58 THE CEEED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



anticipated the coming pessimism, she separated herself 

 definitively from theology, and, for a time, from philo- 

 sophy and from hope ; during which she struck those 

 loud notes of lamentation over man's defeated hopes and 

 mysterious isolation in the universe, which are still 

 ringing in our ears. 



2. But now, stripped of fiction and illusion, what is 

 the scientifically ascertained fact, the sober literal truth 

 respecting human nature ? We desire to know what man 

 really is ; we wish, if possible, to have the conjoint report 

 of the several sciences concerned, and, that the account 

 be the more reliable, from those authorities who have 

 made a special side of man's nature a special subject 

 of study. 



And in response to this desire, we have the latest 

 reports on human nature, as handed in from the several 

 scientific sections, which, when put together, read to the 

 following effect : Man is the superior and highly de- 

 veloped animal, with intellectual, moral, social, sesthetic 

 qualities, differing in degree but not in kind from similar 

 qualities existing in some of the highest of the lower 

 animals. From the point of view of comparative ana- 

 tomy and physiology, man is of like bodily structure 

 and organization with the anthropoids, so much so that, 

 as Professor Huxley concludes, "The structural dif- 

 ferences which separate man from the gorilla and chim- 

 panzee, are not so great as those which separate the 

 gorilla from the lower apes." Man closely resembles the 

 most man-like apes, only that his structure is slightly 

 more complex, and certain of his bodily organs are more 

 highly and more delicately differentiated. The difference 

 between the hand and foot is more pronounced in man 

 than in the nearest resembling animals, his hand is more 

 elaborately finished, his fingers finer and more flexible ; 



