When did reason begin? Do we find it in any species of plant or animal life, save man? The highest order of animals can not reason enough to start a fire or replenish one. A dog, or a cat, or even a monkey, will enjoy the warmth from a fire but will not replenish it, although they may have seen it done many times. Animals may be taught many interesting tricks; many can imitate well. But they do not have the power of reflection or abstract reason. They live for the present. They have no plans for tomorrow,—-no purpose in life. They can not come to new conclusions. They can not add or subtract, multiply or divide. They can not even count. Some animals can solve very intricate problems by instinct, but instinct is the intelligence of God, and never could have come by evolution.
If reason came not from God, but from evolution, should we not expect it well developed in evolutionary man, since for the last 3,000,000 years he must have been 95 to 100 per cent, normal. If we grant the estimate of 500,000,000 years, he would have been 99.4% normal for the last 3,000,000 years. Would we not expect in that time a world of inventions and discoveries, even surpassing those of the last 100 years? The Chinese claim a multitude of inventions and a race so nearly normal as ape-men, ought to have invented language, writing, printing, the telegraph, phonograph, the wireless, the radio, television, and even greater wonders than in our age.
There is no trace of intelligence in man in all the 3,000,000 years, prior to Adam.
We should have many works excelling Homer’s Iliad, Vergil’s Aeneid, and Milton’s Paradise Lost. We have no trace of a road, or a bridge, or a monument, like the pyramids. That no race of intelligent creatures ever lived prior to Adam is proven by lack of affirmative evidence. If it be true, as Romanes declared, that the power of abstract reason in all the species was only equal to that of a child 15 months old, then each species would possess less than one millionth of that.
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