200 



BIMANA. 



of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all 

 the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So 

 God created Man in his own image." 



The right of Man to an isolated station, at the head of the animal 

 kingdom, is founded upon just and solid grounds. Everything connected 

 with his history forces the conviction upon us, that he not only differs 

 from the lower mammals, but is elevated above them. His physical or- 

 ganization accords with his mental endowments, and is befitting a being 

 whose hopes and views are not bounded by mortality. Who that con- 

 templates the personifications of human beauty, embodied in the noble 

 statue of Apollo, or in the lovely figures of the Graces, by Canova, or 

 in the Venus of antiquity, dreams of the affinity of the Orang. The 

 attempt to degrade Man to the level of the Ape, because the Ape has the 

 anterior limbs organized as graspers, or rude hands, is hardly justifiable 

 in true philosophy. Physical differences, of sufficient magnitude,* exist 

 between Man and the Simiae, to forbid his amalgamation with them ; much 

 less with the beings of which any other order is composed : and though 

 Linnaeus and others f could find no characters by which to distinguish 

 between Man and the Monkey, and though the group Primates, of Lin- 

 naeus, has been revived by modern naturalists, every arrangement group- 

 ing together Man, the Monkeys, and the Bats, carries with it (in spite 

 of all authority), like the statue of clay and metal, the palpable tokens of 

 its own incongruity ; and, as Mr. Lawrence well observes, " the principles 

 must be incorrect which lead to such an approximation." 



The importance to be attached to the zoological characters afforded by 

 the slighter modifications of structure, rises as we ascend in the scale of being. 

 In the arrangement of Mammalia and birds, for example, minutiae which, 

 among the Invertebrata, would be deemed of little note, become of decided 

 value, and are no longer to be neglected. Even the modifications, however 

 slight, of a common type, now become stamped with a value, the ratio of 

 which increases as we advance from the lower to the higher orders. Hence, 

 with respect to Mammalia, the highest class of Vertebrata, every structural 

 phase claims attention ; and, when we advance to the highest of the highest 

 class, viz., Man, and the Quadrumana, the naturalist lays a greater stress on 

 minute grades and modifications of form, than he does when among the Ce- 

 tacea or the marsupials ; and hence, groups are separated upon characters thus 



* " Independently of weight and size, Soemmerring observed fifteen visible "material anatomical 

 differences between the brain of the common tailless Ape (Magot) and that of Man." Lawrence, 

 Led. p. 133. 



t Lord Monboddo regarded the Orang and Man as specifically identical ; but Rousseau seems to 

 have hesitated in his opinion : " II est bien demontre," he says, " que le Singe n'est pas une variete de 

 1'Homme, non seulement parcequ'il est priv6 de la faculte de parler, mais, surtout, parcequ'on est 

 sur que son espece n'a point la faculte de se perfectionner, qui est le caractere specifique de 1'espece 

 humaine ; experiences qui ne paroissent pas avoir etc faites, sur le Pongos et 1'Ourang-outang, avec 

 assez de soin, pour en tirer la mSme conclusion." Disc, sur les Causes, #c., note 10. 



