not shown some faculty in this direction." [68] "The difference is a very
fundamental one," and "may be summed up in the words 'arrested
development.'" Words, indeed! but what do they mean? They mean that
these animals have not developed the faculties of speech and
tool-making, which would have been most useful to them in the struggle
for existence, the reason being _that they did not_; and this reason is
exalted into a cause or law of "arrested development." Who or what
arrested it? The advantage of the term is that it implies that they were
on the point of developing, that they could "all but speak," were
"trying to utter connected notes," were "but one step" behind flint
axes, when some cosmic power said, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no
further."
If the dog had organs of speech or an instrument like the hand by which
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]