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Show 60 GRADATION IN INTELLECT AS SHEWN [Ch.lV. respectinO' the O'radual deterioration of created things, but none whatever0 to La0m arck's theory of their progressive perfect!' b1'l1' ty; fm· observations have hitherto shown that there is a tendency, in mule animals and plants, to degenerate in organization. We have already remarked, that the theory of progressive development arose from an attempt to ingraft the doctrines of the transmutationists upon one of the most popular generalizations in geology. But modern geological researches have almost destroyed every appearance of that gradation in the successive groups of animate beings, which was supposed to indicate the slow progress of the organic world from the more simple to the more compound structure. In the more modern formations, we find clear indications that the highest orders of the terrestrial mammalia were fully represented during several successive epochs ; but, in the monuments which we have hitherto examined of more remote eras, in which there are as yet discovered few fluviatile, and perhaps no lacustrine formations, and, therefore, scarcely any means of obtaining an insight into the zoology of the then existing continents, we have only as yet found one example of a mammiferous quadruped. The recent origin of man, and the absence of all signs of any rational being holding an analogous relation to former states of the animate world, affords one, and the only reasonable argument, in support of the hypothesis of a progressive scheme, but none whatever in favom· of the fancied evolution of one species out of another. When the celebrated anatomist, Camper, first attempted to estimate the degrees of sagacity of different animals, and of the races of man, by the measurement of the facial angle, some speculators were bold enough to affirm, that certain simire differed as little from the more savage races of men, as do these from the human race in general; and that a scale might be traced from " apes' with foreheads villanous low," to the African variety of the human species, and from that to the European. The.facial angle was measured by drawing a line from the prominent centre of the forehead to the most advanced part of the lower jaw-bone, and observing the angle which it Ch. IV.] BY TilE FACIAL ANGLE, 61 made with the horizontal line; and it was affirmed, that there was a regular series from birds to the mammalia. The gradation from the dog to the monkey was said to be perfect, and from that again to man. One of the ape tribe has a facial angle of 42o, and another, which approximated nearest to man in figure, an angle of 50°. To this succeeds (longo sed proximus intervallo) the head of the African negro, which, as well as that of the Kalmuc, forms an angle of 70°, while that of the European contains 80°. The Roman painters preferred the angle of 95°, and the character of beauty and sublimity, so striking in some works of Grecian sculpture, as in the head of Apollo, and in the Medusa of Sisocles, is given by an angle which amounts to 100°#.', A great number of valuable facts and curious analoO'ies . . 5 111 comparative anatomy, were brought to light during the investigations which were made by Camper, John Hunter, and others, to illustrate this scale of organization ; and their facts and generalizations must not be confounded with the fanciful systems which White and others deduced from them t. . 'l'hat there i~ some connexion between an elevated and capaCIOus forehead 111 certain races of men, and a large development of the intellectual faculties, seems highly probable; and that a low facial angle is frequently accompanied with inferiority of mental powers, is certain ; but the attempt to trace a O'raduated scale of intelligence through the different species crl- animals accompanying the modifications of the form of the skull is a . . . ' mere VISIOnary speculatiOn. It has been found necessary to exaggerate the sagacity of the ape tribe at the expense of the dog, and strange contradictions have arisen in the conclusions deduced from ~he structure of the elephant, some anatomists being disposed to deny the quadruped the inte11igence which he really possesses, because they found that the volume of his brain was small in comparison to that of the other mammalia, while others were inclined to magnify extravagantly * Prichard, Phys. Hist. of Mankind, vol. i., p. 159. t Ch. White on the regular Gradation in Man1 &c., 1799, |