Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
Before concluding these lectures there is one point to which I must
advert--though, as Mr. Darwin has said nothing about man in his book, it
concerns myself rather than him;--for I have strongly maintained on sundry
occasions that if Mr. Darwin's views are sound, they apply as much to man
as to the lower mammals, seeing that it is perfectly demonstrable that the
structural differences which separate man from the apes are not greater
than those which separate some apes from others. There cannot be the
slightest doubt in the world that the argument which applies to the
improvement of the horse from an earlier stock, or of ape from ape, applies
to the improvement of man from some simpler and lower stock than man. There
is not a single faculty--functional or structural, moral, intellectual, or
instinctive, there--is no faculty whatever that is not capable of
improvement; there is no faculty whatsoever which does not depend upon
structure, and as structure tends to vary, it is capable of being improved.
Well, I have taken a good deal of pains at various times to prove this, and
I have endeavoured to meet the objections of those who maintain, that the
structural differences between man and the lower animals are of so vast a
character and enormous extent, that even if Mr. Darwin's views are correct,
you cannot imagine this particular modification to take place. It is, in
fact, an easy matter to prove that, so far as structure is concerned, man
differs to no greater extent from the animals which are immediately below
him than these do from other members of the same order. Upon the other
hand, there is no one who estimates more highly than I do the dignity of
human nature, and the width of the gulf in intellectual and moral matters
which lies between man and the whole of the lower creation.
But I find this very argument brought forward vehemently by some. "You say
that man has proceeded from a modification of some lower animal, and you
take pains to prove that the structural differences which are said to exist
in his brain do not exist at all, and you teach that all functions,
intellectual, moral, and others, are the expression or the result, in the
long run, of structures, and of the molecular forces which they exert." It
is quite true that I do so.
"Well, but," I am told at once, somewhat triumphantly, "you say in the same
breath that there is a great moral and intellectual chasm between man and
the lower animals. How is this possible when you declare that moral and
intellectual characteristics depend on structure, and yet tell us that
there is no such gulf between the structure of man and that of the lower
animals?"
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