Part 2

— Broca.

THE UNIVERSAL KINSHIP

The PHYSICAL KINSHIP

I. Man an Animal.

It was in the zoology class at college. We had made all the long journey from amoeba to coral, from coral to worm, from worm to mollusk, from mollusk to fish, from fish to reptile, and from reptile to mammal—and there, in the closing pages of faithful old Packard, we found it. ‘A mammal of the order of primates,’ the book said, with that unconcern characteristic of the deliverances of science. I was almost saddened. It was the first intimation I had ever received of that trite but neglected truth that man is an animal.

But the intimation was so weak, and I was at that time so unconscious, that it was not till years later that I began, through reflection, actually to realise the truth here first caught sight of. During these years I knew that man was not a mineral nor a plant—that, indeed, he belonged to the animal kingdom. But, like most men still, I continued to think of him as being altogether different from other animals. I thought of man and the animals, not of man and the other animals. Man was somehow sui generis. He had had, I believed, a unique and miraculous origin; for I had not yet learned of organic evolution. The pre-Darwinian belief that I had come down from the skies, and that non-human creatures of all kinds had been brought into existence as adjuncts of the distinguished species to which I belonged, occupied prominent place in my thinking. Non-human races, so I had been taught, had in themselves no reason for existence. They were accessories. A chasm, too wide for any bridge ever to span, yawned between the human and all other species. Man was celestial, a blue-blood barely escaping divinity. All other beings were little higher than clods. So faithfully and mechanically did I reflect the bias in which I had grown up.

But man is an animal. It was away out there on the prairies, among the green corn rows, one beautiful June morning—a long time ago it seems to me now—that this revelation really came to me. And I repeat it here, as it has grown to seem to me, for the sake of a world which is so wise in many things, but so darkened and wayward regarding this one thing. However averse to accepting it we may be on account of favourite traditions, man is an animal in the most literal and materialistic meaning of the word. Man has not a spark of so-called ‘divinity’ about him. In important respects he is the most highly evolved of animals; but in origin, disposition, and form he is no more ‘divine’ than the dog who laps his sores, the terrapin who waddles over the earth in a carapace, or the unfastidious worm who dines on the dust of his feet. Man is not the pedestalled individual pictured by his imagination—a being glittering with prerogatives, and towering apart from and above all other beings. He is a pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organism, differing in particulars, but not in kind, from the pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking, death-dreading organisms below and around him. Man is neither a rock, a vegetable, nor a deity. He belongs to the same class of existences, and has been brought into existence by the same evolutional processes, as the horse, the toad that hops in his garden, the firefly that lights its twilight torch, and the bivalve that reluctantly feeds him.

Man’s body is composed fundamentally of the same materials as the bodies of all other animals. The bodies of all animals are composed of clay. They are formed of the same elements as those that murmur in the waters, gallop in the winds, and constitute the substance of the insensate rocks and soils. More than two-thirds of the weight of the human body is made up of oxygen alone, a gas which forms one-fifth of the weight of the air, more than eight-ninths of that of the sea, and forty-seven per cent, of the superficial solids of the earth.

Man’s body is composed of cells. So are the bodies of all other animals. And the cells in the body of a human being are not essentially different in composition or structure from the cells in the body of the sponge. All cells are composed primarily of protoplasm, a compound of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Like all other animals, man is incapable of producing a particle of the essential substance of which his body is made. No animal can produce protoplasm. This is a power of the plant, and the plant only. All that any animal can do is to burn the compounds formed in the sun-lit laboratories of the vegetable world. The human skeleton, like the skeletons of nearly all other animals, is composed chiefly of lime—lime being, in the sea, where life spent so many of its earlier centuries, the most available material for parts whose purpose it is to furnish shape and durability to the organism. Man grows from an egg. So do all creatures of clay. Every animal commences at the same place—in a single, lowly, almost homogeneous cell. A dog, a frog, a philosopher, and a worm cannot for a long time after their embryonic commencement be distinguished from each other. Like the oyster, the ox, the insect, and the fish, like all that live, move, and breathe, man is mortal. He increases in size and complexity through an allotted period of time; then, like all his kindred, wilts back into the indistinguishable flux from which he came. Man inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide. So does every animal that breathes, whether it breathe by lungs, gills, skin, or ectosarc, and whether it breathe the sunless ooze of the sea floor or the ethereal blue of the sky. Animals inhale oxygen because they eat carbon and hydrogen. The energy of all animals is produced mainly by the union of oxygen with the elements of carbon and hydrogen in the tissues of animal bodies, the plentiful and ardent oxygen being the most available supporter of the combustion of these two elements.

Man is, then, an animal, more highly evolved than the most of his fellow-beings, but positively of the same clay, and of the same fundamental make-up, with the same eagerness to exceed and the same destiny, as his less pompous kindred who float and frolic and pass away in the seas and atmospheres, and creep over the land-patches of a common clod.

II. Man a Vertebrate.

Man is a vertebrate animal. He has (anatomically at least) a backbone. He belongs to that substantial class of organisms possessing an articulating internal skeleton—the family of the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Most animals have some sort of skeleton, some sort of calcareous contrivance, whose business it is to give form and protection to the softer parts of the organism. Some animals, as the starfishes, have plates of lime scattered throughout the surface parts of the body; others, as the corals and sponges secrete plant-like frames, upon and among the branches of which the organisms reside; and still others, as the clams, crustaceans, and insects, have skeletons consisting of a shell or sheath on the outside of, and more or less surrounding, the softer substances of the body. The limbs of insects are tiny tubes on the inside of which are the miniature muscles with which they perform their marvels of locomotion. The skeleton of vertebrates, consisting of levers, beams, columns, and arches, all skilfully joined together and sunk deep within the muscular tissue, forms a conspicuous contrast to the rudimentary frames of other animals. The vertebrate skeleton consists of a hollow axis, divided into segments and extending along the dorsal region of the body, from the ventral side of which articulate, by means of awkwardly-constructed girdles, an anterior and a posterior pair of limbs. This dorsal axis ends in front in a peculiar bulbous arrangement called the head, which contains, among other valuables, the brain and buccal cavern. The thoracic segments of the backbone send off pairs of flat bones, which, arching ventrally, form the chest for the protection of the heart and other vitals. The limbs (except in fishes) consist each of a single long bone, succeeded by two long bones, followed by two transverse rows of short, irregular wrist or ankle bones, ending normally in five branching series of bones called digits. This is essentially the skeleton of all fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. In short, it is the universal vertebrate type of frame. There are minor modifications to suit the various kinds of environment, adaptations to the necessities of aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial locomotion and life, some parts being specialised, others atrophied, and still others omitted, but there is never anywhere, from fishes to philosophers, any fundamental departure from the established vertebrate type of skeleton. The pectoral fins of fishes correspond to the fore-limbs of frogs and reptiles, the wings of birds, and the arms of men. The pelvic fins of fishes are homologous with the hind-limbs of frogs, reptiles, and quadrupeds, and the legs of birds, apes, and men. The foot of the dog and crocodile, the hand of the orang, and the flipper of the dolphin and seal, all have the same general structure as the hand of man; and the wings of the bat and bird, the forelimbs of the lizard and elephant, and the comical shovels of the mole and ornithorhynchus, notwithstanding the great differences in their external appearance and use, contain essentially the same bones and the same arrangement of the bones as do the arms of men and women. The human body has two primary cavities in it. So have the bodies of all vertebrates: a neural cavity containing the brain and spinal cord, and a visceral cavity containing the heart, liver, lungs, and alimentary canal. Invertebrates have only one body cavity—the one corresponding to the visceral cavity of vertebrates—and the main nerve trunk, instead of extending along the back, as among vertebrates, is in invertebrates located ventrally. Vertebrates are the only animals on the earth that have a highly developed circulatory system, a system entirely shut off from the other systems, and containing a heart, arteries, veins, and capillaries. In all invertebrates the digestive and circulatory systems remain to a greater or less extent connected, the blood and food mingling more or less in the general cavity of the body. Worms and insects have pulsating tubes instead of heart and arteries. Crustaceans have hearts with one chamber, and mollusks have two or three chambered hearts, but the blood, instead of returning to the heart after its journey through the arteries, passes into the body cavity. In man and other vertebrates the circulating current is confined strictly to the bloodvessels, no particle of it ever escaping into the general body cavity. The heart of vertebrates is distinguished from that of invertebrates by being located ventrally. The heart of invertebrates is in the back. The blood of vertebrates differs from that of invertebrates in containing both red and white corpuscles. Invertebrates have white corpuscles only. Worms have yellow, red, or bright green blood. The blood of crustaceans is bluish, that of mollusks is white, and that of insects dusky or brown. The blood of all vertebrates, excepting amphioxus, is red. All backboned beings, whether they dwell in seas or cities, and whether they build nests or empires, have two eyes, two ears, nose and mouth, all located in the head, and always occupying the same relative position to each other. Invertebrates may have their brains in their abdomen, as do the mites; hear with their legs or antennae, as many insects do; see with their tunics, like the scallops; and breathe with their skin, as do the worms. The crayfish hears with its ‘feelers,’ the cricket and katydid with their fore-legs, the grasshopper with its abdomen, the clam with its ‘foot,’ and mysis and other low crustaceans have their auditory organs on their tails.

Man is, then, like the fishes, frogs, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, a vertebrate animal. Excepting in his infancy, when he is a quadruped going on all fours, he uses his posterior limbs only for locomotion, and his anterior for prehension and the like. His spinal axis is erect instead of horizontal, and his tail is atrophied. But he possesses all of the unmistakable qualities of the vertebrate type of structure—a two-chambered body cavity, a highly developed and dorsally located nerve trunk, vertebrate vitals, a closed circulatory system, a ventral heart, red blood, a head containing sense organs and brain, and a well-ordered internal skeleton, consisting of a vertebral column with skull and ribs and two pairs of limbs, the limbs consisting each of one long bone, two long bones, two transverse rows of irregular bones, and five branches at the end.

1. See ‘Classes of Animals,’ at the end of the chapter. 2. Snakes are limbless, and hind-limbs are lacking in whales and other degenerates; but rudimentary limbs are found in the embryonic stages of these animals. Frogs, it may be said also, have no ribs.

III. Man a Mammal.

Man is a mammal. He belongs to the most brilliant and influential of the five classes of vertebrates—the class to which belong so many of his associates and victims, the class to which belong the horse, the dog, the deer, the ox, the sheep, the swine, the squirrel, the camel, the unattenuated elephant, and the timid-hearted hare. To this class belong also the lion, the tiger, the kangaroo, the beaver, the bear, the bat, the monkey, the mole, the wolf, the ornithorhynchus, and the whale—in short, all animals that have hair. Fishes and reptiles have scales; birds have feathers; all mammals are covered to a greater or less extent with hair. The aquatic habits of whales render hair of no use to them. Hence, while the unborn of these animals still cling to the structural traditions of their ancestors and are covered with hair, the adults are almost hairless. The sartorial habits of human beings and the selective influences of the sexes have had a similar effect on the hairy covering of the human body. Hair exists all over the human body surface, excepting on the soles of the hands and feet, but in a greatly dwarfed condition. It is only on the scalp and on the faces of males, where it is scientifically assisted for purposes of display, that it grows luxuriantly. It is by no means certain that even the hair on the masculine scalp will last forever. For if the hermetical derby and other deadly devices worn by men continue their devastations as they have in the past, we may expect to have, in the course of generations, men with foreheads reaching regularly to the occiput. Most animals lay eggs. Man does not. Like the dog, the horse, the squirrel, and the bat, man is viviparous, the eggs hatching within the parental body. Human young are born helpless, and are sustained during the period of their infancy by the secretions of the milk glands. So are all the sons and daughters of mammals. Whether they come into the world among the waters or among the desert sands, in the hollow of a tree, in a hole in the earth, or in a palace, the children of mammals are frail and pitiful, and they survive to grow and multiply only because they are the object of the loving and incessant sacrifices of a mother.

Mammals are distinguished from all other animals by the possession of two kinds of skin glands—the sweat glands and the oil glands—and by the development of certain of these glands in the female into organs for the nourishing of the young. Among reptiles and birds the lower jaw is suspended from the skull by a bone called the quadrate bone. Among men and other mammals the lower jaw is joined directly to the skull, the quadrate bone becoming, in the vicissitudes of evolution, the hammer (malleus) of the mammalian ear. Man has a four-chambered heart—two reservoirs which receive, and two pumps which propel, the scarlet waters of the body. Fishes have two-chambered hearts; frogs and most reptiles have three-chambered hearts; all mammals and birds have four-chambered hearts. The red corpuscles in the blood of fishes, frogs, reptiles, and birds, are discs, double-convex, nucleated, and in shape oval or triangular. In man and in all other mammals (except the archaic camel) the red corpuscles are double-concave, non-nucleated, and circular. ‘Man has a diaphragm dividing the body cavity into chest and abdomen, and a shining white bridge of interlacing fibres, called corpus callosum, uniting his cerebral hemispheres. And man is a mammal because, like other mammals, he has, in addition to the qualities already mentioned, these valuable and distinct characteristics.

IV. Man a Primate.

Man is a primate. There are four divisions in the order of primates—lemurs, monkeys, apes, and men. But the most interesting and important of these, according to man, is man. Man is a primate because, like other primates, he has arms and hands instead of fore-legs. And these are important characteristics. It was a splendid moment when the tendencies of evolution, pondering the possibilities of structural improvement, decided to rear the vertebrate upon its hind-limbs, and convert its anterior appendages into instruments of manipulation. So long as living creatures were able simply to move through the airs and waters of the earth and over the surface of the solids, they were powerless to modify the universe about them very much. But the moment beings were developed with parts of their bodies fitted to take hold of and move and fashion and compel the universe around them, that moment the life process was endowed with the power of miracles. With the invention of hands and arms commenced seriously that long campaign against the tendencies of inanimate nature which finds its most marvellous achievements in the sustained and triumphant operations of human industry. None of the primates excepting man use their hind-limbs as a sole means of changing their place in the universe, but in all of them the fore-limbs are regularly used as organs of manipulation. Man is a primate because his fingers and toes, like those of other primates (except the tiny marmosets of Brazil), end in nails. Man has neither claws to burrow into the earth, talons with which to hold and rend his victims, nor hoofs to put thunder into his movements. The human stomach, like that of all the other primates, is a bagpipe. The stomach of the carnivora is usually a simple sack, while rodents have, as a rule, two stomachs, and ruminants four. Man is a primate because his milk glands are located on the breast and are two in number. The mammary glands vary in number in the different orders of mammals, from two in the horse and whale to twenty-two in some insectivora. Most ruminating animals have four, swine ten, and carnivora generally six or eight. These glands may be located in the region of the groin, as in the horse and whale; between the forelimbs, as in the elephant and bat; or arranged in pairs extending from the fore to the hind limbs, as in the carnivora and swine. In man and all other primates (except lemurs) the mammary glands are pectoral and two in number. All primates, including man, have also a disc-shaped placenta. The placenta is the organ of nutrition in mammalian embryos. It is found in all young-bearing animals above the marsupials, and consists of a mass of glands between the embryo and the parental body. In some animals it entirely surrounds and encloses the embryo; in others it assumes the form of a girdle; and in still others it is bell-shaped. The primates are the only animals in which this peculiar organ is in the shape of a simple disc.

The nearest relatives by blood man has in this world are the exceedingly man-like apes—the tailless anthropoids—the gorillas and chimpanzees of Africa, and the orangs and gibbons of southern and insular Asia. The fact that man is an actual relative and descendant of the ape is one of the most disagreeable of the many distasteful truths which the human mind in its evolution has come upon. To a vanity puffed, as is that of human beings, to the splitting, the consanguinity of gorilla and gentleman seems horrible. Man prefers to have arrived on the earth by way of a ladder let down by his imagination from the celestial concave. Within his own memory man has been guilty of many foolish and disgraceful things. But this attempt by him to repudiate his ancestors by surreptitiously fabricating for himself an origin different from, and more glorious than the rest is one of the most absurd and scandalous in the whole list. It is a shallow logic—the logic of those who, without worth of their own, try to shine with a false and stolen lustre. No more masterly rebuke was ever administered to those in the habit of sneering at the truth in this matter than the caustic reply of Huxley to the taunt of the fat-witted Bishop—that he would rather be the descendant of a respectable ape than the descendant of one who not only closed his eyes to the facts around him, but used his official position to persuade others to do likewise. Man’s reluctance to take his anatomical place beside his simian kinspeople has been exceeded only by his selfish and high-handed determination to exclude all other terrestrial beings from his heaven.

Man is a talkative and religious ape. He is an ape, but with a much greater amount of enterprise and with a greater likelihood of being found in every variety of climate. Like the anthropoid, man has a bald face and an obsolete tail. But he is distinguished from his arboreal relative by his arrogant bearing, his skilled larynx, and especially by the satisfaction he experiences in the contemplation of the image which appears when he looks in a mirror.

The man-like apes are from three to six feet tall, and are all of them very strong, the gorilla, who sometimes weighs over three hundred pounds, being about the bravest and most formidable unarmed animal on the planet. They are erect or semi-erect, have loud voices, plantigrade feet, and irritable dispositions—in all of these particulars being strikingly like men. The gorilla, chimpanzee, and gibbon are highlanders, preferring the uplands and mountains. The orang is a lowlander, living phlegmatically among the sylvan swamps of Sumatra and Borneo. The gorilla and chimpanzee are terrestrial, seldom going among the trees except to get food or to sleep. The orang and gibbon are arboreal, seldom coming to the ground except to drink or bathe. They all walk on their hind-limbs, generally in a stooping posture, with their knuckles or fingers touching the ground. But they sometimes walk with their arms hanging down by their sides, and sometimes with their hands clasped back of their heads to give them balance. None of them ever place their palms on the ground when they walk—that is, none of them walk on four feet. The anthropoid races, in the shape of their heads and faces and in the general form and structure of their bodies, and even in their habits of life, resemble in a remarkable manner the lowest races of human beings. This resemblance is recognised by the negro races, who call the gorilla and chimpanzee ‘hairy men,’ and believe them to be descendants of outcast members of their own species.

There are differences in structure between man and the apes, just as there are differences in structure between the Caucasian and the Caffre, or even between individual Caucasians or individual Caffres. There are differences in structure and topography, often very noticeable differences, even among members of the same family. But in all of its essential characters, and extending often to astonishing particulars, the structure of man is identical with that of the anthropoid.

In external appearances the man-like races differ from men in having a luxuriant covering of natural hair. But anthropoids differ very much among themselves in this particular. The orang, usually covered with long hair, is sometimes almost hairless. There are, too, races of human beings whose bodies are covered with a considerable growth of hair. The Todas (Australians) and Ainus (aborigines of Japan) are noted for the hairiness of their bodies, certain individuals among them being covered with a real fur, especially on the lower limbs.

Individuals also often appear in every race with a remarkable development of the hair. Adrian and his son Fedor, exhibited years ago over Europe as ‘dog-men,’ are examples. The father was completely covered with a thick growth of fine dirty-yellow hair two or three inches long. Long tufts grew out of his nostrils and ears, giving him a striking resemblance to a Skye terrier. Fedor, and also his sister, were covered with hair like the father, but another son was like ordinary men. The man-like races have also longer arms in proportion to the height of the body than man generally has. But this is also true of human infants and negroes. The gibbon has relatively much longer arms than the other anthropoids. It differs from the chimpanzee in this respect more than the chimpanzee differs from man. When standing upright and reaching down with the middle finger, the gibbon can touch its foot, while the chimpanzee can reach only to the knee. Man ordinarily reaches part way down the thigh, but negroes have been known to have arms reaching to the knee-pan.

The skeleton of the African races contains many characters recognised by osteologists as ‘pithecoid,’ or ape-like. It is massive, the flat bones are thick, and the pelvis narrow. In the manlike apes the large toe is opposable to the other four, and is used by them much as the thumb is used. But this difference between the two races of beings is just what might be expected from the differences in their modes of life. Man has little need of this opposability on account of his exclusively terrestrial life, while to the ape it is indispensable on account of his arboreal environment and life. ‘But there are,’ says Haeckel, ‘wild tribes of men who can oppose the large toe to the other four just as if it were a thumb, and even new-born infants of the most highly-developed races of men can grasp as easily with their hind-hands as with their forehands. Chinese boatmen row with their feet, and Bengal workmen weave with them. The negro, in whom the big toe is freely movable, seizes hold of the branches of trees with it when climbing, just like the four-handed apes’.

Many men have lost their arms by accident and have learned to use their feet as hands with wonderful skill. Not many years ago there died in Europe an armless violinist who had during his lifetime played to cultured audiences in most of the capitals of the world. Some of the most accomplished of penmen hold their pen between their toes. The man-like apes live to about the same age as man, and all of them, like man, have beards. The anthropoid beard, too, like the human, appears at the age of sexual maturity. The human beard often differs in colour from the hair of the scalp, and whenever it does it has been observed to be invariably lighter—never darker—than the hair on the scalp. This is true among all races of men. The same rule and the same uniformity exists among anthropoids. The races of mankind are divided into two primary groups depending upon the shape of the head and the character of the hair: the short-headed races (Brachycephali), such as the Malays, Mongols, and Aryans, with round or oval faces, straight hair, and vertical profiles; and the long-headed races (Dolichocephali), with woolly hair and prognathous faces, such as the Papuans and Africa races. The skin of the short-headed races is orange or white, while the skin and hair of the long-headed races are glossy black.

It is, at least, interesting that the orang and gibbon, who live in Asia and its islands, where the brachycephalic races of men supposedly arose, are themselves brachycephalic; and that the gorilla and chimpanzee, who live in Africa, where the dolichocephalic races chiefly live, are dolichocephalic. The gorilla and chimpanzee also have, like the men and women of Africa, black skin and hair; while the hair of the orang is a reddish-brown, and its skin sometimes yellowish-white. The dentition of the anthropoids and men is in all essentials identical. They all have two sets of teeth: a set of milk-teeth, twenty in number, and thirty-two permanent teeth, the permanents consisting of two incisors, one canine, two premolars, and three molars, in each half-jaw. Man has ordinarily twelve pairs of ribs and thirty-two vertebrae. So has the orang. The other anthropoids have thirteen pairs of ribs. But the number of ribs in both human and anthropoid beings is not uniform, man occasionally having thirteen pairs, and the gorilla fourteen. Man has also the same number of caudal vertebrae in his rudimentary tail as the anthropoid has. The hands and feet of anthropoids, bone for bone and muscle for muscle, correspond with those of men, no greater structural differences existing than among different species of men. The human foot has three muscles not found in the human hand—a short flexor muscle, a short extensor muscle, and a long muscle extending from the fibula to the foot. All of these muscles are found in the anthropoid foot just as in the foot of man. There are also the same differences between the arrangement of the bones of the anthropoid wrist and ankle as between the wrist and ankle bones of man. Whatever set of anatomical particulars may be selected, whether it be hands, arms, feet, muscles, skull, viscera, ribs, or dentition, it is found that the anthropoid races and men are in all essentials the same. The differences are such as have arisen as a result of different modes of life, and such as exist between different tribes of either group of animals.