chapter of criticism. 
203 
This separation of Man from the rest of Nature, is, I am aware, a popular 
Potion. It was, I suspect, to this notion, to this prejudice, that the lecturer 
wished to do homage, and thus to secure the favour of his audience. But the 
true man of science lives to teach what he himself has learned, what is real 
and capable of proof, not to abase himself before popular prejudices, where these 
are also popular errors, and therefore representatives of nothing existing in 
external Nature. The true man of science carefully distinguishes between what 
is discovered and what is only supposed capable of discovery; the one is fact* 
the other hypothesis; and, again, between rational conjecture, and conjecture 
founded neither on analogy, induction, nor reason. To this last class belongs 
Mr. Lankesters “principle.” But this irrational conjecture (for no evidence 
can be brought to its support) he gives out as a well-ascertained fact, as a truism 
which needs no proof; thus of necessity weakening, both in his own mind and 
in those of his hearers, the real grounds on which all science rests; since he 
makes no difference between the supposed certainty of that which no reason 
supports, and that which is founded on nothing but reason. It may be said, that 
the point at issue is comparatively unimportant, and so it may be; I am willing 
to grant, for the sake of argument, that it is unimportant intrinsically, whether 
Man does possess a 66 principle denied to other animals,” or no; but it is not 
unimportant whether we believe either way without carefully investigating the 
grounds of our belief, or whether we receive nothing as true but what can be 
proved to be so by a well-connected chain of evidence. Once admit that evidence 
is unnecessary to the progress of science (and every one does so who give out a 
mere hypothesis as a known fact), that is, to the determination in our own minds, 
what are and what are not natural facts, and what are and what are not the 
relations which these natural facts bear to one another; admit this, and you at 
once destroy the firm foundation on which the glorious superstructure of modern 
science has been raised; you at once return to that system of hypothesis which 
was the characteristic and the bane of ancient philosophy, and to the fruitless 
and endless logomachies of the middle-age scholastics, who deluged the world with 
their wordy disputations, and at the end had nothing to show as the product of 
all their noise. 
But I deny that it is unimportant to determine Man’s situation relatively to 
the rest of animated Nature, or rather (since all own that he stands at the 
summit) what it is that exalts him in the scale. Other animals we class by 
their structure; but Man, it seems, is privileged to leave structure out of consi¬ 
deration in determining his own rank, and to resort to any fancy that he imagines 
will exalt him. It is, however, but a paltry and contemptible satisfaction which 
is obtained by contemning Nature, and setting up artifice in its stead. Why 
is one animal superior to another ? Its structure is superior. This is saying every 
% VOL. IV.—NO. XXVIII. 2 E 
