because he can love as well as like, and feel the touch of kindred and of friendship both with God and man, therefore earth cannot hold him, and heaven is not too great for him. All this is truism, but it need be reiterated, since men, narrowed by false science, would fix man's place in nature, and forget that he is supernatural, for he can pervert nature, and in will and work resist the teachings of his Maker, and turn the means of good into causes of evil, perhaps for ever.

Man, then, stands apart from animals in body and in reason: that is, in action, faith, intellect, thought, moral feeling, personal habit, social relation, religious life. He, when taught, conceives the qualities of things and infers, even from his own attributes, the attributes of God. The whole ground on which we estimate the difference in mental and moral character between man and man is that which stands altogether between man and mere animals; for who but dreamers would talk of chimpanzees with enlightened consciences, gorillas of fine genius, or monkeys of good morals?

Thought makes the man, and, wanting that, the ape

Looks more inhuman in his human shape;

But thou, O man! a man shalt never see

Till in thyself thou see Divinity.

103

CHAPTER IX.

SPEECH.

HAVE we too boldly assumed and asserted that man is high above all comparison with brutes in his ideation, his feelings, and his thinking? We are likely to be told this is only from our pride and our ignorance, for animals cannot speak and so cannot inform us what they feel and think; not like some men, they do not speak because they have nothing to say. We have, however, heard of one ass at least that was dumb until he had something to say to the purpose, and then he spoke with angel's voice and in a manner to teach a man and a prophet. And, doubtless, if animals possessed ideas communicable in articulate language, they would not remain unprovided with the means of expressing them. In fact, none of the voices in the world are without significance to a philosophic mind; and we need not resort to Æsop's fables to learn morals of brutes if we have the spirit rightly to listen and interpret. Nevertheless, the possession of articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man.'

* Cuvier; and Huxley's Man's Place, &c., p. 103.

Professor Huxley adopts these words, and yet he would contradict them by strangely questioning whether articulate speech be absolutely peculiar to man or not?' We have not heard of any brute putting syllables together, or at least only one instance is on record giving the construction of a sentence naturally uttered by a brute, and that is in Gulliver's Travels, of which, as an Irish bishop said, We don't believe one-half. We should have better authority for natural grammar in brutes, for grammar there is in all articulate speech, if they possessed it; but as man alone thinks, he alone speaks, for words are thoughts uttered by audible or written signs or symbols. But Professor Huxley attributes the lack of language, and probably of logic, to defective organisation about the larynx and lips of apes. He adds: I find it very easy to comprehend that some equally structural difference may have been the primary cause of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the Human from the Simian stirps.' What can this mean? The structural difference between man and the ape makes an infinite divergence, and yet the slightness of the structural difference is what the Professor so strenuously contends for. Surely, what caused the structural difference caused also the immeasurable divergence, and the idea presupposes a Power operating antecedently to the production of that difference and divergence, that is to say, the ape and the man were designed to be creatures infinitely divergent from each other and developed accordingly: a sufficient reason why they should not be classed together until

they can talk the matter over in a logical manner with each other.

We cannot believe that the ape is only a dumb kind of man, nor that man is a speaking kind of ape, and that is all the essential difference. The ape has a voice which he uses well enough for his purpose. There must be something behind to which the visible difference is conformed, or why does the difference thus persist in undeviating lines of descent, man producing man and ape ape? How can the anatomist continue to assert the essential similarity of man to the ape and yet assert the infinite divergence and difference between them? If the difference did not exist in the germ and the cause of the germ, how came the infinite divergence in the development? We can only suppose there is not an essential similarity, but rather an essential difference both in origin and end. In short, to suppose the possibility of the transmutation of one kind of being into another is to suppose a contradiction in terms, a mere absurdity. How, for instance, can a creature constructed to be moved only by instinct be converted into a creature whose perfection consists in being prompted by reason? As Bunsen says, 'No length of time can create a man out of a monkey, because it never can happen; for it is a logical contradiction to suppose the growth of reason out of its opposite, instinct."*

If it be asserted that the transmutation of species

* Egypt, vol. iv. p. 54.

means only that the offspring may take the character of a new and higher species, and not the transmutation of the actual nature, it amounts to the same thing, for how can the transmission of two similar natures make a new nature? Parallel lines can never cross. In short, the ascent of brutes towards their maximum is away from man and not towards him.' 'Every kingdom of nature, instead of approaching nearer and nearer to the next above, till eventually passing into it, in reality becomes more and more remote from it.'*. There is no development of one class into another; they have different beginnings and different endings: in root and in fruit ever and alike distinct, they cannot be improved one into the other. The improvement in a quadruped is quadrupedal, not quadrumanal; and the improvement in a monkey is a monkey's improvement, and not that of a man, for man's improvement is to think better, to reason better, to work better, to worship better, and to be a better man-that is, less and less subject to the mere animal instincts which, as the epitome of nature, he has but to rule them.

Reason is improvable only by instruction, and all instruction is a degree of revelation, an unveiling of the soul to itself by making known some truth to a mind capable of being prepared to receive any and all truth. Therefore reason is conjoined with speech, because reason alone can be taught words and meanings. The claim of humanity to be immortal rests

* See Life, its Nature, &c., p. 419.