Page:Natural History Review (1861).djvu/80

68 right of kingship over nature; nor lower the great and princely dignity of perfect manhood, which is an order of nobility, not inherited, but to be won by each of us, so far as he consciously seeks good and avoids evil, and puts the faculties with which he is endowed to their fittest use.

Important or unimportant in its final results as it may be, however, there can be no doubt that the controversy as to the real position of man still exists; and I have therefore thought that it would be useful to contribute my mite towards the enrichment of the armoury upon which both sides must, in the long run, be dependent for their weapons, by endeavouring to arrange and put in order the facts of the case, so far as they consist of the only matters of which the anatomist and physiologist can take cognizance—I mean facts of discernible structure and of demonstrable function. If any one assert that there are other orders of facts which enter into this question, but which are distinguished by being neither demonstrable nor discernible, all that can be replied is, that science is incompetent either to affirm or deny his proposition, confined, as she is, to the humble, if safe, region of observation and of logic.

No one denies, I believe, that there are multitudes of analogies and affinities of structure and function connecting man with other living- beings. Man takes his origin in an ovum similar in form, in size, and in structure to that whence the dog or the rabbit arise. The physical process which determines the development of the embryo within that ovum; the successive stages of that development; the mode in which the human foetus is nourished within the maternal organism; the process of birth; the means provided by nature for the due supply of nutriment after birth: are essentially alike in all three cases. Compare the bony frame-work, the muscles, the great vessels, the viscera, of man, the dog, and the rabbit, and the demonstration of a pervading unity of plan in all three is one of the triumphs of modern science.

The most certain propositions entertained by the human physiologist, those upon which the scientific practice of the healing art depends, are largely, or wholly, based on the results of experiments on animals. The poison which hurts them does not leave us unscathed; and we share with them two of the most terrible diseases with,. which mortal beings are afflicted, glanders and hydrophobia. Nor can any impartial judge doubt that the roots, as it were, of those great faculties which confer on man his immeasurable superiority above all other animate things, are traceable far down into the animal world. The dog, the cat, and the parrot return love for our love, and hatred for our hatred. They are capable of shame and of sorrow; and though they may have no logic nor conscious ratiocination, no one who has watched their ways can doubt that they possess that power of rational cerebration which evolves reasonable acts from the premises furnished by the senses—a process, be it observed, which takes fully as large a share as conscious reason in human activity. There is a unity in psychical as in physical plan among animated beings; and the sense of this unity has been expressed in such