THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 13 



natural science, no other assistance is required except facts,An 

 order to explain the origin of anything. However, without 

 prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine 

 the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man 

 is of himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, 

 a sort of microcosm, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, 

 may be perhaps a flattering unction to our soul;* it does 

 little or nothing for science. Anthropology may have its 

 special means of inquiry ; perhaps these means are still to be 

 found, but she will stand alone without profit to the other 

 branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which will not 

 grow, casting all its leaves. If not if man enters into the 

 common course of life if he is merely a part of one grand 

 organic whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points 

 of contact and intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised 

 by the principle of universality, becomes a science by which 

 we may profit; it gives to her sisters, the other natural 

 sciences, that assistance which she herself receives from them ; 

 the paths widen ; the science of organisation becomes easier, 

 more certain, and more enlarged; synthesis, displaying its 

 powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown ; the 

 mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, 

 " of not understanding" animals, will study their intelligence, 

 and will search their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we 

 are learning to know them, like Galen the inspired, who ob- 

 tained a knowledge of human anatomy by dissecting a monkey. 

 Let us endeavour to obtain an exact idea of this bar- 

 rier, apparently impossible to be overcome, which separates 

 man from the brute creation. Whether we compare him to 

 the highest order of primates living on trees rthis genius 



* " If I am not mistaken/' says M. de Quatrefages, " there is in this result, 

 independently of the scientific consequences which may proceed from it, a 

 something which responds to our most noble aspirations. Man confers upon 

 himself dominion of his own will; he loves to proclaim himself legitimate 

 sovereign of all things on the surface of this globe ; and, in fact, no creature 

 will dare to dispute with him an empire which, day by day, extends and in- 

 creases. Well ! is it not satisfactory to behold anthropological characteristics 

 sanction and ennoble this empire by placing by the side of the right, which 

 springs from intellectual superiority, the notion of duty, which arises from 

 morality and religion? (Unite de I'Espece Humaine, p. 33.) 



