The Zoologist— June, 1871. 2621 



place himself. The great point on which Mr. Darwiu relies is 

 evidently the very rudimentary condition of the human foetus and 

 its progressive development anterior to birth : he has taken the 

 utmost pains to place this development before us in the clearest 

 possible light; and invites attention to its correspondence with 

 inferior animals at various stages of their growth. Now I would 

 remark, in the first place, that as the human embryo advances 

 from the state of what may be called a protozoic spermatozoon, 

 or from an ovule fertilized by the spermatozoon, — that is from the 

 most simple, and most imperfect, condition known to the decided and 

 comparatively complex and perfect condition it has assumed before 

 birth, — it must of necessity pass through the intervening or inter- 

 mediate conditions. Then seeing that man, in his consummate 

 skill, has taken advantage of the greater or less perfection of the 

 animal, as affording characters for systematic classification, it 

 seems difficult to conceive anything more inevitable than the cor- 

 respondence between the two : here, on one hand, is a positively 

 ascertained progress towards perfection in a living being, and, on 

 the other, a human classification founded on the degree of per- 

 fection exhibited by Nature herself. Suppose, however, that 

 Cuvier had selected some other character for classification than 

 that of comparative perfection, which he has so admirably carried 

 out in the ' Regne Animal,' then there would have been no corre- 

 spondence between the divine arrangement for progressive develop- 

 ment in the foetus, and the human classification, " according to its 

 organization," of the animal kingdom. A master mind has studied 

 with devout attention the steps of the ladder of life by which Nature 

 mounted from the lowest to the highest, and has selected this 

 graduated ascent towards perfection as the basis of his system. 

 Nature supphes the facts, Cuvier arranges them ; and it must be 

 admitted that he has done so with a sagacity that clearly indicates 

 the existence of the wide "gap" I have already noticed as 

 separating ape from man. 



I am equally a sceptic as to mental advance, and it will doubtless 

 be considered that I have already urged my scepticism far enough 

 on this subject and in this journal. Still it would be scarcely candid 

 to pass over without comment such a passage as the following, 

 which is penned to meet, not viy objections, for Mr. Darwin is 

 scarcely likely to have heard of them, but the objections of those 

 who think as I think. 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VI. 2 E 



