The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 53
Evolution in the Production of Sensation and Mind
Evolution in the Production of Sensation and Mind.
Let us now look for a moment at Evolution from another aspect. If it has broken down in its attempted explanations of the physical structure, how much more lamentably has it failed to throw the faintest light upon sensation, the mental powers, and spiritual existence. Darwin felt that it was folly to make the attempt; these phenomena were beyond the sphere of his philosophy. He says:—"In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lower organisms is as hopeless an inquiry as how life itself first originated. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man." * But it is just the mental power that makes the man; not his anima1 structure and propensities. A theory of the origin of man, without taking into account his mental and moral powers, is a veritable Hamlet, with the prince left out. And Darwinism in every shape is confessedly that theory. The smallest male human skull has twice the brain capacity of the largest gori11a, but the proportion of 2 to 1 is not fractionally typical of the vast gulf fixed between man's intelligence and moral powers and the highest type of animal (which Mr. Wallace justly observes would not be found in any of the monkey species, but in the elephant or dog). The quality of the brain substance is more important than its size. Some of the very largest healthy brains have been found in men and women without intellectual capacity, and heads average larger in size in high than in equatorial latitudes, irrespective of the average intelligence. A certain amount of brain is indispensable to the discharge of merely animal functions. An infant eighteen months old exhibits infinitely higher intellectual powers than an ape of mature age—it has made great progress in the acquisition of language, exhibits keen mental emotions, and applies reasons drawn from one set of observations to a totally different set of circumstances, with perfect accuracy. The gap between man and the ape, which structurally evolutionists confess to be bridgeless, is mentally and morally removed to a degree that places the possibility of a distant affinity beyond credence. Mistaken ideas of the intellectual status of barbarous races, alluded to in another place, have had something to do with the belief that this chasm might one day be spanned by future discovery. Man contains in his own person the complete answer to the evolutionist. The fruit of the ages, he is symbolical of everything which in an evolutionary sense is a weakness. The most helpless of all creatures; for the first year of his life unable to walk, and for many years incapable of supplying his own bodily necessities; utterly destitute of clothing, without claws or teeth, or physical strength or swiftness, to procure for himself food or safety, it is, as Sir John Lubbock acknowledges, extraordinary that he should have held his own against the terrible enemies that roamed the earth. † His intelligence—the sole means of his preservation—could not have always belonged to him if he were the product of evolution, and for its acquisition evolution offers no explanation.
* Darwin—"Descent of Man," page 66.
† Lubbock—Origin of Civilization.