162 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



occurred to any physiologist to love or admire his race the less, 

 because he knew that the human organization has to pass 

 through stages of reproduction, the earlier of which are not to 

 be distinguished from those of the invertebrate animal. So 

 need it never be imputed as a degradation to mankind, that 

 the force and tendencies of their illustrious nature once lay 

 imperfectly developed in some humbler form of being. One 

 source of the prejudice here to be contended with, rests in our 

 associations with the word ancestry. From seeing our imme- 

 diate seniors possessed of venerable qualities, we naturally 

 incline to venerate an ancestry ; we presume its consti- 

 tuent elements to be something superior to ourselves. When 

 called upon, therefore, to place any of the inferior orders of 

 being in this relation, a shock unavoidably follows. But here 

 the error lies in transferring our ideas of the qualities of a sire 

 or grandsire to a collective ancestry. The elder people of the 

 earth are in reality its children, and we are its true senate. 

 The feeling due to early generations, is the half-pitying bene- 

 volence which we daily bestow upon childhood. It follows 

 that the still earlier generations antecedent to the perfection 

 of the human type, ought to be regarded with an extension of 

 this same feeling the modification of it which humane na- 

 tures daily manifest in their treatment of the inferior animals. 

 Our children, it may be said, are the representatives of the 

 first simple and impulsive men of the earth : the lower animals 

 represent the earlier pre-human stages of life. The right con- 

 ception of the case is, that in these stages we are not to look 

 for what is venerable, but, on the contrary, for what is humble 

 and elementary. We are to expect but the primitice of man's 

 masterful life something not even ascending to the dignity 

 of " the infant mewling in its nurse's arms." If thus prepared, 

 we should experience no shock on hearing that the human 

 form was preceded genealogically by others of humbler aspect. 

 A deep moral principle seems involved in the history of the 

 origin of man. He is the undoubted chief of all creatures, 

 and as such may well have a character and destiny in some 

 respects peculiar and far exalted above the rest ; but it appears 

 that his relation to them is, after all, one of kindred. Along 

 with his authority over them, he bears from nature an obliga- 

 tion to abstain from wantonly injuring them, and as far as 

 possible to cherish and protect them. Good men feel this 

 duty, as if it were a command from a source above themselves. 

 It seems to them, that if the helplessness of childhood calls for 



