CHAPTER XXII 



MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE 



THE student who has worked over the intricate 

 problems of mensuration .which seem to have little con- 

 nection with his daily life will appreciate them all the 

 more when he realizes how the carpenters and builders 

 of centuries ago labored over these same problems in 

 studying out the relations of distances and spaces in their 

 work. Also when the student knows something of prim- 

 itive man's crude methods of conversing by gestures 

 and cries he will readily appreciate the advantages of 

 articulate speech and will attack the subtleties of modern 

 grammar with greater zest. And so it is with the various 

 departments of science with which man is concerned. 

 The study of man himself is a most interesting depart- 

 ment of these sciences ; but we are always studying man, 

 since the development of all science has been man's work. 



Man's Place among the Animals. Man differs from 

 the lower animals in many ways ; but the principal dif- 

 ferences are due to civilization. The identity of man 

 as an animal is so completely hidden in this maze of 

 civilization that his true position in the animal kingdom 

 from a physiological standpoint is obscured. The anat- 

 omy of man differs very little from that of the higher 

 mammals ; but man's powers differ to an almost im- 

 measurable extent. Man's reasoning power so far sur- 

 passes that of the highest apes that great naturalists 

 have been at loss to account for the similarity in the 



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