196 The Bible of Nature 



his cunning, his sociability, his curiosity, and his 

 imitativeness, his ruthless and ferocious destruc- 

 tiveness when his anger is roused by opposition." 

 There is doubtless some truth in this, but it under- 

 appreciates what is also a plain fact of life that the 

 success of the Mammalian type depends in great 

 part on maternal care, that as Henry Drummond 

 said, the '" struggle for the life of others' 3 is as 

 important as the struggle for personal subsistence. 

 Repugnance to the Scientific Interpretation. Many 

 who are not unwilling to admit that there is a 

 certain grandeur in the doctrine of descent as 

 applied to plants and animals, express a strong 

 repugnance to the whole idea of the Descent of 

 Man. It may be useful to inquire into this re- 

 pugnance, which is expressed by many clear- 

 headed and noble-minded men and women. To 

 some extent, it is due to misunderstanding. Peo- 

 ple run off with the mistaken idea that evolution- 

 ists try to prove that the chimpanzee is their second 

 cousin or something of that sort; or they fancy 

 that Man, according to biology, is no more than a 

 freak, a strangely fortunate ending of a chapter of 

 accidents. Or the reasons for the repugnance may 

 have an aesthetic basis, since some people dislike 

 anything in the nature of embryos, preferring to 

 picture their ancestors always with gray hairs. 

 They will not look on the rock whence they were 

 hewn or into the pit whence they were digged. 



