Chap. III. APPENDIX. r^6^ 



What has introduced this improper way of fpeaking, with lefpeft 

 to the fpecies Man^ is the not having obferved a progrefs in this 

 fpecies which is characteriftical of it, diftinguifhing it from every 

 other, and, accordingly, is made part of the dehnition of it above 

 given; for tbe capacity of intelkci and fcience, mentioned in the 

 definition, fuppofes that an animal may be a ?nan, without being ac- 

 tually intelligent or fcientilic, though he be not in the ftate of in- 

 fancy but full grown ; for it would be ridiculous to fuppofe that the 

 definition of the Peripatetic School could apply only to infants, and 

 not to men come to a ftate of maturity *. Being ignorant, there- 

 fore, of this progreffion of the fpecies, which I hold to be a fun- 

 damental principle of the hiftory and philofophy of Man, Linnaeus 

 has fuppofed that men, in the firft ftages of this progreffion, were 

 of a fpecies different from oiher men; when he might have as well 

 fuppofed that an infant among us was of a fpecies different from a 

 full grown man. 



The only queftion, therefore, with refped to the OrangOutang, is, 

 Whetherhe be not in what may be'called the infantine flate of our fpe- 

 cies ; by which I meanthat ftate, when man, come to hisfull growth, has 

 only the capacity of intelled or fcience, but not the adual ufe of them ? 

 Andjfetting afide what this lateft French traveller has faid of him, and 

 many other travellers, who have feen him, or had certain informa- 

 tion of him, not in captivity, but in his natural ftate, full grown 

 and living in fociety, I think it is evident, from the account Buffon 

 gives, which cannot be fufpedled of exaggeration, of the one he faw 

 and whom he appears to have ftudied very much,. that he was of the 

 human fpecies, and, I think, a good deal paft the infantine ftate of 

 the fpecies, though he was in the infantine ftate of the individual ; 

 for he was not above two years of age, and yet he was of greater 



Z z 2 ftature, 



* See upon this fubjefl what I have laid in the Origin and Progrefs of Language, 

 Vol. i. Second Edition, p. •^39. 340. 



