Man and Nature. 281 



been to exalt his species. " Man, know thyself." 

 " On earth there is nothing great but man," etc. Such 

 exordiums, dinned into men's ears from the earliest 

 civilisation, naturally puffed up the species with pride 

 and discouraged undue humility. When we couple 

 these pretentious notions with primitive man's crass 

 ignorance of the conditions of his existence, particu- 

 larly his relation to other things in the universe ; his 

 ignorance, even in conception, of other inhabited 

 worlds, and his preposterous views of the size, shape, 

 and motion of the earth, we need not wonder that our 

 ancestors formulated the most heroic notions of the 

 race, that they ranked themselves as demi-gods, and 

 bowed the knee to divinities or idols which were, 

 even in the most exalted types, only more or less 

 gilded and glorified images of man himself. 



Man's valuation of himself, again, differs according 

 to his degree of civilisation. Thus, the lowest tribes, 

 with the instincts only of the brute, think of their 

 fellow-man, when an enemy, as simply a choice roast 

 for a feast ; a higher civilisation truckles in him as a 

 slave, and buys and sells him with other chattels ; 

 while among the most enlightened and cultivated 

 nations now living, priests use him as a dupe, play 

 upon his fears, threaten him with hells, and rob and 

 bleed the simpleton to save his terrified soul from 

 imaginary damnation. 



In the Scottish Review, 1888, in an article on 

 " Charles Darwin," we find the following curious and 

 apposite paragraph : — 



