rations after generations in the
unrecorded obscurity of a life for ever the same. Suppose we admit that
human phenomena presented themselves at first in a very elementary form;
in rudiments of language and rudiments of religion,--although the
historical sciences do not quite give this result:--still suppose the
case that at a given moment a branch of the monkey species presented the
germ, as little developed as you please, but real, of new phenomena. One
variety of the monkey species has been endowed with speech, has become
religious, capable of civilization, and the other varieties of the
species have not offered the same characteristics, although they have
had the same number of ages in which to develop themselves. Observe well
now my process of reasoning. Remark attentively whether I oppose
theories to facts, whether I substitute oratorical declamations for
arguments. I grant the hypotheses best calculated, as commonly thought,
to contradict my theses. I assume that natural history demonstrates by
solid proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of a monkey;
and I ask: What is the circumstance which set apart in the animal
species a branch which presented new phenomena? What is the cause? That
monkey-author of our race which one day began to speak in the midst of
his brother-monkeys, amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that
monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity; that, looking up
to heaven, said, My God! and that, retiring into himself, said: I!--that
monkey which, while the female monkeys continued to give birth to their
young, had sons by the partner of his life and pressed them to his
heart; that monkey--what shall we say of it? What climate, what soil,
what regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what drought, what
light, what combination of phosphorus, what disengagement of
electricity, separated from the animal races, not only man, but human
society? humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again, its
sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles; humanity with its arts,
its sciences, its religion, its history in short, its history and its
hopes of immortality? That monkey, what shall we say of it? Do you not
see that the breath of the Spirit passed over it, and that God said unto
it: Behold, thou art made in mine image: remember now thy Father who is
in heaven? Do you not see that though we grant everything to the extreme
pretensions of naturalists, the question co