(§ BE VIEWS. 



his. For this reason they may veiy usefully be added to the definition of the huvuui 

 J'amily. 



" On the contrary, the other distinctive characters of man mentioned or indicated 

 by authors are no longer distinctive and absolute, but are merely relative ; are dif- 

 ferences of degree and not of kind. 



*' It is no longer a question of anatomical or physical features, possessed by man 

 and not by the apes, or by the apes and not by man, but of features comnion to man 

 and to a part of, or even to all, apes; merely more or less marked in him than in 

 them. So that these fcatm-es would tend, if they existed alone, to make of Man, 

 considered in a classificatory aspect, not & family apart from all animals, but the 

 first genus of the family of apes. By the most of them he would be to the Chim- 

 panzees and to the Orangs, what these are to the Cercopitheoi and Macaci, and these 

 to the lower apes; an additional term at the head of a common series. 



" The facts of this second order, important as many of them may be in a phy- 

 siological point of view, are far less so than the foregoing in their taxonomic asiiect, 

 and we may be permitted to pass more rapidly over them ; indeed to restrict our- 

 selves to the enumeration of those which authors have considered as particulai-ly 

 characteiistic." 



Those of our readers who have followed the controversy respect- 

 ing the brain of Apes and Man, if that can be dignified by the name 

 of controversy where all the facts are on one side and mere empty 

 assertion on the other, will be amused on discovering the nature of 

 the first of these " secondary facts" which M. St. Hilaire treats so 

 cavalierly. 



" The first, the most important of all, so important that one would be inclined, 

 at first sight, to consider them as the characteristics pnr excellence of man, are those 

 presented by the encephalon, particularly the cerebral hemispheres. If there is an 

 abyss between the intelligence of man and that of the brute, ought not a large in- 

 terval to exist between his cerebral characters and those of animals ? Such a con- 

 clusion would certainly follow very logically from the doctrines held by many 

 physiologists, regarding the functions of the brain, and particularly of the convolu- 

 tions, but it is a conclusion, most distinctly refuted by the comparative examination 

 of man and animals. Here, indeed, the facts of our cerebral structure exhibit, not 

 a specially and exclusively luunan structure, but a higher degree of an organization 

 which is found in the apes ; merely relative, instead ol' absolute differences. 



" The great development of the anterior cerebral lobes and of the coi-jmis callo- 

 sum, the multitude of the convolutions and sulci, the depth of the latter and conse- 

 quently the considerable extent of the surface of the cerebrum, are, according to 

 authors, the five jnincipal characteis by which the human brain is particularly dis- 

 tinguished. These are, in fact, so many indubitable marks of the superiority of 

 man over animals; those species which, in the totality of their organization, resemble 

 him most, are inferior to him in these respects. But are they very inferior? 

 Assiu-edly I shall not go so far as to say, with Bory de St. Vincent, that between 

 the brain of the Orang and that of Man there exist " no more essential differences 

 than those which obtain bct\vccn the same parts in different individuals of our own 

 species;" a conclusion which this naturalist, too ready to interpret facts according 

 to his own views, professes to draw from the beautiful researches of Tiedemann on 

 the encephalon of the Orang, as compared with that of Man. But that which is 

 certain, Mhich results not merely from Tiedemann's oliseiwations, btit from those of 

 M. Serres and of all the masters of science ; from all those also which have been 

 made of late, and to which I have had the advantage of being able to add my own 

 upon many points ; is this proposition, which no one will confomid with tlie assertion 

 of Bory St. Vincent: by so much as, in the development of the anterior cerebral 

 lobes, of the corjnis callosum, of the convolutions and the extent of his cerebral 

 surface, Man surpasses even the highest apes; by so much are these, and chielly the 

 Orang, su) erior in the same respects to the first apes of the second tribe (Cynopithe • 



