the tibia; (14) in the slenderness of the ankle; (15) in the length of the great toe compared with that of the whole foot; (16) the prominence of the nose; (17) the form of the stomach; (18) that of the liver; (19) that of the vermiform appendix; (20) the succession of the teeth; (21) the absence of laryngeal sacs; (22) the quality of the voice.

All the Gibbons differ from man, more than do any other of the broad-breastboned Apes, in that: (1) the length of the arms compared with that of the spine is so great; (2) in the excessive length of the leg and foot (taken together) compared with that of the spine; (3) in the length of the foot compared with that of the hand; (4) in the structure of the tongue underneath; (5) in the form of the upper grinding teeth; (6) in the smaller size of the body, and, in the Siamang, in the uncovered cerebellum.

We have seen also that some or other of the Baboons-the lowest of the Simiadaexcel all the higher Apes in resemblance to man as to certain points. These are:(1) the sigmoid curvature of the spine; (2) the lumbo-sacral angle; (3) the concavity of the visceral surface of the sacrum; (4) the convexity of the bones of the nose; (5) the development of the styloid process; (6) the transverse breadth of the pelvis as compared with its depth from the sacrum to the pubis; (7) the greater descent of the inner condyle of the femur; (8) the length of the foot compared with that of the backbone; (9) the angle formed by the axis of the cranium with the axis of the face.

The Cebidae differ from both man and the Simiada in such important characters that they cannot but be considered to constitute a family decidedly more inferior and remote from man than that of the Old World Apes. Nevertheless, some or other of them resemble man more than do the bulk of the Simiada in the following characters: (1) no ischial callosities; (2) no cheek pouches; (3) copious beard and whiskers (Sakis); (4) hair of arms directed as in man; (5) cranium more rounded; (6) cranium higher; (7) face relatively smaller; (8) foramen magnum situate more forwardly; (9) the length of the thumb compared with that of the hand (Hapale); (10) the length of the thigh-bone compared with that of the back-bone (Spider Monkeys); (11) the greater descent of the in

ner condyle of the femur (Spider Monkeys); (12) the length of the shin-bone compared with that of the femur (Spider Monkeys); (13) the length of the hallux compared with that of the spine (Pithecia); (14) the presence of "bridging convolutions" (Spider Monkeys); (15) the very overlapping cerebrum (Squirrel Monkeys); (16) the oblique ridge on the upper grinders (Howling Monkeys).

The Half-Apes (Lemuroidea) differ, as before said, from both man and true Apes in points so numerous and so significant that there can be no question as to their great inferiority and the vast chasm which exists between the two sub-orders.

Nevertheless, we find amongst the HalfApes certain characters which resemble those of man more than do most, sometimes even more than do any, of the characters exhibited by the true apes. Thus the typical Lemurs and the Indris have a more completely opposable and better developed thumb than any Ape. In the slender Loris we find an absence of the extra interlocking processes (metapophyses and anapophyses) of the back-bone, the spinous processes of which do not converge (fore and aft) towards a central point; the pisiform bone of the wrist is smaller than in any Ape; the proportion borne by the thumb to the hand in length is more human, as is the form assumed by the ischium, and the relative size of the foot compared with the leg. In the Indrisine and in Lepilemur we find but eight carpal bones (a character found in no other Primates save Man, the Chimpanzee and Gorilla), and the most human proportional length of both the thumb and the index finger compared with the length of the spine. We also find in the short-tailed Indris the length of the femur compared with that of the haunch bone most human, as also the length of the foot compared with that of the hand, and the near approach made by the length of the "great toe" to the actually longest toe of the foot. In the typical genus Lemur we find the proportion (in length) of thigh-bone to the upper arm-bone most human, as well as that of the longest toe to the back-bone. In the Slow Lemur (Nycticebus), the length of the shin-bone bears a relation to that of the thigh-bone more human than in any other species below man, while in other kinds of Half-Apes we meet with a development of the anterior inferior spinous process of the

ilium more like that of man than we find in any ape; also upper grinding teeth furnished with the" oblique ridge" as in man, and sometimes an almost equality of vertical development in the teeth, and even an absence of any diastema.

Having completed our survey and summary of the structural resemblances and differences presented by the different forms of Primates, we may now consider and endeavor to appraise their value, as bearing upon the question of the "Origin of Species," and especially upon the asserted "descent of man" from some" non-human" Ape ancestor. The question, that is, as to man's body; for as to the totality of his nature no mere anatomical examinations will enable us to decide-that is the task of psychology and philosophy generally.

In the first place it is manifest that man, the Apes, and Half-Apes cannot be arranged in a single ascending series, of which man is the term and culmination.

We may, indeed, by selecting one organ, or one set of parts, and confining our attention to it, arrange the different forms in a more or less simple manner. But, if all the organs be taken into account, the cross relations and interdependencies become in the highest degree complex and difficult to unravel.

This has been more or less generally recognised; but it has been put forward by Mr. Darwin,* and widely accepted, that the resemblances between Man and Apes are such that Man may be conceived to have descended from some ancient members of the broad-breastboned group of Apes, and the Gorilla is still popularly credited with the closest relationship to him which is to be found in all existing Apes.

As to the latter opinion, evidence has been here adduced to show that it is quite untenable.

As to Mr. Darwin's proposition, much remains to be said. But it is certainly true that on the whole the anatomical characters of man's body have much more resemblance to those common to the latisternal group than to those presented by any other section of the order Primates.

But, in the first place, we should consider what evidence of common origin does community of structure afford?

The human structural characters are shared by so many and such diverse

"Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 197.

forms, that it is impossible to arrange even groups of genera in a single ascending series from the Aye-Aye to man (to say nothing of so arranging the several single genera), if all the structural resemblances are taken into account.

On any conceivable hypothesis there are many similar structures, each of which must be deemed to have been independently evolved in more than one in stance.

If the number of wrist bones be deemed a special mark of affinity between the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and man, why are we not to consider it also a special mark of affinity between the Indris and man? That it should be so considered, however, would be deemed an absurdity by every evolutionist.

If the proportions of the arms speak in favor of the Chimpanzee, why do not the proportions of the legs serve to promote the rank of the Gibbons?

If the "bridging convolutions" of the Orang go to sustain its 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 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 ear lobule of the Gorilla makes him our cousin; but his tongue is eloquent in his own dispraise.

The slender Loris, from amidst the Half-Apes, can put in many a claim to be our shadow refracted, as it were, through a Lemurine prism.

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.

In fact, in the words of the illustrious Dutch naturalists, Messrs. Schroeder Van der Kolk and Vrolik, 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

"Nat. Hist. Review," vol. ii.p. 117.

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.

But, it may be replied, the spontaneous and independent appearance of these similar structures, is due to "atavism" and "reversion"—to the reappearance, that is. in modern descendants, of ancient and sometimes long-lost structural characters, which formerly existed in more or less remote hypothetical ancestors.

Let us see to what this reply brings us. If it is true and if Man and the Orang are diverging descendants of a creature with certain cerebral characters, then that remote ancestor must also have had the wrist of the Chimpanzee, the voice of a long-armed Ape, the blade-bone of the Gorilla, the chin of the Siamang, the skulldome of an American Ape, the ischium of a slender Loris, the whiskers and beard of a Saki, the liver and stomach of the Gibbons, and the number of other characters before detailed, in which the various several forms of higher or lower Primates respectively approximate to Man.

But to assert this is as much as to say that low down in the scale of Primates 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.

Nor if such an homunculus had really existed, would it suffice to account for the difficulty. For it must be borne in mind that man is only one of many peculiar forms. The body of the Orang is as exceptional in its way, as is that of man in another. The little Tarsier has even a more exceptional structure than has man himself. Now, all these exceptional forms show cross relations and complex dependencies as involved and puzzling as does the human structure, so that in each several case we should meet with a similar network of difficulties, if we sought to account for existing structural characters through the influence of inheritance and natural selection.

It may be replied that certain of these characters have arisen in total independence, and this reply is no doubt true; but how are we to discriminate between those

which are inherited and those which are independently acquired ? Structures like strong teeth or powerful claws, obviously useful in the struggle for life, may well be supposed to have independently appeared, and been preserved time after time; but what character could well be thought, à priori, less likely to be independently acquired than a more or less developed chin, such as Man shares with the Siamang alone, or a slightly aquiline nose, such as that found in the Hoolock Gibbon and often in the human species? Can either character be thought to have preserved either species in the struggle for life, or have persistently gained the hearts of successive generations of female Gibbons? Certainly seductiveness of this sort will never explain the arrangement of the lobes of the liver, or the presence of an oblique ridge on the grinding surfaces of the back teeth.

Again, can this oblique ridge of the grinding teeth be supposed to have arisen through life necessities? and yet, if it is a real sign of genetic affinity, how comes it to be absent from the man-like Gibbons, and to reappear for the first time in American Apes, and among others in the aberrant and more or less baboon-like Howling Monkeys?

The same remark applies to the condition of wrist bones of man, the Chimpanzee, and Indris. If this condition arises independently, and is no mark whatever of genetic affinity, what other single character can with certainty be deemed to be valid evidence of affinity of the kind?

But if the foregoing facts and considerations tell against a belief in the origin of Man and Apes, by the purely accidental preservation in the struggle of life of minute and fortuitous structural variations, do they tell against the doctrine of evolution generally?

To this question it must be replied that if we have reason to think an innate law has been imposed upon nature by which new and definite species, under definite conditions, emerge from a latent and potential being into actual and manifest existence, then the foregoing facts do not in the least tell against a conception-a conception, that is, of a real and true process of" evolution" or "unfolding."

For there is no conceivable reason why these latent specific forms should not have the most complex and involved relationships one to another; similar structures

independently appearing in widely different instances.

Analogy drawn from the inorganic world is all in favor of such latent potentialities, and the process of development of every individual animal is the unmistakeable manifestation of actual organic evolution and emergence of real from potential existence in each separate case.

It has recently been strongly asserted by Dr. H. Charlton Bastian,* that organic nature does manifestly contain within it these innate powers of developing new and definite forms, more or less like those existing in inorganic nature, as evidenced by crystallisation.

He has given detailed descriptions † of the most strange and startling direct transformations amongst the lower animals, including the direct evolution of Rotifers and Nematoid worms. Moreover, the evidence of the occurrence of sudden and direct transformations does not repose on Dr. Bastian's observations alone. Similar phenomena have been observed by M. Pineau, Mr. Jules Haime, M. T. C. Hildyard, Mr. Metcalf Johnson, Dr. Gros, and M. Nicolet.‡

It would be difficult and eminently unscientific summarily to reject such an accumulation of evidence. To do so simply on account of à priori prejudice, reposing upon nothing better than negative testimony, would be in the highest degree unphilosophical.

Moreover, we have of late years become acquainted with the remarkable fact of the occasional sudden transformation of a certain large Mexican Eft with external gills -the Axolotl-into an animal not only of a different species but of a different genus. Here the whole structure, the arrangement even of certain bones and distribution of the teeth in the jaws becomes transformed without the most careful observations having as yet unabled us to discover what conditions determine in these exceptional cases such a marvellous metamorphosis.

It is true that the Axolotl has characters of immaturity, and that the form ultimately attained by it is probably the fully developed condition; but the wonder is thus only increased, since while the ordinary

"The Beginnings of Life," 1872. t L. c., vol. ii. pp. 307-540.

For an account of their observations and references to their original statements, see "Bastian," Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 493-527.

and immature Axolotls breed freely, the rarely developed adults are absolutely sterile.

To return from this digression, however, to the question of the cause and mode of specific origin. I have elsewhere* endeavored to show by many different facts, what the teaching of nature as to such originnamely, that very frequently indeed similarity of structure may arise without there being any genetic affinity between the resembling forms, as also that it is much rather to an internal cause or principle,‡ than to any action of surrounding external conditions that the origin of new specific forms is due.

The characters and relations exhibited to us by the history of the highest order of mammals-the order Primates, common to us and to the Apes-seem then not only fully to corroborate, but to accentuate and intensify the arguments advanced in the "Genesis of Species" in support of what the author believes to be the more philosophical conception of the cause and nature of" specific genesis" generally.

Not only is there abundant reason to believe that Apes and Half-Apes have little if any closer genetic affinity than they have either with Lions or with Whales; but there is much evidence to support the belief that the Apes of the Old and of the New Worlds respectively (the Simiada and Cebida) have been created independently one of the other, and that the various common characters they exhibit are but parallel adaptive modifications, due simply to similarity as to the exigencies of life to which they are respectively exposed.

Fossil remains, as yet unknown, may bridge over the gulf at present existing between these families. It would be a bold thing to positively affirm that such will not be discovered when we reflect how very few are the extinct animals known to us compared with the vast multitudes which have existed, how very rarely animal remains are fossilized, and how very rarely again such fossils are both accessible and actually found. Nevertheless, the author believes that it is far more likely that tropical geological explorations may reveal to us latisternal Apes more hu

"Genesis of Species," 2nd edition, 1872. "Genesis of Species," p. 71, chap. iii., on the co-existence of closely similar structures of diverse origin.

Op. cit., p. 251, chap. xi., on Specific Genesis.

man than any now existing, rather than that it will bring to our knowledge forms directly connecting the Simiada and Cebida.

To return from this digression, the question may be asked, "What is the bearing of all the foregoing facts on the origin and affinities of man ?"

Man being, as the mind of each man may tell him, an existence not only conscious, but conscious of his own consciousness; one not only acting on inference, but capable of analysing the process of inference; a creature not only capable of acting well or ill, but of understanding the ideas "virtue" and "moral obligation," with their correlatives freedom of choice and responsibility-man being all this, it is at once obvious that the principal part of his being is his mental power.

In Nature there is nothing great but Man, In Man there is nothing great but Mind. We must entirely dismiss, then, the conception that mere anatomy by itself can have any decisive bearing on the question as to man's nature and being as a whole. To solve this question, recourse must be had to other studies; that is to say, to philosophy, and especially to that branch of it which occupies itself with mental phenomena-psychology.

massa

But if man's being as a whole is excluded from our present investigation, man's body considered by itself, his mere corporea," may fairly be compared with the bodies of other species of his zoological order, and his corporeal affinities thus estimated.

Let us suppose ourselves to be purely immaterial intelligences, acquainted only with a world peopled like our own, except that man had never lived on it, yet into which the dead body of a man had somehow been introduced.

We should, I think, consider such a body to be that of some latisternal Ape, but of one much more widely differing from all the others than such others differ one from another amongst themselves. We should be especially struck with its vast brain, and we should be the more impressed by it when we noted how bulky was the body to which that brain belonged. We should be so impressed because we should have previously noted that, as a general rule, in backboned animals, the larger the bulk of the body the less the relative size of the

brain. From our knowledge of the habits and faculties of various animals in relation to their brain structure, we should be led to infer that the animal man was one possessing great power of co-ordinating movements, and that his emotional sensibility would have been considerable. But above all, his powers of imagination would have been deemed by us to have been prodigious, with a corresponding faculty of collecting, grouping, and preserving sensible images of objects in complex and coherent aggregations to a degree much greater than in any other animal with which we were before acquainted. Did we know that all the various other kinds of existing animals had been developed one from another by evolution; did we know that the numerous species had been evolved from potential to actual existence. by implanted powers in matter, aided by the influence of incident forces; then we might reasonably argue by analogy that a similar mode of origin had given rise to the exceptional being, the body of which we were examining.

If, however, it were made clear to usimmaterial intelligences-that the dead body before us had been, in life, animated, not by a merely animal nature, but by an active intelligence like our own, so that the difference between him and all other animals was not a difference of degree but of kind-if we could be made to understand that its vast power of collecting and grouping sensible images served but to supply it with the materials made use of by its intelligence to perceive, not merely sensible phenomena, but also abstract qualities of objects-if we became aware that the sounds uttered by it in life were not exclusively emotional expressions, but signs of general conceptions (such as predominate in the language of even the lowest savage), then the aspect of the question would be entirely altered for us.

We should probably decide that if the body before us seemed to us to be so little related to the informing rational soul that its existence anterior to and independent of such rational soul was quite conceivable and possible, then its origin by process of natural evolution would, indeed, also be conceivable and indeed à priori probable.

But if, on the other hand, we were convinced, from whatever reason, that it was inconceivable and impossible for such a body to be developed or exist without