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servants, and the swell mob. Do they come next to him in rank? No. The classes who really approach the upper, as a general rule, have an order and manner of their own a manner determined by their rank, and which flows naturally enough from the functions they have to perform. They are joined to the upper classes, not by virtue of apishness-which, wherever it does exist, is a cause of disjunction-but because they accomplish indispensable

uses,

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 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.

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"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 diction-aries 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 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 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

significance; on the other, things are according to their origin, differentiated only by the fortuitous inclination of a balance which has honoured some in relation to circumstance, while leaving others to take inferior rank. The difficulty in substantiating the latter position, which is the favoured one of science, is no trifling one, in view of the fact that the secret of the origination of life is as yet as closely hidden within the mystical region of the unknown, even to the priests within the very shrine of science, as is that margin of the unverifiable, which the thoughtful and earnest man is scorned for occupying by a rational faith rather than by a defiant agnosticism.

Are the many relations of man to the animals to be slightly regarded, in order that the one relation of physical organisation shall be made prominent? Are a host of "great broad facts to pass for nothing, simply because the horse," a faithful humble companion, much nearer than a mocking mimic, "does not ape man in external appearance? Is the harmony they imply between man and the domestic animals, the harmony of use and variety, to be overlooked by the scientific naturalist because it puts him out of those first leading strings of the human mind, similarities of form? If it be so, he must continue for ever to be a dictionary-maker, and an order of men must be instituted for the investigation of nature."

"The mental qualities of the domestic animals show precisely the same thing as their natural groupings. In them alone do we recognise an analogy with the highest qualities of the human mind. All animals, indeed, manifest peculiar faculties, tending to self-preservation and to the perpetuation of their species; and some,

as the monkey, alternately amuse and disgust us by their cleverness, cunning, and perverse limitations. But the domestic animals, properly so called, have one distinguishing trait, the power of yielding obedience to a being higher than themselves, which power practically is the representation of wisdom. Such a power no animal can exhibit which is not either domesticated or domesticable."

With regard to this matter of domestication, however, the argument seems to lose reference to the matter of man's inherent relation to the animal world, when we consider that animals have little personal relation to man unless he makes it. Perhaps the robinredbreast shows a tendency to domestic attachments-no doubt in great part inherited-but certainly no wild horse or elephant seeks domestication. He must first be bribed and cajoled by man's intellect, so immeasurably removed from his own as regards quality, or must be entrapped by that puny master whose power to the animal intelligence, were it gifted with analysis, must seem nothing short of magical.

What purpose any animal has in himself, out of relation to man, is as great a problem of creation as are the destiny and status of man himself, and the meaning of his life. But animals must have some purpose on their own plane, and out of reference to ours. Countless myriads of creatures live out their busy life in the ocean depths, with such idiosyncracy that no stretch of fancy can connect their life in any way with man's. They are even outside the beautiful Adamite picture of man's replenishing the earth and subduing it. How shall man subdue a million-million invisibles at the bottom of the sea? In this aspect man is scarcely even the crown of

the animal kingdom-he is out of relation with it. Man is only in part within that kingdom after all. He is the prince, but not the absolute king; not the true monarch who works invisibly, holding his domain even within the smallest atomic entity of his universe.

We shall have to come back to the old idea of a plan in creation, and rest in some kind of faith in the old childlike way, which is after all more like the world's highest and most poetical ideal, than is the new arrogance. An unseen hand holds the balance, and stops the rude haste even of the favoured scions of natural selection. As Professor Bowen observes in the North American Review for November, 1879: "The anthropoid apes are assumed to be highly developed species of monkeys, but they certainly seem to have gained no advantage in the battle of life over their lower competitors through their superior organisation, but rather to have lost ground in the struggle, since they are relatively so inferior in numbers that they appear to be in some danger of extinction. Through being more prolific, less dainty in feeding, and abler to support changes of climate and other altered conditions of life, the monkeys evidently have the better chance of survival. But the higher apes certainly will not be crowded out of life merely by the greater numbers of those below them, since they are abundantly able to protect themselves against such encroachment. Here, again, the balance of opposing tendencies seems to keep the relative numbers in the competing species within definite limits, without permitting the complete triumph of either party. In many cases the existence and the greater fecundity of the inferior races is a condition of the survival of those above them, who are thus supplied with their neces

sary food. Thus the carnivora of Central Africa are more developed and more tenacious of life than the herbivorous animals on which they prey; the latter are thus prevented from multiplying unduly, though their entire extinction, of course, would be fatal even to their antagonists."

As the plan and purpose of human life differs so essentially from that of any animal group whatever, may we not fairly conclude that the physiological resemblances mark the point at which we most nearly touch the animal world? Man has come into nature; there must be therefore a point of contact between the form he takes, and some form in Nature's repertory. He owes parentage to God, the ape to Nature, who is a servant only, and only nurse to man. Two lumps of clay, though one may contain within it a jewel of gold, the other a jewel of silver, will, if brought sharply into contact from opposite points, show very similar surfaces on the planes of con

tact.

Here is an animal form, close to it is a form which has been converted to different purposes, and drawn to a different plane. The animals may be made into friends by man, but they are not relations. Their souls belong to a different sphere of life and activity. God is man's true relation; Nature his friend, not his relation, save in part, and for a time. time. The laws which the highest of brute animals follow are essentially different from ours, being infinitely simpler. Man has qualities which so inordinately transcend the machinery of life's daily detail-all-sufficient as it is for the brute-that it becomes a rational necessity to predicate for humanity a future, either by an indefinite transfiguration of earth to the level of his need, or by a prolongation of the life of the individual under

circumstances more plastic and sublimated. As civilised man has his circle, where the actors who amuse and excite form a separate class, so in all spheres may be one department devoted to sheer imitation and amusement. In nature's sphere the chattering ape is the low comedian, representing the jocose side of nature's heart; the singing bird, to carry out the allusion, is the representative of joy, a more lofty religious quality.

To conclude such unscientific speculation, what is the lowest and

most brutal man, as compared with the highest anthropoid ape? They have no resemblance. The ape is perfect after his kind; the man is an emptiness, a region which the neglectful soul is not governing aright. He must be judged, and indeed judges himself, in the spiritual struggles of what we may vaguely know as thousands of years. To judge him by one small visible fragment of his career taken in isolation, is to estimate him inadequately, and therefore judge unfairly.

K. C.

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