IN MODERN SCIENCE, 



173 



works, and from what we know of their beliefs 

 and habits, that' they were not creatures of 

 instinct, but of thought Hke ourselves, and 

 that materialistic doctrines of automatism and 

 brain-force without mind would be quite as 

 absurd in their application to them as to their 

 modern representatives. 



It is not too much to say that, in presence 

 of these facts, the spontaneous origin of man 

 from inferior animals cannot be held as a 

 scientific conclusion. It may be an article 

 of faith in authority, or a superstition or an 

 hypothesis, but is in no respect a result of 

 scientific investigation into the fossil remains 

 of man. But if man is not such a product 

 of spontaneous evolution, he must have been 

 created by a Being having a higher reason 

 and a greater power than his own ; and the 

 ancestry of the agnostic, and the rational 

 powers which he exercises, constitute the best 

 refutation of his own doctrine. 



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