40 DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. 



Homo are sufficient to entitle man to rank as the type of a separate Order, 

 to which he gave the name of BIMANA, considering it to be specially distin- 

 guished by the possession of two hands from the QUADRUMANA, which pos- 

 sess four nearly similar handlike extremities. And Prof. Owen lias recently 

 gone a step further, by raising Homo into a subclass ARCHENCEPHALA, on 

 the ground that his " psychological powers, in association with his extraor- 

 dinarily developed brain, entitle the group which he represents to equivalent 

 rank with the other primary divisions of the class Mammalia, founded on 

 cerebral characters." 1 Although the discussion of questions of systematic 

 arrangement is the proper business of the Zoologist, yet the inquiry into the 

 exact nature and amount of the differences between Man and the (so-called) 

 Quadrumana falls legitimately within the province of the Physiologist, and 

 may therefore be appropriately dealt with in this place. In the pursuit of 

 this inquiry, it is most important to distinguish between those structural 

 peculiarities of which alone the Anatomist can take cognizance, and those 

 psychical manifestations of which the sources are altogether beyond his ken ; 

 for these two orders of facts cannot be legitimately brought into the same 

 category, and any attempts to blend them can lead to nothing but confusion. 

 It is the province of the Comparative Anatomist to deal with Man's cor- 

 poreal organism, as if he knew nothing more than the facts brought under 

 his observation in the dissecting-room ; scrutinizing every peculiarity in its 

 structure in exactly the same spirit, and valuing it according to exactly the 

 same measure, that he would bring to the investigation of the peculiarities 

 of some newly discovered type, known to him only by dead specimens. And 

 although he might safely assign to the genus Homo a structural capacity for 

 the erect posture, a specialty in the conformation of the anterior and pos- 

 terior extremities, imparting to the former a peculiar power of varied and 

 minute prehension, and fitting the latter for biped progression, and a rela- 

 tively larger and more complex brain, rendering it probable that the psychical 

 faculties of which it is the instrument would be more elevated and more pre- 

 dominant, yet there he must stop ; since he cannot discover in Man's cor- 

 poreity the faintest indication of those Intellectual and Moral attributes by 

 which he holds himself to be specially distinguished from the brute creation, 

 of that Progressive Reason which draws even the Infinite within its scope, 

 of that upward aspiration after Truth and Goodness which ranges even 

 beyond his intellectual conception, of that yearning after a purely Spiritual 

 existence which refuses to recognize in bodily decay anything but the libera- 

 tion of the imprisoned Soul. These are facts of Man's nature not less neces- 

 sary to be taken into account in the estimation of his position in the Universe 

 than those which are supplied by his bodily organization ; and it is not 

 surprising that by a too exclusive regard to them, many eminent Naturalists, 

 from Aristotle downwards, have been led to maintain that Man ought not 

 to be included in the Animal Kingdom at all, but should be ranked in a 

 kingdom by himself. This, however, is a position which cannot be consist- 

 ently held by any one who recognizes Anatomical structure as the true basis 

 of Zoological classification. For granting that Man is distinguished from 

 every other form of terrestrial being by psychical attributes which bring him 

 into relation with Infinite Intelligence, he does not the less belong to the 

 Animal Kingdom in his present stage of existence, in virtue of his possession 

 of every attribute by which an Animal is characterized, and the absence of 

 any peculiarity whatever in his organization which can be shown to remove 

 him from that category. And since it is only as an (tniniul that he is taken 



1 On the Clmrm t"i-s and Classification <>(' tlic Mammalia, in Journal of the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Liniiiuan Society, vol. ii, 18-37, p. 33. 



