TO THE LOWER ANIMALS. 73 



races of Europe were enabled to enter upon that progress 

 towards true knowledge, wliich was commenced by the 

 philosophers of Greece, but was almost arrested in subse- 

 quent long ages of intellectual stagnation, or, at most, 

 gyration, the human larva has been feeding vigorously, 

 and moulting in proportion. A skin of some dimension 

 was cast in the 16th century, and another towards the end 

 of the 18th, while, within the last fifty years, the extraor- 

 dinary growth of every department of physical science has 

 spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimu- 

 lating a 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 process, and even if he have noth- 

 ing but a scalpel to work withal, to ease the cracking in- 

 tegument 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 understanding 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 preceding pages. 



The importance of such an inquiry is indeed intuitively 

 manifest. Brought face to face with these blurred copies 

 of himself, the least thoughtful of men is conscious of a 

 certain shock, due, perhaps, 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- 



* 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. 

 4 



