Again, they tell us the same story in regard to the study of function.  They admit the large and important interval which, at the present time, separates the manifestations of the mental faculties observable in the higher forms of mankind, and even in the lower forms, such as we know them, from those exhibited by other animals; but, at the same time, they tell us that the foundations, or rudiments, of almost all the faculties of man are to be met with in the lower animals; that there is a unity of mental faculty as well as of bodily structure, and that, here also, the difference is a difference of degree and not of kind.  I said “almost all,” for a reason.  Among the many distinctions which have been drawn between the lower creatures and ourselves, there is one which is hardly ever insisted on,[4] but which may be very fitly spoken of in a place so largely devoted to Art as that in which we are assembled.  It is this, that while, among various kinds of animals, it is possible to discover traces of all the other faculties of man, especially the faculty of mimicry, yet that particular form of mimicry which shows itself in the imitation of form, either by modelling or by drawing, is not to be met with.  As far as I know, there is no sculpture or modelling, and decidedly no painting or drawing, of animal origin, I mention the fact, in order that such comfort may be derived therefrom as artists may feel inclined to take.

If what the biologists tell us is true, it will be needful to get rid of our erroneous conceptions of man, and of his place in nature, and to substitute right ones for them.  But it is impossible to form any judgment as to whether the biologists are right or wrong, unless we are able to appreciate the nature of the arguments which they have to offer.

One would almost think this to be a self-evident proposition.  I wonder what a scholar would say to the man who should undertake to criticise a difficult passage in a Greek play, but who obviously had not acquainted himself with the rudiments of Greek grammar.  And yet, before giving positive opinions about these high questions of Biology, people not only do not seem to think it necessary to be acquainted with the grammar of the subject, but they have not even mastered the alphabet.  You find criticism and denunciation showered about by persons, who, not only have not attempted to go through the discipline necessary to enable them to be judges, but who have not even reached that stage of emergence from ignorance in which the knowledge that such a discipline is necessary dawns upon the mind.  I have had to watch with some attention—­in fact I have been favoured with a good deal of it myself—­the sort of criticism with which biologists and biological teachings are visited.  I am told every now and then that there is a “brilliant article"[5] in so-and-so, in which we are all demolished.  I used to read these things once, but I am getting old now, and I have ceased to attend very much to this