[Footnote 186: Primeval Man. An Examination of some Recent Speculations. By the Duke of Argyll. New York: Routledge & Sons. 1869. 16mo, pp. 210.]
There are few more active or able members of the English House of Lords or of the British ministry than the Scottish Duke of Argyll, and, if we could forget the treason to the Stuarts and the Scottish nation of some of his ancestors, there are few scholars and scientific men in the United Kingdom whom we should be disposed to treat with greater respect. He is at once a statesman, a scientist, and a theologian; and in all three capacities has labored earnestly to serve his country and civilization. In politics, he is, of course, a whig, or, as is now said, a liberal; as a theologian, he belongs to the Kirk of Scotland, and may be regarded as a Calvinist; as a man of science, his aim appears to be to assert the freedom and independence of science, without compromising religion. His work on the Reign of Law, reviewed and sharply criticised in this magazine for February, 1868, was designed to combat the atheistic tendencies of modern scientific theories, by asserting final causes, and resolving the natural laws of the physicists into the direct and immediate will of God.
In the present work, quite too brief and sketchy, he treats of the primeval man, and maintains man's origin in the creative act of God, against the developmentists and natural selectionists, which is well, as far as it goes. He treats, also, of the antiquity of man, and of his primeval condition. He appears disposed to allow man a higher antiquity than we think the facts in the case warrant; but, though he dissents, to some extent, from the theory of the late Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, we find him combating with great success the savage theory of Sir John Lubbock, who maintains that man began in the lowest form of barbarism in which he can subsist as man, and has risen to his present state of civilization by his own spontaneous and unassisted efforts—a theory just now very generally adopted in the non-Catholic world, and assumed as the basis of the modern doctrine of progress—the absurdest doctrine that ever gained currency among educated men.
The noble duke very properly denies the origin of species in development, and the production of new species by "natural selection," as Darwin holds, and acceded to by Sir Charles Lyell and an able writer in The Quarterly for last April. The duke maintains that man was created man, not developed from a lower species, from the tadpole or monkey. But, while he asserts the origin of species in the creative act of God, he supposes God supplies extinct species by creating new species by successive creative acts; thus losing the unity of the creative act, placing multiplicity in the origin of things, and favoring that very atheistical tendency he aims to war against. His Reign of Law, though well-intended, and highly praised by our amiable friend, M. Augustin Cochin, of Le Correspondant, showed us that the noble author has failed both in his theology and philosophy. In resolving the natural laws into the will of God enforcing itself by power, he fails to recognize any distinction between first cause and second cause, and, therefore, between the natural and the supernatural. God does all, not only as first cause, or causa eminens, as say the theologians, but as the direct and immediate actor, which, of course, is pantheism, itself only a form of atheism. Yet we know not that his grace could have done better, with Calvinism for his theology, and the Scottish school, as finished by Sir William Hamilton, for his philosophy. To have thoroughly refuted the theories against which he honorably protests, he must have known Catholic theology, and the Christian view of the creative act.
We have no disposition, at present, to discuss the antiquity either of man or the globe. If the fact that God, in the beginning, created heaven and earth, and all things therein, visible and invisible, is admitted and maintained, we know not that we need, in the interest of orthodoxy, quarrel about the date when it was done. Time began with the externization of the divine creative act, and the universe has no relation beyond itself, except the relation of the creature to the creator. Considering the late date of the Incarnation, we are not disposed to assign man a very high antiquity, and no geological or historical facts are, as yet, established that require it for their explanation. We place little confidence in the hasty inductions of geologists.
But the primitive condition of man has for us a deeper interest; and we follow the noble duke with pleasure in his able refutation of the savage theory of Sir J. Lubbock. Sir John evidently holds the theory of development, and that man has been developed from a lower species. He assumes that his primitive human state was the lowest form of barbarism in which he can subsist as man. With regard to man's development from lower animals, it is enough to say that development cannot take place except where there are living germs to be developed, and can only unfold and bring out what is contained in them. But we find in man, even in the lowest form of savage life, elements, language or articulate speech, for instance, of which there are no germs to be found in the animal kingdom. We may dismiss that theory and assume at once that man was created, and created man. But was his condition in his primitive state that of the lowest form of barbarism? Is the savage the primitive man, or the degenerate man? The former is assumed in almost every scientific work we meet; it is defended by all the advocates of the modern doctrine that man is naturally progressive. Saint-Simon, in his Nouveau Christianisme, asserts that paradise is before us, not behind us; and even some who accept the Biblical history have advanced so little in harmonizing their faith with what they call their science, that they do not hesitate to suppose that man began his career, at least after the prevarication of Adam, in downright savagism. Even the learned Döllinger so far falls in with the modern theory as to make polished gentilism originate in disgusting fetichism.
The noble duke sufficiently refutes the theory of Sir John Lubbock, but does not seem to us to have fully grasped and refuted the assumptions on which it is founded. "His two main lines of argument," he says, (page 5,) "connect themselves with the two following propositions, which he undertakes to prove, First, that there are indications of progress even among savages; and second, that among civilized nations there are traces of barbarism."
The first proposition is not proved or provable. The characteristic of the savage is to be unprogressive. Some tribes may be more or less degraded than others. The American Indian ranks above the New Hollander; but, whether more or less degraded, we never find savages lifting themselves by their own efforts into even a comparatively civilized state. Niebuhr says there is no instance on record of a savage tribe having become a civilized people by its own spontaneous efforts; and Heeren remarks that the description of the tribes eastward of the Persian Gulf along the borders of the Indian Ocean, by the companions of Alexander, applies perfectly to them as we now find them. No germs of civilized life are to be found among them, or, if so, they are dead, not living germs, incapable of development. The savage is a thorough routinist, the slave of petrified customs and usages. He shows often great skill in constructing and managing his canoe, in making and ornamenting his bow or his war-club; but one generation never advances on its predecessor, and the new generation only reproduces the old. All the arts the savage has have come, as his ideas, to a stand-still. He is stern, sad, gloomy, as if oppressed by memory, and exhibits none of the joyousness or frolicsomeness which we might expect from his fresh young life, if he represented the infancy or childhood of the race, as pretended.
Even in what are called civilized heathen nations we find a continual deterioration, but no indication of progress in civilization, or in those elements which distinguish civilized from barbaric or savage life. Culture and polish may be the concomitants of civilization, but do not constitute it. The generations that built the pyramids, Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, Rome, were superior to any of their successors. No subsequent Greek poet ever came up to Homer, and the oldest of the Vedas surpass the powers of the Indian people in any generation more recent than that which produced them. The Chinese cannot to-day produce new works to compare with those of Confucius. Where now are the once renowned nations of antiquity whose ships ploughed every sea, and whose armies made the earth tremble with their tread? Fallen, all have fallen, and remain only in their ruins, and the page of the historian or song of the bard. If these nations, so great and powerful, with many elements of a strong civilization, could not sustain themselves from falling into barbarism, how pretend that the lowest and most degraded savages can, without any foreign assistance, lift themselves into a civilized state?