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Show DARWINISM REVERSED. The poot Bryant lately nmlo a epeech at a meeiins of t tie aluiuni ot W illiam College, in which he thus treated of Darwinisui : '"It is a good while hime the remark was made by an English wit, that he did not like to look at liiouki'ys, they seemed to hiin so much like onr relations. rela-tions. What was rL'i;arded at the time as a clever jet, has .-ii:ce Uen taken by an cruineut Daturaii.-t a-, ilie h:its i-J' an extensive r-yateni, whii-h i-i.e.-.-e.s to account lor the origin I" tin- human specie-'. Accord is 1.' 13 Mr. I 'arwin, man i.s an improved monkey, in hin system the lowcat I'e-rtn (.funinial life i.s a minute and auimatuJ ecil. A iiuui ber of these cells come tuu;iily together, to-gether, and I'orni a dab of jdly Used on a crag in the oct'ttn. Tliey .somehow .some-how become arranged in a :-orl ol' sym-metiy; sym-metiy; they gradually acquire organs; they rise to the dignity of oy.sters and muscles; they multiply; by a principle of selection on the pait of the parent j, they rise higher and higher iu the scale of being; they become ttuadiupedt; they crawl upon the land, they waddle on the shore in the shape oi'sal?.; they build houses as Leaver.-; they climb trees as squirrels; their talon-i and paws become bauds furnished with lingers, and we have the monkey; the nnnkey acyuires the faculty of speech, and matures ma-tures into a man. Lt is the old theory of Monboddo propounded a hundred years ago, but spread over a larger surface sur-face witli new illuitratioj-. ''But allowing all that ils author says of the eonsauguiuity of mau and the inferior anin'.ls; admitting that wc are of the same flesh and blond a the baboon aud the rat, when does he lind his proofs that we are improving instead of degenerating'!1 lie claims that man is an improved monkey; how does he know that the monkey i.-- not a degenerate man, a decayed branch of the human family, fallen away from t lie high rank he orco held, and haunted by a dim sent imuat of his lost dignity, as we may infer from his melancholy mel-ancholy aspect? Improvement, Mr. president .and gentlemen, implies effort, ef-fort, it is up-hill work; degeneracy is easy, it asks only neglect, indolence, inaction. How often do the descendants descend-ants of illustrious men become the most Btupid of the human race? Hew many arc there, each of whom we may call: 'Tho tenth transmitter of a fooliih lace' a line of Savage, the best he ever wrote, wortli all his verses put to-; gether - 'The tenth transmitter of a foolish lace,' and that face growing more and more foolish from generation to generation! I might instance the Bourbon family, lately reigning in Spain and Naples. I might instaooc the royal family of Austria. There is a whole nation, millions uporj millions our Chinese neighbors of whom the better opinion opin-ion ia, that they have been going backward in civilization, from century cen-tury to century. Perhaps they wear tbo pigtail as au emblem ol' what they are all coming (0 some thousands of years hence. Ilo v,then, can Mr. Darwin insist, that if we admit ad-mit the near kindred of man lb the inferior in-ferior animals we must believe that our progress has been upward and that the nobler animals are the progeny of the infprinr? Ts not. the contrary more probable? Is it not more likely that the more easy downward road lias been taken, that tho lower animals are derived de-rived from some degenerate branch of the human race and that if we do not labor to keep the rank we hold, our race may be frittered away into the meaner tribes of animals, and finally into animalcule? Thou may our Tweeds become the progenitors of those skulking thieves of the western wild, the prairie wolves, or may swim stagnant pools in the shape of. horse leeches; our astute lawyers may be represented by foxes; our great architects archi-tects by colonies of beaver?; our poels by clouds of mosquitoes, famished arid musical; our doctors of divinity I say it with all respect for the cloth by swarms of tho mantis, or praying insect, in-sect, always in the attitude of devotion. devo-tion. If wc hold to Darwin's theory as I do not how are we to know that the vast multitude of men and women on the earth are not the ruins, so to speak, of some nobler species, with more elevated and perfect faculties, mental, physical, and moral, but now extinct '!" |