6 MAN. 



with the mind that the powers of the latter may have effect, 

 differs necessarily in many points of construction from the body 

 of every brute. Well might Shakspeare exclaim, " What a piece 

 of work is man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! 

 in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how 

 like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of the 

 world ! the paragon of animals !" h 



The orang utans approach the nearest of all brutes to the 

 human subject. Possessing expression of countenance, elevation 

 of forehead, and less projection of the lower part of the face than 

 other brutes, anterior extremities that are really arms and hands, 

 and teeth of the same number and pretty much of the same figure 

 as our own ; curious, imitative, covetous, social ; said by some to 

 place sentinels and dispose themselves in a train for the propaga- 

 tion of alarm ; to seem now and then to laugh and weep 5 , to walk a 

 little occasionally erect, to defend themselves with sticks and 

 stones, to copulate face to face, to carry their young either in 

 their arms or on their backs, and to be very lascivious in regard 

 to our species ; the orang utans at first sight afford, if any of the 

 genus can afford, a little probability to the opinion of a close con- 

 nection between apes and the human race. Uncivilised men, too, 

 make a slight approach in many corporeal particulars, as we shall 

 hereafter find, to the structure of other animals, and since, also, 

 the circumstances of their existence call into action few of the 

 peculiar mental powers of our nature, they have been adduced in 

 corroboration of this opinion. But the least examination displays 

 differences of the greatest magnitude between the human and the 

 brute creation. k These we shall review under two divisions, the 



h Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2. 



1 Le Cat (Trait^ de V Existence du Fluide des Nerfs, p. 35.) asserts that he had 

 seen the jocko or chimpanzee (simia troglodytes) both laugh and cry. The reader 

 will remember the lines in Milton's Paradise Lost (B. ix.), 



" Smiles from reason flow, 

 To brute denied. " 



The orang utans exhibited a few years ago at Exeter 'Change, the one a 

 satyrus and the other a chimpanzee, are said by their keepers to have sometimes 

 laughed when much pleased, but never to have wept. Steller states the fact of 

 Mreeping in regard to the phoca ursina; Pallas, in regard to the camel ; and Hum- 

 boldt, in regard to a small American monkey. Mr. Lawrence, Lectures, p. 236. 

 * In La Fontaine's charming fable of Le Singe et U Dauphin, the former 



