Part 28

“However numerous the troop may be, if one is wounded it is immediately 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?