Selected Works of Thomas H. Huxley (Volume 7) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n. ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO THE LOWER ANIMALS. Multis videri potent, majorem esse differcntiam Simiae et Hominis, quam diei et noctis; verum tamen hi, com- paratione instituta inter summos Europae Heroes et Hottentottes ad Caput bonae apei degentes, difficillime sibi persuadebunt, has eosdem habere natales; vel si virginem nobilem aulicam, maxime comtam et hu- manissimam, conferre vellent cum homine sylvestri et sibi relicto, vix augurari possent, hunc et illam ejus- dem esse speciei.?Linna:i Anncnitatcs Acad. " Anthro- pomorpha." The question of questions for mankind?the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other?is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. Whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man borninto the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the feather-bed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of mere scepticism, are unable to follow in the well- worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own. The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance...