On all sides I shall hear the cry--"We are men and women, not a mere
better sort of apes, a little longer in the leg, more compact in the
foot, and bigger in brain than your brutal Chimpanzees and Gorillas.
The power of knowledge--the conscience of good and evil--the pitiful
tenderness of human affections, raise us out of all real fellowship with
the brutes, however closely they may seem to approximate us."
To this I can only reply that the exclamation would be most just and
would have my own entire sympathy, if it were only relevant. But, it
is not I who seek to base Man's dignity upon his great toe, or
insinuate that we are lost if an Ape has a hippocampus minor. On the
contrary, I have done my best to sweep away this vanity. I have
endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation,
wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the
scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may
add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a psychical
distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of
feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.
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