Thus, biologists have arrived at the conclusion that a fundamental
uniformity of structure pervades the animal and vegetable worlds, and
that plants and animals differ from one another simply as diverse
modifications of the same great general plan.
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.
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