I should in nowise be ashamed of the fear thus ascribed to me, but whether it was an overmastering fear, let those judge who have read such passages in my Lectures, as the following:—
“The question is not whether the belief that animals so distant as a man, a monkey, an elephant, and a humming bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish, could all have sprung from the same parents is monstrous, but simply and solely whether it is true. If it is true, we shall soon learn to digest it. Appeals to the pride or humility of man, to scientific courage, or religious piety, are all equally out of place.”
If this and other passages in my Lectures are inspired by overmastering fear, then surely Talleyrand was right in saying that language was intended to disguise our thoughts. And may I not add, that if such charges can be made with impunity, we shall soon have to say, with a still more notorious diplomatist, “What is truth?” Such reckless charges may look heroic, but what applied to the famous charge of Balaclava, applies to them: C’est magnifique, sans doute, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.
I am next charged, I do not know whether by the senior or the junior counsel, with maintaining the extraordinary position that if an insensible graduation could be established between ape and man, their minds would be identical.
Here all depends on what is meant by mind and by identical. Does Mr. Darwin mean by “mind” something substantial—an agent that deals with the impressions received through the senses, as a builder deals with his bricks? Then, according to his father’s view, the one builder may build a mere hovel, the other may erect a cathedral, but through their descent they are substantially the same. Or does he mean by “mind,” the mode and manner in which sensations are received and arranged, what one might call, in fact, the law of sensuous gravitation? Then I say again, according to his father’s view, that law is substantially the same for animal and man. Nor is this a conclusion derived from Mr. Darwin’s premises against his will. It is the opinion strongly advocated by him. He has collected the most interesting observations on the incipient germs, not only of language, but of æsthetics and ethics, among animals. If Mr. Darwin, Jr., holds that the mind of man is not substantially identical with the animal mind, if he admits a break somewhere in the ascending scale from the Protogenes to the first Man, then we should be driven to the old conclusion—viz., that man was formed of the dust of the ground, but that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Does Mr. Darwin, Jr., accept this?
Next it is said, that by a similar argument the distinction between black and white, hot and cold, a high and a low note might be eliminated. This sounds no doubt formidable—it almost looks like a logical skeleton. But let us not be frightened by words. Black and white are no doubt as different as possible, so are hot and cold, a high and a low note. But what is the difference between a high and a low note? It is simply the smaller or larger number of vibrations in a given time. We can count these vibrations, and we also know that, from time to time, as the velocity of the vibrations increases, our dull senses can distinguish new tones. We have therefore here to deal with differences that used to be called differences of degree, as opposed to differences in kind. What applies to a low and a high note, applies to a low and high degree of heat, and to the various degrees of light which we call by the names of colors. In all these cases, what philosophers call the substance, remains the same, just as, according to evolutionists, the substance of man and animal is the same. Therefore, if man differs from an animal no more than a high note differs from a low, or, vice versâ, if a high note differs no more from a low than man differs from an ape, my argument would seem to stand in spite of the shower of words poured over it.
I myself referred to the difference between a high and a low note for a totally different purpose, viz., in order to call attention to those strange lines and limits in nature which, in spite of insensible graduation, enable us to distinguish broad degrees of sound which we call keys; broad degrees of light, which we call colors; broad degrees of heat, for which our language has a less perfect nomenclature. These lines and limits have never been explained, nor the higher limits which separate sound from light, and light from heat. Why we should derive pleasure from the exact number of vibrations which yield C, and then have painful sensations till we come to the exact number of vibrations which yield C sharp, remains as yet a mystery. But as showing that nature had drawn these sharp lines across the continuous stream of vibrations, whether of sound or light, seemed to me an important problem, particularly for evolutionist philosophers, who see in nature nothing but “insensible graduation.”
The next charge brought against me is, that I overlook the undoubted and undisputed fact that species do actually vary in nature. This seems to me begging the whole question. If terms like species are fetched from the lumber-room of scholastic philosophy, they must be defined with logical exactness, particularly at present, when the very existence of such a thing as a species depends on the meaning which we assign to it. Nature gives us individuals only, and each individual differs from the other. But “species” is a thing of human workmanship,[5] and it depends entirely on the disputed definition of the term, whether species vary or not. In one sense, Mr. Darwin’s book, “On the Origin of Species,” may be called an attempt to repeal the term “species,” or, at all events, an attempt at giving a new definition to that word which it never had before. No one appreciates more than I do the service he has rendered in calling forth a new examination of that old and somewhat rusty instrument of thought.[6] Only, do not let us take for granted what has to be proved.
The dust of words grows thicker and thicker as we go on, for I am next told that the same line of proof would show “that the stature of a man or boy was identical, because the boy passes through every gradation on attaining the one stature from the other. No one could maintain such a position who grasped the doctrines of continuity and of the differential calculus.” It seems to me that even without the help of the differential calculus, we can, with the help of logic and grammar, put a stop to this argument. Boy is the subject, stature looks like a subject, but is merely a predicate, and should have been treated as such by Mr. Darwin. If a boy arrives by insensible graduation or growth at the stature of man, the man is substantially the same as the boy. His stature may be different, the color of his hair may be so likewise; but what philosophers used to call the substance, or the individuality, or the personality, or what we may call the man, remains the same. If evolutionists really maintain that the difference between man and beast is the same as between a grown-up man and a boy, the whole of my argument is granted, and granted with a completeness which I had no right to expect. Will Mr. Darwin, Senior, indorse the concessions thus made by Mr. Darwin, Junior?
In order to show how the simplest matters can be complicated by a free use of scholastic terms, I quote the following sentence, which is meant as an answer to my argument:—