JESTHETICISM AND RELIGION IN ANIMALS. 473 



while its heel is carried in the air and never touches the ground, 

 thus attaining a springiness and swiftness of motion beyond the 

 reach of the human plantigrade. Whatever lightness and elas- 

 ticity of step man possesses is due less to the perfection of his 

 bodily organism than to the uplifting influence of his intellect. 

 With the decay of his mental powers Homo sapiens slouches 

 like a bear, as may be observed in the ungainly and unsteady 

 gait of cretins and idiots, however vigorous they may be phys- 

 ically. 



The objection urged by Prof. Kedny against the doctrine of 

 evolution — namely, that man's helpless infancy proves him to be 

 different in kind from other animals — ignores the fact that the 

 soko and many other species of the genus simia pass through a 

 period of infant helplessness almost as long as that of some 

 savage tribes. The babyhood of the anthropoid apes is much 

 longer and more helpless than that of the cynopithecoids, the 

 platyrhines, or the lemurs ; and the higher the order of the mon- 

 keys, the more they resemble man in this respect. Mr. Wallace 

 captured a young orang-outang, which had to be fed and cared 

 for like a human infant, lay rolling on the ground with all fours 

 in the air, and could hardly walk when it was three months old ; 

 whereas a macacus of the same age seemed to have already ac- 

 quired full use of its limbs and mental faculties. The long dura- 

 tion of this complete dependence on parental care in the case of 

 the human infant, so far from disproving the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion, furnishes one of the strongest arguments in its favor, since 

 it helps to explain how man gradually attained his intellectual 

 primacy among the primates. The American platyrhines, mar- 

 mosets, and other smaller long-tailed monkeys reach maturity in 

 three or four years, whereas the African dog-headed apes require 

 ten or twelve years for their full development, and with the 

 larger anthropoids this period of growth is nearly as long as with 

 human beings. 



The fact that quadrumana have flexible organs of prehension, 

 can grasp and handle things and imitate human actions, gives 

 them a great advantage over quadrupeds. A dog may be as in- 

 telligent as a chimpanzee, but he is unable to " show off " as well ; 

 he can not untie knots with his paws, nor put on clothes, nor eat 

 with knife and fork, nor uncork bottles, nor drink wine by lifting 

 the glass to his lips, nor use a toothpick, nor perform a variety 

 of tricks which make the monkey appear to be relatively far 

 more richly endowed with mental gifts than is actually the case, 

 and throw into the shade the most conspicuous exploits of the 

 poodle and the collie. 



Nevertheless, this manual and digital dexterity can scarcely 

 be overestimated as a means of disciplining the mind and increas- 



