Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the faculty of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this servitude, remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher sphere? No, by the compression of the brain man loses consciousness like the animal. It is material substance, which, brought into contact with the anatomical elements of the nervous centres, can excite,[26] trouble,[27] or depress,[28] the intelligence of animals, and leave no part of the human intellect untouched. Let us reconsider these two systems: viz., that man is similar to animals as much by his intelligence as by his bodily formation; or that he differs from them entirely. And now we have two clearly stated theories before us for our consideration. To embrace either one or the other _à priori_, merely for the sake of propriety or sentiment, would be an arbitrary proceeding, essentially faulty, and contrary to all rule; as in natural science, no other assistance is required except _facts_, in order to explain the origin of anything. However, without prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man is of himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, a sort of _microcosm_, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, may be perhaps a flattering unction to our soul;[29] it does little or nothing for science. Anthropology may have its special means of inquiry; perhaps these means are still to be found, but she will stand alone--without profit to the other branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which will not grow, casting all its leaves. If not--if man enters into the common course of life--if he is merely a part of one grand organic whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points of contact and intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised by the principle of universality, becomes a science by which we may profit; it gives to her sisters, the other natural sciences, that assistance which she herself receives from them; the paths widen; the science of organisation becomes easier, more certain, and more enlarged; _synthesis_, displaying its powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown; the mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, “of not understanding” animals, will study their intelligence, and will search their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we are learning to know them, like Galen the inspired, who obtained a knowledge of human anatomy by dissecting a monkey.