discover if there is any foundation for this notion, let us compare the
brain of man with that of animals. The adult male Orang-utan is quite as
bulky as a small sized man, while the Gorilla is considerably above the
average size of man, as estimated by bulk and weight; yet the former has
a brain of only 28 cubic inches, the latter, one of 30, or, in the
largest specimen yet known, of 341/2 cubic inches. We have seen that the
average cranial capacity of the lowest savages is probably not less than
_five-sixths_ of that of the highest civilized races, while the brain of
the anthropoid apes scarcely amounts to _one-third_ of that of man, in
both cases taking the average; or the proportions may be more clearly
represented by the following figures--anthropoid apes, 10; savages, 26;
civilized man, 32. But do these figures at all approximately represent
the relative intellect of the three groups? Is the savage really no
farther removed from the philosopher, and so much removed from the ape,
as these figures would indicate? In considering this question, we must
not forget that the heads of savages vary in size, almost as much as
those of civilized Europeans. Thus, while the largest Teutonic skull in
Dr. Davis' collection is 112.4 cubic inches, there is an Araucanian of
115.5, an Esquimaux of 113.1, a Marquesan of 11O.6, a Negro of 105.8,
and even an Australian of 104.5 cubic inches. We may, therefore, fairly
compare the savage with the highest European on the one side, and with
the Orang, Chimpanzee, or Gorilla, on the other, and see whether there
is any relative proportion between brain and intellect.
_Range of intellectual power in Man._--First, let us consider what this
wonderful instrument, the brain, is capable of in its higher
developments. In Mr. Galton's interesting work on "Hereditary Genius,"
he remarks on the enormous difference between the intellectual power and
grasp of the well-trained mathematician or man of science, and the
average Englishman. The number of marks obtained by high wranglers, is
often more than thirty times as great as that of the men at the bottom
of the honour list, who are still of fair mathematical ability; and it
is the opinion of skilled examiners, that even this does not represent
the full difference of intellectual power. If, now, we descend to those
savage tribes who only count to three or five, and who find it
impossible to comprehend the addition of two and three without having
the objects actually before them, we feel that the chasm between them
and the good mathematician is so vast, that a thousand to one will
probably not fully express it. Yet we know that the mass of brain might
be nearly the same in both, or might not differ in a greater proportion
than as 5 to 6; whence we may fairly infer that the savage possesses a
brain capable, if cultivated and developed, of performing work of a kind
and degree far beyond what he ever requires it to do.
Again, let us consider the power of the higher or even the average
civilized man, of forming abstract ideas, and carrying on more or less
complex trains of reasoning. Our languages are full of terms to express
abstract conceptions. Our business and our pleasures involve the
continual foresight of many contingencies. Our law, our government, and
our science, continually require us to reason through a variety of
complicated phenomena to the expected result. Even our games, such as
chess, compel us to exercise all these faculties in a remarkable degree.
Compare this with the savage languages, which contain no words for
abstract conceptions; the utter want of foresight of the savage man
beyond his simplest necessities; his inability to combine, or to
compare, or to reason on any general subject that does not immediately
appeal to his senses. So, in his moral and aesthetic faculties, the
savage has none of those wide sympathies with all nature, those
conceptions of the infinite, of the good, of the sublime and beautiful,
which are so largely developed in civilized man. Any considerable
development of these would, in fact, be useless or even hurtful to him,
since they would to some extent interfere with the supremacy of those
perceptive and animal faculties on which his very existence often
depends, in the severe struggle he has to carry on against nature and
his fellow-man. Yet the rudiments of all these powers and feelings
undoubtedly exist in him, since one or other of them frequently manifest
themselves in exceptional cases, or when some special circumstances call
them forth. Some tribes, such as the Santals, are remarkable for as pure
a love of truth as the most moral among civilized men. The Hindoo and
the Polynesian have a high artistic feeling, the first traces of which
are clearly visible in the rude drawings of the palaeolithic men who were
the contemporaries in France of the Reindeer and the Mammoth. Instances
of unselfish love, of true gratitude, and of deep religious feeling,
sometimes occur among most savage races.
On the whole, then, we may conclude, that the general moral and
intellectual development of the savage, is not less removed from that of
civilized man than has been shown to be the case in the one department
of mathematics; and from the fact that all the moral and intellectual
faculties do occasionally manifest themselves, we may fairly conclude
that they are always latent, and that the large brain of the savage man
is much beyond his actual requirements in the savage state.
_Intellect of Savages and of Animals compared._--Let us now compare the
intellectual wants of the savage, and the actual amount of intellect he
exhibits, with those of the higher animals. Such races as the Andaman
Islanders, the Australians, and the Tasmanians, the Digger Indians of
North America, or the natives of Fuegia, pass their lives so as to
require the exercise of few faculties not possessed in an equal degree
by many animals. In the mode of capture of game or fish, they by no
means surpass the ingenuity or forethought of the jaguar, who drops
saliva into the water, and seizes the fish as they come to eat it; or of
wolves and jackals, who hunt in packs; or of the fox, who buries his
surplus food till he requires it. The sentinels placed by antelopes and
by monkeys, and the various modes of building adopted by field mice and
beavers, as well as the sleeping place of the orang-utan, and the
tree-shelter of some of the African anthropoid apes, may well be
compared with the amount of care and forethought bestowed by many
savages in similar circumstances. His possession of free and perfect
hands, not required for locomotion, enable man to form and use weapons
and implements which are beyond the physical powers of brutes; but
having done this, he certainly does not exhibit more mind in using them
than do many lower animals. What is there in the life of the savage, but
the satisfying of the cravings of appetite in the simplest and easiest
way? What thoughts, ideas, or actions are there, that raise him many
grades above the elephant or the ape? Yet he possesses, as we have seen,
a brain vastly superior to theirs in size and complexity; and this brain
gives him, in an undeveloped state, faculties which he never requires to
use. And if this is true of existing savages, how much more true must
it have been of the men whose sole weapons were rudely chipped flints,
and some of whom, we may fairly conclude, were lower than any existing
race; while the only evidence yet in our possession shows them to have
had brains fully as capacious as those of the average of the lower
savage races.
We see, then, that whether we compare the savage with the higher
developments of man, or with the brutes around him, we are alike driven
to the conclusion that in his large and well-developed brain he
possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual requirements--an
organ that seems prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized as he
progresses in civilization. A brain slightly larger than that of the
gorilla would, according to the evidence before us, fully have sufficed
for the limited mental development of the savage; and we must therefore
admit, that the large brain he actually possesses could never have been
solely developed by any of those laws of evolution, whose essence is,
that they lead to a degree of organization exactly proportionate to the
wants of each species, never beyond those wants--that no preparation can
be made for the future development of the race--that one part of the
body can never increase in size or complexity, except in strict
co-ordination to the pressing wants of the whole. The brain of
pre-historic and of savage man seems to me to prove the existence of
some power, distinct from that which has guided the development of the
lower animals through their ever-varying forms of being.
_The Use of the Hairy Covering of Mammalia._
Let us now consider another point in man's organization, the bearing of
which has been almost entirely overlooked by writers on both sides of
this question. One of the most general external characters of the
terrestrial mammalia is the hairy covering of the body, which, whenever
the skin is flexible, soft, and sensitive, forms a natural protection
against the severities of climate, and particularly against rain. That
this is its most important function, is well shown by the manner in
which the hairs are disposed so as to carry off the water, by being
invariably directed downwards from the most elevated parts of the body.
Thus, on the under surface the hair is always less plentiful, and, in
many cases, the belly is almost bare. The hair lies downwards, on the
limbs of all walking mammals, from the shoulder to the toes, but in the
orang-utan it is directed from the shoulder to the elbow, and again from
the wrist to the elbow, in a reverse direction. This corresponds to the
habits of the animal, which, when resting, holds its long arms upwards
over its head, or clasping a branch above it, so that the rain would
flow down both the arm and fore-arm to the long hair which meets at the
elbow. In accordance with this principle, the hair is always longer or
more dense along the spine or middle of the back from the nape to the
tail, often rising into a crest of hair or bristles on the ridge of the
back. This character prevails through the entire series of the mammalia,
from the marsupials to the quadrumana, and by this long persistence it
must have acquired such a powerful hereditary tendency, that we should
expect it to reappear continually even after it had been abolished by
ages of the most rigid selection; and we may feel sure that it never
could have been completely abolished under the law of natural selection,
unless it had become so positively injurious as to lead to the almost
invariable extinction of individuals possessing it.
_The constant absence of Hair from certain parts of Man's Body a
remarkable Phenomenon._
In man the hairy covering of the body has almost totally disappeared,
and, what is very remarkable, it has disappeared more completely from
the back than from any other part of the body. Bearded and beardless
races alike have the back smooth, and even when a considerable quantity
of hair appears on the limbs and breast, the back, and especially the
spinal region, is absolutely free, thus completely reversing the
characteristics of all other mammalia. The Ainos of the Kurile Islands
and Japan are said to be a hairy race; but Mr. Bickmore, who saw some of
them, and described them in a paper read before the Ethnological
Society, gives no details as to where the hair was most abundant, merely
stating generally, that "their chief peculiarity is their great
abundance of hair, not only on the head and face, but over the whole
body." This might very well be said of any man who had hairy limbs and
breast, unless it was specially stated that his back was hairy, which
is not done in this case. The hairy family in Birmah have, indeed, hair
on the back rather longer than on the breast, thus reproducing the true
mammalian character, but they have still longer hair on the face,
forehead, and inside the ears, which is quite abnormal; and the fact
that their teeth are all very imperfect, shows that this is a case of
monstrosity rather than one of true reversion to the ancestral type of
man before he lost his hairy covering.
_Savage Man feels the Want of this Hairy Covering._
We must now enquire if we have any evidence to show, or any reason to
believe, that a hairy covering to the back would be in any degree
hurtful to savage man, or to man in any stage of his progress from his
lower animal form; and if it were merely useless, could it have been so
entirely and completely removed as not to be continually reappearing in
mixed races? Let us look to savage man for some light on these points.
One of the most common habits of savages is to use some covering for the
back and shoulders, even when they have none on any other part of the
body. The early voyagers observed with surprise, that the Tasmanians,
both men and women, wore the kangaroo-skin, which was their only
covering, not from any feeling of modesty, but over the shoulders to
keep the back dry and warm. A cloth over the shoulders was also the
national dress of the Maories. The Patagonians wear a cloak or mantle
over the shoulders, and the Fuegians often wear a small piece of skin on
the back, laced on, and shifted from side to side as the wind blows.
The Hottentots also wore a somewhat similar skin over the back, which
they never removed, and in which they were buried. Even in the tropics
most savages take precautions to keep their backs dry. The natives of
Timor use the leaf of a fan palm, carefully stitched up and folded,
which they always carry with them, and which, held over the back, forms
an admirable protection from the rain. Almost all the Malay races, as
well as the Indians of South America, make great palm-leaf hats, four
feet or more across, which they use during their canoe voyages to
protect their bodies from heavy showers of rain; and they use smaller
hats of the same kind when travelling by land.
We find, then, that so far from there being any reason to believe that a
hairy covering to the back could have been hurtful or even useless to
pre-historic man, the habits of modern savages indicate exactly the
opposite view, as they evidently feel the want of it, and are obliged to
provide substitutes of various kinds. The perfectly erect posture of
man, may be supposed to have something to do with the disappearance of
the hair from his body, while it remains on his head; but when walking,
exposed to rain and wind, a man naturally stoops forwards, and thus
exposes his back; and the undoubted fact, that most savages feel the
effects of cold and wet most severely in that part of the body,
sufficiently demonstrates that the hair could not have ceased to grow
there merely because it was useless, even if it were likely that a
character so long persistent in the entire order of mammalia, could have
so completely disappeared, under the influence of so weak a selective
power as a diminished usefulness.
_Man's Naked Skin could not have been produced by Natural Selection._
It seems to me, then, to be absolutely certain, that "Natural Selection"
could not have produced man's hairless body by the accumulation of
variations from a hairy ancestor. The evidence all goes to show that
such variations could not have been useful, but must, on the contrary,
have been to some extent hurtful. If even, owing to an unknown
correlation with other hurtful qualities, it had been abolished in the
ancestral tropical man, we cannot conceive that, as man spread into
colder climates, it should not have returned under the powerful
influence of reversion to such a long persistent ancestral type. But the
very foundation of such a supposition as this is untenable; for we
cannot suppose that a character which, like hairiness, exists throughout
the whole of the mammalia, can have become, in one form only, so
constantly correlated with an injurious character, as to lead to its
permanent suppression--a suppression so complete and effectual that it
never, or scarcely ever, reappears in mongrels of the most widely
different races of man.
Two characters could hardly be wider apart, than the size and
development of man's brain, and the distribution of hair upon the
surface of his body; yet they both lead us to the same conclusion--that
some other power than Natural Selection has been engaged in his
production.
_Feet and Hands of Man, considered as Difficulties on the Theory of
Natural Selection._
There are a few other physical characteristics of man, that may just be
mentioned as offering similar difficulties, though I do not attach the
same importance to them as to those I have already dwelt on. The
specialization and perfection of the hands and feet of man seems
difficult to account for. Throughout the whole of the quadrumana the
foot is prehensile; and a very rigid selection must therefore have been
needed to bring about that arrangement of the bones and muscles, which
has converted the thumb into a great toe, so completely, that the power
of opposability is totally lost in every race, whatever some travellers
may vaguely assert to the contrary. It is difficult to see why the
prehensile power should have been taken away. It must certainly have
been useful in climbing, and the case of the baboons shows that it is
quite compatible with terrestrial locomotion. It may not be compatible
with perfectly easy erect locomotion; but, then, how can we conceive
that early man, _as an animal_, gained anything by purely erect
locomotion? Again, the hand of man contains latent capacities and powers
which are unused by savages, and must have been even less used by
palaeolithic man and his still ruder predecessors. It has all the
appearance of an organ prepared for the use of civilized man, and one
which was required to render civilization possible. Apes make little use
of their separate fingers and opposable thumbs. They grasp objects
rudely and clumsily, and look as if a much less specialized extremity
would have served their purpose as well. I do not lay much stress on
this, but, if it be proved that some intelligent power has guided or
determined the development of man, then we may see indications of that
power, in facts which, by themselves, would not serve to prove its
existence.
_The voice of man._--The same remark will apply to another peculiarly
human character, the wonderful power, range, flexibility, and sweetness,
of the musical sounds producible by the human larynx, especially in the
female sex. The habits of savages give no indication of how this faculty
could have been developed by natural selection; because it is never
required or used by them. The singing of savages is a more or less
monotonous howling, and the females seldom sing at all. Savages
certainly never choose their wives for fine voices, but for rude health,
and strength, and physical beauty. Sexual selection could not therefore
have developed this wonderful power, which only comes into play among
civilized people. It seems as if the organ had been prepared in
anticipation of the future progress of man, since it contains latent
capacities which are useless to him in his earlier condition. The
delicate correlations of structure that give it such marvellous powers,
could not therefore have been acquired by means of natural selection.
_The Origin of some of Man's Mental Faculties, by the preservation of
Useful Variations, not possible._
Turning to the mind of man, we meet with many difficulties in attempting
to understand, how those mental faculties, which are especially human,
could have been acquired by the preservation of useful variations. At
first sight, it would seem that such feelings as those of abstract
justice and benevolence could never have been so acquired, because they
are incompatible with the law of the strongest, which is the essence of
natural selection. But this is, I think, an erroneous view, because we
must look, not to individuals but to societies; and justice and
benevolence, exercised towards members of the same tribe, would
certainly tend to strengthen that tribe, and give it a superiority over
another in which the right of the strongest prevailed, and where
consequently the weak and the sickly were left to perish, and the few
strong ruthlessly destroyed the many who were weaker.
But there is another class of human faculties that do not regard our
fellow men, and which cannot, therefore, be thus accounted for. Such are
the capacity to form ideal conceptions of space and time, of eternity
and infinity--the capacity for intense artistic feelings of pleasure, in
form, colour, and composition--and for those abstract notions of form
and number which render geometry and arithmetic possible. How were all
or any of these faculties first developed, when they could have been of
no possible use to man in his early stages of barbarism? How could
"natural selection," or survival of the fittest in the struggle for
existence, at all favour the development of mental powers so entirely
removed from the material necessities of savage men, and which even now,
with our comparatively high civilization, are, in their farthest
developments, in advance of the age, and appear to have relation rather
to the future of the race than to its actual status?
_Difficulty as to the Origin of the Moral Sense._
Exactly the same difficulty arises, when we endeavour to account for the
development of the moral sense or conscience in savage man; for although
the _practice_ of benevolence, honesty, or truth, may have been useful
to the tribe possessing these virtues, that does not at all account for
the peculiar _sanctity_, attached to actions which each tribe considers
right and moral, as contrasted with the very different feelings with
which they regard what is merely _useful_. The utilitarian hypothesis
(which is the theory of natural selection applied to the mind) seems
inadequate to account for the development of the moral sense. This
subject has been recently much discussed, and I will here only give one
example to illustrate my argument. The utilitarian sanction for
truthfulness is by no means very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce
it. No very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all ages and
countries, falsehood has been thought allowable in love, and laudable in
war; while, at the present day, it is held to be venial by the majority
of mankind, in trade, commerce, and speculation. A certain amount of
untruthfulness is a necessary part of politeness in the east and west
alike, while even severe moralists have held a lie justifiable, to elude
an enemy or prevent a crime. Such being the difficulties with which this
virtue has had to struggle, with so many exceptions to its practice,
with so many instances in which it brought ruin or death to its too
ardent devotee, how can we believe that considerations of utility could
ever invest it with the mysterious sanctity of the highest
virtue,--could ever induce men to value truth for its own sake, and
practice it regardless of consequences?
Yet, it is a fact, that such a mystical sense of wrong does attach to
untruthfulness, not only among the higher classes of civilized people,
but among whole tribes of utter savages. Sir Walter Elliott tells us (in
his paper "On the Characteristics of the Population of Central and
Southern India," published in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of
London, vol. i., p. 107) that the Kurubars and Santals, barbarous
hill-tribes of Central India, are noted for veracity. It is a common
saying that "a Kurubar _always_ speaks the truth;" and Major Jervis
says, "the Santals are the most truthful men I ever met with." As a
remarkable instance of this quality the following fact is given. A
number of prisoners, taken during the Santal insurrection, were allowed
to go free on parole, to work at a certain spot for wages. After some
time cholera attacked them and they were obliged to leave, but every man
of them returned and gave up his earnings to the guard. Two hundred
savages with money in their girdles, walked thirty miles back to prison
rather than break their word! My own experience among savages has
furnished me with similar, although less severely tested, instances; and
we cannot avoid asking, how is it, that in these few cases "experiences
of utility" have left such an overwhelming impression, while in so many
others they have left none? The experiences of savage men as regards the
utility of truth, must, in the long run, be pretty nearly equal. How is
it, then, that in some cases the result is a sanctity which overrides
all considerations of personal advantage, while in others there is
hardly a rudiment of such a feeling?