64 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



immense amount of prima fade probability : that it is the only 

 means at present within reach of reducing the chaos of ob- 

 served facts to order ; and lastly, that it is the most power- 

 ful instrument of investigation which has been presented to 

 naturalists since the invention of the natural system of classifi- 

 cation, and the commencement of the systematic study of 

 embryology." 



The masterly conclusion of the second lecture, which 

 endeavours to combat the objection, " that the belief 

 in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the 

 brutalization and degradation of the former," contains some 

 fine passages, which are widely known. After the 

 absence of an absolute physical or even psychical 

 boundary line between man and apes is strongly insisted 

 upon, we read : — 



" At the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than 

 I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the 

 brutes ; or is more certain that whether from them or not, he 

 is assuredly not of them. No one is less disposed to think 

 lightly of the present dignity, or despairingly of the future 

 hopes, of the only consciously intelligent denizen of this world." 



And again : — 



" Nay more, thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding 

 influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock 

 whence Man has sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of 

 his capacities ; and will discern in his long progress through the 

 Past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment ot a nobler 

 Future. . . . Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will 

 not be lessened by the knowledge that Man is, in substance and 

 in structure, one with the brutes ; for he alone possesses the 

 marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, 

 in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated 

 and organised the experience which is almost wholly lost with 

 the cessation of every individual life in other animals ; so that, 

 now, he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the 

 level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser 



