[22] It is a curious fact that these Ascidians possess a heart and a circulation, but that after the heart has beaten a certain number of times it stops, and then beats the opposite way, so as to reverse the circulation. (Lay Sermons, p. 95.) In what stage of its progress did it so degenerate as to lose this remarkable power?
[23] Darwin, "Descent of Man," i. 22.[176]
[24] There is something of this in animals just as, on the other hand, man is not altogether devoid of instincts. I should have expected this from the teaching of the first chapter of Genesis, which represents men not as a distinct creation but as the last act of creation.
[25] Physically the monkey is man's superior. Anatomists assure us that they can find no very great difference between his brain and ours. His larynx also is as well fitted as ours to produce articulate sounds. So far we are equal. But he has four hands, and we have but two. Read Sir C. Bell's "Bridgewater Treatise upon the Hand," and you will see at once that a vast superiority is implied in this. I can never believe that when, by natural and sexual selection, a creature had been attained possessed of four hands, nature could so degradate in her work as to fall back upon two. No well-bred monkey would have mated with one so deformed.[178]
[26] Lartet, quoted by Darwin, "Descent," i. 51.
[27] The body politic is in fact very much like the natural body. There is a constant waste and a constant repair. The waste may be greater than the repair—and in that case the body dwindles—but the repair may be greater than the waste, in which case there is growth, progress. In both alike real growth can only be by assimilation. The new must be taken up into the old, and become part with it. That which is losing vitality must be put away; but that which is to take its place must become one with the old. After a certain time, however, natural bodies lose their powers of assimilation, and old age and death are the result: I cannot enter into the question how far this is also the case with political bodies.[179]
[28] Animals brought into contact with man attain some small share in this power. The influence of man over domesticated animals is most remarkable. I should doubt whether a wild animal was at all capable of making such a distinction.
[29] I have taken these words from the "Vedanta Philosophy." It teaches that the apparent reality of this world is māyā, i.e., deceit, illusion, jugglery: "naught besides the One exists:" the world was made out of nothing and is nothing. "All that is real in this visible, is the God who is invisible." See Ballantyne's "Christianity compared with Hindu Philosophy," pp. xxxi-xxxvii, 43–50.
[30] It is the examination of these moral and spiritual faculties which makes it so probable that man possesses something more than a highly organised body and mental powers, which, though superior in degree, are still of the same kind as those possessed by the animals. And it should be remembered that the proof that man possesses a soul, and that the soul is immortal, is entirely independent of revelation. It is based upon the intelligent study of the facts of psychology. If, however, it is said that man does not really possess, but only seems to possess these faculties, I answer that then nature is a mere deceiver, and its works a sham: and that, consequently, all physical science would be the study of the illusive.
[31] Though we draw a distinction between the natural and the supernatural, this distinction is tenable only when we look at things from below, and not when we look at them from above. We call those processes natural of which we know or might know the secondary causes.