THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 225 



origin of the human race, man prefers to believe that 

 he has fallen from the state of ancestors better than 

 himself rather than that he has risen in the social or 

 racial scale. This touching faith in the efficacy of 

 heredity as opposed to the merits of education, 

 environment, and personal endeavour appears to be 

 ingrained in our constitutions. Like other such 

 prepossessions, it has probably some survival value, 

 and should be treated with more respect than it often 

 encounters. Hence new men may be forgiven when 

 they provide themselves, if Nature and the College of 

 Arms have omitted to do so, with noble forebears, 

 and primitive races when they postulate a direct 

 descent from the gods, or, if somewhat more modest, 

 ask only a specific divine act of creation to have been 

 exercised in their favour. And civilised man, con- 

 fronted with the choice between the Book of Genesis 

 and the Origin of Species, at first naturally proclaimed 

 with Disraeli that he was " on the side of the angels." 

 Yet the evidence of man's affinity with animals 

 was overwhelming, and soon prevailed within the 

 limited circle where rational discussion was possible. 

 His body contains the same tissues built into the same 

 organs. He bears numerous vestiges of structures 

 useless to him, but advantageous to his lowly ancestors. 

 Many of his emotions and mental processes are evident 

 in less developed states in the minds of animals. His 

 origin is explicable by natural and sexual selection 

 from hypothetical forms more ape-like than himself. 

 His very weakness and defencelessness against the 

 wild beasts, his earliest foes, may be held to explain 

 his social instincts, the origin of moral qualities, for 

 by them alone could he learn to combine for defence, 



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