The “Times” Review of Darwin's “Descent of Man”

Abstract

THE British public are deeply indebted to the Times Reviewer for his very comforting and reassuring remarks on Mr. Darwin's “Descent of Man,” in which he has so well exposed the “utterly unsupported hypotheses,” the “unsubstantial presumptions,” the “cursory investigations,” of that “reckless” and “unscientific” writer. It is a great satisfaction to find that Mr. Darwin's odious conclusion that the genealogy of the Talbots, and the Howards, and the Percys must be traced back beyond the Conqueror to an Anthropomorphous Ape, and beyond the ape to an Acephalous Mollusk, rests on no logical foundation whatever. The Reviewer well suggests that anything so odious in idea, so immoral in its apparent tendency, and so different from what we have been accustomed to believe, cannot possibly be true. One is so glad indeed to be free once and for ever from the mischievous influence of such, “unpractical,” “disintegrating speculations,” that it seems worth while trying, if space can be found for the experiment, to elicit from the good nature of the Reviewer, or of those who think with him, a little clearer explanation here and there, before the subject is finally consigned to a well-merited oblivion.