I860.] on Species and Races, and their Origin. 199 



Mr. Darwin. If all species have arisen in this way, say they — Man 

 himself must have done so ; and he and all the animated world must 

 have had a conmmon origin. Most assuredly. No question of it. 



" But I would ask, does this logical necessity add one single difficulty 

 of importance to those which already confront us on all sides whenever 

 we contemplate our relations to the surrounding universe ? I think 

 not. Let man's mistaken vanity, his foolish contempt for the material 

 world, impel him to struggle as he will, he strives in vain to break 

 through the ties which hold him to matter and the lower forms of life. 



" In the face of the demonstrable facts, that the anatomical difference 

 between man and the highest of the Quadrumana is less than the differ- 

 ence between the extreme types of the Quadrumanous order ; that, in 

 the course of his development, man passes through stages which corre- 

 spond to, though they are not identical with, those of all the lower 

 animals ; that each of us was once a minute and unintelligent particle 

 of yolk-like substance ; that our highest faculties are dependent for 

 their exercise upon the presence of a few cubic inches more or less of 

 a certain gas in one's blood ; in the face of these tremendous and 

 mysterious facts, I say, what matters it whether a new link is or is 

 not added to the mighty chain which indissolubly binds us to the rest 

 of the universe ? Of what part of the glorious fabric of the world has 

 man a right to be ashamed — that he is so desirous to disconnect him- 

 self from it ? But I would rather reply to this strange objection by 

 suggesting another line of thought. I would rather point out that 

 perhaps the very noblest use of science as a discipline is, that now and 

 then she brings us face to face with difficulties like these. Laden with 

 our idols, we follow her blithely — till a parting in the roads appears, 

 and she turns, and with a stern face asks us whether we are men 

 enough to cast them aside, and follow her up the steep ? Men of 

 science are such by virtue of having answered her with a hearty and 

 unreserved. Yea ; by virtue of having made their election to follow 

 science whithersoever she leads, and whatsoever lions be in the path. 

 Their duty is clear enough. 



" And, in my apprehension, that of the public is not doubtful. I have 

 said that the man of science is the sworn interpreter of nature in the 

 high court of reason. But of what avail is his honest speech, if 

 ignorance is the assessor of the judge, and prejudice foreman of the jury ? 

 I hardly know of a great physical truth, whose universal reception has 

 not been preceded by an epoch in which most estimable persons have 

 maintained that the phenomena investigated were directly dependent 

 on the Divine Will, and that the attempt to investigate them was not 

 only futile, but blasphemous. And there is a wonderful tenacity of 

 life about this sort of opposition to physical science. Crushed and 

 maimed in every battle, it yet seems never to be slain ; and after a 

 hundred defeats it is at this day as rampant, though happily not so 

 mischievous, as in the time of Galileo. 



" But to those whose life is spent, to use Newton's noble words, in 

 picking up here a pebble and there a pebble on the shores of the great 



p2 



