§ 1
No one thinks less of Sir Isaac Newton because he was born as a very
puny infant, and no one should think less of the human race because it
sprang from a stock of arboreal mammals. There is no doubt as to man's
apartness from the rest of creation when he is seen at his best--"a
little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour." "What a
piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in
form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension so like a God." Nevertheless, all the facts point to his
affiliation to the stock to which monkeys and apes also belong. Not,
indeed, that man is descended from any living ape or monkey; it is
rather that he and they have sprung from a common ancestry--are branches
of the same stem. This conclusion is so momentous that the reasons for
accepting it must be carefully considered. They were expounded with
masterly skill in Darwin's _Descent of Man_ in 1871--a book which was
but an expansion of a chapter in _The Origin of Species_ (1859).