the former animal. Now this obstacle being, as I have said, a
matter of feeling or sentiment, as such I am not able to meet it. If you
think that man is shown to be any less human because his origin is now
shown to have been derivative, I cannot change that decision on your
part; I can only express dissent from it on my own. But although I
cannot affect your sentiments in this matter, I may be permitted to
point out that, as they are only sentiments, they are quite worthless as
arguments or guides to truth. I have yet to learn that the "dignity of
man" is a matter of any concern to our Mother Nature, who in all her
dealings appears, to say the least, to treat us in rather a
matter-of-fact sort of way. Indeed, so far is she from respecting our
ideas of "dignity," that whenever these ideas have been applied to any
of her processes, the progress of science has been destined rudely to
dispel them. Thus, for instance, when the sun-spots were first observed
they were indignantly denied by the Aristotelians, on the ground of its
being "impossible that the eye of the universe could suffer from
ophthalmia;" and when Kepler made his great discovery of the accelerated
and retarded motion of the planets in different parts of their orbits,
many persons refused to entertain the conception, on the ground that it
was "undignified" for heavenly bodies to hurry and slacken their pace in
accordance with Kepler's law. This now seems most absurd to us; but to
posterity it will not seem nearly so much so as that, notwithstanding
such precedents, persons should still be found to object to Darwin's
discovery, not because they were anxious to maintain the dignity of the
heavenly bodies, but because they were so ludicrously anxious to
maintain the dignity of their own! Good it is for man, puffed up with
such silly pride, that Nature teaches him humility.

But, before leaving this subject, I should like further to point out
that those who advance this preposterous objection from dignity appear
to forget one all-important point, viz., that whether or not the monkey
is the parent of the man, the man is certainly made in every way to
_look like_ a child of the monkey. For it is a matter of anatomical
demonstration, that in all the features of our bodily structure--even up
to our brains--we more closely resemble the man-like apes than the
man-like apes resemble the lower quadrumana. And I beg it to be
remembered that the tremendous significance of th