We cannot do better, in order to sum up our ideas on this subject, than quote a passage from the works of a learned man, who in our days has gone most deeply into the study of organic homology, Professor Richard Owen; it is the last step which has been taken, and indeed the most decisive one, in the momentous question concerning man’s place in nature. “Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction between the _psychical_ phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Bosjesman, or of an Aztec with arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between them, or _as being other than a difference of degree_, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure--every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous--which makes the determination of the difference between _Homo_ and _Pithecus_ the anatomist’s difficulty. And therefore, with every respect for the author of the _Records of Creation_,[95] I follow Linnæus[96] and Cuvier in regarding mankind as a legitimate subject of zoological comparison and classification.[97]” Is not the admission of gradation the means of binding more firmly together the great chain of human beings, a thing quite impossible, which could not exist, or rather, which would only be a caprice,--an artificial method or system,--if the classified beings were only thus classified by creatures of their own description? Does it not confirm, even more strongly, the continuous series in which Aristotle, Leibnitz, Bonnet, Linnæus, and de Blainville have believed? We shall proclaim, then, the law, shaped by M. Flourens, who, however, does not receive it, as we do, without reservation:-- LAW.--_From animals to man everything is but a chain of uninterrupted gradation_; therefore, there is no human kingdom. Then comes this other conclusion,--one and the same method is applicable both to mankind and animals. CHAPTER III. THE ORDER OF BIMANA.