258 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 60. 



but witliout the primitive conception at- 

 tached to the word.) 



Man was claimed as a being isolated from 

 animals generally, and naturalists of ac- 

 knowledged reputation, and one or two of 

 great fame, more or less completely differen- 

 tiated him from the rest of the animal 

 kingdom and even from the animal king- 

 dom itself. 



As long as the isolation of man from the 

 animal kingdom, or from the greater part, 

 was based on metaphysical or psychological 

 ideas, the naturalist perhaps had no cause 

 of quarrel, although he might wonder why 

 a morphologist should stray so far from the 

 field of observation. But when naturalists 

 confused morphological and psychological 

 data, he had reason to protest. This con- 

 fusion was effected by one of great emin- 

 ence. There was no naturalist in Britain 

 about the middle of the century who 

 enjoyed a reputation equal to that of 

 Richard Owen. An anatomist of preemin- 

 ent skill and extraordinary industry, his 

 merits had been appreciated by the entire 

 world. An opinion of his had a weight 

 accorded to no others. Consequently a 

 new classification of the mammals, pub- 

 lished by him in 1857, soon became popular. 

 This classification was founded on al- 

 leged characters of the brain and on succes- 

 sive phases of increase in the cerebrum. 

 Man was isolated not only as the represent- 

 ative of a family, but of an order and sub- 

 class. 



According to Owen, " in Man the brain 

 presents an ascensive step in development, 

 higher and more strongly marked than that 

 by which the preceding subclass was dis- 

 tinguished from the one below it. Not only 

 do the cerebral hemispheres overlap the ol- 

 factory lobes and cerebellum, but they ex- 

 tend in advance of the one and further back 

 than the other. Their posterior develop- 

 ment is so marked that anatomists have as- 

 signed to that part the character of a third 



lobe ; it is peculiar to the genus Homo and 

 equally peculiar is the ' posterior horn of 

 the lateral ventricle,' and the ' hippocampus 

 minor,' which characterize the hind lobe of 

 each hemisphere. The superficial grey mat- 

 ter of the cerebrum, through the number and 

 depth of the convolutions, attains its maxi- 

 mum of extent in Man. Peculiar mental 

 powers are associated with this highest form 

 of brain, and their consequences wonder- 

 fully illustrate the value of the cerebral 

 character." 



The views thus expressed by Owen were 

 reiterated ou various occasions, but many 

 anatomists dissented from them and the 

 rumbling of a future storm was betokened. 

 At last the stormcloud broke and Owen 

 was overwhelmed. At a great popular as- 

 semblage at Oxford, on the occasion of the 

 meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Owen once more 

 urged his contention of the cerebral charac- 

 teristics of man and maintained this wide 

 difference from the apes. 



Huxley immediately rose and, with that 

 cogency of reasoning which characterized 

 him, preceded to divest the subject of the 

 sophistries in which it had been enveloped. 

 " The question," he said, " appeared to him 

 in no way to represent the real nature of 

 the problem under discussion. He would 

 therefore put that problem in another way. 

 The question was partly one of facts and 

 partly one of reasoning. The question of 

 fact was. What are the structural differences 

 between man and the highest apes? — the 

 question of reasoning, What is the systematic 

 value of those differences? Several years 

 ago Prof. Owen had made three distinct as- 

 sertions respecting the differences which 

 obtained between the brain of man and 

 that of the highest apes. He asserted that 

 three structures were ' peculiar to and char- 

 acteristic ' of man's brain — these being the 

 'posterior lobe,' the 'posterior cornu,' and 

 the ' hippocampus minor.' In a controversy 



