360 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



between men and brutes is one of degree only, and not of 

 kind. Even that negligible distinction, they were told, had 

 been bridged by evolution. In the sequel, the young men 

 failed, apparently, to see why vivisection, which was right in 

 the case of animals, should be wrong in the case of human 

 beings. Their astounding obtuseness on this particular point 

 was, of course, exceedingly regrettable and hard to under- 

 stand. Yet, somehow, one cannot help thinking but that their 

 education was largely responsible for it. 



In the startling crime of these students, modern educators 

 will find much food for serious thought. It should give pause 

 to those, especially, who have been overzealous in popularizing 

 the Darwinian conception of human nature. Let men of this 

 type reflect upon what slender grounds their dogmatism rests, 

 and let them then weigh well the gravity of the responsibility, 

 which they incur. Tuccimei summarizes for them, in the fol- 

 lowing terms, the nature and extent of their accountability: 



"This perverse determination to place man and brutes in 

 the same category, interests me not so much from the scrip- 

 tural standpoint as for reasons moral and social. Science, as 

 the more moderate of our adversaries have told us often 

 enough, does not assail religion, but proceeds on its way re- 

 gardless of the consequences. And the consequences we see 

 only too plainly, now that the evolutionary philosophy has 

 invaded every branch of knowledge and walk of life, and has 

 seeped down among the ignorant and turbulent masses. These 

 consequences are known as socialism and anarchy. The pro- 

 tagonists of the new philosophy strove to repudiate them at 

 first: but now many of their number have laid aside even this 

 pretense. Socialistic doctrines are based exclusively upon our 

 assumed kinship with the brutes, and the leaders of militant 

 socialism have inscribed on the frontispieces of their books the 

 chain fatally logical and terribly true of three names, Darwin, 

 Spencer, Marx. 



''In truth, our common origin with the brutes being taken 

 for granted, why should we not enjoy in common with them 



