470 THE CAUSES OF THE XI 
be read with as much ease as its pleasant style 
may lead you to imagine. You spin through it 
as if it were a novel the first time you read it, and 
think you know all about it ; the second time you 
read it you think you know rather less about it ; 
and the third time, you are amazed to find how 
little you have really apprehended its vast scope 
and objects. I can positively say that I never 
take it up without finding in it some new view, or 
light, or suggestion that I have not noticed before. 
That is the best characteristic of a thorough and 
profound book ; and I believe this feature of the 
“Origin of Species” explains why so many per- 
sons have ventured to pass judgment and criti- 
cisms upon it which are by no means worth the 
paper they are written on. 
Before concluding these lectures there is one 
point to which I must advert—though, as Mr. 
Darwin has said nothing about man in his book, 
it concerns myself rather than him ;—for I have 
strongly maintained on sundry occasions that if 
Mr. Darwin’s views are sound, they apply as much 
to man as to the lower mammals, seeing that it is 
perfectly demonstrable that the structural differ- 
ences which separate man from the apes are not 
greater than those which separate some apes 
from others. There cannot be the slightest doubt 
in the world that the argument which applies to 
the improvement of the horse from an earlier 
stock, or of ape from ape, applies to the improve- 
