physical thought, we are surprised at the manner in which he disregards all the attributes of perceptive reason developed in man, and asserts that the highest knowledge is the knowledge of our relations to the outward world. A more subtle analysis of the hidden fountains of the human mind was revealed to us from the schools of Alexandria,* and has been revived in the latter Germanic philosophy. A more noble occupation of the mind of the truly positive philosopher is that which, attempting to unravel the physiological and psychological significance of man himself, absolutely, as he stands, without reference to any other being, obeys implicitly the direction of Thales, yvŵ0 σeavτóv. A more truthful task for the philosophic inquirer, would be like the fervent and nature-seeking philosopher of Berlin, who "Did cast into the depths of his own soul again The fearless glance, and there, with humble heart, Did prove the secret of all mythic thought," to discover those distinctions between the relations of brain and thought, on which alone a consistent science of psychology will be based. It may appear strange that a writer who adopts the metaphors of the theological school of teleologists, should found the essential doctrines of his own philosophy on the teachings of the most advanced school of Materialists in Germany. When we glance over the pages of Man's Place in Nature, we are irresistibly led to the conviction that the voice is the voice of Büchner, though the words are those of Huxley. The learned author of Kraft und Stoff will, however, scarcely recognize his disciple in the tortuous involutions of metaphysical analysis through which he drags his weary auditor, with a view, firstly, to prove the analogy between the cerebral structure and a devised machine, and, secondly, to base our ideas of psychological variation on functional changes in the brain's structure. Professor Huxley, in reply to the argument brought against him by the Rev. Mr. Molesworth and Mr. Luke Burke, who contended that "the superior psychical manifestations of the human species must be associated with concurrent modifications of his bodily frame and organs," says, "The argument that because there is an immense dif. ference between a Man's intelligence and an Ape's, therefore, there must be an equally immense difference between their brains, appears to. me to be about as well based as the reasoning by which one should endeavour to prove that because there is a 'great gulf between a watch * Plotius, Enneades, v, lib. 5. that keeps accurate time, and another that will not go at all, there is, therefore, a great structural hiatus between the two watches. A hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference.'" The utter inapplicability of the comparison between a "moving thing that has life" and an engine-turned machine made by man, seems transparently obvious. Moreover, the watch simile is completely threadbare; it has been used usque ad nauseam by Nieuwentyt and Paley, and refuted by more accurate metaphysicians. Professor Huxley's expression, "all the difference," we do not consider to be justified by his argument. The "rust on the pinion" is, indeed, a structural hiatus, but we could conceive that the difference may arise from other causes. Expansion of the metal of the pendulum by heat would be a structural change that would also account for the stoppage, and we have no doubt that some analogous "difference in the combination of the primary molecular forces of living substance" might account for some of the variation between Man and the Apes, without confidently assigning to it the vera causa of the totality of differentiation. Professor Huxley is forced (we presume by "atavism") to revert to the original definitions as propounded by Gratiolet; and the writer, who boasts of "having done his best to sweep away the vanity" of forming a classification based on physical characters, as understood by the old anatomists, and who alleges "that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction is equally futile," actually proposes the following tests of differentiation: "Let it be admitted, however, that the brain of man is absolutely distinguished from that of the highest known apes, 1st, by its large size, as compared with the cerebral nerves; 2nd, by the existence of the lobule of the marginal convolution; 3rd, by the absence of the external perpendicular fissure." Certainly the above cannot be deemed "structural differences which shall be absolutely inappreciable to us with our present means of investigation," still less are they differences which we can deem to be modifiable under the operation of a law of natural selection. Of course, if we abrogate our position as students of truth, inductively ascertained, we can realise how long successive ages may have operated to influence the convolutions of the brain. But the realization of such a chimerical dream belongs to that future period, which some hope is fast approaching, when the truths of science, which have been obtained through laborious efforts during the past two hundred years, will be forgotten, and "natural selection," or some equally inconclusive figment of the imagination will be elevated as the dogma unto which all scientific men must yield belief. The brightest periods of science and philosophy in past ages have often been succeeded by retrogressive epochs, similar in nature to the "new Saturnian age of lead," is now in the ascendant. To Germany and France, where the developmental sympathies of zoologists have not yet led them to propound a system so thoroughly at variance with ascertained truths as that of natural selection, we may look at some future time for the diffusion of a system demonstrating transmutation on grounds based on observed facts, and compatible with our present state of knowledge. Professor Huxley's work is, however, styled Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. The nature of this evidence it is the duty of the sincere anthropologist to sift, and we will endeavour fearlessly to perform this task as regards some of the facts which Professor Huxley brings forward. Dissatisfied with the state of our knowledge respecting the measurement of the human skull, Professor Huxley proposes an entirely new system of classification. He says, "I have arrived at the conviction that no comparison of crania is worth very much that is not founded upon the establishment of a relatively fixed base line, to which the measurement in all cases must be referred. Nor do I think it is a very difficult matter to decide what that base line should be." He, therefore, selects a line as the normal base of the skull, or basicranial axis, which line passes through the centres of the bones termed basioccipital, basisphenoid, and presphenoid. He states that this basicranial axis is a relatively fixed line, or to which the arcs described by the various cranial axes form various planes, at angles all comparable with the given modulus afforded by the basicranial line. Pro. fessor Huxley has, therefore, completely pledged himself to the new system of craniometry proposed by him in his third essay "On the Fossil Remains of Man." Six skulls are drawn on Professor Huxley's 79th page, respectively those of the Australian, squirrel monkey, gorilla, baboon, howler, and lemur. Glancing at these figures, the first impression which an inquirer, unacquainted with the anatomical details of the case, would be led unwarily to make, would be, that the figures were all drawn on one uniform plane, so as to show fairly the degree of overlap of the cerebrum over the cerebellum in those apes in which an overlap is visible. Professor Huxley, however, does not adopt any such plan; the base line of each skull, parallel with the bottom of his page, is not the "basicranial" line suggested by him; it is not the "tentorial" line; it is not a line transverse to the axis of the occipital foramen; it is not transverse to the Abbé Frère's line from the meatus to the coronal suture; it is not the "glabello-occipital" line; nor is it the longitudo racheos of Von Baër. What then is it? It is a line drawn to give the cerebral cavity the same length in each figure respectively; a line which has the effect of placing the mycetes and lemur skulls at the foot of his plate at a distorted angle wholly at variance with that in which the other skulls are placed. The effect of this shifting process has been to double, at least, the postcerebellar overlap in the chrysothrix; to enlarge it from -0 toto inch in the gorilla and howler monkey, and almost to treble its dimensions in the baboon. We have rarely seen so peculiar an application of the pictorial art de pose in the production of figures intended for a general audience, and destined to illustrate nice points of scientific controversy. We are entirely at a loss to know what is the cause of this discrepancy. We catch, however, a glimmering light from the advertisement at the beginning. We are told that "the greater part of the substance of the following essay has already been published in the form of oral discourses, addressed to widely different audiences during the past three years." Peradventure one of the modes of cranial admeasurement which Mr. Huxley so seriously propounds belongs to the "pre-Darwinian" age of the controversy; peradventure it even dates its early embryonic existence to the period when Professor Huxley pleaded so strongly against the doctrines of transmutation. However this may be, and whatever change may have taken place in Professor Huxley's opinions, the system of measurement which he advocates in his second is wholly irreconcileable with that taken up in his third essay. His two propositions are mutually destructive. As he takes due care to impress on our minds that "it is the first duty of an hypothesis to be intelligible," this unaccountable laxity seems strangely out of place when applying an exact system of craniometry to the elucidation of "Man's Place in Nature." Whatever criticisms we may pass upon the anatomical value of the facts put forward by Professor Huxley, we are free to admit that they are worthy far more serious consideration than those promulgated by his followers. Sir Charles Lyell refers to alleged testimony on this point. We are in a position to estimate the scientific value of the generalization alluded to. It is sought-by the demonstration of the alleged fact that the verticality of the occiput in "Turanian" crania depends, not upon curtailment of cerebellum, but upon the curtailment of the posterior apical lobules of the cerebral hemispheres-to show that the great overlapping cerebral lobe is not a constant character in man. Rarely has an error so grave of fact, observation, and deduction been committed even by the most ill-informed phrenologists. It is true, that in many short-headed or brachycephalic skulls the cerebral lobes do not project far over, or may even, according to Retzius, fall short of the cerebellum. The demonstration of this fact rests on an examination of the bisected skull. The greatest authority on cerebral anatomy in Europet has, however, warned us against too confident generalizations. He has pointed out that often a truncated occiput is correlated with an immense, a projecting occiput with an atrophied cerebral lobe. The allegation that we can predict by mere inspection of the outward aspect of the occiput of any skull the degree to which the cerebral lobes project over the cerebellum we regard as one which cannot be considered seriously on any scientific grounds whatever. That which has tended very much to keep alive the controversy is, that some advocates of transmutation have shrunk from testing the truth of their theories before the world, and have neglected those public opportunities which have occasionally arisen for the elucidation of the question. The audience collected last year at the British Association (Section D) were told that they were a somewhat promiscuous assemblage," of "limited information," and "scarcely competent to judge of matters of anatomical fact." We have no sympathy for the deviser of this equivocal excuse for not telling a plain story, especially as we remember that some of England's best zoologists and anatomists, the élite of British science, were present on the occasion. Messrs. Schröder van der Kolk and Vrolik say—“ Il paraît que l'année 1861 a été funeste en Angleterre aux Chimpanzés et aux Orangs." The year 1862 has been still more disastrous to the memory of the founder of systematic zoology. The remark has been made by a controversialist-" Why Linnæus named the Cebus capu "See also, on this subject, Professor Rolleston on the Slight degree of Backward Extension of the Cerebrum in some races of Men.-Medical Times, October, 1862, p. 419." Sir Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man; 8vo, London, 1863, p. 488. + Gratiolet, Bull. Soc. Anthropol., vol. ii, p. 257. |