Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Anthropology, Psychology, Human Species, Descent, Evolution, Darwinism

    In a thinly veiled reference to Charles S Wake's paper delivered at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (a version of which was published as Wake 1872), the writer mentions that 'W C Stanisland' told the anthropology section that there were 'a few intellectual, moral, and spiritual differences' between humans and apes, especially concerning the faculty of 'insight and reflection'. Notes that a deficiency in this faculty makes men more like monkeys and thus supports the theory presented in Charles R Darwin's Descent of Man. Thinks that another type of reflection might explain why Darwin wrote this book: claims that on looking at the reflection of his face in a mirror, a man might be led to believe that he was a 'pithecoid man, and bore a family resemblance to an Orang-outang'. Suggests that man might therefore believe that he and the Quadrumana have a common ancestor, but thinks photographs in shop windows undermine this idea.