On the Earth there will never be a Higher Creature than Man.
In elucidating these points, we may fitly begin by considering the
question as to the possibility of the evolution of any higher creature
than Man, to whom the dominion over this earth shall pass. The question
will best be answered by turning back and observing one of the most
remarkable features connected with the origin of Man and with his
superiority over other animals. And let it be borne in mind that we are
not now about to wander through the regions of unconditional
possibility. We are not dealing with vague general notions of
development, but with the scientific Darwinian theory, which alleges
development only as the result of certain rigorously defined agencies.
The chief among these agencies is Natural Selection. It has again and
again been illustrated how by the cumulative selection and inheritance
of slight physical variations generic differences, like those between
the tiger and the leopard, or the cow and the antelope, at length arise;
and the guiding principle in the accumulation of slight physical
differences has been the welfare of the species. The variant forms on
either side have survived while the constant forms have perished, so
that the lines of demarcation between allied species have grown more and
more distinct, and it is usually only by going back to fossil ages that
we can supply the missing links of continuity. In the desperate struggle
for existence no peculiarity, physical or psychical, however slight, has
been too insignificant for natural selection to seize and enhance; and
the myriad fantastic forms and hues of animal and vegetal life
illustrate the seeming capriciousness of its workings. Psychical
variations have never been unimportant since the appearance of the first
faint pigment-spot which by and by was to translate touch into vision,
as it developed into the lenses and humours of the eye.[2] Special
organs of sense and the lower grades of perception and judgment were
slowly developed through countless ages, in company with purely physical
variations of shape of foot, or length of neck, or complexity of
stomach, or thickness of hide. At length there came a wonderful
moment--silent and unnoticed, as are the beginnings of all great
revolutions. Silent and unnoticed, even as the day of the Lord which
cometh like a thief in the night, there arrived that wonderful moment at
which psychical changes began to be of more use than physical changes to
the brute ancestor of Man. Through further ages of ceaseless struggle
the profitable variations in this creature occurred oftener and oftener
in the brain, and less often in other parts of the organism, until by
and by the size of his brain had been doubled and its complexity of
structure increased a thousand-fold, while in other respects his
appearance was not so very different from that of his brother apes.[3]
Along with this growth of the brain, the complete assumption of the
upright posture, enabling the hands to be devoted entirely to prehension
and thus relieving the jaws of that part of their work, has coöperated
in producing that peculiar contour of head and face which is the chief
distinguishing mark of physical Man. These slight anatomical changes
derive their importance entirely from the prodigious intellectual
changes in connection with which they have been produced; and these
intellectual changes have been accumulated until the distance,
psychically speaking, between civilized man and the ape is so great as
to dwarf in comparison all that had been achieved in the process of
evolution down to the time of our half-human ancestor's first
appearance. No fact in nature is fraught with deeper meaning than this
two-sided fact of the extreme physical similarity and enormous psychical
divergence between Man and the group of animals to which he traces his
pedigree. It shows that when Humanity began to be evolved an entirely
new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. Henceforth the
life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance, and the bodily
life became subordinated to it. Henceforth it appeared that, in this
direction at least, the process of zoölogical change had come to an end,
and a process of psychological change was to take its place. Henceforth
along this supreme line of generation there was to be no further
evolution of new species through physical variation, but through the
accumulation of psychical variations one particular species was to be
indefinitely perfected and raised to a totally different plane from that
on which all life had hitherto existed. Henceforth, in short, the
dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, but
the progress of Civilization.
As we thoroughly grasp the meaning of all this, we see that upon the
Darwinian theory it is impossible that any creature zoologically
distinct from Man and superior to him should ever at any future time
exist upon the earth. In the regions of unconditional possibility it is
open to any one to argue, if he chooses, that such a creature may come
to exist; but the Darwinian theory is utterly opposed to any such
conclusion. According to Darwinism, the creation of Man is still the
goal toward which Nature tended from the beginning. Not the production
of any higher creature, but the perfecting of Humanity, is to be the
glorious consummation of Nature's long and tedious work. Thus we
suddenly arrive at the conclusion that Man seems now, much more clearly
than ever, the chief among God's creatures. On the primitive barbaric
theory, which Mr. Darwin has swept away, Man was suddenly flung into the
world by the miraculous act of some unseen and incalculable Power acting
from without; and whatever theology might suppose, no scientific reason
could be alleged why the same incalculable Power might not at some
future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier
creature in whose presence Man would become like a sorry beast of
burden. But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes
the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes
things come to pass, must take afar higher view. He sees that in the
deadly struggle for existence which has raged throughout countless aeons
of time, the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in
order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork,
the Human Soul.
To the creature thus produced through a change in the direction in which
natural selection has worked, the earth and most of its living things
have become gradually subordinated. In all the classes of the animal and
vegetal worlds many ancient species have become extinct, and many modern
species have come into being, through the unchecked working of natural
selection, since Man became distinctively human. But in this respect a
change has long been coming over the face of nature. The destinies of
all other living things are more and more dependent upon the will of
Man. It rests with him to determine, to a great degree, what plants and
animals shall remain upon the earth and what shall be swept from its
surface. By unconsciously imitating the selective processes of Nature,
he long ago wrought many wild species into forms subservient to his
needs. He has created new varieties of fruit and flower and cereal
grass, and has reared new breeds of animals to aid him in the work of
civilization; until at length he is beginning to acquire a mastery over
mechanical and molecular and chemical forces which is doubtless destined
in the future to achieve marvellous results whereof today we little
dream. Natural selection itself will by and by occupy a subordinate
place in comparison with selection by Man, whose appearance on the earth
is thus seen more clearly than ever to have opened an entirely new
chapter in the mysterious history of creation.