I.] INTRODUCTORY. 15 



almost surpassed by an amazing shallowness. Of course, 

 as might be expected, lie adopts and reproduces the 

 absurdly irrelevant objections to absolute morality drawn 

 from differences in national customs. 1 And he seems 

 to have as little conception of the distinction between 

 "formally" moral actions and those which are only 

 " materially " moral, as of that between the verbum mentale 

 and the verbum oris. As an example of the onesidedness 

 of his views, it may be remarked that he compares the 

 skulls of the American monkeys (Cebus apella and C. 

 albifrons) with the intention of showing that man is of 

 several distinct species, because skulls of different men are 

 less alike than those of these two monkeys ; and he does 

 this regardless of how the skulls of domestic animals (with 

 which it is far more legitimate to compare races of men 

 than with wild kinds), e.g. of different dogs or pigeons, tell 

 precisely in the opposite direction regardless also of the 

 fact that perhaps no genus of monkeys is in a more 

 unsatisfactory state as to the determination of its different 

 kinds than the genus chosen by him for illustration. This 

 is so much the case that J. A. Wagner (in his supplement 

 to Schreber's great work on Beasts) at first included all 

 the kinds in a single species. 



As to the strength of his prejudice and his regrettable 

 coarseness, one quotation will be enough to display both. 

 Speaking of certain early Christian missionaries, he says : 2 

 " It is not so very improbable that the new religion, before 

 which the flourishing Roman civilization relapsed into a 

 state of barbarism, should have been introduced by people 

 in whose skulls the anatomist finds simious characters so 



1 "Lectures on Man," translated by the Anthropological Society, 1864, 

 p. 229. 2 Ibid. p. 378. 



