Vestiges of Creation. 957 



highest , the stage of advance being, in all cases, very small — namely, 

 from one species only to another ; so that the phenomenon has 

 always been of a simple and modest character." — p. 231. 



This very highest type, of course, is man, whose progenitors are 

 supposed to have been, an animalcule, a fish, a turtle, a bird, a rodent 

 animal [say a rat], a ruminant animal [say a cow], a digitigrade animal 

 [say a cat], and lastly, a monkey. "Man," to be sure, " has no tail ; 

 but the notion of a much ridiculed philosopher of the last century 

 [Lord Monboddo] is not altogether, as it happens, without founda- 

 tion, for between the fifth and seventh week of the embryo a tail does 

 exist." — p. 199. Still we have lost our tails, but as our philosopher 

 prettily remarks on another subject, " knowing this fact familiarly and 

 beyond contradiction, the healthy and natural mind finds no difficulty 

 in regarding it complacently." 



" But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned 

 in any way with the origin of man — is not this degrading? [We 

 opine it is] . Degrading is a term expressive of a notion of the human 

 mind, and the human mind is liable to prejudices which prevent its 

 notions from being invariably correct." — p. 241. And therefore none 

 but the prejudiced human mind can object to the hypothesis of baboon 

 descent. We, however, prefer being considered the children of pre- 

 judice, to the children of monkeys, and cling to the lesser reproach, in 

 order to avoid the greater. It is to us a humiliating reflection cer- 

 tainly ! we are robbed of that noble origin in which we have believed 

 so devoutly, and so long, and have now to trace our parentage to 

 some chattering monkey, or lascivious baboon. 



" The development hypothesis would demand, of course, that the 

 original seat of the human race should be in a region where the 

 quadrumana [monkeys] are rife. Now, these are most abundant, both 

 in species and individuals, in the Indian Archipelago, although it now 

 appears, from the investigations of Professor Owen, that the chimpan- 

 zee of Western Africa approaches nearer to man than any known species 

 of Indian simiae." — p. 281. Our author, therefore, leaves it an open 

 question, apparently as a sop for the slave-dealers, whether there may 

 not be two original races of mankind, whites, descended from the apes of 

 the Indian Archipelago, and blacks, from the apes of W T estern Africa. 

 The reader will at once perceive, that the hypothesis, from first to 

 last, is that of Lamarck : the author himself acknowledges this, but 

 claims as original the idea of leaving out Lamarck's brightest thought 

 of all, that progressive development arose from the wants of the indi- 

 vidual ; but the author will best explain this difference. 



