Of course, if it can be demonstrated that that difference which Mr. Wallace asserts really exists, it is plain that we then have to do with facts not only harmonizing with religion, but, as it were, preaching and proclaiming it.
It is not, however, necessary for Christianity that any such view should prevail. Man, according to the old scholastic definition, is "a rational animal" (animal rationale), and his animality is distinct in nature from his rationality, though inseparably joined, during life, in one common personality. This animal body must have had a different source from that of the spiritual soul which informs it, from the distinctness of the two orders to which those two existences severally belong.
Scripture seems plainly to indicate this when it says that "God made man from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This is a plain and direct statement that man's body was not created in the primary and absolute sense of the word, but was evolved from pre-existing material (symbolized by the term "dust of the earth"), and was therefore only derivatively created, i.e. by the operation of secondary laws. His soul, on the other hand, was created in quite a different way, not by any pre-existing means, external to God himself, but by the direct action of the Almighty, symbolized by the term "breathing:" the very form adopted by Christ, when conferring the supernatural powers and graces of the Christian dispensation, and a form still daily used in the rites and ceremonies of the Church.
That the first man should have had this double origin agrees with what we now experience. For supposing each human soul to be directly and immediately created, yet each human body is evolved by the ordinary operation of natural physical laws.
Professor Flower in his Introductory Lecture[[306]] (p. 20) to his course of Hunterian Lectures for 1870 well observes: "Whatever man's place may be, either in or out of nature, whatever hopes, or fears or feelings about himself or his race he may have, we all of us admit that these are quite uninfluenced by our knowledge of the fact that each individual man comes into the world by the ordinary processes of generation, according to the same laws which apply to the development of all organic beings whatever, that every part of him which can come under the scrutiny of the anatomist or naturalist, has been evolved according to these regular laws from a simple minute ovum, indistinguishable to our senses from that of any of the inferior animals. If this be so—if man is what he is, notwithstanding the corporeal mode of origin of the individual man, so he will assuredly be neither less nor more than man, whatever may be shown regarding the corporeal origin of the whole race, whether this was from the dust of the earth, or by the modification of some pre-existing animal form."
Man is indeed compound, in him two distinct orders of being impinge and mingle; and with this an origin from two concurrent modes of action is congruous, and might be expected a priori. At the same time as the "soul" is "the form of the body," the former might be expected to modify the latter into a structure of harmony and beauty standing alone in the organic world of nature. Also that, with the full perfection and beauty of that soul, attained by the concurrent action of "Nature" and "Grace," a character would be formed like nothing else which is visible in this world, and having a mode of action different, inasmuch as complementary to all inferior modes of action.
Something of this is evident even to those who approach the subject from the point of view of physical science only. Thus Mr. Wallace observes,[[307]] that on his view man is to be placed
"apart, as not only the head and culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in some degree a new and distinct order of being.[[308]] From those infinitely remote ages when the first rudiments of organic life appeared upon the earth, every plant and every animal has been subject to one great law of physical change. As the earth has gone through its grand cycles of geological, climatal, and organic progress, every form of life has been subject to its irresistible action, and has been continually but imperceptibly moulded into such new shapes as would preserve their harmony with the ever-changing universe. No living thing could escape this law of its being; none (except, perhaps, the simplest and most rudimentary organisms) could remain unchanged and live amid the universal change around it."
"At length, however, there came into existence a being in whom that subtle force we term mind, became of greater importance than his mere bodily structure. Though with a naked and unprotected body, this gave him clothing against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to compete with the deer in swiftness, or with the wild bull in strength, this gave him weapons with which to capture or overcome both. Though less capable than most other animals of living on the herbs and the fruits that unaided nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern and direct nature to his own benefit, and make her produce food for him when and where he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering; when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase; when fire was first used to cook his food; when the first seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the earth's history had had no parallel, for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe, a being who was in some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep