The man in question is the European White. Now from this table we see that from infancy to old age the relation of the brain to the rest of the body keeps diminishing. Are we to conclude then from this that the youth isdegradedrelatively to the infant, and that the adult or the old man has assumed asimian character?
We see, moreover, that there ought to be some understanding as to the wordsimianitself. If the gibbon, whichbelongs to the type of our supposed ancestors, has a brain relatively smaller than ours, it is otherwise with the three members of the genus cebus given in the table. The latter are superior to the anthropoid; the two first show exactly the same relation as the infant and youth; the third surpasses the adult man. But all three are surpassed by the two tits and the canary.
Consequently, if we are right in regarding the human race, or the human individual whose brain is below the mean by several grammes, as tending towards the anthropoid ape, we ought to consider the race, or the individual whose brain is above the mean as approximating to the cebus, or even the passerines or conirostres. If the first comparison is admissible, the second is equally so.
We can then say with the learned anatomist whose authority I have so often appealed to: “The microcephali, however reduced their brain may be, are not brutes; they are merely undeveloped men.” Or again, we may say with M. Best, whose testimony cannot be suspected in such a matter, that in their development apes do not resemble man, and, conversely, that the human type when degraded does not resemble the ape.
IX. From the pithecoid man of Darwin and Haeckel, from the speechless man who used his teeth as weapons, to the man of our age, the distance is still very great. How has it been filled up? How has this intelligence been developed which is able in many cases to hold nature herself in subjection? It is Wallace who has especially answered this question in the name of the theory of which he is one of the founders. We shall see at the same time that he admits the imperfection of this theory, when he discusses the peculiar attributes of the human species.
It is well known that this naturalist shares with Darwin and M. Naudin, the honour of having sought in natural selection for an explanation of organic origins. But our fellow countryman has confined himself to a sketch the fundamental character of which he has recently entirelymodified. Darwin has embraced the problem as a whole and in its details; he has added to his first work several publications upon subjects very different in appearance, but all of which tend to the same end. He may with justice be considered as the chief of the school.
Wallace, who almost anticipated Darwin in the publication of ideas which are common to both, recognises him as his master on all occasions. He has discussed a small number of points in special memoirs which never cover much ground. From not attempting the solution of all the questions suggested by the theory, he has neither met with so many or such serious difficulties as his eminent rival. This, perhaps, explains the fact that he generally shows himself more precise and logical. He therefore, always possessed considerable authority among the partisans of Darwinism, until he published his special views on man.
According to Wallace,immediate and personal utilityis the only cause which setsselectionin action. This is fundamentally the theory of Darwin; but the latter has allowed himself to be influenced by comparisons or metaphors, which have raised sharp criticisms, which have perhaps deceived him, and which he employs more or less to evade his difficulties. We never meet with the same in Wallace, who accepts all the consequences to which his absolute principle leads him.
According to Wallace,utility aloneis able to account for the manner in which inferior animal forms could have produced apes, and afterwards a being having almost all the physical characters of man as he is now. Thisracelived in herds scattered throughout the hot regions of the ancient continent. It was not, however, wanting in true sociability; it possessed the perception of sensations, but was incapable of thought; moral sense and sympathetic feelings were unknown to it. It was still only amaterial outlineof the human being, yet superior to thetailed manof Darwin, and to the pithecoid man of Haeckel.
Towards the earlier part of the tertiary period, addsWallace,an unknown causebegan to accelerate the development of the intelligence in this anthropoid being. It soon played a preponderating part in the existence of man. The perfection of this faculty became incomparablymore usefulthan any other organic modification. Henceforward the powerful modifying agent of selection acted necessarily almost entirely in this direction. The physical characters already acquired remained almost unaltered, while the organs of the intelligence and the intelligence itself were perfected more and more in each generation. Animals unaffected by thisunknown causewhich separates us from them, continued to undergo morphological transmutations, so that since the Miocene epoch there has been a great change in the terrestrial fauna. With man only did the form remain the same. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised to find in the Quaternary epoch skulls like those of Denise and Engis, resembling those of men of the present age.
The superiority acquired by the intelligence has, moreover, removed our race for ever from the law of the action ofmorphological transmutations. His intellectual and moral faculties only are from this time subject to the power of selection, which will cause the disappearance of inferior races and their replacement by a new race, the lowest individual of which would be, in our time, a superior man.
After having read the pages, of which I have just made a summary, we cannot but be surprised to find Wallace declare that natural selection by itself is incapable of producing from ananthropoid animal, a man such as we find in the most savage nations known to us. He thus makes the human species an exception to the laws, which, according to him, rule all other living beings. There is a double interest in following Darwin’s rival in this new path.
Wallace begins by reminding us that natural selection restsentirelyupon the principle ofimmediate utility, relative only to the conditions of the struggle maintained at the time by the individuals constituting the species. Darwin in all his works declares, on different occasions, this sameprinciple, upon which rests, in fact, all his statements upon adaptation, the possibility ofretrogressive transmutations, etc.
It results necessarily from this principle, that selection cannot producevariations in any way injuriousto any being whatever. Darwin has often declared that a single well-attested case of this kind would destroy his whole theory.
But it is evident, adds Wallace, that selection is as incapable of producing auseless variation; it cannot then develop an organ in proportions which would go beyond its degree ofpresent utility.
Now Wallace shews very clearly that in the savage there are organs whose development is out of all proportion with theirpresent utility, and even faculties and physical characters which are either useless or injurious, at least to the individual. “But,” says he, “if it can be proved that these modifications, though dangerous or useless at the time of their first appearance, have become much more useful, and are now indispensable to the complete development of the intellectual and moral nature of man, we ought to believe in the existence of an intelligent action, foreseeing and providing for the future, just as we should do, when we see a breeder set to work to produce a definite improvement in any direction in any cultivated plant or domestic animal.”
The relative development of the body and the brain, the organ of intelligence, is one of the points upon which our author insists most strongly. The height of the orang, he says, is almost equal to that of man; the gorilla is much taller and bigger. Nevertheless, if we represent by ten the average volume of the brain in the anthropoid apes, this same volume will be represented by twenty-six in savages, and by thirty-two in civilised men. The English naturalist also makes the remark, that among savages, the Esquimaux, for instance, we find individuals the capacity of whose skull almost reaches the maximum which is given for the most highly developed nations.
Finally, Wallace, relying upon the experiments andcalculations of Galton, admits distinctly that though the brain of savages is to that of civilised man in the proportion of five to six, the intellectual manifestations are, at the most, that of one to one thousand. The material development is, then, out of all proportion to the function. A brain, a little more voluminous than that of the gorilla, would, in the eyes of the eminent traveller, be perfectly sufficient for the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, of Australia, Tasmania, and Tierra del Fuego.
Wallace explains the development of the ideas of justice and benevolence by the advantages which would result from them to the tribe and to each individual. But faculties essentiallyindividual, and withoutimmediateutility to others, are not subject, according to him, to selection. “How,” says he, “could the struggle for existence, the victory of the most fitted and natural selection give any aid to the development of mental faculties,” such as ideal conceptions of space and time, of eternity and infinity, the artistic feeling, abstract ideas of number and form, without which arithmetic and geometry are impossible?
For a much more cogent reason, the development of the moral sense in the savage cannot be accounted for by considerations taken fromutility, whetherindividualorcollective. Wallace insists upon this point at some length; he quotes examples which prove that this feeling exists, in all which is most delicate and most opposed to utilitarian notions, among the most savage tribes of Central India. We could give many examples of this fact; among others, that the Red-skins have the greatest respect for their word of honour, though it should entail torture and death.
Our author bases numerous arguments upon the physical examination of man. “It is perfectly certain,” he says, “that natural selection could not have produced the present naked body of man from an ancestor covered with hair, for such a modification, far from being useful, would be injurious, at least in certain respects;” in civilised man a number of movements are executed by the hand of which savageshave not the slightest idea, although no anatomical difference exists in the structure of the superior members; the larynx of our singers is constructed similarly to that of savages, and, nevertheless, what a contrast between the sounds produced!
From all these facts Wallace concludes that the brain, hand, and larynx of savages possesslatent aptitudes, which being temporarilyuselesscannot be attributed tonatural selection. Man, moreover, has not the power of acquiring them himself. Foreign intervention therefore is necessary, for the explanation of their existence. Wallace attributes this intervention to asuperior intelligencewhich acted on the human species, just as the latter has acted on the rock-pigeon to produce from it the pouter or the carrier, and which employed analogous processes.
In short,natural selection, regulated by the laws of nature only, is sufficient to produce wild species;artificialorhuman selectioncan produce improved races of animals and plants; a kind ofdivine selectionmust have produced the present man, and can alone bring him to the highest pitch of intellectual and moral development.
In advancing this latter hypothesis, Wallace declares that it no more impairs the theory of natural selection than the latter is weakened by the fact of artificial selection. Few, I think, will accept this proposition. The chief apology for Darwinism in the eyes of men of science, its great charm to all its partisans, lies in the pretensions which it puts forward of connecting organic origins, those of man as well as those of plants, with the single action of second causes; and to explain the present state of living beings by physical and physiological laws, just as geology and astronomy explain the present state of the material world entirely by the general laws of matter. In making the intervention of anintelligent willnecessary for the realisation of the human being, Wallace has set himself in opposition to the very essence of the theory. Such is the opinion of most Darwinists, who have treated him somewhat as a deserter.
I am not therefore called upon to examine this latter hypothesis of Wallace. I am, however, at liberty to state that most of the facts, which have induced one of the founders of Darwinism to separate from his chief upon so important a point, retain all their value as objections. The mistake of Wallace consists in failing to see that his statements upon the subject of man apply equally to animals, and Claparède has justly reproached him with a want of logic on this point. He has been less happy in the answers which he has made to his old ally. Doubtless, he who regards the question exclusively from a Darwinian point of view, and accepts as true everything which I have endeavoured to shew to be false, will readily find a solution for many of the difficulties raised by Wallace. But his statements uponlatent aptitudes, upon the superior faculties of the human mind, and upon the moral sense, are very difficult to refute.Claparède has onlyalluded to the former. Darwin has attempted to go further; but his theories and hypotheses upon these important questions do not appear to me to have given much satisfaction to the most devoted of his followers. I cannot here enter into a discussion, which, to have any value, should be carried to some length, and I refer the reader to the work upon theDescent of Man, and to my articles in the Journal des Savants.
X. I cannot close this short account of the origins, which have been attributed to man during late years, without mentioning the new theory which has lately been put forward by an eminent botanist, to whose works I have often had to allude. M. Naudin has been one of the most important of Darwin’s precursors. Six years before the English naturalist, he compared the action exercised by natural forces in the production ofspeciesto the methods used by man in obtainingraces; he admitted thederivationandfiliationof species; he compared the vegetable kingdom to a tree “where roots, mysteriously hidden in the depths of cosmogenic time, have produced a limitednumber of branches successively divided and sub-divided. The first branches represent the primordial types of the kingdom, the subsequent ramifications the existing species.” We cannot fail to recognise in these words an idea very similar to Darwinism.
M. Naudin now proposes anevolution theorywhich is very different. He “entirely excludes the hypothesis of natural selection, unless the sense of the word is changed so as to make it synonymous withsurvival.” He rejects no less strongly the idea ofgradual transmutations, which require millions of years to effect the transmutation of a single plant. He insists, on the contrary, upon thesuddennesswith which most of the variations observed in plants have been produced, and regards it as a representation of what must have taken place in the successive genesis of living beings. Let us remark in passing, that Darwin, in the last edition of his work recognises the reality of thesesudden leaps, which have taken place without transitions between one generation and another, and confesses that he has not taken sufficient account of them in his earlier writings.
M. Naudin admits the existence of aprotoplasmaorprimordial blastema, the origin of which he does not pretend to explain nor its entrance into action. Under the influence of theorgano-plasticorevolutive forcethere were formedproto-organismsof a very simple structure, asexual, and endowed with the power of producing by buds and with a great activitymeso-organisms, similar to the first, though already more complicated. With each generation forms are multiplied, and become more pronounced, and nature rapidly passes on to theadult state. The beings in question were not, however,species. They were not complete beings, but merely a kind oflarvæ, whose sole duty was to serve as transitions between the primitive blastema and the definite forms. Dispersed in different regions of the globe, they have carried everywhere the germs of future forms whichevolutionhad to produce from them. Fromthecreativecharacter which distinguished it at first, the evolutive force exhausted by its very action, acquired apreservativecharacter. Forms are nowintegrated. They preserve, however, a residue ofplasticity; they vary under the influence of certain conditions, and hence results the multitude of forms which the same species now presents.
The proto- and meso-organisms contained in themselves, each according to its position in the order of evolution, the rudiments of kingdoms, branches, classes, orders, families, and genera. Points where they were fixed, became so manycentres of creation. Moreover, they have not engendered simultaneously all the forms which they were capable of producing. There have been considerable intervals between the production of living beings, which explains why groups of the same order have not been contemporaneous.
Organic types, even those least marked, have not passed into each other. The paths followed by the evolutive force have always been divergent. “Let us picture to ourselves,” says M. Naudin, “the meso-organism which has been the source of the mammalia; ever since its appearance, all the mammalian orders, including the human order, were fermenting in it. Before their appearance, they were virtually distinct, in the sense that the evolutive forces were already distributed, and the method of their effecting, each in its proper time, the production of these different orders, already defined. This is a similar phenomenon to that of the evolution of organs in a growing embryo, where we see springing from a common and uniform origin, parts at first similar, but which are impelled in a determinate direction each by its own particularfuture.”
M. Naudin, as we see, in order to support his theory, appeals to the embryogenic phenomena, to which the Darwinists also look for testimony in favour of their doctrines. The learned botanist, however, attaches much more importance to the metamorphoses which take place subsequently to the egg. He recognisestrue proto-organismsin the pro-embryo of mosses, in the larvæ of insects, and ofmany other inferior animals. He lays particular stress upon the phenomena of alternate generation, as representing what has already taken place, or better, as representing in part “the ancient and general process of creation.”
According to M. Naudin, man was subject to the common law, and the Mosaic account is at the same time very true and full of instruction. In its first phase, mankind was concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them. This is Adam, who sprang from a primordial blastema calledclayin the Bible. At this epoch, he was, properly speaking, neither male nor female; the two sexes were not yet differentiated. “It is from this larval form of mankind, that the evolutive force effected the completion of the species. For the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis.” This is the sleep mentioned in the Bible, during which the work of differentiation was accomplished, to use the words of M. Naudin, by a process of germination, similar to that of medusæ and ascidians. Mankind, thus constituted physiologically, would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production of the various great human races.
Passing over the comparisons established by M. Naudin, I will confine myself to a single observation upon all these ideas; properly speaking, they do not form ascientific theory.
When we fertilise by artificial means the egg of a frog, we know that we determine an entire series of phenomena, which results in the formation of a germ, then in that of an embryo, which will be established by a succession of metamorphoses, in that of a tadpole, which will be equally subject to metamorphoses, and in that of a definite animal which will assume all the characters of the species. So far as man canmake a being, wemake a frogwhen we fertilise an egg.
If thefirst cause, with which M. Naudin immediatelyconnects his primordial blastema, has made potentially in this blastema all past, present, and future beings, as well as the power of producing them at the proper time, with all their distinctive characters,Ithas, in reality,createdall these beingsen masse. We do not see what kind of action is reserved forsecond causes; unless it is, perhaps, the power of accelerating or retarding, of obstructing or favouring the appearance of types of different value, when number and relations have been immutably determined beforehand. But M. Naudin has not even mentioned their part in thisevolutionof the organic world. That science which is only occupied with second causes has, therefore, nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin. It can neither praise nor criticise it.
XI. To explain the origin of the world in which we live, that of beings surrounding us, and our own, is evidently one of the most general aspirations of the human mind. The most civilised nations, as well as the most savage tribes, have satisfied this want in one way or another. Even Australians, whatever may have been said to the contrary, have their rudimentary cosmogony, which those who have taken some interest in the matter, have made them relate.
In all cases, man has at first connected his cosmogonic conceptions with his religious belief. Then among the most advanced ancient nations, independent spirits have sought for an explanation of nature in natural phenomena. But from want of precise knowledge, all their hypothetical conceptions have no fundamental value.
With us also, the purely religious cosmogony has long been accepted as an article of faith. What was called science was confounded with dogma, itself relying upon interpretations of the Bible in harmony with the knowledge of the time.
Science, properly so called, is entirely the creation of modern times. The rapidity, the grandeur of its developments, fill one of the most magnificent pages of human history. Relying entirely upon experiment and observation,it could not fail to contradict certain beliefs, which were drawn from a book written in an entirely different sense to its own, and explained by the aid of data which were incomplete or false. Between the representatives of the past and those of the new era, the struggle was inevitable. It needed to be sharp, and it was so. It is now keener than ever.
Circumstances of every kind have destroyed in many minds the old faith of our ancestors. Carried away by the general stream, many in the matter of religious belief, have arrived at absolute denial. The need of an explanation of the universe is still felt by these uneasy minds; and since they have no belief in the Bible, they have turned their attention to science.
The latter has already given them magnificent answers in astronomy and in geology. Before irrefutable facts, the later upholders of the ancient biblical interpretations have either been obliged to withdraw, or to be silent. No one believes in the immobility of the earth, in creation having taken place in six days of twenty-four hours each, or in the simultaneous appearance of all animals, or all plants. Astronomy has made known to us the genesis of worlds; geology has taught us how continents and seas, valleys and mountains are formed, thus evolving some of the grandest results due to the action of second causes in the inorganic empire.
There remains the organic empire, plants, animals, and man himself. Here curiosity is excited, and the want of explanation becomes more pressing, but unfortunately observation and experiment are equally at fault.
Some men, eminent in science and in the richness of their imaginations, have thought themselves able to do without it. Reviving the methods of the Greek philosophers, they have thought it possible to explain living nature and the entire universe, by connecting certain facts with conceptions, which are almost entirely intellectual. Once started in this path, they are readily elated at their own thoughts. When the positive knowledge which has been accumulated by the long-continuedlabours of their illustrious predecessors, has embarrassed their speculations, they have at once, so to speak, thrown it overboard; they have pushed to the utmost the more or less logical development of theirà priori, and have nothing but irony and disdain for those who hesitate to follow them.
These men could not but excite admiration. They spoke in the name of science alone; by its means they replied to aspirations perfectly justifiable on such a topic; they produced theories which charmed by their fulness and the apparent precision of their explanations. They were able consequently to influence even those men of science who had not gone to the bottom of things, and much more so the general public, who are always satisfied to believe what they are told.
The nature of the resistance which they have met with from time to time was calculated to increase the splendour of their triumph. Men as imprudent as ill-judged have attacked them in the name of dogma. Scientific discovery has degenerated into controversy; both parties have become excited, and in the two camps it has been considered necessary to deny all the statements of the enemy; they have vied with each other in violence, andsavants, who pretended to speak in the name of free thought, have not shown themselves the less intolerant.
I will only remind the one party of the trial of Galileo, and the other of the theories of Voltaire denying the existence of fossils.
Others have resisted the impulse of the time; they have remained faithful to method, the mother of modern science; they have carefully preserved their inheritance of solid and precise knowledge, acquired from past centuries. They cannot on that account be accused of acting from routine or be considered as retrograding. As warmly as the most ardent partisans of the so-called advanced theories, they have applauded all the progress, and have received with equal favour new ideas, on the condition of exposing them toexperiment and observation. But when they meet with questions the solution of which is at present impossible, and will perhaps always be so, they have not hesitated to answer:—WE DO NOT KNOW;—and when they find purely metaphysical theories are being imposed upon them, they have protested in the name of experiment and observation.
I venture to say that I have always remained faithful to the ranks of this phalanx, to which the future distinctly belongs. For this reason, to those who question me upon the problem of our origin, I do not hesitate to answer in the name of science:—I do not know.
I do not on that account anathematise those who consider they ought to act otherwise, nor do I greatly blame their boldness. The study of second causes has enabled man to explain scientifically the present constitution of the inorganic world; and it is quite legitimate to attempt to account for the present state of the organic world by causes of the same nature; perhaps success will one day crown our efforts, and should they for ever remain unrewarded, as they have hitherto done, they will still possess a certain utility. These efforts of the imagination provoke new research, make new openings, and thus render a service to real science in the world of facts, as well as in that of ideas. If Darwin had not been actuated by his preconceptions, he would probably never have accomplished his excellent work upon the 150 races of pigeons, nor developed his theory of the struggle for existence and natural selection, which accounts for so many facts.
Unfortunately, from having forgotten the works of their predecessors, Darwin and his followers have drawn erroneous conclusions from these premises. They imagine they have given explanations when they have given none. This is what I have endeavoured to show. I have been obliged to resume the debate; it is for the impartial and unprejudiced reader to decide between us.