Very odd those accounts in India of the little hairy men! It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank. Man is clearly an old-world, not an American, species; & if ever intermediate forms between him & unknown Quadrumana are found, I should expect they would be found in Tropical countries, probably islands. But what a chance if ever they are discovered: look at the French beds with the celts, & no fragment of a human bone.— It is indeed, as you say absurd to expect a history of the early stages of man in prehistoric times.—
I hope that I have not wearied you with my scribbling & with many thanks for your letter, I remain with much respect— | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin
I personally find this rhetoric shocking, but in this time of advancing barbarism where the Anglo-Saxons are already fading from existence even in their own homeland what could more aptly catch the spirit of the coming age than the sentiments expressed by Mr. Darwin.
It is not so awful & difficult to me, as it seems to be most, partly from familiarity & partly, I think, from having seen a good many Barbarians. I declare the thought, when I first saw in T. del Fuego a naked painted, shivering hideous savage, that my ancestors must have been somewhat similar beings, was at that time as revolting to me, nay more revolting than my present belief that an incomparably more remote ancestor was a hairy beast.f7 Monkeys have downright good hearts, at least sometimes, as I could show, if I had space. I have long attended to this subject, & have materials for a curious essay on Human expression, & a little on the relation in mind of man to the lower animal
I could make further remarks on this, but I would be parroting Deogolwulf, but why would someone listen to a Caruso's parrot when one could listen to the master himself. These quotes, as well as Darwin's other correspondence can be found here.
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