Part 1

Chapter 14,014 wordsPublic domain

THE UNIVERSAL KINSHIP

J. HOWARD MOORE

INSTRUCTOR IN ZOOLOGY, CRANE MANUAL TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL, CHICAGO

‘A Sacred Kinship I would not forego Binds me to all that breathes.’

— Boyesen.

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

56 FIFTH AVENUE

1906

MY DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER

WHO HAVE DONE SO MUCH FOR ME IN THE LONG YEARS

THAT ARE PAST AND GONE

PREFACE

_The Universal Kinship_ means the kinship of all the inhabitants of the planet Earth. Whether they came into existence among the waters or among desert sands, in a hole in the earth, in the hollow of a tree, or in a palace; whether they build nests or empires; whether they swim, fly, crawl, or ambulate; and whether they realise it or not, they are all related, physically, mentally, morally—this is the thesis of this book. But since man is the most gifted and influential of animals, and since his relationship with other animals is more important and more reluctantly recognised than any other, the chief purpose of these pages is to prove and interpret the kinship, of the human species with the other species of animals.

The thesis of this book comes pretty squarely in conflict with widely-practised and highly-prized sins. It will therefore be generally criticised where it is not passed by in silence. Men as a rule do not care to improve. Although they have but one life to live, they are satisfied to live the thing out as they have started on it.

Enthusiasm, which in an enlightened or ideal race would be devoted to self-improvement, is used by men in weaving excuses for their own inertia or in singing of the infirmities of others.

_But there is a Future_. And the creeds and ideals, men bow down to to-day will in time to come pass away, and new creeds and ideals will claim their allegiance. Shrines change as the generations come and go, and out of the decomposition of the old comes the new. The time will come when the sentiments of these pages will not be hailed by two or three, and ridiculed or ignored by the rest; _they will represent Public Opinion and Law_.

M. Chicago, 1905

CONTENTS

THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP

I. Man an Animal II. Man a Vertebrate III. Man a Mammal IV. Man a Primate V. Recapitulation VI. The Meaning of Homology VII. The Earth an Evolution VIII. The Factors of Organic Evolution IX. The Evidences of Organic Evolution X. The Genealogy of Animals XI. Conclusion

THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP

I. The Conflict of Science and Tradition II. Evidences of Psychical Evolution III. The Common-sense View IV. The Elements of Human and Non-human Mind Compared V. Conclusion

THE ETHICAL KINSHIP

I. Human Nature a Product of the Jungle II. Egoism and Altruism III. The Ethics of the Savage IV. The Ethics of the Ancient V. Modern Ethics VI. The Ethics of Human Beings Toward Non-human Beings VII. The Origin of Provincialism VIII. Universal Ethics IX. The Psychology of Altruism X. Anthropocentric Ethics XI. Ethical Implications of Evolution XII. Conclusion

THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP

‘Like the Roman emperors, who, intoxicated by their power, at length regarded themselves as demigods, so the ruler of the earth believes that the animals subjected to his will have nothing in common with his own nature. Man is not content to be the king of animals. He insists on having it that an impassable gulf separates him from his subjects. The affinity of the ape disturbs and humbles him. And, turning his back upon the earth, he flies, with his threatened majesty, into the cloudy sphere of a special “human kingdom.” But Anatomy, like those slaves who followed the conqueror’s car crying, “Thou art a man,” disturbs him in his self-admiration, and reminds him of those plain and tangible realities which unite him with the animal world.’

— Broca.

THE UNIVERSAL KINSHIP

The PHYSICAL KINSHIP

I. Man an Animal.

It was in the zoology class at college. We had made all the long journey from amoeba to coral, from coral to worm, from worm to mollusk, from mollusk to fish, from fish to reptile, and from reptile to mammal—and there, in the closing pages of faithful old Packard, we found it. ‘A mammal of the order of primates,’ the book said, with that unconcern characteristic of the deliverances of science. I was almost saddened. It was the first intimation I had ever received of that trite but neglected truth that _man is an animal_.

But the intimation was so weak, and I was at that time so unconscious, that it was not till years later that I began, through reflection, actually to realise the truth here first caught sight of. During these years I knew that man was not a mineral nor a plant—that, indeed, he belonged to the animal kingdom. But, like most men still, I continued to think of him as being altogether different from other animals. I thought of man _and the animals_, _not_ of man and the _other_ animals. Man was somehow _sui generis_. He had had, I believed, a unique and miraculous origin; for I had not yet learned of organic evolution. The pre-Darwinian belief that I had come down from the skies, and that non-human creatures of all kinds had been brought into existence as adjuncts of the distinguished species to which I belonged, occupied prominent place in my thinking. Non-human races, so I had been taught, had in themselves no reason for existence. They were accessories. A chasm, too wide for any bridge ever to span, yawned between the human and all other species. Man was celestial, a blue-blood barely escaping divinity. All other beings were little higher than clods. So faithfully and mechanically did I reflect the bias in which I had grown up.

But man _is_ an _animal_. It was away out there on the prairies, among the green corn rows, one beautiful June morning—a long time ago it seems to me now—that this revelation really came to me. And I repeat it here, as it has grown to seem to me, for the sake of a world which is so wise in many things, but so darkened and wayward regarding this one thing. However averse to accepting it we may be on account of favourite traditions, man is an animal in the most literal and materialistic meaning of the word. Man has not a spark of so-called ‘divinity’ about him. In important respects he is the most highly evolved of animals; but in origin, disposition, and form he is no more ‘divine’ than the dog who laps his sores, the terrapin who waddles over the earth in a carapace, or the unfastidious worm who dines on the dust of his feet. Man is not the pedestalled individual pictured by his imagination—a being glittering with prerogatives, and towering apart from and above all other beings. He is a pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organism, differing in particulars, but not in kind, from the pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organisms below and around him. Man is neither a rock, a vegetable, nor a deity. He belongs to the same class of existences, and has been brought into existence by the same evolutional processes, as the horse, the toad that hops in his garden, the firefly that lights its twilight torch, and the bivalve that reluctantly feeds him.

Man’s body is composed fundamentally of the same materials as the bodies of all other animals. The bodies of all animals are composed of clay. They are formed of the same elements as those that murmur in the waters, gallop in the winds, and constitute the substance of the insensate rocks and soils. More than two-thirds of the weight of the human body is made up of oxygen alone, a gas which forms one-fifth of the weight of the air, more than eight-ninths of that of the sea, and forty-seven per cent, of the superficial solids of the earth.

Man’s body is composed of cells. So are the bodies of all other animals. And the cells in the body of a human being are not essentially different in composition or structure from the cells in the body of the sponge. All cells are composed primarily of protoplasm, a compound of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Like all other animals, man is incapable of producing a particle of the essential substance of which his body is made. No animal can produce protoplasm. This is a power of the plant, and the plant only. All that any animal can do is to burn the compounds formed in the sun-lit laboratories of the vegetable world. The human skeleton, like the skeletons of nearly all other animals, is composed chiefly of lime—lime being, in the sea, where life spent so many of its earlier centuries, the most available material for parts whose purpose it is to furnish shape and durability to the organism. Man grows from an egg. So do all creatures of clay. Every animal commences at the same place—in a single, lowly, almost homogeneous cell. A dog, a frog, a philosopher, and a worm cannot for a long time after their embryonic commencement be distinguished from each other. Like the oyster, the ox, the insect, and the fish, like all that live, move, and breathe, man is mortal. He increases in size and complexity through an allotted period of time; then, like all his kindred, wilts back into the indistinguishable flux from which he came. Man inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide. So does every animal that breathes, whether it breathe by lungs, gills, skin, or ectosarc, and whether it breathe the sunless ooze of the sea floor or the ethereal blue of the sky. Animals inhale oxygen because they eat carbon and hydrogen. The energy of all animals is produced mainly by the union of oxygen with the elements of carbon and hydrogen in the tissues of animal bodies, the plentiful and ardent oxygen being the most available supporter of the combustion of these two elements.

Man is, then, an animal, more highly evolved than the most of his fellow-beings, but positively of the same clay, and of the same fundamental make-up, with the same eagerness to exceed and the same destiny, as his less pompous kindred who float and frolic and pass away in the seas and atmospheres, and creep over the land-patches of a common clod.

II. Man a Vertebrate.

Man is a _vertebrate_ animal.[1] He has (anatomically at least) a backbone. He belongs to that substantial class of organisms possessing an articulating internal skeleton—the family of the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Most animals have some sort of skeleton, some sort of calcareous contrivance, whose business it is to give form and protection to the softer parts of the organism. Some animals, as the starfishes, have plates of lime scattered throughout the surface parts of the body; others, as the corals and sponges secrete plant-like frames, upon and among the branches of which the organisms reside; and still others, as the clams, crustaceans, and insects, have skeletons consisting of a shell or sheath on the outside of, and more or less surrounding, the softer substances of the body. The limbs of insects are tiny tubes on the inside of which are the miniature muscles with which they perform their marvels of locomotion. The skeleton of vertebrates, consisting of levers, beams, columns, and arches, all skilfully joined together and sunk deep within the muscular tissue, forms a conspicuous contrast to the rudimentary frames of other animals. The vertebrate skeleton consists of a hollow axis, divided into segments and extending along the dorsal region of the body, from the ventral side of which articulate, by means of awkwardly-constructed girdles, an anterior and a posterior pair of limbs. This dorsal axis ends in front in a peculiar bulbous arrangement called the head, which contains, among other valuables, the brain and buccal cavern. The thoracic segments of the backbone send off pairs of flat bones, which, arching ventrally, form the chest for the protection of the heart and other vitals. The limbs (except in fishes) consist each of a single long bone, succeeded by two long bones, followed by two transverse rows of short, irregular wrist or ankle bones, ending normally in five branching series of bones called digits. This is essentially the skeleton of all fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. In short, it is the universal vertebrate type of frame. There are minor modifications to suit the various kinds of environment, adaptations to the necessities of aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial locomotion and life, some parts being specialised, others atrophied, and still others omitted, but there is never anywhere, from fishes to philosophers, any fundamental departure from the established vertebrate type of skeleton.[2] The pectoral fins of fishes correspond to the fore-limbs of frogs and reptiles, the wings of birds, and the arms of men. The pelvic fins of fishes are homologous with the hind-limbs of frogs, reptiles, and quadrupeds, and the legs of birds, apes, and men. The foot of the dog and crocodile, the hand of the orang, and the flipper of the dolphin and seal, all have the same general structure as the hand of man; and the wings of the bat and bird, the forelimbs of the lizard and elephant, and the comical shovels of the mole and ornithorhynchus, notwithstanding the great differences in their external appearance and use, contain essentially the same bones and the same arrangement of the bones as do the arms of men and women. The human body has two primary cavities in it. So have the bodies of all vertebrates: a neural cavity containing the brain and spinal cord, and a visceral cavity containing the heart, liver, lungs, and alimentary canal. Invertebrates have only one body cavity—the one corresponding to the visceral cavity of vertebrates—and the main nerve trunk, instead of extending along the back, as among vertebrates, is in invertebrates located ventrally. Vertebrates are the only animals on the earth that have a highly developed circulatory system, a system entirely shut off from the other systems, and containing a heart, arteries, veins, and capillaries. In all invertebrates the digestive and circulatory systems remain to a greater or less extent connected, the blood and food mingling more or less in the general cavity of the body. Worms and insects have pulsating tubes instead of heart and arteries. Crustaceans have hearts with one chamber, and mollusks have two or three chambered hearts, but the blood, instead of returning to the heart after its journey through the arteries, passes into the body cavity. In man and other vertebrates the circulating current is confined strictly to the bloodvessels, no particle of it ever escaping into the general body cavity. The heart of vertebrates is distinguished from that of invertebrates by being located ventrally. The heart of invertebrates is in the back. The blood of vertebrates differs from that of invertebrates in containing both red and white corpuscles. Invertebrates have white corpuscles only. Worms have yellow, red, or bright green blood. The blood of crustaceans is bluish, that of mollusks is white, and that of insects dusky or brown. The blood of all vertebrates, excepting amphioxus, is red. All backboned beings, whether they dwell in seas or cities, and whether they build nests or empires, have two eyes, two ears, nose and mouth, all located in the head, and always occupying the same relative position to each other. Invertebrates may have their brains in their abdomen, as do the mites; hear with their legs or antennae, as many insects do; see with their tunics, like the scallops; and breathe with their skin, as do the worms. The crayfish hears with its ‘feelers,’ the cricket and katydid with their fore-legs, the grasshopper with its abdomen, the clam with its ‘foot,’ and mysis and other low crustaceans have their auditory organs on their tails.

Man is, then, like the fishes, frogs, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, a vertebrate animal. Excepting in his infancy, when he is a quadruped going on all fours, he uses his posterior limbs only for locomotion, and his anterior for prehension and the like. His spinal axis is erect instead of horizontal, and his tail is atrophied. But he possesses all of the unmistakable qualities of the vertebrate type of structure—a two-chambered body cavity, a highly developed and dorsally located nerve trunk, vertebrate vitals, a closed circulatory system, a ventral heart, red blood, a head containing sense organs and brain, and a well-ordered internal skeleton, consisting of a vertebral column with skull and ribs and two pairs of limbs, the limbs consisting each of one long bone, two long bones, two transverse rows of irregular bones, and five branches at the end.

1. See ‘Classes of Animals,’ at the end of the chapter. 2. Snakes are limbless, and hind-limbs are lacking in whales and other degenerates; but rudimentary limbs are found in the embryonic stages of these animals. Frogs, it may be said also, have no ribs.

III. Man a Mammal.

Man is a _mammal_. He belongs to the most brilliant and influential of the five classes of vertebrates—the class to which belong so many of his associates and victims, the class to which belong the horse, the dog, the deer, the ox, the sheep, the swine, the squirrel, the camel, the unattenuated elephant, and the timid-hearted hare. To this class belong also the lion, the tiger, the kangaroo, the beaver, the bear, the bat, the monkey, the mole, the wolf, the ornithorhynchus, and the whale—in short, _all animals that have hair_. Fishes and reptiles have scales; birds have feathers; all mammals are covered to a greater or less extent with hair. The aquatic habits of whales render hair of no use to them. Hence, while the unborn of these animals still cling to the structural traditions of their ancestors and are covered with hair, the adults are almost hairless. The sartorial habits of human beings and the selective influences of the sexes have had a similar effect on the hairy covering of the human body. Hair exists all over the human body surface, excepting on the soles of the hands and feet, but in a greatly dwarfed condition. It is only on the scalp and on the faces of males, where it is scientifically assisted for purposes of display, that it grows luxuriantly. It is by no means certain that even the hair on the masculine scalp will last forever. For if the hermetical derby and other deadly devices worn by men continue their devastations as they have in the past, we may expect to have, in the course of generations, men with foreheads reaching regularly to the occiput. Most animals lay eggs. Man does not. Like the dog, the horse, the squirrel, and the bat, man is viviparous, the eggs hatching within the parental body. Human young are born helpless, and are sustained during the period of their infancy by the secretions of the milk glands. So are all the sons and daughters of mammals. Whether they come into the world among the waters or among the desert sands, in the hollow of a tree, in a hole in the earth, or in a palace, the children of mammals are frail and pitiful, and they survive to grow and multiply only because they are the object of the loving and incessant sacrifices of a mother.

Mammals are distinguished from all other animals by the possession of two kinds of skin glands—the sweat glands and the oil glands—and by the development of certain of these glands in the female into organs for the nourishing of the young. Among reptiles and birds the lower jaw is suspended from the skull by a bone called the quadrate bone. Among men and other mammals the lower jaw is joined directly to the skull, the quadrate bone becoming, in the vicissitudes of evolution, the hammer (malleus) of the mammalian ear. Man has a four-chambered heart—two reservoirs which receive, and two pumps which propel, the scarlet waters of the body. Fishes have two-chambered hearts; frogs and most reptiles have three-chambered hearts; all mammals and birds have four-chambered hearts. The red corpuscles in the blood of fishes, frogs, reptiles, and birds, are discs, double-convex, nucleated, and in shape oval or triangular. In man and in all other mammals (except the archaic camel) the red corpuscles are double-concave, non-nucleated, and circular. ‘Man has a diaphragm dividing the body cavity into chest and abdomen, and a shining white bridge of interlacing fibres, called _corpus callosum_, uniting his cerebral hemispheres. And man is a mammal because, like other mammals, he has, in addition to the qualities already mentioned, these valuable and distinct characteristics.

IV. Man a Primate.

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]