"They slept in a wood, Or wherever they could, For they didn't know how to make beds; They hadn't got huts, They dined upon nuts, Which they cracked upon each other's heads. They hadn't much scope For a comb, brush, or soap, Or towels, or kettle, or fire; They had no coats nor capes, For ne'er did these apes Invent what they didn't require. · · · · · From these though descended, Our manners are mended, Though still we can grin and backbite; We cut up each other, Be he friend or brother, And tails are the fashion--at night. This origination Is all speculation-- We gamble in various shapes; So Mr. Darwin May speculate in Our ancestors having been apes." _The Athenæum_ was unbelieving, but not denunciatory. _The Edinburgh Review_ declared the doctrine of natural selection hopelessly inadequate to explain the phenomena of man's body; although its truth and falsehood had no necessary connection with the general theory of evolution: some law as yet unknown being looked for. Darwin's attempt to explain the evolution of mind and the moral sense is regarded as failing in every point. "Never, perhaps, in the history of philosophy, have such wide generalisations been derived from such a small basis of fact." _The Quarterly Review_ now acknowledged that "the survival of the fittest" was a truth which readily presented itself to any one considering the subject, and that to Darwin was due the credit of having first brought it forward and demonstrated its truth, and asserted that the destruction of the least fit was recognised thousands of years ago. But, in regard to the descent of man, it fastens specially upon the author's theory of mental and moral evolution, and declares that he has utterly failed. _The Saturday Review_, however, admitted the high antiquity of man, and the nearness of his bodily structure to the apes, and went much further. In discussing the evolution of morals, the author's unexampled grasp of facts, with his power of correlation, is, according to _The Saturday_, seen at its highest, in an exquisite chain of philosophical deduction. The mode in which, at a remote period, the races of mankind became differentiated, is declared to be the weak point in the argument. CHAPTER VIII.