128 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



should logically bring us to the opposite conclusion ; viz., that the 

 laborious investigations of Mr. Darwin have more than ever es- 

 tablished the fixity of species, though they have shown reason 

 to believe that many so-called species are mere varieties. 



Applying this to man, and even admitting, what Sir Charles 

 Lyell very properly declines to admit, that the differences between 

 men and apes are in all respects, only differences of degree, and 

 further admitting with Prof. Huxley, that the difference between 

 the size of the brain in the highest and lowest races of men is 

 greater than the differences between the latter and the highest 

 apes, nothing would be proved towards the doctrine of transmuta- 

 tion ; for all these variations might occur without the ape ever 

 overleaping the dividing line between it and the man ; and the 

 one fact to be proved is that this overleap is possible. 



Perhaps this question as to man and apes, which some recent 

 transmutationists have started, is one of the most damaging as- 

 pects of the doctrine, since itj show sbetter than other cases the 

 essential absurdity of supposing the higher nature to be evolved 

 out of the lower ; and thus startles the common sense of ordinary 

 readers, who might detect little that is unreasonable in the trans- 

 mutation of an oyster into a cockle, or even of a pigeon into a 

 partridge ; more especially if the reader or auditor is enabled 

 to perceive the resemblance of type between these crea- 

 tures, without receiving the further culture necessary to appreciate 

 specific and generic difference, and thus is made ready to believe 

 that similarity of type means something more than similar plan 

 of construction. It is very curious too to observe ,that while 

 these theorists seize on occasional instances of degraded indivi- 

 duals in man as evidence of atavism reverting to a simian ancestry, 

 they are blind to the similar explanation which those who hold 

 an opposite view may give to the cases of superior minds appear- 

 ing in low races, in which the transmutationists can see nothing 

 but spontaneous elevation. It is also deserving of a passing re- 

 mark that while, as Dr. Gray shows, the doctrine of transmuta- 

 tion is not subversive of all natural theology, that is, so long as 

 transmutationists admit the presiding agency of a spiritual 

 Supreme Being, the application of such views to the human spe- 

 cies, attacks leading doctrines of that biblical Christianity which 

 is practically of so much higher importance to man than mere 

 natural theology. 



Still some of our modern naturalists follow with as much per- 



