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Adamite hypothesis, and should have supposed that the oldest human remains found by geologists are not those of men of our race. Fabre d'Envieu thinks that these discoveries point to the fact of the existence on the earth, before the creation of man which is described in the Hexameron, of "races of men, or some other reasonable animals," who had died out before the creation of our common ancestor.1 H. de Valroger rather more cautiously suggests that a kind of animal may possibly have existed in the Tertiary period as "a forerunner of man," which more nearly resembled the human type than do the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang, but which nevertheless was incapable of the intellectual, moral, and religious development of which all races of our species are capable." At any rate, these could not have been men, nor could they have been reasonable animals.

1 Les origines, etc. pp. 329, 454, 478.

2 Les précurseurs de l'homme à l'époque tertiaire, Correspondant, t. 93, p. 456. These theologians follow Boucher de Perthes, who, speaking of the race of men who made the implements found by him at Amiens (see Lect. 35), says: "Ces hommes n'ont plus leurs héritiers sur la terre; nous n'en sommes point les fils; le chaos les separe de la création actuelle."

XXIX.

MAN AND BEAST-Conclusion.

It is admitted by theologians, as I have mentioned in my discussion on the theory of descent, that possibly organic life may have begun with simple forms, and have developed gradually into its later multiplicity— only that this did not take place entirely through influences and forces working by chance, as is assumed in the Darwinian theory, but because, as Michelis expresses it, the Creator chose the method of developing the organic form genetically as the way of attaining to the perfect organization, which in man was united to intellectual development.1 In connection with this some even think that the Biblical teaching will admit of our believing that the creation of man did not take place by the forming of dead matter into a living being, to which all the qualities and attributes of man were given simultaneously, but by the process of adding to the highest and most man-like existing creatures the distinguishing characteristics of human nature. This of course would involve not only a higher development of the faculties which are common to both man and

2

1 See above, p. 115.

2 See Warington, Week of Creation, p. 124; also Frohschammer, Das Christenthum, etc. p. 185; and St. George Mivart, On the Genesis of Species, London 1871, p. 277; cf. Contemporary Review, vol. xix. (January 1872) p. 185; Dublin Review, N. S. vol. xviii. (No. 35, January 1872) p. 198.

beast, but also the gift of new faculties of a higher order that is to say, a new creative impulse was necessary for the creation of man.

It is quite clear that this view is even more entirely opposed to Hæckel's Anthropogenie than to the Bible. But I do not think that such a view at all agrees with the teaching of the Biblical record, although the latter must not be interpreted literally; nor do I believe that it is sufficiently borne out by scientific facts. Let us look at these facts rather more closely.

You will have perhaps observed that in the special discussions in my last lecture, I spoke of Huxley, Vogt, and Hæckel, but not of Darwin, although he is not only in a certain sense their leader, but has also discussed the question of man's descent most exhaustively. In this I do Darwin no wrong. He says himself that in that portion of his book which treats of the descent of man, he adduces hardly any new facts. He then refers to the authors I have named, and, strange to say, he mentions with them people like Büchner and Rolle. Darwin even says, speaking of Hæckel, that his own book on the Descent of Man would probably not have been finished if Hæckel's History of Creation had appeared before it, and that he agrees with the latter in almost everything. I have only found one point which Darwin discusses more fully than any other writer, and that is the manner in which our supposed ancestors developed by means of natural and sexual selection into men.

2

"The early progenitors of man," says Darwin,3" were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having 1 See above, vol. i. p. 149. 2 Descent of Man, i. 4.

3 Ibid. i. 206.

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beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. . . . The foot . . . was then prehensile, and our progenitors no doubt were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm, forestclad land." Darwin is thinking of Central Africa. "The males were provided with great canine teeth which served them as formidable weapons.' You see that this type must be a good deal altered before it can become the human type. And all these alterations have taken place quite gradually in the way that I have shown by the example of animals in explaining the Darwinian theory. Here also, in the development of the beings which have just been described into men, we find on the one hand natural, on the other sexual selection. Small peculiarities appeared in single individuals, which gave them some advantage in the struggle for existence. The individuals so favoured were preserved, while the less favoured ones died out, and the former passed on their favourable qualities to their descendants, in whom these qualities were gradually fixed and increased. This is natural selection. Side by side with this went sexual selection. Certain individuals, possessing certain advantages, paired and reproduced themselves, whereas the individuals not so favoured did not succeed in doing this, or did so more seldom; and as individuals of one sex which possessed special qualities paired with individuals of the other sex also possessed of those qualities, throughout a long series of generations they became gradually hereditary in their descendants.

Let me now try to understand how the type I have

described above can have altered to the human type

according to these laws. the quality of the skin. covered with hair, as the apes are now; how did it come about that the hair was gradually reduced to what it is now? Natural selection will not help us here, for, as Wallace says,' the soft, bare, sensitive skin of man, who does not possess the hairy covering which is common to all apes, is clearly of no advantage in the struggle for existence. Even savages feel the want of such a covering, especially on the back, where with animals the hair is thickest, and they strive to get over it by hanging skins, etc., round them. This hairy covering of the body was therefore not harmful or useless to our progenitors, but rather useful; therefore its gradual complete disappearance cannot be explained by natural selection, by which only advantageous alterations can be preserved, increased, and fixed.

For instance, let us take Our progenitors were thickly

Darwin himself expressly admits this, and he relies upon sexual selection to explain the loss of the hair. The strongest, most powerful men or males among our ancestors, he thinks, were in a position to choose the most attractive women or females. Now we always find that a woman has a less hairy body than a man. It is therefore probable that among our half human ancestors the females first began to lose their hair. This partial loss of hair must have been considered ornamental by the ape-like progenitors of man, as Darwin expresses it, that is, the less hairy females were considered more beutiful than the hairier ones, and were therefore preferred by the males. The descendants of these less

1 Cf. Huber, Die Lehre Darwins, p. 209.

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