472 ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN WITH THE LOWER ANIMALS 
importance than, as it seems to me, can rationally attach to its issue. 
For whether, as some think, man is, by his origin, distinct from all 
other living beings, or whether, on the other hand, as others suppose, 
he is the result of the modification of some other mammal, his duties 
and his aspirations must, I apprehend, remain thesame. The proof of 
his claim to independent parentage will not change the brutishness of 
man’s lower nature ; nor, except to those valet souls who cannot see 
greatness in their fellow because his father was a cobbler, will the 
demonstration of a pithecoid pedigree one whit diminish man’s divine 
right of kingship over nature ; nor lower the great and princely dignity 
of perfect manhood, which is an order of nobility, not inherited, but 
to be won by each of us, so far as he consciously seeks good and avoids 
evil, and puts the faculties with which he is endowed to their fittest 
use. 
Important or unimportant in its final results as it may be, however, 
there can be no doubt that the controversy as to the real position of man 
still exists ; and I have therefore thought that it would be useful to 
contribute my mite towards the enrichment of the armoury upon which 
both sides must, in the long run, be dependent for their weapons, by 
endeavouring to arrange and put in order the facts of the case, so far 
as they consist of the only matters of which the anatomist and physio- 
logist can take cognizance—I mean facts of discernible structure and of 
demonstrable function. If any one assert that there are other orders 
of facts which enter into this question, but which are distinguished by 
being neither demonstrable nor discernible, all that can be replied is, 
that science is incompetent either to affirm or deny his proposition, 
confined, as she is, to the humble, if safe, region of observation and 
of logic. 
No-one denies, I believe, that there are multitudes of analogies and 
affinities of structure and function connecting man with other living 
beings. Man takes his origin in an ovum similar in form, in size, and 
in structure to that whence the dog or the rabbit arise. The physical 
process which determines the development of the embryo within that 
ovum ; the successive stages of that development ; the mode in which 
the human fcetus is nourished within the maternal organism; the 
process of birth ; the means provided by nature for the due supply of 
nutriment after birth: are essentially alike in all three cases. Com- 
pare the bony frame-work, the muscles, the great vessels, the viscera, 
of man, the dog, and the rabbit, and the demonstration of a pervading 
unity of plan in all three is one of the triumphs of modern science. 
The most certain propositions entertained by the human physiolo- 
gist, those upon which the scientific practice of the healing art depends, 
