We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

Darwin makes this remark in the closing pages of The Descent of Man (1871), where he applies evolutionary theory explicitly to human beings. After surveying evidence from comparative anatomy, embryology, and behavior, he argues that humans share common ancestry with other animals and that many human traits can be understood through descent with modification and sexual selection. The sentence comes as part of his summative, reflective conclusion: even granting humanity’s “noble qualities” (moral sense, intellect, sympathy), Darwin insists that the human body still carries traces of earlier evolutionary stages. In Victorian Britain, this was a provocative claim, challenging prevailing assumptions about human exceptionalism and separate creation.

The quote balances admiration for human capacities with a naturalistic insistence on continuity between humans and other animals. “Indelible stamp” suggests that evolutionary history is written into the body: vestigial structures, shared anatomical plans, and other inherited features testify to descent from earlier forms. Darwin’s point is not to denigrate humanity but to relocate human dignity within nature rather than outside it. The line also functions rhetorically as a final pivot from moral and philosophical debate back to empirical biology: whatever one thinks of human uniqueness, the body provides enduring evidence of common ancestry and the gradual processes that produced modern humans.