The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (Annotated)

by Charles Darwin

ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge:

"Man, made in the image of God, was also made in the image of the ape."),

This illustrious anatomist maintains that man is endowed with certain muscles solely for the sake of expressing his emotions.

Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct?

Whether external conditions produce any other direct effect on man is not known.

In infants, long before birth, the skin on the soles of the feet is thicker than on any other part of the body; (28. Paget, 'Lectures on Surgical Pathology,' vol. ii, 1853, p. 209.) and it can hardly be doubted that this is due to the inherited effects of pressure during a long series of generations.

As we now have evidence that mutilations occasionally produce an inherited effect

for the soul is dyed by the thoughts."

"to keep with an unchanged body in harmony with the changing universe."

The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

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