The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

All these phenomena are perfectly new and have no analogy with those which we have noticed in the preceding kingdoms. They evidently justify the formation of an equally important group. The animal kingdom is thus universally admitted, independently of every theory which attempts to explain its characters.

Facts radically different cannot be attributed to the same cause. We must admit, then, that the characteristic phenomena of the animal depend upon something different to those met with in the vegetable or mineral kingdoms. They are, moreover, united by such intimate relations, that it would be impossible not to attribute them to a single cause. From motives already mentioned we will give a name to this Unknown Cause, and, making use of an expression already established, though open, I can see, to more than one criticism, we will call it the Animal Mind (l’âme animale).

Does the animal mind liberate the beings it animates from the inferior forces? By no means, for we find them repeated with all their characteristics. In order to raise the least of its organs, the animal must contend with weight; it cannot perform the smallest movement without the intervention of physico-chemical phenomena; it cannot breathe, and, therefore, cannot live, without constantly consuming some of its constituents. In the animal, moreover, just as much as in the plant, the inanimate forces, etherodynamy especially, appear in their double character of constancy and of ubiquity in the accomplishment of phenomena, and of subordination to life, which governs their action in the animal as in the plant.

Moreover, a large part is reserved for purely vegetative life in animals of the highest order. The entire organism is formed without any intervention of the animal mind. Again, a certain number of organs always escape more or less from the influence of the latter, and seem to be subject to life alone. Now these organs are precisely those upon which nutrition, and consequently the constitution and duration of the whole, depend. Thus life, which reigned supreme in the vegetable kingdom, now in its turn, appears in a subordinate character. We might say that it was essentially entrusted with the organisation and maintenance of the instruments of the animal mind.

As to the latter, even where its intervention is most questioned, it is only revealed to observation by voluntary movements. Now personal experiment and the faculty of reasoning, are necessary to enable us to comprehend the nature, and appreciate the signification of these movements. It is only by regarding himself as normal, that man can judge of the animal, a subject to which I shall presently return.

Phenomena of four kinds are then characteristic of the Animal Kingdom: phenomena of the Keplerian movement; physico-chemical phenomena; vital phenomena; and phenomena of voluntary movement; attributable to the action of four forces: gravitation, etherodynamy, life, and the animal mind.

VII. Although the preceding statements are so much abridged, I have thought it well to give the condensed results in the following table:

	EMPIRES.	KINGDOMS.	PHENOMENA.	CAUSES.
		{ Sidereal	{ Phenomena of the Keplerian
		{ (de Candolle)	{ movement	Gravitation.
		{
	Inorganic	{ Mineral	{ Phenomena of the Keplerian
	(Pallas).	{ (Linnæus)	{ movement	Gravitation.
A		{	{ Physico-chemical phenomena	Etherodynamy.
l
l			{ Phenomena of the Keplerian
		{ Vegetable	{ movement	Gravitation.
B		{ (Linnæus)	{ Physico-chemical phenomena	Etherodynamy.
o		{	{ Vital phenomena	Life.
d		{
i	Organic	{	{ Phenomena of the Keplerian
e	(Pallas).	{	{ movement	Gravitation.
s		{ Animal	{ Physico-chemical phenomena	Etherodynamy.
		{ (Linnæus)	{ Vital phenomena	Life.
			{ Phenomena of voluntary
			{ movement	The Animal Mind.

From this table, and the expansions which it sums up, rise the following conclusions.