CHAPTER I.
THE HUMAN KINGDOM.
Above inorganic matter, plants, and animals, is placed Man.
Here, without any doubt, man is indeed the first of the organisms, when one tries to place in linear series all those which move on our planet. It is, also, not hisrelativeposition in the living world that it is difficult to discover; it is what we may call histrue place. What is, in other terms, the value of the differences which separate man from other mammalia? and at what distance is he from the animal that immediately follows him in this linear series which we are supposing? To examine what man is with respect to the highest orders of mammalia, and in a more general manner, to animals, is the primordial question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical elements, absolutely submitted to the same exigences of development, nutrition, and reproduction, as animals. Ought not all this to make us think that we were not altogether made of so immaterial a substance as the philosophers have generally been satisfied to believe? This has not been the case.
Two systems—two theories, are before us. The one pretends that man is but the first among animals, that he issimilarto them in the clear and precise sense in which this term is taken in geometry, designing qualities, which may differad infinitum, but which still may be comparable.
Another system, supported by the most illustrious names, makes of man a sort of special entity, differing from other organised beings by the distinct and clear nature of his intelligence.It is an opinion adopted and defended to the last by a learned man, to whose memory we cannot,en passant, prevent ourselves from rendering the homage which is his due, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. We find in the second volume of hisHistoire Naturelle Générale, almost a return to Cartesian ideas. According to him animals do not think, they possess only that sensibility that plants have not.23And the celebrated naturalist agreed with the adoption of a human kingdom, appearing as the crowning-point of the organic and inorganic kingdoms,24and as distinct from the second as this is from the third.
Before proceeding further, we may be permitted to make one preliminary remark. We may thus declare it:—
Proposition.—Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous Apes in his Physical Organism.Whether one is a partisan or not of the “Human Kingdom,” this resemblance is a fact which it will be in no person’s ideas to contest. And it is not merely in the external forms; we find it even greater if, going to the foundation of the facts, we give our attention to the essential parts composing the body,—to the anatomical elements,—to those delicate particles visible only in the microscope, and which always show, among animals of the same group, a marvellous uniformity.
It is here where, if not an impossibility, at least a sort of contradiction presents itself to the defenders of the “human kingdom;” for there are two organisms, scarcely different, at the service of two directing powers, of two intelligences absolutely and radically dissimilar. Doubtless all the forces of organised matter are not known to us, but does not this resemblance, though even a superficial one, surprise us; and does it not seem that every organism constituted directly by reason of the influences which it is qualified to receive or totransmit, ought to vary like these influences, and in the same proportion?
It is very easy to admit that there is more distance between the intelligence of man and that of the anthropomorphous apes, than between the intelligence of these last and that of the smooth-brained squirrel, and that at the same time the immense distance is only marked in the first case by very superficial variations of the organ of intellectual manifestations, whilst, in the second case, this lesser distance is explained by enormous differences.
To admit, with Bossuet,25that this superior intelligence, the appanage of man, is not attached to the organs reserved for the manifestations of this inferior intelligence common to man and animals, is to return to Descartes, and this is to fall again into new difficulties. Will this superior intelligence, thus detached from the material world, be then inaccessible to physical violence?
Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the faculty of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this servitude, remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher sphere? No, by the compression of the brain man loses consciousness like the animal. It is material substance, which, brought into contact with the anatomical elements of the nervous centres, can excite,26trouble,27or depress,28the intelligence of animals, and leave no part of the human intellect untouched.
Let us reconsider these two systems: viz., that man is similar to animals as much by his intelligence as by his bodily formation; or that he differs from them entirely. And now we have two clearly stated theories before us for our consideration. To embrace either one or the otherà priori, merely for the sake of propriety or sentiment, would be an arbitrary proceeding, essentially faulty, and contrary to all rule; as innatural science, no other assistance is required exceptfacts, in order to explain the origin of anything. However, without prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man is of himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, a sort ofmicrocosm, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, may be perhaps a flattering unction to our soul;29it does little or nothing for science. Anthropology may have its special means of inquiry; perhaps these means are still to be found, but she will stand alone—without profit to the other branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which will not grow, casting all its leaves. If not—if man enters into the common course of life—if he is merely a part of one grand organic whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points of contact and intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised by the principle of universality, becomes a science by which we may profit; it gives to her sisters, the other natural sciences, that assistance which she herself receives from them; the paths widen; the science of organisation becomes easier, more certain, and more enlarged;synthesis, displaying its powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown; the mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, “of not understanding” animals, will study their intelligence, and will search their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we are learning to know them, like Galen the inspired, who obtained a knowledge of human anatomy by dissecting a monkey.
Let us endeavour to obtain an exact idea of this barrier, apparently impossible to be overcome, which separates man from the brute creation. Whether we compare him to the highest order of primates living on trees—this geniuswhich is the glory of humanity, which has raised to such a height both science and art—or only to the last from among us, members of the great family rejoicing in a white skin,thenthe transition is brutish, and it seems that an abyss separates us from the famouswild man of the woods, so celebrated in the travels of the last century. It is thus that the human kingdom has been established, comparing the two extremes, without taking account of the intermediate terms.
Let us put on one side, for an instant, the question of origin. A race, or a family, endowed with a characteristic and united activity, by the form of mind peculiar to itself, with a prepossession for reuniting in a cluster the work of every individual intelligence, forms out of it a sort of thought common to all, and transmits this inheritance from generation to generation. One can understand that, as time goes on, this family, or this race, will arrive at a degree of civilisation very different to that which it showed at the time of its origin. The concurrence of so many intelligent modes of action will gently, but naturally, lead it to purely metaphysical ideas—to the intricate idea of a divinity, etc. But, in such an arrangement, each one is, after all, but the representative of a secular intellectual work, accustomed since the cradle, without any self-knowledge of the fact, to natural habits and language. We ask if it is right to compare a being thus raised and exalted by his own means with an animal which has no more remote past than its own birth?30Let us take, then, for the sake of comparing them with animals, those people in whom life is in some sort individual, among whom no person adds anything to transmitted inheritance,—among whom even this inheritance has originally come from outside, and who, we know not why, having arrived at the lowest ebb of civilisation, have not been able to improve or perfect it.
Some may say that they simply copy everything. Some may say that the huge weapons used by the inhabitants of Central Africa and Australia have only become known byimportation; that the savage is civilised at a given moment by contact with some foreign nation—by imitation, a faculty which is possessed, within well marked limits, by the highest order of apes; and then, that progress has been stopped when these people return to their own homes. How can we explain otherwise, for example, that the Northern Esquimaux, living on the ice by the borders of creeks and bays, can make dresses and arms, and have never been able to construct a machine capable of bearing them upon the waters?31
If we break up one continuous series, and compare together the two first terms with two of the fragments of the series, they will in reality appear entirely distinct; in fact, almost impossible to be connected with one common type. But, if we compare the last term of one of these partial series with the first term of the following, then the differences are blended, because the transformations do not happen to hide the parts so much that one cannot recognise their fundamental unity. We discover, for example, that in the animal series, such a crustacean is almost a mollusk, such a reptile, such a mammal, almost a bird.32Differences are extinguished; those beings which were said to be most distant have become almost allied one to the other. We can only perceive one continuous series; so much so, indeed, that even where there are any unfilled spaces, or missing links, we consider ourselves almost justified in declaring the past existence (or the future one?) of some intermediate animal.
As for ourselves, the series of beings given by Bonnet and Leibnitz, so far as regards any ulterior phenomenon, resulting from the observation of beings who have not been of necessity created in this order, is true not only of the physical, but also of the intellectual world. Shall we desire to know what man has in common with the ape—what distance there is between the one and the other,—let us no longer putourselveson the stage, we who are privileged so to do; let us descend boldlythe steps of the human ladder, and let us see what we shall find as we do so.
Examples are not wanting of races placed so low, that they have quite naturally appeared to resemble the ape tribe. These people, much nearer than ourselves to a state of nature, deserve on that account every attention on the part of the anthropologist and the linguist, who may both discover, by their means, problems otherwise difficult or impossible to be solved. It is because we have not studied the psychological characters of these races, that we have fallen into such strange mistakes. What will become of all those superb theories concerning this superior intelligence of man, so entirely independent and disengaged from the world, on which so much praise is conferred? What will become of the unity of the human species, if we can prove that certain races are not a whit more intelligent than certain animals, and have no more idea of a moral world or of religion than they themselves have?
The most commonly quoted example is that of the aborigines of Australia. “They have always shown complete ignorance,” say both Lesson and Garnot,33“a sort ofmoral brutality.... A kind of highly developed instinct for discovering the food which is always difficult for them to obtainseems, among them, to have taken the place of most of the moral faculties of mankind.” If the English police did not watch very strictly, they would set at defiance every day, at least in the towns of their colonies, all the laws of public decency without any more thought than the monkeys in a menagerie.
In the account given of the American Expedition in 1838, Mr. Hale writes that they almost possess the stupidity of the brute, that they can only count up tofour, and some tribes only so far asthree. “The power of reasoning,” he says, “seems but imperfectly developed among them. The arguments used by the colonists to convince or persuade them are often such as they would use towards children or personswho are almost idiotic.”34MM. Quoy and Gaimard, whom no one will accuse of polygenist tendencies, give the following account of their interview with these miserable people. “Our presence seemed to cause them a sort of pleasure; and they endeavoured to explain their sensations on the subject with a loquacity to which we could not respond, seeing we did not understand their language. After this meeting they used to come to us, gesticulating and talking rapidly; they gave shrill screams, and if we answered in the same way, their delight was immense. Soon there was a change, and they did not hesitate to ask for something to eat, by the simple mode ofhitting themselves on the belly.”35The spectacle these travellers had before them is so sad and touching that they afterwards add, as if to satisfy their own consciences, “however, they are not stupid.” Doubtless, they are not; but they do not seem to deserve the epithet which the world gives to these beings, who appear so completely inferior to others. “Malicious as a monkey.”They are not stupid, and that is all.36The Australians are not exceptional in this; Bory de Saint Vincent has drawn for us a picture of the inhabitants of South Africa, a beautiful and fertile land, which is almost as sad. At the other end of the world, upon that ice-continent which surrounds the north pole, we find the same abjection.
Sir John Ross, lost among the ice, found himself among a race of people who had never seen an European; this English sailor, a strictly religious man, was peculiarly adapted to behold with indulgence the only beings who were near him, but although he was an attentive and scrupulous observer, and above all, a truly sincere man, he seemed to despair of finding in their minds the living spark for which he was searching. “The Esquimaux,” hesays, “is an animal of prey, with no other enjoyment than eating: and, guided by no principle and no reason, he devours as long as he can, and all that he can procure, like the vulture and the tiger.”37And, farther on, “The Esquimaux eats but to sleep, and sleeps but to eat again as soon as he can.”38We shall descend still lower, in order to find out men who are so degraded, that those who have seen them have stated, that if they were in thick bushes or the shadows of the forest, they would hardly have known whether they were apes or men. And, let attention be paid to this,—these wretched beings, almost deprived of human form, do not inhabit a poor or secluded country, but the continent of Asia, to the south of the Himalaya chain, in the centre of Hindoostan, in those regions which have been the cradle of several huge species of apes, at that epoch, doubtless, when the islands of the Indian Archipelago were joined to Asia, and formed one immense continent,—the land of the Malay race.39
In 1824, an English colonist, Mr. Piddington, a settler in the centre of Hindoostan (towards Palmow, Subhulpore, and the upper basin of the Nerbudda), relates40that he saw amongst a party of Dhangour workmen,—who came every year to work on his plantation,—a man and a woman who were extremely strange and uncouth, and whom the Dhangours themselves calledmonkey-people. They had a language of their own. From so much as could be understood by signs, it was discovered that they lived far beyond the country of the Dhangours, in the forests and in the mountains, and possessed few villages. It would seem that the man had fled with the woman in consequence of some misfortune, perhaps a murder. But at all events, they were found by the Dhangours lost in the woods, exhausted, and almost dead from hunger. They disappeared suddenly one night, just as Mr. Piddington hadmade arrangements to send them to Calcutta. It would seem from other information that a Mr. Trail, for many years Commissioner at Kuman, had also seen these extraordinary beings, and had even been so fortunate as to procure one of them, whose appearance fully justified the traditional name given to them by the natives. In fact, other evidence—some of it historical—may be added to this in order to prove the existence of such an inferior race in different parts of the Indian peninsula. Mr. Piddington thus describes him:—“He was short, flat-nosed, had pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles round the corners of the mouth and cheeks; his arms were disproportionately long, and there was a portion of reddish hair to be seen on the rusty-black skin. Altogether, if crouched in a dark corner or on a tree, he might have been mistaken for a large orang-utan.” It must be noticed that Mr. Piddington had travelled a great deal, and that he had acquired, even without his own knowledge, some experience in anthropology. He takes care to tell us that he had seen in their turn the Bosjesmen, the Hottentots, the Papous, the Alfourous, the aborigines of Australia, New Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands, which, indeed, gives great authority to the facts which he relates.41What, we may indeed exclaim, are these really men? After journeying over the beaten track, see how far we are from that Aryan family, the mistress of arts and science; how much we approach the brute, even if we have not already reached that point? We have descended; let us now raise the other mammalia to man, and in the highest degree to which we can attain, let us endeavour to measure the distance to the point we have just left. Let it be well understood, we shall only consider in this place the highest mammalia; for the question becomes more complicated on every side as soon as the difference in the organisms becomes more apparent. In regard to this, facts have often spoken for a long time, and thesavant, whose testimony insuch a case possesses most value, Professor R. Owen, has not feared to say, that the distinction between man and certain primates is the great difficulty felt by all anatomists.42Let us pass on to intellect.
All animals feel, understand, and think (M. Flourens and M. de Quatrefages), they dream, are capable of feeling distrust, fear, joy,43sorrow, jealousy, etc.; in fact, the entire list of human passions.44All this is amply proved by a thousand examples; who does not remember the accounts of seals, elephants, dogs, which have become celebrated, and which men who have lived a short time with animals may see repeated every day? Only read the admirable account given by Buffon of the intelligence of the dog; again, the detailed and valuable history which F. Cuvier has left us concerning the orang-outang in the Museum, without forgetting that this history could be neither complete nor perfect on account of the various circumstances in which the animal was placed, far from his own country, and under an ungenial sky.
Dr. Yvan, attached to the expedition which the French government sent to China in 1843,45has given us an account of an orang-outang at Borneo, which is, perhaps, the best plea in favour of the connexion between primates and mankind. Tuân, as this animal was called, began to dress himself directly a bit of any stuff, or cloth, got in his way.46On one occasion, when his master had taken a mangrove from him, “he uttered plaintive cries like a child when it is sulky. Thisconduct not having been so successful as he expected, he threw himself on his face upon the ground, struck the earth with his fist, screamed, cried, and howled, for more than half-an-hour.” When the mangrove was given back to him, he threw it at the head of his master.47It is a curious fact, but the particular friend of Tuân was a negro from Manilla. At Manilla, he accustomed himself to Tagal48manners, and played with the children. “One day, when Tuân was rolling on some matting with a little girl, about four or five years old, he stopped all of a sudden, and examined the child in a most minute and anatomical manner. The results of his investigations seemed to astonish him profoundly; he retired on one side, and repeated upon himself the same examination which he had made on his little playmate.” We may all remember the eloquent pages in Buffon, where, admitting the Adamic legend, he recounts the impressions of our first parents. Has not nature been here, we ask, a better historian than our naturalist, even with all his genius?
Over and above these facts, as their crowning-point, we must invoke as a witness the man who has carried farthest the spirit of philosophy in the natural sciences in France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. A cautious and profound observer, he mingled with the crowd which the orang drew to the Museum in 1836. Mistrusting his own judgment, he gathered the opinions of all those who surrounded him,—of all the visitors who, as he said, “came to observe as unprejudiced spectators, without any preconceived ideas, and without being hindered by those deplorable trammels which we call our rules of classification.”49The result surprised even Etienne Geoffroy himself. These visitors, so different one from the other, all united in this idea, “that the animal from Sumatra was neither a mannor an ape:neither one nor the other, that was what the mind of each person at once acknowledged.”
We might quote whole pages from this naturalist philosopher in which the elevation of his style strives with the grandeur of his ideas. “I never used my self-love,” he says, “in bringing forward other opinions against those of the visitors to the orang-outang ... I never drove back the torrent of information which I had the happiness of receiving from each separate mind.... I have faith in the soundness of popular opinions, the masses rejoicing in an instinctive good sense which makes them clear-headed, and renders them peculiarly able to seize the salient point of any question.” This was an excellent method, and showed the power of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
It is curious to compare with him another writer who, from within his study, invoked upon these questions, at least, that which we may calluniversal acquiescence,—it is Maupertuis. Speaking of the characteristics which make man different from animals, he says, “Simple good sense seizes these differences; they have always been felt, and there we behold one of those convictions which theuniversality and uniformity of all mencharacterise as the truth.”50
Maupertuis did not certainly know that the orang-outang,—a word which meanswild-man,—is no metaphor for the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago, and that in the country inhabited by the “long-nosed” Guenon,51the popular belief is that, being sharper than the others, he only keeps silent in order to preserve his liberty. Nothing can be more fallacious than these pretended truths, sustained merely byuniversal acquiescence. At first it was invoked as a proof, at a time when scarcely one-tenth of the inhabited world was known:52but let us proceed. In our own day, we know a little better what to make of this kind of proof, which science has abandoned to theologians. Experience has proved, day by day, what will become of this pretendeduniversality among mankind, of certain thoughts, certain sentiments, and certain aspirations.53
We shall see, farther on, that thecommunityof some of those intellectual manifestations, which many have wished to regard as general, is often restricted to one race alone amongst mankind, and limited in space by the boundaries of the continent occupied by this race. And now we see how anthropology in her turn, can, in all these points, assist even philosophy itself. For example, do we not feel that, from henceforward, the wordsbeautifulandrightcan mean nothing absolute; since whatever isbeautifulandrightupon a hemisphere, for any given intelligence, cannot be so in an opposite hemisphere,—cannot possibly be soin a mind otherwise formed and belonging to another race. To these two words we must, by means of anthropology, restore an exclusively relative value.54TheTruealone is absolute, unchangeable in both time and space. That alone reigns universally, and let us not forget this, it flourishes in science alone,—it is only to be found there.55