TO. THE LOWER ANIMALS. 125 



the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had 

 foreseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity 

 had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, 

 should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the 

 conqueror that he is but dust. 



These are the chief facts, this the immediate conclu- 

 sion from them to which I adverted in the commencement 

 of this Essay. The facts, I believe, cannot be disputed ; 

 and if so, the conclusion appears to me to be inevitable. 



But if Man be separated by no greater structural bar- 

 rier from the brutes than they are from one another then 

 it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation 

 can be discovered by which the genera and families of 

 ordinary animals have been produced, that process of 

 causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of 

 Man. In other words, if it could be shown that the Mar- 

 mosets, for example, have arisen by gradual modification 

 of the ordinary Platyrhini, or that both Marmosets and 

 Platyrhini are modified ramifications of a primitive stock 

 then, there would be no rational ground for doubting 

 that man might have originated, in the one case, by the 

 gradual modification of a man-like ape ; or, in the other 

 case, as a ramification of the same primitive stock as those 

 apes. 



At the present moment, but one such process of phys- 

 ical causation has any evidence in its favour ; or, in other 

 words, there is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of 

 species of animals in general which has any scientific ex- 

 istence that propounded by Mr. Darwin. For Lamarck, 

 sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with 

 so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize 

 the benefit which his originality might have effected, had 

 he been a more sober and cautious thinker ; and though 



