The Origins of Environmental Activism, 1840–1889 55
and extending the original sylvan defences,
secure a more decided effect of rural retirement.
The [natural] advantage for this purpose
supplied one ground for the selection of the spot,
the proximity of the play-grounds for larger
children, another; and that of one of the sunken
roads of the Park another; but the main reason
for it was the fact that it was the precise point in
the Park which could be reached with the fewest
steps on an average, by visitors coming from the
denser parts of the city by seven different lines
of railway, and after the Park should be entered,
wholly along walks by which the crossing of any
carriage road would be avoided.Source: A. Report to Commissioners of Prospect Park,
1866, and B. Department of Public Parks, 2nd Annual
Report, Appendix B, in Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and
Theodora Kimball, eds., Frederic Law Olmsted: Landscape
Architect, 1822-1903 (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970;
reissue of Olmsted and Kimball, Forty Years of Landscape
Architecture: Being the Professional Papers of Frederick
Law Olmsted, Senior [1928]), pp. 211-12, 242-43.The whole Park is, of course, open as
much to mothers with children as to any other
class; but on a hot day a mother carrying a
sick child, and perhaps leading other children,
if she follows the throng, is liable to become
more heated and feverish through fatigue,
anxiety and various slight embarrassments,
than if she remained quietly within a close,
dark chamber. If she comes with a party of
friends, she will be glad to find some quiet
nook in which, while others wander, she can
be left with her baby. The class of considera-
tions thus suggested had influenced the treat-
ment of several localities, but had been con-
trolling in a larger way than elsewhere at the
point in question.
... [J]ust here in the midst of the general
bleakness, barrenness and filth of this quarter of
the Park site, there was a pretty bit of natural
scenery, having a somewhat wild and secluded
character. It was designed to follow up the natu-
ral suggestions of this class, and by thickening
DOCUMENT 49: Charles Darwin on the Similarity between Humans
and Other Animals (1871)Charles Darwin, like many other early British naturalists, was educated for the ministry but had been fascinated
by nature since childhood. His development of the theory of natural selection was influenced in part by reading
Malthus’s “Essay on the Principle of Population” [see Document 26], which led him to contemplate the effects of
living in an overcrowded world. His carefully documented theoretical work presented in The Origin of Species
launched a continuing debate about whether humans are a special creation distinct from all other living things.
The idea that humans are subject to the same “principles of evolution” as other animals was barely alluded to
in The Origin of Species. It was Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature, published in 1863,
that provided the first detailed discussion of the theory. Darwin himself did not expand on the topic until 1871,
when he wrote The Descent of Man, from which this selection is taken.He who wishes to decide whether man is the
modified descendant of some pre-existing form,
would probably first inquire whether man varies,
however slightly, in bodily structure and in men-
tal faculties; and if so, whether the variations are
transmitted to his offspring in accordance with
the laws which prevail with the lower animals.
Again, are the variations the result, as far as our
ignorance permits us to judge, of the same general
causes, and are they governed by the same gen-
eral laws, as in the case of other organisms; for
instance, by correlation, the inherited effects of
use and disuse, etc.? Is man subject to similar
malconformations, the result of arrested devel-
opment, of reduplication of parts, etc., and does
he display in any of his anomalies reversion to
some former and ancient type of structure? It
might also naturally be inquired whether man,