The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

It is true that the language of animals is most rudimentary and, in this respect, in harmony with the inferiority of their intelligence. We might say that it was almost entirely composed of interjections. Such as it is, however, this language is sufficient for the wants of the mammalia and birds who understand it perfectly, while man himself can learn it without very much trouble. The hunter can distinguish the accents of anger, love, pleasure, sorrow, the call and the signal of alarm and makes use of these indications as an unfailing guide, and often imitates these accents and cries in such a manner as to deceive the animal. Of course I exclude from the language of brutes, the song, properly so called, of birds, that of the nightingale for example. It appears to me void of all meaning, as are the notes of a singer, and I do not believe in the interpretation of Dupont de Nemours.

It is not, therefore, in the phenomena connected with the intelligence that we shall find the basis of a fundamental distinction between man and animals.

But in man the existence has been proved of fundamental phenomena of which nothing either in living beings or inanimate bodies has hitherto been able to give us any conception. 1st. Man has the perception of moral good and evil independently of all physical welfare or suffering. 2nd. Man believes in superior beings who can exercise an influence upon his destiny. 3rd. Man believes in the prolongation of his existence after this life.

The last two phenomena have always been so closely connected that it is natural to refer them to the same faculty, to that namely of Religion. The first depends on Morality.

Psychologists attribute religion and morality to the reason, and make the latter an attribute of man. But with the reason they connect the highest phenomena of the intelligence. In my opinion, in so doing they confound and refer to a common origin, facts entirely different. Thus since they are unable to recognise either morality or religion in animals, which in reality do not possess these two faculties, they are forced to refuse them intelligence also, although the same animals, in my opinion, give decisive proof of their possession of this faculty every moment.

The generality of the phenomena which we are discussing is, I believe, indisputable, especially since the investigation to which it has been subjected by the Society of Anthropology in Paris, where the question of the human kingdom has been long and seriously discussed. I cannot here reproduce the discussion, even in an abridged form, but refer my readers either to the summary in my Rapport sur les progrès de l’anthropologie en France, or to the Bulletins of the Society. I shall, moreover, go into this subject in some detail in the chapters devoted to the moral and religious characters of the human races.

A host of manifestations of human activity are derived, as so many consequences, from the three facts which I have pointed out. Customs and institutions of every kind are connected with them; they alone explain some of the great events which change the destiny of nations and the face of the earth.

For reasons which I have several times pointed out already, we must give a name to the Unknown Cause from which are derived the phenomena of morality and religion. We will call it the Human mind (l’âme humaine).

I must here repeat the formal declaration which I have often made already. When I employ this term, which is established by custom, it is with the understanding that I strictly confine myself within the limits imposed upon anyone who intends to be exclusively faithful to science, experiment and observation. I consider the human principle as the Unknown Cause of exclusively human phenomena. To go beyond that would be to encroach upon the domain of philosophy or theology. To them belongs the solution of the formidable problems raised by the existence of the ‘something’ which makes a man of an organism entirely animal, and I give everyone leave to choose from the proposed solutions the one which agrees most satisfactorily with the demands of his own feelings and reason.