his still ruder predecessors. It has all the appearance of an organ prepared for the use of civilized man, and one which was required to render civilization possible." Again speaking of the "wonderful power, range, flexibility, and sweetness of the musical sounds producible by the human larynx," he adds, "The habits of savages give no indication of how this faculty could have been developed by Natural Selection; because it is never required or used by them. The singing of savages is a more or less monotonous howling, and the females seldom sing at all. Savages certainly never choose their wives for fine voices, but for rude health, and strength and physical beauty. Sexual selection could not therefore have developed this wonderful power, which only comes into play among civilized people. It seems as if the organ had been prepared in anticipation of the future
progress of man, since it contains latent capacities which are useless to him in his earlier condition. The delicate correlations of structure that give it such marvellous powers, could not therefore have been acquired by means of Natural Selection."
To this may be added the no less wonderful faculty in the ear of appreciating delicate musical tones, and the harmony of chords.