MAN'S RELATIONS TO LOWER ANIMALS 245 



Each such answer to the great question, invariably 

 asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, 

 to be complete and final, remains in high authority and 

 esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty : 

 but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a 

 mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on 

 account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, 

 and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge 

 of their successors. 



In a well-worn metaphor, a parallel is drawn between 

 the life of man and the metamorphosis of the caterpillar 

 into the butterfly ; but the comparison may be more just 

 as well as more novel, if for its former term we take the 

 mental progress of the race. History shows that the human 

 mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically 

 grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them 

 asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and 

 growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and 

 assumes another, itself but temporary. Truly the imago 

 state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult 

 is a step gained, and of such there have been many. 



Since the revival of learning, whereby the Western races 

 of Europe were enabled to enter upon that progress towards 

 true knowledge, which was commenced by the philosophers 

 of Greece, but was almost arrested in subsequent long ages 

 of intellectual stagnation, or, at most, gyration, the human 

 larva has been feeding vigorously, and moulting in propor- 

 tion. A skin of some dimension was cast in the 16th century, 

 and another towards the end of the 18th, while, within the 

 last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every depart- 

 ment of physical science has spread among us mental food of 

 so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis 

 seems imminent. But this is a process not unusually accom- 

 panied by many throes and some sickness and debility, or, 

 it may be, by graver disturbances ; so that every good 

 citizen must feel bound to facilitate the process, and even 

 if he have nothing but a scalpel to work withal, to ease the 

 cracking integument to the best of his ability. 



In this duty lies my excuse for the publication of these 

 essays. For it will be admitted that some knowledge of 

 man's position in the animate world is an indispensable 

 preliminary to the proper understanding of his relations 

 to the universe and this again resolves itself, in the 

 long run, into an inquiry into the nature and the closeness 



