The evolution imagination ventures to affirm that man's intellectual
superiority over the brute "is not _qualitative_ but _quantitative_."
Then it follows, of necessity, that intellectually considered the brute
is the image of man just as much as man is the image of God, the
difference being _quantitative_ and not _qualitative_. Evolutionists
claim that "man's superiority over the brute results from greater
complexity and superior development of the brain." Now if man, as they
say, once lived the life of the brute, and his superiority now is simply
quantitative, why is it that his inferiors of to-day are not passing
into real manhood? They are far superior to any creature which is "not
far from the tadpole stage of evolution." If we were once there, and
evolutionists say we were, why not take all brutes in as our
_kins-folk_.
Now, since evolutionists have learned the secret of mind-making by
training dogs and other animals to certain habits, and giving time for
heredity to transmit those habits, they being "immediately petrified in
brain structure," why should we not go to work and bring about a
millennial glory, at least by the third or fourth generation? If so much
has been overcome as lies between man and the tadpole, with the tadpole
capital only to work upon, perhaps we might, with our present capital,
bring into existence a race of gods. Why not? We are taught that
"instinct is habit petrified in brain structure and transmitted by
heredity," that it is, consequently, "organized ancestral experiences
that are the source of instinct, but not always." Why this modification
in the teachings of evolutionists? Do they not know that the
acknowledgment of the existence of an original instinctive endowment
breaks down the whole theory of mind-being from environments? And what
right have Atheists to claim instinct as an original endowment, in
certain cases? The very idea is destructive of their speculation, for in
order to an original endowment, as they term it, over and above that
which is the result of ancestral experiences petrified in brain
structure and transmitted, there must be the endowment, that which
endows, and the endowed. These three things stand or fall together. But
why should they claim this exception of an original endowment? The
answer is easy. Facts that are utterly against them are known to exist
in the world of instincts. We have an example in the instinct of the
honey bee. Neither the drone nor the queen ever built a cell. So this is
conceded to be an original endowment. O, ye evolutionists! will you tell
us where this cell-building instinct came from? You claim that it was,
or is, an original endowment. _From whom?_ Again you tell us that
instinct depends upon brain structure in every instance; then what is
the difference between instinct and intellect or mind? You tell us that
mind also depends on brain structure, and you say that intelligence is
unlike instinct, because it works by experience, not ancestral, but, on
the contrary, by individual experience.
Then we have it thus:
First. Instinct works by ancestral experience, petrified in brain
structure, and transmitted.
Second. Mind works by individual and not ancestral experience.
Third. Instinct is sometimes an original endowment.
Now, can we or any others tell how it is that mind depends, just like
instinct, wholly upon brain structure, and is, at the same time, unlike
instinct in that it is wholly dependent on individual, not ancestral
experience? And if mind or intelligence does not depend on ancestral
experience, how is its origin to be accounted for on the hypothesis of
heredity through evolution of species, starting, without life, instinct
or mind, by blind forces operating on dead matter, and the forces
themselves simply the forces of dead matter? The capacity for
intellectual improvement is a remarkable peculiarity of man's nature.
The instinctive habits of the lower animals are limited, are peculiar to
each species, and have immediate reference to their bodily wants. Where
a particular adaptation of means to ends, of actions to circumstances,
is made by an individual the rest do not seem to profit by that
experience, so that, although the instincts of particular animals may be
modified by the training of man, or by the education of circumstances,
so as to show themselves after a few generations under new forms, no
elevation of intelligence ever appears to _take place spontaneously_, no
physical improvement is manifested in the species at large. On the other
hand, we observe in man not merely the capability of profiting by
experience, but the determination to do so, which he is enabled to put
into action by the power which his will, when properly disciplined,
comes to possess, of directing and controlling his current of thought by
fixing his attention upon any subject which he desires to keep before
his mental vision. This power, so far as we know, is peculiar to man,
and the presence or absence of it constitutes the difference between a
being possessed of powers to determine his own course of thought and
action, and a mere thinking automaton.--_Carpenter's Physiology._