ction is it affirmed
at once that our spirit overpasses the bounds of all the realities
which encompass it, and that it has not a source more elevated than
those realities? Listen to a thought of that weighty writer
Montesquieu:[129] "Those who have said that a blind fatality has
produced all the effects which we see in the world, have said a great
absurdity; for what greater absurdity than a blind fatality which should
have produced intelligent beings?" Without restricting ourselves to this
simple and solid argument, let us see how they will explain man by
nature. For this end, we must examine the theory of the perfected
monkey, which, introduced to us by the lectures of Professor Vogt and
the spirited rejoinders of M. de Rougemont, made a great noise as it
descended a short time ago from the mountains of Neuchatel.[130] A
celebrated orator said one day to an assembly of Frenchmen: "I am long,
Gentlemen; but it is your own fault: it is your glory that I am
recounting." Have not I the right to say to you: "I am long, Gentlemen,
but it is worth while to be so; it is our own dignity which is in
question."

Man is a perfected monkey! I have three preliminary observations to make
before I proceed to the direct examination of this theory.

In the first place, this definition transgresses the first and most
essential rules of logic. We must always define what is unknown by what
is known. This is an elementary principle. What a man is, I know. To
think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear, are functions of the mental
life. These words answer to clear ideas, because those ideas result
directly from our personal consciousness. But what is the soul of a
monkey? The nature of animals is a mystery, one which is perhaps
incapable of solution, and which, in all cases is wrapped in profound
darkness, because the animal appears to us an intermediate link between
the mechanism of nature and the functions of the spiritual life, which
are the only two conceptions we have that are really clear and distinct.
In taking the monkey therefore as our point of departure for the
definition of man, we are defining what is clear by what is obscure.

My second remark is this: If it is affirmed that there is but one
species, including all the animals and man, so that man is only a monkey
modified, and the monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal modified;
when once we have established the reality of man we arrive at this
result: all animals whatsoev