Two further remarks may be made before leaving this subject. The first is, that though there are difficulties in placing this known freedom as the difference between animals and men, there are as great, if not greater, difficulties in placing it anywhere else. If we say that an ape or a dog can design, the difficulty is not lessened; it is merely transferred lower down the scale. Can a jellyfish design? The momentous attribute of known freedom must begin somewhere; and it seems less difficult to place it between animals and men than anywhere else.
The second and more important point is, that our ignorance about animals is no reason for doubting what we do know about man. To do this would be most illogical. Indeed, we might as well deny that a man could see, or hear, because there are difficulties in deciding where sight and hearing commence in the scale of animal life.
(D.) Conclusion.
We may now conclude this chapter. With regard to man, it is clear that his bodily, mental, and moral attributes are quite distinct. A man may be strong in body, yet of weak intellectual power; or he may have a great intellect, yet be of weak moral character. This makes it probable that human nature consists of three parts—body, mind, and spirit; the mind corresponding to the mental reasoning part of man, and the spirit to the free moral part, the word soul being often used for either of these latter.
And the difference between animals and men is probably that the former have no spirits, but only bodies and (undeveloped) minds. All life on this planet would then form three great groups—vegetation, consisting of matter alone; animals, of matter and mind; man, of matter, mind, and spirit. And from this it seems to follow that while a man's body may (conceivably) have been evolved from any other form of matter, and his mind from any other form of mind, yet his spirit is essentially distinct, and cannot have been evolved from anything else.
Moreover, as a man's body and mind are both (to some extent) under the known control of his free will, or spirit, this latter must be looked upon as his real self. Thus he is not, strictly speaking, an organism at all, but a free being served by organs both of body and mind. They are his; they do not constitute him. He is the personal being, who controls both. In other words man is a spirit, and has a body and mind.
And our present conclusion is quite plain. We have shown that man is a free being, his freedom distinguishing him from natural forces, and making him in part supernatural. And he is a responsible being, his responsibility being due to his known freedom, and distinguishing him from animals. He has thus a unique position. Nothing else on this planet resembles him, and in his attribute of known freedom which enables him to design, and makes him a personal being, he resembles God alone.