might not perish by famine or violence till it had propagated its
kind. We should then expect to observe that species had distributed
themselves over the globe in lines either tortuous or direct, single
or branching, broad or narrow, but all diverging from a common centre.
Yet nothing of the kind is found. On the contrary, the species of the
new world differ from those of the old, the species of one continent
from those of another[18]. The marsupials of Australia and Polynesia
are generically distinct from all other animals on the globe except the
opossum. The elephant of Africa is not the same species as the elephant
of India: so with the lion, so with the rhinoceros. The apes and
baboons of the old world are nowhere to be found in America, nor the
American monkeys anywhere in the old world. In Madagascar, separated
from Africa by less than the breadth of England, all the species
except one, and nearly all the genera, are peculiar[19]. Everywhere
species are found limited in their range by natural barriers, such
as climate, rivers, mountains, oceans. Are we to suppose that the
prisoners could scramble into their prisons, and then suddenly became
incapable of scrambling out again? Everywhere, as a rule, this range
is consistent with the hypothesis of an origin central to the range,
inconsistent with that of an origin distant from it. Where, as on
mountain ranges, we find, contrary to the general rule, the same
species in different localities, the migration from the door of the ark
loses all semblance of probability, unless we are pleased to imagine
that creatures, now without the instinct of migration, for a long time
possessed it, and roamed about the world through many a sultry plain
to pick out a hill-side here and there with a temperature suited to
their constitutions. But the exceptional phenomenon, otherwise so hard
to account for, Darwin has admirably explained, by pointing out that
species adapted to a low temperature would naturally have occupied
lowlands in the Glacial Period, from which, as the cold gradually grew
less and less intense, they would as naturally have retired, some of
them northwards, others to the cool heights of various mountains.
That there was a Glacial Period, when great icebergs travelled over
England, a period geologically as but of yesterday, though enormously
more remote than any historical dates, is now beyond all question.
Equally beyond question is it that countless ages and generations
of living beings on the earth preceded that Glacial Period. And,
added to this, we find that there are forms of life just where they
would have been left by the effect of that period, had there been
an unbroken succession from that time to this, and just where it is
most unlikely they should be found, had they been forced to travel
to those habitations from the door of the ark within the practically
insignificant period of 4300 years.
But still further, we may compare the world of life before the Flood
with the world of life since. And here surely it needs not the genius
of Darwin or Lyell or Owen to perceive the conclusiveness of the
argument which their genius has pointed out and enforced. For instance,
where the marsupials now live, there lived marsupials in ages long
before Noah, as the fossil remains testify. The fossils are fossil
marsupials, but marsupials of species now extinct. So that the ‘door of
the ark’ theory requires us to believe that the marsupials found their
way to Australia, leaving no traces of their route on land, crossing
seas which they never subsequently recrossed, and planting themselves
precisely in that region which other marsupials, generically the same
but specifically different, had occupied before them.
We are to believe this of countless other species in all parts of the
world. We are to believe that they slowly and in many generations
worked their way back to these quasi-ancestral homes, and yet neglected
to occupy vast tracts equally or even better adapted to their wants.
We must believe also that some of the fleetest, strongest, and most
sagacious animals, as the horse and the elephant, failed to trace
out the abodes of their ancient representatives, since America, when
discovered a few years ago, possessed these quadrupeds only in fossil
and in no living species[20].
There is indeed one animal, whose powers of contrivance would account
for its distribution over the globe, even supposing it to have begun
with a single family, not more than 4300 years ago, and to have ranged
from a single centre. Man is that animal. Yet, if all the other
facts that bear on the universality of the Noachian Deluge were in
an agreement with it as entire as their irreconcileability is utter
and complete, still the circumstances of the human race alone would
disable us from believing that the Flood of Noah’s epoch extended
over all the globe. With other animals it might be advanced that the
different species and main varieties had been represented in the ark
and were thence disseminated; but in the case of man we are precluded
from such an explanatory device by the express terms of the diluvian
record. If the Noachian Flood was universal, then from Noah alone
must be descended all the races of man now upon the earth: all the
great and curious variations they display must have been evolved, not
in countless generations as Darwinism supposes, but in some two or
three hundred or less. From Noah alone must have sprung within a mere
handful of centuries races so widely unlike one another as Greeks
and Negroes, Jews and Egyptians, Saxons and Ojibbeways, Caffirs and
Hottentots, Fuegians and Patagonians, Californians and Chinese, Arabs
and Esquimaux. In the same archipelago we have the Malay, the Papuan,
and the dwarf snub-nosed Negrito. To give the contrast between the
two former in the words of Mr. Wallace[21]:--‘The Malay is of short
stature, brown-skinned, straight-haired, beardless, and smooth-bodied.
The Papuan is taller, is black-skinned, frizzly-haired, bearded, and
hairy-bodied. The former is broad-faced, has a small nose, and flat
eyebrows; the latter is long-faced, has a large and prominent nose,
and projecting eyebrows. The Malay is bashful, cold, undemonstrative,
and quiet; the Papuan is bold, impetuous, excitable, and noisy.
The former is grave, and seldom laughs; the latter is joyous and
laughter-loving,--the one conceals his emotions, the other displays
them.’ Such is the description and contrast of two types of mankind
geographically separated from one another by an interval of not more
than 300 miles; yet the line which separates these two races of the
human family is almost exactly coincident with that deep-sea line
which forms the boundary between two great zoological provinces.
Either, then, in these two distinct but neighbouring localities, the
whole multitude of species, man included, must have been undergoing
variation simultaneously for tens of thousands of years, or else the
differences in the whole multitude, man included, must have been
already established, or nearly so, when first they stepped forth
in singular procession from the door of the ark. But the former
alternative, which is the Darwinian, is consistent with the record of
the Noachian Flood in implying that the inundation was only partial;
while the latter alternative contradicts the record in an essential
point on which it is perfectly explicit, by necessitating the presence
in the ark of more than one human family.
As long as we are content to speak of 4000 years or so, some one might
be tempted to fancy, however erroneously, that such a period would be
adequate to produce the existing varieties of mankind, because there
is some evidence of comparatively rapid changes of colour having
taken place under the influence of climate, and because a new type of
features appears to be forming itself with a noticeable progress under
the absolutely unique circumstances which have governed the recent
colonization of North America. Unique those circumstances are, because
never before has there been so much mingling of the blood of different
nations and races in a new and unoccupied field, with much to stimulate
and nothing to curb or repress variation. Never before have men’s minds
and bodies in every faculty been so taxed and strained to activity
by the very superabundance of their resources, the virgin soil of a
new country, an inherited civilization, enormous and ever-enlarging
facilities for doing, for living, moving, and learning--facilities
sometimes that cannot be declined or escaped from, though they ‘fret
the pigmy body to decay, and o’er-inform the tenement of clay.’
But, in truth, there is no question of 4000 years in the matter; for
there were black people in the time of Herodotus and in the time
of Solomon. Already in the time of Moses there existed a race in
Palestine so different from the Israelites, that the first Hebrew
explorers were daunted by the sight of them, although, in fact, they
were looking on a race no longer in its prime, but one that was dying
out. Egyptian monuments, dating back to the same period and earlier,
give representations of Africans, Asiatics, and Europeans, with
their physical characteristics then as now unmistakeably distinct;
they portray the Negro as the Negro still is both in colour and in
features[22].
If it took only 800 years, then, which is the interval between the
Flood and the birth of Moses, to originate and establish types so
distinct as Jews, Egyptians, Negroes, and Anakim, all gathered together
in a little corner of the world, might not Nature, having done so
much in so short a time for the highest animal, do a little more in a
longer time for lower animals, and so supply that origin of species
by variation for which Mr. Darwin contends? Would not the obvious
inference be that Nature had done so, if it were not fancied that
such an origin of species was still more repugnant to the Book of
Genesis than even a limitation of the area covered by the Flood? But
the Darwinian theory, happily for itself, is not dependent upon any
supposition so incredible as one which would warrant us in expecting
among the descendants, for example, of William the Conqueror, people
as little like one another as John Bull and John Chinaman, Uncle Sambo
and the last of the Mohicans. There are circumstances of immense
weight to convince us that certain marked divisions of mankind
originated in the regions which they are now occupying. There are
other circumstances preponderating for the common origin of mankind.
Darwinism has at length shown how these phenomena can be reconciled, by
simply connecting the history of man with that vast duration of life
upon the globe which geological science has unveiled. The likenesses
among races of men demand a common parentage for all those races; the
unlikenesses can only be accounted for on the view of an isolation
immensely protracted of one race from another. Thus the primary origin
is common to all; the secondary origin is peculiar to each: but now
that the primary origin has been proved to be so vastly more remote
than was once supposed, the secondary origin recedes of itself into a
far distant past, to give time for differences to arise and develope,
since, if the actually existing unlikenesses were only skin-deep,
instead of affecting, as they do, the bones of the skeleton and the
whole fibre of the mind, they would still be too great to admit a
common derivation of the whole human family from the patriarch Noah.
What Geology teaches to demonstration is, that all parts of the dry
land have been not once only but many times under the waters of the
ocean; but it teaches likewise to demonstration that at least for many
and many an age, almost beyond our powers of conceiving duration of
time, there has been no total submergence of the land. That interchange
of lake and sea with isle and continent which is now going on under our
eyes, has been going on for ages innumerable. By this and kindred means
human beings, like all kinds of animals and all kinds of plants, have
at intervals experienced severance into groups and isolation. Thus has
mankind been broken up into distinct families, at first with no line
of demarcation except the geographical, but gradually in successive
generations becoming more and more unlike in manners, morals, language,
features, intelligence, and civilization. But since the era of the
Noachian Deluge neither has there been time for Nature, with her slow
though certain processes, to effect so great a reconstruction of
barriers as to break up the human family, if till then continuous and
united; nor, if there had been time for the geographical severance,
would there have been time for the constitutional changes.
Among the ancients some believed that the sun, moon, and stars were in
reality about the size which they appear to the unassisted eyesight;
others supposed the vault of the sky to be a revolving dome of solid
crystal pierced with little holes through which men saw in starry
shapes the fire of the ethereal region beyond it. Persons with such
ideas of space and physical science might not readily have accepted on
the moment the Copernican system of astronomy. In the same way persons
with a narrow and limited view of the duration of time may find a
difficulty in receiving arguments based on or implying the enormous
extent of it, which all sciences are now combining to demonstrate.
But this mental incapacity, the result of false education and early
prejudice, may be defied to resist any real investigation of the facts
or study of what has been written upon them. Let any man of mature mind
and average intellect read through Sir John Lubbock’s ‘Prehistoric
Times,’ Mr. Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species,’ and Sir Charles Lyell’s
‘Principles of Geology,’ and retain if he can the opinion that our
globe was first peopled about 6000 years ago, and subsequently all
but depopulated by an universal Flood. Let him see, indeed, whether
he can read Sir Charles Lyell’s account of the progress of opinion
and controversy on these subjects and refrain from blushing. He
will recognize in that account a turmoil and clamour of fools and
philosophers, of laymen and divines. He will have to set to the credit
of intelligent humanity and enlightened Christendom a long tissue of
pious frauds, jesuitical defences, arguments based on imaginary facts,
and facts perverted by imagination, till he comes down to the present
time and finds a great multitude of all classes at length agreed in
affirming that life has endured on the globe with unbroken continuity
through a past as yet unfathomable. His own mind, he will perceive,
has actually reached maturity without having admitted the voice of
this multitude, although, to apply almost literally the words of his
great Master, ‘If these should hold their peace, the stones would cry
out[23].’
The world and its wonders are of no mushroom growth, although even
the mushroom, which is commonly supposed to spring up in a single
night, requires a much longer period, often many weeks, for its
production[24]. The Book of Genesis itself most clearly warns any
careful reader against attempting to build a chronology upon the brief
memoranda of names and dates which for other reasons are inserted in
it. For, taking them simply as they stand, Shem, the son of Noah,
is represented as long surviving the birth of Isaac, while Abraham,
the father of Isaac, appears as the contemporary of a vast number of
different and strange tribes and nations--Egyptians, Philistines,
Canaanites, Syrians, and many more, besides the Chaldeans from among
whom he came. To find a parallel to all this, we should imagine our
own Edward III, instead of dying in 1377 as he did, living on and
on to the present day, a forgotten old man, not noticed in the page
of history throughout 500 eventful years, during which the whole of
Europe was becoming peopled with descendants of himself and his
father, men speaking languages mutually unintelligible, holding creeds
mutually abhorrent, with strange diversities in dress, manners and
government, and some prevented by national custom from even eating at
the same table with guests of another neighbouring and kindred tribe.
In vain should we search through history for any actual parallel,
for any instance of developments so extraordinary, and estrangements
so complete, occurring within a space of only 500 years. If all the
nations spoken of as contemporary with Abraham were only 500 years
distant from the Flood, as the Book of Genesis shows them to have
been, we may be certain that they could trace back their lineage,
independently of Noah and his family, far beyond the era of the Deluge.
The monumental evidence of Egyptian chronology carries us back to a
Pharaoh reigning some three or four hundred years before that date[25].
The Book of Genesis introduces us to another Pharaoh reigning some
400 years after it. Are we to set aside the monumental evidence, and
make this later Pharaoh a descendant of Noah, reigning as a powerful
monarch, while Abraham, the rightful heir of a patriarchal monarchy
over all the earth, was nothing but a wandering shepherd? Religion,
morals, civilization, as far as we know anything about them in those
ages, whether we regard their advancement in some quarters or their
decay in others, all protest against having their progress cramped into
those four or five hundred years. They protest against being ascribed
with all their conspicuous diversities to the offspring of one man,
whose son, grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson, Shem,
Arphaxad, Salah, and Eber, were actually still living during all these
supposed revolutions[26].
Indeed, if we go back from our 400 to our 4000 years, the protests on
these points are almost equally forcible. In the matter of language,
estimate how many generations must have passed away before the children
of a common parent came to vary in speech as much as Chinese, Russians,
Englishmen, and clucking Hottentots. Form some estimate of the time
required for the rise and growth of civilization, not only in the
old-world centres of Nineveh and Babylon and Egyptian Thebes, but in
the separate and independent centres of Mexico and Peru. Explain,
moreover, what, on the hypothesis of a common Noachian descent, must
be called the rise and growth of barbarism. Show, if it be possible,
how, amidst the rapid strides of civilization, side by side with the
advancement of taste, literature, and science, the descendants of
Noah in some cases degenerated from all culture, sank away from all
morality, lost all religion, forgot all useful arts, even those most
essential to the lowest degree of comfort, the kindling of fire, the
use of metals, the construction of dwellings, while they learned the
habits and acquired something more than the innocent shamelessness of
brutes--learned to prefer the flesh of their own species to any other,
learned to make a duty in some regions of putting their parents to
death, in others, of eating their dead bodies[27]. Such customs we
have on record four centuries before Christ, such customs on record as
existing nineteen centuries after. Will any one attempt to persuade us
that the savages of Andaman and the Feejee Islands are cousins, through
an ancestor no more remote than Noah, of Chatham and Wilberforce, and
Lesseps and Brunel?
Traditions of a Deluge, it is true, are found almost everywhere. The
reason doubtless is that almost everywhere some tremendous calamity of
this description has at one time or another occurred. Inundations on
a small scale are common and frequent, but on a scale great enough to
surprise the imagination and become traditional in the memories of a
people, they would naturally be rare and infrequent in the extreme, so
that the fact of such an experience belonging to the history of so many
different races, is but another proof, or at least another indication,
of the antiquity of man. If stress is to be laid on the points of
similarity between the traditions, as proving that every land has been
ravaged by the waters of a flood, equal stress may in fairness be laid
on the points of difference, as proving that not one common universal
Deluge is spoken of, but many separate and partial floods, distinct in
time, in place, and in results. If stress again is to be laid on the
tradition because it is common to so many tribes, let equal importance
be granted to the traditions of time among the Chaldeans and the
Egyptians, the Chinese and the Hindus, who reckon the years of their
uninterrupted histories by tens of thousands[28].
Finally, we may ask, where are the traces of so tremendous and
unparalleled a convulsion as one that could wrap the whole world in
water, and hold all its dædal beauty for many months in that drowned
condition, till a tempest still more furious and unparalleled drave
heaven and earth, the clouds and ocean, once more asunder? We know
how the little trilobite in the Devonian seas behaved in its hour of
peril millions of years back; we know what food men ate long ages
before the Flood, what weapons they used, what houses they built, what
animals they tamed; but what became of man and beast and bird and
forest in the supposed universal Deluge, no one knows. The signs and
natural monuments of the catastrophe, which should have been visible
or discoverable on every side, can nowhere be ascertained,--things
that the waters should have swept away or torn down they have left
undisturbed, shell-mounds and glacier moraines and boulderstones on the
mountain-side; while the great museum of the dead which they should
have formed, one would think, over all the earth, to constitute one
striking and indisputable geological date, as well as a world-wide
monument of religion, is nowhere to be found.
What became of flower and herb, of creatures that live between the
zones of high and low water, of mollusk and coral and fish that require
an appropriate depth and a fitting temperature in their liquid homes,
it will be useless to speculate, if, after all that has been urged
upon other points, there are some who still think that the description
in Genesis is the description of a Flood that prevailed over all the
world, and intend still to believe in such a Flood, and to teach it
as a part of religious doctrine, notwithstanding any argument or
scientific proof to the contrary. For them we can do no more than
commend to their daily reflection a few lines from the lives of two
famous men:--‘In spite,’ says Dr. Wilson, ‘alike of the science and the
devout religious spirit of Columbus, the Salamanca divines pronounced
the idea of the earth’s spherical form heterodox, and a belief in
antipodes incompatible with the historical traditions of our faith:
since to assert that there were inhabited lands on the opposite side of
the globe would be to maintain that there were nations not descended
from Adam, it being impossible for them to have passed the intervening
ocean. This would therefore be to discredit the Bible, which expressly
declares that all men are descended from one common parent[29].’ And
thus another author describes a well-known incident in the life of
Galileo:--‘Clad in a penitent’s sackcloth, the mighty, self-relying
philosopher and genius fell upon his knees, and, with his hands laid
on the Holy Evangelists, declared that he abjured, detested, and
would never again teach, the doctrine of the sun’s stability and the
earth’s motion. Having confirmed his oath in writing, and promised to
perform the enjoined penance, he rose from his knees a pardoned man;
and turning about to one of his friends, stamped on the ground, and
pronounced in an emphatic whisper, “Eppure si muove[30],”--but still it
_does_ move.’
As the antipodes exist, as the earth goes round the sun, and as the
Bible continues to be true, in spite of the theologians and inquisitors
at Salamanca and at Rome, so will it continue to be true and full
of truth, when at length it shall be acknowledged, as it will be,
that there is nothing universal about the Noachian Deluge except the
disbelief in its universality.
INSTINCT AND REASON.