142 CHARLES DARWIN 



more profoundedly to affect, every possible sphere of 

 human energy. Not only has it completely reversed 

 our entire conception of history generally, by teaching 

 us that man has slowly risen from a very low and 

 humble beginning, but it has also revolutionised our 

 whole ideas of our own position and our own destiny, it 

 has permeated the sciences of language and of medicine, 

 it has introduced new conceptions of ethics and of 

 religion, and it threatens in the future to produce im- 

 mense effects upon the theory and practice of education, 

 of politics, and of economic and social science. These 

 wide-reaching and deep-seated results began to be felt 

 from the first moment when the Darwinian principle 

 was definitely promulgated in the ' Origin of Species, 

 but their final development and general acceptance was 

 immensely accelerated by Darwin's own authoritative 

 statement in the ' Descent of Man.' 



To some among us still, as to Lyell before us, this 

 new belief in the animal origin of man seems far less 

 beautiful, noble, and inspiriting than the older faith in his 

 special and separate divine creation. Such thinkers find it 

 somehow more pleasant and comfortable to suppose that 

 man has fallen than that man has risen ; the doctrine of 

 the universal degradation of humanity paradoxically ap- 

 pears to them more full of promise and aspiration for the 

 times to come than the doctrine of its universal elevation. 

 To Darwin himself, however, it seemed otherwise. ' Man,' 

 he says, ' may be excused for feeling some pride at having 

 risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very 

 summit of the organic scale ; and the fact of his having 

 thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed 

 there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in 



