474 ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN WITH THE LOWER ANIMALS 
the apes in the same order, Primates, ranging in terms of zoological 
equality the genera, Homo, Sima, Lemur, and Vespertilio. Among 
more modern zoologists of eminence, Schreber, Goldfuss, Gray, and 
Blyth, have followed Linnzeus, in being unable to see the necessity of 
distinguishing man ordinally from the apes. 
Blumenbach, and after him, Cuvier, conceived that the possession of 
two hands, instead of four, taken together with other distinctive charac- 
ters of man, was a sufficient ground for the distinction of the human 
family as a distinct order—Sv-mana., 
Professor Owen goes a step further, and raises Homo into a sub- 
class, “lrchencephala,’ because “his psychological powers, in associa- 
tion with his extraordinarily developed brain, entitle the group which 
he represents to equivalent rank with the other primary divisions of 
the class Mamzalza, founded on cerebral characters.” 4 
M. Terres? vindicates the dignity of man still more strongly, by 
demanding for the human family the rank of a kingdom equal to the 
Animalia or Plantz; while, finally, a countryman of our own arrogates 
to his fellows so high a place in the aristocracy of nature as to deny 
that mankind can be thought of zoologically at all. 
From the conception of man as a genus of Przmates to the refusal 
to conceive of him as a subject of zoological investigation, is a wide 
range of opinion—so wide, indeed, as to include all possible views ; 
for in the present state of science, no one is likely to propound the 
idea that man is only a species of some genus of ape. Ingenious and 
learned men have held all the doctrines which have been mentioned; 
great men have held some of them ; and, therefore, it is more than 
probable that the question at issue, if we put the problem in this way, 
is in reality more one of opinion as to the right method of classification 
and the value of the groups which receive certain names, than one of 
fact. But, after all, it is the latter question which really interests 
‘science; and, therefore, it seems to me, that some service may be 
done by setting about the inquiry in a different way—by endeavouring, 
in fact, to answer the question—What is the value of the differences 
observed between man and the lower animals, as compared with the 
differences between the lower animals themselves? Are the differ- 
ences between man and the apes, for example, as great as those 
between the ape and the fish? or are they rather comparable to those 
between the ape and the bird; or, to take a less range, to those be- 
1 Professor Owen on the Characters, &c., of the Class Mammalia, |. c., p. 33. 
2 « Thomme ne forme ni une espéce ni une genre comparable aux Primates. L’homme a 
lui seul constitue un regne a part—le Regne humain.”— Resumé des Legons sur l’Embryologie 
Anthropologique, Comptes Rendus, 1851. 
