36 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 



a change ; we hope that we have proved so much. Something 

 of the same sort will take place, we think, for the best studied 

 language. There, as with intellect, as with organism, we shall 

 doubtless be able to prove a unity which may be regarded 

 by analogy as necessary, offering alone degrees of gradation 

 in reference to organism and intellect. Every living being (we 

 are only speaking here of vertebrate animals) will appear to be 

 composed of the same constituent parts, but unequally devel- 

 oped, and of which some have only been taken by us for dis- 

 similarities or new parts, on account of our own want of suffi- 

 ciently deep study. As they formerly tried to discover new 

 bones in the heads of fishes, until the time when their relations, 

 connexions, and development were better studied ; so unity of 

 composition has been there recognised and proved where it 

 was least suspected. 



We cannot do better, in order to sum up our ideas on this 

 subject, than quote a passage from the works of a learned 

 man, who in our days has gone most deeply into the study of 

 organic homology, Professor Richard Owen ; it is the last step 

 which has been taken, and indeed the most decisive one, in 

 the momentous question concerning man's place in nature. 



" Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction 

 between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a 

 Bosjesman, 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 of degree, I cannot 

 shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading simili- 

 tude of structure every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous 

 which makes the determination of the difference between 

 Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty. And therefore, 



same means, and our animal functions are almost indistinguishably the 

 same." Sermons, 3rd series, 1857 (preached in 1850), p. 49. "It is the law 

 of being, that in proportion as you rise from lower to higher life, the parts 

 are more distinctly developed, while yet the unity becomes more entire. 

 You find, for example, in the lowest forms of animal life, one organ performs 

 several functions ; one organ being, at the same time, heart, and brain, and 

 blood-vessel. But when you come to man, you find all these various func- 

 tions existing in different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed ; 

 and yet the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet." (Sermons, 

 p. 57.) EDITOR.] 



