DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. i 95 



natures. If that Frenchman meant to infer that the modesty of a 

 civilized being: is no better than the semi-bestial instincts of a man- 

 ape, he was as contemptible as the poet could wish, but Le was also 

 grossly illogical. His observation merely went to show by what 

 means one of the most essential of social instincts was originally 

 generated in the world ; and it is not the less essential because in its 

 first origin it partook of the grossness of the animal in which it was 

 implanted. Mr. MacLennan has written a very interesting book tend- 

 ing to show that the original rnamage ceremony was everywhere like 

 that which survives in Australia to this clay, where the wild human 

 being knocks down his beloved with a club, and drags her off to his 

 own den. Suppose this to be true, would it follow that marriage in 

 the most refined and purest societies was no better than forcible ab- 

 duction as practised in the Australian bush ? Surely it would follow 

 no more than the development of a man from a monkey would prove 

 that men still have tails, or that the brain of a Newton is no better 

 than that which directs a chimpanzee in its search for nuts. In short, 

 it is sufficiently plain that we do not diminish the value of any human 

 accomplishments by tracing them back to their remote origin in the 

 brute, or even the insect creation. That shudder which runs through 

 us when we are invited to recognize our poor relations in the Regent's 

 Park is gratuitous. The philosopher may have thrown more light 

 upon the process by which we came to be what we are ; but he does 

 not, for he obviously cannot, argue that we are other than we are. 

 Whether in pursuing our genealogy Ave stop short at " who was the 

 son of Adam," or carry it back through a vast series of links to " who 

 was the son of a monkey," the fact of our present existence, with our 

 present instincts, aspirations, and endowments, remains precisely what 

 it was. The prospect, indeed, is improved for our remote descendants, 

 " far on in summers that we shall not see ; " but for us poor creatures 

 living and moving in this nineteenth century after Christ, the circum- 

 stances remain unaltered. Turn it as you will, we are the base from 

 which the line is measured, and not the indeterminate point to be dis- 

 covered by a process of trigonometry. 



Is, then, the alarm which has been excited in men's minds totally 

 unreasonable ? In one sense it would seem to be so. The speculations 

 of which we have been speaking are absolutely harmless to any one 

 who holds as surely every sincere believer ought to hold that reli- 

 gion depends upon certain instincts whose existence cannot be explained 

 away by any possible account of the mode by which they came into 

 existence. Property is not less sacred in the eyes of a reasonable man 

 because it may have originated in mere physical force ; nor religion 

 because it first dawned upon mankind in the vague guesses of some 

 torpid brain, which fancied that a bigger Caliban was moving the stars 

 and rolling the thunder. But it may be true that the new theories will 

 transform the mode in which men interpret the universe to themselves, 



