While we grant, then, that man is the last stage in the development of life and that he has a brute ancestry, we regard him also as the offspring of God. The same God who was the author of the brute became in due time the creator of man. Though man came _through_ the brute, he did not come _from_ the brute, but from God, the Father of spirits and the author of all life. Œdipus’ terrific oracle: “Mayst thou ne’er know the truth of what thou art!” might well be uttered to those who believe only in the brute origin of man. Pascal says it is dangerous to let man see too clearly that he is on a level with the animals unless at the same time we show him his greatness. The doctrine that the brute is imperfect man is logically connected with the doctrine that man is a perfect brute. Thomas Carlyle: “If this brute philosophy is true, then man should go on all fours, and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral.” G. F. Wright, Ant. and Origin of Human Race, lecture IX—“One or other of the lower animals may exhibit all the faculties used by a child of fifteen months. The difference may seem very little, but what there is is very important. It is like the difference in direction in the early stages of two separating curves, which go on forever diverging.... The probability is that both in his bodily and in his mental development man appeared as a _sport_ in nature, and leaped at once in some single pair from the plane of irrational being to the possession of the higher powers that have ever since characterized him and dominated both his development and his history.”