36 HOMO V. DARWIN. 



Lord G. You should not allow your feeling against this 

 " dogma," as you call it, to influence you too strongly. If 

 you can show it to be a mere dogma, by establishing your 

 own belief on a basis of ascertained and indisputable facts, 

 it will soon wither and perish. But, as we have seen, you 

 are at present building your hypothesis, not on facts, but 

 on " general reasons," 



Homo. My Lord, what is Mr. Darwin's hypothesis but a 

 dogma ? It is Darwin's dogma of man's development by 

 Natural Selection, against the Bible doctrine of man's 

 creation by the power of the Almighty. 



Darwin. I should also mention, my Lord, that "man is 

 liable to receive from the lower animals, and to communicate 

 to them, certain diseases, as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, 

 &c. ; and this fact proves the close similarity of their tissues 

 and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far 

 more plainly than does their comparison under the best 

 microscope, or by the aid of the best chemical analysis. 

 Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious 

 diseases as we are . . . to catarrh . . . apoplexy, inflammation 

 of the bowels, and cataract in the eyes . . . Medicines produce 

 the same eifect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys have 

 a strong taste for tea, cofiFee, and spirituous liquors ; they will 

 also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure 

 . . . These trifling facts show how similar the nerves of taste 

 must be in monkeys and man, and how similarly their whole 

 nervous system is affected." (Vol. i. pp. 11, 12.) 



Lord G. No one, I presume, will dispute the facts you 

 now state ; but similarity of nervous system in man and 

 monkey, and liability to some of the same diseases, is one 

 thing, their community of descent is quite another. I have 

 a horse that catches cold occasionally ; he has also a strong 

 relish for gooseberries ; he will follow me all over the field, 



