Man is a perfected monkey! I have three preliminary observations to make
before I proceed to the direct examination of this theory.

In the first place, this definition transgresses the first and most
essential rules of logic. We must always define what is unknown by what
is known. This is an elementary principle. What a man is, I know. To
think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear, are functions of the mental
life. These words answer to clear ideas, because those ideas result
directly from our personal consciousness. But what is the soul of a
monkey? The nature of animals is a mystery, one which is perhaps
incapable of solution, and which, in all cases is wrapped in profound
darkness, because the animal appears to us an intermediate link between
the mechanism of nature and the functions of the spiritual life, which
are the only two conceptions we have that are really clear and distinct.
In taking the monkey therefore as our point of departure for the
definition of man, we are defining what is clear by what is obscure.

My second remark is this: If it is affirmed that there is but one
species, including all the animals and man, so that man is only a monkey
modified, and the monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal modified;
when once we have established the reality of man we arrive at this
result: all animals whatsoever are only inferior developments of
humanity, living foetuses which, without having come to their full
term, have nevertheless the faculty of living and reproducing
themselves. The animal then is an incomplete man; a theory which raises
great difficulties, but which is more serious and more easy to
understand than the doctrine which would have man to be a consummation
of the monkey.

In fact,--and this is my third observation,--when the theory which I am