202 



ON THE VARIETIES 



or rather of ages, acquiring a visible or oyster-like form, with little gills, 

 instead of lungs, and, like the 05^ster, produced spontaneously, without dis- 

 tinction into sexes ; that, as reproduction is always favourable to improvement, 

 the aquatic or oyster mannikin, by being progressively accustomed to seek its 

 food on the nascent shores or edges of the primajval ocean, must have grown, 

 after a revolution of countless generations, first into an amphibious, and 

 then into a terrestrial animal; and, in like manner, from being without sex, 

 first also into an androgynous form, and thence into distinct male and 

 female.* 



It is not necessary to notice this dream of a poetizing philosopher, which 

 had also been dreamed of long before his own day, any farther than to remark 

 that it is in every respect inferior to the opinion of two of the most celebrated 

 schools of ancient Greece, the Epicurean and the Stoic; who, though they 

 disagreed on almost every other point, concurred in their dogma concerning 

 the origin of man ; and believed him to have sprung, equally with plants and 

 animals of every kind, from the tender soil of the new-formed earth, at that 

 time infinitely more powerful and prolific ; produced in myriads of little 

 wombs that rose, like mole-hills, over the surface of the ground, and were 

 afterward transformed, for his nourishment, into myriads of glandular and 

 milky bulbs, so as to form a marvellous substitute for the human breast. 



In the correct and elegant description of Lucretius, — 



Terra cibum pueris, vestem vapor, herba cubile 

 Prsebebat, multa et molli lanugine abundans.t 



Earth fed the nursling, the warm ether clothed, 

 And the soft downy grass his couch composed. 



And frivolous as such a theory may appear in the present day, it was the only 

 one which was current among the Grecian or Roman philosophers, except that 

 which supposed mankind to have been propagated by eternal generation, and 

 of course the universe, like himself, to be eternal and self-existent : compared 

 with which, an origin from the dust of the earth, even after the manner of 

 vegetables, is incomparably less monstrous and absurd. 



Let us now pass on to the hypothesis of those modern philosophers who 

 would associate the tribes of man with the tribes of the monkey, and origi- 

 nate both from one common stock, in the same manner as the ox and buffalo 

 are said to be derived from the bison, and the different varieties of sheep from 

 the argali. 



There are a few wonderful histories afloat of wild men and wild women 

 found in the woods of Germany and France; some of which are said to have 

 been dumb, others to have had the voice of sheep or of oxen, and others again 

 to have walked on all-fours. And from these few floating tales, not amounting, 

 in modern times, to more than nine or ten, Linnaeus thought proper to introduce 

 the orang-otang into the human family, and to regard such instances of wild 

 men as the connecting species between this animal and mankind in a state 

 of civilized society. Whence Lord Monboddo has amused us with legends 

 of men found in every variation of barbarism ; in som.e iiistances even un- 

 gregarious or solitary; in others, uniting, indeed, into small hordes, but so 

 scanty even in natural or inarticulate language, as to be obliged to assist their 

 own meaning by signs and gestures ; and, consequently, to be incapable of 

 conversing in the dark; of a third sort who have in some degree improved 

 upon their natural language, but have still so much of the savage beast be- 

 longing to them, as to employ their teeth and nails, which last are not less 

 than an inch long, as weapons of defence ; and of a fourth sort, found in an 

 island of the Indian seas, with the full possession of speech, but with tails 

 like those of cats or monkeys ; a set of dreadful cannibals, which at one time 

 killed and devoured every Dutchman they could lay their hands upon. 



It is truly wonderful that a scholar of Lord Monboddo's accomplishments 



* See Temple of Nature, Cant, i.p.26. 29, ii. p. 54, iv. 158, and the additional notes on Spontaneous Vital* 

 Uy and RepnoducUon. T I>e Rer. Nat. v. 803. 



