Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature

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D. Appleton, 1863 - 184 pages

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Contents

I
9
II
71
III
139

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Page 129 - I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life...
Page 131 - Nay more, 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.
Page 71 - 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.
Page 132 - 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 organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals...
Page 123 - Darwin's hypothesis, maintain, that whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result — that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.
Page 115 - And it is a remarkable circumstance, that though so far as our present knowledge extends, there is one true structural break in the series of forms of Simian brains, this hiatus does not lie between Man and the man-like apes, but between the lower and the lowest Simians; or, in other words, between the old and new world apes and monkeys, and the Lemurs. Every Lemur which has yet been examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior...
Page 130 - At the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes ; or is more certain that whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of them.
Page 83 - So that it is only quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development as the man does. Startling as this last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true...
Page 132 - ... the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby in the secular period of his existence he has slowly accumulated and organized 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 his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.
Page 63 - ... agree that but one adult male is seen in a band ; when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community.

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