This point leads to another distinction which, when properly viewed, widens the gap between man and the animals, or at least destroys one of the frail bridges of the evolutionists. Lubbock and others affect to believe that the lowest savages of the modern world must be nearest to the type of primeval man. I have already attempted to show the fallacy of this. I may add here that in so holding they overlook a fundamental distinction, well pointed out by the Duke of Argyll, between the capacity of acquiring knowledge and knowledge actually acquired, and between the possession of a higher rational nature and the exercise of that nature in the pursuit of mechanical arts. In other words, primeval man must not be held to have been "utterly barbarous" because he was ignorant of mining or navigation, or of sculpture and painting. He had in him the power to attain to these things, but so long as he was not under necessity to exercise it, his mind may have expended its powers in other and happier channels. As well might it be affirmed that a delicately nurtured lady is an "utter barbarian" because she cannot build her own house, or make her own shoes. No doubt in such work she would be far more helpless then the wife of the rudest savage, yet she is not on that account to be held as an inferior being, or nearer to the animals. Our conception of an angelic nature implies the absence of all our social institutions and mechanical arts; but does this necessitate our regarding an angel as an "utter barbarian"? In short, the whole notion of civilisation held by Lubbock and those who think with him, is not only low and degrading, but utterly and absurdly wrong; and of course it vitiates all their conceptions of primeval man as well as of man's future destiny. Further, the theistic idea implies that man was, without exhausting toil, to regulate and control nature, to rule over the animals, to cultivate the earth, to extend himself over it and subdue it; and all this as compatible with moral innocence, and at the same time with high intellectual and spiritual activity. There is, however, a still nicer and more beautiful distinction involved in this, and included in the wonderful narrative in Genesis, so simple yet so much more profound then our philosophies; and which crops out in the same discussion of the critics of Darwin, to which I have already referred. A writer in the _Quarterly Review_ had attempted to distinguish human reason from the intelligence of animals, as involving self-consciousness and reflection in our sensations and perceptions. Huxley objects to this, instancing the mental action of a greyhound when it sees and pursues a hare, as similar to that of the gamekeeper when he lets slip the hound.[BG] [BG] _Contemporary Review_, November, 1871, p. 461.