Creation and Its Records Part 6

[Footnote 1: July, 1885, p. 211, in the course of the article to which I have already alluded.]

On the other hand, some writers (claiming to derive their argument from the Scriptures) have supposed they could a.s.sert three distinct natures in man--a spiritual, a mental (or psychic), and a bodily. Now there is no doubt that, rightly or wrongly (I am not now concerned with that), the Bible does distinctly a.s.sert that a "breath of lives" [1] was specially put into the bodily form of man, and adds that thereby "man became a living soul." But it is also stated of the animal creation that the breath of life was given to them,[2] and animals are said to have a "soul" (nephesh).[3] So that neither in the one case nor the other have we more than the two elements: a body, and a life put into it; though of course the man's "life" (as the plural indicates, and other texts explain) was higher in kind than that of the animal.

[Footnote 1: The plural of excellence appears to mark something superior in the spirit of man over that of the animals. Also compare Job x.x.xiii.

4, "The breath of the Almighty hath given me life," with Isa. xlii. 5 and Zech. xii. 1.]

[Footnote 2: Though not in the plural of excellence. See Gen. vi 17, vii. 22, &c.]

[Footnote 3: Gen. i. 20, margin of A.V.]

St. Paul, it is true, speaks of the "whole spirit, and soul, and body.[1]" But our Lord Himself, in a very solemn pa.s.sage (where it would be most natural to expect the distinction, if it were absolute and structural, to be noticed), speaks of the "soul and body" only.[2]

The fact is that we are only able to argue conclusively that, besides the physical form, we have a non-material soul, or a self. And our Lord, whose teaching was always eminently practical, went no further. We are conscious of a "self"--something that remains, while the body continually grows and changes.

There was in _Punch_, some time ago, a picture of an old grandfather, with a little child looking at a marble bust representing a child. "Who is that?" asks the little one; and the old man replies, "That is grandfather when he was a little boy." "And who is it now?" rejoins the child. One smiles at the picture, but in reality it conceals a very important and a very pathetic truth. Nothing could well be greater than the outward difference between the grey hairs and bowed figure and the little cherub face; and yet there was a "self"--a soul, that remained the same throughout. In Platonic language, while the [Greek: eidolon]

perpetually changes, the [Greek: eidos] remains. We have, therefore, evidence as positive as the nature of the subject admits that we are right in speaking of the _body and the soul, or self_. And as we cannot connect the higher reasoning, and, above all, conscience and the religious belief, as a "property" of physical structure, we conclude that the Scripture only a.s.serts facts when it attributes both to the soul, as a spiritual element or nature belonging to the body. Man is essentially one;[3] but there is both a material and a non-material, a physical and a spiritual element, in the one nature. But, being a spiritual element, that part of our nature necessarily has two sides (so to speak). It has its point of contact with self and the world of sense, and its point of contact with the world of spirit and with the Great Spirit of all, from whom it came. _Because_ of that higher "breath of lives" given by the Most High, man possesses the faculty of _consciousness of G.o.d_ (i.e., the higher spiritual faculties), besides the consciousness of self, or merely intellectual power regarding self and the external world. Therefore, when an Apostle desires to speak very forcibly of something that is to affect a man through and through, in every part and in every aspect of his nature, he speaks of the "whole spirit, soul, and body." To sum up: all that we know from the Bible is that G.o.d gave a "soul" (nephesh) to the animals, in consequence of which (when united to the physical structure) the functions of life and the phenomena of intelligence are manifested. So G.o.d gave a non-material, and therefore "spiritual," element to human nature; and this being of a higher grade and capacity to that of the animal world, not only in its union with physical structure, makes the man a "living soul"--gives him an intelligence and a certain reason such as the animals have, but also gives him, as a special and unique endowment; the consciousness of self (involving--which is very noteworthy--a consciousness of its own limitations) and the consciousness of G.o.d. Hence man's power of improvement. If the man cultivates only the self-consciousness and the reason that is with it, the Scriptures speak of him as the "natural or psychic man;" if he is enabled by Divine grace to develop the higher moral and spiritual part of his nature, and to walk after the Spirit, not after the flesh, he is a "spiritual man."

[Footnote 1: 1 Thess. v. 23.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 28.]

[Footnote 3: The well-known argument of St. Paul regarding the resurrection in 1 Cor. xv. (ver. 45, &c.) is well worthy of consideration in this connection. He deals with man as _one whole_; nothing is said about a man being (or having) a spirit separate from his soul and his body, and that spirit being given a higher body than it had upon earth; but of the whole man, soul _and_ body, being raised and changed into a man, also one whole, with a more perfect body--a body more highly developed in the ascending scale of perfection. I do not forget the pa.s.sage where the same Apostle (2 Cor. v. 6) speaks of being in the body, and absent from the Lord; and of being "clothed upon;" but this does not in any way detract from the importance of the treatment of the subject in the First Epistle.]

It is idle to speculate whether the "nephesh" of the animals, or the "living self" of the man, is an ent.i.ty separate from the body, and capable of existing _per se_--of its own inherent nature--apart from it. We do not know that animal forms are the clothing of a lower-graded but separate spiritual form, or that such an animal soul or spirit can exist separately from the body; and we do not _know_ (from the Bible)--whatever may be the current language on the subject--that man's spirit is in its nature capable of anything like permanent separate existence.[1] Man is essentially one; and when the physical change called death pa.s.ses over him, it does not utterly obliterate the whole being. The non-material element is not affected any more than it is by the sleep of every night; and the man will be ultimately raised, not a spiritual or immaterial form, but provided, as before, with a body, only one of a higher capacity and better adapted to its higher environments--the "spiritual body" of St. Paul, in a word. The original union of mind and matter is, on any possible theory, mysterious; and the separation of them for a time is neither less so, nor more. All this is perfectly true, whether the non-material element in man's nature is _necessarily_, inherently and _by nature_, immortal or not--a question which I do not desire to enter on.

Hence it is that a certain element of truth is recognized in the protest of the Edinburgh Reviewer. On the other hand, as we have not only intelligence, emotions (which are possessed in lower degree by animals), self-consciousness, the power of abstract reasoning, and the higher faculties of the imagination,[2] but also the consciousness of G.o.d and the commanding sense of right and wrong; and seeing that the last-named are different in kind from the former, we give them a separate name, and speak of the moral or spiritual nature or capacity of man, as well as the intellectual or mental. Some (by the way) choose "moral" to include both, holding that ethical perceptions arise out of (or are intimately connected with) our sense of G.o.d. Others would make a further distinction, and confine "moral" to the (supposed) bare ethical perception of duty or of right and wrong, and add "spiritual" to distinguish the highest faculty of all, whereby man holds communion with his Maker and recognizes his relation to Him.

[Footnote 1: This remark does not, of course, in any way touch the question whether the spiritual part of a man is conscious in the interval between death and resurrection, or whether it can be made sensible in any way whatever to living persons.]

[Footnote 2: The poetic sense, the perception of the beautiful, &c.]

Whether this further distinction is justified or not, there is a distinction between the moral and the purely intellectual; and we are justified in using different terms for things that are _practically_ different. This the Edinburgh Reviewer seems to have forgotten.

It was necessary to my argument to enter on this somewhat lengthy examination of the spiritual nature of man, because, while we acknowledge the unity of man, we are compelled to recognize in his religious sense and aspirations and capacities something quite disparate--something that we could not get by a natural process of growth from such beginnings of reason as are observed in the lower animals.

I am aware that Dr. Darwin conceived that the religious feeling of man might have grown out of the natural emotions of fear,[1] love, grat.i.tude, &c., when once men began to question as to the explanation of the phenomena of life, and to ascribe the forces of nature to the possession of a spirit such as he himself was conscious of: and with much more positive intent, Mr. H. Spencer has also, after most painstaking inquiries, formulated what he conceives to be the origin of religious belief in man. He refers us to the early belief in a "double"

of self, which double could be projected out of self, and remained in some way after death, so as to become the object of fear, and ultimately of worship. When this ancestor-worship resulted in the worship of a mult.i.tude of "genii" (whose individuality, as regards their former earthly connection, is more or less forgotten), then the idea of attaching the numerous divinities or ancestor-souls to the ocean, the sky, the sun, the mountains, and the powers of nature, arises; whence the poetic systems of ancient polytheistic mythology. Gradually men began to reason and to think, and they refined the polytheism into the "higher" idea of one great, central, immaterial all-pervading power, which they called G.o.d.

[Footnote: 1 See the "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 68 (original edition).

But it is right to state that the subject is not treated in any way whatever so as to argue that the religious belief is a fancy, or development of fancy, with no G.o.d and no facts about G.o.d behind it.]

Mr. Spencer, in effect, concludes that this "G.o.d" is only man's own idea of filling up a blank, of explaining the fact that there must be an ultimate first cause of whatever exists, and there is also a great source of power of some kind external to ourselves.[1]

I am not going here to enter on any special argument as to the validity of these theories in their relation to the direct question of the nature and existence of G.o.d. What we are here concerned with is, whether they enable us to exclude the idea of a gift and a giver of spiritual or mental (we will not quarrel about terms) nature to man, and whether, by any fair reasoning from a.n.a.logy, we can suppose man's reason and his "_sensus numinis_" to arise by the mere stages of natural growth and development. Dr. Darwin's supposition takes no notice of the moral law and its influence; indeed he adopts[2] the view that conscience is no sense of right and wrong, but only the stored up and inherited social instinct, a sense of convenience and inconvenience to the tribe and to the individual, which at last acts so spontaneously and rapidly in giving its verdict on anything, that we regard it as a special sense. It would of course be possible to expend much time and many words in argument on this subject. There is not, and never will be, any direct evidence as to the origin of conscience; and as that sense (like any other power of our mental nature) is capable of being educated, evoked, enlightened, and strengthened, and may also by neglect and contradiction deteriorate and wither away, there is ample room for allowing a certain part of the theory.[3] But many people who examine their own conscience will feel that the description certainly does not suit them; there are many things which conscience disapproves, of which no great evil consequences to themselves or any one else are felt. Conscience is constantly condemning "the way that seemeth good unto a man."

_Ultimately_ no doubt, there is real evil at the end of everything that conscience warns a man against; but not such as "inherited experience"

is likely to recognize. Is it, for instance, the experience of the ma.s.s of men, as men, that the "fleshly mind is death, but the spiritual mind is life and peace"? Is not rather the world at large habitually putting money-making, position-making, and the care of the things of the body, of time, and of sense, in the first place; and is not the moral law perpetually warning us that the fashion of the world pa.s.ses away, and that what seems gold is in reality tinsel? As far as the condemnation that conscience pa.s.ses on the broad evils which affect society--"thou shalt not steal," "thou shalt not lie," or so forth--no doubt it is supported by the transmitted sense of inconvenience; but who has told it of the evil of things that do not affect our social state? and who has changed the inconvenient, the painful, into the _wrong_? It is one thing to instinctively avoid a theft or a falsehood, even if the first origin of such instinct were the fear of consequences or the love of approbation; it is quite another--the inward condemnation of something which "the deceitfulness of sin" is able to excuse, and which the world at large would regard as permissible or at least venial. Even if inherited use has its full play, there is still a something wanted before the one can be got into (or out of) the other. Why, again, are savages p.r.o.ne to imagine natural phenomena to be caused or actuated by "spirits"? Surely it is because there _is_ consciously a spirit in man, and a Higher Power, even G.o.d, outside, who exists, though man in his ignorance has many false ideas regarding Him.

[Footnote 1: It is not necessary to my immediate argument, and therefore I do not press it into the text (though I should be sorry to seem to forget it for a moment), to urge that St. Paul draws a clear distinction between the intellectual faculties and the higher spiritual ones, when he a.s.sures us that the clearest intellect alone cannot a.s.similate the truths of religion. For the spiritual faculties have been in man grievously deadened and distorted (to say the least of it), so that his intellectual faculties, bright and highly developed as they may be, will always prove insufficient for the highest life in the absence of the "grace of G.o.d." It is exactly a.n.a.logous to the case of a man whom we might suppose to have his sense of sight, touch, &c., distorted, and he himself unable to correct them by aid of the senses of others. However acutely he might exercise his reason, he would be continually wrong in his conclusions. See 1 Cor. ii., the whole, but specially vers. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 2: "Descent of Man," vol. i. p, 70.]

[Footnote 3: The attempt (already alluded to) to separate moral and spiritual, to imagine something that is ethical, apart from the religious idea, has lent some strength to these ideas of the moral sense; but in fact, the moral sense is _inseparably_ connected with the idea of G.o.d, and His approval and disapproval. The idea of G.o.d may be obscured and lost, but conscience is the surviving trace of it; the circ.u.mference that accounts for the broken arc.]

It is an objection of the same order that applies to the other theory (Mr. Spencer's). There can be little doubt that in many respects it is true: as an account of all _human_ systems of religion it is adequate and natural; but it breaks down hopelessly when we try to use it to explain how the conception of G.o.d originated in the mind. Just as there is a felt difference--not of degree or in form, but essential and radical in its nature--between the _undesirable_ and the _wrong_, so there is a difference between the idea of a mysterious thing towards which apprehension or awe is felt, and the conception of G.o.d. Granted that man believed in his own spirit or double, and attributed similar immaterial motor powers as a cause for the wind and waves, and so forth; granted that he at last "refined" this into the belief in one Spirit whose power was necessarily great and varied--the origin is still unexplained. How did man get the idea of a personal spirit or double--no such thing, _ex hypothesi_ existing? How did he get to formulate the idea of a _G.o.d_ when he had simplified his group of many spirits into one?

If man is created with a consciousness of his own inner-self, _as a self_, he is able naturally to imagine a like self in other beings; if he has an idea of G.o.d innate in him, he can a.s.similate the truth when it is at last presented to his mind; and that is why he feels that it _is_ a refinement; a rising from the lower to the higher (because from falsehood to truth), to let the many G.o.ds give place to the One G.o.d. If the idea of G.o.d has been obscured, and the power of its apprehension deadened, the man can only grope about helplessly, fashioning this explanation of nature and that--all more or less false, but all dimly bearing witness to the two absolute facts, that there is an inner non-material self, and an external non-material G.o.d.

If then there are insuperable difficulties in connecting thought with matter by any process of unaided development, there are also great difficulties, even when thought in a rudimentary form is given, in conceiving it developed into man's reason, or man's religious belief, by any known process of "natural" causation.

CHAPTER VIII.

_FURTHER DIFFICULTIES REGARDING THE HISTORY OF MAN_.

There are, however, some other matters connected with the history of man on the globe, unconnected with psychological development, but which demand notice, as making the argument against an undesigned, unaided development of man a c.u.mulative one. It is urged that whatever may be thought of the connection of man with the animal creation, at any rate the received Christian belief regarding the origin of man--especially his late appearance on the scene--is contrary to known facts, and that we have to mount up to a vast geologic antiquity to account for what is known from exhumed remains in caves and lake dwellings, and the like.

Now no one pretends that the history of man is free from doubt and difficulty, but the doubt and difficulty are not confined to the "orthodox." For the inferences to be drawn from the exhumed remains are equally doubtful whatever views be adopted.

I shall not go into great length on this subject, partly because some recent popular tracts of Canon Rawlinson, Mr. R.S. Pattison, and others, have already made the ordinary reader familiar with the main outlines of the subject; and still more because, be the views of archaeologists what they may, it is impossible for any rational person to contend either that they can be reduced to anything like unity among themselves, or that they lead to any conclusion favourable to the belief in the self-caused and undesigned evolution of man.

It may be regarded as known, that at the dawn of history, mankind was pa.s.sing through what may be called a Bronze age, in which weapons of bronze were used before tools of iron were invented. But this age was preceded by one in which even bronze was unknown. Stone implements, and some of bone and horn, were alone used. It is also well ascertained that there were two _widely divided_ stone ages. The latter, distinguished by the polishing of the stones, is described as the _neolithic_; the former, in which flint and other hard stone fragments were merely chipped or flaked to an edge, is called the _palaeolithic_.

It is hardly contended that the neolithic age could have been more than four or five thousand years ago. There is always the greatest difficulty in fixing any dates because from the nature of the case written records are absent, and the stages of growth in the history of peoples overlap so.

We know that sharp flakes of stone were still used for knives in the time of Moses and Joshua. We are not out of the stone age yet, as regards some portions of the globe; and it is quite possible that parts of the earth, not so very remote, may have been still in the midst of a stone age when a.s.syria, Chaldaea, and Egypt were comparatively highly civilized.

It is also fairly certain that between the neolithic or smooth-stone age, and the palaeolithic, certain important geological changes took place, though those changes were not such as to have demanded any very great length of time for their accomplishment.

The palaeolithic stone implements are found in river gravels and clays, along the higher levels of our own Thames Valley, that of the Somme in France, and in other places. They are also found at the bottom of various natural caverns.

No human bones have been found as yet with the implements, but the bones of large numbers of animals have. And it seems certain that the men who made the implements were contemporaries of the animals, because in the later part of the age, at any rate, they drew or scratched likenesses of the animals on bone. Among these representations are figures of the _mammoth_ an extinct form well known to the reader by description and museum specimens of remains.

The animals contemporary with these primeval men were the mammoth, species of rhinoceros and hippopotamus, the "sabre-toothed" lion, the cave-bear, the reindeer, besides oxen, horses, and other still surviving forms.

In his address to the British a.s.sociation in 1881 Sir John Lubbock called attention to the fact that these animals appear to indicate both a hot and a cold climate, and he referred to the fact (known to astronomers) that the earth pa.s.ses through periods of slow change in the eccentricity of its...o...b..t, and in the obliquity of the ecliptic. The result of the latter condition is, to produce periods of about 21,000 years each, during one-half of which the Northern hemisphere will be hotter, and in the other the Southern. At present we are in the former phase.

But the obliquity of the ecliptic does not act alone; the eccentricity of the orbit produces another effect, namely, that when it is at a minimum the difference between the temperatures of the two hemispheres is small, and as the eccentricity increases, so does the difference. At the present time the eccentricity is represented by the fraction .016.

But about 300,000 years ago the eccentricity would have been as great as .26 to .57. The result, it is explained, would have been not a uniform heat or cold, but extremes of both; there would probably have been short but very hot summers, and long and intensely cold winters.

This, Sir John Lubbock thought, might account for the co-existence of both hot and arctic species, like the hippopotamus and rhinoceros on the one hand, and the musk-ox and the reindeer on the other.