THE GORILLA AND OTHER APES. 329 



beyond the admission that these difficulties have not as yet 

 been overcome. It must be remembered, however, that 

 races of men still exist whose moral consciousness can hardly 

 be regarded as very fully developed. Not only so, but, 

 through a form of reversion to savage types, the highest 

 and most cultivated races of man bring forth from time to 

 time (as our police reports too plainly testify) beings utterly 

 savage, brutal, and even (" which is else ") bestial. Nay, the 

 man is fortunate who has never had occasion to control innate 

 tendencies to evil which are at least strongly significant of 

 the origin of our race. To most minds it must be pleasanter 

 as certainly it seems more reasonable, to believe that the 

 evil tendencies of our race are manifestations of qualities 

 undergoing gradual extinction, than to regard them as the 

 consequences of one past offence, and so to have no reason 

 for trusting in their gradual eradication hereafter. But, as 

 Darwin says, in the true scientific spirit, " We are not here 

 concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as 

 our reason allows us to discover it. We must acknowledge 

 that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which 

 feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends 

 not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, 

 with his God-like intellect which has penetrated into the 

 movements and constitution of the solar system, with all 

 these exalted powers, man still bears in his bodily frame the 

 indelible stamp of his lowly origin." As it seems to me, 

 man's moral nature teaches the same lesson with equal, if 

 not greater, significance. 



