Man is a _primate_. There are four divisions in the order of
primates—lemurs, monkeys, apes, and men. But the most interesting
and important of these, according to man, is man. Man is a primate
because, like other primates, he has arms and hands instead of
fore-legs. And these are important characteristics. It was a
splendid moment when the tendencies of evolution, pondering the
possibilities of structural improvement, decided to rear the
vertebrate upon its hind-limbs, and convert its anterior appendages
into instruments of manipulation. So long as living creatures were
able simply to move through the airs and waters of the earth and
over the surface of the solids, they were powerless to modify the
universe about them very much. But the moment beings were developed
with parts of their bodies fitted to take hold of and move and
fashion and compel the universe around them, that moment the life
process was endowed with the power of miracles. With the invention
of hands and arms commenced seriously that long campaign against the
tendencies of inanimate nature which finds its most marvellous
achievements in the sustained and triumphant operations of human
industry. None of the primates excepting man use their hind-limbs as
a sole means of changing their place in the universe, but in all of
them the fore-limbs are regularly used as organs of manipulation.
Man is a primate because his fingers and toes, like those of other
primates (except the tiny marmosets of Brazil), end in nails. Man
has neither claws to burrow into the earth, talons with which to
hold and rend his victims, nor hoofs to put thunder into his
movements. The human stomach, like that of all the other primates,
is a bagpipe. The stomach of the carnivora is usually a simple sack,
while rodents have, as a rule, two stomachs, and ruminants four. Man
is a primate because his milk glands are located on the breast and
are two in number. The mammary glands vary in number in the
different orders of mammals, from two in the horse and whale to
twenty-two in some insectivora. Most ruminating animals have four,
swine ten, and carnivora generally six or eight. These glands may be
located in the region of the groin, as in the horse and whale;
between the forelimbs, as in the elephant and bat; or arranged in
pairs extending from the fore to the hind limbs, as in the carnivora
and swine. In man and all other primates (except lemurs) the mammary
glands are pectoral and two in number. All primates, including man,
have also a disc-shaped placenta. The placenta is the organ of
nutrition in mammalian embryos. It is found in all young-bearing
animals above the marsupials, and consists of a mass of glands
between the embryo and the parental body. In some animals it
entirely surrounds and encloses the embryo; in others it assumes the
form of a girdle; and in still others it is bell-shaped. The
primates are the only animals in which this peculiar organ is in the
shape of a simple disc.[1]
The nearest relatives by blood man has in this world are the
exceedingly man-like apes—the tailless anthropoids—the gorillas
and chimpanzees of Africa, and the orangs and gibbons of southern
and insular Asia. The fact that man is an actual relative and
descendant of the ape is one of the most disagreeable of the many
distasteful truths which the human mind in its evolution has come
upon. To a vanity puffed, as is that of human beings, to the
splitting, the consanguinity of gorilla and gentleman seems
horrible. Man prefers to have arrived on the earth by way of a
ladder let down by his imagination from the celestial concave.
Within his own memory man has been guilty of many foolish and
disgraceful things. But this attempt by him to repudiate his
ancestors by surreptitiously fabricating for himself an origin
different from, and more glorious than the rest is one of the most
absurd and scandalous in the whole list. It is a shallow logic—the
logic of those who, without worth of their own, try to shine with a
false and stolen lustre. No more masterly rebuke was ever
administered to those in the habit of sneering at the truth in this
matter than the caustic reply of Huxley to the taunt of the
fat-witted Bishop—that he would rather be the descendant of a
respectable ape than the descendant of one who not only closed his
eyes to the facts around him, but used his official position to
persuade others to do likewise. Man’s reluctance to take his
anatomical place beside his simian kinspeople has been exceeded only
by his selfish and high-handed determination to exclude all other
terrestrial beings from his heaven.
Man is a talkative and religious ape. He is an ape, but with a much
greater amount of enterprise and with a greater likelihood of being
found in every variety of climate. Like the anthropoid, man has a
bald face and an obsolete tail. But he is distinguished from his
arboreal relative by his arrogant bearing, his skilled larynx, and
especially by the satisfaction he experiences in the contemplation
of the image which appears when he looks in a mirror.
The man-like apes are from three to six feet tall, and are all of
them very strong, the gorilla, who sometimes weighs over three
hundred pounds, being about the bravest and most formidable unarmed
animal on the planet. They are erect or semi-erect, have loud
voices, plantigrade feet, and irritable dispositions—in all of
these particulars being strikingly like men. The gorilla,
chimpanzee, and gibbon are highlanders, preferring the uplands and
mountains. The orang is a lowlander, living phlegmatically among the
sylvan swamps of Sumatra and Borneo. The gorilla and chimpanzee are
terrestrial, seldom going among the trees except to get food or to
sleep. The orang and gibbon are arboreal, seldom coming to the
ground except to drink or bathe. They all walk on their hind-limbs,
generally in a stooping posture, with their knuckles or fingers
touching the ground. But they sometimes walk with their arms hanging
down by their sides, and sometimes with their hands clasped back of
their heads to give them balance. None of them ever place their
palms on the ground when they walk—that is, none of them walk on
four feet. The anthropoid races, in the shape of their heads and
faces and in the general form and structure of their bodies, and
even in their habits of life, resemble in a remarkable manner the
lowest races of human beings. This resemblance is recognised by the
negro races, who call the gorilla and chimpanzee ‘hairy men,’
and believe them to be descendants of outcast members of their own
species.
There are differences in structure between man and the apes, just as
there are differences in structure between the Caucasian and the
Caffre, or even between individual Caucasians or individual Caffres.
There are differences in structure and topography, often very
noticeable differences, even among members of the same family. But
in all of its essential characters, and extending often to
astonishing particulars, the structure of man is identical with that
of the anthropoid.[2]
In external appearances the man-like races differ from men in having
a luxuriant covering of natural hair. But anthropoids differ very
much among themselves in this particular. The orang, usually covered
with long hair, is sometimes almost hairless. There are, too, races
of human beings whose bodies are covered with a considerable growth
of hair. The Todas (Australians) and Ainus (aborigines of Japan) are
noted for the hairiness of their bodies, certain individuals among
them being covered with a real fur, especially on the lower limbs.[3]
Individuals also often appear in every race with a remarkable
development of the hair. Adrian and his son Fedor, exhibited years
ago over Europe as ‘dog-men,’ are examples. The father was
completely covered with a thick growth of fine dirty-yellow hair two
or three inches long. Long tufts grew out of his nostrils and ears,
giving him a striking resemblance to a Skye terrier. Fedor, and also
his sister, were covered with hair like the father, but another son
was like ordinary men. The man-like races have also longer arms in
proportion to the height of the body than man generally has. But
this is also true of human infants and negroes. The gibbon has
relatively much longer arms than the other anthropoids. It differs
from the chimpanzee in this respect more than the chimpanzee differs
from man. When standing upright and reaching down with the middle
finger, the gibbon can touch its foot, while the chimpanzee can
reach only to the knee. Man ordinarily reaches part way down the
thigh, but negroes have been known to have arms reaching to the
knee-pan.[4]
The skeleton of the African races contains many characters
recognised by osteologists as ‘pithecoid,’ or ape-like. It is
massive, the flat bones are thick, and the pelvis narrow. In the
manlike apes the large toe is opposable to the other four, and is
used by them much as the thumb is used. But this difference between
the two races of beings is just what might be expected from the
differences in their modes of life. Man has little need of this
opposability on account of his exclusively terrestrial life, while
to the ape it is indispensable on account of his arboreal
environment and life. ‘But there are,’ says Haeckel, ‘wild
tribes of men who can oppose the large toe to the other four just as
if it were a thumb, and even new-born infants of the most
highly-developed races of men can grasp as easily with their
hind-hands as with their forehands. Chinese boatmen row with their
feet, and Bengal workmen weave with them. The negro, in whom the big
toe is freely movable, seizes hold of the branches of trees with it
when climbing, just like the four-handed apes’.[5]
Many men have lost their arms by accident and have learned to use
their feet as hands with wonderful skill. Not many years ago there
died in Europe an armless violinist who had during his lifetime
played to cultured audiences in most of the capitals of the world.
Some of the most accomplished of penmen hold their pen between their
toes. The man-like apes live to about the same age as man, and all
of them, like man, have beards. The anthropoid beard, too, like the
human, appears at the age of sexual maturity. The human beard often
differs in colour from the hair of the scalp, and whenever it does
it has been observed to be invariably lighter—never darker—than
the hair on the scalp. This is true among all races of men. The same
rule and the same uniformity exists among anthropoids. The races of
mankind are divided into two primary groups depending upon the shape
of the head and the character of the hair: the short-headed races
(Brachycephali), such as the Malays, Mongols, and Aryans, with round
or oval faces, straight hair, and vertical profiles; and the
long-headed races (Dolichocephali), with woolly hair and prognathous
faces, such as the Papuans and Africa races. The skin of the
short-headed races is orange or white, while the skin and hair of
the long-headed races are glossy black.
It is, at least, interesting that the orang and gibbon, who live in
Asia and its islands, where the brachycephalic races of men
supposedly arose, are themselves brachycephalic; and that the
gorilla and chimpanzee, who live in Africa, where the
dolichocephalic races chiefly live, are dolichocephalic. The gorilla
and chimpanzee also have, like the men and women of Africa, black
skin and hair; while the hair of the orang is a reddish-brown, and
its skin sometimes yellowish-white. The dentition of the anthropoids
and men is in all essentials identical. They all have two sets of
teeth: a set of milk-teeth, twenty in number, and thirty-two
permanent teeth, the permanents consisting of two incisors, one
canine, two premolars, and three molars, in each half-jaw. Man has
ordinarily twelve pairs of ribs and thirty-two vertebrae. So has the
orang. The other anthropoids have thirteen pairs of ribs. But the
number of ribs in both human and anthropoid beings is not uniform,
man occasionally having thirteen pairs, and the gorilla fourteen.
Man has also the same number of caudal vertebrae in his rudimentary
tail as the anthropoid has. The hands and feet of anthropoids, bone
for bone and muscle for muscle, correspond with those of men, no
greater structural differences existing than among different species
of men. The human foot has three muscles not found in the human
hand—a short flexor muscle, a short extensor muscle, and a long
muscle extending from the fibula to the foot. All of these muscles
are found in the anthropoid foot just as in the foot of man. There
are also the same differences between the arrangement of the bones
of the anthropoid wrist and ankle as between the wrist and ankle
bones of man. Whatever set of anatomical particulars may be
selected, whether it be hands, arms, feet, muscles, skull, viscera,
ribs, or dentition, it is found that the anthropoid races and men
are in all essentials the same. The differences are such as have
arisen as a result of different modes of life, and such as exist
between different tribes of either group of animals.
‘The structural differences which separate man from the gorilla
and chimpanzee,’ says Huxley, in summing up the conclusion of his
brilliant inquiry into ‘Man’s Place in Nature,’ ‘are not so
great as those which separate the gorilla from the lower apes.’
‘The body of man and that of the anthropoid are not only
peculiarly similar,’ says Haeckel, ‘but they are practically one
and the same in every important respect. The same two hundred bones,
in the same order and structure, make up our inner skeleton; the
same three hundred muscles effect our movements; the same hair
clothes our skin; the same four-chambered heart is the central
pulsometer in our circulation; the same thirty-two teeth are set in
the same order in our jaws; the same salivary, hepatic, and gastric
glands compass our digestion; the same reproductive organs insure
the maintenance of our race’.[6]
‘Not being able,’ says Owen in his paper on ‘The Characters of
Mammalia,’ ‘to appreciate or conceive of the distinction between
the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman or of an
Aztec with arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential
as to preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than a
difference in degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance of
that all-pervading similitude of structure—every tooth, every
bone, strictly homologous—which makes the determination of the
difference between _Homo_ and _Pithecus_ the anatomist’s
difficulty.’
‘If before the appearance of man on the earth,’ says Ward in his
‘Dynamic Sociology,’ ‘an imaginary painter had visited it, and
drawn a portrait embodying the thorax of the gibbon, the hands and
feet of the gorilla, the form and skull of the chimpanzee, the brain
development of the orang, and the countenance of _Semnopithecus_,
giving to the whole the average stature of all of these apes, the
result would have been a being not far removed from our conception
of the primitive man, and not widely different from the actual
condition of certain low tribes of savages. The brain development
would perhaps be too low for the average of any existing tribe, and
would correspond better with that of certain microcephalous idiots
and cretins, of which the human race furnishes many examples.’
And it is not true, as is commonly supposed, that, after all other
resemblances between the human and anthropoid structures have been
made out, there still exists somewhere some undistinguishable
difference in the organic structure of their brains. All differences
in structure from time to time suspected or asserted to exist
between the brain of man and that of the man-like apes have been one
after another completely swept away. And it is now known to all
neurologists that the human and anthropoid brains differ
structurally in no particulars whatever, both of them containing the
same lobes, the same ventricles and cornua, and the same
convolutional outline. Even the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu,
and the hippocampus minor, so long triumphantly asserted to be
characteristic features of the human brain, have been pitilessly
identified in all anthropoids by the profound and terrible Huxley.
There is not an important fold or fissure in the brain of man that
is not found in the brain of the anthropoid. ‘The surface of the
brain of a monkey,’ says Huxley, ‘exhibits a sort of skeleton
map of man’s, and in the man-like apes the details become more and
more filled in, until it is only in minor characters that the
chimpanzee’s or the orang’s brain can be structurally
distinguished from man’s’.[7]
The great difference physically between man and the anthropoids,
aside from man’s talented larynx and erect posture, lies in
man’s abnormal cranial capacity. The normal human cranium never
contains less than 55 cubic inches of space, while the largest
gorilla cranium contains only 34½ cubic inches. This is a
difference of 20½ cubic inches. And 20½ cubic inches of thinking
matter is an alarming amount to be lacking in a single individual.
But this cranial gap between gorilla and man is deprived of some of
its significance by the fact that human crania sometimes measure 114
cubic inches, making a difference between the smallest and largest
human brains of 59 cubic inches. The difference between the gorilla
and the savage in cranial capacity is, therefore, _only about
one-third as great as the cranial chasm between the savage and the
sage_.
1. The bat and a few other animals have a disc-like placenta, but it
develops into the disc shape by a different route from what it does
in the primates.
2. Hartmann: _Anthropoid Apes_; New York, 1901.
3. Quatrefages: _The Human Species_; New York, 1898.
4. Tyler: _Anthropology_; New York; 1899.
5. Haeckel: _History of Creation_, 2 vols.; New York, 1896.
6. Haeckel: _The Riddle of the Universe_; New York, 1901.
7. Huxley: _Man’s Place in Nature_; New York, 1883.