REVIEWS. 
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doctrine had to contend. People who were quite contented to speak of the 
apes as ‘ our cousins/ and to regard them as unquestionably the nearest rela- 
tions of mankind, taking those words in a merely classificational sense, and 
who, on the other hand, would probably have had no objection to accept the 
theory of evolution if confined to plants and the lower animals, cried out 
loudly against the new view as soon as it appeared clearly that if they were 
true for one series of organisms they must apply equally to the whole. ‘ The 
dignity of man ’ was said to be gravely compromised by any such admission 
as this ; and it will be remembered by many that this sentiment was the 
engine principally employed to bring the general public into a state of 
feeling antagonistic to any hypothesis of evolution. 
Side by side with these considerations, founded on the so-called 1 dignity 
of man/ and, indeed, to a considerable extent springing from them, or 
forming part of them, came certain religious or theological objections, which 
were not without considerable influence. Divines and religious writers had 
for many years held it as a fixed principle, not only that man was the only 
reasoning being, but that his rationality was due to the possession of a soul, 
an advantage said to be denied to all lower animals ; and then, arguing 
somewhat in a circle, the exclusive possession of reason by man was taken as 
evidence of his having a soul. Hence it is easy to understand how the dis- 
pute as to the identity, or otherwise, of the mental phenomena of man and 
other animals, became really the turning-point in this discussion ; for it is 
quite clear that, in case the identity was demonstrated, there would b^ no 
ground for denying souls to all animals (as indeed has been maintained by 
the Rev. J. G. Wood); or else the evidence hitherto relied on for demon- 
strating the existence of the soul in man would become nugatory, and such 
evidence would have to be sought somewhere else. With this, however, we 
have nothing to do ; the only object of the preceding remarks being to indi- 
cate the principal reasons which have caused such attention to be given of 
late years to the comparison of the mmtal operations of man and animals. 
In two of his works : On the Descent of Man, and On the Expression of 
the Emotions in Man and Animals, Mr. Darwin has himself treated more or 
less fully upon these matters ; and the question will be found handled in 
greater or less detail in nearly all the numerous books in which the possible 
origin of man by evolution from some lower type of organism has come 
under consideration. The Rev. J. G. Wood has devoted a special work 
to the attempted demonstration of the precise agreement between the mental 
phenomena of man and animals ( Man and Beast, 2 vols., 1874) ; but he tacks 
on to his argument in this direction a somewhat unfortunate corollary, 
namely, that this identity being proved, it follows that all animals, as well 
as man, possess immortal souls. 
Upon the general question of the identity in kind of the mental opera- 
tions of animals and men, it seems to us that no one possessing fair powers 
of observation and analysis who has ever ma'le a friend of his dog can 
entertain the slightest doubt. It is not so much upon special instances of 
intelligence (of which we have had rather a surfeit in the columns of Nature 
during the last two years), but rather upon the general behaviour of the 
animal, his daily Leben und Treiben, that we would rely. In all such 
an animal’s ordinary actions we have examples of reasoning, at least as 
