CHAPTER III.
THE ORDER OF BIMANA.
The naturalist who has in our time most interested himself in the classification of vertebrata, Prince Charles Bonaparte, gives his own opinion as follows:—“Man may be considered, in one point of view, as constituting one single family; in another, as constituting an entire kingdom.” But he also adds that in this second case, “the characteristics are no longer in harmony with the rest of the system.” In fact, we can hardly at the same time admit both the general principles of classification, as followed at the present day, and also the human kingdom. One out of these two things must fall to the ground. The system of classifying mammalia,—adopted in all its uniformity by the two Geoffroys, the Cuviers, De Blainville, and Owen,—cannot be maintained without involving mankind. If man were a kingdom by himself, this classification would be a false one; for ought we not then, at least, to create a cetaceous kingdom, a bird kingdom, etc.? As for ourselves, the problem has been already solved, and we hesitated to come into collision with this new inconsistency. Harmony is the necessary condition of every really natural system. We cannot arbitrarily give a different value to the same characteristics; and, reciprocally, the divisions of the same order ought necessarily to agree with characteristics of the same value.
It has been thought necessary, at least, to create for mankind one of those great divisions into which the mammalia are divided. An Order ofBimanahas been created. We do not hesitate to say that this was a purely theoretical creation; and we will go even farther, we declare it could only be producedin a country where coverings for the feet are in daily and universal wear. We must not go into the midst of our great cities if we wish to study thezoologicalcharacteristics of man.
Is there any reason for the Order ofBimanawhen we consider man in his state of nature? is it “the immediate and necessary results of natural analogies, respectively valued according to their degree?” “No!” was the answer of Étienne Geoffroy, in his eloquent pages, “this Order must be abolished.”98
É. Geoffroy saw workmen in the bazaars at Cairo employ their great toe for numberless prehensile uses. A Nubian, or a negro on horseback, generally takes the stirrup-leather between his great toe and the others; all the Abyssinian cavalry ride in this manner.99If the fact reported by Bory de Saint-Vincent about the rosin-makers of the Landes is not confirmed,100we have at least seen the Barabras Nubians ascend the great yard of the Niledahabiehsby seizing with the great toe the rope underneath them101which supports the sail.
When the action of the foot is not paralysed by the size of the shoe, which is elsewhere the exception, it is pre-eminently adapted for laying hold of anything. And if certain kinds of men seem to us very fit for the kind of existence led by the Quadrumana,—if they seem to us constituted in order to live in trees, there is nothing there which ought to surprise us, nothing but what is quite natural and quite consistent.
It has been truly said, that man isfrugivorous. All the details of his intestinal canal, and above all, his dentition, prove it in the most decided manner. He ought, therefore, from his origin, to have all his organism modified in harmony with this alimentation. Like the apes, he ought to possess such means of locomotion as would enable him to procure the food specially adapted to his wants. And therefore, what is there astonishing in the fact that among certain races, which are scarcelyremoved from a state of nature, we find the remains of a mode of life which was general at their origin.
Modera, quoted by Mr. Crawfurd, relates that one day, three naturalists, travelling on the northern coast of New Guinea for scientific purposes, found the trees full of natives, of both sexes, who leaped from branch to branch like monkeys, with their weapons fastened on their backs, gesticulating, shouting, and laughing.102This singular race, of which we have before spoken, and which has been noticed in Hindoostan by many eye-witnesses, seems to live half its time in trees. We have the right to ask, if the confused remembrance of such a race and such habits was not the origin of the tradition which served as a foundation for the poem of Valmîki. Rama goes to the rescue of his wife, Sita, who had been carried off by the evil genius, Râvana; he is assisted in this enterprise by a valiant army of monkeys, and at every moment expressions are used in the account which recall the monkey-like and quadrumanous nature of the combatants103. In casting our eyes over the first groups composing the mammalian series, we find some apes who walk upon the sole of the feet and upon the palm of the hand; others, who walk upon the sole of the foot and the joints of the folded hands,—a very peculiar method of progression,—of a strange and unexpected nature, and which alone would serve to characterise a group; these are the anthropomorphous apes: lastly, another mammal who walks only on the soles of the feet, the form of the body and legs rendering the anterior members quite unfit to be used in walking; this is man.
The first apes of which we are going to speak, walking upon the sole of the feet and the palms of their hands are, then, unreservedlyquadrupeds. In this particularity they resemble other mammalia, among whom the pectoral, as well as the abdominal, members are chiefly organs of locomotion; only these apes also use their four extremities for another purpose,which appears to be entirely secondary and derived,—that ofprehension. And it is precisely because the organisation of their members is purposely modified by reason of a new, special, and uncommon function, that they have been able to furnish us with a sufficiently defined characteristic, so that we may specify an order,—that of thequadrumana.
Among the anthropomorphous apes, the folded or bent hand seems an organ especially adapted for prehension,104serving, in a secondary manner, for locomotion; whilst the foot, the especial organ of locomotion, preserves the faculty of seizing anything by means of an opposing thumb.
In man, the superior member is not at all fit for walking; and the inferior, used for locomotion, as in the two preceding groups, also preserves its faculty of prehension: observation proves this as well as anatomy.
We see that there again; as everywhere else in an organic point of view, the anthropomorphous quadrumana are a veritable transition from man to the other families of apes. It has been proposed to extend the signification of the word hand, and to apply it to every terminal extremity of a member capable of seizing anything, including the paw of the lemur and the claws of the parrot. We are inclined to restrict the name, like Linnæus, De Blainville, and Cuvier, to an extremity formed of fingers, and with anopposing thumb. But even in confining the definition to such a narrow compass, we think we have shown that man, in reality, isquadrumanous, this definition applying equally to the foot, where the great toe serves—among half the people, at least, on the earth—for the purpose of prehension, and remains, as É. Geoffroy has remarked,quite separate from the other toes, when the foot is not deformed by boots or shoes:105therefore, nothing more can be said in favour of an Order ofBimana, or a human kingdom.
We must return to the subdivision proposed by Charles Bonaparte,—afamily. Man constitutes a simple family in the Order ofQuadrumana, distinguished by characteristics precisely equal in importance to those which make a difference between other similar groups in the class of mammalia, that which even comes to the assistance of the adversaries of the human kingdom, and the partisans of the zoological system. For want of positive characteristics taken from the extremities, which could never,—in the eyes of true naturalists, as we have just said,—favour a serious distinction between man and other quadrumana, a characteristic in dentition has been discovered, remarkable for its constancy even in the most degraded and animal-like races, and which, first and foremost, distinguishes man from the group which immediately follows him in the zoological series. This characteristic, upon which Professor Owen has, in many places, insisted,—like the two Cuviers,—but with an entirely new vigour,106is the contiguity of the teeth and thecontinuityof their crowns, not one of which ever extends beyond the level of the others.107
Thus it is for man, like the rest of the mammalia; it is the dental system which gives us the best characteristic. A new proof that the study of mankind and that of animals ought to be conducted in one and the same manner; a proof, indeed, that these two studies are two parallel branches, intimately united, of one and the same science.