Page:Natural History Review (1862).djvu/19

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REVIEWS.
to the species) to 40° in the Chimpanzee, to less than 40° in the Gorilla to about 35° in the Orang. So that this last ape, this 'man of the woods,' whose pretended facial angle of 63° or 64° (which it really possesses when young) led to its being regarded as the highest of the apes, (such as it really is in virtue of its cerebral characters), here occupies one of the lowest places. It is almost on the same level as the Theropithecus, and has below it only the Cynopithecus and the Cynocephalus; those dogheaded apes, as the ancients called them; a name justified by their facial angle of 30°, that of a true Carnivore and almost that of a Rodent. Whence it follows that, in this respect, there is a passage, by almost insensible gradations, from the most civilized and orthognathous European, not only to the most prognathous negro, but to those very apes, which have the most prominent muzzles. A continuous series of variations, where one is astounded to see Man come in contact with the brute, considering how great is the distance from the highest apes to the lowest, and how great the interval between ourselves and the other races of mankind. From Saimiri to Cynocephalus there is 35° difference, from the European to the Makoia 16° to 18°, and almost 21° if we select one of those beautiful Caucasian skulls of 85° measured by Camper and by Cuvier."

In the same manner M. St. Hilaire shows that, in the deyelopment of the forehead and that of the chin, in the position of the occipital foramen, and in the obliteration of the intermaxillary suture, the skull of man is connected with that of the apes, which differ most widely from him, by intermediate gradations, while, on the other hand, he fully details the important characters in which Man and the higher apes agree. Our space, however, allows us to follow our author no further in this argument, especially as it still remains our duty to explain why, when he has taken these pains to demonstrate that Man, regarded structurally, forms only a family of the Primates, M. St. Hilaire nevertheless conceives himself bound to regard Man as a kingdom, equal in distinctness to Plantæ or Animalia. And here we confess ourselves somewhat at a loss; for while the reasonings we have detailed above are full (occupying as we have said sixty pages) clear in thought, and precise in expression, the argument leading to the latter conclusion is of the briefest, taking up not more than six pages of writing, whose style is as diffuse as its intellectual texture is loose.

Looked at structurally, M. St. Hilaire repeats, in this section, Man can constitute merely a family of the Primates, of that order of mammals in which the apes and lemurs form the other families. But then, he adds, the kingdoms of nature are distinguished from one one another by their faculties and not by their structure.

"It is by its peculiar faculties, which cease only when animality ends, and only by them, that the animal differs essentially from the plant and rises so high above it as to constitute a distinct kingdom: similarly it is by his faculties, so incomparably higher, by the addition of intellectual and moral faculties, to the faculty of sensation and the faculty of motion, that Man in his turn separates himself from the animal kingdom and constitutes above it, the supreme division of nature, the Human Kingdom." p. 260.

It seems almost incredible that a man of science should base such a conclusion upon such an argument as this, which must obviously be at once invalidated by the admission, that animals possess even a trace of intellect, or a rudiment of moral faculty. But the comparison