34 Charles Robert Darwin. 



voted primarily and exclusively to showing that the ances- 

 tors of mankind were monkeys at no great remove. In fact, 

 the "Origin of Species" contained next to nothing about 

 monkeys, and very little about man, to derive whose ances- 

 try there was no attempt whatever. But the implication 

 was natural and unavoidable : if other species were not the 

 results of special creation, the human species could be no 

 exception to the rule. Darwin himself had not the slight- 

 est disposition to deny this implication or to palliate its 

 force. Mr. Wallace, agreeing with him as to the sweep of 

 natural selection beyond the confines of humanity, con- 

 tended that the development of man from ape-like ances- 

 tors could not be thus accounted for. Darwin could not al- 

 low the force of his objections. In 1872 he published "The 

 Descent of Man." What was implicit in the "Origin of 

 Species " was here made explicit. But it was a subordinate 

 matter. Darwin's principal and most characteristic work 

 was not to explicate our human origins. It was to account 

 for the origin of species by the law of natural selection in- 

 stead of by the notion, fancy, what you will, of special cre- 

 ation. The descent of man from anthropoidal apes is a sin- 

 gle illustration of this law, — a very interesting one to us, 

 but it is only a single illustration. 



Consider with me the course of argument by which Dar- 

 win endeavored to establish this law of natural selection. 

 He set out with showing to what a wonderful extent artifi- 

 cial selection on the part of man can vary animals and 

 plants. May there not be a law or principle in nature cor- 

 responding to the artificial selection of the horse-breeder, 

 the pigeon-fancier, the horticulturist and floriculturist ? 

 He answered, Yes, and showed how much more general and 

 effective it must be than any conscious or unconscious art 

 of man. " Man can act only on external and visible char- 

 acters : Nature cares nothing for appearances except in so 

 far as they may be useful to any being. She can act on 

 every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional dif- 

 ference, on the whole machinery of life. ... It may be 

 said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing 

 throughout the world every variation, even the slightest; 

 rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all 

 that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever 

 and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of 



