40 Charles Robert Darwin. 



and earthworms, provokingly indifferent to the pandemo- 

 nium which he had set a-going. The divergence of his the- 

 ory from that of Genesis was much insisted on, and certain- 

 ly it was very great. Later attempts to show that it was 

 not are less ingenuous than the original execrations. There 

 were great men of science who joined with the little men 

 of science and the theologians in the fierce onset. Even 

 our noble Agassiz so far forgot himself as to tickle the ears 

 of the groundlings with such ad captandum phrases as " We 

 are not the children of monkeys ; we are the children of 

 God." But the great Lyell almost at once gave in his frank 

 adhesion ; Huxley, with real joy of battle, took the field 

 against a world in arms ; Spencer, the pre-established har- 

 mony of whose thought with Darwin's we have already no- 

 ticed, hailed with exceeding joy the splendid special illus- 

 tration of the general principles of evolution. With such 

 magnificent approval Darwin could well afford the jeers of 

 ignorance, the pious maledictions of the parsons and the 

 priests. But in 1866, when the " Origin of Species " had 

 been seven years before the world, he confessed to Haeckel 

 that he had no hope of seeing any general recognition of 

 his doctrine in his lifetime. The event was very different 

 from his anticipation. 



In 1872 he published the "Descent of Man." He had 

 said nothing on this head in the " Origin of Species," per- 

 haps because he knew what mountains of prejudice would 

 become volcanic at the suggestion of our development from 

 the lower animals He would have his general doctrine ac- 

 cepted or rejected as nearly as might be on its own merits. 

 But the implication of his theory was so obvious that he 

 might just as well have made a clean breast of it in the " Or- 

 igin of Species." The implication was made explicit enough 

 in 1872. His argument in 250 pages is so condensed that 

 to attempt to summarize it is like trying to make the char- 

 coal of a diamond more compact. Some of the more salient 

 points are these : Man is constructed on the same general 

 model as the other mammals. Bone for bone, he corresponds 

 with the monkej^the bat, the seal. Every chief fissure and fold 

 of his brain corresponds to the brain of the orang-outang. 

 His blood and tissues are the same, and likewise his diseases. 

 The fondness of certain monkeys for tobacco and for ardent 

 spirits is certainly suggestive of their kinship with human- 

 ity — or does the lesson read the other way ? For objectors 



