6 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



The inquirer would next come to the important point, 

 whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead 

 to occasional severe struggles for existence ; and conse- 

 quently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, 

 being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. Do the 

 races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, 

 encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally 

 become extinct ? We shall see that all these questions, as 

 indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be an- 

 swered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the 

 lower animals. But the several considerations just referred 

 to may be conveniently deferred for a time : and we will 

 first see how far the bodily structure of man shows traces, 

 more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form. 

 In succeeding chapters the mental powers of man, in com- 

 parison with those of the lower animals, will be considered. 



The Bodily Structure of Man. It is notorious that man 

 is constructed on the same general type or model as other 

 mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared 

 with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it 

 is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal vis- 

 cera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, 

 follows the same law, as shown by Huxley and other anato- 

 mists. Bischoff,* who is a hostile witness, admits that every 

 chief fissure and fold in the brain of man has its analogy 

 in that % of the orang ; but he adds that at no period of de- 

 velopment do their brains perfectly agree ; nor could per- 

 fect agreement be expected, for otherwise their mental pow- 

 ers would have been the same. Vulpianf remarks : t( Les 

 differences reelles qui existent entre Fencephale de 1'homme 

 et celui des singes superieurs, sont bein minimes. II ne 

 faut pas se faire d'illusions d cet egard. I/homme est bein 

 plus pres des singes anthropomorph.es par les caracteres 

 anatomiques de son cerveau que ceux-ci ne le sont non seul- 

 ernent des autres mammif eres, mais meme de certains quad- 

 rumanes, des guenons et des macaques/' But it would be 



* "Grosshirnwindungen des Menschen," 1868, s. 96. Tlie con- 

 clusions of this author, as well as those of Gratiolet and Aeby, con- 

 cerning the brain, will be discussed by Prof. Huxley in the Appendix 

 alluded to in the Preface to this edition. 



f'Lec. sur la Phys.," 1866, p. 890, as quoted by M. Dally, 

 " l/Ordre des Primates et le Transformisme," 1868, p, 39. 



