the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or
a mere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from
congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear,
which only a careful anatomist could discover.

The argument, that because there is an immense difference between a
Man's intelligence and an Ape's, therefore, there must be an equally
immense difference between their brains, appears to me to be about as
well based as the reasoning by which one should endeavour to prove
that, because there is a "great gulf" between a watch that keeps
accurate time and another that will not go at all, there is therefore a
great structural hiatus between the two watches. A hair in the
balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the
escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the
watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference.

And believing, as I do, with Cuvier, that the possession of articulate
speech is the grand distinctive character of man (whether it be
absolutely peculiar to him or not), I find it very easy to comprehend,
that some equally inconspicuous structural difference may have been the
primary cause of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of
the Human from the Simian Stirps.

Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their
modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result--that
the structural differences which separate Man from the Gorilla and the
Chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the Gorilla from
the lower apes.

But in enunciating this important truth I must guard myself against a