NOTICES OF BOOKS, 379 



this lie has written in his ' Descent of Man,' how •' from the latter 

 (the Old World monkeys), at a remote period, man, the wonder and 

 glory of the universe, proceeded." Now, wliat does the teleologist 

 say to that ? I abstract here from all teaching of Holy Scripture, 

 and argue by science and philosophy, as we should have had to 

 speculate had the Scriptures never been given to us. The teleo- 

 logist then says that, speaking of animals, it is a mistake to discuss 

 their bodily structure alone. In all the higher animals certainly, 

 there is some sort of a soul. The soul is more perfect, if not in 

 its being at least in its operation, where the body is more perfect. 



There is a difference between a material soul and a spiritual 

 soul in this, that the latter can and the former cannot apprehend 

 an universal idea away from individualizing circumstances. None 

 but bodies of the highest organization are capable of uniting with 

 a spiritual sovil ; this, becaiise soul and body in the animal have 

 one joint operation. An inferior organism cannot take a con- 

 current part in high psychical operations. Suppose then that all 

 that Darwin has written on the gradual evolution of the anthropoid 

 ape were true. Evolution is a progress of ever better organised 

 bodies. In time, when organization is sufficiently advanced, 

 suppose the next generation to have infused into it a spiritual and 

 immortal soul. I have nothing to say to the antecedent possibility 

 of man having been evolved in this way ; but let us suppose it pos- 

 sible, which is going to extreme Darwinian lengths. Even then, 

 there is no account rendered of the soul of man, unless that be 

 ascribed to the creative act of a divine Intelligence. There is no 

 evolving an immortal spirit out of cosmic mist, not even through 

 billions of transformations, because thought and matter are not in 

 the same order. If Mr. Clrant Allen maintains that they are, we 

 ask on what particular process of inductive reasoning gone through 

 by Darwin he relies for his proof. It is not enough to show that 

 human thought is conditioned on a certain bodily organization dis- 

 posed and operating in a certain way ; every student knows that. 

 Nor is it enough, as Darwin has done, to trace analogies between 

 emotions in man and in brutes ; for it is not emotion but intellect 

 that is characteristic of man. Most human attributes have their 

 analogues in the lower creation. Indeed it was a favourite idea of 

 the schoolmen, that creatures rose one above the other in a gradual 

 ascending scale. Such a scale has been drawn by Darwin and 

 Haeckel. But the ascent, so gradual to the eye, is broken here and 

 there by vast gulfs of difference. The villages of the Lebanon are 

 so close that you can drop a stone from one to the other, but there 

 is a perpendicular precipice between. There is not much difference 

 to the eye between the lowest man and one of Haeckel's anthropoid 

 apes, nor between a living spore and a speck of dust. But there is 

 a difference so vast that Darwin has been unable to sj)an it. He 

 has not been able to explain the transition from brute matter to 

 life, nor that from a material to a spiritual soul. The linger of 

 God is here. 



One might expect that if ever lower animals had a chance 

 of attaining, if not human form, at least human intelligence, it 



