92 PRODUCTION OF NATIONALITY 



monkeys, baboons, great apes and human beings. 

 We only smile now when we recall the desperate 

 efforts of anatomists in the second half of last century 

 to find some detail of structure on which they could 

 separate man sharply from the great apes. Even if 

 we consider living forms alone, it is difficult to say 

 that man differs in structure from the gorilla more 

 than the gorilla differs from a macaque or a baboon. 

 And if we take into our view the recent discoveries 

 in the fossil history of man and of the great apes, 

 the differences fade away, and we are confident that 

 at some period in the late Tertiary geological epoch, 

 man and the great apes had a common ancestor. 

 Not only in structure but in the functions of the body 

 is this affinity clearly marked. The range and nature 

 of our senses, the physiological rhythm of our body, 

 our reproductive and digestive functions, our in- 

 stincts and aptitudes, our resistance or liability to 

 special diseases, even the kinds of parasites that 

 affect us, all mark us down as slightly modified apes. 

 Any non-human physiologist or anatomist unbiassed 

 by a partiality for man, might not assign man even 

 generic value in his system of classification. None 

 the less we know that man has come into possession 

 of a peculiar quality which can be indicated in such 

 phrases as " consciousness " and " sense of freedom/' 



There are two modern fashions of dealing with 

 this peculiar quality, and to my mind these agree in 

 obscuring or evading the real issue. 



The first school, which arrogates to itself the 

 claim of being scientific and is disposed to brand 

 those who do not accept it as obscurantists, is 

 obsessed by the idea of man's animal origin. It 



