The Descent of Man. 5 7 



concerning the difference between the instincts of the coccus 

 (or scale insect) and those of the ant — and the bearing of 

 that difference on their zoological position (as both are mem- 

 bers of the class Insecta) and on that of man — exhibit clearly 

 his misapprehension as to the true significance of man's 

 mental powers. 



For in the first place zoological classification is mor- 

 phological. That is to say, it is a classification based upon 

 form and structure — upon the number and shape of the 

 several parts of animals, and not at all upon what those parts 

 do, the consideration of which belongs to physiology. This 

 being the case, we not only may, but should, in the field of 

 zoology, neglect all questions of diversities of instinct or 

 mental power, equally with every other power, as is evidenced 

 by the location of the bat and the porpoise in the same class, 

 mammalia, and the parrot and the tortoise in the same 

 larger group, sauropsida. 



Looking therefore at man with regard to his bodily 

 structure, we not only may, but should, reckon him as a 

 member of the class mammalia, and even (we believe) con- 

 sider him as the representative of a mere family of the first 

 order of that class. But all men are not zoologists ; and even 

 zoologists must, outside their science, consider man in his 

 totality and not merely from the point of view of anatomy. 



If then we are right in our confident assertion that man's 

 mental faculties are different in hind from those of brutes, 

 and if he is, as we maintain, the only rational animal : then 

 is man, as a whole, to be spoken of by preference from the 

 point of view of his animality, or from the point of view of 

 his rationality ? Surely from the latter, and if so, we must 

 consider not structure, but action. 



Now Mr. Darwin seems to concede ^ that a difference in 

 kind woidd justify the placing of man in a distinct kingdom, 



1 Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 186. 



