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On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 14 of 68 (20%)
order with these, but he would not think of doing otherwise.

Bearing this obvious course of zoological reasoning in mind, let us
endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask
of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you
will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and
employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular
'erect and featherless biped,' which some enterprising traveller,
overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from
that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a
cask of rum. We should all, at once, agree upon placing him among the
mammalian vertebrates; and his lower jaw, his molars, and his brain,
would leave no room for doubting the systematic position of the new
genus among those mammals, whose young are nourished during gestation
by means of a placenta, or what are called the 'placental mammals.'

Further, the most superficial study would at once convince us that,
among the orders of placental mammals, neither the Whales, nor the
hoofed creatures, nor the Sloths and Ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous
Cats, Dogs, and Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the
Insectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim our 'Homo',
as one of themselves.

There would remain then, but one order for comparison, that of the Apes
(using that word in its broadest sense), and the question for
discussion would narrow itself to this--is Man so different from any of
these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ
less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take
his place in the same order with them?

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