Thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional
prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence Man has sprung the best
evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his
long progress through the Past a reasonable ground of faith in his
attainment of a nobler Future...
And after passion and prejudice have died away, the same result will
attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting that great Alps
and Andes of the living world--Man. Our reverence for the nobility of
manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that Man is, in substance
and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the
marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby,
in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and
organised the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation
of every individual life in other animals; so that, now, he stands
raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of nis humble
fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here
and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.