36 JSSSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



Lamarckians, that "whatever other causes have 

 been at work, natural selection is supreme to an 

 extent which even Darwin himself hesitated to 

 claim for it." 



This supremacy of natural selection throughout 

 the animal and vegetable world is, nevertheless, 

 according to Mr. Wallace, limited when we come 

 to man. It is here that we reach the point of 

 difference between Wallace and Darwin. Yet the 

 difference is far less than is generally supposed. 

 For the idea that man is in any sense a "special 

 creation" is as clearly rejected by Wallace as by 

 Darwin : 



"To any one," he says, "who considers the structure of 

 man's body, even in the most superficial manner, it must be 

 evident that it is the body of an animal, differing greatly, it 

 is true, from the bodies of all other animals, but agreeing 

 with them in all essential features. The bony structure of 

 man classes him as a vertebrate ; the mode of suckling his 

 young classes him as a mammal ; his blood, his muscles, 

 and his nerves, the structure of his heart, with its veins and 

 arteries, his lungs, and his whole respiratory and circulatory 

 systems, all closely correspond to those of other mammals, 

 and are often almost identical with them. He possesses the 

 same number of limbs terminating in the same number of 

 digits as belong fundamentally to the mammalian classes. 

 His senses are identical with theirs, and his organs of sense 

 are the same in number and occupy the same relative 

 position. Every detail of structure which is common to the 

 mammalia as a class is found also in man, while he only 

 differs from them in such ways and degrees as the various 

 species or groups of mammals differ from each other. If, 

 then, we have good reason to believe that every existing 



