free from the
work of locomotion that they might become the skilful servants of
the mind; finally, articulate speech and social, and, above all,
family, life, all tended in this same direction.

And this makes the great difficulty in assigning man his
proper place in our systems of classification. Our zooelogical
classifications depend upon anatomical characteristics; and
anatomically man belongs among the order primates. But mental and
moral values cannot be expressed in terms of anatomy, any more than
we can speak of an idea of so many horse-power, and hence worth
three or four ancestral dollars. Hence, while from the zooelogical
standpoint man is a primate, and while he is very probably descended
from one of these, he has gradually risen above them mentally and
spiritually, so that he stands as far above them as they above the
lowest worm. And this leads us to the consideration of man, not
merely as a mammal, but as "Anthropos," Homo sapiens, although he
often degenerates into "Simia destructor."

From what has just been said man's pre-eminence cannot consist in
any anatomical characteristic, even of the brain--much less of
thumb, forefinger, hand, or foot. But man's mental and moral
characteristics (even though germs of these may be present in the
animal), whether differing in degree or kind from theirs, raise his
life to a totally different plane. He lives in an environment of
which the lower animal is as unconscious and ignorant as we of a
fourth dimension of space. He has the knowledge of abstract truth
and goodness, of certain standards outside of mere appetite and
desire, and feels and acknowledges, however dimly, the requirement
and the ability to conform his life to these standards. He alone can
say "I ought," and answer "I can and will." And hence man alone
actually lives in an environment of the laws of reason,
responsibility, and personality. Whatever germs of these higher
powers the animal possesses are means to material ends, to the
physical life of the animal. In man the long and slow evolution has
ended in revolution, the material and physical have been dethroned,
and truth and goodness reign supreme as ends in themselves.

But, you may object, this definition of man may be true ideally,
certainly it is not true actually. Where are the high ideals of
truth and goodness in the savage? and are these the supreme ends of
even the average American of to-day? But allowing all weight to this
objection,