Revieius and Notices of Boohs, 



145 



sections of the vertebrata that were so genetically connected — the 

 fishes giving rise to the reptiles, the reptiles to the birds, and the 

 birds to the mammals, — still this would be sufficient to prove 

 man's inseparable association with the same scheme of develop- 

 ment. Whatever may be the law that determines the origination 

 of other species, to the same law must we ascribe the origin of 

 man. Philosophy has no alternative. Science has nothing to 

 gain, but everything to lose, by the adoption of any other opinion. 

 We must look, therefore, for man's precursor in the order that 

 stands next beneath him in the zoological scale ; and wide as the 

 gap may appear, we may suppose it either bridged over by inter- 

 mediate forms that became extinct during the tertiary period, or, 

 if the rate of ascent be more rapid in the higher than in the lower 

 orders, to have been passed over per saltiim, or at most by the 

 intervention of very few such intermediate species. But though 

 one form be descended from another — the higher from the next 

 lower in the scale of creation — such descent differs widely from 

 that of ordinary generation, inasmuch as qualities unknown in the 

 lower form begin to manifest themselves in the higher. Whence 

 then, these newer qualities and higher functions 1 Clearly, not 

 from the predecessor, who did not possess them ; not from the 

 law, which is simply a mode of operation ; but from the Lawgiver, 

 who ordained and continues to sustain the method of development. 

 Similar as the framework of the monkey may be to that of man 

 — nay, were it a hundred times more closely resembling — ^yet 

 every superaddition of reason, gift of speech, moral feeling, and 

 religious sentiment in man, is in reality a new creation — a crea- 

 tion as special as if it had proceeded from the audible ' Let it 

 be' of the Creator. To the devout and philosophic mind the 

 secondary law of causation is the great ' Let it be,' ever ringing 

 through nature as audibly as on the morning of its primal utter- 

 ance." 



Our author, therefore, is opposed to the views of those who 

 think that man is merely an ennobled ape, and that he has a 

 Simian origin. The advocates of this opinion say, that because 

 the lowest ape does not differ from the highest ape in the confor- 

 mation of its skeleton more than does the highest ape from man, 

 therefore man was originally an ape. This, in our opinion, is a 

 complete non sequitur. These statements would merely show that 

 the Creator, in forming animals and man, followed a great type, 

 and that out of a small amount of materials He moulded all the 

 varied forms seen in the animal creation. It shows unity of 

 design and wonderful wisdom. But animals have other charac- 

 teristics than their bony skeleton affords, and so has man. We 

 must consider their anatomy in a physiological point of view, and 

 then we shall at once see marked and evident distinctions. 



On the question of the Antiquity of Man, our author, while he 



NEW SERIES. VOL. XIX. NO. 1. JANUARY 1864. T 



