Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
From the principles laid down in the last sentence it would follow that if
man were constructed upon a plan as different from that of any other animal
as that of a sea-urchin is from that of a whale, it would be "equally
probable" that he had been developed from some other animal as it is now,
when we know that for every bone, muscle, tooth, and even pattern of tooth,
in man, there is a corresponding bone, muscle, tooth, and pattern of tooth,
in an ape. And this shows one of two things--either that the Quarterly
Reviewer's notions of probability are peculiar to himself, or that he has
such an overpowering faith in the truth of evolution that no extent of
structural break between one animal and another is sufficient to destroy
his conviction that evolution has taken place.
But this by the way. The importance of the admission that there is nothing
in man's physical structure to interfere with his having been evolved from
an ape is not lessened because it is grudgingly made and inconsistently
qualified. And instead of jubilating over the extent of the enemy's
retreat, it will be more worth while to lay siege to his last
stronghold--the position that there is a distinction in kind between the
mental faculties of man and those of brutes, and that in consequence of
this distinction in kind no gradual progress from the mental faculties of
the one to those of the other can have taken place.
The Quarterly Reviewer entrenches himself within formidable-looking
psychological outworks, and there is no getting at him without attacking
them one by one.
He begins by laying down the following proposition. "'Sensation' is not
'thought,' and no amount of the former would constitute the most
rudimentary condition of the latter, though sensations supply the
conditions for the existence of 'thought' or 'knowledge'" (p. 67).
This proposition is true, or not, according to the sense in which the word
"thought" is employed. Thought is not uncommonly used in a sense
co-extensive with consciousness, and, especially, with those states of
consciousness we call memory. If I recall the impression made by a colour
or an odour, and distinctly remember blueness or muskiness, I may say with
perfect propriety that I "think of" blue or musk; and, so long as the
thought lasts, it is simply a faint reproduction of the state of
consciousness to which I gave the name in question, when it first became
known to me as a sensation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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