188 The Bible of Nature 



scurity, and that the provisional hypothetical his- 

 tory, which zoologists and anthropologists have 

 tried to construct, leaves much to be desired. On 

 the other hand, the drawbacks to the theory are, 

 that it dogmatically sets a limit to the unravelling 

 power of science, that it insinuates a dualism into 

 our scientific conception of history, and that it 

 leaves us with the puzzle of the "all-pervading 

 similitude" between Man and the anthropoids. 

 In trying to save Man's dignity, it makes him a 

 conundrum. 



A somewhat subtler view, which finds favour 

 with many, suggests that while Man as an animal 

 organism was evolved, he received in addition to 

 his natural inheritance a special supernatural en- 

 dowment. As an organism he sprang from the 

 very dust, but he also received a breath of divine 

 life which nature could not give, which nature can- 

 not take away. "There is surely," said Sir 

 Thomas Browne, "a piece of divinity in us; some- 

 thing that was before the elements, and owes no 

 homage unto the sun." According to Dr. Alfred 

 Russel Wallace, the doyen of evolutionists, the 

 Nestor of the Darwinian camp, the facts of Man's 

 higher nature compel us to postulate a special 

 "spiritual influx," comparable to that which inter- 

 vened when living organisms first appeared and 

 when consciousness began. If any one finds this 

 view thoroughly satisfactory and really useful, he 



