A critical examination of some of the principal arguments for and against Darwinism / by James Maclaren.
- MacLaren, James
- Date:
- 1876
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A critical examination of some of the principal arguments for and against Darwinism / by James Maclaren. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![with our Simian ancestors could not liave been very inferior to them in intellectual powers, for Mr Darwin’s theory requires that the advantageous variations should be small; such, therefore, must have been the change which occurred in our Simian ancestors. How does it happen, if the intellect of man and brutes is the same in quality, that the mon- keys were left so far behind in the race for improvement? that between them, as they now exist, and man, there is a great gulf ? ’ As to the nakedness of man’s body being acquired by sexual selection, M. Lecomte says, this is merely offering to prove one hypothesis by another equally gratuitous. As to this point, M. Lecomte quotes M. Clapa- rede’s answer to Mr Wallace’s objections to the productions of man’s naked skin by na- tural selection, to which Mr Darwin referred, only without quoting it: ^ That perhaps man found it necessary to protect his back by the fleece of some animal, and who know^s, says M. Claparede, if the continual rubbing of this garment on that part of the body for a long series of ages may not have jDroduced a com- ]Darative thinness of hair upon the human](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28077416_0465.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
