in their skulls, but they also imply, if they do not assert, that the varied types originated from different antecedent races of apes. To such reasoners it is enough to reply, first be sure of your facts, and then be sure you know how to read them. The difference between the base of the human skull and that of the gorilla or the orang-utan is very marked. Erect the backbone of the gorilla, and try to balance the gorilla's skull upon it at the proper joint, and you fail. You see the reason why. The joint-surfaces of the neck and the skull correspond perfectly, as in man; but those surfaces in the gorilla's skull are not in the line of the centre of gravity as in man, they are more like those of brutes that walk with face and mouth prone to the earth. The zygomatic processes, or cheek-arches, bulging out from the sides of the ape's skull also more resemble those of a beast of prey, because the muscles which pass under those arches and act on the jaws require to be large and powerful, in keeping with the work which those formidable jaws have to accomplish in crushing for food the hardest nuts of the tropical forests. To whatever part of man's body we look, we shall see, if rightly considered, that the human framework is not constructed merely for animal purposes, but also to subserve reason, which overrules the animal propensities with motives not derived from the body. Animals are governed by their bodies, but man by his mind. He uses the body for ends not belonging to the body. Art, science, philosophy, religion, distinguish man, because he can regulate his will for purposes peculiar to himself. Animals have no will but that which relates to the wants of the body. have sprung from any animal? How, then, can man manity must be higher than itself. Therefore, whereever human nature asserts its prerogative of reason, it bids man face the heavens in prayer, or at least with an onward and upward endeavour and desire towards the origin of reason. Man cannot think of himself without looking off beyond the horizon which bounds his bodily vision. And when taught to look towards his Source, there is that within which tells him that earth is but a stepping-stone to a higher world. Organisation is the instrument of reason in man, and cannot be the cause of that which employs it. And 'if organs are common to man and to brute, one is necessarily forced to the conclusion that intelligence is not inherently attached to organs, but that it depends on another principle-et que Dieu sous les mêmes apparences a pu cacher divers trésors."* We may pursue the zoological method with brain, bone, teeth, blood, muscle, and define man as a mammal of the pectoral order; but, after all, we thus miss the man himself, and at the best have only classified his body. Mind makes the man; and we must return to the first words of Linnæus, under the head Homo: Nosce te ipsum-know thyself, O man. That, indeed, * Bossuet, De la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même, cap. v. xiii. D includes not only all we can learn from the revelations of time, but from those of eternity also; that is to say, if man be immortal, which he must be, or his desires are beyond his destiny and he is only an incongruous being, created with the promise of a purpose never to be fulfilled. 35 CHAPTER III. THE HYPOTHETICAL GENESIS OF MAN. HAVING considered the bearing of man's bodily likeness and unlikeness to apes and other animals, let us now proceed to enquire how far the theories of life, either new or old, will assist us to form a conception of the origin and standing-place of the first man. Though looking with reverence and awe at the lowest creatures, and, in a sense, feeling ready to say with Job-Thou O worm art my mother;' and truly, moreover, being linked to the relationship by much of conformation, and by necessities in common; with the consciousness, too, that the touch of Omnipotence is ever evident alike in the flesh and life of maggots and of men-one may yet find it not the less unpleasant to be told we are derived in a direct line even from apes. Indeed, if we may believe those who pretend to have seen traces of genealogy so far back, it appears that if our real origin be sought, we-identity being involved in the continuity-we ourselves can be no other than mere developments of reptilian or some earlier spawn, and might have become toads or other slimy coldblooded creatures, but for circumstances that diverted our tendencies in that line, and produced a greater enormity of deviation from the pristine type of creepers and crawlers by wriggling us into being as men and women. We must not complain, however, that our reason is offended at such information lest our reason itself should be suspected; but really we require a good amount of some sort of philosophy not to laugh when told that a duck, for instance, was not expressly intended to be a duck with a web-foot, that it might pleasantly move on the water, but that its forefathers and mothers a long way back began under pressing circumstances to get a duckish disposition, and by dint of endeavour for ages to try their chance of paddling themselves about on the pools of a puddly world their efforts were at length quite rewarded and resulted in a complete success-so remarkable, indeed, at last, that a generation sprang from them thoroughly equipped for the waters with web-feet, oily backs, boat-shaped bodies, spoony bills, and bowels to correspond with mudworms and duckweed. Thus, also, it is said that polar bears of peculiar make pawed about in the arctic seas, catching shrimps and jelly-fish, until their coarse hairy coats turned into a kind of seal-skin, and their whole economy at length was reduced to, or produced in, the form of a kind of walrus, and then a whale, so that train-oil and blubber are but developments of bear's grease. There was nothing abrupt or startling in those changes, they were so very, very slow; which of course arose from the struggle to determine amongst the existing tendencies |