When did reason begin? Do we find it in any species of plant or animal
life, save man? The highest order of animals can not reason enough to
start a fire or replenish one. A dog, or a cat, or even a monkey, will
enjoy the warmth from a fire but will not replenish it, although they
may have seen it done many times. Animals may be taught many
interesting tricks; many can imitate well. But they do not have the
power of reflection or abstract reason. They live for the
present. They have no plans for tomorrow,---no purpose in life. They
can not come to new conclusions. They can not add or subtract,
multiply or divide. They can not even count. Some animals can solve
very intricate problems by instinct, but instinct is the intelligence
of God, and never could have come by evolution.
If reason came not from God, but from evolution, should we not expect
it well developed in evolutionary man, since for the last 3,000,000
years he must have been 95 to 100 per cent, normal. If we grant the
estimate of 500,000,000 years, he would have been 99.4% normal for the
last 3,000,000 years. Would we not expect in that time a world of
inventions and discoveries, even surpassing those of the last 100
years? The Chinese claim a multitude of inventions and a race so
nearly normal as ape-men, ought to have invented language, writing,
printing, the telegraph, phonograph, the wireless, the radio,
television, and even greater wonders than in our age.
There is no trace of intelligence in man in all the 3,000,000 years,
prior to Adam.
We should have many works excelling Homer's Iliad, Vergil's Aeneid,
and Milton's Paradise Lost. We have no trace of a road, or a bridge,
or a monument, like the pyramids. That no race of intelligent
creatures ever lived prior to Adam is proven by lack of affirmative
evidence. If it be true, as Romanes declared, that the power of
abstract reason in all the species was only equal to that of a child
15 months old, then each species would possess less than one millionth
of that.