144 Literary and PhilosophicaC Society, 



GRADATION IN MAN AND ANIMALS. 



Few people would expect the doctrine of progress in 

 creation to have any representatives in the early Manchester 

 Society, but this is chiefly because it seems so little known 

 how far the world had advanced in the idea, and how many 

 persons allowed it to pass through their minds. Dr. 

 Charles White (we call him Dr., although not M.D.) had 

 carefully thought of the remarkable smallness of the steps 

 by which nature advances from the lowest forms up to the 

 highest, and also the similar character of the advances 

 in man himself His opinions are to be found in a broad 

 but thin quarto volume published in London in 1799; 

 they had been given previously in a series of papers to the 

 Literary and Philosophical Society. Their publication was 

 not refused by the society, but he himself seems to have 

 thought that it would entail too great an expense on that 

 young institution. The volume is entitled ' An Account 

 of the regular Gradation in Man and in different Animals 

 and Vegetables, &c., from the Former to the Latter.' A 

 plate shows these gradations in man and animals from 

 birds to the highest human type. Mr. White had studied 

 * Camper's Facial Angle Theory,' but had made great 

 advances upon him. He had studied Bonnet, and has given 

 the gradation of animals as shown by him from man to 

 earth and to fire, and even ' a more subtile element,' and 

 he had read Lord Monboddo's writings. He is not willing 

 to go with that very clear-headed advocate of evolution, 

 even to the limited extent attempted to be proved by him. 

 Lord Monboddo does not demand belief in the evolution of 

 man from an animal lower than the ourang-outang, and to 



