not? For so are all human destinies

Bound with gold chains unto the throne of God.




ANCIENT CIVILISATION {5} {6}


There is a theory abroad in the world just now about the origin of the
human race, which has so many patent and powerful physiological facts to
support it that we must not lightly say that it is absurd or impossible;
and that is, that man's mortal body and brain were derived from some
animal and ape-like creature. Of that I am not going to speak now. My
subject is: How this creature called man, from whatever source derived,
became civilised, rational, and moral. And I am sorry to say that there
is tacked on by many to the first theory, another which does not follow
from it, and which has really nothing to do with it, and it is this: That
man, with all his wonderful and mysterious aspirations, always
unfulfilled yet always precious, at once his torment and his joy, his
very hope of everlasting life; that man, I say, developed himself,
unassisted, out of a state of primaeval brutishness, simply by
calculations of pleasure and pain, by observing what actions would pay in
the long run and what would not; and so learnt to conquer his selfishness
by a more refined and extended selfishness, and exchanged his brutality
for worldliness, and then, in a few instances, his worldliness for next-
worldliness. I hope I need not say that I do not believe this theory. If
I did, I could not be a Christian, I think, nor a philosopher either. At
least, if I thought that human civilisation had sprung from such a