But, in point of fact, this kind of anatomy is pitiable. Is there nothing in man but bones? Do the skeleton and the viscera make up the entire sum of the human being? What will you say, then, ye blind rhetoricians, about the faculty of intelligence as manifested in the gift of speech? Intelligence and speech, these are really the attributes which constitute man; these are the qualities which make him the most complete being in creation, and the most privileged of God's creatures. Show me an ape who can speak, and then I will agree with you in recognising it as a fact that man is nothing but an improved ape! Show me an ape who can make flint hatchets and arrow-heads, who can light a fire and cook his food, who, in short, can act like an intelligent creature—then, and then only, I am ready to confess that I am nothing more than an orang-outang revised and corrected.
It is not, however, our desire to speak of a question which has been the subject of so much controversy as that of the anatomical resemblance between the ape and the man without thoroughly entering into it; we have, indeed, no wish to shun the discussion of the point. On the present occasion, we shall appeal to the opinion of a savant perfectly qualified in such matters; we allude to M. de Quatrefages, Professor of Anthropology in the Museum of Natural History at Paris.
M. de Quatrefages, in his work entitled 'Rapport sur le Progrès de l'Anthropologie,' published in 1868, has entered rather fully into the question whether man is descended from the ape or not. He has summed up the contents of a multitude of contemporary works on this subject, and has laid down his opinion—the perfect impossibility, in an anatomical point of view, of this strange and repugnant genealogy.
The following extract from his work will be sufficient to make our readers acquainted with the ideas of the learned Professor of Anthropology with regard to the question which we are now considering:
"Man and apes in general," says M. de Quatrefages, "present a most striking contrast—a contrast on which Vicq-d'Azyr, Lawrence, and M. Serres have dwelt in detail for some considerable time past. The former is a walking animal, who walks upon his hind legs; all apes are climbing animals. The whole of the locomotive system in the two groups bears the stamp of these two very different intentions; the two types, in fact, are perfectly distinct.
"The very remarkable works of Duvernoy on the 'Gorilla,' and of MM. Gratiolet and Alix on the 'Chimpanzee,' have fully confirmed this result as regards the anthropomorphous apes—a result very important, from whatever point of view it is looked at, but of still greater value to any one who wishes to apply logically Darwin's idea. These recent investigations prove, in fact, that the ape type, however highly it may be developed, loses nothing of its fundamental character, and remains always perfectly distinct from the type of man; the latter, therefore, cannot have taken its rise from the former.
"Darwin's doctrine, when rationally adapted to the fact of the appearance of man, would lead us to the following results:
"We are acquainted with a large number of terms in the Simian series. We see it branching out into secondary series all leading up to anthropomorphous apes, which are not members of one and the same family, but corresponding superior terms of three distinct families (Gratiolet). In spite of the secondary modifications involved by the developments of the same natural qualities, the orang, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee remain none the less fundamentally mere apes and climbers (Duvernoy, Gratiolet, and Alix). Man, consequently, in whom everything shows that he is a walker, cannot belong to any one of these series; he can only be the higher term of a distinct series, the other representatives of which have disappeared, or, up to the present time, have evaded our search. Man and the anthropomorphous apes are the final terms of two series, which commence to diverge at the very latest as soon as the lowest of the apes appear upon the earth.