I have already said that our pride may be wholly laid out of consideration. The question of the probable truth of this hypothesis of man's descent should not be affected by anything but correct reasoning and the application of proper principles of belief. Treating it with absolute indifference in regard to the dignity of our race, I shall request my readers to examine the argument by which it is supported, without the smallest influence of prejudice. I am aware that it is asking a good deal to desire the reader to divest himself of all that nature and education and history and poetry and religion have contributed to produce in our feelings respecting our rank in the scale of being. When I come to treat of that which, for want of a more suitable term, must be called the substance of the human mind, and to suggest how it bears upon this question of the origin of man, I shall, as I trust, give the true, and no more than the true, scope to those considerations which lead to the comparative dignity of the race. But this dignity, as I have before observed, should follow and should not precede or accompany the discussion of the scientific problem. What has chiefly struck me in studying the theory of evolution as an account of the origin of man is the extent to which the theory itself has influenced the array of proofs, the inconsequential character of the reasoning, and the amount of assumption which marks the whole argument. This is not said with any purpose of giving offense. What is meant by it will be fully explained and justified, and one of the chief means for its justification will be found in what I have here more than once adverted to--Mr. Darwin's own candor and accuracy in pointing out the particulars in which important proofs are wanting. Another thing by which I have been much impressed has been the repetition of what is "probable," without a sufficient weighing of the opposite probability; and sometimes this reliance on the "probable" has been carried to the verge, and even beyond the verge, of all probability. Doubtless the whole question of special creations on the one hand and of gradual evolution on the other is a question of probability. But I now refer to a habit among naturalists of asserting the probability of a fact or an occurrence, and then, without proof, placing that fact or occurrence in a chain of evidence from which the truth of their main hypothesis is to be inferred. It is creditable to them as witnesses, that they tell us that the particular fact or occurrence is only probably true, and that we are to look for proof of it hereafter. But the whole theory thus becomes an expectant one. We are to give up our belief that God made man in his own image--that he fashioned our minds and bodies after an image which he had conceived in his infinite wisdom--because we are to expect at some future time to discover the proof that he did something very different; that he formed some very lowly-organized