CONCERNING THE HIGHER MAMMALIA. 165 



essence of the Animating Spirit of the universe, but hold an invisible 

 communion with that beneficent Parent ? 



•It is upon these six characteristics that Man may base his right to 

 repudiate all fellowship with the lower animals, save in the fact of his 

 enjoying an animal. existence and submitting to the laws which gov- 

 ern the animal kingdom. Many other distinctive marks can be ad- 

 duced, but can hardly be considered necessary, if full value be accor- 

 ded to the six above enumerated. Those, lio^vever, which depend 

 upon Man's superior cerebral organization, and which have been so 

 ably demonstrated by Owen, are well worthy of examination. 



However ingeniously Prof. Huxley has reasoned upon the fellowship 

 of Man with the brutes, there are many who will not appreciate his 

 argunaent as highly as he does himself. They will naturally "reason 

 on this wise. If Nature chooses to bring Man into existence through 

 the medium of an ovum, in the same way as she introduces to the 

 world a dog or a chicken, and if, before and after birth, man is nour- 

 ished as other placental mammals are, this only proves the consistency 

 and uniformity of Nature in her laws. If man be in his corporeal 

 part an animal, why should Nature, in his case, depart from the law 

 of animal reproduction and nutrition ? That, up to a certain point of 

 embryonic life he cannot be distinguished from a dog, is not to be re- 

 garded as a proof of the characteristic and essential identity of the two 

 up to that point, but of our inability to penetrate deeply enough into 

 the mysteries of Nature to perceive a distinction. As to Prof. Hux- 

 ley's position, that Man is one in substance and in structure with the 

 brutes, it may be replied — If Man was created a denizen of the same 

 planet as these animals, with organs of animal life suited to his posi- 

 tion, should we not expect his substance to be similar to theirs ? If 

 ^he had to breathe an atmosphere and feed on organic substances of the 

 same chemical composition, his bone and his muscle and his blood 

 would, in accordance with natural laws, present characteristics similar 

 to those of other animals. And so of anatomical structures. In this 

 particular we might justly expect a similarity corresponding with the 

 similarity of position in which both, as living beings are placed. The 

 laws of pneumatics are obeyed in respiration, of hydraulics in circula- 

 tion, of optics in vision, of mechanics in muscular action. If these 

 laws are suitable to Man as an animal, why may they not regulate the 

 economy of the brute, and his structure also be arranged for the action 

 of these laws ? It appears unworthy of a philosopher when reasoning 



