And here I lay out of view entirely the comparative dignity of man as a being whose existence is to be accounted for by the one hypothesis or the other, because this comparative dignity is not properly an element in the question of probability. The doctrine of evolution, as expounded by Darwin and other modern scientists, may be true, and we shall still have reason to exclaim with Hamlet, "What a piece of work is man!" On the other hand, the hypothesis that man is a special creation of an infinite workman, if true, does not enhance the mere _a priori_ dignity of the human race. It may, and it will hereafter appear that it does, establish the moral accountability of man to a supreme being, a relation which, if I correctly understand the doctrine of evolution, is left out of the system that supposes intellect to be evolved out of the improving process by which matter becomes nervous organization, whose action exhibits those manifestations which we call mind. The moral accountability of man to a supreme being may, if it becomes established by proper evidence, be a circumstance that distinguishes him from other animals, and may, therefore, raise him in the scale of being. But then this dignity is a fact that comes after the process of reasoning has shown the relation of creator and creature, and it should not be placed at the beginning of the process among the proofs that are to show that relation. Mr. Darwin, in concluding his great work, "The Descent of Man," which he maintains to have been from some very low type of animated creature, through the apes, who became our ancestors, and who were developed into the lowest savages, and finally into the civilized man, has anticipated that his theory will, he regrets to say, be "highly distasteful to many"; and he adds, by way of parrying this disgust, that "he who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins." For his own part, he adds, he would as soon be descended from a certain heroic little monkey who exposed himself to great danger in order to save the life of his keeper, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide, etc. Waiving for the present the question whether the man who is called civilized is necessarily descended from or through the kind of savage whom Mr. Darwin saw in the Tierra del Fuego, or whether that kind of savage is a deteriorated offshoot from some higher human creatures that possessed moral and intellectual characteristics of a more elevated nature, I freely concede that this question of the dignity of our descent is not of much logical consequence. However distasteful to us may be the idea that we are descended from the same stock as the apes, and that their direct ancestors are to be traced to some more humble creature until we reach the lowest form of organized and animated matter, the dignity