26 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



pacity, I think is evident from the feveral accounts of him which 

 I have publifhed in the paflages above quoted. And indeed, from 

 what i faw of him myfelf, I think I can atteft, that he had as much 

 underftanding as could be expeded in a man who had learned none 

 of our arts, not even the ufe of his ovcrn body fo as to walk eredl, 

 till he was 15 years of age ; for till then he was a quadruped. 



The nest ftep of this progreffion Is the Ourang Outang, or 

 Man of the Woods, as the name imports, by which he is called by the 

 people of Africa, where he Is to be feen, and who do not appear ta 

 have the leaft doubt that he is a man ; which, as they live in the 

 country with him, they fhould know better than we can do. Two 

 of them I faw in London fome years ago, and one of them I could 

 have purchafed for L. 50 ; which money, poor as I am, I would 

 have given for him, and been at the expence of his education, if I 

 had not been convinced, not only that ^^ was a man, but that it 

 was of abfolute neceflity that, in the progrefs of the human fpecies,. 

 man Ihould at fome time or another be fuch an animal : For, if he 

 was originally a quadruped, as 1 think I have proved by fadts in- 

 conteftible, with only a natural aptitude, more than any other ani- 

 mal, to walk on two, as Ariftotle has fald, the firft ftep in his pro- 

 greffion was to become a biped, to which, by nature, he \yas fo 

 much adapted. I will not here repeat what 1 have elfewhere faid 

 at fo great length, in proof of the humanity of the Ourang Ou- 

 tang *, where I think 1 have demonftrated that he Is a man, both 



in 



• See chap. 4th of book 2d of vol. I, of the Origin of Language, ad edition, 

 and particularly p. 289. of that chapter, where I have iummed up the evidence of 

 his being a man : In which there is one circumftance dcferving particularnotice, that 

 he carries otF negro boys and girls to make fervants ot them, and keeps them for 

 years, ufing them with great gentlenefs and humanity ; a thing of which we cannot 

 conceive any brute animal capable. See alfo what I have faid in the Appendix to 



vol* 



