CHARLES DARWIN AND DARWINISM 39 



followers of method, for the author of the Origin of 

 Species to leave the objection without a decisive 

 answer. And it is, perhaps, in this response that 

 that contrast most clearly stands out which charac- 

 terizes on so many points the work of Darwin. 

 On the one hand we have his admirable ingenuity 

 in his comparative studies of the anatomical, 

 intellectual, and psychical characters of man 

 and of animals ; on the other, the really decep- 

 tive weakness of the positive arguments and the 

 precise facts relative to the real reconstitution of 

 the human branch. Let us, together with the 

 author under discussion, cast a rapid glance on the 

 principal stages of this history. 



The numerous facts of the material and moral 

 resemblance between man and animals, studied 

 at length in the Descent of Man, show in the clearest 

 manner, says the author, that man descends from 

 an inferior type. In spite of the remarkable de- 

 velopment of his brain and the richness of his 

 mental faculties, man cannot claim that he forms 

 by himself a special kingdom, or, as Owen main- 

 tained, a sub-class of the Mammals, or even an order 

 of this class, or order of Bimana, as Blumenbach and 

 Cuvier proposed. Linnaeus was right in bringing 

 man with the Quadrumana into the single order 

 of Primates. Huxley divided the Primates into 

 three sub-orders : Man, the Apes, and the Lemurs. 

 But this sub-order is still too high in rank for man, 

 who, from a genealogical point of view, should at 

 the most represent a family or, even better, a 

 simple sub-family of the Primates. 



The Apes, or Simiadce, comprise two groups, the 



