308 THE HUMAN FORM. 



is, to range living beings in a scale of which man is the head, and 

 to set down the lower animals as extended cases of the human 

 type. "The animal kingdom/' says Oken, "is man disintegrated." 

 Comparative anatomy is the anatomy of the beasts compared to that 

 of man. Take the animal forms one by one, and their likeness 

 does not perhaps clearly shine inwards to their chief, but group 

 them severally upon the order of the mind, which is science; and 

 unlikeness travels into likeness as they approach the human goal. 

 As in languages a word shall seem alien to its root, but track it 

 through a number of kindreds and tongues, and the links are sup- 

 plied that connect it with its source, and draw it from its parental 

 stem. So man is the word to which this social science of compara- 

 tive anatomy leads up the forms of animal life, and Adam still in 

 this way gives all living things their names. 



This is better the case with natural history, which leaves dead 

 bones and ghoul sciences to become acquainted with animals at home 

 in their gayeties and enjoyments. The portraits of man are so close 

 here, that the naturalist associates with his pets, and a White of 

 Selbourne can spend a long day with his swallows, Huber with his 

 bees, Wilson with his acarus fotticulorum, and Swammerdam with 

 his snails. Moreover, we judge the animals by our own standards 

 of pleasure and pain, attribute to them a part of our metaphysics 

 (would they took them all) ; and assign them natural virtues and 

 vices for which they are responsible with their lives. We also 

 reverse the case, and feel no inappropriateness in giving our brethern 

 animal names, making a comparative natural history out of the 

 eccentricities of man; for we have human asses, geese, pigs, foxes, 

 tigers, monkeys, peacocks; nay, in some cases we qualify humanity 

 by an animal color; as when we say that an innocent person is a 

 lamb; a gentle beauty, a dove; or a heroic man, a lion: which 

 shows well the sliding scale from man to nature, in the easy projec- 

 tion of ideals into these distant but beautiful types. The symbol- 

 ism of the Bible makes animals thus expressive. It is impossible 

 not to interpret them by our own faculties, though reason knows 

 that the faculties between the two are not the same but analogous. 

 But the interpretation holds all the better; for it embraces the 

 animal fact, plus an intellect that enlightens it. This is one fnnc- 



