however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of
our modern scientists.

And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the
definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest
vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest
allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct
living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is
hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and
uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber,
to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is
not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his
own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral _plexus_, and
Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet
and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No
_a priori_ induction will ever extend this line _or plexus_ to man. The
developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that
will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter
up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in
his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or
downwards.[8] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an
archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be,
and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in
nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations.
Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp
and woof of their scientific formulA| respecting life, will never stand
before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any
thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present
against them.