XXVI 
ON THE ZOOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF MAN WITH 
THE LOWER ANIMALS. 
The Natural History Review, 1861, pp. 67-84. 
AS the biological sciences have grown in breadth and in depth, and 
as successive generations of naturalists have succeeded in penetrating 
further and further into the arcana of nature, the questions—In what 
relation does the thinker and investigator stand to the objects of his 
inquiries? What is the tie which connects man with other anim- 
ated and sentient beings ?—have more and more forcibly pressed for 
a reply. 
Nor have responses been wanting ; but, unfortunately, they have 
been diametrically opposed to one another. Theologians and moralists, 
historians and poets, impressed by a sense of the infinite responsi- 
bilities of mankind, awed by a just prevision of the great destinies in 
store for the only earthly being of practically unlimited. powers, or 
touched by the tragic dignity of the ever-recurring struggle of human 
will with circumstance, have always tended to conceive of their kind 
as something apart, separated by a great and impassable barrier, from 
the rest of the natural world. 
On the other hand, the students of physical science, discovering as 
complete a system of law and order in the microcosm as in the macro- 
cosm, incessantly lighting upon new analogies and new identities 
between life as manifested by man, and life in other shapes,—have no 
less steadily gravitated towards the opposite opinion, and, as know- 
ledge has advanced, have more and more distinctly admitted the 
closeness of the bond which unites man with his humbler fellows. 
A controversy has raged between these opposed schools, and, as 
usual, passion and prejudice have conferred upon the battle far more 
