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Page 11
But when all this is said, man rises almost infinitely beyond the
highest brute. Man can stand outside of himself; contemplate the
movements of his own mind; watch the play of motive upon energy and
will, and know himself as no brute can ever be trained to do. Nor have
brutes the ganglia, lobes, or convolutions which house and direct such
powers; and no tribe of mankind has been found without them, however
undeveloped. Very limited, indeed, is the use of natural forces or of
supplied materials in the life of a brute. The birds pick up feathers,
hair, twigs; but no bird provides such things by deliberate prevision
and co-operation with nature. What animal sows that he may reap? The
so-called agricultural ants gather what they have not sown, and reap
what they have not planted. Man sows that he may gather; breeds that he
may use; and accomplishes civilization by an ever-increasing mastery and
adaptation of natural forces. An insect may float with the current on a
chip; but what one ever put a chip into the water? A beaver may build a
dam; but what beaver ever turned the heightened water on a wheel? The
dog may lie in a sunny spot; but what dog ever created artificial heat
or condensed by a lens the sun's heat on a particular point? The hen may
lay and incubate an egg; but what hen ever invented an incubator to
save her long sitting in one pose or place, or studied the development
of life in and from the egg she produced? The ox may select the richest
pasture; but never dreamed of creating a rich pasture by the culture and
fertilization of which he is the chief source. The tiger chooses and
slays his prey; but does not know how to propagate, develop, and safely
mature the animals on which he feeds. All animal life below man must
locate where its food abounds, or follow that food in its migrations or
seasonal changes. Man alone stores and transports his food, creating
commerce by his mastery of climate.
[Sidenote: Man Parts Company.]
[Sidenote: Man and Brute Compared.]
[Sidenote: How Man Can Live.]
[Sidenote: How Man Can Decay.]
[Sidenote: Incidental as to Body.]
The brute obeys law unwittingly in the sustenance and transmission of
life. Man alone perceives and deduces law from a thousand facts, and
concludes a lawgiver from the law, and one Lord and Giver of Life "from
the unity and universality of force." The brute turns its eye skyward to
detect danger; but never measures or counts the stars, discerns the
movements of the planets, nor extends vision and hearing by telescope,
microscope, and megaphone, nor proves by the spectroscope the sameness
of stellar elements with those of our own world. The brute neither makes
history nor records it. He remembers, but does not recollect. His
affections are evanescent as to his kind, and only approach permanence
as they are fastened upon us. The brute cognizes external things, but
does not perceive their being. Thus man can live in an intellectual or
spiritual world as to his aims, motives, and occupations. He need touch
matter only so far as it is necessary to support the bodily strength on
which his spiritual and intellectual movement must depend for basis and
manifestation. On the other hand he may reduce the intellectual and
spiritual life to the lowest limit by giving the mastery to his physical
appetites. We feel instinctively that to do this last is unworthy of
manhood and destructive of the higher nature and intent. But who expects
a brute to do anything else but minister to his appetites? If he delays
a single second in doing it, it is only through fear of man or of some
stronger animal. His intellectual movements have this as an end in
complete reversal of the case with man. With the brute the intellect
seems incidental to the body. With man the body is incidental to the
intellect. One feels for this reason that man might live a purely
spiritual and disembodied life. No one from this standpoint thinks so of
a brute.
[Sidenote: Immortality of Force.]
[Sidenote: Christ's Light.]
[Sidenote: The Christian's Eye.]
Once more let Huxley speak as to the scientific possibility "with regard
to the other great Christian dogmas, the immortality of the soul, and a
future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I,
who am compelled, perforce, to believe in the immortality of what we
call matter and force, and in a very unmistakable present state of
rewards and punishments for all our deeds, have to these doctrines? Give
me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them."[9] But when
all conditions are considered, and just weight given to all the
probabilities, the full persuasion of immortality comes through Him who
has "brought life and immortality to light." These seem part of His
communication to the souls in whom He dwells. To them He says, "Because
I live, ye shall live also." Into their being He injects the power of an
endless life. Their hopes, faith, affections center less and less on
time. The truer, fuller, richer life is felt to be coming. It is to
surpass the earthly life in quantity and in quality only because the
soul, as it flutters Godward, must here feel the attrition of its
fleshly tabernacle. This dissolved, the fullness and the freedom come.
The house not made with hands henceforth enshrines the spirit. Christ's
great Word is finally interpreted: "I am come, that they might have
life, and have it more abundantly."
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