If I here recall the hypotheses of the anthropology of all men who did not actually descend from Noah, I am far from saying that they were not descended from one couple. I have had, on the contrary, occasion to declare that, according to my views, science, in its present state, is powerless to resolve the question whether the human race is descended from one or from several sources. However, I am convinced that the differences which actually present themselves in the diverse human races have not manifested themselves since the deluge of Noah. I have said, long since, that paleontology has led me to admit that hereditary transformations are much more important than the differences which exist in the human race. At all times admitting that man has hardly suffered the transformations analogous to those described in the paleontological order, I am far from concluding that he descends from a beast. Existing observations do not disprove the distinct creation attributed by the Bible to man. The opinion of some authors, that all living beings derive their origin from a monad, is a gratuitous hypothesis, which cannot be supported by facts. Quite to the contrary, we learn, by paleontology, that all the great organic types existed in the silurian period; and, if the vertebral type had not yet been observed in the anterior deposits, this negative circumstance is considered of small importance. For it is only a short time since that the existence of organic remains in these deposits has been revealed; that these remains are very rare, and that even they differ but slightly from those of the silurian soil. Now, if the present state of observation leads us to admit that the Creator originally and distinctly formed the great types of organization, nothing authorizes us to deny that he created in a distinct manner the only being endowed with the faculty of knowing and adoring him.
On the other side, we do not see why the special origin of man is denied, even if he should have changed his form with time, as I suppose other living creatures may have done. Genesis tells us truly that God created man in his own image; but we cannot understand this phrase to signify that he himself actuated a material form. God has taken the human form under certain circumstances to communicate with man, but no one maintains that this is the normal form of an essentially spiritual being. The Bible, in speaking of the image of the Deity, scarcely alludes to the material and decomposable part of man, but always to the spiritual part; which, to be the image of God, should be endowed with immortality. But this spiritual part, which we call the soul, may have been placed in a being who had a different form to that worn by man at the present time; one more appropriate to the sphere in which he lived. Because God now permits the existence of men, who, by their brutishness, assimilate to the beasts, we see no reason for supposing that the first men had forms unsuited to the development of the faculties which characterize the civilized world of to-day.
They have also denied particular immortality to human souls in assimilating them to vital force, but this is one of those hypotheses unfounded upon any observation.
I am convinced that the life, that is to say, the vital force, or the union of forces which gives to matter the attributes characteristic of organized bodies, can be assimilated, to a certain degree, to the forces which determine physical phenomena; because the condition of its effects are more restrained, and only develop by continuation with the body with which it was originally endowed, and is not a sufficient reason for concluding that it belongs to an entirely different order of things. We see, in effect, that the order of forces presents phenomena which becomes successively less general; it is thus that attraction constantly acts upon all bodies, while there exist circumstances where affinity acts upon certain bodies; and the manifestation of electricity is due to conditions again less general. On the other side, we cannot conceive the movement of the stars without the first cause of impulsion, any more than we can conceive the birth of a living being without the intervention of a pre-existing cause; we cannot give to these connections any consequence contrary to the dogma of the immortality of the soul. Nor can science decide whether physical phenomena are owing to diverse forces, or to a single force that manifests itself in various ways; neither resolve the question whether life is composed of an individual force or the union of many. It is certain that vegetable life, a term which we consider applicable to all living things, is something different from animal life, a term applied to all sensible beings. It is contended no longer that man has attributes not possessed by beasts. Now we see nothing in physiology which opposes itself to these aptitudes being determined by a particular force named the soul, and that this force be endowed with immortality; that is to say, the power of preserving eternally its individuality after separation from the matter which it once animated.
Although I am unfamiliar with physiological studies, I will add that these considerations compel me to say that I have no right to apply the name of soul to that force which animates beasts; not that I wish to rob certain animals of the faculties which they enjoy, but whatever may be the intelligence or social capacity with which these animals are endowed, they cannot pretend to perform the rôle that man maintains upon earth. And neither physiology nor the sacred writings lead us to believe that the force which animates beasts should be endowed with immortality. I can only avow that the birth, the existence, and the death of an animal are but the manifestation of a vital force determined by particular circumstances, as lightning and thunder are but the manifestations of electricity.
Again, according to my views, a religious sense has hardly been given to the admission or the rejection of a human kingdom, a question frequently agitated in these modern times. In fact, the division of natural bodies into three kingdoms, with their inferior subdivisions, has only been made to facilitate the knowledge of these beings, and to designate by name the different groups of which we would speak. We cannot deny that by the mineral, the animal, and the vegetable kingdoms we understand three divisions, which include all bodies on the terrestrial globe; and that each one has common attributes which are not found in the two others; it follows that, when we admit a human kingdom, we have no term to designate the class of beings possessing the attributes which distinguish man and the beasts from the two other kingdoms. This consideration causes me to reject the human kingdom, without always classing man in the animal; the enlargement of the vertebrae and the mammiferous class appear to me to oppose themselves in another order of ideas; we must, therefore, believe that man is endowed with a soul enjoying attributes different from the force which animates beasts.
In conclusion, I do not hesitate to say that there exists in my mind no real opposition between our religious belief and the demonstrations afforded by the present state of the natural sciences.