If all monkeys were fossils, and if we had a natural history, also fossil, setting forth to us the customs and habits of these animals; if the savages that are said to be the nearest neighbors to monkeys were all fossils; we should find ourselves in presence of a progressive and continued development of beings, and, for an inattentive mind, all would be easily explained by the slow and continued action of time.  But this is not the case.  All the elements of nature are before our eyes, from inorganic matter up to man.  We do not see that time suffices for savages to become civilized, and still less for monkeys to become men.  I was, in the spring of this year, in the Jardin des plantes at Paris, musing on the question which we are discussing, and I took a good look at the monkeys.  Come now, I said to myself, canst thou recognize them as thine ancestors?  The question was badly put.  The monkeys are not our ancestors, inasmuch as they are living at the same time with us; they can only be our cousins, and it would seem that they are the eldest branch, as they have best preserved the primitive type.  But let us speak more seriously.  The races of monkeys have lived as long or longer than we:  it is neither time nor climate which has made men of them.  Recollect, I pray you, that the words ‘time’ and ‘progress’ explain nothing.  There must have occurred favorable circumstances to transform the earth’s substance into living cellules, and the living cellules into plants clearly marked, and into animals properly so called; and in the same way there must have been a propitious circumstance to transform the monkey into man.  I think so, in fact; and this propitious circumstance well deserves to be studied with attention.

Man presents characteristics which distinguish him profoundly from the animal races:  no one disputes it.  He possesses speech; he is capable of religion; he exhibits the varied phenomena of civilization, while the animals succeed one another generations after generations in the unrecorded obscurity of a life for ever the same.  Suppose we admit that human phenomena presented themselves at first in a very elementary form; in rudiments of language and rudiments of religion,—­although the historical sciences do not quite give this result:—­still suppose the case that at a given moment a branch of the monkey species presented the germ, as little developed as you please, but real, of new phenomena.  One variety of the monkey species has been endowed with speech, has become religious, capable of civilization, and the other varieties of the species have not offered the same characteristics, although they have had the same number of ages in which to develop themselves.  Observe well now my process of reasoning.  Remark attentively whether I oppose theories to facts, whether I substitute oratorical declamations for arguments.  I grant the hypotheses best calculated, as commonly thought, to contradict my theses.  I assume that