300 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



then have to do with facts not only harmonizing with re- 

 ligion, but, as it were, preaching and proclaiming it. 



It is not, however, necessary for Christianity that any 

 such view should prevail. Man, according to the old scho- 

 lastic definition, is " a rational animal " (animal rationale) , 

 and his animality is distinct in nature from his rationality, 

 though inseparably joined, during life, in one common per- 

 sonality. This animal body must have had a different 

 source from that of the spiritual soul which informs it, from 

 the distinctness of the two orders to which those two ex- 

 istences severally belong. 



Scripture seems plainly to indicate this when it says 

 that " God made man from the dust of the earth, and 

 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This is a plain 

 and direct statement that man's body was not created in 

 the primary and absolute sense of the word, but was evolved 

 from preexisting material (symbolized by the term " dust 

 of the earth"), and was therefore only derivatively created, 

 i. e., by the operation of secondary laws. His soul, on the 

 other hand, was created in quite a different way, not by any 

 preexisting means, external to God Himself, but by the 

 direct action of the Almighty, symbolized by the term 

 " breathing : " the very form adopted by Christ, when con- 

 ferring the supernatural powers and graces of the Christian 

 dispensation, and a form still daily used in the rites and 

 ceremonies of the Church. 



That the first man should have had this double origin 

 agrees with what we now experience. For supposing each 

 human soul to be directly and immediately created, yet 

 each human body is evolved by the ordinary operation of 

 natural physical laws. 



Prof. Flower, in his Introductory Lecture 61 (p. 20) to 

 his course of Hunterian Lectures for 1870, well observes : 

 " Whatever man's place may be, either in or out of Nature, 

 6S Published by John Churchill. 



