MAN AS THE TYPE OF A DISTINCT ORDER. 209 



laws of Nature to arrive at the knowledge of a Great First Cause ; if it be 

 to his mind, and not to instinct, that he has to resort for the maintenance of 

 his own existence, his safety, and his civil advancement ; and if his bodily 

 organization comport with this possession of mind, and harmonize with 

 it alone, so that between his mind and body there exist a mutual balance 

 and correspondence ; then, though the Ape may have an analogy to 

 him, in certain points of its structure, it can claim no real affinity. The 

 anthropoid appearance of the Chimpanzee may, indeed, startle us, and 

 has led to the assignment to it of a far higher ratio of intelligence than 

 it really possesses ; but, it must be remembered that, from the Chim- 

 panzee to the stupid nocturnal Loris, there is a consecutive chain of 

 gradation ; whilst Man, in the most degraded condition of savage life, 

 stands alone, and is still a being of " large discourse, looking before and 

 behind." 



One department of zoology is the right discrimination between the 

 groups into which natural objects are resolvable (and which is rather to be 

 accomplished by taking the totality of organization into account, than by 

 pertinaciously looking at only one or two points of structure) : yet, strange 

 to say, one naturalist places Man, the Monkeys, and the Bats together ; 

 and another, excluding the Bats, considers Man, the Monkeys, and the 

 cheiropodous marsupials, as constituting a natural order. 



It may be deemed that the system which would establish Man as the 

 type of an exclusive order, is the result of a sort of pride, repugnant 

 to the fancied disgrace which the association of him with the Simiae and 

 cheiropodous marsupials would seem to reflect upon our species : but such 

 is not the case ; for Man can be neither raised by one system, nor lowered by 

 another. It is because the totality of his conformation, taking into account 

 the increase in the value of characters as we ascend in the scale, appears to 

 justify his exclusive situation, that it is assigned to him : while, on the 

 contrary, to include Man, the Simiae, and Bats, in one order, because Man 

 has hands, and the Simiae have hands, or hand-like paws ; or, because in the 

 human species the mammae are pectoral, as in Bats and Monkeys, seems 

 to be an effort to distort analogies of structure into proofs of direct and 

 positive affinity. 



Again, the opinion may be expressed that, according to the law of har- 

 mony, the condition of existence which ordains the mutual accordance 

 of organization with necessities, instinct, and intelligence, Man, having a 

 situation in the great scheme of Nature, unique as to mind, destiny, and 

 the place in creation he has to fill, must have an organization in unison 

 with his intellectual exaltation his mental isolation, and which will 

 furnish data sufficient, if duly weighed, to satisfy the physiologist as to 

 the propriety of his being considered as the representative of an exclusive 

 order. 



