26 The Descent of Man 



evolution, then it becomes highly probable a "priori that 

 man's body has been similarly evolved ; but this, in such a 

 case, becomes equally probable from the admitted fact that 

 he is an animal at all. 



The evidence for such a process of evolution of man's bodyi 

 amounts, however, only to an a priori probability, and might 

 be reconciled with another mode of origin if there were 

 sufficient reason (of another kind) to justify a belief in such 

 other mode of origin. Mr. Darwin says : — ' It is only our 

 natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our 

 forefathers declare that they were descended from demi- 

 gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion ' (vol. i. 

 p. 32). But this is not the case ; for many demur to his con- 

 clusion because they believe that to accept his view would 

 be to contradict other truths which to them are far more 

 evident. 



He also makes the startling assertion that to take any 

 other view than his as to man's origin, ' is to admit that our 

 own structure and that of all the animals around us, is a 

 mere snare laid to entrap our judgment ' (vol. i. p. 32). Mr. 

 Darwin is, we are quite sure, far enough from pretending 

 that he has exhausted the possibilities of the case, and yet 

 could anything but a conviction that the whole field had 

 been explored exhaustively justify such an assertion ? If, 

 without such a conviction, it were permissible so to dogma- 

 tise, every theoriser who had attained to a plausible explana- 

 tion of a set of phenomena might equally make use of the 

 assertion, and say, until a better explanation was found, 

 that to doubt him would be to attribute duplicity to the 

 Almighty. 



In tracing man's origin Mr. Darwin is again betrayed into 

 slight inaccuracies. Thus, in combating a position, advanced 

 in the Quarterly Revieiv^ that the hands of apes had been 



1 See that for April 1869, p. 392. 



