158 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



the order of animals, since he is not the most intelligent : 

 the high opinion which men have of the intelligence of 

 apes is a prejudice based only upon the resemblance 

 between their outward appearance and our own." * But 

 the undiscerning were not only to be kept quiet, they 

 were to be made happy. With this end, if I am not 

 much mistaken, Buffon brings his chapter on the 

 nomenclature of apes to the following conclusion : 



"The ape, which the philosopher and the unedu- 

 cated have alike regarded as difficult to define, and as 

 being at best equivocal, and midway between man and 

 the lower animals, proves in fact to be an animal and 

 nothing more ; he is masked externally in the shape of 

 man, but internally he is found incapable of thought, and 

 of all that constitutes man ; apes are below several of 

 the other animals in respect of qualities corresponding 

 to their own, and differ essentially from man, in nature, 

 temperament, the time which must be spent upon their 

 gestation and education, in their period of growth, dura- 

 tion of life, and in fact in all those profounder habits 

 which constitute what is called the 'nature' of any 

 individual existence." f This is handsome, and leaves 

 the more timorous reader in full possession of the field. 



Buffon is accordingly at liberty in the following 

 chapter to bring together every fact he can lay his 

 hands on which may point the resemblance between 

 man and the Orang-outang most strongly; but he is 

 careful to use inverted commas here much more freely 

 than is his wont. Having thus made out a strong case for 

 the near affinity between man and the Orang-outang, 



* Tom. xiv. p. 38, 1766. f Ibid. p. 42, 1766. 



