abandoned by the rest, unless, indeed, it happen to be a young one.
Then the mother, who either carries it or follows close behind, stops,
falls with it, and, uttering the most frightful cries, precipitates
herself upon the common enemy with open mouth and arms extended. But it
is manifest that these animals are not made for combat; they neither
know how to deal nor to shun a blow. Nor is their maternal affection
displayed only in moments of danger. The care which the females bestow
upon their offspring is so tender and even refined, that one would be
almost tempted to attribute the sentiment to a rational rather than
an instinctive process. It is a curious and interesting spectacle,
which a little precaution has sometimes enabled me to witness, to see
these females carry their young to the river, wash their faces in
spite of their outcries, wipe and dry them, and altogether bestow
upon their cleanliness a time and attention that in many cases the
children of our own species might well envy. The Malays related a
fact to me, which I doubted at first, but which I consider to be in
a great measure confirmed by my own subsequent observations. It is
that the young siamangs, whilst yet too weak to go alone, are always
carried by individuals of their own sex, by their fathers if they are
males, and by their mothers if females. I have also been assured that
these animals frequently become the prey of the tiger, from the same
species of fascination which serpents are said to exercise over birds,
squirrels, and other small animals. Servitude, however long, seems
to have no effect in modifying the characteristic defects of this
ape—his stupidity, sluggishness, and awkwardness. It is true that a
few days suffice to make him as gentle and contented as he was before
wild and distrustful; but, constitutionally timid, he never acquires
the familiarity of other apes, and even his submission appears to be
rather the result of extreme apathy than of any degree of confidence or
affection. He is almost equally insensible to good or bad treatment;
gratitude and revenge are equally strange to him.”
We have next to consider certain points connected with the theory of
the relationship between man and the anthropoid apes. It is hardly
necessary for me to say, perhaps, that in thus dealing with a subject
requiring for its independent investigation the life-long study of
departments of science which are outside those in which I have taken
special interest, I am not pretending to advance my opinion as of
weight in matters as yet undetermined by zoologists. But it has always
seemed to me, that when those who have made special study of a subject
collect and publish the result of their researches, and a body of
evidence is thus made available for the general body scientific, the
facts can be advantageously considered by students of other branches
of science, so only that, in leaving for a while their own subject,
they do not depart from the true scientific method, and that they are
specially careful to distinguish what has been really ascertained from
what is only surmised with a greater or less degree of probability.
In the first place, then, I would call attention to some very common
mistakes respecting the Darwinian theory of the Descent of Man. I
do not refer here to ordinary misconceptions respecting the theory
of natural selection. To say the truth, those who have not passed
beyond _this_ stage of error,—those who still confound the theory of
natural selection with the Lamarckian and other theories (or rather
hypotheses[38]) of evolution,—are not as yet in a position to deal
with our present subject, and may be left out of consideration.
The errors to which I refer are in the main included in the following
statement. It is supposed by many, perhaps by most, that according to
Darwin man is descended from one or other of the races of anthropoid
apes; and that the various orders and sub-orders of apes and monkeys
at present existing can be arranged in a series gradually approaching
more and more nearly to man, and indicating the various steps (or some
of them, for gaps exist in the series) by which man was developed.
Nothing can be plainer, however, than Darwin’s contradiction of this
genealogy for the human races. Not only does he not for a moment
countenance the belief that the present races of monkeys and apes can
be arranged in a series gradually approximating more and more nearly to
man, not only does he reject the belief that man is descended from any
present existing anthropoid ape, but he even denies that the progenitor
of man resembled any known ape. “We must not fall into the error of
supposing,” he says, “that the early progenitor of the whole simian
stock, including man, was identical with, or even closely resembled,
any existing ape or monkey.”
It appears to me, though it may seem somewhat bold to express this
opinion of the views of a naturalist so deservedly eminent as Mr.
Mivart, that in his interesting little treatise, “Man and Apes,”—a
treatise which may be described as opposed to Darwin’s special views
but not generally opposed to the theory of evolution,—he misapprehends
Darwin’s position in this respect. For he arrives at the conclusion
that if the Darwinian theory is sound, then “low down” (_i.e._, far
remote) “in the scale of Primates” (tri-syllabic) “was an ancestral
form so like man that it might well be called an _homunculus_; and we
have the virtual pre-existence of man’s body supposed, in order to
account for the actual first appearance of that body as we know it—a
supposition manifestly absurd if put forward as an explanation.”[39]
How, then, according to the Darwinian theory, is man related to the
monkey? The answer to this question is simply that the relationship
is the same in kind, though not the same in degree, as that by which
the most perfect Caucasian race is related to the lowest race of
Australian, or Papuan, or Bosjesman savages. No one supposes that one
of these races of savages could by any process of evolution, however
long-continued, be developed into a race resembling the Caucasian
in bodily and mental attributes. Nor does any one suppose that the
savage progenitor of the Caucasian races was identical with, or even
closely resembled, any existing race of savages. Yet we recognize in
the lowest forms of savage man our blood relations. In other words, it
is generally believed that if our genealogy, and that of any existing
race of savages, could be traced back through all its reticulations,
we should at length reach a race whose blood we share with that race.
It is also generally believed (though for my own part I think the
logical consequences of the principle underlying all theories of
evolution is in reality opposed to the belief) that, by tracing the
genealogical reticulations still further back, we should at length
arrive at a single race from which all the present races of man and no
other animals have descended. The Darwinian faith with respect to men
and monkeys is precisely analogous. It is believed that the genealogy
of every existent race of monkeys, if traced back, would lead us to
a race whose blood we share with that race of monkeys; and—which is
at once a wider and a more precise proposition—that, as Darwin puts
it, “the two main divisions of the Simiadæ, namely, the catarhine
and platyrhine monkeys, with their sub-groups, have all proceeded
from some one extremely ancient progenitor.” This proposition is
manifestly wider. I call it also more precise, because it implies, and
is evidently intended by Darwin to signify, that from that extremely
ancient progenitor no race outside the two great orders of Simiadæ have
even partially _descended_, though other races share with the Simiadæ
descent from some still more remote race of progenitors.
This latter point, however, is not related specially to the common
errors respecting the Darwinian theory which I have indicated above,
except in so far as it is a detail of the actual Darwinian theory.
I would, in passing, point out that, like the detail referred to in
connection with the relationship of the various races of man, this
one is not logically deducible from the theory of evolution. In fact,
I have sometimes thought that the principal difficulties of that
theory arise from this unnecessary and not logically sound doctrine.
I pointed out, rather more than three years ago, in an article “On
some of our Blood Relations,” in a weekly scientific journal, that the
analogy between the descent of races and the descent of individual
members of any race, requires us rather to believe that the remote
progenitor of the human race and the Simiadæ has had its share—though
a less share—in the generation of other races related to these in more
or less remote degrees. I may perhaps most conveniently present the
considerations on which I based this conclusion, by means of a somewhat
familiar illustration:—
Let us take two persons, brother and sister (whom let us call the
pair A), as analogues of the human race. Then these two have four
great-grandparents on the father’s side, and four on the mother’s side.
All these may be regarded as equally related to the pair A. Now, let us
suppose that the descendants of the four families of great-grandparents
intermarry, no marriages being in any case made outside these families,
and that the descendants in the same generation as the pair A are
regarded as corresponding to the entire order of the Simiadæ, the
pair A representing, as already agreed, the race of man, and all
families outside the descendants of the four great-grandparental
families corresponding to orders of animals more distantly related
than the Simiadæ to man. Then we have what corresponds (so far as
our illustration is concerned) to Darwin’s views respecting man
and the Simiadæ, and animals lower in the scale of life. The first
cousins of the pair A may be taken as representing the anthropoid
apes; the second cousins as representing the lemurs or half-apes; the
third cousins as representing the platyrhine or American apes. The
entire family—including the pair A, representing man—is descended
also, in accordance with the Darwinian view, from a single family of
progenitors, no outside families sharing _descent_, though all share
_blood_, with that family.
But manifestly, this is an entirely artificial and improbable
arrangement in the case of families. The eight grandparents _might_
be so removed in circumstances from surrounding families—so much
superior to them, let us say—that neither they nor any of their
descendants would intermarry with these inferior families: and thus
none of their great-grandchildren would share descent from some other
stock contemporary with the great-grandparents; or—which is the same
thing, but seen in another light—none of the contemporaries of the
great-grandchildren would share descent from the eight grandparents.
But so complete a separation of the family from surrounding families
would be altogether exceptional and unlikely. For, even assuming the
eight families to be originally very markedly distinguished from all
surrounding families, yet families rise and fall, marry unequally, and
within the range of a few generations a wide disparity of blood and
condition appears among the descendants of any group of families. So
that, in point of fact, the relations assumed to subsist between man,
the Simiadæ, and lower animal forms, corresponds to an unusual and
improbable set of relations among families of several persons. Either,
then, the relations of families must be regarded as not truly analogous
to the relations of races, which no evolutionist would assert, or else
we must adopt a somewhat different view of the relationship between
man, the Simiadæ, and inferior animals.
One other illustration may serve not only to make my argument clearer,
but also, by presenting an actual case, to enforce the conclusion to
which it points.
We know that the various races of man are related together more or
less closely, that some are purer than others, and that one or two
claim almost absolute purity. Now, if we take one of these last, as,
for instance, the Jewish race, and trace the race backwards to its
origin, we find it, according to tradition, carried back to twelve
families, the twelve sons of Jacob and their respective wives. (We
cannot go further back because the wives of Jacob’s sons must be taken
into account, and they were not descended from Abraham or Isaac and
their wives only,—in fact, could not have been.) If the descendants
of those twelve families had never intermarried with outside families
in such sort that the descendants of such mixed families came to
be regarded as true Hebrews, we should have in the Hebrews a race
corresponding to the Simiadæ as regarded by Darwin, _i.e._, a race
entirely descended from one set of families, and so constituting,
in fact, a single family. But we know that, despite the objections
entertained by the Hebrews against the intermixture of their race with
other races, this did not happen. Not only did many of those regarded
as true Hebrews share descent from nations outside their own, but many
of those regarded as truly belonging to nations outside the Jewish race
shared descent from the twelve sons of Jacob.
The case corresponding, then, to that of the purest of all human
races, and the case therefore most favourable to the view presented
by Darwin (though very far from essential to the Darwinian theory),
is simply this, that, in the first place, many animals regarded as
truly Simiadæ share descent from animals outside that family which
Darwin regards as the ape progenitor of man; and, in the second place,
many animals regarded as outside the Simiadæ share descent from that
ape-like progenitor. This involves the important inference that the
ape-like progenitor of man was not so markedly differentiated from
other families of animals then existing, that fertile intercourse
was impossible. A little consideration will show that this inference
accords well with, if it might not almost have been directly deduced
from, the Darwinian doctrine that all orders of mammals were, in
turn, descended from a still more remote progenitor race. The same
considerations may manifestly be applied also to that more remote
race, to the still more remote race from which all the vertebrates
have descended, and so on to the source itself from which all forms of
living creatures are supposed to have descended. A difficulty meets
us at that remotest end of the chain analogous to the difficulty of
understanding how life began at all; but we should profit little by
extending the inquiry to these difficulties, which remain, and are
likely long to remain, insuperable.
So far, however, are the considerations above urged from introducing
any new or insuperable objection to the Darwinian theory, that, rightly
understood, they indicate the true answer to an objection which has
been urged by Mivart and others against the belief that man has
descended from some ape-like progenitor.
Mivart shows that no existing ape or monkey approaches man more nearly
in all respects than other races, but that one resembles man more
closely in some respects, another in others, a third in yet others,
and so forth. “The ear lobule of the gorilla makes him our cousin,”
he says, “but his tongue is eloquent in his own dispraise.” If the
“bridging convolutions of the orang[’s brain] go to sustain his claim
to supremacy, they also go far to sustain a similar claim on the
part of the long-tailed thumbless spider-monkeys. If the obliquely
ridged teeth of _Simia_ and _Troglodytes_ (the chimpanzee) point to
community of origin, how can we deny a similar community of origin, as
thus estimated, to the howling monkeys and galagos? The liver of the
gibbons proclaims them almost human; that of the gorilla declares him
comparatively brutal. The lower American apes meet us with what seems
the ‘front of Jove himself,’ compared with the gigantic but low-browed
denizens of tropical Western Africa.”
He concludes that the existence of these wide-spread signs of affinity
and the associated signs of divergence, disprove the theory that the
structural characters existing in the human frame have had their origin
in the influence of inheritance and “natural selection.” “In the words
of the illustrious Dutch naturalists, Messrs. Schroeder, Van der Kolk
and Vrolik,” he says, “the lines of affinity existing between different
Primates construct rather a network than a ladder. It is indeed a
tangled web, the meshes of which no naturalist has as yet unravelled
by the aid of natural selection. Nay, more, these complex affinities
form such a net for the use of the teleological _retiarius_ as it
will be difficult for his Lucretian antagonist to evade, even with the
countless turns and doublings of Darwinian evolutions.”
It appears to me that when we observe the analogy between the
relationships of individuals, families, and races of man, and the
relationships of the various species of animals, the difficulty
indicated by Mr. Mivart disappears. Take, for instance, the case
of the eight allied families above considered. Suppose, instead of
the continual intermarriages before imagined—an exceptional order
of events, be it remembered—that the more usual order of things
prevails, viz., that alliances take place with other families. For
simplicity, however, imagine that each married pair has two children,
male and female, and that each person marries once and only once. Then
it will be found that the pair A have ten families of cousins, two
first-cousin families, and eight second-cousin families; these are all
the families which share descent from the eight great-grandparents of
the pair. (To have third-cousin families we should have to go back to
the fourth generation.) Thus there are eleven families in all. Now,
in the case first imagined of constant intermarrying, there would
still have been eleven families, but they would all have descended
from eight great-grandparents, and we should then expect to find
among the eleven families various combinations, so to speak, of the
special characteristics of the eight families from which they had
descended. On the other hand, eleven families, in _no_ way connected,
have descended from eighty-eight great-grandparents, and would
present a corresponding variety of characteristics. But in the case
actually supposed, in which the eleven families are so related that
each one (for what applies to the pair A applies to the others) has
two first-cousin families, and eight second-cousin families, it will
be found that instead of 88 they have only 56 great-grandparents,
or ancestors, in the third generation above them. The two families
related as first cousins to the pair A have, like these, eight
great-grandparents, four out of these eight for one family, being the
four grandparents of the father of the pair A, the other four being
outsiders; while four of the eight great-grandparents of the other
family of first cousins are the four grandparents of the mother of the
pair A, the other four being outsiders. The other eight families each
have eight great-grandparents; two of the families having among their
great-grandparents the parents of one of the grandfathers of the pair
A, but no other great-grandparent in common with the pair A; other two
of the eight families having among their great-grandparents the parents
of the other grandfather of the pair A; other two having among their
great-grandparents the parents of one of the grandmothers of the pair
A; the remaining two families having among their great-grandparents the
parents of the other grandmother of the pair A; while in all cases the
six remaining great-grandparents of each family are outsiders, in no
way related, on our assumption, either to the eight great-grandparents
of the pair A or to each other, except as connected in pairs by
marriage.
Now manifestly in such a case, which, save for the symmetry introduced
to simplify its details, represents fairly the usual relationships
between any family, its first cousins, and its second cousins, we
should not expect to find any one of the ten other families resembling
the pair A more closely in _all_ respects than would any other of
the ten. The two first-cousin families would _on the whole_ resemble
the pair A more nearly than would any of the other eight, but we
should expect to find _some_ features or circumstances in which one
or other or all of the second-cousin families would show a closer
resemblance to one or other or both of the pair A. This is found often,
perhaps generally, to be the case, even as respects the ordinary
characteristics in which resemblance is looked for, as complexion,
height, features, manner, disposition, and so forth. Much more would
it be recognized, if such close investigation could be made among the
various families as the naturalist can make into the characteristics
of men and animals. The fact, then, that features of resemblance to
man are found, not all in one order of the Simiadæ, but scattered among
the various orders, is perfectly analogous with the laws of resemblance
recognized among the various members of more or less closely related
families.
The same result follows if we consider the analogy between various
different species of animals on the one hand and between various races
of the human family on the other. No one thinks of urging against the
ordinary theory that men form only a single species, the objection that
none of the other families of the human race can be regarded as the
progenitor of the Caucasian family, seeing that though the Mongolian
type is nearer in some respects, the Ethiopian is nearer in others,
the American in others, the Malay in yet others. We find in this the
perfect analogue of what is recognized in the relationships between
families all belonging to one nation, or even to one small branch of
a nation. Is it not reasonable, then, to find in the corresponding
features of scattered resemblance observed among the various branches
of the great Simian family, not the objection which Mivart finds
against the theory of relationship, but rather what should be expected
if that theory is sound, and therefore, _pro tanto_, a confirmation of
the theory?
But now, in conclusion, let us briefly consider the great difficulty
of the theory that man is descended from some ape-like, arboreal,
speechless animal,—the difficulty of bridging over the wide gap which
confessedly separates the lowest race of savages from the highest
existing race of apes. After all that has been done to diminish the
difficulty, it remains a very great one. It is quite true that what
is going on at this present time shows how the gap has been widened,
and therefore indicates how it may once have been comparatively small.
The more savage races of man are gradually disappearing on the one
hand, the most man-like apes are being destroyed on the other,—so
that on both sides of the great gap a widening process is at work. Ten
thousand years hence the least civilized human race will probably be
little inferior to the average Caucasian races of the present day,
the most civilized being far in advance of the most advanced European
races of our time. On the other hand, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the
orang-outang, and the gibbon will probably be extinct or nearly so.
True, the men of those days will probably have very exact records of
the characteristics not only of the present savage races of man, but of
the present races of apes. Nay, they will probably know of intermediate
races, long since extinct even now, whose fossil remains geologists
hope to discover before long as they have already discovered the
remains of an ape as large as man (the _Dryopithecus_) which existed
in Europe during the Miocene period;[40] and more recently the remains
of a race of monkeys akin to Macacus, which once inhabited Attica. But
although our remote descendants will thus possess means which we do not
possess of bridging the gap between the highest races of apes and the
lowest races of man, the gap will nevertheless be wider in their time.
And tracing backwards the process, which, thus traced forward, shows a
widened gap, we see that once the gap must have been much narrower than
it is. Lower races of man than any now known once existed on the earth,
and also races of apes nearer akin to man than any now existing, even
if the present races of apes are not the degraded descendants of races
which, living under more favourable conditions, were better developed
after their kind than the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbon of the
present time.