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It seemed to me sufficient to indicate, in the first edition of my ‘Origin of Species,’ that by this work “light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history;” and this implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on this earth.
The sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form; secondly, the manner of his development; and thirdly, the value of the differences between the so-called races of man.
ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men.
Why these animals, as well as the progenitors of man, should have lost the power of erecting their ears we cannot say.
The cæcum is a branch or diverticulum of the intestine, ending in a cul-de-sac, and it is extremely long in many of the lower vegetable-feeding mammals.
No other explanation has ever been given of the marvellous fact that the embryo of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, &c., can at first hardly be distinguished from each other.
It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion.
No doubt the difference in this respect is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher than four, and who uses no abstract terms for the commonest objects or affections, 45 with that of the most highly organised ape.
My object in this chapter is solely to shew that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.
In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms, is as hopeless an enquiry as how life first originated. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man.
Language.—This faculty has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals.
It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write.
The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs.
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, 105 would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.
Hence, “the sight of another person enduring hunger, cold, fatigue, revives in us some recollection of these states, which are painful even in idea.” We are thus impelled to relieve the sufferings of another, in order that our own painful feelings may be at the same time relieved.
Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.
Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind.
Notwithstanding that savages appear to be less prolific than civilised people, they would no doubt rapidly increase if their numbers were not by some means rigidly kept down.
Many accounts have been published of their protruding stomachs and emaciated limbs after and during famines.
These practices appear to have originated in savages recognising the difficulty, or rather the impossibility of supporting all the infants that are born.
The early progenitors of man must also have tended, like all other animals, to have increased beyond their means of subsistence; they must therefore occasionally have been exposed to a struggle for existence, and consequently to the rigid law of natural selection.
Whilst observing the barbarous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, it struck me that the possession of some property, a fixed abode, and the union of many families under a chief, were the indispensable requisites for civilisation.
In Spain alone some of the best men—those who doubted and questioned, and without doubting there can be no progress—were eliminated during three centuries at the rate of a thousand a year. The evil which the Catholic Church has thus effected, though no doubt counterbalanced to a certain, perhaps large extent in other ways, is incalculable;
Many existing superstitions are the remnants of former false religious beliefs. The highest form of religion—the grand idea of God hating sin and loving righteousness—was unknown during primeval times.
that man is descended from some lower form, notwithstanding that connecting-links have not hitherto been discovered.
They build great edifices, keep them clean, close the doors in the evening, and post sentries.
Hence we can see how it is that resemblances in unimportant structures, in useless and rudimentary organs, and in parts not as yet fully developed or functionally active, are by far the most serviceable for classification;
it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere.
But no one can at present say by what line of descent the three higher and related classes, namely, mammals, birds, and reptiles, were derived from either of the two lower vertebrate classes, namely amphibians and fishes.
Unless we wilfully close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately recognise our parentage; nor need we feel ashamed of it.
Even if it should hereafter be proved that all the races of men were perfectly fertile together,
he who was inclined from other reasons to rank them as distinct species, might with justice argue that fertility and sterility are not safe criterions of specific distinctness.
Thus with mankind the offspring of distinct races resemble in all respects the offspring of true species and of varieties.
But the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed.
The singular fact that Europeans and Hindoos, who belong to the same Aryan stock and speak a language fundamentally the same, differ widely in appearance,
sexual selection has played an important part in the history of the organic world.
According to this hypothesis, every unit or cell of the body throws off gemmules or undeveloped atoms, which are transmitted to the offspring of both sexes, and are multiplied by self-division.
Hence the successive steps in the modification of a species might readily be transmitted in different ways; some of the steps being transmitted to one sex, and some to both; some to the offspring at one age, and some at all ages.
