My second remark is this:  If it is affirmed that there is but one species, including all the animals and man, so that man is only a monkey modified, and the monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal modified; when once we have established the reality of man we arrive at this result:  all animals whatsoever are only inferior developments of humanity, living foetuses which, without having come to their full term, have nevertheless the faculty of living and reproducing themselves.  The animal then is an incomplete man; a theory which raises great difficulties, but which is more serious and more easy to understand than the doctrine which would have man to be a consummation of the monkey.

In fact,—­and this is my third observation,—­when the theory which I am examining is adopted, it must be carried out to its consequences, and the bearing of it clearly seen.  Man, it is said, is the consummation of the monkey.  The monkey is an improvement upon some quadruped or other, and this quadruped is an improvement upon another, and so on.  We must descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most elementary manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter.  If it is not admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must be admitted that man is a melange of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote, phosphorus—­a melange which has been brought little by little to perfection.  Such is the final inference from the doctrine which we are examining; and there are theorists who deduce it clearly.  Now what is it that goes on in the minds of these savants?  When the object is to banish God from nature, the creative Intelligence is resolved into thousands of ages.  When it is desired to get rid in man of the reality of mind, they seek to resolve the human intelligence into a long series of modifications which have caused life to spring from matter, superior animals from simpler organisms, and man from the animal.  Do not allow yourselves to be caught in this trap.  Maintain firmly, that, whatever the degree of intelligence, of will, of spiritual essence, which may exist in animals, if that element is really found in them, it demands a cause, and cannot, without an enormous confusion of ideas, be regarded as a mere perfecting of matter.  In fact, a thing in perfecting itself, realizes continually more fully its own proper idea, and does not become another thing.  A perfect monkey would be of all monkeys the one which is most a monkey, and would not be a man.  But let us leave the animals in the darkness in which they abide for our minds, and let us speak of what for us is less obscure.

Our spiritual existence is a fact; it is of all facts the one which is best known to us; it is the fact without which no other fact would exist for us.  And whence proceeds our spirit?  To this question, natural history has no answer.  It is easy to see this, though we grant once again to natural history, when made the most of by our adversaries, all that it can pretend to claim.  Suppose it proved, that in the historical development of nature, man has a monkey for his mother.  I will grant it, and grant it quite seriously in order to ascertain what will be the influence of this hypothesis upon the problem on which we are engaged.