i88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



aberrant muscles in his structure may be recognized in some degraded 

 progenitor. And in proof of this there is established a series of facts 

 of precisely the same nature as is seen in those discoveries which link 

 the horse in an almost unbroken line to earlier and more generalized 

 animals. 



It is instructive to read the discussions in relation to man's posi- 

 tion in Nature as represented by Agassiz, Morton, and others. 



The position that these eminent men were justified in taking 

 shocked the Church, and received from her the same vigorous denun- 

 ciations that Darwin was forced to bear at a later day. 



The systematist, in formulating the separate species and genera 

 of the apes and monkeys, was early led to see that man also in vari- 

 ous parts of the world presented differences quite as striking, and 

 if it were assumed, as indeed it was, that the peculiarities among 

 men were only varietal, then it could be claimed with equal empha- 

 sis that the differences among apes were only varietal. Agassiz, in 

 his keen grasp of things, readily saw this, and, since the races of men 

 revealed differences just as specific in their characters as the animals 

 immediately below them, he was forced to admit the plurality of ori- 

 gin of the human race. He says : 



"Unless we recognize the differences among men, and we recognize the 

 identity of these differences with the differences which exist among animals, w'o 

 are not true to our subject, and, whatever be the origin of these differences, 

 they are of some account ; and if it ever is proved that all men have a common 

 origin, then it will be at the same time proved that all monkeys have a common 

 origin, and it will by the same evidence be proved that man and monkeys can- 

 not have a different origin." 



He confesses that he " saw the time coming when the position of 

 the origin of man would be mixed up with the question of the origin 

 of animals, and a community of origin might be affirmed for them 

 all." With these convictions it is not surprising that he should have 

 been led to express the opinions regarding the diversity of the human 

 race that we find recorded. 



Agassiz, in the meetings of the American Academy, repeatedly and 

 in various ways illustrated the diversity of the human race. In one 

 place he alludes to the difficulty in defining the species of man, and 

 says the same difficulties occur in defining the species of anthropoid 

 apes. We quote from the records : 



" The languages of different races of men were neither more different nor more 

 similar than the sounds characteristic of animals of the same genus ; and their 

 analogy can no more be fully accounted for on any hypothesis of transmission 

 or tradition than in the case of birds of the same genus uttering similar notes in 

 Europe and America." (" Proceedings of the American Academy," vol. hi., p. 6.) 



Again, in a later volume, he expresses a general disbelief in the 

 supposed derivation of later languages from earlier ones. He re- 



