* At
the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than I am of the
vastness of the gulf between civilized man and the brutes; or is more
certain that whether 'from' them or not, he is assuredly not 'of'
them. No one is less disposed to think lightly of the present dignity,
or desparingly of the future hopes, of the only consciously intelligent
denizen of this world.
[Footnote] * It is so rare a pleasure for me to find
Professor Owen's opinions in entire accordance with my own,
that I cannot forbear from quoting a paragraph which
appeared in his Essay "On the Characters, etc., of the
Class Mammalia," in the 'Journal of the Proceedings of the
Linnean Society of London' for 1857, but is unaccountably
omitted in the "Reade Lecture" delivered before the
University of Cambridge two years later, which is otherwise
nearly a reprint of the paper in question. Prof. Owen
writes: "Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the
distinction between the psychical phenomena of a Chimpanzee,
and of a Boschisman or of an Aztec, with arrested brain
growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a
comparison between them, or as being other than a
difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the
significance of that all-pervading similitude of
structure--every tooth, every bone, strictly
homologous--which makes the determination of the difference
between 'Homo' and 'Pithecus' the anatomist's difficulty.
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