strong terms by Professor Owen, that his words may form a fitting climax to these introductory sentences.
"Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman, or of an Aztec, with arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure—every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous—which makes the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty."[1]
That there are a great number of points of similarity between ourselves and the lower animals, then, appears to be clearly admitted on all hands. It is, further, universally allowed that the Vertebrata resemble man more nearly than do any invertebrates; that among vertebrates the Mammalia, and of these the Quadrumana, approach him most closely. Lastly, I am aware of no dissentient voice to the proposition, that in the whole, the genera Troglodytes, Pithecus, and Hylobates, make the closest approximation to the human structure.
The approximation is admitted unanimously; but unanimity ceases the moment one asks what is the value of that approximation, if expressed in the terms by which the relations of the lower animals one to another are signified. Linnæus was content to rank man and the apes in the same order, Primates, ranging in terms of zoological equality, the genera, Homo, Sima, Lemur, and Vespertilio. Among more modern zoologists of eminence, Schreber, Goldfuss, Gray, and Blyth, have followed Linnæus, in being unable to see the necessity of distinguishing man ordinally from the apes.
Blumenbach, and after him, Cuvier, conceived that the possession of two hands, instead of four, taken together with other distinctive charac- ters of man, was a sufficient ground for the distinction of the human family as a distinct order—Bi-mana.
Professor Owen goes a step further, and raises Homo into a sub-class, "Archencephala," because "his psychological powers, in association with his extraordinarily developed brain, entitle the group which he represents to equivalent rank with the other primary divisions of the class Mammalia, founded on cerebral characters."[2]
M. Terres[3] vindicates the dignity of man still more strongly, by demanding for the human family the rank of a kingdom equal to the Ani-
- ↑ Prof. Owen on the Characters, &c, of the Class Mammalia, "Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnæan Society of London," vol. ii., No. 5, 1857, p. 20, note. It is to be regretted that this note is omitted in the "Essay on the Classification of the Mammalia," which is otherwise nearly a reprint of this paper. I cannot go so far, however, as to say, with Prof. Owen, that the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus is the 'anatomist's difficulty.'
- ↑ Professor Owen on the Characters, &c, of the Class Mammalia, l. c., p. 33.
- ↑ L'homme ne forme ni une espèce ni une genre comparable aux Primates. L'homme à lui seul constitue un regne à part—le Regne humain."—Resumé des Leçons sur l'Embryologie Anthropologique, Comptes Rendus, 1851.
