much to make the human hand so admirable an
instrument; but the gorilla's thumb is proportionately shorter than
man's. The foot of the higher apes, though often spoken of as a hand, is
anatomically not such, but a prehensile foot. It has been argued by Sir
Richard Owen and others that the position of the great toe converts the
foot of the higher apes into a hand, an extremely important distinction
from man; but against this Professor T.H. Huxley maintained that it has
the characteristic structure of a foot with a very movable great toe.
The external unlikeness of the apes to man depends much on their
hairiness, but this and some other characteristics have no great
zoological value. No doubt the difference between man and the apes
depends, of all things, on the relative size and organization of the
brain. While similar as to their general arrangement to the human brain,
those of the higher apes, such as the chimpanzee, are much less complex
in their convolutions, as well as much less in both absolute and
relative weight--the weight of a gorilla's brain hardly exceeding 20
oz., and a man's brain hardly weighing less thin 32 oz., although the
gorilla is considerably the larger animal of the two.

These anatomical distinctions are undoubtedly of great moment, and it is
an interesting question whether they suffice to place man in a
zoological order by himself. It is plain that some eminent zoologists,
regarding man as absolutely differing as to mind and spirit from any
other animal, have had their discrimination of mere bodily differences
unconsciously sharpened, and have been led to give differences, such as
in the brain or even the foot of the apes and man, somewhat more
importance than if they had merely distinguished two species of apes.
Many naturalists hold the opinion that the anatomical differences which
separate the gorilla or chimpanzee from man are in some respects less
than those which separate these man-like apes from apes lower in the
scale. Yet all authorities class both the higher and lower apes in the
same order. This is Huxley's argument, some prominent points of which
are the following: As regards the proportion of limbs, the hylobates or
gibbon is as much longer in the arms than the gorilla as the gorilla is
than the man, while on the other hand, it is as much longer in the legs
than the man as the man is than the gorilla. As to the vertebral column
and pelvis, the lower apes differ from the gorilla as muc