Whoever heard a Sheep was an assassin, Whose gullet takes not flesh, but only grass in ?" Then spoke the Fox, with dignity surpassing: "The Sheep's iniquity cannot be hid, He might have killed the fowls, and therefore did. Tell this to Sheep, too flagrantly it shocks R. GARNETT. MAN AND ANIMALS IN NATURE. A SCIENTIFIC conclusion, owing to the care which is taken during the process to eliminate any elements of doubt, tends to a fixity which is liable to become narrowness and dogmatism. For, in passing by the doubtful elements, in letting slip the difficult, ill-ascertained, or still mysterious constituents of the subject, it is quite possible to miss something without which no large and integral conception of it is possible. Science is classification, and, to be perfect, must include in every category one very large and important group of qualities, labelled as the Athenians wisely named one deity of the Pantheon-one side, that is to say, of universal God, -the Unknown. To show that a man and a monkey in physical structure manifest very decided resemblances, and carefully to note all of them, and all corporeal dissimilarities as well, is scientific. To assert that therefore man and monkey are on the same plane of universal life, on which by various processes the so-called human denomination has erected a step or raised platform, is plausible, but not scientific. All the elements of comparison are not allowed equal force, the great region of the unknown is defrauded of its prerogative, a place in the classification. What do we know of the life of man?-a phase of seventy years, or thereabouts. A phase! What reason is there for supposing human life more than any other to be only a phase? asks science. Perhaps none, but there is equally little reason for asserting that the manifestation of life which we behold in the career of a human individual is the sole and complete expression of the force in activity therein; it would be dogmatic and not scientific to make that assertion, and science therefore is no science unless "not grudgingly or of necessity" it leaves room in the anthropological map for the extensive tract of the unknown. Alone of animals, man has an instinct of superiority to his earthly lot, an intuition which blossoms into shapes of beauty in imagination, and into forms of art which are felt to be related to a perfection only partially realisable under terrestrial conditions. This foreboding is an argument for the belief that the relation of man to the animal plane is a partial and temporary one only; but it is an argument which science shrinks from taking hold of. And while "we know not what we shall be," this element of man can belong only to the region of the unknown, which fact it is that makes unscientific folk instinctively rebel against their place being found for them next door to the ape. This instinct is an intelligible one, but strangely difficult to account for is the opposite instinct, that of aversion from any theory allowing for the extension into the unknown of the unexplorable side of the constitution of man. This aversion can only be understood on the hypothesis that in some minds the sense of orderly classification and definition is so strong, that pain is produced by contemplation of anything admitting neither of certain classification nor precise definition. Moreover, even on the theory that present life is but a phase of human spiritual existence, while we are here, we are here; and though certain individuals of high faculties. to be conscious of a glory afar, the generality of mankind are glad to content themselves in making certain of the undoubted realities of terrestrial existence. seem The aversion to which we have referred shows itself in the growth of what is called materialism, a state of mind which probably affords rest to some minds, by relieving them of the strain of pressing forward into that vague unknown which is so attractive to others. The dislike manifests itself also in neglect of any theory which, by admitting the unverifiable, conflicts with theories which derive their force and solidity from its elimination. Some years ago we fell upon a curious little treatise* which, being scientifically objectionable, well illustrates the tendency to neglect of which we speak. The essay contains much that is interesting from a literary point of view, or as considered on the broad ground of general and philosophical thought rather than on the narrow arena of the prevalent creed of the day; and, as it is practically unknown, we propose making a few extracts from it to illustrate the oft-discussed relations of man and monkey. 66 When," says our author, "the end proposed in a classification of animals is to fortify the memory and to facilitate the record of knowledge, it would seem that similarity of form, and similarity in general, may constitute the basis of classification. On the other hand, when the end is of a philosophical character, when we wish to treat our classification as a truth, and to reason from it, we must have recourse to something more vital than analogy of form, and in this case, as I hope to show, we must rather consider affinities of use and character than the resemblances perceptible to the senses." The rigidity of scientific deduction meets with a due corrective when we bear in mind that "a classification framed upon the one principle of uniformity involves a hypothesis and not a fact; that, if used for higher purposes than those of reference and memoria technica, it will carry us away from the laws of nature; and that, when so abused, it must cause small facts to extinguish great ones, particular instances to override general laws, exceptions to put down rules, and the senses of the body to be discordant with the common sense of the mind." Animated nature the writer very fairly represents, not as a museum of stuffed specimens grouped in classes, but as a vast social organisation, a family: "The grouping of animals in nature is not according to a scale of similarities, but according to a scale of differences." "Take, first, a case from ranks in society, and look at the upper classes. Now, human society is a wonderful instance of grouping. But are its grades associated by extrinsic similiarity alone? Who are the parties that most copy the nobleman? Decidedly his own *On the Grouping of Animals. By Mr. J. J. G. Wilkinson, M.R.C.S. (A paper read before the Veterinary Medical Association, April 8, 1845, and published in the Transactions of the Society in the same year.) London: Longmans. without which rank itself must stand nearly on the bare ground, like a statue without a pedestal. Such also is the relation of man and animals. The animal which is an imitation of man does not enter into the grouping that nature brings about between the human race and those good and useful creatures that adorn our fields and gather round our homesteads; for the ape is no more next to man in the nature of things than the actor is next to the monarch he personates, or the valet next to the peer. "It is true the ape is like man, disgustingly like; but this very fact it is that degrades him and removes him from his prototype; for he is a copy without a useful character of his own; and the poorest creature with an originality is nearer to man in essence than he. "Indeed, there is no real order, whether in history, art, or science, but exemplifies the same thing. Take the similars, copies, or simiæ in any case, and you will find you cannot construct a series by placing them next to the originals. Were it wished, for instance, to construct a series of English poets, and to show the order in which genius was succeeded by genius, you would probably name Shakespeare and Milton as two of the brightest links in the chain; but the bare imitators of each would drop clean out of your consideration: those who had copied these great writers might, indeed, constitute a subordinate series by themselves, but you would never place them between Shakespeare and Milton. Shakespeare's imitators are far more like Shakespeare in form than is Milton; Milton's imitators are altogether unlike either in essence, because they have no poetic originality; and Milton and Shakespeare themselves are allied, not by similarity of form but by harmony of variety; each contributing something which the other could not give, to realise that which was the common end of both, namely, the exaltation of human art. "Take another illustration, borrowed from language, which also is an organic reality, and shows in its use that the higher intellectual powers are constantly working to produce a unity, not out of similars, but out of dis-similars. I before stated that existing classifications may be likened to dictionaries of animated nature, and the parallel involves an interesting truth. In an ordinary dictionary, the words of a language are brought together by the rule of literal similarity; and a mighty convenient thing such a dictionary is. But, in making use of language as an instrument of thought, we depart at once from the order of the dictionary; and in proportion as the subject lifts us into the art of expression, we avoid the similarities of sound, lest the progressive spiral of ideas should be drawn back into a circle of jingling terms. Now, there is just the same difference between the present method of the naturalist and the method of nature that there is between a dictionary and a grand composition: the former coheres by a single thread, namely, the rule of uniformity; the latter is a connected tissue of ends, means, and uses, and the bond of connection throughout is the harmonious working of the parts, all with each, and each with all. Is it not, then, curious that classification should be based exclusively upon similarities, when the grouping of nature is effected between dissimilars ? It argues little for the docility of the human mind that it persists in substituting a single kind of order, and that the lowest, for the combined order of creation; and this, too, so long after Bacon began to expound the inductive method, and taught that 'man is the minister and interpreter of nature.' It is also curious that the prime link in our classification-I mean the relation of man to the monkeyshould be typical of all schemes of the kind, as involving a series in which different forms ape each other, without any bond of principle or use." There is here much that is in many ways suggestive and valuable, and a fair corrective to the dogmatic straitness of too rigidly scientific a conclusion. The following passage is a formal expression of a doctrine which receives support from the universal consciousness of man that he is not next of kin to any one animal, but that his relation is to the animal kingdom viewed as a whole, and as a subordinate crowd to which he is immeasurably superior. His superiority being moreover not by a small difference of one kind with regard to this animal, a trifling step above that, a success in a brotherly rivalry with another, but by the possession of an undefined quality which makes him immeasurably removed from jealousy of any, from competition or comparison with any. "Were a theory of developments sound in itself, and even the animal kingdom that from which man was to arise, still the world's master could proceed from no one animal, but the whole kingdom must be developed at once to produce him; and this, not by an evolution of forms, but by a spiritual outgrowth, expansion, and concentration; in which case we have recourse to a principle which virtually extinguishes the theory of development, so far at least as it is one-sided, and attributes activities to nature which can only belong to the Creator." The question, "What animal comes next to man? involves in its statement a radical inaccuracy. It is based upon the notion that man, as a physical being, is a part of the so-called animal kingdom, whereas I hold that, instead of a part, he is the animal kingdom itself, and contains all below him, as the universal includes the partial, or the accomplished end the means; and therefore, if we are to have a theory of evolution, we must seek the matrix of the human race not in the animal but in the vegetable kingdom, from which, according to any such theory, the animal kingdom must originally have been evolved. But in this case the question, What animal comes next to man? would be changed into this other question, In what order do animals stand, as ministering to human uses, and representing the scale of human faculties? For, as all animals are related to man by use or its opposite, and as they all shadow forth somewhat of his mental constitution, so are they all proximate to proximate to some part of his nature." The two poles of the argument regarding the relation of animals to man seem to be, on the one side, things are to be reckoned according to their uses, which are full of |