had better follow the sure law. By following precisely this method, meditation, virtue, sympathy, and studious labor,

one of the wisest and most sainted men modern times have produced; a man who said, "In my early years, my spirit, consumed with passionate fires, thirsted for an unknown good, and my body pined away to a shadow under the workings of a troubled mind," was, at a later period of his life, enabled to say, "I have attained to a faith and serenity that once seemed denied in the present state." The doctrine we have set forth is thus sealed and clasped, as with a diamond brooch, with the precious and deathless name of Channing.

ART. V.-THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

1. Lectures on the Antiquity and Origin of Man. By JOHN LUBBOCK, F.R.S. London. 1865.

2. Researches into the Early History of Mankind, and the Development of Civilization. By EDWARD BURNET TYLER. London. 1865. 3. Lectures on Man: his Place in Creation, and in the History of the Earth. By DR. CARL VOGT. Published for the London Anthropological Society.

THE antiquity of man, and the double question of his origin, -whether by development from a lower type (as the anthropoid), or by distinct creation; and whether of one or several original stocks, are topics closely connected, both in themselves and in the discussions going on among scientific men. The first was treated in a previous number of the "Christian Examiner," in a review chiefly of Sir Charles Lyell's very full, though somewhat dry, synopsis of the evidence on that subject. Mr. Lubbock's volume covers nearly the same ground, but more archæologically, and less geologically; is more readable, but throws no new light on the chief point. Some opinions were briefly expressed in the article referred

*November, 1864.

to upon the second topic, the question respecting the simian origin of the human race. Further reading has brought no disposition to change the views then expressed; namely, that nothing in the investigations of the archæologists hitherto helps us a single step towards bridging over the gulf between man and the lower animals. The earliest traces yet discovered of man show him entirely anthropic, not anthropoid; and what is quite as much to the purpose, all phases of ape life, as now existing, or revealed in fossil remains, are purely simian, not semi-human. There is no nebulous shading-off on either side. Some doubtful stories of baboons or orangs that use clubs, and make for themselves slight shelters of the boughs of trees, are the nearest approach to man from the anthropoid quarter;-stories, if true, no more to the purpose than the fact that birds build nests, beavers dams, marmots burrows, bees hives, and that elephants use boughs to whip off flies, is to show a human tendency in these animals.

The physiological argument stands on a different footing. As between Mr. Huxley and Mr. Owen, and the parties which they respectively represent, we are inclined to think the former have the advantage. It is not practicable to point out any structural peculiarity, of such importance as to entitle man to be regarded as an Order by himself. In zoology, man may be regarded as forming a genus, distinguished by the unprehensile character of his hinder extremities, and his naturally upright position, or bipedal locomotion. But, supposing it should be shown that man holds only the place of one species among the bimana, -Mr. Huxley having proved the old term quadrumana an error, so long as it has not yet been proved that any one species of the whole family, or order, was derived from another, of course nothing is effected towards proving man to have been derived from other and lower types.

But what, after all, depends on the way this question is settled? If man were clearly proved to be a distinct order, that would be to establish only a zoological fact, pertaining solely to his physical structure and functions. It would do nothing towards establishing his moral and intellectual pre

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eminence. And, on the other hand, to show him to be physically co-ordinate with lower animals could not possibly affect his actual supremacy mentally. Suppose a perfect resemblance in every physical organ and member, a complete corporeal equivalency, were proved to exist between men and some apes or gorillas: it would only demonstrate, beyond all question, that the evident and immense superiority of the human being, mentally and spiritually, is due to something else than physical conformation. If there should be found a perfectly man-like ape, yet plainly an ape, it would complete the proof that humanity is not a thing of physical origin. So the anxious student, conscious of a kind of fear of being shown to be akin to monkeys, may rather welcome Mr. Huxley's demonstrations, and feel sure that he is not in the remotest degree related to the anthropoids, the more plainly it appears that they have all the apparatus he has, hands and brains too, yet are nothing but apes and baboons,- having a reasonable confidence, an internal evidence, that he is something far better, whatever may be true of anthropologists.

There seems to be here a curious instance of the glaring inconsistencies into which men of science are often led by their prepossessions, that many of those who regard Mr. Huxley's views as true, and as establishing the probable community of origin of man and the apes, notwithstanding the obvious differences in the whole specific conformation, shape, size, covering, feature, and habits, are the same men who maintain the diverse origin of the different human races, which have, of course, all the points in common, in which the apes agree with men, besides their unquestioned and far more general likeness as human beings. We would recommend to any victim of the fear just alluded to, of being proved a relative to the orang or gorilla, to inspect the admirable bust of the last-named amiable creature in the Museum at Cambridge. It would be no small gratification to get any advocate of man's simian parentage into that place, and introduce him to his cousin in the hundred-thousandth or millionth degree. It is doubtful if even such a degree would be remote enough to reconcile him to the relationship.

The real distinctions between animals are not those which the anatomist, or even zoologist, can detect and explain; but those which the eye sees, which the painter is able to represent in form and color; which make the presence of dog evident, whether the animal before you is a shaggy Newfoundland, an English bull-dog, a Scotch terrier, or a lady's silken-fleeced lapdog. After all that has been, or can be, determined by anatomy or physiology, of resemblance between men and monkeys, the great and perfectly obvious fact remains, that one is man, and the other is monkey. The members of the London Anthropological Society may have some excuse for being in doubt on this point. We have not. Even in the Aztec children, so called, who were in fact idiotic dwarfs, the human was evident beyond the remotest possibility of doubt; though it is likely their mental development was inferior to that of many dogs, horses, elephants, and seals, to say nothing of anthropological savans.

One of the favorite arguments of those who hold to man's simian parentage is that derived from a comparison of the skull forms in some of the lower tribes of men with those of the anthropoids; or, as they call it, the ape-like character of the negro cranium. But, in fact, if a series of craniums, beginning from the lowest of the vertebrates and reaching to man, be compared with each other, we shall have a progression of the most gradual kind, till we reach those of the chimpanzees and some of the more highly civilized dogs; but then a wide and unmistakable gap, beyond which come the lowest forms of human skulls, even if we include that godsend to the development theorists, the Neanderthal skull; and then a series of still slighter differences from those to the most towering brows and expanded temples of the sages and geniuses of our race. The proper statement of the fact is, that, among the brains of the lower animals, we can perceive in those of the more intelligent, a slight approximation to the shape of the human brain,— an approximation seeming to correspond very well to what we know of the mental capacities of such animals. The distance from the highest animal brain to the lowest typical human brain is about equal to that which sep

arates the brain of the rudest savage from that of a Goethe or Humboldt. The former gap is an unbridged gulf: the latter is filled with an infinite series of forms, differing by insensible degrees. Yet the latter is thought enough to prove the savage to be of a different species from the educated and civilized man; while the former, because it is not so wide as it might be, is thought to prove that all men probably originated from the brutes.

Very nearly the same statement represents the fact, if we look at the series of animals, with regard to any line of difference, keeping within that one of the four great types to which man belongs. Everywhere we find the gentlest graduation from one to another, with the single exception of the broad, obvious, unspanned gap that separates man from all the rest. This does not prove man's separate origin; but it creates a strong presumption in favor of the common view, even if the theory of development were firmly established as to all below man, which is far from being the case yet.

In order to create a presumption in favor of those who hold to man's derivation from the lower animals, there should be some instances of apes or other animals so closely resembling man, as to raise a question respecting their true place, whether within or out of human limits. There is no pretence of any such instance. And, on the other side, the lowest specimens of human beings should be such as to leave room to doubt whether they are really human, or only humanlike, of which also there is no instance. It has been already stated, that, among the fossil remains of ancient men, there is found nothing of this ambiguous sort. Tyler says, substantially, in his summing up, there is no evidence of any form of human life in the past lower than what now exists among some savage tribes. And if we look at the lowest existing races, after determining, among the conflicting authorities, whether it is Hottentot, Bushman, Australian, Tasmanian, Fuegian, Fejee Islander, sandhiller, clay-eater, or Andamaner, we shall find, in each and all, the multiplied and unquestionable tokens of man's sole and singular supremacy, the obvious elements of the highest arts and culture. The An