attributed to sexual selection,' incipient man being supposed to have chosen mates with less and less hairy bodies; and the possibility of such action is thought by Mr. Darwin to be supported by the fact that certain monkeys have parts of the body naked. Yet it is a fact that the higher apes have not this nakedness, or have it in a much smaller degree.

Secondly, as to the races of mankind, Mr. Darwin's theory, indeed, requires the alternation of constancy and caprice to account for the selection and the conservation of marked varieties. In order that each race may possess and preserve its own ideal standard of beauty, we require the truth of the hypothesis that 'certain tastes may in the course of time become inherited'; and yet Mr. Darwin candidly admits (vol. ii. p. 353), 'I know of no evidence in favour of this belief.' On the other hand, he says (p. 370), 'As soon as tribes exposed to different conditions came to vary, each isolated tribe would form for itself a slightly different standard of beauty,' which would gradually and inevitably be increased to a greater and greater degree.' But why have not the numerous tribes of North American Indians diverged from each other more conspicuously, inhabiting, as they do, such different climates, and surrounded by such diverse conditions?

Again, far from each race being bound in the trammels of its own features, all cultivated Europeans, whether Celts, Teutons, or Slavs, agree in admiring the Hellenic ideal as the highest type of human beauty.

We may now pass on to the peculiarities of man's bodily frame, and the value and the signification of the resemblances presented by it to the various structures which are found to exist in lower members of the animal kingdom.

Mr. Darwin treats us to a very interesting account, not only of man's anatomy, but also of the habits, diseases, and parasites (internal and external) of man, together with the

process of his development. He points out (vol. i. p. 11) not only the close similarity even of cerebral structure between man and apes, but also how the same animals are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as we are; thus Rengger, who carefully observed for a long time the Cebus Azar in its native land, found it liable to catarrh, with the usual symptons, and which when often recurrent, led to consumption. These monkeys suffered also from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. The younger ones, when shedding their milk-teeth, often died from fever. Medicines produced the same effect on them as on us. Many kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors; they will also, as I have myself seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure.' He also tells us of baboons which, after taking too much beer, 'on the following morning were very cross and dismal, held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons.' He notices, besides, the process of development in man with the transitory resemblances it exhibits to the immature conditions of other animals, and he mentions certain muscular abnormalities.

Mr. Darwin also brings forward an observation of Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, as to a small projection of the helix or outermost fold of the human ear, which projection 'we may safely conclude' to be 'a vestige of formerly pointed ears— which occasionally re-appears in man' (vol. i. p. 23). Very many other interesting facts are noted which it would be superfluous here to recapitulate. It is, however, in connection with man's bodily structure and its resemblances, that we have observed slight errors on the part of Mr. Darwin, which it may be as well to point out; though it should be borne in mind that he does not profess to be in any sense an

anatomist. Thus, at vol. i. p. 28, he mistakes the supracondyloid foramen of the humerus for the inter-condyloid perforation. Did the former condition frequently occur in man-as, through this mistake, he asserts-it would be remarkable indeed, as it is only found in the lower monkeys and not in the higher. A more singular mistake is that of the malar bone for the premaxilla (vol. i. p. 124).

To return to the bodily and other characters enumerated at such length by Mr. Darwin. They may, and doubtless they will, produce a considerable effect on readers who are not anatomists, but in fact the whole and sole result is to show that man is an animal. That he is such is denied by no one, but has been taught and accepted since the time of Aristotle. We remember on one occasion meeting at a dinnertable a clever medical man of materialistic views. He strongly impressed the minds of some laymen present by an elaborate statement of the mental phenomena following upon different injuries, or diseased conditions of different parts of the brain, until one of the guests remarked as a climax, 'Yes; and when the brain is entirely removed the mental phenomena cease altogether the previous observations having only brought out vividly what no one denied, viz., that during this life a certain integrity of bodily structure is requisite for the due exercise of the mental powers. Thus Mr. Darwin's remarks are merely an elaborate statement of what all admit, namely, that man is an animal. They further imply, however, that he is no more than an animal, and that the mode of origin of his visible being must be the mode of his origin as a whole-a conclusion of which we should not question the legitimacy, if we could accept Mr. Darwin's views of man's mental powers.

All that can be said to be established by our author is, that if the various kinds of lower animals have been evolved one from the other by a process of natural generation or

evolution, then it becomes highly probable à priori that man's body has been similarly evolved; but this, in such a case, becomes equally probable from the admitted fact that he is an animal at all.

The evidence for such a process of evolution of man's body amounts, however, only to an à priori probability, and might be reconciled with another mode of origin if there were sufficient reason (of another kind) to justify a belief in such other mode of origin. Mr. Darwin says:-It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demigods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion' (vol. i. p. 32). But this is not the case; for many demur to his conclusion because they believe that to accept his view would be to contradict other truths which to them are far more evident.

He also makes the startling assertion that to take any other view than his as to man's origin, 'is to admit that our own structure and that of all the animals around us, is a mere snare laid to entrap our judgment' (vol. i. p. 32). Mr. Darwin is, we are quite sure, far enough from pretending that he has exhausted the possibilities of the case, and yet could anything but a conviction that the whole field had been explored exhaustively justify such an assertion? If, without such a conviction, it were permissible so to dogmatise, every theoriser who had attained to a plausible explanation of a set of phenomena might equally make use of the assertion, and say, until a better explanation was found, that to doubt him would be to attribute duplicity to the Almighty.

In tracing man's origin Mr. Darwin is again betrayed into slight inaccuracies. Thus, in combating a position, advanced in the Quarterly Review, that the hands of apes had been

1 See that for April 1869, p. 392.

preformed (with a view to man) in a condition of perfection beyond their needs, he says:

'On the contrary, I see no reason to doubt that a more perfectly constructed hand would have been an advantage to them, provided, and it is important to note this, that their hands had not thus been rendered less well adapted for climbing trees. We may suspect that a perfect hand would have been disadvantageous for climbing; as the most arboreal monkeys in the world, namely Ateles in America and Hylobates in Asia, either have their thumbs much reduced in size and even rudimentary, or their fingers partially coherent, so that their hands are converted into grasping-hooks.'-Vol. i. p. 140.

In a note, Mr. Darwin refers to the Syndactyle Gibbon as having two of the digits coherent. But these digits are not, as he supposes, digits of the hand but toes. Moreover, though doubtless the Gibbons and spider-monkeys are admirably organised for their needs, yet it is plain that a well developed thumb is no impediment to climbing, for the strictly arboreal Lemurs are exceedingly well furnished in this respect. Again he says (vol. i. p. 143) of the Gibbons, that they, without having been taught, can walk or run upright with tolerable quickness, though they move awkwardly, and much less securely than man.' This is a little misleading, inasmuch as it is not stated that this upright progression is effected by placing the enormously long arms behind the head or holding them out backwards as a balance in progression.

We have already seen that Mr. Darwin tries to account for man's hairlessness by the help of 'sexual selection.' He also, however, speculates as to the possibility of his having lost it through heat of climate, saying:- Elephants and rhinoceroses are almost hairless; and as certain extinct species which formerly lived under an arctic climate were covered with long wool or hair, it would almost appear as if the existing species of both genera have lost their hairy covering from exposure to heat' (vol. i. p. 148).