CHARACTER OF BUNSEN'S CRITICISM.

245

a preconceived hypothesis. In this arbitrary manner does he treat what he admits to be "the only one of the five monuments examined by Biot and De Rongé which combines all the requisites, and may therefore give a positive date." He first supposes a blunder in the inscription, and then by correcting it -of his own profound wisdom, and his own plenary authorityhe obtains the "absolute date" which he requires, "Now, supposing the workmen to have cut three of those little strokes instead of two, the inscription would have run," &c., &c.: a process which, for its simplicity and certainty, rivals that of the village schoolmaster for ascertaining the sun's distance from the earth-" you guess at a quarter of the way, and then multiply by four!" And then we are to be gravely told of results thus obtained, that if they do contain any errors, they are but "as dust in the balance!" Or perhaps we should select, as an instance of those depths which the Essayist's plummet cannot sound, the strange indictment against Eusebius; an indictment sustained by such inversions of plain facts as to elicit from a competent judge this condemnation:-" Every statement, without exception, is wholly untrue.”

The truth is, that the tinsel adulation with which Baron Bunsen has been arrayed by his admirers is much too flimsy to prevent examination and exposure. One such exposure, conspicuous for its thorough impartiality, its perfect independence of theological considerations, and its complete conformity to the canons of historical criticism (vindicated by such authorities as Sir George Cornewall Lewis and Mr. Grote,) concludes in words which may well be quoted here. "When a writer calls upon us to correct the chronology of the Bible by a new system derived from his interpretation of Egyptian records, and denounces all persons who do not accept his conclusions as either fools or knaves, he challenges us to examine carefully the authenticity and value of these records, as well as his interpretation of them. Such an examination we have endeavoured to conduct, quite irrespectively of the Bible, upon critical principles alone; and we feel convinced that no sound scholar,

whatever may be his theological opinions, can thoroughly test M. Bunsen's method and system, without coming to the conclusion that he has violated the first principles of historical criticism, and that his whole superstructure is raised upon a foundation of sand."

13

From these attempts to wrest the facts of geology and archæology so as to alter the date of the Creation, we now revert to the kindred attempts, so strenuously made, to annihilate the fact of the Creation. The former imply that the narrative of Creation as found in Genesis is erroneous in point of time; the latter that it is false as matter of fact. Thus while Sir C. Lyell's chief object is to move men backward to some era of indefinite remoteness in the scale of geological time, Professor Huxley's aim is to degrade man deeply in the scale of animal existence. The one puts him back on the huge dial of duration, the other puts him down in the grade of Nature. Man is no longer "a creature of yesterday," in the opinion of Lyell; man is no longer a distinct sub-class, in the view of Huxley. According to Lyell, man probably lived a hundred thousand years ago: according to Huxley, he had probably a hundred thousand apes for his ancestors. Poets, in all ages, have sung of men as being little lower than angels, while these modern sages teach that they are only a little higher than apes. "The speculation" of the "Hebrew Descartes" who "asserted as facts what he knew only as probabilities (!)" was that"God created man." But our moderns know better. With their characteristic "modesty of "modesty of assertion," they do not hesitate to affirm that man was never created at all: he was merely developed-from a monkey! "Lo! here is wisdom :" -"the question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other-the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature, and of his relations to the universe of things."

1 Quarterly Review: vol. cv. p.

415.

"Evidence as to Man's Place

in Nature by Thomas Henry Huxley, F.R.S. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863.)

"MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE."

247

We all know something of the great gorilla controversy, thanks to M. de Chaillu; and since the late meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, few readers can have remained in ignorance of the important line of demarcation between men and apes, furnished by the much-disputed hippocampus minor. It was a comforting opinion, after all, that we had, as men, a cerebral distinction, even though it was but a minor hippocampus; but (alas!) it is no more! for we are now assured by Prof. Huxley that "all the abundant and trustworthy evidence which we now possess leads to the conviction that, so far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to

man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly Simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits." Thus, then, it appears that while Owen and Huxley differ, apes and men do not. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the more we are developed from apes, the more we differ from each other.

Most people as they advance in life are apt to disown their poor relations; but Prof. Huxley takes an honest pride in parading them all before us in his frontispiece. Here is skeletonized Man lightly tripping forward, followed by a skeletonized Gorilla, who is heavily bending downward; after whom come "Messieurs Chimpanzee, Orang and Gibbon, all in their best bones, and with their best legs foremost." Our Professor confesses however, that when thus "brought face to face with these blurred copies of himself, the least thoughtful of men is conscious of a certain shock;" although he attributes that shock "not so much to disgust at the aspect of what looks like an insulting caricature, as to the awakening of a sudden and profound mistrust of time-honoured theories and stronglyrooted prejudices regarding his own position in nature, and his relations to the under world of life."

We must bear the shock, however, as well as we can ; for we are told as to cerebral structure, "it is clear that man differs

less from the chimpanzee or the orang, than these do even from the monkeys; and that the difference between the brains of the chimpanzee and of man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the chimpanzee brain and that of a lemur." Per contra, as to cerebral weight, "there is a very striking difference in absolute mass and weight between the lowest human brain and that of the highest ape." "It may be doubted," adds the Professor, "whether a healthy human adult brain ever weighed less than 31 or 32 ounces, or that the heaviest gorilla brain has exceeded 20 ounces." Yet, as we read in the next page, "the difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest men is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape." And, in short," whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result that the structural differences which separate man from the gorilla and the chimpanzee, are not so great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes." No sooner however, have we reached this definite conclusion, than we find it qualified by an assurance that the structural differences between man and the highest apes are neither small nor insignificant. "On the contrary," says the Professor, "let me take this opportunity of distinctly asserting that they are great and significant; that every bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it might be distinguished from the corresponding bone of a man; and that in the present creation, at any rate, no intermediate link bridges over the gap between Homo and Troglodytes." Now, at least, we may imagine that we have grasped a definite difference; for if every bone differs, there is a general, as well as wide distinction between man and the nearest ape. But this is by no means the issue our guide has in view; so the next sentence but one is this: "Remember, if you will, that there is no existing link between man and the gorilla; but do not forget that there is a no less sharp line of demarcation, a no less complete absence of any transitional form, between the gorilla and the orang, or the orang and the gibbon. I say not less sharp, though it is somewhat narrower."

9915

15 Ibid. p. 104.

This is sufficiently intelligible; and so our Professor evidently believes it to be; for he says-" On all sides I shall hear the cry—' We are men and women, not a mere better sort of apes, a little longer in the legs, more compact in the foot, and bigger in brain than your brutal chimpanzees and gorillas. The power of knowledge, the conscience of good and evil, the pitiful tenderness of human affections, raise us out of all real fellowship with the brutes, however closely they may seem to approximate us.'" Very well: but how does he answer this objurgation? He proceeds to answer it by saying "I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life." And further: as if to prevent all possibility of mistake, and at the same time to show how far he himself is from shrinking at this close affinity to our "poor relations," our Professor declares that our reverence for the ability of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes."

Justly then has it been said, "After all this, another look at the grim procession of skeletons in the frontispiece is rather discouraging. If the beholder can but conclude that he is one 'in substance and structure' with those gibbering grovelling apes behind man, then where is our pride of ancestry, our heraldic pomp, our vaunted nobility of descent? Any man can now mount armorial bearings in the shape of the long arms of the gibbon or the gorilla. These are our true 'kings-atarms;' and sculptors, painters, and poets have omitted the greatest of themes.'

2216

Yet in all this there is no just ground for surprise. The dogmatic statements of Prof. Huxley are but the natural supplement to the plausible suppositions of Mr. Darwin. Not that the Professor is willing to stand or fall by those suppositions alone, however; he thinks it safer to have two strings to his bow:

16 The Athenæum, for 1863; p. 288.