150 Darwin as an Anthropologist 



thinker, that Darwin takes his place among the greatest men of science 

 of the nineteenth century. 



To appreciate fully the immortal merit of Darwin in connection 

 with anthropology, we must remember that not only did his chief 

 work, The Origin of Species, which opened up a new era in natural 

 history in 1859, sustain the most virulent and widespread opposition 

 for a lengthy period, but even thirty years later, when its principles 

 were generally recognised and adopted, the application of them to 

 man was energetically contested by many high scientific authorities. 

 Even Alfred Russel Wallace, who discovered the principle of natural 

 selection independently in 1858, did not concede that it was applicable 

 to the higher mental and moral qualities of man. Dr Wallace still 

 holds a spiritualist and dualist view of the nature of man, contending 

 that he is composed of a material frame (descended from the apes) 

 and an immortal immaterial soul (infused by a higher power). This 

 dual conception, moreover, is still predominant in the wide circles of 

 modern theology and metaphysics, and has the general and influential 

 adherence of the more conservative classes of society. 



In strict contradiction to this mystical dualism, which is generally 

 connected with teleology and vitalism, Darwin always maintained the 

 complete unity of human nature, and showed convincingly that the 

 psychological side of man was developed, in the same way as the body, 

 from the less advanced soul of the anthropoid ape, and, at a still more 

 remote period, from the cerebral functions of the older vertebrates. 

 The eighth chapter of the Origin of Species, which is devoted to 

 instinct, contains weighty evidence that the instincts of animals are 

 subject, like all other vital processes, to the general laws of historic 

 development. The special instincts of particular species were formed 

 by adaptation, and the modifications thus acquired were handed on 

 to posterity by heredity ; in their formation and preservation natural 

 selection plays the same part as in the transformation of every other 

 physiological function. The higher moral qualities of civilised man 

 have been derived from the lower mental functions of the un- 

 cultivated barbarians and savages, and these in turn from the social 

 instincts of the mammals. This natural and monistic psychology of 

 Darwin's was afterwards more fully developed by his friend George 

 Romanes in his excellent works Mental Evolution in Animals and 

 Mental Evolution in Man 1 . 



Many valuable and most interesting contributions to this monistic 

 psychology of man were made by Darwin in his fine work on The 

 Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, and again in his sup- 

 plementary work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and A nimals. 

 To understand the historical development of Darwin's anthropology one 



1 London, 1885; 1888. 



