this cheerful opinion still linger. Most men have grown beyond it, and have found some broader basis for their hopes and aspirations. And yet, when one comes to think about it, is not the alarm which has been caused by the statement that Adam was the great-grandson of an ape equally preposterous? Why should it have so fluttered the dove-cotes of the Church? If science could have proved divines to be apes themselves, there would have been some ground for vexation; but that was obviously out of the question, and their alarm would only prove that they were drawing some very unwarrantable inferences, or else by association of ideas had become unable to distinguish between the essence and the remotest accidental accompaniments of the faith. What interest can the highest part of our nature really take in a dispute as to whether certain facts did or did not occur many ages ago? The prima-facie presumption is, certainly, that any change in our opinions would affect rather the external imagery than the faith which it embodies. One would say at first sight that religion is no more likely to leave the world because we have new views as to the mode in which the world began, than poetry to vanish as soon as we have ceased to believe in the historical accuracy of the account of the siege of Troy. Man possesses certain spiritual organs, whose function it is to produce religion. Religion could only be destroyed by removing the organs, and not by supplying them with slightly different food.
The precise nature of the fears entertained by the orthodox is revealed by the arguments generally brought to bear against the new doctrine. There is, for example, what may be called the metaphysical argument, which, in one form or another, seems to be regarded as important. It is substantially an attempt to prove that the gap between the brute and the human mind is so wide that we cannot imagine it to be filled up by any continuous series. It is argued at great length that instinct differs from reason not in degree but in kind, or that brutes do not possess even the rudiments of what we call a moral sense. The argument has Ions: been more or less familiar. Animals have always been regarded with a certain dislike by theological arrogance. It has been held to be a conclusive objection to the validity of certain arguments for the immortality of the soul, that they would open the path to heaven to our dogs as well as to ourselves. It does not seem very easy to give any satisfactory reason for the extreme abhorrence with which such a consummation is regarded, or to say why we should claim a monopoly in another world which we do not enjoy in this. Philosophers, indeed, have gone further, and denied to animals even the most moderate share of our own capacities, and have set them down as nothing better than machines. One is really rather glad to see the poor beasts getting their revenge in public opinion, and being recognized as our relations after having been almost repudiated as fellow-creatures. The distinctions, indeed, which have
