ow of a reason to be
gleaned from the Bible, nor from any other source, that the commencement
of orderly development, the separation of land and water, earth and sky,
and the subsequent provision of designs for organic forms of life and
the first steps that followed the issue of the design, began six
thousand years ago, or anything like it. It can be shown, indeed, that
_historical_ man, or the specific origin of the man spoken of as Adam,
dates back but a limited time; and it is calculable with some degree of
probability how far; but that is all. We are therefore in no difficulty
when ample time is demanded; but we are in the greatest straits when the
illimitable demands of a slowly and minutely stepping development,
perpetually liable to be checked, turned back, and even obliterated,
have to be confronted with other weighty probabilities and calculations
regarding the sun's light and heat, and the duration of particular
geologic eras.

CHAPTER VII.

_THE DESCENT OF MAN_.

We now approach a special objection which always, has been (and I shall
be pardoned, perhaps, for saying _always will be_) the _crux_ of the
theory of unaided, uncreated evolution--the advent of reasoning, and not
only reasoning, but self-conscious and God-conscious MAN.

Here again the lines of argument are so numerous, and the details into
which we might go so varied, that a rigid and perhaps bald selection of
a few topics is all that can be attempted.

But I may remark that naturalists are far from being agreed on this part
of the subject. Agassiz rejects the evolution of man altogether. Mr. St.
G. Mivart, while partly admitting, as every one else now does, the
doctrine of evolution, denies the descent of man. Mr. Wallace, the great
apostle of evolution, opposes Darwin, and will have none of his views on
the descent of man; and Professor Huxley himself says that, while the
resemblance of structure is such that if any "process of physical
causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary
animals have been produced, the process of causation is amply sufficient
to account for the origin of man," still he admits that the gulf is vast
between civilized man and brutes, and he is certain that "whether _from_
them or not, man is assuredly not _of_ them."

The first difficulty I shall mention is, however, a structural one.
Supposing that an ape-like ancestor developed into man, on the
principles of natural selection; t