CHAP. VI.] MAN. 131 



lation apart, only to be investigated by conjecture and analogy. 

 This being so, we must be content to study existing races of 

 men, and thence arrive at the best conclusions we may, with 

 the aid to be derived from history, archaeology, and geology. 



The questions, then, to which attention should be directed 

 with a view to determining whether the balance of Test ques- 

 evidence favours the monistic or the dualistic these. r 

 hypothesis, are the following ; and to answer these, the 

 savage, Homo sylvaticus, must serve as our test. 1. Can any 

 direct evidence be found of races of man, past or present, 

 existing in a brutal or irrational condition ? 2. Does avail 

 able evidence clearly point to the past existence of such a 

 condition ? 3. Are races anywhere to be found in a con 

 dition which is less remote from mere animal existence than 

 from the highest human development of which we have as 

 yet experience ? 



Should unmistakable evidence of the sort be forthcoming, 

 then the existence of an essential difference, a difference of 

 kind, between human and brutal nature, could no longer be 

 maintained. It would also follow that if other animals have 

 arisen by a merely natural process of development, reason 

 could oppose no barrier to the belief that the origin of man, 

 in the totality of his nature, was also due to such a merely 

 natural process. If, on the other hand, no such direct 

 evidence is forthcoming, and none even pointing clearly in 

 the indicated direction ; if, also, no races can be found in a 

 condition nearer to irrational brutality than to the highest 

 refinement then it must be admitted that we have no scien 

 tific ground for asserting that man is of one nature with the 

 brutes, or that it is an a priori probability that his origin 

 was the same as theirs. 



More than this, in the absence of such evidence it may 

 fairly be inferred that there is an d priori probability against 

 this community of nature and origin. It may be so inferred, 

 because it seems likely that if all men were once irrational 

 animals, some tribe of the kind would have survived in some 

 remote part of the world to this day, especially as, on the 



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