HUMAN RESEMBLANCES TO LOWER LIFE. 21 



echoes of the past, still dwell with us, and remind us of the length 

 of our pedigree. Nor do such studies remind us only of the antiquity 

 of our origin. They recall to mind with equal force the nobility with 

 which such an ancestry invests our race, because they show us that 

 we are the highest products of laws of development which invest and 

 rule the whole of the animated universe. To stand at the head of a 

 creation of such surprising and almost incomprehensible extent, and 

 which has been fashioned by laws and powers of such exceeding 

 complexity, must surely confer a patent of nobility upon our race, 

 compared with which all the prepossessions of the past appear of 

 sordid order. There is the ring of truest wisdom in the words with 

 which Mr. Leslie Stephen closes his reflections regarding the effect 

 of the newer ideas of human origin on the moral progress of the 

 race. "If Darwinism demonstrates that men have been evolved 

 out of brutes," says Mr. Stephen, " the religion which it takes into 

 account will also have to help men to bear in mind that they are now 

 different from brutes." 



