Brute creation

“ To complete the downfal of human nature from that reason and conscience by which it has been distinguished from the brute creation, he projected to annihilate religion. Lest the fine-spun deductions of abused logic should be unsuccessful in conveying doctrines so absurd, and practices so destructive, the powers of fancy are super-added to render them picturesque and impressive. ”

“ Thus it is natural to expect, that the happiness and misery of brutes should depend principally, and in a direct manner, on the impressions made upon their gross senses, whilst that of mankind arises, in great measure, from long trains of associated ideas and emotions, which enter chiefly by the eye and ear. And it seems to me a very striking coincidence, that mankind should at the same time exceed the brute creation in the variety of their ideas, and in the proportional largeness of that part of the body which is the peculiar seat of these. ”

“ It is error and the lack of knowledge of God's laws and God's will that leaves men in the world on a par with the brute creation; for they have no higher instincts, no higher principle, no higher incentive, no higher aspiration, than the brute world, if they have not some inspiration that comes from a higher source than man himself.—Apr. ”

“ But when progressive man 32 obtains a more perfect mastery over the brute creation, brute worship ceases; as he becomes familiar with the causes of some of the forces in nature, and is better able to protect himself from them, the fear of natural objects is lessened. Leaving the level of the brute creation he mounts upward, and selecting from his own species some living or dead hero, he endows a king or comrade with superhuman attributes, and worships his dead fellow as a divine being. ”

“ With these testimonies from such eminent witnesses, we leave the friends of the rational argument inextricably mixed up with the brute creation. The legitimate result of their theory is to confer immortality upon all orders of animated existence. We are sometimes accused of degrading man to the level of the brute. But if 330our friends of the other side elevate all brutes up to the level of man, how does that practically differ from what they accuse us of doing? ”

“ The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly to their existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, because it has a resisting power more supreme. But enough; do you comprehend my theory? ”

“ Those therefore are unrighteous men that are not just to the brute-creatures; those that are furious and barbarous to them evidence, and confirm in themselves, a habit of barbarity, and help to make the creation groan, Rom. ”

“ Numberless writers have noticed the different dispositions of the lower animals, differing not merely in separate species, but in various individuals of the same. There has been no scruple in taking the brutes themselves as types and emblems of moral qualities. Almost every vice and virtue has been unsparingly assigned to one or other of the brute creation. They are brave or cowardly, savage and treacherous, gentle and generous, industrious, idle, obedient, wayward, affectionate, malicious, working always for the common good, or full of rapacity and selfishness. ”

“ The answer seems to be that the brute is a mere appendage to man, has no independent value in the creation, is incapable of ethical life or of communion with God the source of life, and so has no guarantee of continuance. ”

“ In other66 words, we should expect to find in human nature itself those very inequalities, that very conflict of the higher and the lower elements on which moralists so urgently insist, and we should expect to find affinities and resemblances, more or less close, pervading the whole animal creation, and exhibiting human reason and brute intelligence as, upon a broad view, one in kind, however different in degree. ”

“ All the coarse and stridulous creatures of inferior creation come out against it, arrayed as one to lay it in its kindred ashes. All evils have their way with it; day by day and year by year a myriad demons claw and fret it. ”

“ It is here, in truth, while we thrust our hideous ancestry from our rarer minds, we yet derive from it our greatest blessing; for it is only so far as we are of common clay with the brute that we can forget and enjoy. The brute proceeds upon his grosser pleasures with a blind complacency from which our finer natures, an ineffectual compromise between God and him, shrink and wince. ”

“ I have long desired, and should be glad if some one of sufficient learning and skill would point out to me the line of demonstration between the human and brutal creation; and say where the human ends, and where the brutal begins! ”

“ And by originating thus, he would escape that horrible heritage of bestial and savage propensities which he would get through evolution, a heritage that would make it not his fault, but his misfortune, that sin and evil are in the world, and which would also shift the responsibility for the evidently abnormal condition of 'this present evil world' off from the creature to the Creator, and change to us His character from that of a loving Father, fettered by no conditions in His creation, to that of either a bungling, incompetent workman or a heartless fiend ”

“ For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. ”

“ The mass of humanity, considered as a whole, separated from these restless and stinging parasites, observed through the perspective of history, tradition and science, resembles nothing so much as some monstrous dull-brained and gloomy animal, alternately dozing and raging through the centuries, now as if stupefied in its own bulk or then as if furious with the madness of brute power. ”

“ We fancy that we are witnessing the descent of supreme evil into the infinite. At moments we seem to discern a reclamation of the elements, some vain effort of chaos to re-assert itself over creation. ”

“ Grant it; but why should good things in nature be used as types of evil things in the mind? If the thorn and the brier be good and a part of the original and beautiful order of creation, with what propriety can they be taken as emblems of what is evil and disorderly in the mind of man? ”

“ The good Creator is baffled, thwarted, and impeded by a brutish or malignant tendency in matter, which on the one hand mars the perfection of creation, and on the other hand inserts in the physical order of things elements of hostility and malevolence to man. It is a thought that at once degrades the Creator, and denudes Nature, as man's abode, of its beauty, comfort, and kindliness. How different is it in the Bible picture of creation! ”

“ And if any man wishes to discover whether or no he has really learned to regard the line between man and brute as merely relative and evolutionary, let him say again to himself those frightful words, "Creatures that once were Men." ”

“ If by reading, observation, and reflection, I have learnt anything respecting my fellow-creatures, it is this: that eight-tenths of their sufferings have been and are entirely of their own creation, and that it is within the powers of the human mind to diminish the amount of moral and physical evil to an incalculable extent. ”

“ And when this is done we shall not be astonished to see the moral brute exhibiting the instinct natural to the brute condition. How vain must it always be, [397] when we shall have reduced humanity to its ultimate capability of degradation, to expect any embellishment of mind to adorn the wretched existence. If the relation require that the slave be disrobed of the essential features which distinguish him from the brute, the relation must adapt itself to the consequences and leave its subject the instinctive privileges of a brute. ”

“ They do not belittle the modern triumphs of the race in commerce, science, art, invention, and organization. But they look upon all this as an evil, delusive, vainglorious show—a devil's work of tinsel and veneer—a bubble-blown fabric, quite empty of the substance of eternal things. ”

“ Creation has fallen under the curse through man's sin. As man has continued in sin and has become worse in his deeds of defiance of God, creation has also seen degradation in a like degree. Blights are seen everywhere. Tidal waves and terrific earthquakes have destroyed human lives by the millions. All creation is suffering and groaning under the curse. ”

“ Man's dream-life is the best analogue to the mental life of the brute.
6. The brute has no general ideas or intuitions, as of space, time, substance, cause, right. Hence there is no generalizing, and no proper experience or progress. There is no capacity for improvement in animals. The brute cannot be trained, except in certain inferior matters of association, where independent judgment is not required. No animal makes tools, uses clothes, cooks food, breeds other animals for food. ”

“ The activity of nature is shown in eternal creation, destruction, and re-creation from destruction,--plants, brutes, and men are the blind tools of her secret forces, creative and destructive, or, as the moralist calls them, good and evil! ”

“ The two great revolting crimes of barbarism, cannibalism and human sacrifices, only prevailed when man had fallen to the lowest depths, not when he had risen out of savagery to the heights. The assertion that man was originally a brute, savage and uncivilized is pure fiction, unsupported by the facts. The original civilization of mankind supports the Bible, and upsets evolution. ”

“ This truth admitted, he went on from it to think, against his former masters, that nothing is bad in itself—bad because it has within it a corrupting principle. On the contrary, all things are good, though in varying degrees. The apparent defects of creation, perceived by our senses, blend into the harmony of the whole. ”

“ But the cruelty of creation was not content with setting her loose in the world of created things with the gift of beauty and holiness in her hand. It had veiled her also with the mysterious magic that was simple enough and directly compelling enough to rouse the beast of jealousy, the beast of mastery, in the hearts of men. ”

“ Man never appears there as a merciless destroyer, but the preserver, instead of the tyrant, of the inferior part of the creation. While they continue in that wood, none but natural evil can approach them, and from that they are defended as much as possible. We there 'walked joint tenant of the shade' with the animal race; and a perfect equality in nature's bounty seems enjoyed by the whole creation. ”

“ Here is the explanation: he drags man down to the brute level, and then, judging man by brute standards, he questions whether man's mind can be trusted to deal with God and immortality?
How can any teacher tell his students that evolution does not tend to destroy his religious faith? ”

“ This theory entirely relieves the Creator of all blame, but gives no other help or comfort to the miserable race of man. It certainly is a comfort to feel that our Maker is not a being who ruins his creatures in the very process of creation, and then exposes them to eternal, hopeless misery as the consequence of it. ”

“ Sinks, full of a superb dignity to the end, and one asks oneself—"What can the scheme of creation be that gives a creature so clean-souled, so grand, into the power of such a miserable mass of vile lusts as man?" ”

“ Under no condition and by no possible power can the good and the true in man be developed out of the evil or false. The fatal error that has driven the ship of Evolution upon the rocks is that these plainly marked buoys along the course have been misplaced by the mirage of naturalism, or overlooked in the fogs of sodden materialism. ”

“ They would really groan, had they understanding to be sensible of the outrage done them. “The whole creation.”—It is the pang of universal nature, the agony of the whole creation, to be alienated from the original use for which they were intended, and be disjointed from their end to serve the disloyalty of a rebel. ”

“ Bunk of beginnings and of ends, and heads and tails. Why does man always want to know so damned much? Or rather, so damned little? If he can’t draw a ring round creation, and fasten the serpent’s tail into its mouth with the padlock of one final clinching idea, then creation can go to hell, as far as man is concerned. ”

“ Yet he held that man could sink to a degradation below the brute: “No brute is any more capable of rebelling against God than of serving him; is any more capable of sinking below the level of its own nature than of rising to the level of man. No brute can be either a fool or a fiend.... In the way that sin and corruption came into the spiritual realm we find one of those analogies to what takes place in the lower forms of being that show the unity of the system throughout. All disintegration and corruption of matter is from the domination of a lower over a higher law. ”

“ But have their ambition and the evil passions which fill and degrade his heart taken possession of you also? I will not believe it; for Nature never conceived nor uttered an unholy thought. Or perhaps your rage is kindled against this fabric of human construction, which invades your ancient domain? ”

“ We reduce him to the standard and condition of a brute, then assume that he is but a brute in feelings, intellect, capacity to acquire, and thence argue—in the narrowest of circles—that being but a brute, it is but right and natural to deal with him as what he is. ”