horough and profound book; and I believe this
feature of the 'Origin of Species' explains why so many persons have
ventured to pass judgment and criticisms upon it which are by no means
worth the paper they are written on.

Before concluding these lectures there is one point to which I must
advert,--though, as Mr. Darwin has said nothing about man in his book,
it concerns myself rather than him;--for I have strongly maintained on
sundry occasions that if Mr. Darwin's views are sound, they apply
as much to man as to the lower mammals, seeing that it is perfectly
demonstrable that the structural differences which separate man from the
apes are not greater than those which separate some apes from others.
There cannot be the slightest doubt in the world that the argument which
applies to the improvement of the horse from an earlier stock, or of ape
from ape, applies to the improvement of man from some simpler and lower
stock than man. There is not a single faculty--functional or structural,
moral, intellectual, or instinctive,--there is no faculty whatever that
is not capable of improvement; there is no faculty whatsoever which does
not depend upon structure, and as structure tends to vary, it is capable
of being improved.

Well, I have taken a good deal of pains at various times to prove this,
and I have endeavoured to meet the objections of those who maintain,
that the structural differences between man and the lower animals are of
so vast a character and enormous extent, that even if Mr. Darwin's views
are correct, you cannot imagine this particular modification to take
place. It is, in fact, easy matter to prove that, so far as structure is
concerned, man differs to no greater extent from the animals which
are immediately below him than these do from other members of the same
order. Upon the other hand, there is no one who estimates more highly
than I do the dignity of human nature, and the width of the gulf in
intellectual and moral matters, which lies between man and the whole of
the lower creation.

But I find this very argument brought forward vehemently by some. "You
say that man has proceeded from a modification of some lower animal, and
you take pains to prove that the structural differences which are
said to exist in his brain do not exist at all, and you teach that all
functions, intellectual, moral, and others, are the expression or the
result, in the long run, of structures, and of the molecular forces
whi