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.[32] Differences 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 put ourselves on the stage, we who are privileged so to do; let us descend boldly the 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 of moral brutality.... A kind of highly developed instinct for discovering the food which is always difficult for them to obtain seems, 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 to four, and some tribes only so far as three. “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 persons who are almost idiotic.”[34] MM. 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 of hitting themselves on the belly.”[35] The 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.[36] The 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,” he says, “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.”[37] And, farther on, “The Esquimaux eats but to sleep, and sleeps but to eat again as soon as he can.”[38] We 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), relates[40] that 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 called monkey-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 had made 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.[41] What, 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 the savant, whose testimony in such 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.[42] Let 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,[43] sorrow, jealousy, etc.; in fact, the entire list of human passions.[44] All 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,[45] has 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.[46] On one occasion, when his master had taken a mangrove from him, “he uttered plaintive cries like a child when it is sulky. This conduct 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.[47] It is a curious fact, but the particular friend of Tuân was a negro from Manilla. At Manilla, he accustomed himself to Tagal[48] manners, 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.”[49] The 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 man nor an ape: neither one nor the other, that was what the mind of each person at once acknowledged.”