Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

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This result, however, we could not have attained without first recognising the fact that man is no isolated being, complete in himself; that if he is to be effectively studied he cannot be disassociated from his family, all the members of which are governed by the same laws, all move round the same centre, and all receive their light from the same focal point. He is one of a class, of one genus or kind, whom it would be impossible to estimate correctly, if we set aside his relations to his fellows.

“To understand man,” an illustrious naturalist has said recently, “it is not sufficient not to separate him from those whom he resembles in every point; it is quite as necessary to study him in connection with those closely related to him, the inferior animals.”

Hitherto I have not mentioned a hypothesis which has been promulgated in our days on the origin of man, which would have been considered the most remarkable this century had seen, had it not appeared simultaneously with another treatment of a like subject equally noticeable for its profundity in another direction.