I4 2 Human Physiology. 



And the life of man, in all its developments, is a life so infi- 

 nitely higher, and more varied, than that of any member of the 

 animal creation, that it is astonishing that the idea could ever 

 have entered the mind of any cultivated and thoughtful man, 

 that there was any near relationship between them. In whatever 

 way the body of man may have been formed, it is evident that its 

 animating soul cannot owe its origin to any animal which now 

 exists, or of which we have any relics. Professor Huxley, who 

 teaches that man's place in nature is that of a descendant of 

 lower animal races, still says : " No one is more strongly con- 

 vinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilised 

 man and the brutes, or is more certain that, whether from them 

 or not, he is assuredly not of them. No one is less disposed to 

 think lightly of the present dignity, or despairingly of the future 

 hopes of the only consciously intelligent denizen of this world." 



" Missing link !" We want a thousand missing links to con- 

 nect man with the brutes. I know that there are savages who 

 do not count far, and perhaps have had little occasion for 

 counting; but every race of man has a capacity for education 

 and progress, that in a few generations will bring it up to the 

 highest standards of civilisation. No animal shows any such 

 capacity. There is a narrow range of improvement even in 

 dogs and horses. Monkeys have shown no such capability. 

 Does any one imagine that the most careful training of succes- 

 sive generations for a thousand, or a hundred thousand years, 

 would enable dogs or elephants, or any race of monkeys to cal- 

 culate an eclipse, or compose an opera to paint a picture, or 

 invent a locomotive write a poem, or found a university? 



Still we must not be unjust to our fellow-creatures, for they 

 are all gifted with marvellous powers. Their organs of sensa- 

 tion are as perfectly formed as our own; and their senses in 

 many cases, far more acute. Their eyes are adapted to the 

 light by the same contrivances a dark chamber, a convex 

 lens, a pictured retina, nerves to convey the impression of the 



