Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/132

118 is the present and more pertinent question, as to whether after all the difference now existing between man and the animal may not be regarded as a negligible factor. There are many who today would reduce this difference to such a minimum that it becomes practically a vanishing quantity. Darwin describes the difference between man and the animal as one of "degree and not of kind."

This has been quoted so often and repeated with such satisfaction as a final explanation, that a due consideration of its real meaning has not been given—at least in certain quarters. It is easy to fall into the fallacy which I would characterize as acquiescence in a reiterated formula. Inasmuch as we form one of the terms of this relation, the difference between man and the animal, which is alleged to be one of degree and not of kind, may well challenge our attention, and more particular reflection. In the first place, there is a question of fact involved. Is the only difference between man and the species of animal most closely allied to him, merely one of degree and not one of kind? Philosophers should not assume as true what biologists are to-day questioning. Professor Bateson, one of the most eminent of the British biologists, states in his recent essay on "Heredity and Variation in Modern Lights": "In the light of present knowledge it is evident that before we can attack the Species-problem with any hope of success there are vast arrears to be built up. He would be a bold man who would now assert that there was no sense in which the term Species might not have a strict and concrete meaning in contradistinction to the term Variety. We have been taught to regard the difference between species and variety as one of degree. I think it unlikely that this conclusion will bear the test of further research." If this opinion holds good regarding the difference between species and variety, it will certainly apply much more forcibly to the difference between such widely separated species as man, and those animal forms most closely resembling him. There is a second consideration, however: Even granting that all differences may be expressed as differences in degree, it does