xv DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 461 



part of the habitable world, and by conquest and intermixture 

 led ultimately to that puzzling gradation of types which the 

 ethnologist in vain seeks to unravel. 



The Origin of the Moral and Intellectual Nature of Man. 



From the foregoing discussion it will be seen that I fully 

 accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to the essential identity of 

 man's bodily structure with that of the higher mammalia, and 

 his descent from some ancestral form common to man and 

 the anthropoid apes. The evidence of such descent appears 

 to me to be overwhelming and conclusive. Again, as to the 

 cause and method of such descent and modification, we may 

 admit, at all events provisionally, that the laws of variation 

 and natural selection, acting through the struggle for existence 

 and the continual need of more perfect adaptation to the 

 physical and biological environments, may have brought about, 

 first that perfection of bodily structure in which he is so far 

 above all other animals, and in co-ordination with it the 

 larger and more developed brain, by means of which he has 

 been able to utilise that structure in the more and more 

 complete subjection of the whole animal and vegetable king- 

 doms to his service. 



But this is only the beginning of Mr. Darwin's work, since 

 he goes on to discuss the moral nature and mental faculties of 

 man, and derives these too by gradual modification and de- 

 velopment from the lower animals. Although, perhaps, nowhere 

 distinctly formulated, his whole argument tends to the con- 

 clusion that man's entire nature and all his faculties, whether 

 moral, intellectual, or spiritual, have been derived from their 

 rudiments in the lower animals, in the same manner and by 

 the action of the same general laws as his physical structure 

 has been derived. As this conclusion appears to me not to be 

 supported by adequate evidence, and to be directly opposed to 

 many well-ascertained facts, I propose to devote a brief space 

 to its discussion. 



The Argument from Continuity. 



Mr. Darwin's mode of argument consists in showing that 

 the rudiments of most, if not of all, the mental and moral 

 faculties of man can be detected in some animals. The 



