CHAP. XXIV. ORDER BIMANA OF BLUMENBACH. 475 



The terms " bimanous" and " quadrumanous" had been al- 

 ready employed by Buffon, in 1766, but not applied in a strict 

 zoological classification till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve 

 3^ears later, .Cuvier adopted the same order Bimana for the 

 human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs consti- 

 tuted a separate order, called Quadrumana. 



Eespecting this last innovation, Isidore G. St. Hilaire asks, 

 " How could such a division stand, repudiated as it was hy 

 the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual 

 supremacy of Man, and by the zoologists on the ground of 

 its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true 

 principles of classification ? Sej^arated as a group of ordinal 

 value, j)laced at the same distance from the ape as the latter 

 from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant 

 from the higher mammalia; — too near if Ave take into ac- 

 count those elevated faculties which, raising Man above all 

 other organized beings, accord to him not onlj^ the first, but 

 a separate, place in the creation, — too far if we merely con- 

 sider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadru- 

 mana ; with the apes especially, wdiieh, in a purely physical 

 point of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the 

 leir.urs. 



" What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and 

 Cuvier ? An impracticable compromise between tAvo oppo- 

 site and irreconcilable systems, — between two orders of ideas 

 which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history 

 by these two words: the human hlngdovi and the human 

 family. It is one of those would-be via media j^ropositions 

 which, once seen tlirough, satisfy- no one, precisely because 

 they are intended to please everj^body; half-truths, perhaps, 

 but also half-falsehoods ; for what, in science, is a half-truth 

 but an error?" 



Isidore G. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite 

 of the great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large 



