If man is created with a consciousness of his own inner-self, as a self, he is able naturally to imagine a like self in other beings; if he has an idea of God innate in him, he can assimilate the truth when it is at last presented to his mind; and that is why he feels that it is a refinement; a rising from the lower to the higher (because from falsehood to truth), to let the many gods give place to the One God.  If the idea of God has been obscured, and the power of its apprehension deadened, the man can only grope about helplessly, fashioning this explanation of nature and that—­all more or less false, but all dimly bearing witness to the two absolute facts, that there is an inner non-material self, and an external non-material God.

If then there are insuperable difficulties in connecting thought with matter by any process of unaided development, there are also great difficulties, even when thought in a rudimentary form is given, in conceiving it developed into man’s reason, or man’s religious belief, by any known process of “natural” causation.

CHAPTER VIII.

FURTHER DIFFICULTIES REGARDING THE HISTORY OF MAN.

There are, however, some other matters connected with the history of man on the globe, unconnected with psychological development, but which demand notice, as making the argument against an undesigned, unaided development of man a cumulative one.  It is urged that whatever may be thought of the connection of man with the animal creation, at any rate the received Christian belief regarding the origin of man—­especially his late appearance on the scene—­is contrary to known facts, and that we have to mount up to a vast geologic antiquity to account for what is known from exhumed remains in caves and lake dwellings, and the like.

Now no one pretends that the history of man is free from doubt and difficulty, but the doubt and difficulty are not confined to the “orthodox.”  For the inferences to be drawn from the exhumed remains are equally doubtful whatever views be adopted.

I shall not go into great length on this subject, partly because some recent popular tracts of Canon Rawlinson, Mr. R.S.  Pattison, and others, have already made the ordinary reader familiar with the main outlines of the subject; and still more because, be the views of archaeologists what they may, it is impossible for any rational person to contend either that they can be reduced to anything like unity among themselves, or that they lead to any conclusion favourable to the belief in the self-caused and undesigned evolution of man.

It may be regarded as known, that at the dawn of history, mankind was passing through what may be called a Bronze age, in which weapons of bronze were used before tools of iron were invented.  But this age was preceded by one in which even bronze was unknown.  Stone implements, and some of bone and horn, were alone used.  It is also well ascertained that there were two widely divided stone ages.  The latter, distinguished by the polishing of the stones, is described as the neolithic; the former, in which flint and other hard stone fragments were merely chipped or flaked to an edge, is called the palaeolithic.