C 00 - CHAPTER III Primitive Man

CHAPTER III.

ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.

III. PRIMITIVE MAN.

Having taken this survey of man in his origin and natural constitution, we may endeavour to realize him in thought as he was in the first stage of his existence on earth, as he was when he came forth, as Scripture relates, from the hand of his Creator.

Now, in respect of this I cannot but believe that we often impose upon ourselves, and cherish a picture which is not consonant with the reality, and foster an illusion which is not a little heightened and strengthened by the strong language commonly used in speaking or writing of man’s condition in Paradise as one of absolute perfection. From such language we are apt to carry away the notion that Adam was a being not only physically complete and perfect, but also a being whose intellectual and moral nature was in its highest degree developed, a being, in short, to whom nothing needed to be added to render him perfect in all his parts. Along with this, we are apt to fancy that his condition in Paradise was one of the most perfect felicity which the human nature is capable of enjoying.

Now, that this is an illusive view of man’s primitive condition will, I think, appear from the following con siderations : i. On a mere general survey, and looking at man simply in his physical and intellectual aspect, it must strike one that the highest state of man is not and cannot be that of a naked animal, with nothing to do but to keep a garden, already richly furnished with all that is " pleasant to the eye and good for food." Viewing man, even in the lowest state in which we find him now, we feel that he must have been made for higher ends and worthier pursuits and nobler en joyments than this. It is inconceivable that with capacities for thought and work, such as man even in the lowest state of civilisation is seen to possess, the perfection of his nature and his supreme felicity can have been realized in a state of such simplicity and in a sphere so limited as that which Paradise afforded to our first parents. ii. It must also, I think, strike one that if Adam was the perfect being intellectually and morally he is often represented as having been, it is inconceivable that he should have fallen before so slight a temptation, or yielded to so trifling an impulse as that by which he was led to transgress the divine prohibition. Eve was seduced as a little child might be by a mere trifle by talk insidious, indeed, and subtle, but by which a being of high intelligence and firmly established moral character could not have been led astray; such an one would at once have seen through the artifice, detected its falsehood, and spurned its impiety. As respects Adam, he, the apostle tells us, was not deceived; he so far surpassed his wife in intelligence that he saw through Satan’s device; he saw that what he was invited to do was wrong; but what shall we say of his moral faculty or of his mental strength when we see him, for what reason we know not, but apparently from mere softness and desire to please his wife, knowingly transgressing the express command of God, a command which he had been so solemnly enjoined to keep? To me it appears incredible that any being of high moral capacity and mental vigour a being approximating even remotely to the perfec tion of manhood could have allowed himself to be drawn so easily to do what he knew to be wrong, and what he had been forewarned would bring such terrible consequences. iii. The law of man’s nature is that he reaches perfection only by a slow process of growth and gradual development, secured through the due exercise of his faculties. This is inseparable from his constitution as a free intelligent agent. That God could create an intelligent being from the first absolutely perfect, so that he neither needed to become nor could become more complete either intellectually or morally than he was at the moment of his creation, is not to he denied, for with God all things are possible. But such a being would not be like any of those whom God has formed.

Such a " monstrum perfect ionis " would be an anomaly in God s universe a piece of strange symmetrical spiritual mechanism (if that be not a contradiction in terms), in whom thinking would be a sort of clock-work, and in whom there could be neither goodness nor badness morally. It was not so that God made man Man, as he came from the hand of his Maker, was a free, intelligent, self-governing agent, capable of development, and needing experience, trial, and use in order to attain both the proper growth of his physical and mental faculties and the strengthening, maturing, and perfecting of his moral nature. Of every such being it is in a very im portant sense true that he is his own maker. From God he receives the faculties and capacities by which he is to be enabled to fulfil the functions of his position; but he must himself use these, and use them wisely and well, if he is really to advance in culture and rise towards the perfection of his being. " Mankind," as Bishop Butler remarks, " is left by nature an unformed, unfinished creature, utterly deficient and unqualified, before the acquirement of knowledge, experience, and habits for that mature state of life which was the end of his creation." l This is the law under which man, as he exists now, is placed; he becomes strong bodily, men tally, and morally, not all at once, nor by mere mechanical processes, nor by natural instinct, but by the free and voluntary use of the capacities God has given him amid the varied experiences of life. " Nature," to quote again from Butler, " does in nowise qualify us wholly, much less at once for this mature state of life. Even maturity of understanding and bodily strength are not only arrived to gradually, but are also very much owing to the continued exercise of our powers of body and mind from infancy." 2

Butler even goes the length of maintaining that a person brought into the world with all his powers in full maturity would at first be " as unqualified for the human life of mature age as an idiot," and he questions " whether the natural 1 Analogy, Part I. cli. v. p. 146 (Bohn’s edition).

2 Hid., i<. 145. information of his sight and hearing would be of any manner of use at all to him in acting before experience." Be this, however, as it may, there can be no doubt that it is only by experience that man in his present state advances to maturity. Now, we have no reason to believe that it was otherwise with our first parents. Their nature was the same as ours, and it is to be presumed that the same law applied to them in this respect as to us. They could reach perfection only by the continuous use of the faculties they possessed.

It would seem even that their moral perception needed the discipline of evil before it could be fully developed; for it was after they had sinned that God said, " Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil," i.e. to make moral distinctions, to discern between good and evil (Genesis 3:22). Not that they needed personally to sin in order to attain to this, but that it was only by experience that they could arrive at an apprehension of the distinction between good and evil. And as it was only by experience that their moral nature could be fully matured, so we may safely affirm of their whole nature that it could reach per fection only by the free and intelligent use of those facul ties, physical, intellectual, and moral, with which God had endowed them.

" God created man as little as possible," is the dictum of a recent writer, " meaning thereby that we were endowed with the germ and crude capacity of that state for which we were intended, but that the exercise of our freedom was necessary to raise us up to the positive attainment of the dignity and bliss of perfect moral being." " Mere animal natures are finished from the first; God took everything that concerned them upon Himself, and left them nothing to do. But it was His will that man should be His fellow-worker in the great feat of his own creation, and thereby in the completion of all creation; the Father left the mighty work unfinished, so to speak, until the child should set his seal on it." l

We must think of man, then, in his first estate, as he came from the hand of his Creator, not as a perfect, fully-matured being, but rather as a man-child, a man with noble capacities, 1 Monsell, Religion of Redemption, p. 10. but these as yet undeveloped, and with everything to learn, an innocent, pure, guileless being, with no bias to evil, without any knowledge of evil, with affections tending naturally to good, and with a soul capable of rising to a freedom like that of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold sin, and who cannot be tempted of evil. Adam was placed in Paradise as in a school, a training-place suited to a beginner, and where the lessons and the discipline were such as his almost infantile condition required. As one of the schoolmen 1 expresses it :

" Paradisus est locus inchoantium, et in melius proficiscentium; et ideo ibi solum bonum esse debuit, quia creatura a malo non initianda fuit non tamen summum"

" The actual constitution of the first man," says Dorner, " must not be so conceived as to imply that he was spared all labour and the conquest of the world intellectual and readjust as little as he was spared spontaneous moral effort. ... It is of no dogmatical importance how high the prerogatives of the first man are placed, provided only two limits are observed 1. That God is not made the author of evil; 2. That man is not precluded from a course of ethical development by a too much or too little. Both are observed by regarding the first man as created with a pure, innocent nature, with a natural bias to good or a natural love for God. Beside this, there was in him, along with consciousness of self and the world, a natural bias to self and the world. These qualities cannot be antagonistic to each other. As they came from the Creator’s hand they existed in immediate, good, though still not perfect and indissoluble unity. On the other hand, this unity needed to be ratified by the will, by the good use of freedom. Actual living relation to God, because depending on the use made of freedom, cannot be perfect in the begin ning, but must be the outcome of several divine acts." 2

I have referred to the descriptions which are often given, both in discourse and in writing, of man’s estate in Paradise as fostering a delusive conception of his actual condition and attainments in the first stages of his existence. The poets are here chiefly in fault. Take, for instance, the following lines from Montgomery’s exquisite poem, " The World before 1 Hugo de St. Victor.

2 System of Christian .Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 82. the Flood," in which a descendant of Adam describes his great progenitor,

" "With him his noblest sons might not compare In Godlike feature and majestic air; Not out of weakness rose his gradual frame; Perfect from his Creator’s hand he came; And as in form excelling, so in mind The Sire of men transcended all mankind. A soul was in his eye, and in his speech A dialect of heav n no art could reach : For oft of old to him the evening breeze Had borne the voice of God among the trees; Angels were wont their songs with his to blend, And talk with him as their familiar friend." This is very beautiful, but it is poetry, not history. That man was created in this state of consummate perfection, transcending in intelligence as in form all mankind, is a vision of the imagination, not an expression of actual fact. That Adam was no imbecile, that his original state was not that of a savage, that he from the first possessed intelligence as well as a capacity of growth in mental power and attainment, and that he was not only absolutely sinless, but positively good, the Scripture distinctly leads us to conclude. But beyond this we have no right to go. All that we really know is that he was made good in every respect, and that he was placed in a sphere which was a training-place for the whole man, fitted for the development of all his powers.