314 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



what is venerable, but, on the contrary, for what is 

 humble and elementary. We are to expect but the pri- 

 mitice of man's masterful life — something not even 

 ascending to the dignity of "the infant mewling in its 

 nurse's arms." If thus prepared, we should experi- 

 ence no shock on hearing that the human form was 

 preceded genealogically by others of humbler aspect. 

 A deep moral principle seems involved in the history 

 of the origin of man. He is the undoubted chief of all 

 creatures, and as such may well have a character and 

 destiny in some respects peculiar and far exalted 

 above the rest; but it appears that his relation to 

 them is, after all, one of kinship. 



The work shows the author's thorough famil- 

 iarity with Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, 

 St. Hilaire, and Series. In the first edition of 

 1844 (p. 174), he rejects Lamarck's hypothesis 

 of the origin of adaptations by the choice of the 

 animal, "which has incurred much ridicule and 

 scarcely ever had a single defender," on the 

 ground that the arbitrary modification of form 

 by the needs of the animal could never have led 

 to the unities and analogies of structure which 

 we observe. 



On the previous page he advocates (without 

 credit) St. Hilaire's modification of BufTon's 

 hypothesis of the direct action of environment. 

 Light, heat, the chemical constitution of the at- 

 mosphere, he says, "may have been the imme- 



