278 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



highest living apes, made reasonable speculations (based 

 on wide study of anthropology and ancient philosophy) 

 as to the passage from the monkey to man. He regarded 

 man as of the same " species " as the orang-utan. 

 He traced the gradual elevation of man to the social 

 state as a natural process determined by " the necessities 

 of human life." He looked on language (which he said 

 is not " natural " to man in the sense of being necessary 

 to his self-preservation) as a consequence of his social 

 state. His views about the origin of society and language, 

 and the faculties by which man is distinguished from 

 the brutes, are in some interesting ways similar to those 

 of Darwin. He conceived man as gradually elevating 

 himself from an animal condition in which his mind is 

 immersed in matter to a state in which mind acts 

 independent of body. He was ridiculed and declared 

 to be half mad by his co-temporaries (among them 

 Samuel Johnson), although he was, philosophically, far 

 in advance of those with whom he came into contact. 

 Darwin's views on the " Descent of Man " were met in 

 the same contemptuous spirit at first. But he held a 

 much stronger position than Monboddo, having first of 

 all established the general theory of organic evolution, 

 and having, further, a well-established mass of evidence 

 at his command in regard to the relationship of man 

 and apes. Further, he had that wonderful champion, 

 Huxley, to fight for him. Huxley's book, " Man's Place 

 in Nature," originally given as lectures which I, then a 

 boy, attended, placed the evidence of the close relation- 

 ship of man and the higher apes in the clearest way 

 before the public, and, indeed, established the identity 

 of the structure of man with that of the ape, bone for 

 bone, muscle for muscle, and nerve for nerve. 



Still, there was always a gap — a place unfilled — 



