Lord Monboddo, A Precursor of the Darwins. 
47 
Vegetable becomes more excellent than the Mineral, being of more 
various and artificial structure, and, consequently, having more of 
Intelligence displayed in it. The Animal, having besides Organization, 
Sensation, Appetites, and Desires, is of a nature still more excellent ; 
and, last of all, comes Intellect, which is so much superior to all the 
other things I have named, that Man, who possesses it, may be said to 
be the God of this lower world.” 
Man is a system by himself, composed of elemental, vegetable, animal , 
and intellectual parts; as an individual he is originally “a Yegetable, 
coming, probably, like other Vegetables, from eggs”; he becomes grad- 
ually a perfect animal, and then the intellectual part follows, “by slow 
degrees even among us, but by degrees infinitely slower when he could 
not be formed, as we are, by example and instruction.” The idea in 
this last clause, of development through education, bears curious re- 
semblance to the “social heredity” recently suggested by J. Mark Bald- 
win as a factor in development. 4 This observable individual develop- 
ment, coupled with the recorded facts relating' to the progress in “the 
arts” and in the use of clothing, houses, fire, and speech, among un- 
civilized races, suggests a similar development of the human species;, 
and Monboddo proceeds to elaborate the theory, as follows: 
He defines the natural state of mankind as the original condition of 
the race, from which human progress began; “it is to be observed, that 
this progress did not go on at the same time among all the inhabitants 
of the different parts of the earth; on the contrary, we are sure from 
history, that some nations were no better than mere animals. But 
what I say is, that all nations must be supposed to have been, at some 
time or another, in that state, in which we know that some have been, 
and some are at this day.” (Ill, p. 28.) His proofs are descriptions, 
of peoples in various stages of development, his authorities for his state- 
ments ranging from Herodotus and Justin to any sailor with a strange 
tale to tell. He produces, inductively, descriptions of several stages. 
Man in the natural state was a mere animal, lacking the use of his 
intellect, it being latent within him; hence he was without clothing, as,, 
for example, the orang-outang and the Hew Hollanders, and without 
houses, like the ancient Scythians ; he was unacquainted with the use 
of fire or even of speech. He was a solitary brute, living in caves, feed- 
ing on the natural fruits of the earth, walking on all-fours, and pre- 
senting a variety of forms- — and here Monboddo, to support his state- 
ments, goes off in a wild citation of men with tails, and men with one 
median eye, and giants, and dwarfs, that reminds the reader of Kip- 
4 Development and Evolution , New York; 1902. 
