-Illustrated London News, October 15, 1927
Quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton
Thursday, November 26, 2015
[Sir Arthur Keith] seemed to be setting out to show that man is entirely explained by his animal ancestry; and he then proceeded to say that the animal formation (including the brain formation) of an ape is exactly the same as that of a man. Whether this is true or not I have no sort of authority to discuss, and Sir Arthur Keith has a great deal. But if it is true, his own inference from it must be false. If he was arguing that Homo Sapiens must be an entirely natural or evolutionary product, he was arguing against himself. If he was trying to prove that man has a merely material origin like the ape, he was proving exactly the opposite. If there are two motor-cars, which a minute examination proves to be exactly alike in every mechanical detail, then we shall be rather more and not less surprised if one of them suddenly soars into the air like an aeroplane, while the other can only trundle along the road like a cart. The only way in which we can possibly explain it is to suppose that, at some time and in some way, some other more mysterious force came into play. But the more we prove that every cog and rivet in the two machines is identical, the more we are driven to the mystical explanation when their action is different. And the difference between a man and an ape does not need discussion; it does not allow of denial or even doubt. Man has stepped into a totally different world of imagination and invention; like a man turning into a god. If this startling and stupendous difference can co-exist with exactly the same material origins, the only possible deduction is that it does not come from the material origins. In other words, the only possible deduction is that by some special spiritual act, as in the ancient record, man became a living soul. So far as Sir Arthur Keith's argument can be said to prove anything, it proves the theological conception he was apparently trying to disprove. That is a perfectly simple and self-evident fact; and yet nobody seems to have seen it, either among his friends or foes.
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