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gerous heresy, by showing that the possession of Articulate 

 Language establishes a difference between man and animals, a 

 difference not of degree only, but of kind. 



I wish here to make a brief comment upon a most able notice of 

 the Descent of Man/' which appeared in the British Quarterly 

 Review for October, 1871. Agreeing as I do with the general 

 tenor of the writer's remarks, I most entirely differ from him in 

 one essential point. After disputing the truth of Mr. Darwin's 

 assumed similarity between the minute structure of man and 

 animals, he goes on to say, " If it could be shown that in their 

 minute anatomy the tissues of an ape so closely resembled those 

 of a dog on the one hand, and of a man on the other, as that 

 they could not be distinguished by the microscope, the fact 

 would be of the highest importance, and would add enormously 

 to the evidence already adduced by Mr. Darwin." I cannot 

 agree with the inference here drawn by the able reviewer, w^ho 

 seems to imply that Mr. Darwin's theory is unassailable if he 

 can prove his assertion as to the close similarity in the minute 

 structure of man and animals. I am ready to admit this simi- 

 larity ; I will even strengthen Mr. Darwin's position by remark- 

 ing that we are unable by means of the microscope to distinguish 

 human blood from that of other mammals ; and further^ that 

 there is a remarkable correspondence in the vital properties of 

 the blood of man and animals, as shown by the fact that in the 

 case of apparent death in man from loss of blood, resuscitation 

 has taken place in consequence of the transfusion into the sys- 

 tem of the blood of an animal, as the sheep, or the calf. It is 

 idle to attempt to shirk the import of these physiological results. 

 I admit the force of them. But supposing it is proved to a mathe- 

 matical demonstration that man is like an ape, bone for bone, 

 muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, what then? What does 

 this prove, if it can be shown that man possesses a distinctive 

 attribute, of w^hich not a trace can be found in the ape, an 

 attribute of such a nature as to create an immeasurable gulf 

 between the two ? This attribute I assert to be the faculty of 

 Articulate Language, which I maintain to be a difference, not 

 onty of degree, but of kind, 



I now propose very briefly to explain what I understand by 

 the term faculty of language. I shall then inquire how far 

 this faculty is shared by animals, and having shown that they 

 do not possess it even in an elementary form, I shall then glance 

 at the much-disputed question of the seat of language — the 

 localization of the faculty of speech, — as I need not say, if it could 

 be shown that language had a habitat in any particular part 

 of the brain^ the Darwinian could plead the structural analogy 



