308 ANTHROPOID APES. 



nourishment, a more regular mode of life, and often 

 also to the sexual selection prompted by aesthetic 

 considerations, yet the reversion to such animal 

 characteristics as do not exercise any modifying 

 influence on the bodily development of the indi- 

 vidual, occurs both in these and other races. I 

 conclude these remarks with the reproduction of the 

 fine passage with which Darwin ends his work on 

 the descent of man. 



" Man may be excused for feeling some pride at 

 having risen, though not through his own exertions, 

 to the very summit of the organic scale ; and the 

 fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been 

 aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for 

 a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we 

 are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with 

 the truth, as far as our reason allows us to discover it. 

 I have given the evidence to the best of my ability : 

 and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, 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." 



