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WHETHER MAN CAN BE REGARDED AS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE
IF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION BE EMBRACED FOR THE REST
OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM-ZOOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF MAN TO OTHER
MAMMALIA-SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION TERM QUADRUMANOUS,

WHY DECEPTIVE-WHETHER THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN
ENTITLES MAN TO FORM A DISTINCT SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA
-INTELLIGENCE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS COMPARED TO THE IN-
TELLECT AND REASON OF MAN-GROUNDS ON WHICH MAN HAS
BEEN REFERRED TO A DISTINCT KINGDOM OF NATURE-IMMATERIAL
PRINCIPLE COMMON TO MAN AND ANIMALS-NON-DISCOVERY OF IN-
TERMEDIATE LINKS AMONG FOSSIL ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECIES--
HALLAM ON THE COMPOUND NATURE OF MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN
THE CREATION-GREAT INEQUALITY OF MENTAL ENDOWMENT IN
DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES AND INDIVIDUALS DEVELOPED BY VARIATION
AND ORDINARY GENERATION HOW FAR A CORRESPONDING DIVERGENCE
IN PHYSICAL STRUCTURE MAY RESULT FROM THE WORKING OF THE
SAME CAUSES CONCLUDING REMARKS.

SOME

NOME of the opponents of transmutation, who are well versed in Natural History, admit that though that doctrine is untenable, it is not without its practical advantages as a useful working hypothesis,' often suggesting good experiments and observations, and aiding us to retain in the memory a multitude of facts respecting the geographical distribution of genera, and species, both of animals and plants, and the succession in time of organic remains, and many other phenomena which, but for such a theory, would be wholly without a common bond of relationship.

It is in fact conceded by many eminent zoologists and

472

THEORY OF PROGRESSION.

CHAP. XXIV.

botanists, as before explained, that whatever may be the nature of the species-making power or law, its effects are of such a character as to imitate the results which variation, guided by natural selection, would produce, if only we could assume with certainty that there are no limits to the variability of species. But as the anti-transmutationists are persuaded that such limits do exist, they regard the hypothesis as simply a provisional one, and expect that it will one day be surperseded by another cognate theory, which will not require us to assume the former continuousness of the links which have connected the past and present states of the organic world, or the outgoing with the incoming species.

In like manner, many of those who hesitate to give in their full adhesion to the doctrine of progression, the other twin branch of the developement theory, and who even object to it, as frequently tending to retard the reception of new facts supposed to militate against opinions solely founded on negative evidence, are, nevertheless, agreed that on the whole it is of great service in guiding our speculations. Indeed, it cannot be denied that a theory which establishes a connection between the absence of all relics of vertebrata in the oldest fossiliferous rocks, and the presence of man's remains in the newest, which affords a more than plausible explanation of the successive appearance in strata of intermediate age of the fish, reptile, bird, and mammifer, has no ordinary claims to our favour as comprehending the largest number of positive and negative facts gathered from all parts of the globe, and extending over countless ages, that science has perhaps ever attempted to embrace in one grand generalisation.

But will not transmutation, if adopted, require us to include the human race in the same continuous series of developements, so that we must hold that Man himself has been derived by an unbroken line of descent from some one

CHAP. XXIV.

SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION.

473

of the inferior animals? We certainly cannot escape from such a conclusion without abandoning many of the weightiest arguments which have been urged in support of variation and natural selection, considered as the subordinate causes by which new types have been gradually introduced into the earth. Many of the gaps which separate the most nearly allied genera and orders of mammalia are, in a physical point of view, as wide as those which divide Man from the mammalia most nearly akin to him, and the extent of his isolation, whether we regard his whole nature or simply his corporeal attributes, must be considered before we can discuss the bearing of transmutation upon his origin and place in the creation.

Systems of Classification.

In order to qualify ourselves to judge of the degree of affinity in physical organisation between Man and the lower animals, we cannot do better than study those systems of classification which have been proposed by the most eminent teachers of natural history. Of these an elaborate and faithful summary has recently been drawn up by the late Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, which the reader will do well to consult.*

He begins by passing in review numerous schemes of classification, each of them having some merit, and most of which have been invented with a view of assigning to Man a separate place in the system of Nature, as, for example, by dividing animals into rational and irrational, or the whole organic world into three kingdoms, the human, the animal, and the vegetable,-an arrangement defended on the ground that Man is raised as much by his intelligence above the animals as are these by their sensibility above plants.

• Histoire Naturale Générale des Règnes organiques. Paris, vol. ii. 1856.

474

LINNEAN CLASSIFICATION OF MAN. CHAP. XXIV.

Admitting that these schemes are not unphilosophical, as duly recognising the double nature of Man (his moral and intellectual, as well as his physical attributes), Isidore G. St. Hilaire observes that little knowledge has been imparted by them. We have gained, he says, much more from those masters of the science who have not attempted any compromise between two distinct orders of ideas, the physical and psychological, and who have confined their attention strictly to Man's physical relation to the lower animals.

Linnæus led the way in this field of enquiry by comparing Man and the apes, in the same manner as he compared these last with the carnivores, ruminants, rodents, or any other division of warm-blooded quadrupeds. After several modifications of his original scheme, he ended by placing Man as one of the many genera in his order Primates, which embraced not only the apes and lemurs, but the bats also, as he found these last to be nearly allied to some of the lowest forms of the monkeys. But all modern naturalists, who retain the order Primates, agree to exclude from it the bats or cheiroptera; and most of them class Man as one of several families of the order Primates. In this, as in most systems of classification, the families of modern zoologists and botanists correspond with the genera of Linnæus.

Blumenbach, in 1779, proposed to deviate from this course, and to separate Man from the apes as an order apart, under the name of Bimana, or two-handed. In making this innovation he seems at first to have felt that it could not be justified without calling in psychological considerations to his aid, to strengthen those which were purely anatomical; for, in the earliest edition of his Manual of Natural History,' he defined Man to be animal rationale, loquens, erectum, bimanum,' whereas in later editions he restricted himself entirely to the two last characters, namely, the erect position and the two hands, or animal erectum, bimanum.'

CHAP. XXIV.

ORDER BIMANA OF BLUMENBACH.

475

The terms 'bimanous' and 'quadrumanous' had been already employed by Buffon, in 1766, but not applied in a strict zoological classification till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve years later, Cuvier adopted the same order Bimana for the human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs constituted a separate order, called Quadrumana.

Respecting this last innovation, Isidore G. St. Hilaire asks, 'How could such a division stand, repudiated as it was by the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual supremacy of Man; and by the zoologists, on the ground of its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true principles of classification? Separated as a group of ordinal value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant from the higher mammalia; - too near if we take into account those elevated faculties, which, raising Man above all other organised beings, accord to him not only the first, but a separate place in the creation,- too far if we merely consider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadrumana; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical point of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the lemurs.

'What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and Cuvier? An impracticable compromise between two opposite and irreconcilable systems-between two orders of ideas which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history by these two words: the human kingdom and the human family. It is one of those would-be via media propositions which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because they are intended to please everybody; half-truths, perhaps, but also half-falsehoods; for what, in science, is a half-truth but an error?'

Isidore G. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite of the great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large

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