The Three Barriers; Notes on Mr Darwin's 'Origin of Species'

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1861. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... lifted by either natural or artificial means out of its own sphere? Does it tally with the testimony of the rocks? Does it take account of the equivalence of scale to time? Does it vanquish the infinitely ramified proof of design in the structures and instincts of animals; and succeed in converting creative endowments into fortuitous acquirements? Can we descry with clearness in the vista of the future, by putting on the spectacles of natural selection, here a race of superhuman men, and there a race of super-simian apes? Have we lighted on the true apology for the basest shapes of historical superstition when we discover that the Egyptian monkey-worship71 was an innocent memorial of ancestors? Are Homer, and Plato, and Pascal, and Shakspeare, to be looked back on and looked down on by the coming masters of the earth, as we look back on the mammoth or the mastodon; and shall it be the chosen pastime of the sages of the future to Admire such wisdom in Bo mean a shape, And show a Newton as we show an ape? Or, conversely, must we accept it, as matter of unerring prediction, that, supposing the scene cleared of their human competitors, only time is required for the dawning of a new and splendid civilization, guaranteed by the action of infallible laws, and the hope-inspiring aptitudes of the gorilla and the orang? All products of art, language, science--the city, the minster, the university; the steam-ship, the telegraph, the printingpress; the sculpture lining the walls of the British Museum, the thought garnered in a million volumes beneath its dome--all this latent in the chimpanzee, potentially restorable from the baboon! Strike out all moral concern from the questions: the verdict of the Scientific Eeason must surely nevertheless be, No. 32. Mr. Darwin...