CHAP. xxiv. OEDER BIMANA OF BLUMENBACH. 475 



The terms 'bimanous' and 'quadrumanous' had been al 

 ready employed by BufTon, in 1766, but not applied in a strict 

 zoological classification till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve 

 years later, Cuvier adopted the same order Bimana for the 

 human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs consti 

 tuted a separate order, called Quadrumana. 



Eespecting this last innovation, Isidore GK St. Hilaire asks, 

 ' How could such a division stand, repudiated as it was by 

 the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual 

 supremacy of Man ; and by the zoologists, on the ground of 

 its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true 

 principles of classification ? Separated as a group of ordinal 

 value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter 

 from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant 

 from the higher mammalia ; too near if we take into ac 

 count those elevated faculties, which, raising Man above all 

 other organised beings, accord to him not only the first, but 

 a separate place in the creation, too far if we merely con 

 sider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadru- 

 mana ; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical 

 point of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the 

 lemurs. 



f What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and 

 Cuvier ? An impracticable compromise between two oppo 

 site and irreconcilable systems between two orders of ideas 

 which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history 

 by these two words : the human kingdom and the human 

 family. It is one of those would-be via media propositions 

 which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because 

 they are intended to please everybody ; half-truths, perhaps, 

 but also half-falsehoods ; for what, in science, is a half-truth 

 but an error ? ' 



Isidore Gr. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite 

 of the great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large 



