34 HOMO V. DAEWIN. 



Darwin. That is a task, my Lord, which I have not 

 attempted. 



Homo. And very wisely so, my Lord, He could as little 

 have succeeded in it, as in producing a new species from an 

 old one, or in finding the missing links of some one of the 

 missing chains. Every animal is adapted by its structure 

 for its habitat and mode of life. Creatures of the ape kind, 

 for example, with a rude kind of hands, and feet which are 

 also hands, being fitted for clutching branches and climbing 

 trees, are essentially arboreal in their habits. They never 

 willingly leave the forest, where they find at once suitable 

 food and needful security. Mr. Darwin would as little 

 succeed in showing, in the case of an ape, as in the case of 

 a man, that it might have been more suitably modelled than 

 it is. If he asks me why my bodily structure somewhat 

 resembles that of an ape, I reply — Certainly not because 

 I am descended from an ape, but because I require, for my 

 habitat and mode of life, precisely such a bodily structure 

 as I possess. Mr. Darwin should show that man's bodily 

 structure might have been better modelled before he argues 

 from it that I am descended from an ape. If this argument, 

 in itself, be worth anything, it would prove, quite as con- 

 clusively, that the ape is descended from man. 



Lord G. If you could show, Mr. Darwin, that man's bodily 

 structure is an inconvenience to him, or that it might have 

 been more suitably modelled, this would go so far towards 

 supporting your argument. On the supposition of man 

 having been separately created, we can imagine the Creator 

 moulding his animal nature after the same general type as 

 that of other mammals, though we can hardly suppose Him 

 following that type so far as thereby to subject this new 

 and superior creature to disadvantage. It appears to me 

 an important point that man's bodily structure should be 



