PRIMITIVE MAN -- NATURE OF MAN

We discuss man as the Scriptures introduce him to us, and as we now know him. Of the original man of evolution, a hairy beast with a tail and without a language, we have nothing to do. It is not proved that there ever was such a creature on the earth. Hence we dismiss him to the limbo of idle speculation.

The Scriptures tell us: "And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

I. This seems to be literal history. "When the style of a writing is purely historical, the contents must be accepted as literal, unless there be determining reasons for a different sense. This is a familiar and sound principle of interpretation." Murphy states it thus: "The direct or literal sense of a sentence is the meaning of the author, when no other is indicated; not any figurative, allegorical or mystical meaning" (Miley, Vol. I, p. 394). This is a perfectly natural interpretation of these opening chapters of Genesis. The narrative of the creation of man is no isolated section, but is interwoven with the rest of the Book. There is nothing to indicate that this is not as historical as the remainder. "No writer of true history," says Bishop Horsely, "would mix plain matter of fact with allegory in one continued narrative, without any intimation of a transition from one to the other. If, therefore, any part of this narrative be matter of fact, no part is allegorical. On the other hand, if any part be allegorical, no part is naked matter of fact." With a simple historic style and nothing to discredit an historical sense, we must adhere to the true historical character of this narrative. To say that the Author was writing a romance is to make the Bible inexplicable. We would be able to discover no rational account of its origin or purpose. But with a literal interpretation, it abounds in lessons of truth important to all mankind.

Jesus cited this story of Moses about the creation of Adam and Eve, in his teaching about divorce, as if it were simple, unadorned history. St. Paul repeatedly did the same. He referred to the order of their creation: "For Adam was first formed, then Eve" (1 Tim. 2: 13). "And Adam was not beguiled but the woman," verse 14. He tells us that the sin and the death came into the world through Adam (Rom. 5: 12-19). We are content to be in agreement with Jesus and the Apostle Paul.

II. The question then arises as to the constituent natures of man. On the face of the story of man's creation it is perfectly clear that man consists of at least two distinct principles or natures - a body and a soul, the one material and the other immaterial. The phenomena or properties of matter are essentially different and distinct from those of mind. To identify matter with mind is confusion of thought. It is contrary, also, to our innate intuitions. It is intuitively certain that matter and mind are two distinct substances; and such has been the commonsense decision of the great mass of mankind. It is at least certain that man is dichotomic, that is, has two distinct natures-body and soul. Though he has a physical body like other animals, yet the chief distinction of man is his rational mind. In the one are found the common properties of matter; in the other such mental faculties and powers as 'prove the reality of spiritual being.

Scripture abundantly confirms this fact, universally known without the Scripture. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it" (Ec. 12: 7). "And he will consume both soul and body" (Isa. 10: 18). "As for me, Daniel, my spirit was grieved in the midst of my body" (7: 15). "Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10: 29).

But there is also scripture to support a TRICHOTOMIC nature in man. Trichotomy is the doctrine of three distinct natures in man - body, soul and spirit - soma, psuche, and pneuma. Body and spirit are discriminated as in the dichotomic division of natures. But psuche means a something different from either, and not easily defined. Dr. Bush, with others, calls it a tertium quid, and thinks it refers to the animal life in man, in distinction from the intellectual or rational life. President Dwight of Yale taught us that it designated "the animating principle of the body connected with the senses." Some think it may mean what faculties man shares with the lower animals, only possessing them in a higher degree, but excluding those which recognize and know God and moral accountability - in other words, those which relate us to God and the spirit realm.

At any rate Paul with his usual force and fulness of expression, speaking of the great blessing of sanctification as purifying the. whole being, wrote: "And may your spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless" (1 Thess. 5: 23). Again, "The Word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. 4: 12). Here a distinction seems to be made between soul and spirit and "heart" would seem to include both. Again, "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind." Here again a distinction seems to be made between soul and mind. For centuries the early church at Alexandria, the great seat of Christian learning, held to the Trichotomic division.

Dr. Hodge contends for dichotomy. Dr. Miley after discussing dichotomic and trichotomic divisions of human nature, closes by saying, "We have reached no dogmatic conclusion on the question. Indeed, it does not seriously concern any important doctrine of Christian theology. It is a question of speculative interest in biblical psychology, but has no doctrinal implications decisive of either its truth or falsity."

III. As to the original physical constitution of man, we must conclude in the light of all the facts of human history, that it was substantially the same as our own. In chemical elements, in physiological constitution, in anatomical structure, the human body can not have materially changed. Then as now there were lungs for breathing, an alimentary system for the digestion and assimilation of food, veins and arteries for the circulation of blood, a nervous system for sensation and locomotion. Though absolutely perfect in form, and strength and health, he would be liable to accidents then as now. A fall over the precipice would break his bones, water might drown him, a falling rock might crush him, eating or drinking poison might poison him, the lightning bolt might strike him down. He would suffer from excess of fasting or eating." Such a bodily constitution is naturally liable to suffering and death. Any exemption would depend upon a specially providential economy. Such an exemption was no doubt available for Adam on the condition of obedience to the divine will. In accord with these views, suffering and death are accounted to man through the sin of disobedience" (Miley, Vol. I, p. 403). President Dwight taught us that God would have had some wise way of getting people out of the world, to make room for others. It might have been by translation, or by painlessly falling asleep and waking in glory. But death as we know it, with all its-pain and agony of dissolving nature, and torture and dread, would have been unknown, had there been no sin.

As to Adam's mind, in number of faculties it was like our own. They had never been enfeebled or warped; or biased by the sins of a long line of ancestors or of his own. It is said of Themistocles that an ancient Greek teacher proposed to train his memory. "Teach me to remember!" he exclaimed. "I never forget anything now; I would rather you would teach me how to forget." It is reported of Lord Macauley that his memory retained everything and he declared that, if every copy of Milton's Poems were lost, he could reproduce every line of Paradise Lost from memory. If here and there a man now has such a memory, we may suppose that Adam's memory was perfect. If we could add to that a faultless reasoning power, and marvellous intuitions, and a perfect judgment, and remarkable perceptions and a corresponding imagination, all these faculties in a harmonious balance and combination, we might have some correct idea of what the first man was. Mr. Miley, however, thinks that theologians, prompted by John Milton, have been prone to exaggerate the greatness of Adam. He quotes South as saying: "An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam." And, Wesley that, "Adam reasoned with unerring accuracy if he reasoned at all." This supposes that he possessed immediate insight into all subjects, and was in no need of experience or reasoning or study as a means of knowledge. This may be an overestimate of the primitive man. "No doubt," says Miley, "he possessed a faculty of immediate insight into primary truths; but there is no evidence of any such insight into truths which we can acquire only through experience and reasoning. We may concede him a very high grade of mental powers, yet they were merely human just like our own in kind, and operative under the same laws" (p. 404).

As to his language, very likely God gave him a language of reasonable fullness and sufficient vocabulary ready made. The use of language is not acquired by intuition but by practice. How much God taught Adam by inspiration or communion with him, we know not. But by the common agreement of the best thinkers the origination of language is a difficult and slow problem; not a few have found its sufficient source only in the divine agency. The proper naming of only a limited number of birds and beasts would require more knowledge 'than our first parent could possibly have had, if dependent solely on himself. "It is hardly thinkable that such intuition can belong to any finite mind." To suppose that Adam possessed an intuitive knowledge of the structure and nature of the fauna and flora of his locality, so that he could give appropriate names to each creature puts him out of all relation with ourselves. "Either he must from the first have been able to distinguish them by their characteristic marks and leading properties, and to have distinct notions of them annexed to their several appellations, or that he applied sounds at random, as names of the animals, without such notions. But the latter is to suppose a jargon, not a language; and the former implies a miraculous operation on the mind of Adam" (Magee).

It is far more rational to think our first parent was divinely helped to that knowledge and language which prepared him to rule the world.

IV. Adam was made "in the image of God." What is the real significance of such language? It could scarcely mean less than that he had a moral nature like God's. To know God man must have similar faculties and attributes, otherwise it would be impossible. To owe duty to God man must be a moral being. To be a moral being there must be the possession of moral faculties, which are INTELLECT, SENSIBILITY and FREE WILL. These are the invariable attributes of personality. No being, not possessed of these, is a person in the eyes of law, human or divine.

1. The intellect. By this we mean the power of perceiving and knowing, embracing all the various faculties of sense, judgment, memory imagination and reason. In this discussion we chiefly concern ourselves with the REASON because of its bearing on theology.

a. By this attribute come to us all the necessary truths; such as, the knowledge of our own personal existence, identity and free agency. Self-consciousness is the condition and guarantee of all knowledge. Reason gives us the axioms of mathematics, the ideas of time and space; of causation and obligation. These ideas or principles are the necessary truths, because they are seen directly to be true of necessity. No sane man can call some things in question. There is a consciousness within us, a self-knowing, self-judging function of our rational being by which we know our own acts and states. This includes a distinction between ourselves, the knower, and the outer world which we know; also a distinction between our own mind, the thinker, and the body which we inhabit. The reason says, "I am spirit-not matter." It distinguishes itself from its own body and from the outer world.

b. "Right reason recognizing itself as law is conscience" (Harris). It says, "I ought," or "I ought not." It has a sense of duty, of obligation to a superior Being from which it cannot escape, which holds man accountable at least for his choices. This faculty makes man a law to himself in all his voluntary, intelligent actions. He can no more escape from moral obligation than he can deny his identity, or annihilate himself. Wuttke said, "It is not so much the person who has the conscience but the conscience which has the person." "Two things fill me with awe, the starry heavens, and the sense of moral responsibility in man" (Kant). "There is a spectacle grander than the ocean, and that is the conscience. There is a spectacle grander than the sky, and it is the interior of the soul" (V. Hugo).

The terms right and wrong, or kindred words, are in all languages, because the idea of right and wrong is in every soul. We charge ourselves and others with doing right or wrong from our earliest youth, and throughout life. We do it in pleasure, in business, in society, in family life, in civil government, in uncivilized society, in literature and religion. We never cease doing it, and we cannot help doing it. "It is by this faculty that we say 'must' and 'ought'; there is no must or ought to the brute; it has a kind of intelligence, a spiritual nature in some form; but not having reason it cannot know obligation nor God. Hence it cannot be a moral or religious being" (Fairchild). This is what makes us "rational beings," in distinction from the lower animals.

c. This gives us the real knowledge of God. If something within us (reason) affirms accountability, it is accountability to a SOME ONE-God. Conscience speaks in God's name and forbids man to be a God to himself. It presumes the being of God-a righteous being who will ratify the verdicts of conscience. We know God by intuition and conscience. We cannot reason at all without assuming a God. We cannot help assuming a regular order, a supreme intelligence, a designing mind, if not a moral end or purpose in advance of all reasoning. Mansell declares: "Man learns to pray before he learns to reason; he feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct of worship, before he can argue from effects to causes." "Self-consciousness and world-consciousness can only find their completion in God-consciousness" (Dorner). "Men do not reach their belief in God by argument but without it" (Calderwood). "Not by arguments without but by the breath of God within us, do we get our first impression of the divine existence" (F. L. Patton). "There is that in man which makes him restless without God, discontented with every substitute for him" (Fisher). "In proportion as the conscience is quickened, it is natural that men should believe in a personal God, who judges them and who will punish and reward them" (Wace). "Through self-knowledge man comes to the knowledge of God. There can be no true conception of conscience which does not affirm the being of God" (Mulford).

Thus it is that this great faculty of reason, as intuition and conscience, by these fundamental first principles, lays the foundation of science and theology. It is a peculiarity of these truths of the reason that they are known to be true by their own nature. Nobody stops to prove them to anybody else. Their truth is assumed. We call them necessary truths, and believe them without any argument, and assume that everybody else believes them.

d. It is another peculiarity of the reason that much of its results have the character of inevitableness. This is true also of the action of what is commonly called the intellect. We cannot help thinking that two and two are four; that we ourselves exist; that we are different from the bodies we inhabit and from the material world around us; that right is right and wrong is wrong, and the two are not the same; that there is a God and we ought to obey Him; that we ought to do right and ought not to do wrong. We cannot help thinking that white is white and not black, or that a horse is before us in the street when we see him. We can give our attention to one object and not to another; we can determine the direction of our thoughts in a degree, but not the nature of the thought in the presence of the object. Hence we have only an indirect responsibility for our thoughts.

2. THE SENSIBILITY.

a. Through our sentient nature or sensibility we become aware of good and evil in the matter of pleasure and pain, satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Indeed, good and evil can have no existence except on condition of a sensibility. If our intellects were metallic calculating machines without the power of feeling, there could be no such thing as duty or obligation, because there could be no pleasure or pain. President Fairchild well said: "If there were no sentient being, there could be no good or evil in the universe-nothing of ultimate value-nothing to be chosen or regarded as a desirable end -an object to be chosen for its own sake; hence there could be no obligation, no end to be chosen, no course of conduct which ought to be pursued; hence no right or wrong as moral facts, and no ideas corresponding with the words 'right' and 'wrong,' 'ought' and 'ought not.' We never say ought or ought not except in regard to some natural good-some interest; and all good, all interest lies in the condition or experience of a sentient nature. The sensibilities are the channel for the ideas of good and evil, and thus it is the condition of the apprehension of obligation. Obligation is perceived by the reason in view of the good or happiness given by the sensibility. Hence one cannot be a moral being without a sentient nature" (Theology, p. 35).

b. The actions of the sensibility take the various forms of desires, appetites, affections, passions and emotions. All these except the emotions are related to something outside of us, the attainment of which affords satisfaction. These objects as producing satisfaction are a relative good, but the satisfaction is the good itself. Fruit on a tree, ripe and luscious, is a relative good-good to delight and sustain man; but the sustenance and satisfaction of man, his delight derived from the fruit is absolute good-the real good in itself.

It is this happiness which man receives that constitutes the motive to human action and all man's achievement. Without this sentient nature man would not take enough interest in himself to feed himself or care for himself or keep himself alive, or propagate the race. The sentient nature affords the continual spur to enterprise, and pushes the race along in the path of advancement and progress.

It is through our sensibilities that God himself appeals to us, that is, by the bliss of heaven and the pangs of hell. Without our sentient nature there could be no bliss and no pangs, and no motive to right action. Heaven itself as we think of it would be an impossibility. Thus it will be seen what a part the sensibilities play in the destiny of moral beings.

c. The emotions in themselves are passive experiences, depending upon the conditions that excite them, and are only indirectly motives to action. The emotions of fear may bring pain and the pain is a motive; so indirectly the emotion itself is a motive.

The movements of the sensibility in their higher forms, depend upon some special apprehensions of the mind. The emotions arise in the presence of the exciting causes; hence the causes must be present to perception or thought. The sight of the Alps may awaken the emotion of sublimity; the thought of them might do the same. So far as we know the lower animals are not moved by beauty, grandeur, sublimity, or moral excellence, and have no corresponding emotions.

d. It will be seen at once that the sensibility acts inevitably by a law of necessity. We cannot avoid desiring the object correlated to our sensibility. A hungry man cannot help desiring food when he sees it, and smells it. A thirsty man has no option whether he will desire water or not, when he sees it. The thirsty coffee drinker is moved by the fragrance of coffee, and the drunkard by the odor of his favorite drink. The sensibility waits for no permission to be excited. We cannot well avoid having the emotions which objects of sense or thought are calculated to excite. We can often decide ' what our eyes shall see and our ears shall hear, and what subjects shall occupy our thoughts, and thus indirectly we can decide the character of our desires and emotions, but only indirectly. It would follow, therefore, that in-so-far as our feelings and desires and emotions are inevitable no moral character attaches to them. Thus a moral philosopher, very judicious in statement writes: "We do not strictly speak of these emotions or desires as morally right or! wrong, but as pleasant or painful, as desirable or undesirable, helpful or harmful. Even an artificial appetite, craving a harmful indulgence, like the love of strong drink, is not wrong in a moral sense; what are sometimes called the malevolent affections, like anger, resentment, which impel us to do harm to the objects which excite them, are not morally wrong. A yielding to them may be wrong; the action to which they tend to move us may be wrong; nursing these passions, giving them place and encouragement in our hearts may be wrong, but, strictly, the wrong is not in the movement of the sensibility itself."1 1. Fairchild's Theology, pp. 36, 37.

e. It will be seen from the foregoing that the sensibility is of indispensable value to us. It makes us moral beings. It gives us the whole realm of motives. It spurs us to action, and inspires our efforts; it makes blessedness possible both here and hereafter. But while it is thus a source of good, it also is the source of temptation. All evil makes its appeal here. And here we get an insight into the nature of sin. It is the consent of the will to obey the sensibility instead of living a life of obedience to enlightened reason. "A life controlled by the sensibility is a life which befits a brute. A life ordered by reason, against impulse and feeling if need be, is a life which befits man," the child of God. Which of the two lives we shall live is decided by the FREE WILL.

3. THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

The question of the freedom of the will is one of profound importance. It is as old as human philosophy. It will be noticed that the will is only one of the three great moral attributes of man. So strictly speaking, it is the freedom of the moral being, who possesses the attribute of will, that we are discussing. The attribute of will belongs to an agent. The mind, or soul, or spiritual being is the active, intelligent agent to whom the powers of free moral action belong; the will is the mind acting as it freely elects to act. The question, then, under consideration is WHETHER MAN is A FREE MORAL AGENT. The terms should be defined.

(1) An agent is an actor, one who puts forth acts.

(2) A moral agent is one who puts forth acts that have a moral bearing to them-acts that are related to duty and moral obligation, and affect the moral character and destiny of immortal beings.

(3) A free moral agent is one whose moral choices, which lead to acts, are not necessitated by any internal or external compulsion. By internal compulsion is meant previous character or a previous act of volition, or previous state of mind, or desires, or habits, or natural appetences. By external compulsion is meant any effect of motives, or the influence of other beings. Now if a moral being is not thus free to originate his choices, independent of all compulsion from within or from without, then he is not a moral being at all. His actions can be neither virtuous nor vicious, worthy of praise or deserving of blame.

A free moral agent, then, be it understood, is one who can originate- moral choices, freely, deliberately, voluntarily, in view of motives, and enlightened by a sense of duty and obligation. Moral freedom, then, is an attribute of personality. It is the power of rational self-energizing with respect to ends. For such agency there must be a rational conception of the ends of action; a power of reflection and judgment upon ends and motives, and of rationally determining our action in respect to them. Such a power belongs only to moral beings, and the freedom lies not in the constituent faculties of our personality, but in our power of freely using them in personal action. The possession of such power cannot be consistently denied by any who admit the existence of virtue and vice, or who believe that man is an accountable being. The two facts are correlated and must stand or fall together.

The difference between the working of the will and the movements of the intellect and sensibilities becomes apparent. The actions of the intellect and sensibility we found to a degree to be inevitable. Not so with the action of the will. Here all is freedom, if there is any responsibility.

We are conscious of at least two courses of action possible to us; there may be many. They severally present their advantages and disadvantages, attractions and repulsions; and we consciously determine for ourselves by a free choice between them, which course we will pursue. Consciousness affirms that it is not a matter of thought or feeling, though both of these are involved, but the use of a faculty different from either. It is a conscious determination we make of the course we will pursue by the use of our faculty of choice or will.

In this decision we are conscious of the fact of freedom or liberty. We know that we can will to take either of the attitudes or pursue either of the courses open to us; nothing can persuade us otherwise. In spite of all the befogging speculations of theologians and philosophers, this is something that is infallibly known by the common sense of mankind. We are conscious of being self-sovereigns; in forming our decisions of the will, and to this extent we are free.

Let it be carefully observed, that our freedom may go no further. Something may prevent us from carrying the decision of the; will into execution. A burglar decides to rob a bank; the policeman, prevents him from carrying his purpose into actual execution, but the deed was performed, morally when the purpose was formed.-The decision of the will is the deed. Forty men bound themselves; by an oath to murder St. Paul. The Roman government prevented; them. But in the eye of moral reason they were all murderers, asi truly as if they had been permitted to execute their murderous-design. The real freedom of man begins and ends with the forma-: tion of the purpose. We cannot surely and absolutely and directly determine any result outside of or beyond the simple decision of the will itself. If our constitution, mental and physical, is in order, and there is no outside impediment, action will naturally follow the decision of the will. But many hindrances may come in to prevent the execution of the freely formed purpose. Over the results we have no direct and absolute control. We are free in the forming of the purpose. Here moral freedom properly speaking ends. But this is ample to give us a basis for man's moral character, and" God's moral government.