TO DESCENT OF MAN FROM APES r 



him as the prophet of their faith, and boldly assert 

 that he has done for Biology what Newton did for 

 Astronomy ! In regard, however, to this comparison 

 of Natural Selection with Universal Gravitation, it 

 may be remarked that we look in vain for any real 

 basis to the conceit of Natural Selection, like the 

 accurate measurements of Picard and the profound 

 calculations of Newton, from which the grand law of 

 Universal Gravitation was deduced. 



According to the principles of Evolution, which 

 I have thus briefly sketched, Mankind are merely 

 the Sons and Daughters of Apes ; and if we trace 

 our ancestors still further back through the lowest 

 mammals to frogs, and thence through fishes to 

 invertebrates, we shall probably find among the 

 latter, our two great-grandparents — in what degree, 

 shall I say — the million-millionth ? rolled into one, 

 in the shape of an hermaphrodite ascidian mollusk, 

 molluscoid, or worm — whichever you choose to call 

 it ; — whilst, passing back from this ascidian pro- 

 genitor through protozoa, we come in the last 

 instance to our alleged first parent, a spontaneously 

 generated cytode ! 



Such is, in bare outline, the genealogy of Man, 

 which has been propounded with the claim of being 

 a special deduction from the Evolution theory. 



Evolutionists, as I have said, claim a very high 

 antiquity for the human race. It appears, however, 

 difficult to understand in what way the argument 



