About twenty-five centuries ago, a voyager called Hanno is said to have sailed from Carthage, between the Pillars of Hercules—that is, through the Straits of Gibraltar—along the shores of Africa. “Passing the Streams of Fire,” says the narrator, “we came to a bay called the Horn of the South. In the recess there was an island, like the first, having a lake, and in this there was another island full of wild men. But much the greater part of them were women, with hairy bodies, whom the interpreters called ‘Gorillas.’ Pursuing them, we were not able to take the men; they all escaped, being able to climb the precipices; and defended themselves with pieces of rock. But three women, who bit and scratched those who led them, were not willing to follow. However, having killed them, we flayed them, and conveyed the skins to Carthage; for we did not sail any further, as provisions began to fail.”35

In the opinion of many naturalists, the wild men of this story were the anthropoid or manlike apes which are now called gorillas, rediscovered recently by Du Chaillu. The region inhabited by the gorillas is a well-wooded country, “extending about a thousand miles from the Gulf of Guinea southward,” says Gosse; “and as the gorilla is not found beyond these limits, so we may pretty conclusively infer that the extreme point of Hanno was somewhere in this region.” I must confess these inferences seem to me somewhat open to question, and the account of Hanno’s voyage only interesting in its relation to the gorilla, as having suggested the name now given to this race of apes. It is not probable that Hanno sailed much further than Sierra Leone; according to Rennell, the island where the “wild men” were seen, was the small island lying close to Sherbro, some seventy miles south of Sierra Leone. To have reached the gorilla district after doubling Cape Verd—which is itself a point considerably south of the most southerly city founded by Hanno—he would have had to voyage a distance exceeding that of Cape Verd from Carthage. Nothing in the account suggests that the portion of the voyage, after the colonizing was completed, had so great a range. The behaviour of the “wild men,” again, does not correspond with the known habits of the gorilla. The idea suggested is that of a species of anthropoid ape far inferior to the gorilla in strength, courage, and ferocity.

The next accounts which have been regarded as relating to the gorilla are those given by Portuguese voyagers. These narratives have been received with considerable doubt, because in some parts they seem manifestly fabulous. Thus the pictures representing apes show also huge flying dragons with a crocodile’s head; and we have no reason for believing that batlike creatures like the pterodactyls of the greensand existed in Africa or elsewhere so late as the time of the Portuguese voyages of discovery. Purchas, in his history of Andrew Battell, speaks of “a kinde of great apes, if they might so bee termed, of the height of a man, but twice as bigge in feature of their limmes, with strength proportionable, hairie all over, otherwise altogether like men and women in their whole bodily shape, except that their legges had no calves.” This description accords well with the peculiarities of gorillas, and may be regarded as the first genuine account of these animals. Battell’s contemporaries called the apes so described Pongoes. It is probable that in selecting the name Pongo for the young gorilla lately at the Westminster Aquarium, the proprietors of this interesting creature showed a more accurate judgment of the meaning of Purchas’s narrative than Du Chaillu showed of Hanno’s account, in calling the great anthropoid ape of the Gulf of Guinea a gorilla.

I propose here briefly to sketch the peculiarities of the four apes which approach nearest in form to man—the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang, and the gibbon; and then, though not dealing generally with the question of our relationship to these non-speaking (and, in some respects, perhaps, “unspeakable”) animals, to touch on some points connected with this question, and to point out some errors which are very commonly entertained on the subject.

It may be well, in the first place, to point out that the terms “ape,” “baboon,” and “monkey” are no longer used as they were by the older naturalists. Formerly the term “ape” was limited to tailless simians having no cheek-pouches, and the same number of teeth as man; the term “baboon” to short-tailed simians with dog-shaped heads; and the term “monkey,” unless used generically, to the long-tailed species. This was the usage suggested by Ray, and adopted systematically thirty or forty years ago. But it is no longer followed, though no uniform classification has been substituted for the old arrangement. Thus Mivart divides the apes into two classes—calling the first the SimiadÆ, or Old World apes; and the second the CebidÆ, or New World apes. He subdivides the SimiadÆ into (1) the SiminÆ, including the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon; (2) the SemnopithecinÆ; and (3) the CynopithecinÆ; neither of which subdivisions will occupy much of our attention here, save as respects the third subdivision of the CynopithecinÆ, viz., the Cynocephali, which includes the baboons. The other great division, the CebidÆ, or New World apes, are for the most part very unlike the Old World apes. None of them approach the gorilla or orang-outang in size; most of them are long-tailed; and the number and arrangement of the teeth is different. The feature, however, which most naturalists have selected as the characteristic distinction between the apes of the Old World and of the New World is the position of the nostrils. The former are called Catarhine, a word signifying that the nostrils are directed downwards; the latter are called Platyrhine, or broad-nosed. The nostrils of all the Old World apes are separated by a narrow cartilaginous plate or septum, whereas the septum of the New World apes is broad. After the apes come, according to Mivart’s classification, the half-apes or lemuroids.

I ought, perhaps, to have mentioned that Mivart, in describing the lemuroids as the second sub-order of a great order of animals, the Primates, speaks of a man as (zoologically speaking) belonging to the first sub-order. So that, in point of fact, the two sub-orders are the Anthropoids, including the Anthropos (man) and the Lemuroids, including the lemur.

The classification here indicated will serve our present purpose very well. But the reader is reminded that, as already mentioned, naturalists do not adopt at present any uniform system of classification. Moreover, the term SimiadÆ is usually employed—and will be employed here—to represent the entire simian race, i.e., both the SimiadÆ and the CebidÆ of Mivart’s classification.

And now, turning to the Anthropoid apes, we find ourselves at the outset confronted by the question, Which of the four apes, the gorilla, the orang-outang, the chimpanzee, or the gibbon, is to be regarded as nearest to man in intelligence? So far as bodily configuration is concerned, our opinion would vary according to the particular feature which we selected for consideration. But it will probably be admitted that intelligence should be the characteristic by which our opinions should be guided.

The gibbon may be dismissed at once, though, as will presently appear, there are some features in which this ape resembles man more closely than either the gorilla, the orang-outang, or the chimpanzee. The gorilla must, I fear, be summarily ejected from the position of honour to which he has been raised by many naturalists. Though the gorilla is a much larger animal than the chimpanzee, his brain barely equals the chimpanzee’s in mass. It is also less fully developed in front. In fact Gratiolet asserts that of all the broad-chested apes, the gorilla is—so far as brain character is concerned—the lowest and most degraded. He regards the gorilla’s brain as only a more advanced form of that of the brutal baboons, while the orang’s brain is the culminating form of the gibbon type, and the chimpanzee’s the culminating form of the macaque type. This does not dispose of the difficulty very satisfactorily, however, because it remains to be shown whether the gibbon type and the macaque type are superior as types to the baboon types. But it may suffice to remark that the baboons are all brutal and ferocious, whereas the gibbons are comparatively gentle animals, and the macaques docile and even playful. It may be questioned whether brutality and ferocity should be regarded as necessarily removing the gorilla further from man; because it is certain that the races of man which approach nearest to the anthropoid apes, with which races the comparison should assuredly be made, are characterized by these very qualities, brutality and ferocity. Intelligence must be otherwise gauged. Probably the average proportion of the brain’s weight to that of the entire body, and the complexity of the structure of the brain, would afford the best means of deciding the question. But, unfortunately, we have very unsatisfactory evidence on these points. The naturalists who have based opinions on such evidence as has been obtained, seem to overlook the poverty of the evidence. Knowing as we do how greatly the human brain varies in size and complexity, not only in different races, but in different individuals of the same race, it appears unsatisfactory in the extreme to regard the average of the brains of each simian species hitherto examined as presenting the true average cerebral capacity for each species. Still it seems tolerably clear that the choice as to the race of apes which must be regarded as first in intelligence, and therefore as on the whole the most manlike, rests between the orang-outang and the chimpanzee. “In the world of science, as in that of politics,” said Professor Rolleston in 1862, “France and England have occasionally differed as to their choice between rival candidates for royalty. If either hereditary claims or personal merits affect at all the right of succession, beyond a question the gorilla is but a pretender, and one or other of the two (other) candidates the true prince. There is a graceful as well as an ungraceful way of withdrawing from a false position, and the British public will adopt the graceful course by accepting forthwith and henceforth the French candidate”—the orang-outang. If this were intended as prophecy, it has not been fulfilled by the event, for the gorilla is still regarded by most British naturalists as the ape which comes on the whole nearest to man; but probably, in saying “the British public will adopt the graceful course” in accepting the orang-outang as “the king of the SimiadÆ,” Professor Rolleston meant only that that course would be graceful if adopted.

Before the discovery of the gorilla, the chimpanzee was usually regarded as next to man in the scale of the animal creation. It was Cuvier who first maintained the claim of the orang-outang to this position. Cuvier’s opinion was based on the greater development of the orang-outang’s brain, and the height of its forehead. But these marks of superiority belong to the orang only when young. The adult orang seems to be inferior, or at least not superior, to the chimpanzee as respects cerebral formation, and in other respects seems less to resemble man. The proportions of his body, his long arms, high shoulders, deformed neck, and imperfect ears are opposed to its claims to be regarded as manlike. In all these respects, save one, the chimpanzee seems to be greatly its superior. (The ear of the chimpanzee is large, and not placed as with us: that of the gorilla is much more like man’s.) As to the intelligence exhibited in the conduct of the chimpanzee and orang-outang, various opinions may be formed according to the various circumstances under which the animals are observed. The following has been quoted in evidence of the superiority of the chimpanzee in this respect:—“About fifty years ago, a young chimpanzee and an orang-outang of about the same age were exhibited together at the Egyptian Hall. The chimpanzee, though in a declining state of health, and rendered peevish and irritable by bodily suffering, exhibited much superior marks of intelligence to his companion; he was active, quick, and observant of everything that passed around him; no new visitor entered the apartment in which he was kept, and no one left it, without attracting his attention. The orang-outang, on the contrary, exhibited a melancholy and a disregard of passing occurrences almost amounting to apathy; and though in the enjoyment of better health, was evidently much inferior to his companion in quickness and observation. On one occasion, when the animals were dining on potatoes and boiled chicken, and surrounded as usual with a large party of visitors, the orang-outang allowed her plate to be taken without exhibiting the least apparent concern. Not so, however, the chimpanzee. We took advantage of an opportunity when his head was turned (to observe a person coming in) to secrete his plate also. For a few seconds he looked round to see what had become of it, but, not finding it, began to pout and fret exactly like a spoiled child, and perceiving a young lady, who happened to be standing near him, laughing, perhaps suspecting her to be the delinquent, he flew at her in the greatest rage, and would probably have bitten her had she not got beyond his reach. Upon having his plate restored, he took care to prevent the repetition of the joke by holding it firmly with one hand, while he fed himself with the other.”

This story can hardly be regarded as deciding the question in favour of the chimpanzee. Many animals, admittedly far inferior to the lowest order of monkeys in intelligence, show watchfulness over their food, and as much ill-temper when deprived of it, and as much anxiety to recover it, as this chimpanzee did. A hundred cases in point might readily be cited.36

Perhaps the soundest opinion respecting the relative position of the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang with reference to man, is that which places the gorilla nearest to the lower tribes of man now inhabiting Africa, the chimpanzee approximating, but not so closely, to higher African tribes, and the orang-outang approximating, but still less closely, to Asiatic tribes. It appears to me that, whatever weight naturalists may attach to those details in which the gorilla and the chimpanzee are more removed from man than the orang, no one who takes a general view of these three races of anthropoid apes can hesitate to regard the gorilla as that which, on the whole, approaches nearest to man; but it is to a much lower race of man that the gorilla approximates, so that the chimpanzee and the orang-outang may fairly be regarded as higher in the scale of animal life.

If we consider young specimens of the three animals, which is, on the whole, the safest way of forming an opinion, we are unmistakably led, in my judgment, to such a conclusion. I have seen three or four young chimpanzees, two young orangs, and the young gorilla lately exhibited at the Aquarium (where he could be directly compared with the chimpanzee), and I cannot hesitate to pronounce Pongo altogether the most human of the three. A young chimpanzee reminds one rather of an old man than of a child, and the same may be said of young orangs; but the young gorilla unmistakably reminds one of the young negro. Repeatedly, while watching Pongo, I was reminded of the looks and behaviour of young negroes whom I had seen in America, though not able in every case to fix definitely on the feature of resemblance which recalled the negro to my mind. (The reader is, doubtless, familiar with half-remembered traits such as those I refer to—traits, for instance, such as assure you that a person belongs to some county or district, though you may be unable to say what feature, expression, or gesture suggests the idea.) One circumstance may be specially noted, not only as frequently recurring, but as illustrating the traits on which the resemblance of the gorilla (when young, at any rate) to the negro depends. A negro turns his eyes where a Caucasian would turn his head. The peculiarity is probably a relic of savage life; for the savage, whether engaged in war or in the chase, avoids, as far as possible, every movement of body or limb. Pongo looked in this way. When he thus cast his black eyes sideways at an object I found myself reminded irresistibly of the ways of the watchful negro waiters at an American hotel. Certainly there is little in the movements of the chimpanzee to remind one of any kind of human child. He is impish; but not the most impish child of any race or tribe ever had ways, I should suppose, resembling his.

The four anthropoid apes, full grown and in their native wilds, differ greatly from each other in character. It may be well to consider their various traits, endeavouring to ascertain how far diversities existing among them may be traced to the conditions under which the four orders subsist.

The gorilla occupies a well-wooded country extending along the coast of Africa from the Gulf of Guinea southwards across the equator. When full grown he is equal to a man in height, but much more powerfully built. “Of specimens shot by Du Chaillu,” says Rymer Jones, “the largest male seems to have been at least six feet two in height; so that, making allowance for the shortness of the lower limbs, the dimensions of a full-grown male may be said to equal those of a man of eight or nine feet high, and it is only in their length that the lower limbs are disproportionate to the gigantic trunk. In the thickness and solidity of their bones, and in the strength of their muscles, these limbs are quite in keeping with the rest of the body. When upright, the gorilla’s arms reach to his knees; the hind hands are wide, and of amazing size and power; the great toe or thumb measures six inches in circumference; the palms and soles, and the naked part of the face, are of an intense black colour, as is also the breast. The other parts are thickly clothed with hair of an iron grey, except the head, on which it is reddish brown, and the arms, where it is long and nearly black. The female is wholly tinged with red.”

Du Chaillu gives the following account of the aspect of the gorilla in his native woods:—“Suddenly, as we were yet creeping along in a silence which made even a heavy breath seem loud and distinct, the woods were at once filled with a tremendous barking roar; then the underbrush swayed rapidly just ahead, and presently stood before us an immense gorilla. He had gone through the jungle on all-fours; but when he saw our party he erected himself and looked us boldly in the face. He stood about a dozen yards from us, and was a sight I think I shall never forget. Nearly six feet high (he proved four inches shorter), with immense body, huge chest, and great muscular arms, with fiercely glaring, large, deep-grey eyes, and a hellish expression of face, which seemed to me some night-mare vision; thus stood before us the king of the African forest. He was not afraid of us; he stood there and beat his breasts with his large fists till it resounded like an immense bass drum (which is their mode of bidding defiance), meantime giving vent to roar after roar.”

The gorilla is a fruit-eater, but as fierce as the most carnivorous animals. He is said to show an enraged enmity against men, probably because he has found them not only hostile to himself, but successful in securing the fruits which the gorilla loves, for he shows a similar hatred to the elephant, which also seeks these fruits. We are told that when the gorilla “sees the elephant busy with his trunk among the twigs, he instantly regards this as an infraction of the laws of property, and, dropping silently down to the bough, he suddenly brings his club smartly down on the sensitive finger of the elephant’s proboscis, and drives off the alarmed animal trumpeting shrilly with rage and pain.” His enmity to man is more terribly manifested. “The young athletic negroes in their ivory-haunts,” says Gosse, “well know the prowess of the gorilla. He does not, like the lion, sullenly retreat on seeing them, but swings himself rapidly down to the lower branches, courting the conflict, and clutches the nearest of his enemies. The hideous aspect of his visage (his green eyes flashing with rage) is heightened by the thick and prominent brows being drawn spasmodically up and down, with the hair erect, causing a horrible and fiendish scowl. Weapons are torn from their possessor’s grasp, gun-barrels bent and crushed in by the powerful hands and vice-like teeth of the enraged brute. More horrid still, however, is the sudden and unexpected fate which is often inflicted by him. Two negroes will be walking through one of the woodland paths unsuspicious of evil, when in an instant one misses his companion, or turns to see him drawn up in the air with a convulsed choking cry, and in a few minutes dropped to the ground, a strangled corpse. The terrified survivor gazes up, and meets the grin and glare of the fiendish giant, who, watching his opportunity, had suddenly put down his immense hind hand, caught the wretch by the neck with resistless power, and dropped him only when he ceased to struggle.”

The chimpanzee inhabits the region from Sierra Leone to the southern confines of Angola, possibly as far as Cape Negro, so that his domain includes within it that of the gorilla. He attains almost the same height as the gorilla when full grown, but is far less powerfully built. In fact, in general proportions the chimpanzee approaches man more nearly than does any other animal. His body is covered with long black coarse hair, thickest on the head, shoulders, and back, and rather thin on the breast and belly. The face is dark brown and naked, as are the ears, except that long black whiskers adorn the animal’s cheeks. The hair on the forearms is directed towards the elbows, as is the case with all the anthropoid apes, and with man himself. This hair forms, where it meets the hair from the upper arm, a small ruff about the elbow joint. The chimpanzees live in society in the woods, constructing huts from the branches and foliage of trees to protect themselves against the sun and heavy rains. It is said by some travellers that the chimpanzee walks upright in its native woods, but this is doubtful; though certainly the formation of the toes better fits them to stand upright than either the gorilla or the orang. They arm themselves with clubs, and unite to defend themselves against the attacks of wild beasts, “compelling,” it is said, “even the elephant himself to abandon the districts in which they reside.” We learn that “it is dangerous for men to enter their forests, unless in companies and well armed; women in particular are often said to be carried away by these animals, and one negress is reported to have lived among them for the space of three years, during which time they treated her with uniform kindness, but always prevented any attempt on her part to escape. When the negroes leave a fire in the woods, it is said that the chimpanzees will gather round and warm themselves at the blaze, but they have not sufficient intelligence to keep it alive by fresh supplies of fuel.”

The orang-outang inhabits Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and other islands of the Indian coast. He attains a greater height than the gorilla, but, though very powerful and active, would probably not be a match for the gorilla in a single combat. His arms are by comparison as well as actually much longer. Whereas the gorilla’s reach only to the knees, the arms of the orang-outang almost reach the ground when the animal is standing upright. The orang does not often assume an upright attitude, however. “It seldom attempts to walk on the hind feet alone, and when it does the hands are invariably employed for the purpose of steadying its tottering equilibrium, touching the ground lightly on each side as it proceeds, and by this means recovering the lost balance of the body.” The gorilla uses his hands differently. He can scarcely be said to walk on all-fours, because he does not place the inside of the hand on the ground, but walks on the knuckles, evidently trying to keep the fore part of the body as high as possible. “The muzzle is somewhat long, the mouth ill-shaped, the lips thin and protuberant; the ears are very small, the chin scarcely recognizable, and the nose only to be recognized by the nostrils. The face, ears, and inside of the hands of the orang are naked and of a brick-red colour; the fore parts are also but thinly covered with hair; but the head, shoulders, back, and extremities are thickly clothed with long hair of dark wine-red colour, directed forwards on the crown of the head and upwards towards the elbows on the forearms.”

The orang-outang changes remarkably in character and appearance as he approaches full growth. “Though exhibiting in early youth a rotundity of the cranium and a height of forehead altogether peculiar, and accompanied at the same time with a gentleness of disposition and a gravity of manners which contrast strongly with the petulant and irascible temper of the lower orders of quadrumanous mammals, the orang-outang in its adult state is even remarkable for the flatness of its retiring forehead, the great development of the superorbital and occipital crests, the prominence of its jaws, the remarkable size of its canine teeth, and the whole form of the skull, which from the globular shape of the human head, as in the young specimen, assumes all the forms and characters belonging to that of a large carnivorous animal. The extraordinary contrasts thus presented in the form of the skull at different epochs of the same animal’s life were long considered as the characters of distinct species; nor was it till intermediate forms were obtained, exhibiting in some degree the peculiarities of both extremes, that they were finally recognized as distinguishing different periods of growth only.”

Unlike the gorilla, which attacks man with peculiar malignity, and the chimpanzee, which when in large troops assails those who approach its retreats, the orang, even in its adult state, seems not to be dangerous unless attacked. Even then he does not always show great ferocity. The two following anecdotes illustrate well its character. The first is from the pen of Dr. Abel Clarke (fifth volume of the “Asiatic Researches”); the other is from Wallace’s interesting work, “The Malay Archipelago.” An orang-outang fully seven feet high was discovered by the company of a merchant ship, at a place called Ramboon, on the north-west coast of Sumatra, on a spot where there were few trees and little cultivated ground. “It was evident that he had come from a distance, for his legs were covered with mud up to the knees, and the natives were unacquainted with him. On the approach of the boat’s crew he came down from the tree in which he was discovered, and made for a clump at some distance; exhibiting, as he moved, the appearance of a tall man-like figure, covered with shining brown hair, walking erect, with a waddling gait, but sometimes accelerating his motion with his hands, and occasionally impelling himself forward with the bough of a tree. His motion on the ground was evidently not his natural mode of progression, for, even when assisted by his hands and the bough, it was slow and vacillating; it was necessary to see him among the trees to estimate his strength and agility. On being driven to a small clump, he gained by one spring a very lofty branch and bounded from one branch to another with the swiftness of a common monkey, his progress being as rapid as that of a swift horse. After receiving five balls his exertions relaxed, and, reclining exhausted against a branch, he vomited a quantity of blood. The ammunition of the hunters being by this time exhausted, they were obliged to fell the tree in order to obtain him; but what was their surprise to see him, as the tree was falling, effect his retreat to another, with seemingly undiminished vigour! In fact, they were obliged to cut down all the trees before they could force him to combat his enemies on the ground, and when finally overpowered by numbers, and nearly in a dying state, he seized a spear made of supple wood, which would have withstood the strength of the stoutest man, and broke it like a reed. It was stated, by those who aided in his death, that the human-like expression of his countenance and his piteous manner of placing his hands over his wounds, distressed their feelings so as almost to make them question the nature of the act they were committing. He was seven feet high, with a broad expanded chest and narrow waist. His chin was fringed with a beard that curled neatly on each side, and formed an ornamental rather than a frightful appendage to his visage. His arms were long even in proportion to his height, but his legs were much shorter. Upon the whole, he was a wonderful beast to behold, and there was more about him to excite amazement than fear. His hair was smooth and glossy, and his whole appearance showed him to be in the full vigour of his youth and strength.” On the whole, the narrative seems to suggest a remark similar to one applied by Washington Irving to the followers of Ojeda and their treatment of the (so-called) Indians of South America, “we confess we feel a momentary doubt whether the arbitrary appellation of ‘brute’ is always applied to the right party.”

The other story also presents man as at least as brutal as the orang concerned in the event. “A few miles down the river,” says Wallace, “there is a Dyak house, and the inhabitants saw a large orang feeding on the young shoots of a palm by the river-side. On being alarmed he retreated towards the jungle which was close by, and a number of the men, armed with spears and choppers, ran out to intercept him. The man who was in front tried to run his spear through the animal’s body; but the orang seized it in his hands, and in an instant got hold of the man’s arm, which he seized in his mouth, making his teeth meet in the flesh above the elbow, which he tore and lacerated in a dreadful manner. Had not the others been close behind, the man would have been more seriously injured, if not killed, as he was quite powerless; but they soon destroyed the creature with their spears and choppers. The man remained ill for a long time, and never fully recovered the use of his arm.”

The term gibbon includes several varieties of tail-less, long-armed, catarhine apes. The largest variety, called the siamang, need alone be described here.

The siamang inhabits Sumatra. It presents several points of resemblance to the orang-outang, but is also in several respects strongly distinguished from that animal. The arms are longer even than the orang’s, and the peculiar use which the orang makes of his long arms is more strikingly shown in the progression of the long-armed siamang, for the body inclining slightly forward, when the animal is on level ground the long arms are used somewhat like crutches, and they advance by jerks resembling the hobbling of a lame man whom fear compels to make an extraordinary effort. The skull is small, and much more depressed than that of the orang or chimpanzee. The face is naked and black, straggling red hairs marking the eyebrows. The eyes are deeply sunk, a peculiarity which, by the way, seems characteristic of arboreal creatures generally;37 the nose broad and flat, with wide-open nostrils; the cheeks sunk under high cheekbones; the chin almost rudimentary. “The hair over the whole body is thick, long, and of a glossy black colour, much closer on the shoulders, back, and limbs than on the belly, which, particularly in the females, is nearly naked. The ears are entirely concealed by the hair of the head; they are naked, and, like all the other naked parts, of a deep black colour. Beneath the chin there is a large, bare sac, of a lax and oily appearance, which is distended with air when the animal cries, and in that state resembles an enormous goitre. It is similar to that possessed by the orang-outang, and undoubtedly assists in swelling the volume of the voice, and producing those astounding cries which, according to Duvancelle’s account, may be heard at the distance of several miles.” This, however, may be doubted, for M. Duvancelle himself remarks of the wouwou, that, “though deprived of the guttural sac so remarkable in the siamang, its cry is very nearly the same; so that it would appear that this organ does not produce the effect of increasing the sound usually attributed to it, or else that it must be replaced in the wouwou by some analogous formation.”

The habits of the siamang are interesting, especially in their bearing on the relationship between the various orders of anthropoid apes and man; for, though the gibbon is unquestionably the lowest of the four orders of the anthropoid apes in intelligence, it possesses some characteristics which bring it nearer to man (so far as they are concerned) than any of its congeners. The chief authorities respecting the ways of the siamang are the French naturalists Diard and Duvancelle, and the late Sir Stamford Raffles.

The siamangs generally assemble in large troops, “conducted, it is said, by a chief, whom the Malays believe to be invulnerable, probably because he is more agile, powerful, and difficult to capture than the rest.” “Thus united,” proceeds M. Duvancelle (in a letter addressed to Cuvier), “the siamangs salute the rising and the setting sun with the most terrific cries” (like sun-worshippers), “which may be heard at the distance of many miles, and which, when near, stun when they do not frighten. This is the morning call of the mountain Malays; but to the inhabitants of the town, who are unaccustomed to it, it is an unsupportable annoyance. By way of compensation, the siamangs keep a profound silence during the day, unless when interrupted in their repose or their sleep. They are slow and heavy in their gait, wanting confidence when they climb and agility when they leap, so that they may be easily caught when they can be surprised. But nature, in depriving them of the means of readily escaping danger, has endowed them with a vigilance which rarely fails them; and if they hear a noise which is unusual to them, even at the distance of a mile, fright seizes them and they immediately take flight. When surprised on the ground, however, they may be captured without resistance, either overwhelmed with fear or conscious of their weakness and the impossibility of escaping. At first, indeed, they endeavour to avoid their pursuers by flight, and it is then that their want of skill in this exercise becomes most apparent.”

“However numerous the troop may be, if one is wounded it is immediately abandoned by the rest, unless, indeed, it happen to be a young one. Then the mother, who either carries it or follows close behind, stops, falls with it, and, uttering the most frightful cries, precipitates herself upon the common enemy with open mouth and arms extended. But it is manifest that these animals are not made for combat; they neither know how to deal nor to shun a blow. Nor is their maternal affection displayed only in moments of danger. The care which the females bestow upon their offspring is so tender and even refined, that one would be almost tempted to attribute the sentiment to a rational rather than an instinctive process. It is a curious and interesting spectacle, which a little precaution has sometimes enabled me to witness, to see these females carry their young to the river, wash their faces in spite of their outcries, wipe and dry them, and altogether bestow upon their cleanliness a time and attention that in many cases the children of our own species might well envy. The Malays related a fact to me, which I doubted at first, but which I consider to be in a great measure confirmed by my own subsequent observations. It is that the young siamangs, whilst yet too weak to go alone, are always carried by individuals of their own sex, by their fathers if they are males, and by their mothers if females. I have also been assured that these animals frequently become the prey of the tiger, from the same species of fascination which serpents are said to exercise over birds, squirrels, and other small animals. Servitude, however long, seems to have no effect in modifying the characteristic defects of this ape—his stupidity, sluggishness, and awkwardness. It is true that a few days suffice to make him as gentle and contented as he was before wild and distrustful; but, constitutionally timid, he never acquires the familiarity of other apes, and even his submission appears to be rather the result of extreme apathy than of any degree of confidence or affection. He is almost equally insensible to good or bad treatment; gratitude and revenge are equally strange to him.”

We have next to consider certain points connected with the theory of the relationship between man and the anthropoid apes. It is hardly necessary for me to say, perhaps, that in thus dealing with a subject requiring for its independent investigation the life-long study of departments of science which are outside those in which I have taken special interest, I am not pretending to advance my opinion as of weight in matters as yet undetermined by zoologists. But it has always seemed to me, that when those who have made special study of a subject collect and publish the result of their researches, and a body of evidence is thus made available for the general body scientific, the facts can be advantageously considered by students of other branches of science, so only that, in leaving for a while their own subject, they do not depart from the true scientific method, and that they are specially careful to distinguish what has been really ascertained from what is only surmised with a greater or less degree of probability.

In the first place, then, I would call attention to some very common mistakes respecting the Darwinian theory of the Descent of Man. I do not refer here to ordinary misconceptions respecting the theory of natural selection. To say the truth, those who have not passed beyond this stage of error,—those who still confound the theory of natural selection with the Lamarckian and other theories (or rather hypotheses38) of evolution,—are not as yet in a position to deal with our present subject, and may be left out of consideration.

The errors to which I refer are in the main included in the following statement. It is supposed by many, perhaps by most, that according to Darwin man is descended from one or other of the races of anthropoid apes; and that the various orders and sub-orders of apes and monkeys at present existing can be arranged in a series gradually approaching more and more nearly to man, and indicating the various steps (or some of them, for gaps exist in the series) by which man was developed. Nothing can be plainer, however, than Darwin’s contradiction of this genealogy for the human races. Not only does he not for a moment countenance the belief that the present races of monkeys and apes can be arranged in a series gradually approximating more and more nearly to man, not only does he reject the belief that man is descended from any present existing anthropoid ape, but he even denies that the progenitor of man resembled any known ape. “We must not fall into the error of supposing,” he says, “that the early progenitor of the whole simian stock, including man, was identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey.”

It appears to me, though it may seem somewhat bold to express this opinion of the views of a naturalist so deservedly eminent as Mr. Mivart, that in his interesting little treatise, “Man and Apes,”—a treatise which may be described as opposed to Darwin’s special views but not generally opposed to the theory of evolution,—he misapprehends Darwin’s position in this respect. For he arrives at the conclusion that if the Darwinian theory is sound, then “low down” (i.e., far remote) “in the scale of Primates” (tri-syllabic) “was an ancestral form so like man that it might well be called an homunculus; and we have the virtual pre-existence of man’s body supposed, in order to account for the actual first appearance of that body as we know it—a supposition manifestly absurd if put forward as an explanation.”39

How, then, according to the Darwinian theory, is man related to the monkey? The answer to this question is simply that the relationship is the same in kind, though not the same in degree, as that by which the most perfect Caucasian race is related to the lowest race of Australian, or Papuan, or Bosjesman savages. No one supposes that one of these races of savages could by any process of evolution, however long-continued, be developed into a race resembling the Caucasian in bodily and mental attributes. Nor does any one suppose that the savage progenitor of the Caucasian races was identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing race of savages. Yet we recognize in the lowest forms of savage man our blood relations. In other words, it is generally believed that if our genealogy, and that of any existing race of savages, could be traced back through all its reticulations, we should at length reach a race whose blood we share with that race. It is also generally believed (though for my own part I think the logical consequences of the principle underlying all theories of evolution is in reality opposed to the belief) that, by tracing the genealogical reticulations still further back, we should at length arrive at a single race from which all the present races of man and no other animals have descended. The Darwinian faith with respect to men and monkeys is precisely analogous. It is believed that the genealogy of every existent race of monkeys, if traced back, would lead us to a race whose blood we share with that race of monkeys; and—which is at once a wider and a more precise proposition—that, as Darwin puts it, “the two main divisions of the SimiadÆ, namely, the catarhine and platyrhine monkeys, with their sub-groups, have all proceeded from some one extremely ancient progenitor.” This proposition is manifestly wider. I call it also more precise, because it implies, and is evidently intended by Darwin to signify, that from that extremely ancient progenitor no race outside the two great orders of SimiadÆ have even partially descended, though other races share with the SimiadÆ descent from some still more remote race of progenitors.

This latter point, however, is not related specially to the common errors respecting the Darwinian theory which I have indicated above, except in so far as it is a detail of the actual Darwinian theory. I would, in passing, point out that, like the detail referred to in connection with the relationship of the various races of man, this one is not logically deducible from the theory of evolution. In fact, I have sometimes thought that the principal difficulties of that theory arise from this unnecessary and not logically sound doctrine. I pointed out, rather more than three years ago, in an article “On some of our Blood Relations,” in a weekly scientific journal, that the analogy between the descent of races and the descent of individual members of any race, requires us rather to believe that the remote progenitor of the human race and the SimiadÆ has had its share—though a less share—in the generation of other races related to these in more or less remote degrees. I may perhaps most conveniently present the considerations on which I based this conclusion, by means of a somewhat familiar illustration:—

Let us take two persons, brother and sister (whom let us call the pair A), as analogues of the human race. Then these two have four great-grandparents on the father’s side, and four on the mother’s side. All these may be regarded as equally related to the pair A. Now, let us suppose that the descendants of the four families of great-grandparents intermarry, no marriages being in any case made outside these families, and that the descendants in the same generation as the pair A are regarded as corresponding to the entire order of the SimiadÆ, the pair A representing, as already agreed, the race of man, and all families outside the descendants of the four great-grandparental families corresponding to orders of animals more distantly related than the SimiadÆ to man. Then we have what corresponds (so far as our illustration is concerned) to Darwin’s views respecting man and the SimiadÆ, and animals lower in the scale of life. The first cousins of the pair A may be taken as representing the anthropoid apes; the second cousins as representing the lemurs or half-apes; the third cousins as representing the platyrhine or American apes. The entire family—including the pair A, representing man—is descended also, in accordance with the Darwinian view, from a single family of progenitors, no outside families sharing descent, though all share blood, with that family.

But manifestly, this is an entirely artificial and improbable arrangement in the case of families. The eight grandparents might be so removed in circumstances from surrounding families—so much superior to them, let us say—that neither they nor any of their descendants would intermarry with these inferior families: and thus none of their great-grandchildren would share descent from some other stock contemporary with the great-grandparents; or—which is the same thing, but seen in another light—none of the contemporaries of the great-grandchildren would share descent from the eight grandparents. But so complete a separation of the family from surrounding families would be altogether exceptional and unlikely. For, even assuming the eight families to be originally very markedly distinguished from all surrounding families, yet families rise and fall, marry unequally, and within the range of a few generations a wide disparity of blood and condition appears among the descendants of any group of families. So that, in point of fact, the relations assumed to subsist between man, the SimiadÆ, and lower animal forms, corresponds to an unusual and improbable set of relations among families of several persons. Either, then, the relations of families must be regarded as not truly analogous to the relations of races, which no evolutionist would assert, or else we must adopt a somewhat different view of the relationship between man, the SimiadÆ, and inferior animals.

One other illustration may serve not only to make my argument clearer, but also, by presenting an actual case, to enforce the conclusion to which it points.

We know that the various races of man are related together more or less closely, that some are purer than others, and that one or two claim almost absolute purity. Now, if we take one of these last, as, for instance, the Jewish race, and trace the race backwards to its origin, we find it, according to tradition, carried back to twelve families, the twelve sons of Jacob and their respective wives. (We cannot go further back because the wives of Jacob’s sons must be taken into account, and they were not descended from Abraham or Isaac and their wives only,—in fact, could not have been.) If the descendants of those twelve families had never intermarried with outside families in such sort that the descendants of such mixed families came to be regarded as true Hebrews, we should have in the Hebrews a race corresponding to the SimiadÆ as regarded by Darwin, i.e., a race entirely descended from one set of families, and so constituting, in fact, a single family. But we know that, despite the objections entertained by the Hebrews against the intermixture of their race with other races, this did not happen. Not only did many of those regarded as true Hebrews share descent from nations outside their own, but many of those regarded as truly belonging to nations outside the Jewish race shared descent from the twelve sons of Jacob.

The case corresponding, then, to that of the purest of all human races, and the case therefore most favourable to the view presented by Darwin (though very far from essential to the Darwinian theory), is simply this, that, in the first place, many animals regarded as truly SimiadÆ share descent from animals outside that family which Darwin regards as the ape progenitor of man; and, in the second place, many animals regarded as outside the SimiadÆ share descent from that ape-like progenitor. This involves the important inference that the ape-like progenitor of man was not so markedly differentiated from other families of animals then existing, that fertile intercourse was impossible. A little consideration will show that this inference accords well with, if it might not almost have been directly deduced from, the Darwinian doctrine that all orders of mammals were, in turn, descended from a still more remote progenitor race. The same considerations may manifestly be applied also to that more remote race, to the still more remote race from which all the vertebrates have descended, and so on to the source itself from which all forms of living creatures are supposed to have descended. A difficulty meets us at that remotest end of the chain analogous to the difficulty of understanding how life began at all; but we should profit little by extending the inquiry to these difficulties, which remain, and are likely long to remain, insuperable.

So far, however, are the considerations above urged from introducing any new or insuperable objection to the Darwinian theory, that, rightly understood, they indicate the true answer to an objection which has been urged by Mivart and others against the belief that man has descended from some ape-like progenitor.

Mivart shows that no existing ape or monkey approaches man more nearly in all respects than other races, but that one resembles man more closely in some respects, another in others, a third in yet others, and so forth. “The ear lobule of the gorilla makes him our cousin,” he says, “but his tongue is eloquent in his own dispraise.” If the “bridging convolutions of the orang[’s brain] go to sustain his claim to supremacy, they also go far to sustain a similar claim on the part of the long-tailed thumbless spider-monkeys. If the obliquely ridged teeth of Simia and Troglodytes (the chimpanzee) point to community of origin, how can we deny a similar community of origin, as thus estimated, to the howling monkeys and galagos? The liver of the gibbons proclaims them almost human; that of the gorilla declares him comparatively brutal. The lower American apes meet us with what seems the ‘front of Jove himself,’ compared with the gigantic but low-browed denizens of tropical Western Africa.”

He concludes that the existence of these wide-spread signs of affinity and the associated signs of divergence, disprove the theory that the structural characters existing in the human frame have had their origin in the influence of inheritance and “natural selection.” “In the words of the illustrious Dutch naturalists, Messrs. Schroeder, Van der Kolk and Vrolik,” he says, “the lines of affinity existing between different Primates construct rather a network than a ladder. It is indeed a tangled web, the meshes of which no naturalist has as yet unravelled by the aid of natural selection. Nay, more, these complex affinities form such a net for the use of the teleological retiarius as it will be difficult for his Lucretian antagonist to evade, even with the countless turns and doublings of Darwinian evolutions.”

It appears to me that when we observe the analogy between the relationships of individuals, families, and races of man, and the relationships of the various species of animals, the difficulty indicated by Mr. Mivart disappears. Take, for instance, the case of the eight allied families above considered. Suppose, instead of the continual intermarriages before imagined—an exceptional order of events, be it remembered—that the more usual order of things prevails, viz., that alliances take place with other families. For simplicity, however, imagine that each married pair has two children, male and female, and that each person marries once and only once. Then it will be found that the pair A have ten families of cousins, two first-cousin families, and eight second-cousin families; these are all the families which share descent from the eight great-grandparents of the pair. (To have third-cousin families we should have to go back to the fourth generation.) Thus there are eleven families in all. Now, in the case first imagined of constant intermarrying, there would still have been eleven families, but they would all have descended from eight great-grandparents, and we should then expect to find among the eleven families various combinations, so to speak, of the special characteristics of the eight families from which they had descended. On the other hand, eleven families, in no way connected, have descended from eighty-eight great-grandparents, and would present a corresponding variety of characteristics. But in the case actually supposed, in which the eleven families are so related that each one (for what applies to the pair A applies to the others) has two first-cousin families, and eight second-cousin families, it will be found that instead of 88 they have only 56 great-grandparents, or ancestors, in the third generation above them. The two families related as first cousins to the pair A have, like these, eight great-grandparents, four out of these eight for one family, being the four grandparents of the father of the pair A, the other four being outsiders; while four of the eight great-grandparents of the other family of first cousins are the four grandparents of the mother of the pair A, the other four being outsiders. The other eight families each have eight great-grandparents; two of the families having among their great-grandparents the parents of one of the grandfathers of the pair A, but no other great-grandparent in common with the pair A; other two of the eight families having among their great-grandparents the parents of the other grandfather of the pair A; other two having among their great-grandparents the parents of one of the grandmothers of the pair A; the remaining two families having among their great-grandparents the parents of the other grandmother of the pair A; while in all cases the six remaining great-grandparents of each family are outsiders, in no way related, on our assumption, either to the eight great-grandparents of the pair A or to each other, except as connected in pairs by marriage.

Now manifestly in such a case, which, save for the symmetry introduced to simplify its details, represents fairly the usual relationships between any family, its first cousins, and its second cousins, we should not expect to find any one of the ten other families resembling the pair A more closely in all respects than would any other of the ten. The two first-cousin families would on the whole resemble the pair A more nearly than would any of the other eight, but we should expect to find some features or circumstances in which one or other or all of the second-cousin families would show a closer resemblance to one or other or both of the pair A. This is found often, perhaps generally, to be the case, even as respects the ordinary characteristics in which resemblance is looked for, as complexion, height, features, manner, disposition, and so forth. Much more would it be recognized, if such close investigation could be made among the various families as the naturalist can make into the characteristics of men and animals. The fact, then, that features of resemblance to man are found, not all in one order of the SimiadÆ, but scattered among the various orders, is perfectly analogous with the laws of resemblance recognized among the various members of more or less closely related families.

The same result follows if we consider the analogy between various different species of animals on the one hand and between various races of the human family on the other. No one thinks of urging against the ordinary theory that men form only a single species, the objection that none of the other families of the human race can be regarded as the progenitor of the Caucasian family, seeing that though the Mongolian type is nearer in some respects, the Ethiopian is nearer in others, the American in others, the Malay in yet others. We find in this the perfect analogue of what is recognized in the relationships between families all belonging to one nation, or even to one small branch of a nation. Is it not reasonable, then, to find in the corresponding features of scattered resemblance observed among the various branches of the great Simian family, not the objection which Mivart finds against the theory of relationship, but rather what should be expected if that theory is sound, and therefore, pro tanto, a confirmation of the theory?

But now, in conclusion, let us briefly consider the great difficulty of the theory that man is descended from some ape-like, arboreal, speechless animal,—the difficulty of bridging over the wide gap which confessedly separates the lowest race of savages from the highest existing race of apes. After all that has been done to diminish the difficulty, it remains a very great one. It is quite true that what is going on at this present time shows how the gap has been widened, and therefore indicates how it may once have been comparatively small. The more savage races of man are gradually disappearing on the one hand, the most man-like apes are being destroyed on the other,—so that on both sides of the great gap a widening process is at work. Ten thousand years hence the least civilized human race will probably be little inferior to the average Caucasian races of the present day, the most civilized being far in advance of the most advanced European races of our time. On the other hand, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang, and the gibbon will probably be extinct or nearly so. True, the men of those days will probably have very exact records of the characteristics not only of the present savage races of man, but of the present races of apes. Nay, they will probably know of intermediate races, long since extinct even now, whose fossil remains geologists hope to discover before long as they have already discovered the remains of an ape as large as man (the Dryopithecus) which existed in Europe during the Miocene period;40 and more recently the remains of a race of monkeys akin to Macacus, which once inhabited Attica. But although our remote descendants will thus possess means which we do not possess of bridging the gap between the highest races of apes and the lowest races of man, the gap will nevertheless be wider in their time. And tracing backwards the process, which, thus traced forward, shows a widened gap, we see that once the gap must have been much narrower than it is. Lower races of man than any now known once existed on the earth, and also races of apes nearer akin to man than any now existing, even if the present races of apes are not the degraded descendants of races which, living under more favourable conditions, were better developed after their kind than the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon of the present time.

It may be, indeed, that in the consideration last suggested we may find some assistance in dealing with our difficult problem. It is commonly assumed that the man-like apes are the most advanced members of the Simian family save man alone, and so far as their present condition is concerned this may be true. But it is not necessarily the case that the anthropoid apes have advanced to their present condition. Judging from the appearance of the young of these races, we may infer with some degree of probability that these apes are the degraded representatives of more intelligent and less savage creatures. Whereas the young of man is decidedly more savage in character than the well-nurtured and carefully trained adult, the young of apes are decidedly less savage than the adult. The same reasoning which leads us to regard the wildness, the natural cruelty, the destructiveness, the love of noise, and many other little ways of young children, as reminders of a more or less remote savage ancestry, should lead us to regard the comparative tameness and quiet of the young gorilla, for example, as evidence that in remote times the progenitors of the race were not so wild and fierce as the present race of gorillas.

But even when all such considerations, whether based on the known or the possible, have been taken into account, the gap between the lowest savage and the highest ape is not easily bridged. It is easier to see how man may have developed from an arboreal, unspeaking animal to his present state, than to ascertain how any part of the development was actually effected; in other words, it is easier to suggest a general hypothesis than to establish an even partial theory.

That the progenitor of man was arboreal in his habits seems altogether probable. Darwin recognizes in the arrangement of the hair on the human forearm the strongest evidence on this point, so far as the actual body of man is concerned; the remaining and perhaps stronger evidence being derived from appearances recognized in the unborn child. He, who usually seems as though he could overlook nothing, seems to me to have overlooked a peculiarity which is even more strikingly suggestive of original arboreal habits. There is one set of muscles, and, so far as I know, one only, which the infant uses freely, while the adult scarcely uses them at all. I mean the muscles which separate the toes, and those, especially, which work the big toe. Very young children not only move the toes apart, so that the great toe and the little toe will be inclined to each other (in the plane of the sole) nearly ninety degrees, but also distinctly clutch with the toes. The habit has no relation to the child’s actual means of satisfying its wants. I have often thought that the child’s manner of clutching with its fingers is indicative of the former arboreal habits of the race, but it is not difficult to explain the action otherwise. The clutching movement of the toes, however, cannot be so explained. The child can neither bring food to its mouth in this way nor save itself from falling; and as the adult does not use the toes in this way the habit cannot be regarded as the first imperfect effort towards movements subsequently useful. In fact, the very circumstance that the movement is gradually disused shows that it is useless to the human child in the present condition of the race. In the very young gorilla the clutching motion of the toes is scarcely more marked than it is in a very young child; only in the gorilla the movement, being of use, is continued by the young, and is developed into that effective clutch with the feet which has been already described. Here we have another illustration of that divergency which, rather than either simple descent or ascent, characterizes the relationship between man and the anthropoid ape. In the growing gorilla a habit is more and more freely used, which is more and more completely given up by the child as he progresses towards maturity.

Probably the arboreal progenitor of man was originally compelled to abandon his arboreal habits by some slow change in the flora of his habitat, resulting in the diminution and eventual disappearance of trees suited for his movements. He would thus be compelled to adopt, at first, some such course as the chimpanzee—making huts of such branches and foliage as he could conveniently use for the purpose. The habit of living in large companies would (as in the case of the chimpanzee) become before long necessary, especially if the race or races thus driven from their former abode in the trees were, like the gibbons, unapt when alone both in attack and in defence. One can imagine how the use of vocal signals of various kinds would be of service to the members of these troops, not only in their excursions, but during the work of erecting huts or defences against their enemies. If in two generations the silent wild dog acquires, when brought into the company of domestic dogs, no less than five distinct barking signals, we can well believe that a race much superior in intelligence, and forced by necessity to associate in large bodies, would—in many hundreds of generations, perhaps—acquire a great number of vocal symbols. These at first would express various emotions, as of affection, fear, anxiety, sympathy, and so forth. Other signals would be used to indicate the approach of enemies, or as battle-cries. I can see no reason why gradually the use of particular vocal signs to indicate various objects, animate or inanimate, and various actions, should not follow after a while. And though the possession and use of many, even of many hundreds, of such signs would be very far from even the most imperfect of the languages now employed by savage races, one can perceive the possibility—which is all that at present we can expect to recognize—that out of such systems of vocal signalling a form of language might arise, which, undergoing slow and gradual development, should, in the course of many generations, approach in character the language of the lowest savage races. That from such a beginning language should attain its higher and highest developments is not more wonderful in kind, though much more wonderful, perhaps, in degree, than that from the first imperfect methods of printing should have arisen the highest known developments of the typographic art. The real difficulty lies in conceiving how mere vocal signalling became developed into what can properly be regarded as spoken language.

Of the difficulties related to the origin of, or rather the development of, man’s moral consciousness, space will not permit me to speak, even though there were much to be said beyond the admission that these difficulties have not as yet been overcome. It must be remembered, however, that races of men still exist whose moral consciousness can hardly be regarded as very fully developed. Not only so, but, through a form of reversion to savage types, the highest and most cultivated races of man bring forth from time to time (as our police reports too plainly testify) beings utterly savage, brutal, and even (“which is else”) bestial. Nay, the man is fortunate who has never had occasion to control innate tendencies to evil which are at least strongly significant of the origin of our race. To most minds it must be pleasanter as certainly it seems more reasonable, to believe that the evil tendencies of our race are manifestations of qualities undergoing gradual extinction, than to regard them as the consequences of one past offence, and so to have no reason for trusting in their gradual eradication hereafter. But, as Darwin says, in the true scientific spirit, “We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. We must acknowledge that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his God-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system,—with all these exalted powers, man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.” As it seems to me, man’s moral nature teaches the same lesson with equal, if not greater, significance.