CHARLES R. DARWIN. j 



whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to 

 the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning 

 endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have 

 been and are being evolved." 



In the "Origin of Species " Darwin had not actually 

 expressed his views as to the ancestry of man, though 

 he had left them to be very clearly inferred. " It 

 seemed to me sufficient to indicate that by this work 

 '' light would be thrown on the origin of man and his 

 history/" for this implied that man "must be in- 

 <cluded with other organic beings in any general 

 conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on 

 this earth." But in the " Descent of Man/' Darwin, 

 dealt at length and boldly with that subject on 

 which he had hitherto deemed it well to be reticent. 

 He presented man as co-descendant with the catarhine, 

 or " down-nostrilled " monkeys, from a hairy quad- 

 ruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, and 

 probably a climber of trees. Nay, he traced back the 

 chain of descent until he found, as the progenitor of 

 all the vertebrate animals, some aquatic creature pro- 

 vided with gills, hermaphrodite, and with brain, 

 heart, and other organs imperfectly developed. The 

 treatise in which this view is presented falls in 

 no respect behind Mr. Darwin's other great work in 

 closeness of reasoning and grasp of facts. The 

 portion of the work more than one-half bearing on 

 sexual selection, if somewhat less satisfactory and 

 conclusive, forms yet a most important contribution 

 to the wide subject of the genesis of species. The 



