Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the same manner, and you shall be able to dis- tinguish no difference between them ; but let me take a pair of pincers, and if my hand is steady enough to do it, let me just lightly crush together the bearings of the balance-wheel, or force to a slightly different angle the teeth of the escape- ment of one of them, and of course you know the immediate result will be that the watch, so treated, from that moment will cease to go. But what proportion is there between the structural altera- tion and the functional result ? Is it not perfectly obvious that the alteration is of the minutest kind, yet that, slight as it is, it has produced an infinite difference in the performance of the functions of these two instruments ? Well, now, apply that to the present question. What is it that constitutes and makes man Avhat he is ? What is it but his power of language— that language giving him the means of recording his experience—making every generation some- what wiser than its predecessor—more in accord- ance with the established order of the universe ? What is it but this power of speech, of record- ing experience, which enables men to be men— looking before and after and, in some dim sense, understanding the working of this wondrous uni- verse—and which distinguishes man from the whole of the brute world ? I say that this func- tional difference is vast, unfathomable, and truly infinite in its consequences; and I say at the same