552 NATURE CROWNED IN MAN 



God-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movements 

 and constitution of the solar system — with all these exalted 

 powers — man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible 

 stamp of his lowly origin." 



The Psalmist felt Man's insignificance, " When I con- 

 sider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and 

 the stars which Thou hast ordained, — What is man ? '' Sub- 

 sequent astronomers from Copernicus onwards had taught 

 the same humbling lesson; but it was reserved for the 

 biologists to expose the pit whence Man had been digged, 

 and the rock whence he had been hewn by proving his 

 solidarity with mammals. But this is only one side of the 

 picture. 



§ 4. Mans Unique Position. 



Mankind has often had to pay for the realisation of a 

 great truth by temporarily losing grip of some other. 

 Dazzled by a new conclusion, we are blinded to an old one. 

 Thus, without being reactionary, we may ask whether we 

 have not paid heavily for the truth that is in Darwinism. 

 That truth, as regards Man, was the recognition of his 

 solidarity with the rest of creation, of his definite affiliation 

 to a primitive stock of Primate mammals, of his literal 

 blood-relationship to the relatively distant collateral stock 

 of Anthropoids. It has made the world more a universe 

 to have seen the worm, as Emerson said, mount through 

 all the spires of form, striving to be Man. It has given 

 a new significance to the realm of organisms, with all its 

 groaning and travailing, that the man-child glorious was 

 born of them, bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh. 

 It has been a clearing of the eyes to know that much that 

 used to seem quite inexplicable and bitterly perplexing in 



