388 THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN. 



his opponent see the higher truth that in the love of 

 God we have a principle far nobler and more God- 

 like and less animal than that of mere duty. Man 

 primeval, according to the doctrine of Genesis, was, 

 by simple love and communion with his God, placed 

 in the position of a spiritual being, a member of a 

 higher family than that of the animal. The ' ' know- 

 ledge of good and evil " which he acquired later, and 

 on which is based the law of conscious duty, was a less 

 happy attainment, which placed him on a lower level 

 than that of the unconscious love and goodness of 

 primal innocence. No doubt man's sense of right 

 and wrong is something above the attainment of 

 animals, and which could never have sprung from 

 them ; but still more is this the case with his direct 

 spiritual relation to God, which, whether it rises to 

 the inspiration of the prophet or the piety of the 

 Christian, or sinks to the rude superstition of the 

 savage, can be no part of the Adam of the dust 

 but only of the breath of life breathed into him from 

 above. 



That man should love his fellow-man may not seem 

 strange. Certain social and gregarious and family 

 instincts exist among the lower animals, and Darwin 

 very ably adduces these as akin to the similar affections 

 of man ; yet even in the law of love of our neighbour, 

 as enforced by Christ's teaching, it is easy to see that 

 we have something beyond animal nature. But thia 

 becomes still more distinct in the love of God. Man 

 was the " shadow and likeness of God," says the old 



