24 THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP 



* Not being able," says Owen in his paper on 

 ' The Characters of Mammalia,' * to appreciate or 

 conceive of the distinction between the psychical 

 phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman 

 or of an Aztec with arrested brain-growth, as 

 being of a nature so essential as to preclude a 

 comparison between them, or as being other than 

 a difference in degree, I cannot shut my eyes to 

 the significance of that all-pervading similitude of 

 structure — every tooth, every bone, strictly homo- 

 logous — which makes the determination of the 

 difference between Homo and Pithecus the anato- 

 mist's difficulty.' 



* If before the appearance of man on the earth,' 

 says Ward in his * Dynamic Sociology,' * an 

 imaginary painter had visited it, and drawn a 

 portrait embodying the thorax of the gibbon, the 

 hands and feet of the gorilla, the form and skull 

 of the chimpanzee, the brain development of the 

 orang, and the countenance oi Semnopithecus, giving 

 to the whole the average stature of all of these apes, 

 the result would have been a being not far removed 

 from our conception of the primitive man, and not 

 widely different from the actual condition of 

 certain low tribes of savages. The brain develop- 

 ment would perhaps be too low for the average 

 of any existing tribe, and would correspond better 

 with that of certain microcephalous idiots and 

 cretins, of which the human race furnishes many 

 examples.' 



And it is not true, as is commonly supposed, 

 that, after all other resemblances between the 



