"
Surely it is a little singular, that the 'anatomist,' who
finds it 'difficult' to 'determine the difference' between
'Homo' and 'Pithecus', should yet range them on anatomical
grounds, in distinct sub-classes!
We are indeed told by those who assume authority in these matters, that
the two sets of opinions are incompatible, and that the belief in the
unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and
degradation of the former. But is this really so? Could not a
sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians
who would force this conclusion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the
Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist whose genius is the glory of
his age, is degraded from his high estate by the undoubted historical
probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of
some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient
to make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and by so much more
dangerous than the Tiger? Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all
fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an
egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from
that of a Dog? Or is the philanthropist or the saint to give up his
endeavours to lead a noble life, because the simplest study of man's
nature reveals, at its foundations, all the selfish passions and fierce
appetites of the merest quadruped? Is mother-love vile because a hen
shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it?
The common sense of the mass of mankind will answer these questions
without a moment's hesitation.
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