278 
OWEN’S POSITION IN 
go by them. Aristotle, with his immediate pre- 
decessors and successors, took the broadest 
possible view of the subject; the .structure of 
cuttlefishes and crayfishes interested them as 
much as that of the higher animals. And inas- 
much as the taint of impurity which, in ancient 
times, attached to contact with the dead human 
body, hindered them from obtaining a knowledge 
of the structure of man directly, they were com- 
pelled to divine it, by way of analogy, from their 
observations on apes. In fact, their over-con- 
fidence in the extent to which the likeness ex- 
tended led them into serious errors. At the revival 
of learning, things took another turn. Anatomy 
sank to the level of a mere handmaid to practical 
and theoretical medicine. It was only very much 
later, as the anatomical, like other pure sciences, 
progressed backwards to their original dignity 
and independence, that the position of Democritus 
and of Aristotle was once more reached ; and, 
the study of the living world being taken up for 
the sake of knowledge alone, man assumed his 
place as neither more nor less scientifically in- 
teresting than his fellows. In the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, however, the great anato- 
mists of the Low Countries and of Italy had pushed 
their investigations so far, that more was known 
of the structure of man than of that of any other 
animal. It was therefore natural, and indeed 
unavoidable, that the structure of man should 
