The “pigeon-hole” system of classification had, however, been discredited in the fourth edition of Prichard’s Natural History of Man, edited and enlarged by Edwin Norris (1855), since on p. 644 it is stated:—
The different races of men are not distinguished from each other by strongly-marked, uniform, and permanent distinctions, as are the several species belonging to any given tribe of animals. All the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each other by insensible gradations; and there is, moreover, scarcely an instance in which the actual transition cannot be proved to have taken place.
This is practically the same result at which Waitz arrived in 1863.
Keane.
Professor Keane (1895, p. 228), though returning to the four-fold grouping proposed by Linnæus, uses these divisions to represent, not actual varieties or races, but “ideal types,” differentiated by somatic characters, and also by language, religion, and temperament. “Although man had but one origin, one pliocene precursor [Pithecanthropus], men had several separate places of origin, several pleistocene precursors. In our family tree four such precursors are assumed.” From each “ideal type” he traces the development of the present varieties arranged in the scheme of the family tree.
Man’s Place in Nature.
Since the time of Linnæus it has been recognised that a place for man must be found in classification of animals; and he was naturally put at the top of the tree. The main question, however, was his exact relationship to the higher apes. Linnæus (p. [90]) included man and apes in the Primates, one of his seven orders of Mammalia. Cuvier divided the Mammifères into nine groups, man being included in the Bimanes, and apes and monkeys in the Quadrumanes. The most noteworthy attempt to put man in his place was made when Huxley published his Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863), based on lectures given in 1860, in which he proved that man was more nearly allied to the higher apes than the latter were to the lower monkeys. Concerning this book, he wrote to Mr. E. Clodd, thirty years later, “that a very shrewd friend of mine [Sir William Lawrence[[76]]] implored me not to publish, as it would certainly ruin all my prospects.”[[77]] Doubtless one reason why Huxley wrote the book was to impress on the public that the evolution of man as an animal is perfectly comparable with that of other mammals, since Darwin only hinted in his Origin of Species (1859) that “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (p. 488). His silence, he confesses in the Introduction to the Descent of Man (1871), was due to desire “not to add to the prejudices against his views.” Professor Haeckel fully discussed his views concerning the genealogy of man in 1868,[[78]] and several times subsequently.
[76]. In the Preface to the 1894 edition Huxley writes: “It was not so very long since my kind friend Sir William Lawrence, one of the ablest men whom I have known, had been well-nigh ostracised for his book On Man, which now might be read in a Sunday-school without surprising anybody.”
[77]. Folk-Lore, VI., 1895, p. 67, f.n.
[78]. Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte.