The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)Figuier, Louis
Religion
The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)
Figuier, Louis
Cosmology; Future life; Transmigration
No, certainly not. The French and German naturalists, who, applying
Darwin's theory of the transformation of species to man, have declared
man to be derived from the monkey, rely entirely on anatomical
considerations. Vogt, Bruchner, Huxley, and Broca compare the skeleton
of the monkey with that of primitive man; they study the form of the
skull of each respectively, they measure the width and the prominence
of the jaws, &c., &c. From the results, they draw the conclusion that
man is anatomically derived from a species of quadrumane. The soul is
not taken into any consideration by these men of science, who argue
precisely as if nothing of the thinking kind existed in the anatomical
cavities which they explore and measure. It is, on the contrary, by
comparing the faculties of the human soul with the faculties of animals
that we arrive at our conclusion. The animal forms signify nothing to
us; the spirit, in its various manifestations, is our chief object.
Why, indeed, should we seek to derive man from the monkey, rather than
from any other mammiferous animal, rather than from the wolf, or the
fox? Is there much difference between the skeleton of the monkey and
that of the wolf, the fox, or any other carnivorous beast? Put three
or four of those skeletons together, and you will not find it easy to
distinguish one from the other, if, instead of selecting a monkey of a
superior species, you take an inferior quadrumane, a striated monkey, a
lemur, or a macao.
Interrogate the physiological functions of the monkey. You will find
them, and the organs which serve those functions, perfectly similar
in all animals, and those organs identical in their structure. Why,
then, should you derive man from the monkey, rather than from the
wolf or the fox? Is it because the monkeys in our menageries have a
distant resemblance to man, in their occasional vertical attitude,
and in certain features which are caricatures of those of the human
face? How many of the species among the immense simial family of the
two hemispheres present this resemblance? Hardly five or six. All the
others have the bestial snout in its fullest development, and are
very inferior in intelligence to most of the other mammifers. If it be
from the organic point of view that you derive man from the monkey,
because certain species of quadrumanes are caricatures of men in their
physiognomy, why may he not be derived as reasonably from the parrot,
which emits articulate sounds, the caricature of the human voice, or
even the nightingale, because that melodious songster of the woods
modulates his notes like our singers?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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