EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 195 



species is attached; and man himself, though a 

 unique species, infinitely different from all those spe- 

 cies of animals, having only a mediocre height, is less 

 isolated and has more neighbors than the large ani- 

 mals. We shall see in the account of the orang- 

 outang that if we paid no attention to anything but 

 the shape, we could equally well regard this animal 

 as the first of the apes or the last of the men, be- 

 cause, with the exception of the soul, he lacks noth- 

 ing at all that we have, and because he differs less 

 from man in body than he differs from the other ani- 

 mals to which we have given the same name of "ape." 



As to the unity of type which pervades certain 

 families, he says, in effect, that if we reason out 

 this matter, we find that the fundamental idea 

 of the family in classification is remote commu- 

 nity of origin for the man and the ape, as well 

 as for the horse and the ass. The ass is a degen- 

 erate horse ; the ape is a degenerate man. In car- 

 rying this back to its logical extreme, we are 

 forced to admit that these animals sprang from 

 a common source — from one animal, which, in 

 the succession of time, has produced, either by 

 perfecting itself {se perfectionnant) or by de- 

 g-eneration, all the races of other animals. 



Then follows a passage^ that is unmistakably 

 ironical : 



Mais non, il est certain, par la revelation, que tous 



11763, t. IV, p. 383: 



