The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals, by
Thomas H. Huxley

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Title: On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals

Author: Thomas H. Huxley

Posting Date: January 6, 2009 [EBook #2932]
Release Date: November, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELATIONS OF MAN ***

Produced by Amy E. Zelmer

ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE LOWER ANIMALS

By Thomas H. Huxley

Multis videri poterit, majorem esso differentiam Simiae et
Hominis, quam diei et noctis; verum tamen hi, comparatione
instituta inter summos Europae Heroes et Hottentottos ad
Caput bonae spei degentes, difficillime sibi persuadebunt,
has eosdem habere natales; vel si virginem nobilem aulicam,
maxime comtam et humanissimam, conferre vellent cum homine
sylvestri et sibi relicto, vix augurari possent, hunc et
illam ejusdem esse speciei.--'Linnaei Amoenitates Acad.
"Anthropomorpha."'

THE question of questions for mankind--the problem which underlies
all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other--is the
ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his
relations to the universe of things. Whence our race has come; what are
the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to
what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew
and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of
us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker
after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them
altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed
of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two
restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can
only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of mere
scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track
of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and
stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own. The sceptics end
in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, o