There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. An anthrop...omorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case, would admit that though he could form an artful plan to plunder a garden--though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking open nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, however, would probably declare that they could and did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of their partners in marriage. They would admit, that though they could make other apes understand by cries some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their minds. They might insist that they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their comprehension. Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is one of degree and not of kind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but... whether or not proportionally to his larger body, has not, I believe, been fully ascertained. In woman the face is rounder; the jaws and the base of skull smaller; the outlines of the body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in man; but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character. She comes to maturity at an earlier age than man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other... men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production ...of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »