PREFACE vii 



done better. And my method had this great ad- 

 vantage ; it involved the certainty that somebody 

 would profit by my effort to teach properly. What- 

 ever my hearers might do, I myself always learned 

 something by lecturing. And to those who have 

 experience of what a heart-breaking business 

 teaching is how much the can't-learns and won't- 

 learns and don't-learns predominate over the do- 

 learns will understand the comfort of that re- 

 flection. 



Among the many problems which came under 

 my consideration, the position of the human 

 species in zoological classification was one of the 

 most serious. Indeed, at that time, it was a burn- 

 ing question in the sense that those who touched 

 it were almost certain to burn their fingers severely. 

 It was not so very long since my kind friend Sir 

 William Lawrence, one of the ablest men whom 

 I have known, had been well-nigh ostracized 

 for his book " On Man," which now might be read 

 in a Sunday-school without surprising anybody ; 

 it was only a few years, since the electors to the 

 chair of Natural History in a famous northern 

 university had refused to invite a very distinguished 

 man to occupy it because he advocated the 

 doctrine of the diversity of species of mankind, 

 or what was called " polygeny." Even among those 

 who considered man from the point of view, not of 

 vulgar prejudice, but of science, opinions lay poles 

 asunder. Linnaeus had taken one view, Cuvier 



