Of Beasts and Boys: Kingsley, Spencer, and the Theory of Recapitulation

Abstract

In the early 1860s, Victorians were introduced to a part of their bodies most never knew existed. An acrimonious debate between anatomist richard Owen and T. H. Huxley sensationalized the “hippocampus minor,” a small fold in the human brain. In an 1857 paper delivered to the Linnean society, Owen had argued that the unique possession of three cerebral features—the “hippocampus minor,” the posterior cornu, and the third lobe—distinguished human beings from apes sufficiently enough to justify our inclusion in a sepa rate sub-class (“On the Characters” 182–83). But after studies revealed the same structures in simian brains, Huxley repeatedly challenged Owen in print and speech, insisting in 1863 that the discovery proved beyond any doubt “the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes” (Place 98). 1 To novelist and professor of history Charles Kingsley, the quarrel suggested nothing more than the absurdity of characterizing humanity by anatomical minutiae. In his 1862–63 children’s fantasy The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, he mocked the significance that scientists were giving to this tiny cranny: