Origin of Man

I. Origin of Man

Man was created in God's image. The consensus gentium bears testimony to the truth of this Biblical sentence. According to most pagan myths of creation, the human race was created by the gods or the deity. Some anthropologists like to base their theories upon legends in natural religions (India, Tibet, etc.), which trace the original man back to the ape; but other legends as numerous and as old as those (ancient Mexico, West Africa, South Arabia, Indo-China) consider apes as degenerated and fallen descendants of men. More important are the traditions of the civilized nations of antiquity, which almost unanimously agree that man is the creature of God. Of these may be mentioned the Chinese tradition about Fo-hi or Pao-hi, the Babylonian, with its many points of agreement with the Biblical account the Egyptian Book of the Dead, with its praise of the " Divine Architect, who made the world to be the home of man, the image of the Creator "; Hesiod's and Ovid's poems.

It is only since the middle of the eighteenth century that the materialistic philosophy of men like Lamettrie, Holbach, Helvetius (qq.v.) degraded man to a mere animal, or even a machine. In recent times many anthropologists have adopted the same view. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) classified man with the ape as the highest representative of the vertebrates, but pronounced him to have been " created with an immortal soul, after the divine image," and called him " the only one among the creatures blessed with a rational soul for the praise of God " (Systems Nature, 6th ed., 1748). J. F. Blumenbach (1752-1840), the real founder of anthropology as a science, never doubted that man was distinguished from the whole animal world by his upright walk, perfectly developed hands, protruding chin, and articulate speech. Other investigators, basing their theories on the study of embryology, paleontology, and experiments in breeding animals and plants, have come to the conclusion that man is the result of a process of development, some primeval type of ape being his immediate ancestor (see Evolution). This view has been advanced especially by Charles Darwin, Thomas H. Huxley, John Lubbock , E. B. Tylor, and in Germany by Ernst Haeckel, Oakar Schmidt, H. Schaaffhausen, p. Caspari, and others.

This theory, however, is only a hypothesis the scientific untenableness of which is evident from the following facts: (1) There are anatomical differences between man and even the most developed apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, etc.), so important that the assumption of their common origin is subject to the greatest difficulties. According to the investigations of &by, Bischoff, R. Owen, and others, the capacity of the lowest human skull (the natives of New Holland) is seventy-five cubic inches; while the largest capacity of the gorilla is thirty-four cubic inches. The average weight of the brain of a European is fifty-seven ounces; that of the negro, from thirty-eight to fifty-one ounces; but that of the gorilla from seventeen to nineteen ounces. (2) No validity can be attached to the embryological proof, consisting in the supposed identity of the fetal phases of the development of man with those of the higher mammals, especially the apes. The enact repetition of lower animal forms of existence in the steps of the development of the embryo does not take place in reality, as Haeckel has asserted. His, Goette, Solliker, and other authorities on the doctrine of evolution decidedly disagree with Haeckel in many details. (3) The proof from paleontology is also full of gaps and deficiencies. The assumed human apes (pithecanthropt) have so far been found neither in a living nor in a fossil condition. Neither the Neanderthal skull, nor the Engis skull, nor the Cro-Magnon skull, nor any other human remains excavated in a fossil condition show an essential approach to the type of the ape. (4) The doctrine of descent assumes far the sake of certain analogies genealogical relations of affinity and -ehliages of organisms in great numbers, but not one case of a definite and permanent change of an organic species into another has 'been accurately observed. It assumes a process of natural selection such as a gardener or a breeder pursues; but as far as empirical knowledge goes, the character of the individual vegetable and animal species has never changed. In order to substantiate its view, its advocates postulate millions of years; but whether the epochs of geological formation really require such an immense amount of time as Darwin needed for his hypothesis is still doubted by geologists. Geology, too, shows that the specific groups of organic beings were distinct from the very beginning. The truth of the Biblical words that "God created everything after its kind," is confirmed as

Much ay the natural lit of the pffthi world as Ly the facts of the former ages of geology. (5) The Darwinian hypothesis of descent does not give due consideration to the great difference between man and animal in a psychological respect. Man represents an entirely new phase of existence, being distinguished from the preceding organisms by his freedom, self-consciousness, and endowment of speech. Conservative investigators like Agaasiz, Rudolf Wagner, Wigand, and Dubois-Iteymond have always ridiculed the hypothesis that considers the higher nature of man the product of a purely natural development. In the same way, men like A. de Quatrefagea and the French physiologists following him, E. Bouchut, Tandon, and others, and

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rent German critics of Darwin like Hans Driesch, Hauck% and Gustav Wolff acknowledge the radical distinction between man and animal; and Wallace, who with Darwin 'is the author of the theory of natural selection, holds that in the case of man, the natural selection was the work of God.

MAN.

I. Origin of Man