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that there is no reason for believing that apes and men are but bodily and mental modifications derived from the same stock. It rather follows, from the law of avitism, as an inevitable truth, that all living creatures were created according to their kind, and therefore that the first man was expressly created as the parent of mankind, and not produced as by a natural selection from a peculiar race of apes, who were wiped out from creation without leaving a trace of their existence behind them. The law of avitism, of course, applies as restricting the dispositions and instincts in lines of inherited peculiarity equally with the distinctive characteristic forms propagated in kinds.

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CHAPTER VI.

MAN THE PRIMATE.

EVERY creature takes its place in nature; and that is precisely the proper place for any creature which it is best qualified to occupy. In this respect man is undoubtedly the primate-he takes the first place; and notwithstanding that Mr. Huxley merely follows Linnæus in his class of primates, including man with apes and monkeys, he not only uses a contradiction in the term primate as applied to any creatures but man, but he also contradicts facts, for there is no creature that can be classed as on a par or even next to man, in respect to position arising from endowment. Man is the first, that is, the only primate, and the rest are equally at a distance below him. There cannot be two or three primates in the same line, nor can two creatures with an infinite divergence between them be ever, on true scientific principles, classed together. Even according to Mr. Huxley's own acknowledgment, there is an infinite gap between man and the ape. Yet he leaps over this gap by an anatomical effort, and classes man and ape in the same category because their bones are somewhat alike, and so, notwithstanding the infinite

disparity in their minds, they are both primates. How does he account for the infinite disparity in their minds if their structural similarity be so close, seeing he asserts that there is no faculty, moral or intellectual, that does not depend on structure? He must, as already shown, either have overlooked some marked difference in their structure, or he must be wrong in his conclusion as to the dependence of faculty on structure. Man in his pride, folly, and madness, often mistakes his place among his fellows, but animals never naturally lose their place. If any man will strive aright to attain his right position, he will find the place God designs for him, which is the best place he can find. A diamond and a coal are rightly classed together as consisting of carbon, and so may the bodies of men and monkeys be classed as akin in the matter of bones; but taking the qualities that appear in them, who would practically place them together?

Man's place in creation is not quite determined by his seeming anatomical affinities. Is he or can he be placed next to the ape merely because his bones, muscles, and brain are somewhat like the ape's? No; by his tastes, actions, and habits he is formed and fitted for purposes entirely beyond the reach of chimpanzee or gorilla. It is not general resemblance in outward form that justifies a naturalist in classifying two creatures together. Minute differences in some particulars may cause them to live and look wide apart. A horse and a rhinoceros, as to their skeletons, are very similar, but in habit how unlike! The difference between the

minute structure of the human body and that of the ape is really immense, and no true anatomist would mistake a single bone or muscle in man's body for the ape's; neither would any physiologist say that any part of the human fabric would be suited to the ape's manner of life; and no animal could take man's place, simply because, whatever the general resemblance, there is no more fitness for man's proper employments in the body of a brute than there is in its mind.

The question is not what is it like, but what can it do? That determines man's place, both bodily and mentally. True, men teach monkeys human tricks, and multitudes have paid to see a man do badly what a monkey would do better. But that only shows how fond fools are of seeing contrasts and incongruities; wonder is more congenial than wisdom to minds that seem unconscious of themselves without something sensational.

It does not require many ages to make roving men into savages, but all the ages have failed to make a savage into a simian primate, an ape of even the first class, or to improve an ape into a fetish-fearing negro, that other possibly improvable species of man. Science, at least, does not record any instance of savages being transmuted into apes; but perhaps the transmutationists may be thankful for a tradition in their favour, and therefore the authority of the natives about the Bight of Benin may be quoted, to the effect that the chimpanzees abounding there did once belong to their tribe, but were expelled for their filthy habits; and

the consequence was, that, not improving their propensities, and being entirely inattentive to their morals and manners, they by degrees assumed a beastly form in keeping with their mental condition.* A moral for us, and a fact, with a fancy in it, not to be overlooked in any future edition of Professor Kingsley's Water Babies.

It is not true, however, that man's physical nature is so nearly allied to that of apes as to afford even the slightest grounds for the suspicion that they are related by natural descent. An ape is not only a beast by birthright, in being exempted from human responsibilities, tailors, cooks, and clergy, but he is a beast every bit of him. From germ to full growth and greyness, every atom of him is essentially ape-only ape; every fibre, every hair, every pore, every function is altogether other than human in mould and fashion. The very globules of the blood, and the liquor in which they roll and live, are so different from man's, that they would probably convey death instead of life if injected into

man's veins.

We might refer to functions of the body which are timed, the importance of which may be philosophically appreciated; the beat of the heart, the tone and contraction of the muscles, and, indeed, all the workings of the body are differently timed in man. What would any human mother think of a baby born with a full suit of clothes on, and with arms strong and long

* Dr. Savage's Paper, quoted by Huxley, Man's Place, p. 45.

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