Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/495

Rh The terms 'bimanous' and 'quadrumanous' had been already employed by Buffon, in 1766, but not applied in a strict zoological classification till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve years later, Cuvier adopted the same order Bimana for the human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs constituted a separate order, called Quadrumana.

Respecting this last innovation, Isidore G. St. Hilaire asks, 'How could such a division stand, repudiated as it was by the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual supremacy of Man; and by the zoologists, on the ground of its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true principles of classification? Separated as a group of ordinal value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant from the higher mammalia;—too near if we take into account those elevated faculties, which, raising Man above all other organised beings, accord to him not only the first, but a separate place in the creation,—too far if we merely consider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadrumana; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical point of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the lemurs.

'What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and Cuvier? An impracticable compromise between two opposite and irreconcilable systems—between two orders of ideas which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history by these two words: the human kingdom and the human family. It is one of those would-be via media propositions which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because they are intended to please everybody; half-truths, perhaps, but also half-falsehoods; for what, in science, is a half-truth but an error?' Isidore G. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite of the great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large