DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 223 



may be considered as central between the other two, combining 

 characters from both, along with characters of its own. Its 

 central sub-line is eminently eclectic, and particularly in its 

 food, uniting the carnivorous instincts of the bats, on the one 

 hand, with the phytophagous habits of the sloths, on the other. 

 Sociality, vocality or the use of voice, a prehensive use of the 

 extremities, imitativeness, drollery, sagacity, all form charac- 

 teristics generally applicable to this line of animals. In the 

 reptilian grade, and perhaps in inferior grades also, they are 

 rather below than above their fellows ; but in the mammalian 

 stage, they suddenly ascend to a pre-eminence, not by superior 

 strength, but by greater relative magnitude of brain, by agility, 

 and by the use of the hand. The signal superiority of the 

 human species is thus prepared for and betokened in the im- 

 mediately preceding portions of the line : it might have been 

 seen, ere man existed, that a remarkable creature was corning 

 upon the earth. The advance, nevertheless, which man makes 

 above his immediate predecessors is very great ; the highest of 

 these cannot rank above an infant of our species in sagacity or 

 morale. 



This advance is no isolated fact. In each of the other sub- 

 lines, there is what may be called a crowning species, greatly 

 superior to its immediate ancestry, and these are the most dis- 

 tinguished of all animals. In the herbivorous stirps, the sub- 

 carnivorous line is topped by the pig, the sub-herbivorous by 

 the sheep, the sub-central by the horse. In the carnivorous 

 stirps, the sub -herbivorous is topped by the dog, the sub-central 

 by the cat. The horse, dog, and cat, so eminent for their sagatity 

 and usefulness, are in this peculiar manner analogues to man, 

 whom they serve so faithfully. A signal superiority, however, 

 belongs to him as the centre and apex of all ; the undoubted 

 king and lord of this portion of animated nature. His great- 

 ness considering him merely as a unit in the animal kingdom 

 lies primarily in the concentration of qualities which he 

 derives from this situation . He is not an animal solely herbi- 

 vorous, or solely carnivorous ; solely innocent, or solely de- 

 structive. He has all these characters and habits, with the 

 addition of others proper to his own family. There is great 

 virtue in this principle of concentration, or, as it may rather 

 be called, this universality of character. We see that an in- 

 tensity of it marks all the greatest individuals of our species, 

 such as Shakespeare and Scott, of whom it has been observed 

 that they must have possessed within themselves, not only the 



