descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to think, be
highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we
are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first
seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be
forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind--such
were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed
with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with
excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful.
They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what
they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to
every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in
his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge
that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For
my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little
monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his
keeper, or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains,
carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished
dogs--as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up
bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his
wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not
through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and
the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally
placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the
distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only
with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I
have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however,
acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities,
with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which
extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature,
with his godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and
constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--man
still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
“ACCORDS BETTER WITH WHAT WE KNOW OF THE CREATOR’S LAWS.”
[Origin of
Species,
page 428.]
Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the
view that each species has been independently created. To my mind
it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter
by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and
present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary
causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.
When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal
descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of
the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species
will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the
species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a
far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are
grouped, shows that the greater number of species in each genus, and
all the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have
become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into
futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and widely-spread
species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each class,
which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species.
As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those
which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that
the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and
that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with
some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural
selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal
and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.
THE GRANDEUR OF THIS VIEW OF LIFE.
[Page 429.]
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many
plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth,
and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different
from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in
the largest sense, being growth with reproduction; inheritance which
is almost implied by reproduction; variability from the indirect and
direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a
ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a
consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and
the extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature,
from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable
of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly
follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according
to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.
NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.
[Descent of
Man, page 612.]
I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by
many persons as a rash argument for his existence. But this is a rash
argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence
of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than
man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent
Deity. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to
arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued
culture.
He who believes in the advancement of man from some low organized
form, will naturally ask, How does this bear on the belief in the
immortality of the soul? The barbarous races of man, as Sir J. Lubbock
has shown, possess no clear belief of this kind; but arguments derived
from the primeval beliefs of savages are, as we have just seen, of
little or no avail. Few persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility
of determining at what precise period in the development of the
individual, from the first trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man
becomes an immortal being; and there is no greater cause for anxiety
because the period can not possibly be determined in the gradually
ascending organic scale.
I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be
denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is
bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man
as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the
laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of
the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth
both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that
grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to accept as the
result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion,
whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of
structure--the union of each pair in marriage--the dissemination of
each seed--and other such events, have all been ordained for some
special purpose.
* * * * *
[Journal of
Researches,
page 503.]
Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in
sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether
those of Brazil, where the powers of life are predominant, or those
of Tierra del Fuego, where death and decay prevail. Both are temples
filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature; no one can
stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in
man than the mere breath of his body.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks
were remedied when the change was obvious or could be determined by
reference to Darwin’s original books; and otherwise left unbalanced.