The Doctrine of Evolution (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...questions by asking if there are any reasons for regarding the human species as a unique and isolated type of organism. At the outset, we must recognize that in so far as the human body is material, its movements and mass relations are controlled by physical principles, like all other masses of matter. It is well, indeed, that this is so, for if gravitation and the laws of inertia were not consistent and reliable principles holding true at all times and not intermittently, it would be difficult to order our lives with confidence. In the next place, the general principles of biology hold true for the structure and physiology of the human species as they do for all other living things. A human body is composed of eight systems of organs, whose functions are identical with the eight vital tasks of every other animal. All these organs are made up of cells as ultimate vital units, and the materials of which human cells are composed belong to the class of substances called protoplasm. Human protoplasm, like all other living materials, must replenish itself, and respire and oxidize in obedience to biological laws that have been found to be uniform everywhere. Thus the human organism is no more unique in fundamental organic respects than it is apart from the world of physical processes and laws. How does the matter stand when the general structural plan of a human being is examined? Is it entirely different from everything else? It is a fact of common knowledge that the human body is supported by a bony axis, the vertebral column, to which the skull is articulated and to which also the skeletal framework of the limbs is attached. These characteristics place man inevitably among the so-called vertebrata; he is certainly not an invertebrate, nor is the basic structure of his body such that a third group, outside the invertebrata and vertebrata, can be made to include only the single type-man. Passing now to the classes that make up the group of vertebrates, ..