"huxleTs law/ 443 



Huxley in his celebrated work, which we have so often 

 quoted, on the " Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature," — 

 the way afforded by Comparative Anatomy and Ontogeny. 

 We have to compare objectively all the several organs of 

 Man with the same organs in the higher Apes, and then to 

 ascertain whether the differences between the former and 

 the latter are greater than the corresponding differences 

 between the higher and lower Apes. The indubitable and 

 indisputable result of this comparative anatomical investi- 

 gation which was conducted with the greatest candour and 

 accuracy, was the important law, which,, in honour of its 

 discoverer, we have named Huxley's Law ; namely, that the 

 physical differences between the organization of Man and 

 that of the most highly developed Apes known to us, are 

 much smaller than the corresponding differences between 

 the higher and lower Apes. We might even define this law 

 yet more exactly by excluding entirely the Platyrhina or 

 American Apes as being more remote relatives, and limiting 

 our comparison to the narrower circle of relatives, the 

 Catarhina, or Apes of the Old World. Even within this 

 small group of Mammals, we found the differences of struc- 

 ture between the higher and lower Narrow-nosed Apes, for 

 example between the Gorilla and the Baboon, much greater 

 than the differences between these Man-like Apes and Man 

 When, in addition, we now turn to Ontogeny, and when we 

 find there, according to our "law of the ontogenetic con- 

 nection of systematically related forms, that the embryos of 

 Man and of the Man-like Apes, are identical for a longer 

 period than the embryos of the highest and of the lowest 

 Apes, we are certainly obliged to bring ourselves, whether 

 with a good or a bad grace, to acknowledge our origin from 



