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Hilaire's work, that he had been led by purely anatomical considerations to separate Man from the other Primates and from the mammalia generally as a distinct SUB-CLASS, thus departing farther from the classification of Blumenbach and Cuvier than they had ventured to do from that of Linnaeus.
The manner in which these two kinds of vessels combine in the placenta, and the structure, form, and size of it, differ a good deal in the various Placentals; to some extent they give us valuable data for the natural classification, and therefore the phylogeny, of the whole of this sub-class.
With respect, however, to the first sub-class of these illusions, namely, those arising from organic peculiarities which give a twist, so to speak, to the sensation, no very marked contrast between the different senses presents itself. So that in illustrating this group we shall be pretty equally concerned with the various modes of perception connected with the different senses.
In the year 1857, however, Professor Owen, either in ignorance of these well-known facts or else unjustifiably suppressing them, submitted to the Linnaean Society a paper "On the Characters, Principles of Division, and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia," which was printed in the Society's Journal, and contains the following passage: "In Man, the brain presents an ascensive step in development, higher and more strongly marked than that by which the preceding sub-class was distinguished from the one below it.
Of this order are the illusions connected with the reflection of light and sound. We may, perhaps, distinguish the first sub-class as organically conditioned illusions, and the second as extra-organically determined illusions. It may be added that the latter are roughly describable as common illusions.
I think it is clear, however, that, at any rate in the case of auditory and visual images, they do differ from ordinary auditory and visual sensations, and therefore form a recognizable class of occurrences, even if it should prove that they can be regarded as a sub-class of sensations. This is all that is necessary to validate the use of images to be made in the sequel.
The Placentals are also generally without the hook-shaped process at the angle of the lower jaw which is found in the Marsupials. However, the feature that characterises the Placentals above all others, and that has given its name to the whole sub-class, is the formation of the placenta.
Darwin regards them as forming a peculiar sub-class equivalent to the Podophthalma, Edriophthalma, etc. This appears to me to be most convenient. I would not combine the Rhizocephala with the Cirripedia, as Liljeborg has done, but place them in opposition as equivalent, like the Amphipoda and Isopoda.
Animal, or living creature, is also a real kind, and includes Socrates; but, since it likewise includes man, or in other words, since all men are animals, the properties common to animals form a portion of the common properties of the sub-class, man. And if there be any class which includes Socrates without including man, that class is not a real Kind.
Few if any of the authors above cited, while they admit so fully the analogy which exists between the faculties of Man and the inferior animals, are disposed to underrate the enormous gap which separates Man from the brutes, and if they scarcely allow him to be referable to a distinct order, and much less to a separate sub-class, on purely physical grounds, it does not follow that they would object to the reasoning of M. Quatrefages, who says, in his work on the "Unity of the Human Species," that Man must form a kingdom by himself if once we permit his moral and intellectual endowments to have their due weight in classification.
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