XV 
DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 
461 
part of the habitable world, and by conquest and intermixture 
led ultimately to that puzzling gradation of types which the 
ethnologist in vain seeks to unravel. 
The Origin of the Moral and Intellectual Nature of Man. 
From the foregoing discussion it will be seen that I fully 
accept Mr. Darwin’s conclusion as to the essential identity of 
man’s bodily structure with that of the higher mammalia, and 
his descent from some ancestral form common to man and 
the anthropoid apes. The evidence of such descent appears 
to me to be overwhelming and conclusive. Again, as to the 
cause and method of such descent and modification, we may 
admit, at all events provisionally, that the laws of variation 
and natural selection, acting through the struggle for existence 
and the continual need of more perfect adaptation to the 
physical and biological environments, may have brought about, 
first that perfection of bodily structure in which he is so far 
above all other animals, and in co-ordination with it the 
larger and more developed brain, by means of which he has 
been able to utilise that structure in the more and more 
complete subjection of the whole animal and vegetable king¬ 
doms to his service. 
But this is only the beginning of Mr. Darwin’s work, since 
he goes on to discuss the moral nature and mental faculties of 
man, and derives these too by gradual modification and de¬ 
velopment from the lower animals. Although, perhaps, nowhere 
distinctly formulated, his whole argument tends to the con¬ 
clusion that man’s entire nature and all his faculties, whether 
moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived from their 
rudiments in the lower animals, in the same manner and by 
the action of the same general laws as his physical structure 
has been derived. As this conclusion appears to me not to be 
supported by adequate evidence, and to be directly opposed to 
many well-ascertained facts, I propose to devote a brief space 
to its discussion. 
The Argument from, Continuity. 
Mr. Darwin’s mode of argument consists in showing that 
the rudiments of most, if not of all, the mental and moral 
faculties of man can be detected in some animals. The 
