176 MAN'S PRIMITIVE STATE 



of life being suited to its environment and to its specific 

 functioning. Now to suppose that the latest and highest 

 product of this hitherto successful process of adaptation 

 to the requirements of existence should prove to be a 

 missing of the mark, a being incapable of fulfilling its 

 characteristic function, is to suppose that evolution 

 became unsuccessful when it became most intelligent 

 and significant. Yet it must apparently have done so, 

 if no superadded endowments were imparted to man 

 to offset the long-intrenched and deeply ingrained 

 habits and propensities of his brute-inheritance. Man 

 is constituted for righteousness, and this law of his 

 being is not a result of later developments, but charac- 

 terizes his original nature as human. Yet the history 

 of his efforts to obey this law is a history of universal 

 and lifelong failure. An evolution which we are told 

 has for its law the development and survival of what is 

 most useful is consummated by the development of a 

 species whose chief and distinguishing mark is defeat. 

 Unless the evolutionary theory is supplemented by 

 the doctrine that man was originally afforded super- 

 natural aid, and thus given power to realize himself in 

 accordance with his natural instincts, and that the 

 continual missing the mark which has followed is due 

 to his own avoidable sin and consequent alienation 

 of grace, — unless, in brief, the superphysical and 

 supernatural is taken into account, — human history 

 exhibits a unique and baffling enigma, the one stulti- 

 fying exception to the continuity of things. 



As I have previously noted. Professor Huxley main- 



