SUPERFICIAL OBJECTIONS. 285 



even the most kindred creature ; and, moreover, that 

 this pecuHar nature is his most pecuHar property, whether 

 he received it as a ready-made gift, or worked it out 

 laboriously from a lower condition in tens of thousands 

 of years. But if his present constitution is not in the 

 slightest degree injured by his (assumed) animal origin, 

 neither can his aims and tasks, his endeavours and voca- 

 tions — in short, his whole future — be any other than, from 

 his entire nature, he must imagine and believe it to be. 

 Or must the cultivated portion of mankind be really so 

 profoundly dismayed by the idea of descending from 

 apes, that in despair at the impossibility of maintaining 

 and improving the civilization, which by no means fell 

 into their lap like ripe fruit, but which was painfully 

 acquired, they would abandon their business and pur- 

 suits, their forms of law and government, their arts and 

 sciences, and sink to the level of the Australian bush- 

 men — that they would let go that by which they had 

 raised themselves so far above the apes, and by which 

 they are constantly raising themselves still higher, merely 

 because it was once difficult to raise themselves above 

 these apes even by a hair's breadth ? But what man 

 destined by nature for a ruler, would have refused to 

 grasp the crown because his father was a hind ? Or 

 what born Raphael would have forsworn palette and 

 pencil, because his parent had been a sign-painter ? 

 Mankind, like each individual, will use and improve its 

 powers because it has them, not because it has obtained 

 them from hither or thither." 



We give these transient fireworks their due, but we 

 require more profound arguments whence to derive the 

 final verdict. To the votaries of the doctrine of Descent, 



