80 MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. n 



character that a new ecdysis seems imminent. 

 But this is a process not unusually accompanied 

 by many throes and some sickness and debility, or, 

 it may be, by graver disturbances; so that every 

 good citizen must feel bound to facilitate the pro- 

 cess, and even if he have nothing but a scalpel to 

 work withal, to ease the cracking integument to 

 the best of his ability. 



In this duty lies my excuse for the publication 

 of these essays. For it will be admitted that some 

 knowledge of man's position in the animate world 

 is an indispensable preliminary to the proper un- 

 derstanding of his relations to the universe; and 

 this again resolves itself, in the long run, into an 

 inquiry into the nature and the closeness of the ties 

 which connect him with those singular creatures 

 whose history * has been sketched in the preced- 

 ing pages. 



The importance of such an inquiry is indeed 

 intuitively manifest. Brought face to face with 

 these blurred copies of himself, the least thought- 

 ful of men is conscious of a certain shock, due per- 

 haps, not so much to disgust at the aspect of 

 what looks like an insulting caricature, as to the 

 awakening of a sudden and profound mistrust of 

 time-honoured theories and strongly-rooted preju- 

 dices regarding his own position in nature, and 



* It will be understood that, in the preceding Essay, I 

 have selected for notice from the vast mass of papers 

 which have been written upon the man-like Apes, only 

 those which seem to me to be of special moment. 



