"No? Then no wonder you are dissatisfied. Your mind is evidently seeking for truth. Nothing but the great truth can satisfy it. Study dispassionately the evidences of the truth of the great Mosaic history. Contemplate the grand position of our first father, Adam, receiving instruction from God himself concerning the mighty mysteries of creation, not only of matter and of material forms, but of bright intelligences created to glorify and adorn the court of heaven, and who fell from their sublime position. Study man first, fresh in perfection from the hand of God, living as the friend of God, communing with his Maker in the garden of Eden. Appointed by him to rule o'er all inferior nature, the entitled Lord of the Creation, the master of animal existences, and superior in his own person to much of material influence. Think what it must have been to walk with God, and have divine knowledge infused into his soul, as also all such material science as would befit the founder of a mighty race to transmit to his offspring, over whom he was to reign as prince, father, priest, and teacher; and then consider what it must have been to find suddenly that source of knowledge dried up, the door of communication closed, power weakened, intuitions dimmed, and labor imposed as the price alike of happiness, knowledge, and of that supernatural communication which had been man's best and highest privilege: the solution of these problems will give you the key to many difficulties which perplex you."
"There are modern theories which agree not with these premises," said Eugene. "These trace man from the savage upward."
"Yes,' said M. Bertolot, "the mutum et turpe pecus [Footnote 36] of Horace has found, if not admirers, yet professed believers in this age.
[Footnote 36: Dumb and filthy herd.]
A theory contrary to analogy, to evidence alike of history and tradition, has been assumed, and wondrously has found asserters too. All mere animals are observed to be born complete—their instincts, their organization serve but the individual; and though accident may train an individual to feats beyond his fellows, yet there is no appearance of new organs being formed to be transmitted to its race. Now, these modern progressionists, who go back to the time
'When wild in woods the Noble Savage ran,'
deprive man of his soul, assimilate him to the brutes to make him perform what brute nature never did perform, namely, create faculty. Men have lives to laugh at the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, but methinks the doctrine of the progression to bodily beauty from monkeys without tails; of barbarians to civilized man without aid, is to the full as absurd; to say nothing of that comprehensive power of contemplation which enabled Newton to demonstrate the order of the universe, it would be very difficult to understand how abstract ideas could be latent in the soul of a monkey waiting development. Besides, by the theory of progression, during the time of which we have record, say six thousand years, men should be steadily on the improve—both as to arts, science, moral government, legal government, self-government, and bodily development; but we do not find it so. The ruins of Babylon, of Thebes, and of other great cities built soon after the flood, attest architectural skill among the ancients such as is hardly aimed at no. Callisthenes found astronomical tables reaching as far back as within a few years of the deluge, in the Temple of Belus, when he accompanied Alexander the Great on his expedition to the East. And many arts have been lost altogether that were well known to the ancients. The half-barbarian Copt erecting his hut amid the fallen pillars and statuary of ancient Thebes, the Mameluke riding recklessly and savagely amid the pyramids, that still remain to puzzle the assertor of progression even with the mere mechanical difficulties of the machinery used for [{179}] raising such immense stones to such a height and in such a plain, so distant from any known quarries. These are hut poor indications of the race advancing, though individual nations, worked on by a regenerative influence, may appear to make, nay do make, great improvements in all respects."
"Do you, then, think that man's tendency is to degenerate?" asked Eugene.
"Not necessarily, by any means," replied M. Bertolot; "but in proportion as he departs from the centre of unity, from the truths once imprinted on the soul of Adam, thence to be transmitted for human guidance, it will, I think, be found so."
"But," said Eugene, "is Adam's religion yours? Surely he was not a Christian."