The Relation of Science and Religion.pdf - Online Christian Library

CONDITIONS OF THE INQUIRY. 23of obscrvation, description, and discussionconcerning monkeys and apes. Laboriousinquiries became provocative of grotesquefancy. In the train of science came theworkers who minister to the popular imagination,and there appeared a whole series ofcomic pictures, amusing narratives, and evenmusical compositions, representing monkeysand apes as taking part in human occupations.These have left their testimony to thepower of scientific hypothesis in determiningthe thought and interest of the time duringwhich they find favor. It was demonstratedincontestably that the anatomical structureof the ape was much more like to that of manthan the structure of the dog, or the horse;and that the brain of the ape was so likein form and arrangement to the human brain,that it might be represented as a smaller andundeveloped example of the human brain.But when the work of observation and descriptionhad been well nigh completed; whenthe work of deliberate thinking was commencedwith the assurance that the factswere pretty fully and fairly before us, therecame a considerable abatement for the eiithusiasmof scientific speculation in the new