REVIEWS. 
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“ By turns,” he says, “ man has been made to constitute a special kingdom, 
a branch of the animal kingdom, a class, an order, a sub-order, a family, a sub- 
family, a genus, a simple species of an order in which he has found himself 
closely linked together with the apes ! 
“ It is not for me to discuss all these opinions, some of them of so strange 
a character ; it will suffice that I should justify the one which I have held 
for many years, and which day by day I am more disposed to regard as the 
only true one. 
“ In my estimation man has as fair a title to be classed distinctly from the 
animal kingdom as the latter may be said to differ from the vegetable king- 
dom. He alone should constitute a separate realm, the human kingdom,* 
which is characterized by distinctive features of the same order as those 
which separate from one another the primordial groups that I have just 
enumerated.” 
The title of man to a separate kingdom in nature is found not in his 
anatomy, nor yet in the mode in which he exercises his animal functions ; 
not in the possession of a voice, nor even in those emotions which are manifested 
so strongly in the human race. All these the author is willing to concede 
in a greater or less degree to the higher animals with whom man holds them 
in common. The attributes that entitle him to the distinction accorded to 
him are (as the reader will doubtless anticipate) his sense of right and wrong, 
his consciousness of the existence of the Deity, and his hope of immortality. 
As there are, however, many authors who have denied to some of the 
most degraded races of men the possession of any of these attributes, the 
narratives of Dr. Livingstone and of other travellers are quoted to prove that 
even the most barbarous tribes possess at least the germs of these faculties ; 
for even the idol-worship of the most debased Polynesians affords to the 
author sufficient evidence of the existence of religion in their minds. 
He thus concludes his review of this portion of the subject : — “ In order to 
follow Linnseus step by step in the definition of the nature of man, his 
characteristics, as he would be zoologically t designated, are — Man is a body, 
or rather an organized being, living, feeling, moving spontaneously, and 
endowed with morality and religion!' 
Having thus sought generally to establish for mankind the major position 
of being so far superior to the animal races as to occupy a separate realm in 
nature, the author now descends to the consideration of “ species,” with a 
view to show that there are no specific differences between the varieties, as he 
considers them, of the human race. 
He regards species as the “ unity " of which all other subdivisions of the 
animal kingdom are composed (genera, families, orders, &c.), but “ species” 
is itself divisible into fractions, called varieties. 
Now, the question at issue between the advocates of that theory, which 
includes all the peoples of the earth in one species (“ monogenistes ”), and 
those who believe them to consist of more than one (“ polygenistes ”), is, 
whether the distinctions which characterize certain human groups are such 
as to constitute each a distinct species or “ unity,” or whether they amount 
only to a variety or “ fraction.” 
This being the case, it is of primary importance that our readers should 
* “ Le regne liomminal, ou regne humain.” 
t We beg the reader to remember this expression, as we shall revert to it 
in our criticisms. 
R 2 
