192 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



ganism compounded of flesh, blood, bone, and sinew like the 

 brute. The "discovery" that man is a species of animal dates 

 from the year one of human existence, and it is now high 

 time for the novelty of this discovery to be worn off. 



Even as a difficulty against human superiority and immor- 

 tality, the "recognition" is by no means recent. We find it 

 squarely faced in a book of the Old Testament, the entire 

 book being devoted to the solution of the difficulty in ques- 

 tion. "I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons 

 of men . . . that they might see they are themselves beasts. 

 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; 

 even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the 

 other; yea, they have all one breath; so that man hath no pre- 

 eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one 

 place; all are of the dust, and all return to dust. Who know- 

 eth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit 

 of the beast whether it goeth downward to the earth?" 

 {Ecclesiastes, III: 18-21.) The sacred writer insists that, so 

 far as the body is concerned, man and the brute stand on the 

 same level; but what of the human soul? Is it, he asks, re- 

 solvable into matter like the soul of a beast, or is it a super- 

 material principle destined, not for time, but for eternity? 

 At the close of the book, the conclusion is reached that the 

 latter alternative is the true solution of the riddle of human 

 nature — "the dust returneth to the earth whence it was, and 

 the spirit returneth to God who gave it." (Ch. XII, v. 7.) ' 



Centuries, therefore, before the Christian era, this problem 

 was formulated by Ecclesiastes, the Jew, and also, as we shall 

 presently see, by Aristotle, the coryphaeus of Greek philosophy. 

 Nay, from time immemorial man, contrasting his aspirations 

 after immortality with the spectacle of corporal death, has 

 appreciated to the full the significance of his own animality. 

 Never was there question of whether man is, or is not, just 

 as thoroughly an animal as any beast, but rather of whether, 

 his animal nature being unhesitatingly conceded, we are not, 

 none the less, forced to recognize in him, over and above this. 



