TO THE LOWER ANIMALS 291 



more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the 

 gulf between civilized 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. 



We are indeed told by those who assume authority in 

 these matters, that the two sets of opinions are incompat- 

 ible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man and 

 brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the 

 former. But is this really so ? Could not a sensible 

 child confute, by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetori- 

 cians who would force this conclusion upon us ? Is it, 

 indeed, true, that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the 

 Artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded 

 from his high estate by the undoubted historical probability, 

 not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant 

 of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was 

 just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the 

 Fox, and by so much more dangerous than the Tiger ? 

 Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because 

 of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an 

 egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could 

 distinguish from that of a Dog ? Or is the philanthropist 

 or the saint to give up his endeavours to lead a noble, 

 life, because the simplest study of man's nature reveals, 

 at its foundations, all the selfish passions and fierce appetites 

 of the merest quadruped ? Is mother-love vile because 

 a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it ? 



The common sense of the mass of mankind will answer 

 these questions without a moment's hesitation. Healthy 

 humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real 

 sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over specula- 

 tive pollution to the cynics and the ' righteous overmuch * 



man or of an Aztec, with arrested brain growth, as being of a nature 

 so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being 

 other than a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the 

 significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure every 

 tooth, every bone, strictly homologous which makes the deter- 

 mination of the difference between Homo and Pithecas the anato- 

 mist's difficulty." 



Surely it is a little singular that the ' anatomist,' who finds it 

 ' difficult ' to ' determine the difference ' between Homo and Pithccus, 

 should yet range them on anatomical grounds, in distinct sub- 

 classes I 



