Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/40

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fore, our outward forms remain, like geologic strata in the earth, to indicate the forces by which they were originally moulded, they can be considered no measure of the relation we at present stand in to the lower animals. "Man is," to use the words of the writer* to whom I am indebted for these suggestions, "a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings." He is a being who is, in some degree, superior to nature, inas- much as he knows how to control and regu- late her actions, and to keep himself in har- mony with her, not by a change in his body, but by an advance in his mind.

The lower law of nature advances in man to a higher form. It ceases to be mechanical, and becomes intellectual and moral. Force does not now properly balance force, as of individual against individual, and kind against kind, as in the lower natures; but force is properly balanced by right, and

  • Alfred R. Wallace on the Origin of Iluman Races,

"Anthropological Review," May, 1864.