56 Dr J. W. Dawson on the Antiquity of Man. 



to the ground ; unless we are content quietly to assume tlie 

 thing to be proved, and to say, that after showing that 

 some species are very variable, we have established a cer- 

 tain probability that they may overpass the specific limits ; 

 though the fact that with all this variability, no species has 

 been known practically to overpass these limits, should 

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

 laborious investigations of Mr Darwin have more than ever 

 established 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 Professor 

 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 transmutation ; 

 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 aspects of the doctrine, since it shows better 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 transmutation of an oyster into 

 a cockle, or even of a pigeon into a partridge ; more espe- 

 cially if the reader or auditor is enabled to perceive the 

 resemblance of type between these creatures, without re- 

 ceiving 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 individuals in man as evidence of atavism revert- 

 ing to a simian ancestry, they are blind to the similar ex- 



