Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/79

Rh the lovers of damnation would insinuate. It is no use for him, himself, to mildly plead that he is no iconoclast, and makes no pretense whatever to have fathomed the solemn mysteries of Nature. His great offense has been committed, and he is condemned out of the mouth of his enemies to moral excommunication. Curiously enough, those most indignant at the suggestion of an ape-like ancestry are the individuals who are pretty generally admitted to be descendants of quite another species. By these the dangers of Darwinism are proclaimed with unwearied iteration, and thus the bray of the donkey confutes the folly which affirms man to be an offshoot of some archetypal baboon.

The author of this "Darwinian Theory Examined" is anonymous, but from the anxiety he shows to be "written down" not an ape, we have no hesitation in saying that he belongs to the Dogberry family of dissenters from the faith of modern science. Under what temptation he first thought of coming forward as the critic of Darwinism, and of speaking so loudly on behalf of the claims of his own ancestry, we are at a loss to guess; but we may at once say that he has made us fully alive to the limitations of the great modern theory of man's descent. A theory which relegates all men to the great monkey family, and makes no account of those who confidently establish and vindicate a descent from the four-footed companion of Balaam, must be defective somewhere, as our anonymous author shows. With a charming coherence, he compares Darwinism to phrenology, and again to mesmerism, and again to what he calls phrenomesmerism. "None of these," he says, "could have sprung from nothing (sic) that was reasonable; they all held on by the skirts of truth, and they have all had their hour of triumph"; and he continues, "Every one of a certain age may remember how phrenology flourished, how people hired servants, selected associates, and so forth, by its rules." We ourselves are of a certain age, but we really don't remember so much; and the period when people "hired servants" and "selected associates" by feeling their bumps must have been previous to our editorial infancy. There is now a danger, we presume, that people may do such things by the rules of Darwinism, but the author fails to inform us whether we are likely to "select" servants and intimate friends because they do, or because they do not, present in their faces and on their persons indications of their apely origin? As to the common results of the theory, however, he is far more explicit, and the case that he reports is so awful that We hope all our readers will take warning. "A man," he says, "was lately reported in America as giving a lecture, at the close of which he had advertised his intention to destroy himself. The audience was considerable. . . . Having concluded a most interesting discourse, he, in compliance with his advertised intention, before any one could interfere, drew a pistol out of his pocket and blew his brains out. At his lodging was found a will, leaving all his property to purchase the works of Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley for the public library of the district."