THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN BODY
In an article published August 31, 1895, in the _New York Freeman’s
Journal_, the late Rev. J. A. Zahm gave expression to the following
opinion: “The evolution of the body of man from some inferior animal
and its subsequent endowment in this body by God of a rational soul is
antagonistic to no dogma of faith and may be shown to be in harmony
with the teachings of St. Thomas.” The scriptural and theological
aspect of this view need not concern us here, our sole purpose being
to evaluate it from a purely scientific standpoint. Once evolutionary
thought takes cognizance of the fact that the human soul is a spiritual
principle underivable from mere matter, once it acknowledges the
immediate creation of the human soul, and professes to do no more
than account for the origin of man’s animal _body_, that moment is it
shorn of its materialistic implications; but what, we may ask, are the
foundations of such an hypothesis in the realm of scientific fact?
The writer must confess that he cannot fathom the mentality of those
who accept the evolutionary explanation, so far as plant and animal
organisms are concerned, but proceed to draw the line when it comes to
applying it to the human body. For if one (to borrow Du Bois-Reymond’s
expression) “gives so much as his little finger to” the evolutional
argument from organic homology, he must end, in so far as he is
consistent, in acknowledging as incontestable its obvious application
to man. The only choice which sound logic can sanction is between
fixism and a thoroughgoing system of transformism, which does not
exempt the human body from the scope of the evolutionary explanation.
Indeed, the theory of evolution itself stands or falls upon this issue;
for, if structures so strikingly similar as the skeletons of a man
and an ape, respectively, have originated from two distinct ancestral
stocks, then in no case at all is the inference of common descent
from structural resemblance a legitimate procedure. In other words,
if the homologies existent between the human and simian organisms are
explicable on some other basis than that of common ancestry, then
all organic homologies are so explicable, and the whole evolutionary
argument collapses.
§ 1. Two Theories of Descent
Two theories have been formulated regarding the alleged bestial
origin of the human body: (1) the theory of lineal descent from some
known species (living or fossil) of ape or monkey; (2) the theory of
collateral descent from a hypothetical bestial ancestor common to apes
and men. The theory of lineal descent is that to which Darwin himself
stands committed. This theory, however, soon fell into disrepute among
scientists, who came to prefer the theory of collateral descent,
although signs of a return to the older theory are not wanting in our
day. At all events, Darwin came out flatly in favor of the monkey
origin of man. This, it is true, has been indignantly denied by loyal
partisans anxious to exonerate their idol from the reproach of having
advanced a crude and now obsolete theory of human descent. But Darwin’s
own words speak for themselves: “The Simiadae,” he says, “then branched
off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from
the latter, at a remote period of time, Man, the wonder and glory of
the Universe, proceeded.” (“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. VI, pp. 220,
221.) Note that he does not say “probably”; his language is not the
language of hypothesis, but of categorical affirmation.
The theory, however, which is most generally favored at the present
time holds that, assuming the universality of the evolutionary
process, all existing types must be of equal antiquity, and none prior
or ancestral to any other. Hence it regards man, not as the direct
descendant of any known type of ape, but as the offspring of an as yet
undiscovered Tertiary ancestor, from which men and apes have diverged
in two distinct lines of descent. “_Monkeys, apes, and men_,” says
Conklin, “_have descended from some common but at present extinct
ancestor_. Existing apes and monkeys are collateral relatives of man
but not his ancestors; his cousins but not his parents.... The human
branch diverged from the anthropoid stock not less than two million
years ago, and since that time man has been evolving in the direction
represented by existing human races, while the apes have been evolving
in the direction represented by existing anthropoids. During all this
time men and apes have been growing more and more unlike and conversely
the farther back we go, the more we should find them converging until
they meet in a common stock which should be intermediate between these
two stocks.” (“Evolution and the Bible,” pp. 12, 13—italics his.)
Barnum Brown’s recent discovery of three jaws of the fossil ape
_Dryopithecus_ in the Siwalik Hills of India has, as previously
intimated, resulted in a return on the part of certain scientists,
_e.g._ Wm. K. Gregory and Dudley J. Morton, to views that more nearly
approximate those of Charles Darwin. According to these men, the fossil
anthropoid _Dryopithecus_ is to be regarded as the common ancestor of
men, chimpanzees, and gorillas. (Cf. _Science_, April 25, 1924, Suppl.
XII.)
Many considerations, however, militate against the direct derivation
of man’s bodily frame from any known species of ape, whether living
or fossil. Dana has pointed out that, as regards the mechanism of
locomotion, man belongs to a more primitive type than the ape.
The earliest and lowest type of vertebrates are the fish, and
these, according to the above-mentioned author, are _urosthenic_
(tail-strong), inasmuch as they propel themselves by means of their
tails. Next in point of organization and time came the _merosthenic_
vertebrates, which have their strength concentrated in the hind-limbs,
_e.g._ reptiles like the dinosaurs. In the last place come the
_prosthenic_ vertebrates, whose strength is concentrated in the
fore-limbs, _e.g._ the carnivora and apes. Now man belongs to the
_merosthenic_ type, and his mode of progression, therefore, is more
primitive than that of apes, which are _prosthenic_, all anthropoid
apes, such as the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-utan and the
gibbon having longer fore-limbs than hind-limbs.
The striking anatomical differences between apes and men, though not
of sufficient importance to exclude the possibility of collateral
relationship, are so many solid arguments against the theory of
direct descent. We will content ourselves with a mere enumeration of
these differences. In the ape, the cranium has a protruding muzzle
and powerful jaws equipped with projecting canine teeth, but the
brain-case is comparatively small; in man, on the contrary, the facial
development is insignificant and the teeth are small and vertical,
while the brain-case is enormous in size, having at least twice the
capacity of that of an ape. “The face of man,” to quote Ranke, “slides,
as it were, down from the forehead and appears as an appendix to the
front half of the skull. But the gorilla’s face, on the contrary,
protrudes from the skull, which in turn slides almost entirely backward
from the face. By a cross-cut one may sever the whole face from the
skull, except a very small part near the sockets, without being forced
to open up the interior of the skull. It is only on account of its
protruding, strongly developed lower parts that the skull-cap of the
animal can simulate a kind of human face.” (“Der Mensch,” vol. II,
p. 401.) These differences may be summarized by saying that the head
of the ape is specialized for mastication and defense, whereas the
head of man is specialized for psychic functions. Again, as we have
seen, the fore-limbs of the ape are long, and its hind-limbs short,
the extremities of both the latter and the former being specialized
primarily for prehension and only secondarily for progression. This
is due to the ape’s adaptation to arboreal life. In man, however,
the arms are short and specialized for prehension alone, while the
legs are long and terminate in broad plantigrade feet specialized for
progression alone. Man, consequently, is not adapted to arboreal life.
In the ape, the spine has a single curve, and the occipital foramen
(the aperture through which the spinal cord enters the brain-case)
is eccentrically located in the floor of the cranial box; in man,
the spine has a double curve, and the occipital foramen is centrally
located, both features being in adaptation to the upright posture
peculiar to man—“_die zentralle Lage dieser Oeffnung_,” says Ranke
alluding to the occipital foramen of man, “_in der Schädelbasis ist
für den Menschenschädel im Unterschied gegen den Tierschädel eine in
hohem Masse typische_.” (“Der Mensch,” vol. I, p. 378.) In the ape,
therefore, the vertebræ have an adaptation producing convexity of the
back, precluding a normal upright posture, and enforcing progression
on all fours. It has, moreover, powerful muscles at the back of the
neck to carry the head in the horizontal position necessitated by this
mode of progression. In man “the skull has the occipital condyles
placed within the middle fifth, in adaptation to the vertical position
of the spine” (Nicholson), the spinal cord enters the cranial box at
a perpendicular, and the head balances on the spinal column as on a
pivot, all of which ensures the erect posture and bipedal progression
in man. There are, moreover, no neck muscles to support the head in any
other than the vertical position. There are many other differences,
besides: the ape, for example, has no chin, while in man there is a
marked mental protuberance; man has a slender waist, but the ape has a
barrel-like torso without any waist; the ape has huge bony ridges for
the attachment of muscles, _e.g._ the sagittal crest, the superciliary
ridges, etc., while in man such features are practically absent.
Ranke has given a very good summary of the chief anatomical differences
between man and the anthropoid apes: “The gorilla’s head leaning
forward, hangs down from the spinal column, and his chinless snout,
equipped with powerful teeth, touches the breastbone. Man’s head
is round, and resting on a free neck, balances unrestrained upon
the spinal column. The gorilla’s body, without a waist, swells out
barrel-shaped, and when straightened up finds no sufficient support on
the pelvis; the back-bone, tailless as in man, but almost straight,
loses itself without nape or neck formation properly so-called in the
rear part of the head and without protuberance of the gluteal region
in the flat thighs. Man’s body is slightly molded, like an hour-glass,
the chest and abdomen meeting to form a waist where they are narrowest;
the abdominal viscera are perfectly supported in the pelvis as in a
plate; and elegance is decidedly gained by the double S-line, which,
curving alternately convex and concave, passes from the crown through
the neck and nape, down the back to the base of the spine and the
gluteal region. The normal position of the gorilla shows us a plump,
bear-like trunk, carried by short, crooked legs and by arms which serve
as crutches and touch the ground with the knuckles of the turned-in
fingers. The posture of the body is perfectly straight in man, it rests
on the legs as on columns when he stands upright, and his hands hang
down on both sides always ready for use. The gorilla is thickly covered
with hair, while man’s body on the whole is naked.” (_Op. cit._, vol.
II, p. 213.)
In conclusion, we may say that, while there is a general resemblance
between the human body and that of an anthropoid ape, there is,
likewise, a particular divergence—“there is no bone, be it ever so
small, nay, not even the smallest particle of a bone, in which the
general agreement in structure and function would pass over into real
identity.” (Ranke, _op. cit._, vol. I, p. 437.) Hence Virchow declares
that “the differences between man and monkey are so wide that almost
any fragment is sufficient to diagnose them.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for
1889, p. 566.) These differences are so considerable as to preclude the
possibility of a _direct_ genealogical connection between man and any
known type of ape or monkey—“The testimony of comparative anatomy,” to
quote Bumüller, “is decidedly against the theory of man’s descent from
the ape.” (“Mensch oder Affe?” p. 59.) Ranke has somewhere called man
a brain-animal, and this sums up the chief difference, which marks off
the human body from all bestial organisms. In the ape the brain weighs
only 100th part of the weight of its body, whereas in man the brain has
a weight equivalent to the 37th part of the weight of the human body.
The cranial capacity of the largest apes ranges from 500 to 600 c.cm.,
while the average cranial capacity in man is 1500 c.cm. Moreover, the
human brain is far more extensively convoluted within the brain-case
than that of an ape, so much so that the surface or cortical area of
the human brain is four times as great as that of the ape’s brain.
Thus Wundt, in his “Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie,” cites
H. Wagner as assigning to man a brain surface of from 2,196 to 1,877
sq. cm., but a cortical area of only 535 sq. cm. in the case of an
orang-outang. (Cf. English Translation by Titchener, vol. I, p. 286.)
Another difficulty in the way of the Darwinian theory of direct
descent is the fact that the best counterparts of human anatomy
are not found united in any one species of ape or monkey, but are
scattered throughout a large number of species. “Returning to the
old discussion,” says Thomas Dwight, “as to which ape can boast of
the closest resemblance to man, Kohlbrugge brings before us Aeby’s
forgotten book on the skull of man and apes. His measurements show that
the form nearest to man among apes is the gibbon, or long-armed ape,
but that the South American monkey _Crysothrix_ is nearer still. Aeby
recognized what modern anatomists have forgotten or wilfully ignored:
that any system of descent is inadequate which does not recognize that
the type of man is not in any one organ, but in all the physical and
psychological features. He declared that while we are far from having
this universal knowledge, we have learned enough about the various
parts of the body to make it impossible for us to sketch any plan
of descent. ‘It almost seems as if every part had its own line of
descent, different from that of others.’ ... Kohlbrugge now introduces
Haacke, who denies any relationship between man and apes, the latter
being instances of one-sided development. He even dares to declare
anyone who speaks of an intermediate form between man and apes to be
ignorant of the laws of development governing the race history of
mammals. He believes man came from some lemuroid form, which may have
descended from the insectivora.” (“Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist,”
pp. 188-190.)
All known types, then, of apes and monkeys are too specialized to have
been in the direct line of human descent. Man, as Kohlbrugge ironically
remarks, appears to have come from an ancestor much more like himself
than any species of ape we know of. Moreover, no species of apes or
monkeys monopolizes the honors of closest resemblance to man. In many
points, the South American monkeys, though more primitive than the
anthropoid apes, are more similar to man than the latter.
§ 2. Embryological Resemblances
Much has been made of the so-called biogenetic law as an argument
for the bestial origin of mankind. This theory of the embryological
recapitulation of racial history was first formulated by Fritz Müller.
Haeckel, however, was the one who exploited it most extensively,
and who exalted it to the status of “the fundamental law of
biogenesis.”[16] The latter’s statement of the principle is as follows:
“_Die Ontogenesis ist die Palingenesis der Phylogenesis_.”—Ontogeny
(the development of the individual) is a recapitulation of phylogeny
(the development of the race). For a long time this law was received
with uncritical credulity by the scientific world, but enthusiasm
diminished when more careful studies made it clear that the line of
descent suggested by embryology did not agree with what was inferred
from comparative anatomy and the sequence of fossil forms. Besides,
it was manifest that certain organs in embryos were distinctively
_embryonic_ and could never have functioned in adult forms, _e.g._ the
yolk sac and the amnion. “It was recognized,” says T. H. Morgan, “that
many embryonic stages could not possibly represent ancestral animals. A
young fish with a huge yolk sac attached could scarcely ever have led a
happy, free life as an adult individual. Such stages were interpreted,
however, as _embryonic_ additions to the original ancestral type. The
embryo had done something on its own account. In some animals the
young have structures that attach them to the mother, as does the
placenta of mammals. In other cases the young develop membranes about
themselves—like the amnion of the chick and the mammal—that would have
shut off an adult animal from all intercourse with the outside world.
Hundreds of such embryonic structures are known to embryologists. These
were explained as adaptations and as falsifications of the ancestral
records.” (“Critique of the Theory of Evolution,” pp. 16, 17.)
[16] Haeckel’s “Biogenetisches Grundgesetz,” which he
formulates thus: “_Die Ontogenie (Keimesgeschichte) ist eine
kurze Wiederholung der Phylogenie (Stammesgeschichte)_,” 1874.
The result has been that this so-called law has fallen into general
disrepute among scientists, especially as a means of reconstructing
the phylogeny of modern organisms. It is recognized, of course, that
comparative embryology can furnish embryological homologies analogous
to the homologies of comparative anatomy, but it is now generally
acknowledged that the view, which regards the embryological process
as an abridged repetition of the various states through which the
species has passed in its evolutionary career must be definitively
abandoned, and that, as a general law of organic development, the
biogenetic principle has been thoroughly discredited. “This law,” says
Karl Vogt of Geneva, “which I long held as well-founded, is absolutely
and radically false. Attentive study of embryology shows us, in fact,
that embryos have their own conditions suitable to themselves, and very
different from those of adults.” (Quoted by Quatrefages De Breau, in
his “Les Emules de Darwin,” vol. II, p. 13.) “There can no longer be
question,” says Prof. M. Caullery of the Sorbonne, “of systematically
regarding individual development as a repetition of the history of the
stock. This conclusion results from the very progress made under the
inspiration received from this imaginary law, the law of biogenesis.”
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, p. 325.)
This collapse of the biogenetic law has tumbled into ruins the
elaborate superstructure of genealogy which Haeckel had reared upon it.
His series of thirty stages extending from the fictitious “cytodes”
up to man, inclusively, is even more worthless today than it was when
Du Bois-Reymond made his ironic comment: “Man’s pedigree, as drawn up
by Haeckel, is worth about as much as is that of Homer’s heroes for
critical historians.” (_Revue Scientifique_, 1877, I, p. 1101.) Haeckel
tried in vain to save his discredited law by means of the expedient
of _cænogenesis_, that is, “the falsification of the ancestral record
(palingenesis).” That Nature should be guilty of “falsification” is an
hypothesis not to be lightly entertained, and it is more credible, as
Wasmann remarks, to assume that Haeckel, and not Nature, is the real
falsifier, inasmuch as he has misrepresented Nature in his “fundamental
biogenetic law.” Cænogenesis is a very convenient device. One can
alternate at will between _cænogenesis_ and _palingenesis_, just
as, in comparative anatomy, one can alternate capriciously between
_convergence_ and _homology_, on the general understanding of its
being a case of: “Heads, I win; tails, you lose”—certainly, there is
no _objective_ consideration to restrain us in such procedure. “Such
weapons as Cænogenesis and Convergence,” says Kohlbrugge (in his “Die
Morphologische Abstammung des Menschen,” 1908) “are unfortunately so
shaped that anyone can use them when they suit him, or throw them
aside when they do not. They show, therefore, in the prettiest way the
uncertainty even now of the construction of the theory of descent.
As soon as we go into details it leaves us in the lurch; it was only
while our knowledge was small that everything seemed to fit together
in most beautiful order.” (Quoted by Dwight in “Thoughts of a Catholic
Anatomist,” p. 187.)
It is undeniable, indeed, that in many cases the young of higher
animals pass through stages in which they bear at least a superficial
resemblance to adult stages in inferior and less complex organisms.
Obviously, however, there cannot be any direct derivation of the
_embryonic_ features of one organism from the _adult_ characters of
another organism. This preposterous implication of the Müller-Haeckel
Law must, as Morgan points out, be entirely eliminated, before it
can merit serious consideration. Referring to the spiral cleavage
exhibited by annelid, planarian and molluscan eggs, Morgan says:
“It has been found that the cleavage pattern has the same general
arrangement in the early stages of flat worms, annelids and molluscs.
Obviously these stages have never been adult ancestors, and obviously
if their resemblance has any meaning at all, it is that each group has
retained the same general plan of cleavage possessed by their common
ancestor.... Perhaps someone will say, ‘Well! is not this all that
we have contended for! Have you not reached the old conclusion in a
roundabout way?’ I think not. To my mind there is a wide difference
between the old statement that the higher animals living today have the
original adult stages telescoped into their embryos, and the statement
that the resemblance between certain characters in the embryos of
higher animals and corresponding stages in the embryos of lower animals
is most plausibly explained by the assumption that they have descended
from the same ancestors, and that their common structures are embryonic
survivals.” (_Op. cit._, pp. 22, 23.)
After this admission, however, nothing remains of the law of
“recapitulation” except simple embryological homology comparable, in
every sense, to adult homology, and adding nothing essentially new
to the latter argument for evolution. It is, therefore, ridiculous
for evolutionists to speak of _branchial_ (gill) arches and clefts in
man. The visceral or pharyngeal arches and grooves appearing in the
human embryo are unquestionably homologous with the genuine branchial
arches and clefts in a fish embryo. In the latter, however, the grooves
become real clefts through perforation, while the arches become the
lamellæ of the permanent gills, thus adapting the animal to aquatic
respiration. It is, accordingly, perfectly legitimate to refer to these
embryonic structures in the young fish as gill arches and gill clefts.
In man, however, the corresponding embryonic structures develop into
the oral cavity, auditory meatus, ossicles of the ear, the mandible,
the lower lip, the tongue, the cheek, the hyoid bone, the styloid
process, the thymus, the thyroid and tracheal cartilages, etc. There is
no perforation of the grooves, and the arches develop into something
quite different than branchial lamellæ. Hence the correct name for
these structures in the human embryo is _pharyngeal_ (visceral) arches
and grooves, their superficial resemblance to the embryonic structures
in the fish embryo being no justification for calling them branchial.
In short, the mere fact that certain embryonic structures in the
young fish (homologous to the pharyngeal arches and grooves in the
human embryo) develop into the permanent gills of the adult fish, is
no more significant than the association of homology with divergent
preadaptations, which is of quite general occurrence among adult
vertebrate types. In all such cases, we have instances of fundamentally
identical structures, diverted, as it were, to entirely different
purposes or functions (_e.g._ the arm of a man and the flipper of a
whale). Hence the argument drawn from embryological homology is no
more cogent than the argument drawn from the homologies of comparative
anatomy, which we have already discussed in a previous chapter. The
misuse of the term _branchial_, to prejudge matters in their own
favor, is in keeping with the customary policy of evolutionists. It is
intended, naturally, to convey the impression that man, in the course
of his evolution, has passed through a fish-like stage. At bottom,
however, it is nothing more than a verbal subterfuge, that need not
detain us further.
The theory of embryological recapitulation is often applied to man,
with a view to establishing the doctrine of his bestial ancestry. We
have seen one instance of this application, and we shall consider
one other, for the purpose of illustrating more fully the principles
involved. The claim is made by evolutionists, that man must have
passed through a fish or amphibian stage, because, in common with all
other mammals, he exhibits, during his embryological development, a
typical fish (or, if you prefer, amphibian) kidney, which subsequently
atrophies, only to be replaced by the characteristic mammalian kidney.
The human embryo, therefore, repeats the history of our race, which
must have passed through a fish-like stage in the remote past. In
consequence of this phenomenon, therefore, it is inferred that man must
have had fish-like ancestors. Let us pause, however, to analyze the
facts upon which this inference is based.
In annelids, like the earthworm, the nephridia or excretory tubules
are arranged segmentally, one pair to each somite. In vertebrates,
however, the nephridial tubules, instead of developing in regular
sequence from before backwards, develop in three batches, one behind
the other, the anterior batch being called the _pronephros_, the middle
one, the _mesonephros_ and the posterior one, the _metanephros_. This,
according to J. Graham Kerr, holds true not only of the amniotic
vertebrates (reptiles, birds, and mammals) but also, with a certain
reservation, of the anamniotic vertebrates (fishes and amphibians).
“In many of the lower Vertebrates,” says this author, “there is no
separation between the mesonephros and metanephros, the two forming one
continuous structure which acts as the functional kidney. Such a type
of renal organ consisting of the series of tubules corresponding to
mesonephros together with metanephros may conveniently be termed the
opisthonephros.” (“Textbook of Embryology,” II—Vertebrata, p. 221.) If
we accept this view, it is not quite accurate to regard the mesonephros
in man as a homologue of the _opisthonephros_ of a fish, seeing that
the latter is composed not only of mesonephridia (mesonephric tubules),
but also of metanephridia (metanephric tubules). A brief description
of the three nephridial systems of vertebrate embryos will serve to
further clarify their interrelationship.
(1) _The pronephric system_: This consists of a collection of tubules
called the pronephros, and a pronephric duct leading to the cloaca,
or terminal portion of the alimentary canal. The pronephros is a
functional organ in the frog tadpole and other larval amphibia. It
is also found in a few teleosts, where it is said to persist as a
functional organ in the adult. In other fishes, however, and in all
higher forms the pronephros atrophies and becomes reduced to a few
rudiments.[17]
[17] The objection may be raised that a purely embryonic organ
like the pronephros, which is functional in but few vertebrate
adults and which originates in vertebrate embryos only to
undergo atrophy, can have no other explanation than that of
“recapitulation.” The objection, however, fails to take into
account the possibility of the organ being serviceable to
the _embryo_, in which it may be a provisory solution of the
excretory problem and not a vestige of past ancestry.
(2) _The mesonephric system_: This consists of a collection of
nephridial tubules called the mesonephros (Wolffian body). The tubules
of the mesonephros do not develop any duct of their own, but utilize
the posterior portion of the pronephric duct, the said tubules becoming
secondarily connected with this duct in a region posterior to the
pronephridia (tubules of the pronephros). The pronephric tubules
together with the anterior portion of the pronephric duct then atrophy,
while the persisting posterior portion of this duct receives the name
of mesonephric or Wolffian duct. The duct in question still terminates
in the cloaca, and serves, in the male, the combined function of a
urinary and spermatic duct; but, in the female, a special oviduct (the
Müllerian duct) is superadded because of the large size of the eggs to
be transmitted, the Wolffian or mesonephric duct subserving only the
urinary function. The mesonephros is functional in mammalian embryos,
but atrophies and disappears coincidently with the development of the
permanent kidney. The same is true of amniotic vertebrates generally,
except that in the case of reptiles the mesonephros persists for a
few months after hatching in the adult, the definitive kidney of the
adult being reinforced during that interval by the still functional
mesonephros. In anamniotic vertebrates, however, no separation exists
between the mesonephros and the metanephros, the two forming one
continuous structure, the opisthonephros, which acts as the functional
kidney of the adult.
(3) _The metanephric system_: In the amniotic vertebrates the
mesonephros and metanephros are distinct, the former being functional
in embryos and in adult reptiles (for a few months after hatching),
while the metanephros becomes the definitive kidney of the adult. The
metanephros is a collection of nephridial tubules provided with a
special urinary duct called the ureter, which empties into the bladder
(not the cloaca). The Wolffian or mesonephric duct is retained as a
sperm duct in the male (of amniotic vertebrates), but becomes vestigial
in the female. Only a certain number of the nephridial tubules of the
embryonic metanephros are taken over to form part of the permanent or
adult kidney (in mammals, birds, and reptiles).
If, then, as we have previously observed, we follow Kerr in regarding
the fish kidney, not as a simple mesonephros, but as an opisthonephros
(_i.e._ a combination of mesonephros and metanephros), there is no
warrant for interpreting the embryonic mesonephros of man and mammals
generally as the fish-kidney stage. But waiving this consideration, and
assuming, for the sake of argument, that the fish kidney is a perfect
homologue of the human mesonephros, the mere fact of the adoption by
the human embryo of a temporary solution of its excretory problem
similar to the permanent solution of that problem adopted by the fish,
would not, of itself, imply the common ancestry of men and fishes.
Such a coincidence would be fully explicable as a case of convergent
adaptation occurring in the interest of embryonic economy.
It is, indeed, a well-known fact that larval and embryonic organisms
are often obliged to defer temporarily the construction of the more
complex structures of adult life, and to improvise simpler substitutes
for use until such a time as they have accumulated a sufficient reserve
of energy and materials to complete the work of their more elaborate
adult organization. The young starfish, for example, arising as it does
from an egg but scantily supplied with yolk, is forced, from the very
outset, to shift for itself, in coping with the food-getting problem.
Under stress of this necessity, it economizes its slender resources
by constructing the extremely simple digestive and motor apparatus
characteristic of the larva in its bilaterally-symmetrical _Bipinnaria_
stage, and postponing the development of the radially-symmetrical
structure characteristic of the adult stage, until it has stored up the
wherewithal to complete its metamorphosis.
From this viewpoint, there is no difficulty in understanding why
_temporary_ solutions of the excretory problem should precede the
_definitive_ solution of this problem in mammalian embryos. The problem
of excretion is urgent from the outset, and its demands increase with
the growth of the embryo. It is only natural, then, that a series of
improvised structures should be resorted to, in a case of this kind;
and, since these temporary solutions of the excretory problem must,
of necessity, be as simple as possible, it should not be in the least
surprising to find them coinciding with the permanent solutions adopted
by inferior organisms less complexly organized than the mammals.
Hence the bare fact of resemblance between the transitory embryonic
kidney of a mammal and the permanent adult kidney of a fish would
have no atavistic significance. We know of innumerable cases in which
an identical adaptation occurs in genetically unrelated organisms.
The cephalopod mollusc _Nautilus_, for example, solves the problem
of light-perception in the identical manner in which it is solved by
the vertebrates. This mollusc has the perfect vertebrate type of eye,
including the lens and all other parts down to the minutest detail.
The fact, however, that the mollusc solves its problem by using the
stereotyped solution found in vertebrates rather than by developing a
compound eye analogous to the type found among arthropods, is wholly
destitute of genetic significance. In fact, the genetic interpretation
is positively rejected by the evolutionists, who interpret the
occurrence of similar eyes in molluscs and vertebrates as an instance
of “accidental convergence.” Even assuming, then, what Kerr denies,
namely, a perfect parallelism between the mesonephros of the human
embryo and the permanent kidney of an adult fish, the alleged fact that
the human embryo temporarily adopts the same type of solution for its
excretory problem as the one permanently employed by the fish would not
in itself be a proof of our descent from a fish-like ancestor.
In fact, not only is embryological homology of no greater value
than adult homology as an argument for evolution, but it is, on
the contrary, considerably inferior to the latter, as regards
cogency. _Differentiation_ pertains to the final or _adult_ stage of
organisms. Embryonic structures, inasmuch as they are undeveloped and
undifferentiated, present for that very reason an appearance of crude
and superficial similarity. “Most of what is generally ascribed to
the action of the so-called biogenetic law,” says T. Garbowski, “is
erroneously ascribed to it, since all things that are undeveloped and
incomplete must be more or less alike.” (“Morphogenetische Studien,”
Jena, 1903.) When we consider the fact that the metazoa have all a
similar unicellular origin, are subject to uniform morphogenetic laws,
and are frequently exposed to analogous environmental conditions
demanding similar adaptations, it is not at all surprising that
they should present many points of resemblance (both in their
embryonic and their adult morphology) which are not referable to any
particular line of descent. At all events, these resemblances are
far too general in their extension to enable us to specify the type
of ancestor responsible therefor. More especially is this true of
embryological homologies, which are practically valueless as basis for
reconstructing the phylogeny of any type. “That certain phenomena,”
says Oskar Hertwig, “recur with great regularity and uniformity in
the development of different species of animals, is due chiefly to the
fact that under all circumstances they supply the necessary condition
under which alone the next higher stage in ontogeny (embryological
development) can be produced.” (“Allgemeine Biologie,” 1906, p.
595.) The same author, therefore, proposes to revamp Haeckel’s
“biogenetisches Grundgesetz” as follows: “We must leave out the words
‘recapitulation of forms of extinct ancestors’ and substitute for them
‘repetition of forms regularly occurring in organic development, and
advancing from the simple to the more complex.’” (_Op. cit._, p. 593.)
Finally, when applied to the problem of man’s alleged genetic
connection with the ape, the biogenetic principle proves the exact
reverse of what the Darwinians desire; for as a matter of fact the
young apes resemble man much more closely in the shape of the skull
and facial features than do the adult animals. Inasmuch, therefore, as
the ape, in its earlier development, reveals a more marked resemblance
to man than is present in its later stages, it follows, according
to the “biogenetic law,” that man is the ancestor of the ape. This,
however, is inadmissible, seeing that the ape is by no means a more
recent type than man. Consequently, as applied to man, the Haeckelian
principle leads to a preposterous conclusion, and thereby manifests
its worthlessness as a clue to phylogeny. Julius Kollmann, it is true,
gives serious attention to this likeness between young apes and men,
and makes it the basis of his scheme of human evolution. “Kollmann,”
says Dwight, “starts from the fact that the head of a young ape is very
much more like that of a child than the head of an old ape is like that
of a man. He holds that the likeness of the skull of a very young ape
is so great that there must be a family relationship. He believes that
some differentiation, some favorable variation, must occur in the body
of the mother and so a somewhat higher skull is transmitted to the
offspring and is perpetuated. Concerning which Kohlbrugge remarks that
‘thus the first men were developed, not from the adult, but from the
embryonic forms of the anthropoids whose more favorable form of skull
they managed to preserve in further growth.’ ... Schwalbe makes the
telling criticism of these views of Kollmann that much the same thing
might be said of the heads of embryonic animals in general that is said
of those of apes, and that thus mammals might be said to have come from
a more man-like ancestor.” (_Op. cit._, pp. 186, 187.) All of which
goes to show that the “biogenetic law” is more misleading than helpful
in settling the question of human phylogeny.
§ 3. Rudimentary Organs
Darwin attached great importance to the existence in man of so-called
rudimentary organs, which he regarded as convincing evidence of man’s
descent from the lower forms of animal life. Nineteenth century
science, being ignorant of the functional purpose served by many
organs, arbitrarily pronounced them to be useless organs, and chose,
in consequence, to regard them all as the atrophied and (wholly or
partially) functionless remnants of organs that were formerly developed
and fully functional in remote ancestors of the race. Darwin borrowed
this argument from Lamarck. It may be stated thus: Undeveloped and
functionless organs are atrophied organs. But atrophy is the result of
disuse. Now disuse presupposes former use. Consequently, rudimentary
organs were at one time developed and functioning, viz. in the remote
ancestors of the race. Since, therefore, these selfsame organs are
developed and functional in the lower forms of life, it follows that
the higher forms, in which these organs are reduced and functionless,
are descended from forms similar to those in which said organs are
developed and fully functional.
This argument, however, fairly bristles with assumptions that are not
only wholly unwarranted, but utterly at variance with actual facts.
In the first place, it wrongly assumes that all reduced organs are
functionless, and, conversely, that all functionless organs are
atrophied or reduced. Facts, however, prove the contrary; for we find
frequent instances of reduced organs which function, and, _vice versa_,
of well-developed organs which are functionless. The tail, for example,
in cats, dogs, and certain Catarrhine monkeys, though it discharges
neither the prehensile function that makes it useful in the Platyrrhine
monkey, nor the protective function that makes it useful to horses and
cattle in warding off flies, is, nevertheless, despite its inutility
or absence of function, a quite fully developed organ. Conversely, the
reduced or undeveloped fin-like wings of the penguin are by no means
functionless, since they enable this bird to swim through the water
with great facility.
To save his argument from this antagonism of the facts, Darwin resorts
to the ingenious expedient of distinguishing between _rudimentary_
organs and _nascent_ organs. Rudimentary organs are undeveloped organs,
which are wholly, or partially, useless. They have had a past, but have
no future. Nascent organs, on the contrary, are undeveloped organs,
which “are of high service to their possessors” (“Descent of Man,”
ch. I, p. 28, 2nd ed.). They “are capable of further development”
(_ibidem_), and have, therefore, a future before them. He gives the
following examples of rudimentary organs: “Rudimentary organs ...
are either quite useless, such as teeth which never cut through the
gums, or almost useless, such as the wings of an ostrich, which serve
merely as sails.” (“Origin of Species,” 6th ed., ch. XIV, p. 469.)
As an example of a nascent organ, he gives the mammary glands of the
oviparous Duckbill: “The mammary glands of the Ornithorhynchus may be
considered, in comparison with the udders of a cow, as in a nascent
condition.” (_Op. cit._, ch. XIV, p. 470.)
Darwin admits that it is hard to apply this distinction in the
concrete: “It is, however, often difficult to distinguish between
rudimentary and nascent organs; for we can judge only by analogy
whether a part is capable of further development, in which case alone
it deserves to be called nascent.” (_Op. cit._, ch. XIV, p. 469.)
For Darwin “judging by analogy” meant judging on the assumption that
evolution has really taken place; for he describes rudimentary organs
as being “of such slight service that we can hardly suppose that they
were developed under the conditions which now exist.” (“Descent of
Man,” ch. I, p. 29.)
He is somewhat perplexed about applying this distinction to the
penguin: “The wing of the penguin,” he admits, “is of high service,
acting as a fin; it may, therefore, represent the nascent state: not
that I believe this to be the case; it is more probably a reduced
organ, modified for a new function.” (“Origin of Species,” 6th ed., ch.
XIV, pp. 469, 470.) In other words, there is scarcely any objective
consideration by which the validity of this distinction can be checked
up in practice. Like homology and convergence, like palingenesis and
cænogensis, the distinction between rudimentary and nascent organs is
a convenient device, which can be arbitrarily manipulated according to
the necessities of a preconceived theory. It is “scientific” sanction
for the privilege of blowing hot and cold with the same breath.
The assumption that atrophy and reduction are the inevitable
consequence of disuse, or diminution of use, in so far as this
decreases the flow of nourishing blood to unexercised parts, is
certainly erroneous. Yet Darwin made it the premise of his argument
from so-called rudimentary organs. “The term ‘disuse’ does not relate,”
he informs us, “merely to lessened action of muscles, but includes a
diminished flow of blood to the part or organ, from being subjected
to fewer alternations of pressure, or from being in any way less
habitually active.” (“Origin of Species,” 6th ed., p. 469.) As a matter
of fact, however, we have many instances in which use has failed to
develop and disuse to reduce organs in certain types of animals. As
an example in point, we may cite the case of right-handedness among
human beings. From time immemorial, the generality of mankind have
consistently used the right hand in preference to the left, without
any atrophy or reduction of the left hand, or over-development of the
right hand, resulting from this racial practice. “The superiority of
one hand,” says G. Elliot Smith, “is as old as mankind.” (Smithson.
Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 570.) It is true that only about 6,000 years
of human existence are known to history, but, if one accepts the most
conservative estimates of glaciologists, man has had a much longer
prehistory, the lowest estimates for the age of man being approximately
30,000 years. Thus W. J. Sollas tells us that the Glacial period, in
which man first appeared, came to an end about 7,000 years ago, and
that the men buried at Chapelle-aux-Saints in France lived about 25,000
years ago. His figures agree with those of C. F. Wright, who bases
his calculations on the Niagara Gorge. The Niagara River is one of
the postglacial streams, and the time required to cut its gorge has
been calculated as 7,000 years. Gerard De Geer, the Swedish scientist,
gives 20,000 years ago as the end of glacial and the commencement of
recent or postglacial time. He bases his estimates on the sediments of
the Yoldia Sea in Sweden. His method consists in the actual counting
of certain seasonally-laminated clay layers, presumably left behind
by the receding ice sheet of the continental glacier. The melting is
registered by annual deposition, in which the thinner layers of finer
sand from the winter flows alternate with thicker layers of coarser
material from the summer flows. In warm years, the layers are thicker,
in colder years they are thinner, so that these laminated Pleistocene
clays constitute a thermographic as well as a chronological record. De
Geer began his study of Pleistocene clays in 1878, and in 1920 he led
an expedition to the United States, for the purpose of extending his
researches. (Cf. _Science_, Sept. 24, 1920, pp. 284-286.) At that time,
he claimed to have worked out the chronology of the past 12,000 years.
His figure of 20,000 years for postglacial time, while very displeasing
to that reckless foe of scientific caution and conservatism, Henry
Fairfield Osborn, tallies very well with the estimates of Sollas and
Wright. H. Obermaier, basing his computation on Croll’s theory that
glaciation is caused by variations in the eccentricity of the earth’s
orbit about the sun, which would bring about protracted winters in the
hemisphere having winter, when the earth was farthest from the sun
(with consequent accumulation of ice), gives 30,000 years ago as the
date of the first appearance of man on earth. Father Hugues Obermaier,
it may be noted, like Abbé Henri Breuil, is one of the foremost
authorities on the subject of prehistoric Man. Both are Catholic
priests.
All such computations of the age of man are, of course, uncertain and
theoretical. Evolutionists calculate it in hundreds of thousands,
and even millions, of years. After giving such a table of recklessly
tremendous figures, Osborn has the hypocritical meticulosity to add
that, for the sake of _precision_ (save the mark!) the nineteen hundred
and some odd years of the Christian era should be added to his figures.
But, even according to the most conservative scientific estimates,
as we have seen, man is said to have been in existence for 30,000
years, and the prevalence of right-handedness among men is as old as
the human race. One would expect, then, to find modern man equipped
with a gigantic right arm and a dwarfed left arm. In other words, man
should exhibit a condition comparable to that of a lobster, which has
one large and one small chela. Yet, in spite of the fact that the
comparative inaction of the human left hand is supposed to have endured
throughout a period of, at least, 30,000 years, this state of affairs
has not resulted in the faintest trace of atrophy or retrogression.
Bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves, blood vessels, and all
parts are of equal size in both arms and both hands. Excessive exercise
may overdevelop the musculature of the right arm, but this is an
individual and acquired adaptation, which is never transmitted to
the offspring, _e.g._ the child of a blacksmith does not inherit the
muscular hypertrophy of his father. Disuse, therefore, has not the
efficacy which Lamarck and Darwin ascribed to it.
In fine, it must be recognized, once for all, that organisms are
not-molded on a Lamarckian basis of use, nor yet on a Darwinian
basis of selected utility. Expediency, in other words, is not the
sole governing principle of the organic world. Neither instinctive
habitude nor the struggle for existence succeeds in forcing structural
adaptation of a predictable nature. Animals with different organic
structure have the same instincts, _e.g._ monkeys with, and without,
prehensile tails alike dwell in trees; while animals having the same
organic structure may have different instincts, _e.g._ the rabbit,
which burrows, and the hare, which does not, are practically identical
in anatomical structure. Again, some animals are highly specialized for
a function, which other animals perform without specialized organs, as
is instanced in the case of moles, which possess a special burrowing
apparatus, and prairie-dogs, which burrow without a specialized
apparatus. Any system of evolution, which ignores the internal or
hereditary factors of organic life and strives to explain all in terms
of the environmental factors, encounters an insuperable obstacle in
this remorseless resistance of conflicting facts.
Another flaw in the Darwinian argument from rudimentary organs is
that it confounds, in many cases, _apparent_, with _real_ inutility
(or absence of function). Darwin and his followers frequently argued
out of their ignorance, and falsely concluded that an organ was
destitute of a function, merely because _they_ had failed to discover
its utility. Large numbers, accordingly, of highly serviceable organs
were catalogued as vestigial or rudimentary, simply because nineteenth
century science did not comprehend their indubitable utility. With the
advance of present-day physiology, this list of “useless organs” is
being rapidly depleted, so that the scientific days of the rudimentary
organ appear to be numbered. At any rate, in arbitrarily pronouncing
many important and functioning organs to be useless vestiges of a
former stage in the history of the race, the Darwinians were not the
friends of Science, but rather its reactionary enemies, inasmuch as
they sought to discourage further investigation by their dogmatic
decision that there was no function to be found. In so doing, however,
they were merely exploiting the ignorance of their times in the
interest of a preconceived theory, which whetted their appetite for
discovering, at all costs, the presence in man of functionless organs.
Their anxiety in this direction led them to consider the whole group
of organs constituting a most important regulatory and coördinative
system in man and other vertebrates as so many useless vestigial
organs. This system is called the _cryptorhetic system_ and is made of
internally-secreting, ductless glands, now called _endocrine glands_.
These glands generate and instill into the blood stream certain
chemical substances called _hormones_, which, diffusing in the blood,
produce immediate stimulatory, and remote metabolic effects on special
organs distant from the endocrine gland, in which the particular
hormone is elaborated. As examples of such endocrine glands, we may
mention the pineal gland (epiphysis), the pituitary body (hypophysis),
the thyroid glands, the parathyroids, the islelets of Langerhans, the
adrenal bodies (suprarenal capsules), and the interstitial cells of the
gonads. The importance of these alleged useless organs is now known to
be paramount. Death, for instance, will immediately ensue in man and
other animals, upon extirpation of the adrenal bodies.
The late Robert Wiedersheim, it will be remembered, declared the
pineal gland or epiphysis to be the surviving vestige of a “third
eye” inherited from a former ancestor, in whom it opened between the
parietal bones of the skull, like the median or _pineal eye_ of certain
lizards, the socket of which is the parietal foramen formed in the
interparietal suture. If the argument is based on homology alone,
then the coincidence in position between the human epiphysis and the
median optic nerve of the lizards in question has the ordinary force
of the evolutionary argument from homology. But when one attempts to
reduce the epiphysis to the status of a useless vestigial rudiment,
he is in open conflict with facts; for the pineal body is, in reality,
an endocrine gland generating and dispersing a hormone, which is
very important for the regulation of growth in general and of sexual
development in particular. Hence this tiny organ in the diencephalic
roof, no larger than a grain of wheat, is not a functionless rudiment,
but an important functioning organ of the cryptorhetic system. We have
no ground, therefore, on this score for inferring that our pineal gland
functioned in former ancestors as a median eye comparable to that of
the cyclops Polyphemus of Homeric fame.
In like manner, the pituitary body or hypophysis, which in man is a
small organ about the size of a cherry, situated at the base of the
brain, buried in the floor of the skull, and lying just behind the
optic chiasma, was formerly rated as a rudimentary organ. It was, in
fact, regarded as the vestigial remnant of a former connection between
the neural and alimentary canals, reminiscent of the invertebrate
stage. “The phylogenetic explanation of this organ generally accepted,”
says Albert P. Mathews, “is that formerly the neural canal connected
at this point with the alimentary canal. A probable and almost the
only explanation of this, though an explanation almost universally
rejected by zoölogists, is that of Gaskell, who has maintained that
the vertebrate alimentary canal is a new structure, and that the old
invertebrate canal is the present neural canal. The infundibulum,
on this view, would correspond to the old invertebrate œsophagus,
the ventricle of the thalamus to the invertebrate stomach, and the
canal originally connected posteriorly with the anus. The anterior
lobe of the pituitary body could then correspond to some glandular
adjunct of the invertebrate canal, and the nervous part to a portion
of the original circumœsophageal nervous ring of the invertebrates.”
(“Physiological Chemistry,” 2nd ed., 1916, pp. 641, 642.)
This elaborate piece of evolutionary contortion calls for no comment
here. We are only interested in the fact that this wild and weird
speculation was originally inspired by the false assumption that
the hypophysis was a functionless organ. As a matter of fact, it
is the source of two important hormones. The one generated in its
anterior lobe is _tethelin_, a metabolic hormone, which promotes the
growth of the body in general and of the bony tissue in particular.
Hypertrophy and overfunction of this gland produces giantism, or
acromegaly (enlargement of hands, feet, and skull), while atrophy and
underfunction of the anterior lobe results in infantilism, acromikria
(diminution of extremities, _i. e._ hands, feet, head), obesity, and
genital dystrophy (_i. e._ suppression of secondary sexual characters).
The posterior lobe of the pituitary body constitutes, with the _pars
intermedia_, a second endocrine gland, which generates a stimulatory
hormone called _pituitrin_. This hormone stimulates unstriated muscle
to contract, and thereby regulates the discharge of secretions from
various glands of the body, _e. g._ the mammary glands, bladder,
etc. Hence the hypophysis, far from being a useless organ, is an
indispensable one. Moreover, it is an integral and important part of
the cryptorhetic system.
The same story may be repeated of the thyroid glands. These consist
of two lobes located on either side of the windpipe, just below the
larynx (Adam’s apple), and joined together across the windpipe by a
narrow band or isthmus of their own substance. Gaskell homologized
them with a gland in scorpions, and Mathew says that, if his surmise
is correct, “the thyroid represents an accessory sexual organ of the
invertebrate.” (_Op. cit._, p. 654.) They are, however, endocrine
glands, that generate a hormone known as _thyroxin_, which regulates
the body-temperature, growth of the body in general, and of the nervous
system in particular, etc., etc. Atrophy or extirpation of these glands
causes cretinism in the young and myxoedema in adults. Without a
sufficient supply of this hormone, the normal exercise of mental powers
in human beings is impossible. The organ, therefore, is far from being
a useless vestige of what was formerly useful.
George Howard Parker, the Zoölogist of Harvard, sums up the case
against the Darwinian interpretation of the endocrine glands as
follows: “The extent to which hormones control the body is only just
beginning to be appreciated. For a long time anatomists have recognized
in the higher animals, including man, a number of so-called ductless
glands, such as the thyroid gland, the pineal gland, the hypophysis,
the adrenal bodies, and so forth. These have often been passed over as
unimportant functionless organs whose presence was to be explained as
an inheritance from some remote ancestor. But such a conception is far
from correct. If the thyroids are removed from a dog, death follows in
from one to four weeks. If the adrenal bodies are excised, the animal
dies in from two to three days. Such results show beyond doubt that at
least some of these organs are of vital importance, and more recent
studies have demonstrated that most of them produce substances which
have all the properties of hormones.” (“Biology and Social Problems,”
1914, pp. 43, 44.)
Even the _vermiform appendix_ of the cæcum, which since Darwin’s time
has served as a classic example of a rudimentary organ in man, is, in
reality, not a functionless organ. Darwin, however, was of opinion
that it was not only useless, but positively harmful. “With respect to
the alimentary canal,” he says, “I have met with an account of only a
single rudiment, namely, the vermiform appendage of the cæcum. ... Not
only is it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of death, of which
fact I have lately heard two instances. This is due to small hard
bodies, such as seeds, entering the passage and causing inflammation.”
(“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. I, pp. 39, 40.) The idea that seeds
cause appendicitis is, of course, an exploded superstition, the hard
bodies sometimes found in the appendix being fecal concretions and not
seeds—“The old idea,” says Dr. John B. Deaver, “that foreign bodies,
such as grape seeds, are the cause of the disease, has been disproved.”
(Encycl. Americana, vol. 2, p. 76.) What is more germane to the point
at issue, however, is that Darwin erred in denying the utility of the
vermiform appendix. For, although this organ does not discharge in man
the important function which its homologue discharges in grain-eating
birds and also in herbivorous mammals, it subserves the secondary
function of lubricating the intestines by means of a secretion from its
muciparous glands.
Darwin gives the _semilunar fold_ as another instance of a vestigial
organ, claiming that it is a persistent rudiment of a former third
eyelid or _membrana nictitans_, such as we find in birds. “The
nictitating membrane, or third eyelid,” he says, “with its accessory
muscles and other structures, is especially well developed in birds,
and is of much functional importance to them, as it can be rapidly
drawn across the whole eyeball. It is found in some reptiles and
amphibians, and in certain fishes as in sharks. It is fairly well
developed in the two lower divisions of the mammalian series, namely,
in the monotremata and marsupials, and in some higher mammals, as in
the walrus. But in man, the quadrumana, and most other mammals, it
exists, as is admitted by all anatomists, as a mere rudiment, called
the semilunar fold.” (_Op. cit._, ch. I, pp. 35, 36.) Here Darwin is
certainly wrong about his facts; for the so-called third eyelid is
not well developed in the two lower divisions of the mammalian series
(_i.e._ the monotremes and the marsupials) nor in any other mammalian
type. “With but few exceptions,” says Remy Perrier, “the third eyelid
is not so complete as among the birds; (in the mammals) it never
covers the entire eye. For the rest, it is not really perceptible
except in certain types, like the dog, the ruminants, and, still more
so, the horse. In the rest (of the mammals) it is less developed.”
(“Elements d’anatomie comparée,” Paris, 1893, p. 1137.) Moreover,
Darwin’s suggestion leaves us at sea as to the ancestor, from whom
our “rudimentary third eyelid” has been inherited. His mention of
birds as having a well developed third eyelid is not very helpful,
because all evolutionists agree in excluding the birds from our line of
descent. The reptiles are more promising candidates for the position
of ancestors, but, as no trace of a third eyelid could possibly be
left behind in the imperfect record of the fossiliferous rocks (soft
parts like this having but slight chance of preservation), we do not
really _know_ whether the palæozoic reptiles possessed this particular
feature, or not. Nor can we argue from analogy and induction, because
not _all_ modern reptiles are equipped with third eyelids. Hence the
particular group of palæozoic reptiles, which are supposed to have been
our progenitors, may not have possessed any third eyelid to bequeath to
us in the reduced and rudimentary form of the plica semilunaris. If it
be replied, that they _must_ have had this feature, because otherwise
we would have no ancestor from whom we could inherit our semilunar
fold, it is obvious that such argumentation assumes the very point
which it ought to prove, namely: the actuality of evolution. Rudiments
are supposed to be a proof for evolution, and not, _vice versa_,
evolution a proof for rudiments.
Finally, the basic assumption of Darwin that the semilunar fold is
destitute of function is incorrect; for this crescent-shaped fold
situated in the inner or nasal corner of the eye of man and other
mammals serves to regulate the flow of the lubricating lacrimal fluid
(which we call tears). True this function is secondary compared with
the more important function discharged by the nictitating membrane in
birds. In the latter, the third eyelid is a pearly-white (sometimes
transparent) membrane placed internal to the real eyelids, on the
inner side of the eye, over whose surface it can be drawn like a
curtain to shield the organ from excessive light, or irritating dust;
nevertheless, the regulation of the flow of lacrimal humor is a real
function, and it is therefore entirely false to speak of the semilunar
fold as a functionless rudiment.
The _coccyx_ is likewise cited by Darwin as an example of an inherited
rudiment in man. “In man,” he says, “the os coccyx, together with
certain other vertebræ hereafter to be described, though functionless
as a tail, plainly represents this part in other vertebrate animals.”
(_Op. cit._, ch. I, p. 42.) That it serves no purpose _as a tail_,
may be readily admitted, but that it serves no purpose _whatever_, is
quite another matter. As a matter of fact, it serves for the attachment
of several small muscles, whose functioning would be impossible in the
absence of this bone. Darwin himself concedes this; for he confesses
that the four vertebræ of the coccyx “are furnished with some small
muscles.” (_Ibidem._) We may, therefore, admit the homology between the
human coccyx and the tails of other vertebrates, without being forced
to regard the latter as a useless vestigial organ. It may be objected
that the attachment of these muscles might have been provided for in
a manner more in harmony with our ideas of symmetry. To this we reply
that Helmholtz criticized the human eye for similar reasons, when he
said that he would remand to his workshop for correction an optical
instrument so flawed with defects as the human eye. But, after all,
it was by the use of these selfsame imperfect eyes that Helmholtz was
enabled to detect the flaws of which he complained. When man shall
have fully fathomed the difficulties and obstructions with which
organic morphogeny has to contend in performing its wonderful work,
and shall have arrived at an elementary knowledge of the general laws
of morphogenetic mechanics, he will be more inclined to admire than
to criticize. It is a mistake to imagine that the finite works of the
Creator must be perfect from _every_ viewpoint. It suffices that they
are perfect with respect to the particular _purpose_ which they serve,
and this purpose must not be narrowly estimated from the standpoint of
the created work itself, but from that of its position in the universal
scheme of creation. All such partial views as the Helmholtzian one are
false views.
Another consideration which Darwin and his partisans have failed
to take into account is the possibility of an _ontogenetic_, as
well as a phylogenetic, explanation of rudimentary organs. That is
to say, rudimentary organs might, so far as _a priori_ reasons are
concerned, be the now useless vestiges of organs formerly developed
and functional _in the fœtus_, and need not necessarily be interpreted
as traces of organs that functioned formerly in remote racial
ancestors. That there should be such things as special fœtal organs,
which atrophy in later adult life, is a possibility that ought not to
excite surprise. During its uterine existence, the fœtus is subject
to peculiar conditions of life, very different from those which
prevail in the case of adult organisms—_e.g._ respiration and the
digestive process are suspended, and there is a totally different kind
of circulation. What, then, more natural than that the fœtus should
require special organs to adapt it to these special conditions of
uterine life? Such organs, while useful and functional in the earlier
stages of embryonic development, will, so soon as birth and maturity
introduce new conditions of life, become superfluous, and therefore
doomed, in the interest of organic economy, to ultimate atrophy and
degeneration, until nothing is left of them but vestigial remnants.
The thymus may be cited as a probable instance of such an organ.
This organ, which is located in front of the heart and behind the
breastbone, in the region between the two lungs, consists, at the
period of its greatest development in man, of a two-lobed structure,
5 cm. long and 4 cm. wide, with a thickness of 6 mm. and a maximum
weight of 35 grams. It is supplied with numerous lymphoid cells, which
are aggregated to form lymphoid follicles (_cf._ Gray’s “Anatomy,”
20th ed., 1918, pp. 1273, 1274; Burton-Opitz’ “Physiology,” 1920,
p. 964). This organ is a transitory one, well developed at birth,
but degenerating, according to some authors, after the second year
of life (_cf._ Starling’s “Physiology,” 3rd ed., 1920, p. 1245);
according to others, however, not until the period of full maturity,
namely, puberty. (_Cf._ Gray’s “Anatomy,” _loc. cit._) W. H. Howell
cites both opinions, without venturing to decide the matter (_cf._
his “Physiology,” 8th ed., 1921, pp. 869, 870). It was at one time
classified as a rudimentary or functionless organ. Later on, however,
it was thought by certain observers to be an endocrine gland, yielding
a secretion important for the growth of young mammals. This took it
out of the class of useless vestigial organs, but the recent discovery
that it is indispensable to birds as furnishing a secretion necessary
for the formation of the tertiary envelopes (egg membrane and shell)
of their eggs, has tended to revive the idea of its being a vestigial
organ inherited from the lower vertebrates.
Thus Dr. Oscar Riddle, while admitting that the thymus gland in
man has some influence on the growth of the bones, contends that
the newly-discovered function of this gland in birds is much more
important, since without it none of the vertebrates, excepting mammals,
could reproduce their young. “It thus becomes clear,” he says, “that
though the thymus is almost without use in the human being, it is in
fact a sort of ‘mother of the race.’ The higher animals could not have
come into existence without it. For even while our ancestors lived in
the water, it was the thymus of these ancestors which made possible the
production of the egg-envelopes within which the young were cradled and
protected until they were ready for an independent life.” (_Science_,
Dec. 28, 1923, Suppl. XIII, XIV.)
This conclusion, however, is far too hasty. For, even if we disregard
as negligible the minor function, that Riddle assigns to the thymus
in man, there remains another possibility, which H. H. Wilder takes
into account, namely, that the thymus may, in certain cases, be
a temporary substitute for the lymphatic vessels. Having called
attention to certain determinate channels found in some of the lower
vertebrates, he tells us that these “can well be utilized as adjuncts
of the lymphatic system until their function can be supplied by
definite lymphatic vessels.” He then resumes his discussion of the
lymph nodules in mammals as follows: “Aside from the solitary and
aggregated nodules, both of which appear to be centers of origin of
lymphocytes, there are numerous other places in which the cellular
constituents of the blood are developed. Many of these, as in the case
of the aggregated nodules of the intestines, are developed within
the wall of the alimentary canal and are therefore endodermic in
origin. These include the tonsils, the _thymus_, and thyroid glands,
the associated epithelial bodies, and, perhaps, the spleen.... In
their function as formative nidi for the cellular elements of the
blood these organs form physiologically important auxiliaries to the
vascular system as a whole, but belong elsewhere in their anatomical
developmental affinities.” (“History of the Human Body,” 2nd ed., 1923,
p. 395—italics mine.)
This being the case, it is much more reasonable to interpret the thymus
as an ontogenetic (embryonic), rather than a phylogenetic (racial)
rudiment. It has been observed that, in the case of reptiles which
lack definite lymphatic glands (which function in man as formative
centers of lymphocytes or white blood corpuscles), the thymus is
extraordinarily developed and abounds in lymphoid cells. It has also
been observed that the formation of lymphocytes in the lymphatic
glands is regulated by the digestive process; for, after digestion,
the activity of these glands increases and the formation of leucocytes
is accelerated. Since, then, the lymphatic glands appear to require
the stimulus of the digestive process to incite them to action, it
is clear that in the fœtus, which lacks the digestive process, the
lymphatic glands will not be stimulated to action, and that the task
of furnishing lymphocytes will devolve upon the thymus. After birth,
the digestive process commences and the lymphatic glands become active
in response to this stimulus. As the function of forming lymphocytes
is transferred from the thymus to the lymphatic glands, the former is
gradually deprived of its importance, and, in the interest of organic
economy, it begins to atrophy, until, at the end of the child’s second
year, or, at latest, when the child has reached sexual maturity,
nothing but a reduced vestige remains of this once functional organ.
“The thymus,” says Starling, “forms two large masses in the anterior
mediastinum which in man grow up to the second year of life and then
rapidly diminish, so that only traces are to be found at puberty. It
contains a large amount of lymphatic tissue and is therefore often
associated with the lymphatic glands as the seat of the formation of
lymph corpuscles.... In certain cases of arrested development or of
general weakness in young people, the thymus has been found to be
persistent.” (“Physiology,” 3rd ed., 1920, p. 1245.)
In the light of these facts, it is utterly unreasonable to regard the
thymus as a practically useless rudiment inherited from the lower
vertebrates. “That they have an important function in the young
animal,” says Albert Mathews, “can hardly be doubted.” (“Physiological
Chemistry,” 1916, p. 675.) In fact, the peculiar nature of their
development in the young and their atrophy in the adult forces such a
conclusion upon us. The thymus, therefore, is, in all probability, an
ontogenetic, and not a phylogenetic, rudiment. It might conceivably be
exploited as a biogenetic recapitulation of a reptilian stage in man,
just as the so-called fish-kidney of the human embryo is exploited for
evolutionary interpretation. The principles by which such a view may be
refuted have been given previously. But, in any case, it is folly to
interpret the thymus as a rudiment in the racial, rather than embryonic
sense. Moreover, the possibility of an ontogenetic interpretation
of rudiments must not be restricted to the thymus, but must be
accepted as a general and legitimate alternative for the phylogenetic
interpretation.
In the last place, it remains for us to consider the Darwinian
argument, based upon so-called rudimentary organs, from the standpoint
of the science of genetics. Darwin, as we have remarked elsewhere,
was ignorant of the non-inheritability of those inconstant individual
variations now known as fluctuations. He was somewhat perplexed, when
Professor L. Meyer pointed out the extreme variability in position
of the “projecting point” on the margin of the human ear, but he
still clung to his original contention that this “blunt point” was a
surviving vestige of the apex of the pointed ears found in donkeys and
horses, etc. “Nevertheless,” he says, “in some cases my original view,
that the points are vestiges of the tips of formerly erect and pointed
ears, still seems to be probable.” (“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. I,
p. 34.) Darwin, as Ranke points out, was mistaken in homologizing his
famous “tubercule” with the apex of bestial ears. “The acute extremity
of the pointed animal ear,” says this author, “does not correspond to
this prominence designated by Darwin, but to the vertex of the helix.”
(“Der Mensch,” II, p. 39.) The feature in question is, moreover, a mere
fluctuation due to the degree of development attained by the cartilage:
hence its variability in different human beings. In very extreme cases,
fluctuations of this sort, may be important enough to constitute an
_anomaly_, and, as anomalies are often interpreted as atavisms and
reversions to a primitive type, it may be well to advert to this
subject here.
Dwight has an excellent chapter on anatomical variations and anomalies.
(_Cf._ “Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist,” 1911, ch. IX.) He tells us
that “a thigh bone a little more bent, an ear a little more pointed,
a nose a little more projecting ... a little more or a little less
of anything you please—this is variation.” “An anatomical anomaly,”
he says, “is some peculiarity of any part of the body which cannot
be expressed in terms of more or less, but is distinctly new.” He
divides the latter into two classes, namely: those which consist in the
repetition of one or more elements in a series, _e.g._ the occurrence
of supernumerary legs in an insect, and those which consist in the
suppression of one or more elements in a series, _e.g._ the occurrence
of eleven pairs of ribs in a man. Variations and anomalies are
fluctuational or mutational, according as they are based on changes in
the soma alone, or on changes in the germ plasm. Variations, however,
are more likely to be non-inheritable fluctuations, and anomalies to
be inheritable mutations. We shall speak of the latter presently. In
the meantime we may note that the main trouble with interpreting these
anatomical irregularities as “reversive” or “atavistic” is that they
would connect man with all sorts of quite impossible lines of descent.
“In my early days of anatomy,” says Dwight, “I thought that I must
be very ignorant, because I could not understand how the occasional
appearance in man of a peculiarity of some animal outside of any
conceivable line of descent could be called a reversion, as it soon
became the custom to call it.... It was only later that I grasped the
fact that the reason I could not understand these things was that there
was nothing to understand. It was sham science from beginning to end.”
(_Op. cit._, p. 209.) By way of anomaly, almost any human peculiarity
can occur in animals, and, conversely, any bestial peculiarity in
man, but the resemblance to man of an animal outside of the alleged
line of human descent represents a grave difficulty for the theory of
evolution, and not an argument in its favor.
The human body is certainly not a _mosaic of heterogenetic organs_,
_i.e._ a complex of structures inherited from any and every sort of
animal, whether extant or extinct; for such a vast number and variety
of ancestors could not possibly have coöperated to produce man. Prof.
D. Carazzi, in his Address of Inauguration in the Chair of Zoölogy
and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Padua, Jan. 20, 1906,
excoriated with scathing irony the sham Darwinian science, of which
Dwight complains. “But even in the serious works of pure science,” says
the Italian zoölogist, “we read, for example, that the over-development
of the postauricular muscles sometimes observed in man is an atavistic
reminiscence of the muscles of the helix of the ear of the horse and
the ass. And so far so good, because it gives evidence of great modesty
in recognizing as our ancestors those well-deserving and long-eared
quadrupeds. But this is not all; there appear at times in a woman one
or more anomalous mammary glands below the pectoral ones; and here,
too, they insist on explaining the anomaly as a reversion to type,
that is, as an atavistic reminiscence of the numerous mammary glands
possessed by different lower mammals; the bitch, for example....
“But the supernumerary mammary glands are not a reversion to type;
anomalous mammary glands may appear upon the median line, upon
the deltoid, and even upon the knee, regions far-distant from the
‘milk-line.’ So with regard to the postauricular muscles we must
say that according to the laws of Darwinism the cases of anomalous
development are not interpretable as reversions to type. All these
features are not phylogenetic reminiscences, but anomalies of
development, of such a nature that, if we should wish to make use of
them for establishing the line of human descent, we would have to say
that man descends from the swine, from the solipeds and even from the
cetaceans, returning, namely, to the old conception of lineal descent,
that is, to Buffon’s idea of the concatenation of creatures.” (“Teorie
e critiche nella moderna biologia,” 1906.)
Darwin’s doctrine, however, on the origin and significance of
rudimentary organs has been damaged by genetic analysis in a yet
more serious fashion. In fact, with the discovery that anomalous
_suppression_ and anomalous _duplication_ of organs may result from
_factorial mutation_, this Darwinian conception received what is
tantamount to its deathblow. Darwin, it will be remembered, was
convinced that the regression of organs was brought about by “increased
disuse controlled by natural selection.” (Cf. “Origin of Species,” 6th
ed., ch. V.) Such phenomena, he thought, as the suppression of wings
in the Apteryx and the reduction of wings in running birds, arose from
their “inhabiting ocean islands,” where they “have not been exposed to
the attacks of beasts, and consequently lost the power of using their
wings for flight.” (“Descent of Man,” 6th ed., ch. I, p. 32.) In some
cases, he believed that disuse and natural selection had coöperated
_ex aequo_ to produce results of this nature, _e.g._ the reduction of
the eyes in the mole and in Ctenomys; for this reduction, he claims,
has some selection-value, inasmuch as reduction of the eyes, adhesion
of the lids, and covering with hair tends to protect the unused and
useless eye against inflammation. In other cases, however, he is
inclined to discount the idea that suppression of organs is an “effect
of long-continued disuse,” and to regard the phenomenon as “wholly, or
mainly, due to natural selection,” _e.g._ in the case of the wingless
beetles of the island of Madeira. “For during successive generations,”
he reasons, “each individual beetle which flew least, either from its
wings having been ever so little less developed or from indolent habit,
will have had the best chance of surviving from not being blown out
to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles which most readily took
to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus destroyed.”
In a third class of instances, however, he assigns the principal rôle
to disuse, _e.g._ in the case of the blind animals “which inhabit
the caves of Carniola and Kentucky, because,” as he tells us, “it is
difficult to imagine that eyes, though useless, could be injurious
to animals living in darkness.” Hence he concludes that, as the
obliteration of eyes has no selection-value, under the circumstances
prevailing in dark caves, “their loss may be attributed to disuse.”
(Cf. “Origin of Species,” 6th ed., ch. V, pp. 128-133.)
Morgan’s comment on these elaborate speculations of Darwin is very
caustic and concise. Referring to factorial mutations, which give rise
to races of flies having _supernumerary_ and _vestigial_ organs, he
says: “In contrast to the last case, where a character is doubled, is
the next one in which the eyes are lost. This change took place at a
single step. All the flies of this stock, however, cannot be said to be
eyeless, since many of them show pieces of eye—indeed the variation is
so wide that the eye may even appear like a normal eye unless carefully
examined. Formerly we were taught that eyeless animals arose in caves.
This case shows that they may also arise suddenly in glass milk
bottles, by a change in a single factor.
“I may recall in this connection that wingless flies also arose in
our cultures by a single mutation. We used to be told that wingless
insects occurred on desert islands because those insects that had the
best developed wings were blown out to sea. Whether this is true or
not, I will not pretend to say, but at any rate wingless insects may
also arise, not through a slow process of elimination, but at a single
step.” (“A Critique of the Theory of Evolution,” 1916, pp. 66, 67.)
In directing attention to the fact that a permanent and inheritable
reduction of organs to the vestigial state can result from mutation,
we do not, of course, intend to exclude the possible occurrence of
somatic atrophy due to lack of exercise rather than to germinal change.
Thus the blind species of animals in caves may, in some instances,
be persistently blind, because of the persistent darkness of the
environment in which they live, and not by reason of any inherited
factor for blindness. Darwin gives one such instance, namely, that
of the cave rat _Neotoma_. To test such cases, the blind animals
would have to be bred in an illuminated environment. If, under this
condition, they failed to develop normal eyes, the blindness would be
due to a germinal factor, and would be inherited in an illumined, no
less than a dark, environment.
In any case, a mutation which suppresses a character is not, as we
have seen, a specific change, but merely one of the varietal order,
which does not result in the production of a genuine new species. The
factorial mutant with a vestigial wing or eye belongs to the same
species as its wild or normal parent stock. Moreover, neither disuse
nor natural selection has the slightest power to induce mutations
of this kind. If mutation be the cause of the blindness of cave
animals, then their presence in such caves must be accounted for by
supposing that they migrated thither because they found in the cave a
most suitable environment for safety, foraging, etc. Darkness alone,
however, could never induce germinal, but, at most, merely somatic
blindness. The Lamarckian factor of disuse and the Darwinian factor of
selection have been definitely discredited as agents which could bring
about hereditarily-transmissible modifications.
§ 4. Fossil Links
All efforts, then, to establish, by means of anatomical and
embryological homologies, the lineal descent of man from any known
type of monkey or ape have ended in ignominious failure. Comparative
anatomy and embryology can, at most, only furnish grounds for extremely
vague and indefinite speculations regarding the descent of man, but
they can never become a basis for specific conclusions with respect
to the phylogeny of _Homo sapiens_. Every known form of ape, whether
extant or extinct, is, as we have seen, far too specialized in its
adaptation to arboreal life to pass muster as a feasible ancestor. The
only conceivable manner in which the human body could be related to
simian stock is by way of collateral descent, and the only means of
proving such descent is to adduce a series of intermediate fossil types
connecting modern men and modern apes with this alleged common ancestor
of both. “The ascent (_sic_) of man as one of the Primates,” says Henry
Fairfield Osborn, “was parallel with that of the families of apes. Man
has a long line of ancestry of his own, perhaps two million or more
years in length. He is not descended from any known form of ape either
living or fossil.” (_The Ill. London News_, Jan. 8, 1921, p. 40.)
This theory of a hypothetical primate ancestor of man, which is
supposed to have inhabited the earth during the earlier part of the
Tertiary period, and to have presented a more man-like appearance than
any known type of ape, was first propounded by Karl Snell in 1863. It
was popularized at the beginning of the present century by Klaatsch,
who saw in it a means of escape from the absurdities and perplexities
of the theory of lineal descent—“the less,” says the latter, “an ape
has changed from its original form, just so much the more human it
appears.” This saying is revamped by Kohlbrugge to read: “Man comes
from an original form much more like himself than any existing ape.”
Kohlbrugge’s comment is as follows: “The line of descent of man thus
receives on the side of the primates a quite different form from its
previous-one. Such new hypotheses as those of Hubrecht and Klaatsch
seem, therefore, fortunate for nature-philosophers, because evolution
always failed us when we compared known forms in their details, and led
us only to confusion. But if one works with such distant hypothetical
ancestors, one escapes much disillusioning.” (Quoted by Dwight, _op.
cit._, p. 195.)
One thing, at any rate, is certain, namely: that we do not possess any
fossils of this primitive “large brained, erectly walking primate,”
who is alleged to have roamed the earth during the eocene or oligocene
epoch. The Foxhall Man, whose culture Osborn ascribes to the Upper
Pliocene, is far too recent, and, what is worse, far too intelligent,
to be this Tertiary Ancestor. The _Pithecanthropus erectus_, likewise,
is excluded for reasons which we shall presently consider. Meanwhile,
let it be noted, that we have Osborn’s assurance for the fact that we
are descended from a brainy and upright oligocene ancestor, as yet,
however, undiscovered.
But the situation is more hopeful, if we hark back to a still more
remote period, whose remains are so scarce and fragmentary, as to
eliminate the possibility of embarrassment arising from intractable
details. “Back of this,” says Osborn, “ ... was a prehuman arboreal
stage.” (_Loc. cit._) Here, then, we are back again in the same old rut
of tree-climbing simian ancestry, whence we thought to have escaped
by abandoning the theory of lineal descent; and, before we have time
to speculate upon how we got there, Prof. Wm. Gregory of the American
Museum is summoned by Osborn to present us with specimens of this
prehuman arboreal stage. This expert, it would seem, favored up till
the year 1923 the fossil jaw of the _Propliopithecus_ as representing
the common root, whence the human race diverged, on one side, and the
races of anthropoid apes, on the other. (Cf. Osborn’s _Museum-leaflet_
of 1923 on “The Hall of the Age of Man,” p. 29.) On April 14, 1923,
however, Gregory announced the deposition of _Propliopithecus_ and
the enthronement of the jaw of _Dryopithecus_. This sudden accession
of _Dryopithecus_ to the post of common ancestor of apes and men was
due to the discovery by Dr. Barnum Brown of three fossil jaws of
_Dryopithecus_ in the Miocene deposits of the Siwalik beds in northern
India. By some rapturous coincidence, the three jaws in question happen
to come from three successive “horizons,” and to be representative
of just three different stages in the evolution of _Dryopithecus_.
Doctor Gregory finds, moreover, that the patterns of the minute cracks
and furrows on the surviving molar teeth correspond to those on the
surface of the enamels of modern ape and human teeth. Hence, with
that ephemeral infallibility, which is characteristic of authorities
like Doctor Gregory, and which is proof against all discouragement
by reason of past blunders, the one who told us but a year ago that
the cusps of all the teeth of _Propliopithecus_ “are exactly such
as would be expected in the common starting point for the divergent
lines leading to the gibbons, to the higher apes, and to man” (_loc.
cit._), now tells us that both we and the apes have inherited our teeth
from _Dryopithecus_, who had heretofore remained neglected on the
side-lines. In 1923, apparently, Dr. Gregory was unimpressed with the
crown patterns of _Dryopithecus_, whose jaw he then excluded from the
direct human line. (Cf. _Museum-leaflet_, p. 5.) Now, however, that
the new discoveries have brought _Dryopithecus_ into the limelight,
and, particularly because these jaws were found in _Miocene_ deposits,
Gregory has shifted his favor from _Propliopithecus_ to _Dryopithecus_.
(Cf. _Science_, April 25, 1924, suppl. XIII.)
When palæontologists are obliged to do a _volte face_ of this sort,
one ought not to scoff. One ought to be an optimist, and eschew above
all the spirit of the English statesman, who, on hearing a learned
lecture by Pearson on the question of whether Man was descended from
hylobatic, or troglodytic stock, was guilty of the following piece
of impatience: “I am not particularly interested in the descent of
man ... this scientific pursuit of the dead bones of the past does
not seem to me a very useful way of spending life. I am accustomed
to this mode of study; learned volumes have been written in Sanscrit
to explain the conjunction of the two vowels ‘a’ and ‘u’. It is very
learned, very ingenious, but not very helpful.... I am not concerned
with my genealogy so much as with my future. Our intellects can be more
advantageously employed than in finding our diversity from the ape....
There may be no spirit, no soul; there is no proof of their existence.
If that is so, let us do away with shams and live like animals. If, on
the other hand, there is a soul to be looked after, let us all strain
our nerves to the task; there is no use in digging into the sands of
time for the skeletons of the past; build your man for the future.”
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1921, pp. 432, 433.) It is to be hoped,
however, that this reactionary spirit is confined to the few, and
that the accession of this new primitive ancestor will be hailed with
general satisfaction. At any rate, we can wish him well, and trust that
the fossilized jaw of _Dryopithecus_ will not lose caste so speedily as
that of _Propliopithecus_.
_Propliopithecus_, or _Dryopithecus_? Hylobatic, or troglodytic
affinities? Such questions are scarcely the pivots on which the
world is turned! Nevertheless, we rejoice that Doctor Gregory has
again settled the former problem (provisorily, at least) to his own
satisfaction. More important, however, than that of the dentition of
_Dryopithecus_, is the crucial question of whether or not Palæontology
is able to furnish evidence of man’s genetic continuity with this
primitive pithecoid root. Certainly, no effort has been spared to
procure the much desired proofs of our reputed bestial ancestry. The
Tertiary deposits of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the oceanic
islands have been diligently ransacked for fossil facts that would
be susceptible to an evolutionary interpretation. The aprioristic
criterion that all large-brained men are recent, and all small-brained
men with recessive chins are necessarily ancient, has always been
employed in evaluating the fossil evidence. Notwithstanding all
endeavors, however, to bring about the consummation so devoutly
desired, the facts discovered not only fail to support the theory of
collateral descent, but actually militate against it. For assuming that
man and the anthropoid apes constitute two distinct lines of evolution
branching out from common Tertiary or pre-Tertiary stock, palæontology
should be able to show numerous intermediate fossil forms, not alone
for the lateral branch of the apes, but also, and especially, for the
lateral line connecting modern men with the common root of the primate
tree. But it is precisely in this latter respect that the fossil
evidence for collateral descent fails most egregiously. Palæontology
knows of many fossil genera and species of apes and lemurs, that might
conceivably represent links in a genetic chain connecting modern
monkeys with Tertiary stock, but it has yet to discover so much as a
single fossil species, much less a fossil genus, intermediate between
man, as we know him, and this alleged Tertiary ancestor common to apes
and men.
Not even catastrophism can be invoked to save this irremediable
situation; for any catastrophe that would have swept away the human
links would likewise have swept away the ape links. The presence of
many genera and species of fossil apes, in contrast to the absence
of any fossil genus or species of man distinct from _Homo sapiens_,
is irreconcilable with the theory of collateral descent. Such is the
dilemma proposed to the upholders of this theory by Wasmann, in the
10th chapter of his “Die Moderne Biologie” (3rd edition, 1906), a
dilemma, from which, as we shall see, their every attempt to extricate
themselves has failed most signally.
“But what,” asked Wasmann, “has palæontology to say concerning this
question? It tells us that, up to the present, no connecting link
between man and the ape has been found; and, indeed, according to
the theory of Klaatsch, it is absurd to speak of a link of direct
connection between these two forms, but it tells us much more than
this. It shows us, on the basis of the results of the most recent
research, that we know the genealogical tree of the various apes, a
tree very rich in species, which extends from the present as far back
as the hypothetical primitive form assigned to the earliest part of
the Tertiary period; and, in fact, in Zittel’s work, “Grundzüge der
Paläontologie” (1895), not less than thirty genera of fossil Pro-simiæ
and eighteen genera of genuine fossil apes are enumerated, the which
have been entombed in those strata of the earth that intervene between
the Lower Eocene and the Alluvial epoch, but between this hypothetical
primitive form and man of the present time we do not find a single
connecting link. _The entire genealogical tree of man does not show so
much as one fossil genus, or even one fossil species._” (_Op. cit._,
italics his.) A brief consideration of the principal fossil remains, in
which certain palæontologists profess to see evidence of a transition
between man and the primitive pithecoid stock, will serve to verify
Wasmann’s statement, and will reveal the fact that all the alleged
connecting links are distinctly human, or purely simian, or merely
mismated combinations of human and simian remains.
(1) _Pithecanthropus erectus_: In 1891 Eugène Dubois, a Dutch army
surgeon, discovered in Java, at Trinil, in the Ngawa district of
the Madiun Residency, a calvarium (skull-cap), 2 upper molars and a
femur, in the central part of an old river bed. The four fragments,
however, were not all found in the same year, because the advent of
the rainy season compelled him to suspend the work of excavation.
“The teeth,” to quote Dubois himself, “were distant from the skull
from one to, at most, three meters; the femur was fifteen meters (50
feet) away.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1898, p. 447.) Dubois judged
the lapilli stratum, in which the bones were found, to be older than
the Pleistocene, and older, perhaps, than the most recent zones of the
_Pliocene_ series. “The Trinil ape-man,” says Osborn, “ ... is the
first of the conundrums of human ancestry. Is the Trinil race prehuman
or not?” (_Loc. cit._, p. 40.) Certainly, Lower Pleistocene, or Upper
Pliocene represents too late a time for the appearance of the upright
primate, whence we are said to have sprung. Even Miocene would be too
late a date for our alleged divergence from the primitive arboreal
stock.
Of the capacity of the calvarium, Dubois says: “I found the
above-mentioned cavity measured 550 c.cm. The cast of the cavity of
the Neanderthal skull taken to the same plane measures 750 c.cm.”
(_Loc. cit._, p. 450, footnote.) His first estimate of the total
cranial capacity of _Pithecanthropus_ was 1000 c.cm., but, later on,
when he decided to reconstruct the skull on the basis of the cranium
of a gibbon (_Hylobates agilis_) rather than that of a chimpanzee
(_Troglodytes niger_), he reduced his estimate of the cranial capacity
to 900 c.cm. Recently, it is rumored, he has increased the latter
estimate, as a sequel to his having removed by means of a dentist’s
tool all the siliceous matter adhering to the skull-cap. As regards
shape, the calvarium seems to resemble most closely the cranial vault
of gibbon. This similarity, as we have seen, led Dubois to reconstruct
the skull on hylobatic lines—“the skull of Hylobates agilis,” says
Dubois, “ ... strikingly resembles that of Pithecanthropus.” (_Loc.
cit._, p. 450, footnote.) The craniologist Macnamara, it is true,
claims that the skull-cap most closely approximates the Troglodyte
type. Speaking of the calvarium of Pithecanthropus, the latter says:
“The cranium of an average adult male chimpanzee and the Java cranium
are so closely related that I believe them to belong to the same family
of animals—_i.e._ to the true apes.” (_Archiv. für Anthropologie_,
XXVIII, 1903, pp. 349-360.) The large cranial capacity, however,
would seem to favor Dubois’ interpretation, seeing that gibbons have,
in proportion to their bodies, twice as large a brain as the huge
Troglodyte apes, namely, the chimpanzee and the gorilla. The maximum
cranial capacity for any ape is from 500 to 600 c.cm. Hence, with 900
c.cm. of cranial capacity estimated by Dubois, the Pithecanthropus
stands midway between the ape and the Neanderthal Man, a human
dwarf, whose cranial capacity Huxley estimated at 1,236 c.cm. This
consideration, however, does not of itself entitle the Pithecanthropus
to be regarded as a connecting link between man and the anthropoid
apes. In all such comparisons, it is the _relative_, and not the
_absolute_, size of the brain, which is important. The elephant for
example, has as large a brain as a man, but the elephant’s brain
is small, in comparison to its huge body. The brain of a mouse is
insignificant, as regards absolute size, but, considered in relation to
the size of the mouse’s body, it is as large as, if not larger than,
that of an elephant, and hence the elephant, for all the absolute
magnitude of its brain, is no more “intelligent” than a mouse. As
we have already seen, man’s brain is unique, not for its absolute
size, but for its weight and enormous cortical surface, considered
with reference to the comparatively small organism controlled by the
brain in question. It is this excess in size which manifests the
specialization of the human brain for psychic functions. The Weddas,
a dwarf race of Ceylon, have a far smaller cranial capacity than the
Neanderthal Man, their average cranial capacity being 960 c.cm., but
they are _human pigmies_, whereas the Pithecanthropus, according to
Richard Hertwig, was a _giant ape_. “The fragments,” says Hertwig,
“were regarded by some as belonging to a connecting link between apes
and man, _Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois_; by others they were thought
to be the remains of genuine apes, and by others those of genuine
men. The opinion that is most probably correct is that the fragments
belonged to an anthropoid ape of extraordinary size and enormous
cranial capacity.” (“Lehrbuch der Zoologie,” 7th ed.)
Prof. J. H. McGregor essays to make a gradational series out of
conjectural brain casts of a large ape, the Pithecanthropus and the
Neanderthal Man, in the ratio of 6: 9: 12, this ratio being based
upon the estimated cranial capacities of the skulls in question.
In a previous chapter, we have seen that such symmetrically graded
series have little force as an argument for common descent. In the
present instance, however, the gradation gives a wrong impression of
the real state of affairs. If Doctor McGregor had taken into account
the all-important consideration of relative size, he would not have
been able to construct this misleading series. This consideration,
however, did not escape Dubois himself, and in his paper of Dec. 14,
1896, before the Berlin Anthropological Society, he confessed that a
gigantic ape of hylobatic type would have a cranial capacity close to
that of Pithecanthropus, even if we suppose it to have been no taller
than a man. (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1898, p. 350.) The admission
is all the more significant in view of the fact that Dubois was then
endeavoring to exclude the possibility of regarding Pithecanthropus as
an anthropoid ape.
The teeth, according to Dubois, are unlike the teeth of either
men or apes, but according to Virchow and Hrdlička, they are more
ape-like than human. The femur, though unquestionably man-like, might
conceivably belong to an ape of the gibbon type, inasmuch as the
upright posture is more normal to the long-armed gibbon than to any
other anthropoid ape, and its thighbone, for this reason, bears the
closest resemblance to that of man. According to the “Text-Book of
Zoölogy” by Parker and Haswell, the gibbon is the only ape that can
walk erectly, which it does, not like other apes, with the fore-limbs
used as crutches, but balanced exclusively upon its hind-limbs, with
its long arms dangling to the ground—“The Gibbons can walk in an
upright position without the assistance of the fore-limbs; in the
others, though, in progression on the surface of the ground, the
body may be held in a semi-erect position with the weight resting on
the hind-limbs, yet the assistance of the long fore-limbs acting as
crutches is necessary to enable the animal to swing itself along.”
(_Op. cit._, 3rd ed., 1921, vol. II, p. 494.) The Javanese femur is
rounder than in man, and is, in this, as well as other respects, more
akin to the thighbone of the gibbon. “After examining hundreds of
human femora,” says Dubois, “Manouvrier could find only two that had
a somewhat similar shape. It is therefore a very rare form in man.
With the gibbon a similar form normally occurs.” (_Loc. cit._, pp.
456, 457.) Whether the thighbone really belonged to an erectly walking
animal has not yet been definitely settled. To decide this matter, it
would be necessary to apply the Walkhoff x-ray method, which determines
the mode of progression from the arrangement of the bone fibers in
frontal, or other, sections from the femur. This test, however, has
not hitherto been made. Nor should the significance of the fact that
the thighbone was found at a distance of some _fifty feet away_ from
the skull-cap be overlooked, seeing that this fact destroys, once and
for all, any possibility of _certainty_ that both belonged to the same
animal.
In conclusion, therefore, we may say that the remains of
Pithecanthropus are so scanty, fragmentary, and doubtful, as to
preclude a reliable verdict on their true significance. As Virchow
pointed out, the determination of their correct taxonomic position is
impossible, in the absence of a complete skeleton. Meanwhile, the most
probable opinion is that they represent the remains of a giant ape of
the hylobatic type. In other words, the Pithecanthropus belongs to the
genealogical tree of the apes, and not to that of man. In fact, he
has been excluded from the direct line of human descent by Schwalbe,
Alsberg, Kollmann, Haacke, Hubrecht, Klaatsch, and all the foremost
protagonists of the theory of collateral descent. (Cf. Dwight, _op.
cit._, ch. VIII.) Professor McGregor’s series consisting of an ape, the
Pithecanthropus, Homo neanderthalensis, and the Crô-Magnon Man fails
as an argument, not only for the general reason we have discussed in
our third chapter, but also for two special reasons, namely: (1) that
he completely ignores the chronological question of the comparative
age of the fossils in his series, and (2) that he has neglected to
take into account the consideration of the body-brain ratio. For as
Prof. G. Grant MacCurdy puts it, “We must distinguish between relative
(cranial) capacity and absolute capacity.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for
1909, p. 575.) In justice to Professor McGregor, however, it should be
noted that he proposes his interpretation in a purely provisory and
tentative sense, and does not dogmatize after the fashion of Osborn and
Gregory.
After the year 1896, Dubois appears to have withdrawn the relics of
Pithecanthropus from further inspection on the part of scientific
men, and to have kept them securely locked up in his safe at
Haarlem, Holland. (Cf. _Science_, June 15, 1923, suppl. VIII.)
Since all existing casts of the skull-cap of Pithecanthropus are
inaccurate, according to the measurements originally given by Dubois,
anthropologists were anxious to have access to bones, in order to
verify his figures and to obtain better casts. (Cf. Hrdlička, Smithson.
Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 498.) His obstinate refusal, therefore, to
place the Javanese remains at the disposal of scientists was bitterly
resented by the latter. Some of them accused him of having become
“reactionary” and “orthodox” in his later years, and others went so
far as to impugn his good faith in the matter of the discovery. (Cf.
W. H. Ballou’s article, _North American Review_, April, 1922.) A
writer in _Science_ says: “It has been rumored that he was influenced
by religious bigotry” and refers to the bones as a “skeleton in the
closet.” (Cf. _loc. cit._) Dubois’ own explanation, however, was
that he wished to publish his own finds first. Recently, he seems to
have yielded to pressure in the matter, since he permitted Hrdlička,
McGregor, and others to examine the fragments of Pithecanthropus. (Cf.
_Science_, Aug. 17, 1923, Suppl. VIII.) Meanwhile, too, his opinion
has changed with reference to these bones, which he now regards as
the remains of a large ape of the hylobatic type, and not of a form
intermediate between men and apes. This opinion is, in all likelihood,
the correct one.
(2) _The Heidelberg Man_: In a quarry near Mauer in the Elsenz Valley,
Germany, on Oct. 21, 1907, a workman engaged in excavating drove his
shovel into a fossilized human jaw, severing it into two pieces. Herr
Joseph Rösch, the owner of the quarry, immediately telegraphed the news
of the find to Prof. Otto Schoetensack of the neighboring University
of Heidelberg. The Professor arrived on the scene the following day,
and “once he got hold of the specimen, he would no more let it out of
his possession.” (Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 510.) He took
it back with him to Heidelberg, where he cleaned and repaired it. The
crowns of four of the teeth broken by the workman’s shovel were never
recovered. The Heidelberg jaw was found at a depth of about 79 feet
below the surface (24.1 meters). Fossil bones of Elephas antiquus,
Rhinoceros etruscus, Felis leo fossilis, etc., are said to have been
discovered at the same level. The layer in which it was found has been
classed by some as Middle Pleistocene, by others as Early Quaternary;
for “there seems to be some uncertainty as to the exact subdivision of
the period to which it should be attributed.” (Hrdlička, _loc. cit._,
p. 516.) No other part of the skeleton except the jaw was discovered.
The teeth are of the normal human pattern, being small and vertical.
Prof. Arthur Keith says they have the same shape as those of the
specimen found at Spy. The jaw has an ape-like appearance, due to
the extreme recessiveness of the chin. It is also remarkable for its
massiveness and the broadness of the ascending rami. Its anomalous
character is indicated by the manifest disproportion between the
powerful jaw and the insignificant teeth. “One is impressed,” says
Prof. George Grant MacCurdy of Yale, “by the relative smallness of
the teeth as compared with the massive jaw in the case of _Homo
heidelbergensis_.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 570.) “Why so
massive a jaw,” says the late Professor Dwight, former anatomist at
Harvard, “should have such inefficient teeth is hard to explain, for
the very strength of the jaw implies the fitness of corresponding
teeth. Either it is an anomaly or the jaw of some aberrant species of
ape.” (_Op. cit._, p. 164.) This fact alone destroys its evidential
force; for, by way of anomaly, almost any sort of feature can appear in
apes and men, that is, human characters in apes and simian characters
in man. “Thus it is certain,” says Dwight, “that animal features of
the most diverse kinds appear in man apparently without rhyme or
reason, and also that they appear in precisely the same way in animals
far removed from those in which they are normal. It is hopeless to
try to account for them by inheritance; and to call them instances of
convergence does not help matters.” (_Op. cit._, pp. 230, 231.)
Kramberger, however, claims that, with the exception of the
extremely recessive chin, the features of the Heidelberg jaw are
approximated by those which are normal in the modern Eskimo skull.
(Cf. _Sitzungbericht der Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften_, 1909.)
Prof. J. H. McGregor holds similar views. He claims that the greater
use of the jaw in uncivilized peoples, who must masticate tough foods,
tends to accentuate and increase the recessiveness of the chin. It
is also possible that the backward sloping of the chin may have been
intensified in certain primitive races or varieties of the human
species as a result of factorial mutation. We would not, however, be
justified in segregating a distinct human species on the basis of minor
differences, such as the protuberance or recessiveness of chins. On
the whole, we are hopelessly at sea with reference to the significance
of the Heidelberg mandible. Taxonomic allocation must be grounded on
something more than a jaw, otherwise it amounts to nothing more than a
piece of capricious speculation.
(3) _Eoanthropus Dawsoni_: Dec. 18, 1912, is memorable with
evolutionary anthropologists as the day on which Charles Dawson
announced his discovery of the famous Dawn Man. The period of discovery
extended from the years prior to 1911 up to Aug. 30, 1913, when the
canine tooth was found by Father Teilhard de Chardin. The locality
was Piltdown Common, Sussex, in England. The fragments recovered were
an imperfect cranium, part of the mandible, and the above-mentioned
canine tooth. The stratified Piltdown gravel, which Dawson assigns to
the Lower Pleistocene or Glacial epoch, had been much disturbed by
workmen, “who were digging the gravel for small repairs.” (Dawson.)
The discoverer first found a fragment of a parietal bone. Then several
years later, after the gravels had been considerably rainwashed, he
recovered other fragments of the skull. All parts of the skeletal
remains are said to have been found within a radius of several yards
from the site of the initial discovery. The skull was reconstructed by
Dr. A. Smith Woodward and deposited in the British Museum of Natural
History at South Kensington. Eoliths were found in the same gravel as
the skull.
Of the skull, according to Woodward, four parts remain, which, however,
were integrated from nine fragments of bone. “The human remains,” he
says, “comprise the greater part of a brain-case and one ramus of
the mandible, with two lower molars.” Of Woodward’s reconstruction,
Keith tells us that “an approach to symmetry and a correct adjustment
of parts came only after many experimental reconstructions” (cf.
“Antiquity of Man,” p. 364), and he also remarks that, when Woodward
undertook to “replace the missing points of the jaws, the incisor
and canine teeth, he followed simian rather than human lines.” (_Op.
cit._, p. 324.) Here we may be permitted to observe that, even apart
from the distorting influence of preconceived theories, this business
of reconstruction is a rather dubious procedure. The absence of parts
and the inevitable modification introduced by the use of cement
employed to make the fragments cohere make accurate reconstruction
an impossibility. The fact that Woodward assigned to the _lower_ jaw
a tooth which Gerrit Miller of the United States Museum assigns to
the _upper_ jaw, may well give pause to those credulous persons, who
believe that palæontologists can reliably reconstruct a whole cranium
or skeleton from the minutest fragments. Sometimes, apparently, the
“experts” are at sea even over so simple a question as the proper
allocation of a tooth.
Woodward, however, was fully satisfied with his own artistic work on
Eoanthropus; for he says: “While the skull, indeed, is evidently human,
only approaching a lower grade in certain characters of the brain, in
the attachment for the neck, the extent of the temporal muscles and
in the probable size of the face, the mandible appears to be almost
precisely that of an ape, with nothing human except the molar teeth.”
(Cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, pp. 505, 506.) Of the cranial
capacity Woodward gives the following estimate: “The capacity of the
brain-case cannot, of course, be exactly determined; but measurements
both by millet seed and water show that it must have been at least
1,070 cc., while a consideration of the missing parts suggests that
it may have been a little more (note the parsimoniousness of this
concession!). It therefore agrees closely with the capacity of the
Gibraltar skull, as determined by Professor Keith, and equals that of
the lowest skulls of the existing Australians. It is much below the
Mousterian skulls from Spy and La Chapelle-aux-Saints.” (_Loc. cit._,
p. 505.)
Where Doctor Woodward came to grief, however, was in his failure to
discern the obvious disproportion between the mismated cranium and
mandible. As a matter of fact, the mandible is older than the skull
and belongs to a fossil ape, whereas the cranium is more recent and
is conspicuously human. Woodward, however, was blissfully unconscious
of this mésalliance. What there is of the lower jaw, he assures us,
“shows the same mineralized condition as the skull” and “corresponds
sufficiently well in size to be referred to the same individual without
any hesitation.” (_Loc. cit._, p. 506.)
For this he was roundly taken to task by Prof. David Waterston in an
address delivered by the latter before the London Geological Society,
Dec., 1912. _Nature_, the English scientific weekly, reports this
criticism as follows: “To refer the mandible and the cranium to the
same individual would be equivalent to articulating a chimpanzee
foot with the bones of a human thigh and leg.” Prof. J. H. McGregor
of Columbia, though he followed Woodward in modeling the head of
Eoanthropus now exhibited in “The Hall of the Age of Man,” told the
writer that he believed the jaw and the skull to be misfits. Recently,
Hrdlička has come out strongly for the separation of the mandible
from the cranium, insisting that the former is _older_ and on the
order of the jaw of the fossil ape _Dryopithecus_, while the skull
is less antique and indubitably human. The following abstract of
Hrdlička’s view is given in _Science_, May 4, 1923: “Dr. Hrdlička,”
we read, “holds that the Piltdown jaw is much older than the skull
found near it and to which it had been supposed to belong.” (Cf.
suppl. X.) Hrdlička asserts that, from the standpoint of dentition,
there is a striking resemblance between the Piltdown jaw and that of
the extinct ape _Dryopithecus rhenanus_. He comments, in fact, on
“the close relation of the Piltdown molars to some of the Miocene or
early Pliocene human-like teeth of this fossil ape.” (_Ibidem._) Still
other authorities, however, have claimed that the jaw was that of a
chimpanzee.
To conclude, therefore, the Eoanthropus Dawsoni is an invention, and
not a discovery, an artistic creation, not a specimen. Anyone can
combine a simian mandible with a human cranium, and, if the discovery
of a connecting link entails no more than this, then there is no reason
why evidence of human evolution should not be turned out wholesale.
(4) _The Neanderthal Man_ (No. 1): The remains of the famous
Neanderthal Man were found in August, 1856, by two laborers at work
in the Feldhofer Grotte, a small cave about 100 feet from the Düssel
river, near Hochdal in Germany. This cave is located at the entrance
of the Neanderthal gorge in Westphalia, at a height of 60 feet above
the bottom of the valley. No competent scientist, however, saw the
bones _in situ_. Both the bones and the loam, in which they were
entombed, had been thrown out of the cave and partly precipitated into
the ravine, long before the scientists arrived. Indeed, the scientific
discoverer, Dr. C. Fuhlrott, did not come upon the scene until several
weeks later. It was then too late to determine the age of the bones
geologically and stratigraphically, and no petrigraphic examination of
the loam was made. The cave, which is about 25 meters above the level
of the river, communicates by crevices with the surface, so that it
is possible that the bones and the loam, which covered the floor of
the cave, may have been washed in from without. Fuhlrott recovered a
skull-cap, two femurs, both humeri, both ulnæ (almost complete), the
right radius, the left pelvic bone, a fragment of the right scapula,
five pieces of rib, and the right clavicle. (Cf. Hugues Obermaier’s
article, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1906, pp. 394, 395.) “Whether they
(the bones) were really in the Alluvial loam,” says Virchow, “no one
saw.... The whole importance of the Neanderthal skull consists in
the honor ascribed to it from the very beginning, of having rested
in the Alluvial loam, which was formed at the time of the early
mammals.” (Quoted by Ranke, “Der Mensch,” II, p. 485.) We know nothing,
therefore, regarding the age of the fragmentary skeleton; for, as
Obermaier says: “It is certain that its exact age is in no way defined,
either geologically or stratigraphically.” (_Loc. cit._, p. 395.)
The remains are no less enigmatic from the anthropological standpoint.
For while no doubt has been raised as to their human character,
they have given rise to at least a dozen conflicting opinions. Thus
Professor Clemont of Bonn pronounced the remains in question to be
those of a Mongolian Cossack shot by snipers in 1814, and cast by his
slayers into the Feldhofer Grotte. The same verdict had been given by
L. Meyer in 1864. C. Carter Blake (1864) and Karl Vogt (1863) declared
the skull to be that of an idiot. J. Barnard Davis (1864) claimed that
it had been artificially deformed by early obliteration of the cranial
sutures. Pruner-Bey (1863) said that it was the skull of an ancient
Celt or German; R. Wagner (1864), that it belonged to an ancient
Hollander; Rudolf Virchow, that the remains were those of a primitive
Frieslander. Prof. G. Schwalbe of Strassburg erected it into a new
_genus_ of the _Anthropidæ_ in 1901. In 1904, however, he repented of
his rashness and contented himself with calling it a distinct human
_species_, namely, _Homo primigenius_, in contradistinction to _Homo
sapiens_ (modern man). As we shall see presently, however, it is not a
distinct species, but, at most, an ancient _variety_ or _subspecies_
(race) of the species _Homo sapiens_, differing from modern Europeans
only in the degree that Polynesians, Mongolians, and Hottentots differ
from them, that is, within the limits of the one and only human
species. Other opinions might be cited (cf. Hrdlička, Smithson. Inst.
Rpt. for 1913, p. 518, and H. Muckermann’s “Darwinism and Evolution,”
1906, pp. 63, 64), but the number and variety of the foregoing bear
ample testimony to the uncertain and ambiguous character of the remains.
The skull is that of a low, perhaps, degenerate, type of humanity. The
facial and basal parts of the skull are missing. Hence we are not sure
of the prognathism shown in McGregor’s reconstruction. The skull has,
however, a retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges and a sloping
occiput. Yet, in spite of the fact that it is of a very low type, it
is indubitably human. “In no sense,” says Huxley, “can the Neanderthal
bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between
men and apes.” (“Evidence of Man’s Place in Nature,” Humb. ed., p.
253.) D. Schaaffhausen makes the same confession—“In making this
discovery,” he owns, “we have not found the missing link.” (“Der
Neanderthaler Fund,” p. 49.) The cranial capacity of the Neanderthal
skull, as we have seen, is 1,236 c.cm., which is practically the same
as that of the average European woman of today. In size it exceeds,
but in shape it resembles, the dolichocephalic skull of the modern
Australian, being itself a dolichocephalic cranium. Huxley called
attention to this resemblance, and Macnamara, after comparing it with
a large number of such skulls, reaches this conclusion: “The average
cranial capacity of these selected 36 skulls (namely, of Australian
and Tasmanian blacks) is even less than that of the Neanderthal group,
but in shape some of these two groups are closely related.” (_Archiv.
für Anthropologie_, XXVIII, 1903, p. 358.) Schwalbe’s opinion that the
Neanderthal Man constitutes a distinct species, though its author has
since abandoned it (cf. Wasmann’s “Modern Biology,” Eng. ed., 1910, p.
506), will be considered later, viz. after we have discussed the Men of
Spy, Krapina and Le Moustier, all of whom have been assigned to the
Neanderthal group.
(5) _Neanderthal Man_ (No. 2): This specimen is said to be more recent
than No. 1. Its discoverers were Rautert, Klaatsch, and Koenen. It
consists of a human skeleton without a skull. It was found buried in
the loess at a depth of 50 centimeters. This loess had been washed
into the ruined cave, where the relics were found, subsequently to its
deposition on the plateau above. The bones were most probably washed
into the cave along with the loess, which fills the remnant of the
destroyed cave. The upper plateau of the region is covered with the
same loess. The site of the second discovery was 200 meters to the west
of the Neanderthal Cave (_i.e._ the Feldhofer Grotte). The bones were
either washed into the broken cave, or buried there later. We have no
indication whatever of their age.
(6) _The Man of La Naulette_: In 1866, André Dupont found in the
cavern of La Naulette, valley of the Lesse, Belgium, a fossil lower
jaw, or rather, the fragment of a lower jaw, associated with remains
of the mammoth and rhinoceros. The fragment was sufficient to show the
dentition, and to indicate the absence of a chin. “Its kinship with the
man of Neanderthal,” remarks Professor MacCurdy very naïvely, “whose
lower jaw could not be found, was evident. It tended to legitimatize
the latter, which hitherto had failed of general recognition.”
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 572.)
(7) _The Men of Spy_: In June of 1886 two nearly complete skeletons,
probably of a woman and a man, were discovered by Messrs. Marcel
de Puydt and Maximin Lohest in a terrace fronting a cave at Spy in
the Province of Namur, Belgium, 47½ feet above the shallow bed of
the stream Orneau. The bones were found at a depth of 13 feet below
the surface of the terrace. The remains were associated with bones
of the rhinoceros (_Rhinoceros tichorhinus_), the mammoth (_Elephas
primigenius_), and the great bear (_Ursus spelaeus_). There were also
stone implements indicating Mousterian industry, and the position of
one of the skeletons shows that the bodies were buried by friends.
The present valley of the Orneau was almost completely formed at the
time of the burial. The exact age of the bones cannot be determined
nor can these cave deposits be correlated with the river drift and the
loess. The cultural evidences are said to be Mousterian, and Mousterian
culture is assigned by Obermaier to the Fourth, or last, Glacial period.
Prof. Julien Fraipont of the University of Liége announced the
discovery of these palæolithic skeletons Aug. 16, 1886. Skeleton No.
1 has weaker bones and is thought to be that of a woman; No. 2 shows
signs of strong musculature and is evidently that of a man. Of No. 1
we have the cranial vault, two portions of the upper jaw (with five
molars and four other teeth), a nearly complete mandible with all the
teeth, a left clavicle, a right humerus, the shaft of the left humerus,
a left radius, the heads of two ulnæ, a nearly complete right femur,
a complete left tibia, and the right os calcis. Of No. 2 we have the
vault of the skull, two portions of the maxilla with teeth, loose teeth
belonging to lower jaw, fragments of the scapulæ, the left clavicle,
imperfect humeri, the shaft of the right radius, a left femur, the
left os calcis, and the left astragalus. The separation of the bones,
however, is not yet satisfactory. The jaw of No. 1 is well-preserved,
except in the region of the coronoids and condyles, which makes any
position we may give it more or less arbitrary. The skull of this
specimen is almost the replica of the Neanderthal skull, except that
the forehead is lower and more sloping. But No. 1 has a trace of chin
prominence and in this it resembles modern skulls. No. 2 has a higher
forehead and the cranial vault is higher and more spacious.
In both skeletons the radius and femur show a peculiar curvature,
and in both, too, the arms and legs must have been very short. Hence
the men of Spy are described as having been only partially erect,
and as having had bowed thighs and bent knees. The source of this
modification, however, is not a surviving pithecoid atavism, but a
non-inheritable adaptation acquired through the habitual attitude or
posture maintained in stalking game—“Now we know,” says Dwight, “that
this feature, which is certainly an ape-like one, implies simply
that the race was one of those with the habit of ‘squatting,’ which
implies that the body hangs from the knees, not touching the ground
for hours together. As a matter of course we look for this in savage
tribes.” (“Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist,” p. 168.) The same may
be said of the receding chin, which, as we have seen, is also an
acquired adaptation. The same, finally, is true of the prominent brow
ridges, which are not pithecoid, but are, as Klaatsch has pointed out,
related to the size of the eye sockets, and consequently the result
of an adaptation of early palæolithic man to the life of a hunter, a
natural sequel of the very marked development of his sense of sight.
Similar brow ridges, though not quite so prominent, occur among modern
Australian blacks.
Nor are the remains as typically Neanderthaloid as Keith and others
(who wish to see in palæolithic men a distinct human species) could
desire. No. 1, as we have seen, though almost a replica of the
Neanderthal skull-cap, has a trace of chin prominence in the mandible.
No. 2, though the chin is recessive, has a higher forehead and higher
and more spacious cranial vault than the Neanderthal Man. “On the
whole,” says Hrdlička, “it may be said that No. 2, while in some
respects still very primitive, represents morphologically a decided
step from the Neanderthaloid to the present-day type of the human
cranium.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 525.)
(8) _The Men of Krapina_: In the cave, or rather rock shelter, of
Krapina, in northern Croatia, beside the small stream Kaprinica which
now flows 82 feet below the cave, K. Gorjanovič-Kramberger, Professor
of geology and palæontology at the University of Zagreb, found, in
the year 1899, ten or twelve skulls in fragments, a large number of
teeth, and many other defective parts of skeletons. All told, they
represent at least fourteen different individuals. The bones are in
a bad state of preservation, and show traces of burning, some of them
being calcined. The bones were associated with objects of Mousterian
industry, and bones of extinct animals such as _Rhinoceros merckii_,
_Ursus spelaeus_, _Bos primigenius_, etc. The aforesaid Rhinoceros is
an older type than the _Rhinoceros tichorhinus_ associated with the men
of Spy, and implies a hot climate, wherein the _Rhinoceros merckii_
managed to persist for a longer time than in the north. Hence the
remains are thought to belong to the last Interglacial period.
In general, the bones show the same racial characteristics as those of
Neanderthal and Spy, though they are said to be of a perceptibly more
modern type than the latter. They were men of short stature and strong
muscular development. “The crania,” says Hrdlička, “were of good size
externally, but the brain cavities were probably below the present
average. The vault of the skull was of good length and at the same
time fairly broad, so that the cephalic index, at least in some of the
individuals, was more elevated than usual in the crania of early man.”
(_Loc. cit._, pp. 530, 531.) The reader must take Hrdlička’s use of
the word “usual” with “the grain of salt” necessitated in view of the
scanty number of specimens whence such inductive generalizations are
derived. The pronounced and complete supraorbital arcs characteristic
of the Neanderthaloid type occur in this group also, though in a less
marked manner. The stone implements are evidence of the intelligence of
these men.
(9) _The Le Moustier Man_: This specimen, _Homo mousteriensis
Hauseri_, was found by Prof. O. Hauser in the “lower Moustier Cave”
at Le Moustier in the valley of the Vézère, Department of Dordogne in
France, during the March of 1908. It consists of the complete skull
and other skeletal parts of a youth of about 15 years. At this age,
the sex cannot be determined from the bones alone. Obermaier assigns
these bones to the Fourth Glacial period. Prof. George Grant MacCurdy’s
anthropological evaluation is the following: “The race characters ...
are not so distinct (_i.e._ at the age of 15 years) as they would be at
full maturity; but they point unmistakably to the type of Neanderthal,
Spy, and Krapina—the so-called _Homo primigenius_ which now also
becomes _Homo mousteriensis_. It was a rather stocky type, robust and
of a low stature. The arms and legs were relatively short, especially
the forearm and from the knee down, as is the case among the Eskimo.
Ape-like characters are noticeable in the curvature of the radius and
of the femur, the latter being also rounder in section than is the case
with _Homo sapiens_. In the retreating forehead, prominent brow ridges,
and prognathism (_i.e._ projection of the jaws) it is approached to
some extent by the modern Australian. The industry associated with
this skeleton is that typical of the Mousterian epoch.” (_Loc. cit._,
p. 573.) As we have already seen, the so-called ape-like features are
simply acquired adaptations to the hunter’s life, and, if inheritable
characters, they do not exceed the limits of a varietal mutation.
That the Mousterian men were endowed with the same intelligence as
ourselves, appears from the evidences of solemn burial which surround
the remains of this youth of 15 years, and prove, as Klaatsch points
out, that these men of the Glacial period were persuaded of their
own immortality. The head reclined on a pillow of earth, which still
retains the impression of the youth’s cheek, the body having been laid
on its side. Around the corpse are the best examples of the stone
implements of the period, the parents having buried their choicest
possession with the corpse of their son.
(10) _The La Chapelle Man_: On August 3, 1908, the Abbés J. and A.
Bouyssonie and L. Bardon, assisted by Paul Bouyssonie (a younger
brother of the first two), discovered palæolithic human remains,
which are also assigned to the Neanderthal group. The locality
of the discovery was the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, 22
kilometers south of the town of Brive, in the department of Corrèze,
in southern France. In the side of a moderate elevation, 200 yards
south of the aforesaid village, and beyond the left bank of a small
stream, the Sourdoire, there is a cave now known as the Cave of
La Chapelle-aux-Saints. It was here, on the above-mentioned date,
that the priests discovered the bones of a human skeleton surrounded
by unmistakable evidences of solemn burial. “The body lay on its
back, with the head to the westward, the latter being surrounded by
stones.... About the body were many flakes of quartz and flint, some
fragments of ochre, broken animal bones, etc.” (Hrdlička.) Another
token of burial is the rectangular pit, in which the remains were
found. It is sunk to a depth of 30 to 40 centimeters in the floor of
the cavern.
“They (the remains) were covered,” says Prof. G. G. MacCurdy, “by a
deposit intact 30 to 40 centimeters thick, consisting of a magma of
bone, of stone implements, and of clay. The stone implements belong to
a pure Mousterian industry. While some pieces suggest a vague survival
of Acheulian implements (_i.e._ from the cool latter half of the Third
Interglacial period), others presage the coming of the Aurignacian
(close of last Glacial period). Directly over the human skull were the
foot bones, still in connection, of a bison—proof that the piece had
been placed there with the flesh still on, and proof, too, that the
deposit had not been disturbed. Two hearths were noted also, and the
fact that there were no implements of bone, the industry differing in
this respect from that of La Quina and Petit-Puymoyen (Charente), as
well as at Wildkirchli, Switzerland.
“The human bones include the cranium and lower jaw (broken, but the
pieces nearly all present and easily replaced in exact position), a
few vertebræ and long bones, several ribs, phalanges, and metacarpals,
clavicle, astragalus, calcaneum, parts of scaphoid, ilium, and sacrum.
The ensemble denotes an individual of the male sex whose height was
about 1.60 meters. The condition of the sutures and of the jaws proves
the skull to be that of an old man. The cranium is dolichocephalic,
with an index of 75. It is said to be flatter in the frontal region
than those of Neanderthal and Spy.” (_Loc. cit._, p. 574.)
The associated remains of fossil animals comprise the horse, reindeer,
bison, _Rhinoceros tichorinus_, etc., and, according to Hrdlička,
“indicate that the deposits date from somewhere near the middle of the
glacial epoch.” (_Loc. cit._, p. 539.) The discoverers turned over the
skeleton to Marcellin Boule of the Paris Museum of Natural History
for cleaning and reconstruction. It is the _first instance_ of a
palæolithic man, in which _the basal parts_ of the skull, including the
foramen magnum, were recovered. Professor Boule estimates the cranial
capacity as being something between 1,600 and 1,620 c.cm. He found the
lower part of the face to be prognathic, but not excessively so, the
vault like the Neanderthal cranium, but larger, the occiput broad and
protruding, the supraorbital arch prominent and complete, the nasal
process broad, the forehead low, and the mandible stout and chinless,
though not sloping backward at the symphysis.
Alluding to the rectangular burial pit in the cave, Hrdlička remarks:
“The depression was clearly made by the primitive inhabitants or
visitors of the cave for the body and the whole represents very
plainly a regular burial, the most ancient intentional burial thus far
discovered.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1913, p. 539.)
The specimens of Neanderthal, Spy, La Naulette, Krapina, Le Moustier
and La Chapelle, as we have seen, are the principal remains said to
represent the Neanderthal type, which, according to Keith and others,
is a distinct human species. As Aurignacian Man (assigned to the close
of the “Old Stone Age,” or Glacial epoch), including the Grimaldi or
Negroid as well as the Crô-Magnon type, are universally acknowledged
to belong to the species _Homo sapiens_, we need not discuss them
here. The same holds true, _a fortiori_, of Neolithic races such as
the Solutreans and the Magdalenians. The main issue for the present is
whether or not the Neanderthal type represents a _distinct species_ of
human being.
Anent this question, Professor MacCurdy has the following: “Boule
estimated the capacity of the Chapelle-aux-Saints skull according to
the formulæ of Manouvrier, of Lee, and of Beddoe, obtaining results
that varied between 1,570 and 1,750 cubic centimeters. By the use of
millet and of shot an average capacity of 1,626 was obtained. Judging
from these figures the capacity of the crania of Neanderthal and Spy
has been underestimated by Schaaffhausen, Huxley, and Schwalbe. By its
cranial capacity, therefore, the Neanderthal race belongs easily in
the class of _Homo sapiens_. But we must distinguish between relative
capacity and absolute capacity. In modern man, where the transverse
and antero-posterior diameters are the same as in the skull of La
Chapelle-aux-Saints, the vertical diameter would be much greater, which
would increase the capacity to 1,800 cubic centimeters and even to
1,900 cubic centimeters. Such voluminous modern crania are very rare.
Thus Bismarck, with horizontal cranial diameters scarcely greater than
in the man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, is said to have had a cranial
capacity of 1,965 cubic centimeters.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909,
p. 575.)
As for the structural features which are alleged to constitute a
_specific difference_ between the Neanderthal type and modern man,
_v.g._ the prominent brow ridges, prognathism, retreating forehead,
receding chin, etc., all of these occur, albeit in a lesser degree, in
modern Australian blacks, who are universally acknowledged to belong
to the species _Homo sapiens_. Moreover, there is much _fluctuation_,
as Kramberger has shown from the examination of an enormous number
of modern and fossil skulls, in both the Neanderthal and the modern
type; that is to say, Neanderthaloid features occur in modern skulls
and, conversely, modern features occur in the skulls of _Homo
neanderthalensis_ (cf. “Biolog. Zentralblatt,” 1905, p. 810; and
Wasmann’s “Modern Biology,” Eng. ed., pp. 472, 473).
All the differences between modern and palæolithic man are explicable,
partly upon the basis of _acquired adaptation_, inasmuch as the
primitive mode of life pursued by the latter entailed the formation
of body-modifying habits very different from our present customs
and habits (viz. those of our modern civilized life). But these
modifications, not being inheritable, passed away with the passing of
the habits that gave rise to them. In part, however, the differences
may be due to heritable _mutations_, which gave rise to new _races_ or
_varieties_ or _subspecies_, such as Indo-Europeans, Mongolians, and
Negroes. And, if the evolutionary palæontologist insists on magnifying
characters that are well within the scope of mere factorial mutation
into a specific difference, we shall reply, with Bateson and Morgan,
by denying his competence to pronounce on taxonomic questions, without
consulting the verdict of the geneticist. Without breeding tests,
the criterions of intersterility and longevity cannot be applied,
and breeding tests are impossible in the case of fossils. As for an
_a priori_ verdict, no modern geneticist, if called upon to give his
opinion, would concede that the differences which divide the modern and
the Neanderthal types of men exceed the limits of factorial mutations,
or of natural varieties within the same species. Here, then, it is
a case of the wish being father to the thought. So anxious are the
materialistic evolutionists to secure evidence of a connection between
man and the brute, that no pretext is too insignificant to serve as
warrant for recognizing an “intermediate species.”
Even waiving this point, however, there is no evidence at all that the
Neanderthal type is ancestral to the Crô-Magnon type. Both of these
races must have migrated into Europe from the east or the south, and
we have no proof whatever of genetic relationship between them. True,
attempts have been made to capitalize the fact that the Neanderthal
race was represented by specimens discovered in what were alleged to
be the older deposits of the Glacial epoch, but we have seen that
the evidences of antiquity are very precarious in the case of these
Neanderthaloid skeletons. Time-scales based on extinct species and
characteristic stone implements, etc., are always satisfactory to
evolutionists, because they can _date_ their fossils and archæological
cultures _according to the theory of evolution_, but, for one whose
confidence in the “reality” of evolution is not so great, these
palæontological chronometers are open to grave suspicion.
If the horizon levels are not too finely graded, the difficulty
of accepting such a time-scale is not excessive. Hence we might
be prepared to accept the chronometric value of the division of
fossiliferous rocks into Groups, such as the Palæozoic, the Mesozoic,
and the Cænozoic, even though we are assured by Grabau that this
time-scale is “based on the changes of life, with the result that
fossils alone determine whether a formation belongs to one or the
other of these great divisions” (“Principles of Stratigraphy,” p.
1103), but when it comes to projecting an elaborate scheme of levels
or horizons into Pleistocene deposits on the dubious basis of index
fossils and “industries,” our credulity is not equal to the demands
that are made upon it. And this is particularly true with reference
to fossil men. Man has the geologically unfortunate habit of _burying
his dead_. Other fossils have been entombed on the spot where they
died, and therefore belong where we find them. But it is otherwise with
man. In Hilo, Hawaii, the writer heard of a Kanaka, who was buried
to a depth of 80 feet, having stipulated this sort of burial through
a special disposition in his will. His purpose, in so doing, was to
preclude the possibility of his bones ever being disturbed by a plough
or other instrument. Nor have we any right to assume that indications
of burial will always be present in a case of this nature. We may, on
the contrary, assume it as a general rule that human remains are always
more recent than the formations in which they are found.
Be that as it may, the evidences for the antiquity of the
Neanderthaloid man prove, at most, that he was prior to the Crô-Magnon
man in Europe, but they do not prove that the former was prior to the
latter absolutely. Things may, for all we know, have been just the
reverse in Asia. Hence we have no ground for regarding the Man of
Neanderthal as ancestral to the race of artists, who frescoed the caves
of France and Spain. In fact, to the unprejudiced mind the Neanderthal
type conveys the impression of a race on the downward path of
degeneration rather than an embodiment of the promise of better things.
“There is another view,” says Dwight, “ ... though it is so at variance
with the Zeitgeist that little is heard of it. May it not be that many
low forms of man, archaic as well as contemporary, are degenerate
races? We are told everything about progress; but decline is put aside.
It is impossible to construct a tolerable scheme of ascent among the
races of man; but cannot dark points be made light by this theory of
degeneration? One of the most obscure, and to me most attractive of
questions, is the wiping out of old civilizations. That it has occurred
repeatedly, and on very extensive scales, is as certain as any fact in
history. Why is it not reasonable to believe that bodily degeneration
took place in those fallen from a higher estate, who, half-starved and
degraded, returned to savagery? Moreover, the workings of the soul
would be hampered by a degenerating brain. For my part I believe the
Neanderthal man to be a specimen of a race, not arrested in its upward
climb, but thrown down from a higher position.” (_Op. cit._, pp. 169,
170.)
The view, however, that the Neanderthaloid type had degenerated from
a previous higher human type was not at all in accord with the then
prevalent opinion that this type was far more ancient than any other.
And Dwight himself admitted the force of the “objection ... that the
Neanderthal race was an excessively old one and that skeletons of the
higher race which, according to the view which I have offered, must
have existed at the same time as the degenerate ones, are still to be
discovered.” (_Op. cit._, p. 170.) In fact, the Neanderthal ancestry
of the present human race was so generally accepted that, in the very
year in which Dwight’s book appeared, Sir Arthur Keith declared: “The
Neanderthal type represents the stock from which all modern races have
arisen.” Time, however, as Dr. James Walsh remarked (_America_, Dec.
15, 1917, pp. 230, 231), has triumphantly vindicated the expectations
of Professor Dwight. For in his latest book, “The Antiquity of Man”
(1916), Sir Arthur Keith has a chapter of Conclusions, in which the
following recantation appears: “We were compelled to admit,” he owns,
“that men of the modern type had been in existence long before the
Neanderthal type.”
But, even if it were true that savagery preceded civilization in
Europe, such could not have been the case everywhere; for it is
certain that civilization and culture of a comparatively high order
were imported into Europe before the close of the Old Stone Age. The
Hungarian Lake-dwellings show that culture of a high type existed
in the New Stone Age. These two ages are regarded as prehistoric in
Europe, though in America the Stone Age belongs to history. It is
also possible that in Europe much of the Stone Age was coëval with
the history of civilized nations, and that it may be coincident with,
instead of prior to, the Bronze Age, which seems to have begun in
Egypt, and which belongs unquestionably to history. And here we may
be permitted to remark that history gives the lie to the evolutionary
conceit that civilized man has arisen from a primitive state of
barbarism. History begins almost contemporaneously in many different
centers, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Chaldea, China, and Crete, about
5,000 or 6,000 years ago, and, as far back as history goes, we find
the record of high civilizations existing side by side with a coëval
barbarism. Barbarism is historically a state of degeneration and
stagnation, and history knows of no instance of a people sunk in
barbarism elevating itself by its own efforts to higher stages of
civilization. Always civilization has been imposed upon barbarians
from without. Savages, so far as history knows them, have never become
civilized, save through the intervention of some contemporary civilized
nation. History is one long refutation of the Darwinian theory of
constant and inevitable progress. The progress of civilization is not
subsequent, but prior, or parallel, to the retrogression of barbarism.
That savagery and barbarism represent a _degenerate_, rather than
a _primitive_, state, is proved by the fact that savage tribes, in
general, despite their brutish degradation, possess languages too
perfectly elaborated and systematized to be accounted for by the mental
attainments of the men who now use them, languages which testify
unmistakably to the superior intellectual and cultural level of their
civilized ancestors, to whom the initial construction of such marvelous
means of communication was due. “It is indeed one of the paradoxes
of linguistic science,” says Dr. Edwin Sapir, in a lecture delivered
April 1, 1911, at the University of Pennsylvania, “that some of the
most complexly organized languages are spoken by so-called primitive
peoples, while, on the other hand, not a few languages of relatively
simple structure are found among peoples of considerable advance in
culture. Relatively to the modern inhabitants of England, to cite but
one instance out of an indefinitely large number, the Eskimos must be
considered as rather limited in cultural development. Yet there is just
as little doubt that in complexity of form the Eskimo language goes far
beyond English. I wish merely to indicate that, however we may indulge
in speaking of primitive man, of a primitive language in the true sense
of the word we find nowhere a trace.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912,
p. 573.) Pierre Duponceau makes a similar observation with reference
to the logical and orderly organization of the Indian languages: “The
dialects of the Indian tribes,” he says, “appear to be the work of
philosophers rather than of savages.” (Cited by F. A. Tholuck, “Verm.
Schr.,” ii, p. 260.)
It was considerations of this sort which led the great philologist Max
Müller to ridicule Darwin’s conception of primitive man as a savage.
“As far as we can trace the footsteps of man,” he writes, “even on the
lowest strata of history, we see that the Divine gift of a sound and
sober intellect belonged to him from the very first; and the idea of
humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can
never be maintained again in our century. The earliest work of art
wrought by the human mind—more ancient than any literary document, and
prior even to the first whisperings of tradition—the human language,
forms one uninterrupted chain, from the first dawn of history down
to our own times. We still speak the language of the first ancestors
of our race; and this language with its wonderful structures, bears
witness against such gratuitous theories. The formation of language,
the composition of roots, the gradual discrimination of meanings, the
systematic elaboration of grammatic forms—all this working which we can
see under the surface of our own speech attests from the very first
the presence of a rational mind, of an artist as great at least as his
work.” (“Essays,” vol. I, p. 306.) History and philology are far more
solid and certain as a basis for inference than are “index fossils” and
prehistoric archæology; and the lesson taught by history and philology
is that primitive man was not a savage, but a cultured being endowed
with an intellect equal, if not superior, to our own.
But, even if we grant the priority, which evolutionists claim for the
Old Stone Age, there are not absent even from that cultural level
evident tokens of artistic genius and high intellectual gifts. Speaking
of the pictures in the caves of Altamira, of Marsoulas in the Haute
Garonne, and of Fonte de Gaume in the Dordogne, the archæologist
Sir Arthur Evans says: “These primeval frescoes display not only
consummate mastery of natural design, but an extraordinary technical
resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain outlines, the chief
coloring matter was red and yellow ochre, mortars and palettes for the
preparation of which have come to light. In single animals the tints
varied from black to dark and ruddy brown or brilliant orange, and so,
by fine gradations, to paler nuances, obtained by scraping and washing.
Outlines and details are brought out by white incised lines, and the
artists availed themselves with great skill of the reliefs afforded by
convexities of the rock surface. But the greatest marvel of all is
that such polychrome masterpieces as the bisons, standing and couchant,
or with limbs huddled together, of the Altamira Cave, were executed
on the ceilings of inner vaults and galleries where the light of day
has never penetrated. Nowhere is there any trace of smoke, and it is
clear that great progress in the art of artificial illumination had
already been made. We know that stone lamps, decorated in one case
with the engraved head of an ibex, were already in existence. Such was
the level of artistic attainment in southwestern Europe, at a modest
estimate, some 10,000 years earlier than the most ancient monuments
of Egypt or Chaldæa!” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, pp. 429, 430.)
While reaffirming our distrust of the undocumented chronology of
“prehistory,” we cite these examples of palæolithic art as a proof of
the fact that everywhere the manifestation of man’s physical presence
coincides with the manifestation of his intelligence, and that neither
in history nor in prehistory have we any evidence of the existence of
a bestial or irrational man preceding _Homo sapiens_, as we know him
today. It is interesting to note in this connection that a certain J.
Taylor claims to have found a prehistoric engraving of a mastodon on a
bone found in a rock shelter known as Jacobs’ Cavern in Missouri (cf.
_Science_, Oct. 14, 1921, p. 357). Incidents of this sort must needs
dampen the enthusiasm of those who are overeager to believe in the
enormous antiquity of the Old Stone Age in Europe.
(11) _The Rhodesian Man_: In 1921 a human skull was found by miners
in the “Bone Cave” of the Broken Hill Mine in southern Rhodesia. It
was associated with human and animal bones, as well as very crude
instruments (knives and scrapers) in flint and quartz. It was found
at a depth of 60 feet below the surface. The lower jaw was missing,
and has not been recovered. It was sent to the British Museum, South
Kensington, where it is now preserved. Doctor Smith-Woodward has
examined and described it. “The skull is in some features the most
primitive one that has ever been found; at the same time it has many
points of resemblance to (or even identity with) that of modern man.”
(_Science_, Feb. 3, 1922, p. 129.) The face is intact. The forehead is
low, and the brow ridges are more pronounced than in any known fossil
human skull. The prognathism of the upper jaw is very accentuated.
The cranium is very flat on top and broad in the back. “Its total
capacity is surprisingly large. At least one prominent authority
thinks that this man had quite as much gray matter as the average
modern man.” (_Loc. cit._, pp. 129, 130.) Woodward, however, estimates
the cranial capacity of this skull as 1280 c.cm. The neck must have
had powerful muscles. The nasal bone is prominent and Neanderthaloid
in character. “The wisdom tooth is reduced in size—another point in
common with modern man and never found before in a fossil skull.”
(_Ibidem._) The palate and the teeth in general are like those of
existing men. The femur is not curved like that of the Neanderthal
man—“In contrast to the Neanderthal man who is supposed to have walked
in a crouching position (because of the rather curved femur and other
bits of evidence), this man is believed to have maintained the upright
position, because the femur is relatively straight and when fitted to
the tibia (which was also found) presents a perfectly good, straight
leg.” (_Ibidem._) According to the writer we have quoted, Dr. Elliot
Smith entertained hopes that the Rhodesian man might represent the
“missing link” in man’s ancestry, leaving the Neanderthal man as an
offshoot from the main ancestral trunk. No comment is necessary. The
skull may be a pathological specimen, but, in any case, it is evidently
human as regards its cranial capacity. The remains, moreover, serve
to emphasize the _fluctuational_ character of the so-called _Homo
primigenius_ type, being a mixture of modern and Neanderthaloid
features. They are not fossilized and present a recent appearance.
Hence, as B. Windle suggests, they may have fallen into the cave
through a crack, and may be modern rather than prehistoric.
(12) _The Foxhall Man_: This is the earliest known prehistoric man.
He is known to us, however, only through “his flint instruments
partly burned with fire, found near the little hamlet of Foxhall, near
Norwich, on the east coast of England. These flints, discovered in
1921, constitute the first proofs that man of sufficient intelligence
to make a variety of flint implements and to use fire existed in
Britain at the close of the Age of Mammals; this is the first true
Tertiary man ever found.” (Osborn: _Guide-leaflet_ to “The Hall of the
Age of Man,” 2nd ed., 1923, p. 9.) Osborn assigns the twelve kinds
of flint instruments typical of the Foxhallian culture to the Upper
Pliocene epoch. R. A. Macalister, however, denies that the deposits are
Tertiary. Abbé Henri Breuil’s verdict was undecided. In any case, the
Foxhallian culture proves that the earliest of prehistoric men were
intelligent like ourselves.
_Summa summarum_: So far as science knows, only one human species
has ever existed on the earth, and that is _Homo sapiens_. All the
alleged connecting links between men and apes are found, on careful
examination, to be illusory. When not wholly ambiguous in view of their
inadequate preservation and fragmentary character, they are (as regards
both mind and body) distinctly human, like the Neanderthal man, or they
are purely simian, like the Pithecanthropus, or they are heterogeneous
combinations of human and simian bones, like the Eoanthropus
Dawsoni.[18] “With absolute certainty,” says Hugues Obermaier, “we can
only say that man of the Quaternary period differed in no essential
respect from man of the present day. In no way did he go beyond the
limits of variation of the normal human body.” (“The Oldest Remains of
the Human Body, etc.,” Vienna, 1905.) The so-called _Homo primigenius_,
therefore, is not a distinct species of human being, but merely an
ancient race that is, at most, a distinct variety or subspecies of man.
In spite of tireless searching, no traces of a bestial, irrational
man have been discovered. Indeed, man whom nature has left naked,
defenseless, unarmed with natural weapons, and deficient in instinct,
has no other resource than his reason and could never have survived
without it. To imagine primitive man in a condition analogous to that
of the idiot is preposterous. “For other animals,” says St. Thomas of
Aquin, “nature has prepared food, garments of fur, means of defense,
such as teeth, horns, and hoofs, or at least swiftness in flight. But
man is so constituted that, none of these things having been prepared
for him by nature, reason is given him in their stead, reason by which
through his handiwork he is enabled to prepare all these things....
Moreover, in other animals there is inborn a certain natural economy
respecting those things which are useful or hurtful, as the lamb by
nature knows the wolf to be its enemy. Some animals also by natural
instinct are aware of the medicinal properties of herbs and of other
things which are necessary for life. Man, however, has a natural
knowledge of these things which are necessary for life only in general,
as being able to arrive at the knowledge of the particular necessities
of human life by way of inference from general principles.” (“De regim.
princ.,” l. I, c. I.) As a matter of fact, man is never found apart
from evidences of his intelligence. The Neanderthaloid race, with their
solemn burials and implements of bone and stone, exemplify this truth
no less than the palæolithic artists of the Cave of Altamira.
[18] See Addenda.
§ 5. The Edict of the American Association
In the Cincinnati meeting (1923-1924) of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, a number of resolutions were passed
regarding the subject of evolution. True, the session in which these
resolutions were passed was but sparsely attended, and packed, for the
most part, with the ultra-partisans of transformism. Nevertheless, it
is to be regretted that the dignity of this eminent and distinguished
body was so unfittingly compromised by the fulmination of rhetorical
anathemas against W. J. Bryan and his Round Head adherents. Among
the resolutions, of which we have spoken, the following dictatorial
proclamation occurs: “_The evidences in favor of the evolution of man
are sufficient to convince every scientist in the world._”
This authoritative decree is both rash and intolerant. The
resolution-committee of the American Association is by no means
infallible, and, in the absence of infallibility, no group of men
should be so unmindful of their own limitations as to strive to make
their subjective views binding upon others. Scientific questions are
not settled by authority, but exclusively by means of irresistible
evidence, which is certainly absent in the present case. Moreover,
the declaration in question is untrue; for many of the foremost
palæontologists and anthropologists of the day confess their complete
ignorance, as scientists, with respect to the origin of man.
Dr. Clark Wissler, for example, who is the Curator-in-Chief of the
Anthropological section of the American Museum of Natural History
in New York City, made, in the course of an interview published in
the _New York American_ of April 2, 1918, the following statement:
“Man, like the horse or elephant, just happened anyhow, so far as has
been discovered yet. As far as science has discovered, there always
was a man—some not so developed, but still human beings in all their
functions, much as we are today.” Asked by the reporter, whether this
did not favor the idea of an abrupt, unheralded appearance of man on
earth, Doctor Wissler replied: “Man came out of a blue sky as far as
we have been able to delve back.” Fearing lest the reporter might have
sensationalized his words, the writer took occasion to question the
learned anthropologist on the subject during the Pan Pacific Conference
held at Honolulu, Hawaii (Aug. 2-20, 1920). His answer was that the
foregoing citations were substantially correct.
The same verdict is given by the great palæontologist, Prof. W.
Branco, Director of the Institute of Geology and Palæontology at the
University of Berlin. In his discourse on “Fossil Man” delivered
August 16, 1901, before the Fifth International Zoölogical Congress
at Berlin, Branco said, with reference to the origin of man:
“Palæontology tells us nothing on the subject—it knows no ancestors
of man.” The well-known palæontologist Karl A. von Zittel reached
the same conclusion. He says somewhere (probably in his “Grundzüge
der Paläontologie”): “Such material as this (the discovered remains
of fossil men) throws no light upon the question of race and descent.
All the human bones of determinable age that have come down to us
from the European Diluvium, as well as all the skulls discovered in
caves, are identified by their size, shape, and capacity as belonging
to _Homo sapiens_, and are fine specimens of their kind. They do not
by any means fill up the gap between man and the ape.” Joseph Le
Conte repeats the identical refrain. In the revised Fairchild edition
(1903) of his “Elements of Geology” we read: “The earliest men yet
found are in no sense connecting links between man and ape. They are
distinctly human.” (Ch. VI, p. 638.) Replying to Haeckel, who in his
“Welträtsel” proclaims man’s descent from pithecoid primates to be
_an historical fact_, J. Reinke, the biologist of Kiel, declares: “We
are merely having dust thrown in our eyes when we read in a widely
circulated book by Ernst Haeckel the following words: ‘That man is
immediately descended from apes, and more remotely from a long line of
lower vertebrates, remains established as an indubitable historic fact,
fraught with important consequences.’ It is absurd to speak of anything
as a fact when experience lends it no support.” (“Haeckel’s Monism
and Its Supporters,” Leipzig, 1907, p. 6.) The sum-total, in fact,
of scientific knowledge concerning the origin of the human body is
contained in the saying of the geologist, Sir Wm. Dawson, President of
McGill University: “I know nothing about the origin of man, except what
I am told in the Scripture—that God created him. I do not know anything
more than that, and I do not know of anyone who does.”
In view of this uncertainty and ignorance regarding the origin of the
human body, it is extremely unethical to strive to impose the theory
of man’s bestial origin by the sheer weight of scientific authority
and prestige. Conscientious scientists would never venture to abuse
in such a fashion the confidence which the people at large place in
their assurances. Hence those who respect their honor and dignity as
scientists should refrain from dogmatizing on the undemonstrated animal
origin of man, however much they may personally fancy this theory. “We
cannot teach,” says Virchow, “nor can we regard as one of the results
of scientific research, the doctrine that man is descended from the ape
or from any other animal.” (“The Liberty of Science,” p. 30, et seq.)
And Professor Reinke of Kiel concludes: “The only statement consistent
with her dignity, that Science can make, is to say that she knows
nothing about the origin of man.” (_Der Türmer_, V, Oct., 1902, Part I,
p. 13.)
A slave, we are told (Tertul., _Apolog._ 33), rode in the triumphal
chariot of the Roman conqueror, to whisper ever and anon in his ear:
_Hominem memento te!_—“Remember that thou art a man!” It is unfortunate
that no similar warning is sounded when the tone of scientific
individuals or organizations threatens to become unduly imperious
and intolerant. This tendency, however, to forget limitations and to
usurp the prerogative of infallibility is sometimes rebuked by other
reminders. The writer recalls an instance, which happened in connection
with the Pan Pacific Conference at Honolulu during the August of 1920.
The Conference was attended by illustrious scientists from every
land bordering upon the Pacific. After the preliminary sessions,
the delegates paid a visit to the famous volcano of Kilauea. Doctor
T. A. Jaggar, Jr., vulcanologist and Director of the United States
Observatory at Kilauea, acted as guide, the writer himself being one
of the party. In the course of our tour of inspection, we came to the
extinct volcano of Kenakakoe. There a number of volcanic bombs, some
shattered and some intact, were pointed out to us. For the benefit of
readers, who may not know, I may state that a volcanic bomb originates
as a fragment of foreign material, _e.g._ a stone, which, falling into
a volcano, becomes coated with an external shell of lava. In addition
to the bombs, certain holes in the soil were shown to us, which Doctor
Jaggar, evidently under the influence of military imagery suggested by
the then recent European War, described as “shell-craters” dug by the
aforesaid volcanic bombs.
Doctor Jaggar accounted for the bombs and craters by a very ingenious
theory. In 1790, he said, the year in which Kamehameha I was contending
with Keoua for the mastery of the large island of Hawaii, the only
explosive eruption of Kilauea known to history occurred, and it was
during this eruption (which destroyed part of Keoua’s army) that the
bombs found at Kenakakoe were ejected from the above-mentioned volcano.
It was then, we were informed, that these bombs hurtling through the
air in giant trajectories from Kilauea struck the ground and scooped
out the “shell-craters” at Kenakakoe. Some of them, it appeared, did
not remain in the craters, but rebounded to strike again on the rocks
beyond. Of the latter, part were shattered, while others withstood the
force of the second impact. The whole party was much impressed by the
grandeur of this vivid description, and some of the scientists were at
great pains to photograph the craters as awe-inspiring vestiges of the
mighty bombardment wrought in times past by Nature’s volcanic artillery.
When I returned to Hilo, I happened to mention to Brother Matthias
Newell some misgivings which I had felt concerning the size and
appearance of the so-called “shell-craters.” Brother Newell, a member
of the Marist Congregation and quite a scientist in his way, is famous
in the Islands as the discoverer of a fungus, by which the Japanese
Beetle, a local pest, has been largely exterminated. For several years,
prior to the advent of Doctor Jaggar and the United States Observatory,
he had studied extensively the famous volcano on the slopes of Mauna
Loa. On hearing my narrative of the foregoing incident, Brother Newell
was curious to know the exact locality, and burst into a hearty laugh
as soon as I mentioned Kenakakoe. He himself, he told me, in company
with Brother Henry, had frequently dug for bombs at Kenakakoe. When
successful in their quest, the two were wont to carry the volcanic
bomb to the rocks, and to break it open for the purpose of examining
the inner core. Some of the bombs, however, escaped this fate through
being too resistent to the hammer. The holes, needless to say, were not
“shell-craters” scooped by volcanic bombs, but ordinary excavations dug
by prosaic spades. Such was the simple basis of fact upon which the
elaborate superstructure of Jaggar’s theory had been reared! Though
Jaggar was, in a sense, entirely blameless, his theory was pure fiction
from start to finish. No scientist present, however, took exception to
it. On the contrary, all of them appeared perfectly satisfied with his
pseudoscientific explanation.
If the foregoing incident conveys any lesson, it is this, that neither
singly nor collectively are scientists exempt from error, especially
when they deal with a remote past, which no one has observed. The
attempt to reconstruct the past by means of inference alone produces,
not history, but romance. Doctor Gregory’s genealogy of Man displayed
in the American Museum is quite as much the fruit of imagination as
Jaggar’s Kilauean fantasy. The sham pedigree bears like witness to the
ingenuity of the human mind, but, if anyone is tempted by its false
show of science to take it seriously, let him think of the bombs of
Kenakakoe.
AFTERWORD
With the close of the nineteenth century the hour hand of biological
science had completed another revolution. One after another, the
classic systems of evolution had passed into the discard, as its
remorseless progress registered their doom. The last of these systems,
De-Vriesianism, enjoyed a meteoric vogue in the first years of the
present century, but it, too, has gone into eclipse with the rise of
rediscovered Mendelism. Notwithstanding all these reverses, however,
the evolutionary theory still continues to number a host of steadfast
adherents.
Some of its partisans uphold it upon antiquated grounds. Culturally
speaking, such men still live in the days of Darwin, and fail to
realize that much water has passed under the bridge since then. It
has other protagonists, however, who are thoroughly conversant with
modern data, and fully aware, in consequence, of the inadequacy of
all existent formulations of the evolutional hypothesis. Minds of the
latter type are proof, apparently, against any sort of disillusionment,
and it is manifest that their attitude is determined by some
consideration other than the actual results of research.
This other consideration is monistic metaphysics. In defect of
factual confirmation, evolution is demonstrated aprioristically
from the principle of the minimum. The scope of this methodological
principle is to simplify or unify causation by dispensing with all
that is superfluous in the way of explanation. In olden days, it went
by the name of Occam’s Razor and was worded thus: _Entia non sunt
multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_—“Things are not to be multiplied
without necessity.” Evolution meets the requirements of this principle.
It simplifies the problem of organic origins by reducing the number of
ancestors to a minimum. Therefore, argues the evolutionist, evolution
must be true.
As an empirical rule, the principle of the minimum is, no doubt,
essential to the scientific method. To erect it into a metaphysical
axiom, however, is preposterous; for _simple_ explanations are
not necessarily _true_ explanations. In the rôle of aprioristic
metaphysics, the principle of continuity is destructive, and tends
to plane down everything to the dead level of materialistic monism.
For those who transcendentalize it, it becomes the principle “that
everything is ‘nothing but’ something else, probably inferior to it.”
(Santayana.) To assert continuity, they are driven to deny, or, at
least, to leave unexplained and inexplicable, the obvious novelty
that emerges at each higher level of the cosmic scale. And thus it
comes to pass that intelligence is pronounced to be nothing but
sense, and sense to be nothing but physiology, and physiology to be
nothing but chemistry, and chemistry to be nothing but mechanics,
until this philosophical nihilism weeps at last for want of further
opportunities of devastation. Its exponents have an intense horror for
abrupt transitions, and resent the discovery of anything that defies
resolution into terms of mass and motion.
Evolution smooths the path for monism of this type by transforming
nature’s staircase into an inclined plane of imperceptible ascent.
Hence Dewey refers to evolution as a “clinching proof” of the
continuity hypothecated by the monist. For the latter, there is no
hierarchy of values, and all essential distinctions are abolished; for
him nothing is unique and everything is equally important. He affirms
the democracy of facts and is blind to all perspective in nature. He
is, in short, the enemy of all beauty, all spirituality, all culture,
all morality, and all religion. He substitutes neurons for the soul,
and enthrones Natural Selection in the place of the Creator. He sets
up, in a word, the ideal of “an animalistic man and a mechanistic
universe,” and offers us evolution as a demonstration of this “ideal.”
Vernon Kellogg objects to our indictment. “The evolutionist,” he says,
“does not like being called a bad man. He does not like being posted
as an enemy of poetry and faith and religion. He does not like being
defined as crassly materialist, a man exclusively of the earth earthy.”
(_Atlantic Monthly_, April 24, 1924, p. 490.) Apart from their object,
the likes or dislikes of an evolutionist are a matter of indifference.
What we want to know is whether his dislike is merely for the names, or
whether it extends to the reality denoted by these names. Human nature
has a weakness for euphemisms. Men may “want the game without the
name,” particularly when, deservedly or undeservedly, the name happens
to have an offensive connotation.
There are, no doubt, evolutionists who mingle enough dualism with their
philosophy to mitigate the most objectionable aspects of its basic
monism. In so doing, however, they are governed by considerations that
are wholly extraneous to evolutionary thought. Indeed, if we take
Kellogg’s words at their face value (that is, in a sense which he
would probably disclaim), it is in spite of his philosophy that the
evolutionist is a spiritualist. “And just as religion and cheating,”
reasons Kellogg, “can apparently be compassed in one man, so can one
man be both evolutionist and idealist.” (_Loc. cit._, p. 490.) If this
comparison holds true, the evolutionist can be an idealist only to the
extent that he is inconsistent or hypocritical, since under no other
supposition could piety and crime coëxist in one and the same person.
Be that as it may, the majority of evolutionists are avowed mechanists
and materialists, in all that concerns the explanation of natural
phenomena. “That there may be God who has put his Spirit into men”
(Kellogg, _ibid._, p. 491), they are condescendingly willing to
concede. And small credit to them for this; for who can _disprove_ the
existence of God, or the spirituality of the human soul? Nevertheless,
it is impossible, they maintain, to be _certain_ on these subjects.
Natural science is in their eyes the only form of human knowledge that
has any objective validity. Proofs of human spirituality they denounce
as _metaphysical_, and metaphysics is for them synonymous with “such
stuff as dreams are made of,” unworthy to be mentioned in the same
breath with physical science—“Es gibt für uns kein anderes Erkennen als
das mechanische, ... Nur mechanisch begreifen ist Wissenschaft.” (Du
Bois-Reymond.)
In practice, therefore, if not in theory, the tendency of evolution
has been to unspiritualize and dereligionize the philosophy of its
adherents, a tendency which is strikingly exemplified in one of its
greatest exponents, Charles Darwin himself. The English naturalist
began his scientific career as a theist and a spiritualist. He ended
it as an agnostic and a materialist. His evolutionary philosophy was,
by his own confession, responsible for the transformation. “When thus
reflecting,” he says, “I feel compelled to look to a first cause
having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man,
and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my
mind about the time, as far as I remember, when I wrote the ‘Origin
of Species’; and it is since that time that it has very gradually,
with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can
the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a
mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when
it draws such grand conclusions? I can not pretend to throw the least
light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all
things is insoluble by us; and I, for one, must be content to remain an
Agnostic.” (“The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” edited by Francis
Darwin, 1887, vol. I, p. 282.)
Darwin likewise exemplifies in his own person the destructive
influence exercised upon the æsthetic sense by exclusive adherence to
the monistic viewpoint. Having alluded in his autobiography to his
former predilection for poetry, music, and the beauties of nature,
he continues as follows: “But now for many years I cannot endure to
read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and
found that it nauseated me. I have also lost my taste for pictures and
music.... I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause
me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.... My mind seems to
have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts; ... if I had to live my life again, I would have
made it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least
every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have
been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of
happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more
probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our
nature.” (_Op. cit._, vol. I, pp. 81, 82.)
Evolution, we repeat, has brought us materialistic monism, in whose
barren soil nor faith, nor idealism, nor morality, nor poesy, nor art,
nor any of the finer things of life can thrive. To its dystelic and
atomistic view, Nature has ceased to be the vicar of God, and material
things are no longer sacramental symbols of eternal verities. It denies
all design in Nature, and dismembers all beauty into meaningless
fragments. It is so deeply engrossed in the contemplation of parts,
that it has forgotten that there is any such thing as a whole. The rose
and the bird-of-paradise are not ineffable messages from God to man;
they are but accidental aggregates of colloidal molecules fortuitously
assembled in the perpetual, yet aimless, flux of evolving matter.
From the standpoint of the moral and sociological consequences,
however, the gravest count against evolution is the seeming support
which this theory has given to the monistic conception of an
animalistic man. Darwin’s doctrine on the bestial origin of man
brought no other gain to natural science than the addition of one more
unverified and unverifiable hypothesis to its already extensive stock
of unfounded speculations. It did, however, work irreparable harm to
millions of unlearned and credulous persons, whose childlike confidence
the unscrupulous expounders of this doctrine have not hesitated to
abuse. The exaggerations and misrepresentations of the latter met
with an all too ready credence on the part of those who were not
competent to discriminate between theory and fact. The sequel has been
a wholesale abandonment of religious and moral convictions, which has
ruined the lives and blighted the happiness of countless victims.
Has it been worth while, we may well ask of the propounders of this
theory, to sacrifice so much in exchange for so little? The solid gain
to natural science has been negligible, but the consequences of the
blow unfairly dealt to morals and religion are incalculable and beyond
the possibility of repair. “Morals and Religion,” says Newman, “are not
represented to the intelligence of the world by intimations and notices
strong and obvious such as those which are the foundation of physical
science.... Instead of being obtruded on our notice, so that we cannot
possibly overlook them, they are the dictates either of Conscience or
of Faith. They are faint shadows and tracings, certain indeed, but
delicate, fragile, and almost evanescent, which the mind recognizes at
one time, not at another, discerns when it is calm, loses when it is
in agitation. The reflection of sky and mountains in the lake is proof
that sky and mountains are around it, but the twilight or the mist or
the sudden thunderstorm hurries away the beautiful image, which leaves
behind it no memorial of what it was.... How easily can we be talked
out of our clearest views of duty; how does this or that moral precept
crumble into nothing when we rudely handle it! How does the fear of sin
pass off from us, as quickly as the glow of modesty dies away from the
countenance! and then we say ‘It is all superstition.’ However, after a
time, we look around, and then to our surprise we see, as before, the
same law of duty, the same moral precepts, the same protest against
sin, appearing over against us, in their old places, as if they had
never been brushed away, like the Divine handwriting upon the wall at
the banquet.” (“Idea of a University,” pp. 513-515.)