182 LESSONS FKOM NATUEE. [CHAP. VI. 



milch cows. They move the eggs of their aphides, as well as their 

 own eggs and cocoons, into warm parts of the nest, in order that they 

 may be quickly hatched; and endless similar facts could be given. 

 On the whole, the difference in mental power between an ant and a 

 coccus is immense ; yet no one has ever dreamed of placing them in 

 distinct classes, much less in distinct kingdoms. No doubt this 

 interval is bridged over by the intermediate mental powers of many 

 other insects ; and this is not the case with man and the higher apes. 

 But we have every reason to believe that breaks in the series are 

 simply the result of many forms having become extinct.&quot; 



I have extracted the whole of this passage because it states 

 in the strongest manner what Mr. Darwin considers the most 

 telling points in his favour, while it exhibits as clearly his 

 misapprehensions as to the true significance of man s mental 

 powers. 



In the first place the zoological classification universally 

 adopted is a morphological classification. 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 struc 

 ture, we not only may, but should, reckon him as a member 

 of the class mammalia, and even (we believe) consider 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 I am right in my assertion that man s mental 

 faculties are different in kind 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 anirnality, or from the point of view of his rationality ? 



