PREFACE. vii 



done better. And my method had this great ad- 

 vantage; it involved the certainty that somebody 

 would profit by my effort to teach properly. What- 

 ever my hearers might do, I myself always learned 

 something by lecturing. And to those who have 

 experience of what a heart-breaking business teach- 

 ing is — how much the can't-learns and won't- 

 learns and don't-learns predominate over the do- 

 learns — will understand the comfort of that re- 

 flection. 



Among the many problems which came under 

 my consideration, the position of the human species 

 in zoological classification was one of the most 

 serious. Indeed, at that time, it was a burning 

 question in the sense that those who touched it 

 were almost certain to burn their fingers severely. 

 It was not so very long since my kind friend Sir 

 William Lawrence, one of the ablest men whom 

 I have known, had been well-nigh ostracized for 

 his book " On Man," which now might be read 

 in a Sunday-school without surprising anybody; it 

 was only a few years, since the electors to the chair 

 of Natural History in a famous northern univer- 

 sity had refused to invite a very distinguished man 

 to occupy it because he advocated the doctrine of 

 the diversity of species of mankind, or what was 

 called " polygeny." Even among those who con- 

 sidered man from the point of view, not of vulgar 

 prejudice, but of science, opinions lay poles asun- 

 der. Linngeus had taken one view, Cuvier another; 



