Part 9 (1/2)

Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigations, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one?

presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but notorious.

CLXXII

It is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, application, that every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

The oak is a more complex thing than the little rudimentary plant contained in the acorn; the caterpillar is more complex than the egg; the b.u.t.terfly than the caterpillar; and each of these beings, in pa.s.sing from its rudimentary to its perfect condition, runs through a series of changes, the sum of which is called its development In the higher animals these changes are extremely complicated; but, within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischoff, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the schoolboy. It will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in the higher animals generally.

CLXXIII

Exactly in those respects in which the developing Man differs from the Dog, he resembles the ape, which, like man, has a spheroidal yolk-sac and a discoidal, sometimes partially lobed, placenta. So that it is only quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development, as the man does.

Startling as the last a.s.sertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true, and it alone appears to me sufficient to place beyond all doubt the structural unity of man with the rest of the animal world, and more particularly and closely with the apes.

Thus, identical in the physical processes by which he originates--identical in the early stages of his formation--identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale--Man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organisation. He resembles them as they resemble one another--he differs from them as they differ from one another.

CLXXIV

If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

CLXXV

Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this*--leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonis.h.i.+ng the conqueror that he is but dust.

CLXXVI

If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another--then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.

* This alludes to a foregoing enumeration of the seven families of Primates headed by the Anthropini containing man alone.

CLXXVII

The whole a.n.a.logy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crus.h.i.+ng an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed--from tne inorganic to the organic--from blind force to conscious intellect and will.

CLXXVIII

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

CLXXIX

Thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence Man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the Past a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a n.o.bler Future...