[11]. J. Aitken Meigs, North American Med.-Chir. Rev., 1861, p. 840.
Tyson.
Johann Sperling, author of a Physica anthropologia (1668), and Samuel Haworth, who wrote Anthropologia; or A philosophical discourse concerning man (1680), also belong to the seventeenth century. But more important is the work of Edward Tyson, a Cambridge man, who took his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1678. He was a Fellow, and later Censor, of the College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal Society, and writer of numerous papers on anatomy. His fame rests mainly on the work which laid the foundations of comparative morphology, Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or The Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man (1699). This was the first attempt to deal with the anatomy of any of the anthropoid apes, and shows very conspicuous ability on the part of the author. He compared the structure of man with that of the monkeys, and came to the conclusion that the pygmy formed a kind of intermediate animal between the two. The pygmy was, as a matter of fact, a chimpanzee, and its skeleton, which was thus early recognised as the “missing link,” is still to be seen in the Natural History Museum (British Museum) at South Kensington. Tyson added to his work on the Anatomy of the Pygmie, A Philological Essay, Concerning the Pygmies, the Cynocephali, the Satyrs, and Sphinges of the Ancients. Wherein it will appear that they are all either Apes or Monkeys, and not Men as formerly pretended. The purpose of the Essay may be expressed in his own words:—
If therefore I can make out ... that there were such Animals as Pygmies; and that they were not a Race of Men, but Apes; and can discover the Authors, who have forged all, or most of the idle Stories concerning them; and shew how the Cheat in after Ages has been carried on, by embalming the Bodies of Apes, then exposing them for the Men of the Country, from whence they brought them: If I can do this, I shall think my time not wholly lost, nor the trouble altogether useless, that I have had in this Enquiry.
The Pygmies.
This was the first attempt to explain in a rational fashion the innumerable tales found in all parts of the world about the existence of pygmy races, ape-men or men-apes. Tyson’s hypothesis was that all these legends were based on imperfect observations of apes, and he was followed by Buffon and others. It may be well here briefly to note the researches which have led in late years to the opposite conclusion—i.e., that the tales relate to a dwarf race of men formerly very widely spread over the globe.
This theory is mainly associated with the name of de Quatrefages (1810-1892). In the Introduction to his book on the pygmies he says: “For a long time past the small black races have attracted my attention and my interest in a special manner.” His earliest investigations of the subject were published in 1862, and continued until 1887. Analysing the evidence, he shows that the two localities where the ancients appear to place their pygmies (the interior of Africa and the southern-most parts of Asia), together with the characters assigned to them, indicate an actual knowledge of the two groups of small people (Negrilloes and Negritoes), who are still to be found in those regions. Professor J. Kollmann, of Basel, in his Pygmäen in Europa (1894), argues for the existence of a European pygmy race in Neolithic times from some remains found at Schaffhausen, and the wide prevalence of short statures among many peoples in Europe, especially in the south. Mr. David MacRitchie attributes not only legends of pygmies, but fairy-tales in general, to this prehistoric dwarf race. President Windle sums up the question thus:—
It is possible with more or less accuracy and certainty to identify most of those races which, described by the older writers, had been rejected by their successors. Time has brought their revenge to Aristotle and Pliny by showing that they were right, where Tyson, and even Buffon, were wrong. (P. liii.)
In the time of Aristotle Man took his place naturally at the head of the other animals, being distinguished from the brutes by certain characters. But the influence of religion and of philosophy did not long permit of this association. Man came to be regarded as the chef d’œuvre of creation, a thing apart, a position aptly described in the words of Saint Paul (marginal version) “for a little while inferior to the angels.”
In the eighteenth century came a startling change. Man was wrenched from this detached and isolated attitude, and linked on once more to the beasts of the field. This was the work of Linnæus.