26 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



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 

 are those of these two monkeys ; and he does this regard- 

 less 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 : 8 

 " 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 well devel- 

 oped, and in which the phrenologist finds the organ of ven- 

 eration so much enlarged. I shall, in the meanwhile, call 

 these simious narrow skulls of Switzerland ' Apostle skulls,' 

 as I imagine that in life they must have resembled the type 

 of Peter the Apostle, as represented in Byzantine-Nazarene 

 art." 



In face of such a spirit, can it be wondered at that dis- 

 putants have grown warm ? Moreover, in estimating the 

 vehemence of the opposition which has been offered, it 

 should be borne in mind that the views defended by religious 

 writers are, or should be, all-important in their eyes. They 

 could not be expected to view with equanimity the destruc- 

 tion in many minds of "theology, natural and revealed, 

 8 " Lectures on Man," p. 378. 



