THE ORDER OF BIMANA.
The naturalist who has in our time most interested himself in the
classification of vertebrata, Prince Charles Bonaparte, gives his
own opinion as follows:--“Man may be considered, in one point of
view, as constituting one single family; in another, as constituting
an entire kingdom.” But he also adds that in this second case,
“the characteristics are no longer in harmony with the rest of the
system.” In fact, we can hardly at the same time admit both the
general principles of classification, as followed at the present day,
and also the human kingdom. One out of these two things must fall
to the ground. The system of classifying mammalia,--adopted in all
its uniformity by the two Geoffroys, the Cuviers, De Blainville, and
Owen,--cannot be maintained without involving mankind. If man were a
kingdom by himself, this classification would be a false one; for ought
we not then, at least, to create a cetaceous kingdom, a bird kingdom,
etc.? As for ourselves, the problem has been already solved, and we
hesitated to come into collision with this new inconsistency. Harmony
is the necessary condition of every really natural system. We cannot
arbitrarily give a different value to the same characteristics; and,
reciprocally, the divisions of the same order ought necessarily to
agree with characteristics of the same value.
It has been thought necessary, at least, to create for mankind one of
those great divisions into which the mammalia are divided. An Order of
_Bimana_ has been created. We do not hesitate to say that this was a
purely theoretical creation; and we will go even farther, we declare it
could only be produced in a country where coverings for the feet are
in daily and universal wear. We must not go into the midst of our great
cities if we wish to study the _zoological_ characteristics of man.
Is there any reason for the Order of _Bimana_ when we consider man in
his state of nature? is it “the immediate and necessary results of
natural analogies, respectively valued according to their degree?”
“No!” was the answer of Étienne Geoffroy, in his eloquent pages, “this
Order must be abolished.”[98]
É. Geoffroy saw workmen in the bazaars at Cairo employ their great toe
for numberless prehensile uses. A Nubian, or a negro on horseback,
generally takes the stirrup-leather between his great toe and the
others; all the Abyssinian cavalry ride in this manner.[99] If the fact
reported by Bory de Saint-Vincent about the rosin-makers of the Landes
is not confirmed,[100] we have at least seen the Barabras Nubians
ascend the great yard of the Nile _dahabiehs_ by seizing with the great
toe the rope underneath them[101] which supports the sail.
When the action of the foot is not paralysed by the size of the shoe,
which is elsewhere the exception, it is pre-eminently adapted for
laying hold of anything. And if certain kinds of men seem to us very
fit for the kind of existence led by the Quadrumana,--if they seem to
us constituted in order to live in trees, there is nothing there which
ought to surprise us, nothing but what is quite natural and quite
consistent.
It has been truly said, that man is _frugivorous_. All the details of
his intestinal canal, and above all, his dentition, prove it in the
most decided manner. He ought, therefore, from his origin, to have all
his organism modified in harmony with this alimentation. Like the apes,
he ought to possess such means of locomotion as would enable him to
procure the food specially adapted to his wants. And therefore, what
is there astonishing in the fact that among certain races, which are
scarcely removed from a state of nature, we find the remains of a mode
of life which was general at their origin.
Modera, quoted by Mr. Crawfurd, relates that one day, three
naturalists, travelling on the northern coast of New Guinea for
scientific purposes, found the trees full of natives, of both sexes,
who leaped from branch to branch like monkeys, with their weapons
fastened on their backs, gesticulating, shouting, and laughing.[102]
This singular race, of which we have before spoken, and which has been
noticed in Hindoostan by many eye-witnesses, seems to live half its
time in trees. We have the right to ask, if the confused remembrance of
such a race and such habits was not the origin of the tradition which
served as a foundation for the poem of Valmîki. Rama goes to the rescue
of his wife, Sita, who had been carried off by the evil genius, Râvana;
he is assisted in this enterprise by a valiant army of monkeys, and
at every moment expressions are used in the account which recall the
monkey-like and quadrumanous nature of the combatants[103]. In casting
our eyes over the first groups composing the mammalian series, we find
some apes who walk upon the sole of the feet and upon the palm of the
hand; others, who walk upon the sole of the foot and the joints of the
folded hands,--a very peculiar method of progression,--of a strange and
unexpected nature, and which alone would serve to characterise a group;
these are the anthropomorphous apes: lastly, another mammal who walks
only on the soles of the feet, the form of the body and legs rendering
the anterior members quite unfit to be used in walking; this is man.
The first apes of which we are going to speak, walking upon the sole
of the feet and the palms of their hands are, then, unreservedly
_quadrupeds_. In this particularity they resemble other mammalia,
among whom the pectoral, as well as the abdominal, members are chiefly
organs of locomotion; only these apes also use their four extremities
for another purpose, which appears to be entirely secondary and
derived,--that of _prehension_. And it is precisely because the
organisation of their members is purposely modified by reason of a new,
special, and uncommon function, that they have been able to furnish us
with a sufficiently defined characteristic, so that we may specify an
order,--that of the _quadrumana_.
Among the anthropomorphous apes, the folded or bent hand seems an organ
especially adapted for prehension,[104] serving, in a secondary manner,
for locomotion; whilst the foot, the especial organ of locomotion,
preserves the faculty of seizing anything by means of an opposing thumb.
In man, the superior member is not at all fit for walking; and the
inferior, used for locomotion, as in the two preceding groups, also
preserves its faculty of prehension: observation proves this as well as
anatomy.
We see that there again; as everywhere else in an organic point of
view, the anthropomorphous quadrumana are a veritable transition from
man to the other families of apes. It has been proposed to extend the
signification of the word hand, and to apply it to every terminal
extremity of a member capable of seizing anything, including the paw of
the lemur and the claws of the parrot. We are inclined to restrict the
name, like Linnæus, De Blainville, and Cuvier, to an extremity formed
of fingers, and with an _opposing thumb_. But even in confining the
definition to such a narrow compass, we think we have shown that man,
in reality, is _quadrumanous_, this definition applying equally to the
foot, where the great toe serves--among half the people, at least, on
the earth--for the purpose of prehension, and remains, as É. Geoffroy
has remarked, quite separate from the other toes, when the foot is not
deformed by boots or shoes:[105] therefore, nothing more can be said in
favour of an Order of _Bimana_, or a human kingdom.
We must return to the subdivision proposed by Charles Bonaparte,--a
_family_. Man constitutes a simple family in the Order of _Quadrumana_,
distinguished by characteristics precisely equal in importance to those
which make a difference between other similar groups in the class of
mammalia, that which even comes to the assistance of the adversaries
of the human kingdom, and the partisans of the zoological system.
For want of positive characteristics taken from the extremities,
which could never,--in the eyes of true naturalists, as we have just
said,--favour a serious distinction between man and other quadrumana,
a characteristic in dentition has been discovered, remarkable for
its constancy even in the most degraded and animal-like races, and
which, first and foremost, distinguishes man from the group which
immediately follows him in the zoological series. This characteristic,
upon which Professor Owen has, in many places, insisted,--like the two
Cuviers,--but with an entirely new vigour,[106] is the contiguity of
the teeth and the _continuity_ of their crowns, not one of which ever
extends beyond the level of the others.[107]
Thus it is for man, like the rest of the mammalia; it is the dental
system which gives us the best characteristic. A new proof that the
study of mankind and that of animals ought to be conducted in one
and the same manner; a proof, indeed, that these two studies are two
parallel branches, intimately united, of one and the same science.