CHAPTER VII.


_THE DESCENT OF MAN_.

We now approach a special objection which always, has been (and I shall
be pardoned, perhaps, for saying _always will be_) the _crux_ of the
theory of unaided, uncreated evolution--the advent of reasoning, and not
only reasoning, but self-conscious and God-conscious MAN.

Here again the lines of argument are so numerous, and the details into
which we might go so varied, that a rigid and perhaps bald selection of
a few topics is all that can be attempted.

But I may remark that naturalists are far from being agreed on this part
of the subject. Agassiz rejects the evolution of man altogether. Mr. St.
G. Mivart, while partly admitting, as every one else now does, the
doctrine of evolution, denies the descent of man. Mr. Wallace, the great
apostle of evolution, opposes Darwin, and will have none of his views on
the descent of man; and Professor Huxley himself says that, while the
resemblance of structure is such that if any "process of physical
causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary
animals have been produced, the process of causation is amply sufficient
to account for the origin of man," still he admits that the gulf is vast
between civilized man and brutes, and he is certain that "whether _from_
them or not, man is assuredly not _of_ them."