i6o Thomas Henry Huxley 



expressed by the system of classification of animals now cur- 

 rent among zoologists." 



Having explained the general s^'stem of zoological 

 classification, he tried to dispel preliminary prejudice 

 by inducing his readers or hearers to take an outside 

 view of themselves. 



" Let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking 

 selves from the mask of humanit}' ; let us imagine ourselves 

 scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such 

 animals as now inhabit the earth, and employed in discussing 

 the relations they bear to a new and singular ' erect and feather- 

 less biped,' which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the 

 difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that dis- 

 tant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a 

 cask of rum. We should all, at once, agree upon placing him 

 among the mammalian vertebrates ; and his lower jaw, his 

 molars, and his brain, would leave no room for doubting the 

 systematic position of the new genus among those mammals 

 whose young are nourished during gestation by means of a 

 placenta, or what are called the placental mammals. 



" Further, the most superficial study would at once convince 

 us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the 

 whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the sloths and ant-eaters, 

 nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, and bears, still less the rodent 

 rats and rabbits, or the insectivorous moles and hedgehogs, or 

 the bats, could claim our Homo as one of themselves. 



"There would remain, then, but one order for comparison, 

 that of the apes (using that word in its broadest sense), and the 

 question for discussion would narrow itself to this — Is Man so 

 different from any of these apes that he must form an order by 

 himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ 

 from one another, — and hence must take his place in the same 

 order with them ? 



"Being happily free from all real or imaginar}' personal in- 

 terest in the results of the enquiry thus set afoot, we should 

 proceed to weigh the arguments on one side and on the other, 

 with as much jurlicial calmness as if the question related to a 



