The plurality of the human race

by G. Pouchet

Before proceeding further, we may be permitted to make one preliminary remark. We may thus declare it:—

Proposition.—Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous Apes in his Physical Organism. Whether one is a partisan or not of the “Human Kingdom,” this resemblance is a fact which it will be in no person’s ideas to contest. And it is not merely in the external forms; we find it even greater if, going to the foundation of the facts, we give our attention to the essential parts composing the body,—to the anatomical elements,—to those delicate particles visible only in the microscope, and which always show, among animals of the same group, a marvellous uniformity.

It is here where, if not an impossibility, at least a sort of contradiction presents itself to the defenders of the “human kingdom;” for there are two organisms, scarcely different, at the service of two directing powers, of two intelligences absolutely and radically dissimilar. Doubtless all the forces of organised matter are not known to us, but does not this resemblance, though even a superficial one, surprise us; and does it not seem that every organism constituted directly by reason of the influences which it is qualified to receive or to transmit, ought to vary like these influences, and in the same proportion?

It is very easy to admit that there is more distance between the intelligence of man and that of the anthropomorphous apes, than between the intelligence of these last and that of the smooth-brained squirrel, and that at the same time the immense distance is only marked in the first case by very superficial variations of the organ of intellectual manifestations, whilst, in the second case, this lesser distance is explained by enormous differences.

To admit, with Bossuet,[25] that this superior intelligence, the appanage of man, is not attached to the organs reserved for the manifestations of this inferior intelligence common to man and animals, is to return to Descartes, and this is to fall again into new difficulties. Will this superior intelligence, thus detached from the material world, be then inaccessible to physical violence?

Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the faculty of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this servitude, remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher sphere? No, by the compression of the brain man loses consciousness like the animal. It is material substance, which, brought into contact with the anatomical elements of the nervous centres, can excite,[26] trouble,[27] or depress,[28] the intelligence of animals, and leave no part of the human intellect untouched.

Let us reconsider these two systems: viz., that man is similar to animals as much by his intelligence as by his bodily formation; or that he differs from them entirely. And now we have two clearly stated theories before us for our consideration. To embrace either one or the other à priori, merely for the sake of propriety or sentiment, would be an arbitrary proceeding, essentially faulty, and contrary to all rule; as in natural science, no other assistance is required except facts, in order to explain the origin of anything. However, without prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man is of himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, a sort of microcosm, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, may be perhaps a flattering unction to our soul;[29] it does little or nothing for science. Anthropology may have its special means of inquiry; perhaps these means are still to be found, but she will stand alone—without profit to the other branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which will not grow, casting all its leaves. If not—if man enters into the common course of life—if he is merely a part of one grand organic whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points of contact and intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised by the principle of universality, becomes a science by which we may profit; it gives to her sisters, the other natural sciences, that assistance which she herself receives from them; the paths widen; the science of organisation becomes easier, more certain, and more enlarged; synthesis, displaying its powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown; the mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, “of not understanding” animals, will study their intelligence, and will search their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we are learning to know them, like Galen the inspired, who obtained a knowledge of human anatomy by dissecting a monkey.

Let us endeavour to obtain an exact idea of this barrier, apparently impossible to be overcome, which separates man from the brute creation. Whether we compare him to the highest order of primates living on trees—this genius which is the glory of humanity, which has raised to such a height both science and art—or only to the last from among us, members of the great family rejoicing in a white skin, then the transition is brutish, and it seems that an abyss separates us from the famous wild man of the woods, so celebrated in the travels of the last century. It is thus that the human kingdom has been established, comparing the two extremes, without taking account of the intermediate terms.

Let us put on one side, for an instant, the question of origin. A race, or a family, endowed with a characteristic and united activity, by the form of mind peculiar to itself, with a prepossession for reuniting in a cluster the work of every individual intelligence, forms out of it a sort of thought common to all, and transmits this inheritance from generation to generation. One can understand that, as time goes on, this family, or this race, will arrive at a degree of civilisation very different to that which it showed at the time of its origin. The concurrence of so many intelligent modes of action will gently, but naturally, lead it to purely metaphysical ideas—to the intricate idea of a divinity, etc. But, in such an arrangement, each one is, after all, but the representative of a secular intellectual work, accustomed since the cradle, without any self-knowledge of the fact, to natural habits and language. We ask if it is right to compare a being thus raised and exalted by his own means with an animal which has no more remote past than its own birth?[30] Let us take, then, for the sake of comparing them with animals, those people in whom life is in some sort individual, among whom no person adds anything to transmitted inheritance,—among whom even this inheritance has originally come from outside, and who, we know not why, having arrived at the lowest ebb of civilisation, have not been able to improve or perfect it.

Some may say that they simply copy everything. Some may say that the huge weapons used by the inhabitants of Central Africa and Australia have only become known by importation; that the savage is civilised at a given moment by contact with some foreign nation—by imitation, a faculty which is possessed, within well marked limits, by the highest order of apes; and then, that progress has been stopped when these people return to their own homes. How can we explain otherwise, for example, that the Northern Esquimaux, living on the ice by the borders of creeks and bays, can make dresses and arms, and have never been able to construct a machine capable of bearing them upon the waters?[31]