1018 HISTORICAL GEOLOGY. 



Man, on the contrary, is not Quadrumanous. His limbs are of the 2^rimitive 

 type so common in tlie Eocene. He is plantigrade, " has neither hoofs nor 

 claws to his five toes and fingers, but something between the two." More- 

 over, in his teeth "Man is thoroughly jyrimitive, he having in fact the original 

 quadrituberculate form of molar, with but little modification," and also 

 having " the teeth of the two jaws exactly alike, and making one continuous 

 even series, with nothing of the diastema which prevailed among the 

 higher Monkeys." The body of Man has retrograded also in being 

 merosthenic in limbs, instead of prosthenic, the hinder limbs being the 

 stronger as Avell as longer, and the fore limbs comparatively weak. All 

 these low-grade characteristics and despecialized conditions of the structure 

 evince that Man does not pertain zoologically to the group called Primates, 

 either to the higher or lower end of the series. Considering further the 

 zoological fact that Man is an erect Mammal, and the only erect species 

 in the whole series, the bones throughout the structure, with the double 

 curvature of the back, being adapted to this characteristic ; that his fore 

 limbs are taken from the locomotive series and passed over to the cephalic, 

 to subserve especially the purposes of the brain ; that muscular power is not 

 in him the foundation of grade and efficiency, but that he has a brain more 

 than twice the size of the highest of the Quadrumana, and herein is prosthenic 

 to a preeminent degree, as the labors of his hands and head declare, the 

 divergence from the Quadrumana is manifestly great. Man's " low-grade " 

 or " primitive " characteristics have special fitness for the exalted being ; and 

 this is sufficient reason for their existence. 



Man, moreover, is the last species of the series. Agassiz observed that 

 the Vertebrate type, which began during the Paleozoic in the prone or hori- 

 zontal Fish, became erect in Man, and thus completed the possible changes 

 in the series, to its last term. An erect body, with an erect forehead and a 

 symmetry that is of ideal perfection, admits of no step beyond. 



Man was the first being, in the geological succession, capable of an 

 intelligent survey of nature and a comprehension of her laws; the first 

 capable of augmenting his strength by bending nature to his service, render- 

 ing thereby a weak body stronger than all possible animal force ; the first 

 capable of deriving happiness from truth and goodness ; of apprehending 

 eternal right ; of reaching toward a knowledge of self and God ; the first, 

 therefore, capable of conscious obedience or disobedience of a moral law, 

 and the first subject to debasement of his moral nature through his appetites. 



There is in Man, therefore, a spiritual element in which the brute has 

 no share. His power of indefinite progress, his thoughts and desires that 

 look onward even beyond time, his recognition of spiritual existence and of 

 a Divinity above, all evince a nature that partakes of the infinite and divine. 

 Man is linked to the past through the system of life, of which he is the last, 

 the completing, creation. But, unlike other species of that closing system 

 of the past, he, through his spiritual nature, is more intimately connected 

 with the opening future. 



