to place himself in closer relation to the outer world, he would
doubtless be on a footing of mental equality with man, according to Mr.
Laing. [69] The elephant's trunk accounts for his superior sagacity, and
the horse suffers by his hoof-enclosed forefoot. [70] "Given a being
with man's brain, man's hand, and erect stature, _it is easy to see_ how
intelligence _must_ have been gradually evolved." [71] Now honestly it
seems to us that many animals are as well provided as man is with a
variety of flexible organs of communication with the outward world (for
example, the antennae of insects, the prehensile tails of some monkeys,
whose hands are as lithe as man's and articulated bone for bone and
joint for joint). But letting this pass, we thought evolutionists
allowed that structure is determined by function, rather than the
converse; and so the confession that "it is not so easy to see how this
difference of the structure arose," [72] surprises us, coming from Mr.
Laing; though why this difference should exist at all, on evolution
principles, is a far greater difficulty. Yet he confesses that "the
difference in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the
highest existing ape, [73] is too great to admit of one being possibly
the direct descendant of the other." The ape, then, is not a man whose
development is arrested. "The negro in some respects makes a slight
approximation, ... still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide
gulf from the chimpanzee or gorilla. Even the idiot is ... an arrested
man and, not an ape." [74]

Nearly all these (higher intellectual and moral) faculties appear in a
rudimentary state in animals.... Still there is this wide distinction
that even in the highest animals these faculties remain rudimentary and
seem incapable of progress, while even in the lowest races of man they
have reached a much higher level [75] and seem capable of almost
unlimited development. [76] Why does he not seek out the reason of this,
or is he satisfied with the _words_ "arrested development"? If I find a
child who can repeat a poem of Tennyson's, am I to be puzzled because it
cannot originate one as good, or go on even to something better? Am I to
ascribe to it a rudimentary but arrested poetic faculty? Surely the same
poem proceeding from the lips of the poet and of the child he has
taught, are essentially different effects, though outwardly the same. If
there were a true living germ, it would mos