The second principle is perhaps even more significant: when we review the many races from the Caucasian to the dwarf Negrito, we traverse a downward path which will bring us inevitably to the higher apes. In our survey of human races, we have passed from the Caucasian, with the largest brain and cranium and with straight jaws well underneath the brain-case, to the pygmy with a relatively small brain, with huge projecting jaws and with prominent ridges over the eyes; one step more along that path would bring us to the gorilla or the chimpanzee. The array of lower primates, from the lemur to the gorilla, gives a series of forms exhibiting a progressive advance in respect to the size of the brain and cranium, and a gradual retreat of the jaws to a position underneath the cranium; and one step further brings us to man. In a word, these two lines join—in fact, they are directly continuous. There is a far smaller difference between the lowest man and the highest ape than we have been accustomed to suppose.
Thus in general terms, it can justly be said that process of evolution which developed the first man from its ape-man progenitor seems to have continued during subsequent ages. Spreading out in diverging lines of evolutionary descent no less clearly than they have in geographical respects, certain races have far surpassed their fellows of a lower order, which, like the brute pygmy, remain nearer the common structural form from which all men have sprung.
VI
THE MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN
The problems dealing with the make-up of the human mind and with the evidences of mental evolution bring the student to matters of more vivid human interest. Mental phenomena are so complex and intricate that it is well-nigh impossible to analyze their history without a knowledge of the principles derived from the broad study of evolution as a general doctrine, where human prejudice is not so large a factor and where his perspective is less affected by the proximity of the observer to his facts. For these and other reasons the foregoing treatment of human evolution has been confined to the purely structural characteristics of man as a species and of human races as so many varieties of this type. When the broad comparative methods of biological science are employed for the elucidation of human anatomical facts, the result in this special case, like that established through the study of the characteristics of living things in general, is the proof that evolution gives the most rational and natural explanation of the observed data. This being true, the naturalist who turns from purely structural matters to human intellect and its history, finds well-tried methods of inquiry already available, and he approaches his further studies with a conviction that evolution, having proved to be universal so far, in all probability will be found equally true in the case of psychological phenomena. This expectation is indeed realized, and the scope of the doctrine is extended over a new field, when the facts of human psychology are treated as materials for impersonal comparative study; and this result is not only useful and valuable in and by itself, but it also provides in the principles of mental evolution the transition to the field of social relations and ethical ideas and ideals which are apparently the unique possessions of men as individuals and as associated groups.
The field of comparative psychology might seem at first sight to be a foreign territory to the average well-informed layman in science, but the contrary is really the case. Every one has thought at one time or another about his own mental make-up, and about the minds of others. No one can watch a child at play with his toys or at work with his schoolbooks without being struck by many evidences of marked differences between the immature and the experienced types of mind. Every one knows also that the mental "scheme of things" is by no means the same for all nations or races of mankind existing to-day, while furthermore the fact is entirely familiar that the intellectual heritage of a present race has changed in the course of previous ages. Therefore in this field as before we need only to amplify our knowledge of such representative psychological facts as these by drawing upon the full stores of the special investigator, in order to learn that human thought, like the human frame, has undergone a natural history of transformation to become what it is and what it was not.
Many who would be ready to accept the evolution of physical characteristics find it impossible to treat the history of human mentality as a subject for dispassionate consideration, because above all else the intellectual powers of mankind seem to be truly distinctive. It is only after constant use of the methods of science that we can bring ourselves to see how closely we resemble lower forms in physical make-up; still greater reluctance must be overcome before we can view our mental processes as counterparts of those of inferior animals, so essential to our very humanity do they seem. But our duty to undertake the task is plain, and its discharge will be greatly facilitated by a clear realization that mental evolution is but a part of human transformation in times past, as the latter is only a small fraction of the universal process of organic evolution in general. While our own nature and inquisitiveness give us so intense an interest in the teachings of science that relate to the constitution and history of human faculty, wherefore these matters gain an undue prominence in perspective, it must never be forgotten that these teachings do not stand by themselves, for they are built upon the sure foundations already laid in physical evolution; and these foundations cannot be disturbed by our failure to use them as a basis when we construct our own conceptions of human intellect and its history.
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Before passing to the systematic review of the facts and principles of comparative psychology which demonstrate evolution, there are certain general aspects of the subject to be considered so as to clear the ground, as it were, for further progress. When the several organic systems of the human body were compared with those of the apes and of lower animals, their evolution was proved as far as the purely physical and material characteristics were concerned. But we know that there is no part of any one of these systems which has not its own particular function, even though this may be a relatively passive one; while furthermore, science does not know of any physiological activity without some organ or tissue or cell as its material basis. Therefore the evolution of an organic system in material respects involves its functional or dynamic evolution as an inseparable correlate; the two proceed in unity, and they cannot be regarded as entirely distinct without violating common-sense.
The fin of a fish is used as an organ of locomotion in water; from some such organ have evolved the walking limbs of amphibia and reptiles, constructed for progression upon land. Among the mammalia the fore limbs have become structurally adapted so as to be such diverse organs of locomotion as the stilt-like leg of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the whale's paddle, and the bat's wing, while among the birds the wing may change into a flipper like that of the penguin, or become reduced to a vestige as in Apteryx. We may focus our attention upon the material likenesses and differences in such a series of locomotory organs, but an inevitable accompaniment of their physical changes in the transformation of species has been an evolution in the functional matter of locomotion. The most complex and differentiated tracts of even the highest animals have evolved from a simple sac like that of a polyp or jellyfish, as we know from the independent testimony of comparative anatomy and embryology; in this case also the evolution of alimentary functions is no less inseparable from the transformations in structural respects. And again, we cannot understand the historical development of vision without taking into account the eyes of various types belonging to lower and higher animals.