74 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



the moral attributes of man. The range of their passions is even as 

 extensive as that of the human mind, and I am at a loss to perceive a 

 difference of kind between them, however much they may differ in 

 degree and in the manner in which they are expressed. The gTada- 

 tions of the moral faculties among the higher animals and man are, 

 moreover, so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense 

 of responsibility and consciousness would certainly be an exaggera- 

 tion of the difference between animals and man. There exists, be- 

 sides, as much individuality, within their respective capabilities, 

 among animals as among men, as every sportsman, or every keeper 

 of menageries, or every farmer and shepherd can testify who has had 

 a large experience with wild or tamed or domesticated animals. 



This argues strongly in favor of the existence in every animal of 

 an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and 

 superior endowments, places man so much above animals.^^ Yet the 



^ It might easily be shown that the exaggerated views generally entertained of the 

 difference existing between man and monkeys are traceable to the ignorance of the 

 ancients, and especially the Greeks, to whom we owe chiefly our intellectual culture, 

 of the existence of the Orang-Outang and the Chimpanzee. The animals most closely 

 allied to man known to them were the Red Monkey, the Baboon, and the Barbary 

 Ape. A modern translation of Aristotle, it is true, makes him say that monkeys form 

 the transition between man and quadrupeds: (Aristoteles, Natiirgeschichte der Thiere, 

 von Dr. Franz Strack, Frankfurt am Main, 1816,, p. 65) but the original says no such 

 thing. In the History of Animals, Book II, Chap. 8. we read only ip^oc 5e rccv ^aoiif 

 kTraix<poTepi^ei ttjv (f>vaiv tw re avdpwTTUi xai rrt j TiTpairoaiv. L ^omc animals snare the prop- 

 erties of man and the quadrupeds, as the ape, the monkey, and the Baboon." DArcy 

 Wentworth Thompson, tr., Historia Animalium (Oxford, 1910), II. 8. 502M6-18.] 

 There is a wide difference between "partaking of the nature of both man and the 

 quadrupeds" and "forming a transition between man and the quadrupeds." The 

 whole chapter goes on enumerating the structural similarity of the three monkeys 

 named above with man, but the iclea of a close affinity is not even expressed, and 

 still less that of a transition between man and the quadrupeds. The writer, on 

 the contrary, dwells very fully upon the marked differences they exhibit and knows 

 as Avell as any modern anatomist has ever known that monkeys have four hands. 

 ^X*' 5^ xat fipaxiova^, wairep &v9po}iros . . . ISLov s 5k tovs TrdSas- eial yap oTov x^tpf s ntyoiKai. 

 Kai ol boLKTvKoL wcnrep oi tcov x^i-P^v, 6 fikyas ixaxpSraros' xal to xaro} tov ttoSo s X^'P' ojuotov, 

 ■K\i]v kwl TO fjirjxo $ TO Trj s Xii-po s kirl ra i<7x<XTa Ttivov xadairep dkvap. ToOro 5k kir axpov 

 axXrjpSrepov, xaxSis xai anvdpds ixifxohixevov ■KTkpvr)v. L the ape . . . nke man ... its teet 

 are exceptional in kind. That is, they are like large hands, and the toes are like 

 fingers, with the middle one the longest of all, and the under part of the foot is 

 like a hand except for its length, and stretches out towards the extremities like the 

 palm of the hand, and this palm at the after end is unusually hard, and in a 

 clumsy kind of way resembles a heel." Thompson, tr.. Hist. Anim., II. 8. 502''2.] 



It is strange that these clear and precise distinctions should have been so entirely 

 forgotten in the days of Linna?us that the great reformer in Natural History had to 

 confess in the year 1746 that he knew no character by which to distinguish man form 

 monkeys. Fauna Suecica. . . . (Stockholm), Praefat., p. 2. "Nullum characterem adhuc 

 eruere potui, unde home a simia internoscatur." But it is not upon structural simi- 



