INFERIOR CEPHALIZATION.
Fewer of the anterior appendages serve the head.
The structure of the head is loose and im perfect; the form is elongated and enlarged.
Great length of tail shows inferiority of grade.
The anterior extremity tends downward, finds its limit and is horizontal in the fish.
Degradation often extends to the absence of essential parts, as teeth, limbs, senses, and is often indicated by gross enlargement of mass, accompanied by stupidity and sluggishness.
Degrees of cephalization may be illustrated by the subdivisions of the mannalia, beginning with the lowest: 1. The mutilates, in which the limbs are wanting, or are degraded to tins; as whales, dolphins, etc.: 2. Herbivores, or plant-eaters; as the ele phant, horse, deer, hog,.ete. : 3. Carnivores, or flesh-eaters; as the lion, bear, dog. 'wolf, etc.: 4. Quadrumanes, including monkeys: 5. Bimanes, including mankind. Follow ing this arrangement, as we ascend step by step, we find constant degrees of develop ment corresponding to higher cephalic character, and showing itself in every phase of organized structure. In locomotion, for example, we find the limbs of (1) the mutilates fit only for paddling the body about in the element which gives it support; those of (2) the herbivores carry them from place to place; those of (3) the carnivores carry them about, and serve to grasp and tear their prey; those of (4) the quadrumanes serve for locomotion, for grasping prey, for carrying food to the mouth, and for carrying and defending their young; while in (5) man the fore limbs are relieved from service of loco motion, and are fitted not merely for feeding, for carrying, for defense, but also for an infinity of purposes, to which they are guided by the acuter sensibility of the brain. Similar steps of gradation may be found in other respects, as in the tail, the teeth, the form of the skull, etc. The principle may be further illustrated by the gradations of
the lower orders, as in the articulates, going from the worms through the crustaceans to the insects; or in insects, from myriapods through spiders to the true insects; as in the varieties of man, in which the lower races have projecting jaws, retreating foreheads, and enlarged basal brains. With increased brain-force we find diminished jaw, less facial angle, elevated and enlarged forehead, the head generally shortened from front to rear, a larger cavity for the brain, and a greater weight thereof. Finding this con stant progression from lower to higher developments, whose exponent is larger and more efficient brain, with nicer adaptation of mechanism for all the functions of life; finding also evidence of a similar gradation in sensation, sensibility, intelligence—every where the material more and more subordinated to the immaterial, the body conformed to the spirit, and ruled by it—it is not strange that men should look for a law of devel opment, pervading and controlling all animated nature, or that they should expect to find in this law G formula of 'the relation between thought and matter, as a function of* the brain. But, while there may be abundant reason for supposing that such a law of relationship might exist, and that if demonstrated it might account logically for a vast and rapidly growing mass of observed facts, it is evident that no such law has yet been proved. Nor, indeed, does it now seem that such a law can be demonstrated without the admission of axioms and postulates, which involve as great strains upon the philo sophic imagination as the very principles which such demonstrated law would antago nize and overthrow.