Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/27

Rh education and the acquisition of knowledge. He is every inch a Primate nevertheless, and ever will be, with all that this word means. His place in nature is as fixed as is the fact that if his head be cut off it will kill him.

That man has a place in nature there is no manner of a doubt and the truth has been told when we admit that it is, in reality, in nature, and that he has arisen to that place in time and along developmental lines in every way similar to those lines followed in their evolution by all other animals in nature, starting as they have, and we all have, in common, from the simplest animals known to us, and which existed in the world with the first manifestations of life of any kind.

In commenting upon this forty years ago in his "Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature" Mr. Huxley said: "Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth; and were these pages addressed to men of science only, I should now close this essay, knowing that my colleages have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations. But desiring, as I do, to reach the wider circle of the intelligent public, it would be unworthy cowardice were I to ignore the repugnance with which the majority of my readers are likely to meet the conclusions to which the most careful and conscientious study I have been able to give to this matter, has led me.

"On all sides I shall hear the cry— 'we are men and women, and not a mere better sort of apes, a little longer in the leg, more compact in the foot, and bigger in brain than your brutal Chimpanzees and