Man's Place in Nature 223 



the scientific outlook man is seen as the child of 

 nature. He is the *'last inheritor and the last re- 

 sult" of a pedigree which goes back for millions 

 of years, the last manifestation of a Karma which 

 has been gradually modified since the time when 

 life appeared upon the earth. More immediately 

 the paragon of animals is a scion of a Simian stock. 

 Thus, perhaps, we can better understand the beast 

 in the man. Much of the inherent sinfulness which 

 vexes the righteous soul, is the outcrop — the re- 

 crudescence — of ancestral habits. We need no 

 elaborate theory of it. We have to let the ape and 

 tiger die, and they often die hard. We rise on 

 stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things, 

 but the grave clothes hang about us, as about 

 Lazarus, hampering our steps. 



Huxley goes on to say : 



"After the manner of successful persons, civilized man 

 would gladly kick down the ladder by which he has 

 climbed. He would be only too pleased to see 'the ape 

 and tiger die.' But they decline to suit his convenience; 

 and the unwelcome intrusion of these boon companions 

 of his hot youth into the ranged existence of civilized life 

 adds pains and griefs, innumerable and immeasurably 

 great, to those which the cosmic process necessarily brings 

 on the mere animal. In fact, civilized man brands all 

 these ape and tiger promptings with the name of sins; 

 he punishes many of the acts which flow from them as 

 crimes; and, in extreme cases, he does his best to put an 

 end to the survival of the fittest of former days by axe and 

 rope." 



