Facts and fancies in modern science / Studies of the relations of science to prevalent speculations and religious belief

by Sir John William Dawson

Man, when regarded merely as an organism, is closely related to the lower animals. His body is constructed on the same general plan with theirs. More especially, he is near akin to the other members of the class Mammalia. But we must not forget that even as an animal man is somewhat widely separated from his humbler relations (see Fig. 7). It is easy to say that every bone, every muscle, every convolution of his brain, has its counterpart in the corresponding parts of an orang or a gorilla. But, admitting this, it is also true that every one of these parts is different, and that the aggregate of all the differences mounts up to an enormous sum-total, more especially in relation to habits and to capacities for action. Those remarkable homologies or likenesses of plan which obtain in the animal kingdom are very wonderful, and the study of them greatly enlarges our conceptions of the unity of nature; but we must never forget that such general agreements in plan cover the most profound differences in detail and in adaptation to use, and that, while they indicate a common type, this may rather point to a unity of design than to a mere accidental unity of descent.

Fig. 7.

Man and his "poor relation," the gorilla. (After Huxley.) The head of the gorilla, with immense jaws and small brain-case, its huge spines on the neck, its long arms, its elongated pelvis, and its hand-like feet, with its incapacity to assume the erect position, indicate its ordinal difference from man, and the necessity of many intermediate forms, still unknown, to connect the two species.

There is a method, well known to natural science, for measuring and indicating the divergence of man from his nearest allies. This is the application of those principles of classification which, though of essential importance in science, are by some modern students of nature strangely overlooked or misunderstood. Perhaps in nothing has the progress of ideas of evolution made a more injurious impress on the advance of knowledge than in the manner in which it has caused many eminent and able naturalists to diverge from all logical propriety in their ideas of classification. Still, in so far as man is concerned, there are some facts of this kind which are indisputable. He certainly constitutes a distinct species, including many races, which all, however, have common specific characters. On the other hand, no one pretends that he is conspecific with any lower animal. All naturalists would now deride the stories, at one time current, that gorillas and chimpanzees are degraded races of men. On the other hand, even Haeckel admits that there is a wide gap, unfilled by any recent or any fossil creature, between man and the highest apes. Again, no generic relationship can be claimed as between man and the lower animals. He presents such structural differences as entitle him to rank by himself in the genus Homo. Still further, the ablest naturalists, before the rise of Darwinism, held that man was entitled to be placed in a separate family or order from the apes. Modern evolutionists prefer to fall back on the old arrangement of Linnæus, and to place man and apes together in the group of Primates, which, however, Linnæus would not have regarded as precisely of the same value with an order as now held. In this those of them who have sufficient ability to comprehend the facts of the case are undoubtedly warped in judgment by the tendency of their philosophy to magnify resemblances and to minimize differences; while the herd of feebler men have their ideas of classification thoroughly confused by the doctrine which they have received as a creed dictated by authority, and to which they adhere under the influence of fear. In point of fact, the differences between man and any other animal are so wide that they warrant a distinction, not merely specific and generic, but of a family and an ordinal character.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this will be to suppose that man has become extinct, and that in some future geological period his fossil remains are studied by some new race of intelligent beings, and compared with those of the lower animals his contemporaries. Let us suppose that they have disinterred a human skull or the bones of a human foot. From the foot they would learn that man is not an arboreal animal, but intended to walk erect on the ground. They could infer from this certain structures and uses of the vertebral column and of the anterior limbs different from those found in apes, and which would certainly induce them to conclude that they had obtained remains indicating a new order of mammals. If they had found the foot alone, they might doubt whether the possessor of this strange and highly-specialized organ had been carnivorous or herbivorous, more nearly allied to the bears or to the monkeys. Should they now find the skull, these doubts would be solved, and they would know that the new animal was somewhat nearer to the apes than to the bears, but still at a very remote distance from them, and this indicated by peculiarities of brain-case, jaws, and teeth, proving divergences in function still wider than those apparent in the structures. They would also plainly perceive that to link man with his nearest mammalian allies would require the discovery of several missing links.

When we consider the psychological endowments of man, his divergence from lower animals becomes immensely greater. In his external senses and in the perceptions derived through them it is true he resembles the brutes. There is also much in common with them in his appetites and emotions, and in some of the lower manifestations of intelligence. But he adds to this a higher reason, which causes his actions to be differently determined from theirs; and this higher reason, or spiritual nature, leads him to abstract ideas, to consciousness, to notions of right and of wrong, to ideas of higher spiritual beings and of futurity altogether unknown to lower animals. This divine reason, in connection with special vocal contrivances, also bestows on him the gift of speech. Nor can speech be reduced to a mere imitation of natural sounds; for, granting that these sounds may be the raw material of speech, yet man is enabled to apply this to the expression of ideas in a manner altogether peculiar to himself. Scientific precision obliges us to recognize these differences, and to admit that they place man on an entirely different plane from the lower animals.

Perhaps the expression "a different plane" is scarcely correct, for man can exist on many different planes—a fact which has produced some confusion in the minds of naturalists not versed in psychological questions, though, when rightly considered, it marks very strongly the distinction between the man and the mere animal.

The lower animals are tied up by invariable instincts to certain lines of action which keep all the individuals of any species on nearly the same level, except where some little disturbance may be caused by man in his processes of domestication. But with man it is quite different. He is emancipated from the bond of instinct, and left free to follow the guidance of his own will, determined by his own reason. It follows that the habits and the actions of a man depend on what he knows and believes, and on the deductions of his reason from these premises. Without knowledge, culture, and training, man is more helpless than any brute. With the noblest and highest capacities, he may devise and follow habits of life more base than those of any mere animal. Thus there is an almost immeasurable difference between the Godlike height to which man can attain by the right use of his powers and the depth to which ignorance and depravity may degrade him. It follows that the degradation of the lower races of men is as strong a proof of the difference between man and the lower animals as is the elevation of the higher races. Both are characteristic of a being emancipated from the control of instinct, knowing good and evil, free to choose, and differing in these respects from every other creature on earth. Such is man as we find him; and we may well ask by what process animal instinct could ever spontaneously develop human freedom and human reason.

But we might have evidence of such a process, however strange and improbable it might at first sight appear. We might be able to trace man back in history or by prehistoric remains to greater and greater approximation to the lower animals, and might thus bridge over the great chasm now existing between man and beast. It may be instructive, therefore, to glance at what geology discloses as to the origin of man and his first appearance on the earth.