Charles Robert Damvin. 41 



there is the fact that a certain monkey, after getting badly 

 drunk, and having an outrageous headache, would never 

 again touch the liquor that occasioned his discomfiture. 

 The processes of reproduction, the differences of male and 

 female, closely correspond in man and other mammals. The 

 argument from embryology I have detailed already. By it- 

 self it ought to be conclusive to any candid mind. The ex- 

 istence of certain rudimentary parts and organs in man I 

 have also mentioned incidentally already. These rudiment- 

 ary parts and organs are considerably manjr. The coccygeal 

 bone is the most significant. " Thereby hangs a tail" late 

 in the pre-natal period. A comparison of the mental powers 

 of man with those of the lower animals is confirmatory 

 of his relationship with them. Even his moral qualities are 

 anticipated in some slight degree by them. They are ca- 

 pable of jealousy, of fear, of love, of emulation, of shame, of 

 pride, of magnanimity — as when a great dog scorns the 

 snarling of a little one. The moral sense has its beginnings 

 in the social tendencies of the lower animals. The more so- 

 cial instincts are selected and made permanent because they 

 are for the good of those who cherish them. 



Endeavoring to trace the genealogy of man, Darwin de- 

 clares his next of kin to be the catarrhine or Old World 

 monkeys. But we must not, he says, fall into the error of 

 supposing that the early progenitor of the whole Simian 

 stock, including Man, was identical with, or even close- 

 ly resembled, any existing ape or monkey. The five great 

 vertebrate classes, — mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, 

 and fishes, — are all, says Darwin, descended from some one 

 prototype, — probably, as fishes are the most lowly organized, 

 from some very ancient and fish-like animal akin to and near- 

 ly resembling our present ascidians, a class of invertebrate, 

 hermaphrodite, marine creatures permanently attached to a 

 support. It is contended that the original group diverged into 

 two great branches — " the one retrograding in development 

 and producing the present class of ascidians, the other ris- 

 ing to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom." 



The volumes that contained the chapters on the " Descent 

 of Man " also contained five or six hundred pages on sexual 

 selection — an expansion of two or three pages in the " Or- 

 igin of Species." Of all that Darwin wrote, these five or 

 six hundred pages are the most delightful reading. But at 

 the time of their appearance their interest was not a little 



