The Destiny of Man | Page 3

He came not in the earthquake or the tempest but in a voice
that was still and small, so that divine spark the Soul, as it takes up its
brief abode in this realm of fleeting phenomena, chooses not the central
sun where elemental forces forever blaze and clash, but selects an
outlying terrestrial nook where seeds may germinate in silence, and
where through slow fruition the mysterious forms of organic life may
come to take shape and thrive. He who thus looks a little deeper into
the secrets of nature than his forefathers of the sixteenth century may
well smile at the quaint conceit that man cannot be the object of God's
care unless he occupies an immovable position in the centre of the
stellar universe.

II.
Man's Place in Nature, as affected by Darwinism.
When the Copernican astronomy was finally established through the
discoveries of Kepler and Newton, it might well have been pronounced
the greatest scientific achievement of the human mind; but it was still
more than that. It was the greatest revolution that had ever been
effected in Man's views of his relations to the universe in which he
lives, and of which he is--at least during the present life--a part. During
the nineteenth century, however, a still greater revolution has been
effected. Not only has Lyell enlarged our mental horizon in time as
much as Newton enlarged it in space, but it appears that throughout
these vast stretches of time and space with which we have been made
acquainted there are sundry well-marked changes going on. Certain
definite paths of development are being pursued; and around us on
every side we behold worlds, organisms, and societies in divers stages
of progress or decline. Still more, as we examine the records of past life
upon our globe, and study the mutual relations of the living things that
still remain, it appears that the higher forms of life--including Man
himself--are the modified descendants of lower forms. Zoölogically
speaking, Man can no longer be regarded as a creature apart by himself.
We cannot erect an order on purpose to contain him, as Cuvier tried to
do; we cannot even make a separate family for him. Man is not only a
vertebrate, a mammal, and a primate, but he belongs, as a genus, to the
catarrhine family of apes. And just as lions, leopards, and
lynxes--different genera of the cat-family--are descended from a
common stock of carnivora, back to which we may also trace the
pedigrees of dogs, hyænas, bears, and seals; so the various genera of
platyrrhine and catarrhine apes, including Man, are doubtless
descended from a common stock of primates, back to which we may
also trace the converging pedigrees of monkeys and lemurs, until their
ancestry becomes indistinguishable from that of rabbits and squirrels.
Such is the conclusion to which the scientific world has come within a
quarter of a century from the publication of Mr. Darwin's "Origin of
Species;" and there is no more reason for supposing that this conclusion

will ever be gainsaid than for supposing that the Copernican astronomy
will some time be overthrown and the concentric spheres of Dante's
heaven reinstated in the minds of men.
It is not strange that this theory of man's origin, which we associate
mainly with the name of Mr. Darwin, should be to many people very
unwelcome. It is fast bringing about a still greater revolution in thought
than that which was heralded by Copernicus; and it naturally takes
some time for the various portions of one's theory of things to become
adjusted, one after another, to so vast and sweeping a change. From
many quarters the cry goes up,--If this be true, then Man is at length
cast down from his high position in the world. "I will not be called a
mammal, or the son of a mammal!" once exclaimed an acquaintance of
mine who perhaps had been brought up by hand. Such expressions of
feeling are crude, but the feeling is not unjustifiable. It is urged that if
man is physically akin to a baboon, as pigs are akin to horses, and cows
to deer, then Humanity can in nowise be regarded as occupying a
peculiar place in the universe; it becomes a mere incident in an endless
series of changes, and how can we say that the same process of
evolution that has produced mankind may not by and by produce
something far more perfect? There was a time when huge bird-like
reptiles were the lords of creation, and after these had been "sealed
within the iron hills" there came successive dynasties of mammals; and
as the iguanodon gave place to the great Eocene marsupials, as the
mastodon and the sabre-toothed lion have long since vanished from the
scene, so may not Man by