Huxley’s statement, that the lowest apes are further removed from the highest apes than the latter are from men, is, according to my experience, still perfectly valid. It cannot be denied that the highest order of the animal world is closely connected with the highest created being.

In the third chapter I have sought to show in what way the pithecoid characteristics of men may be proved. From the latter chapters, also, much may be learned with respect to the anthropoid characteristics of anthropoids. The external form first provokes the comparison. There is much in the bodily structure which spans the apparent chasm between men and apes, and this is evident to the simplest understanding. The head, and the general form of the body, especially in young male and female gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangs, and even in gibbons, if we exclude the length of their arms, display many points of resemblance with man. It is shown even in separate organs of the body—as, for instance, in the ear. The illustrations given in the second chapter of the ears of apes, including that of the gorilla, were intentionally taken by me from such specimens as had least resemblance to man, and yet even in these a certain likeness must be recognized.

I have already observed that the old males of an anthropoid species are always further removed from man than the young, and this is especially the case with the gorilla. The head of an aged male gorilla, with its great cranial crests and powerful jaw, displays striking differences from the human type. This is an important fact, since in the case of man we almost without exception regard the fully developed male adult as the typical form.

In considering the limbs, the differences between the arms and hands of man and those of anthropoids are apparent, but less striking than in the case of the lower limbs. For the prehensile foot of apes has in it something abnormal which distinctly differs from the human foot, adapted for walking. Nor can the prehensibility of the human toes in certain cases be directly compared with the prehensibility of an ape’s foot, in which the great toe has the action of a thumb. Haeckel remarks that newly born children can also take a strong grip with the great toe, and if a spoon is inserted they can hold it with the foot as firmly as with the hand.129 This power is, however, only partial and subordinate, compared with the manifold and developed prehensibility of an anthropoid’s foot. The possibility of walking upright to a certain, although sometimes to a very limited, extent is no exclusive privilege of anthropoids, since this power may be acquired by training in the case of other apes, as well as of dogs, pigs, horses, etc. Many apes of the New World, such as the tailed and climbing apes, as well as some semi-apes, bears, ichneumons, scaled and rodent animals, can go for some distance in an upright position, quite as readily as anthropoids, and without being trained to do so.130 The structure of anthropoids is, indeed, better adapted for going on all-fours, or for climbing. The projection of the coccyx in the form of a rudimentary tail has, as is well known, been observed in some isolated cases in the human species. This peculiarity is supposed to be hereditary in the case of some non-European peoples, such as the Niam-Niam of Central Africa, and some of the Southern Malays. But this surmise has not yet been confirmed.

It has already been said that when we compare men and anthropoids, the profile of the coloured man presents a striking likeness to that of anthropoids. This is believed by the coloured people themselves, who, especially among negro races, regard the large apes as accursed individuals of their own species, as dumb and hairy men, and so on. It should, however, be noticed that anthropomorphism plays an important part in the religious life of rude peoples, and that it is comparatively easy for uncivilized men to place themselves on the same level as animals, while civilized races reject such ideas with self-conscious pride. I may add that civilized men are revolted by the proverbial ugliness of apes, and therefore reject with abhorrence any admission of actual relationship with them. We must, however, remember that men are by no means generally endowed with physical beauty, and especially with beauty of feature. Among all nations we find individuals whose ugliness is little inferior to that of anthropoids, and which sometimes even exceeds it. A claim to a widely diffused physical beauty may be made by the peoples of classical antiquity; by the Teutonic, Roumanian, and Slav races; by the Circassians, Armenians, Tartars, Turks, Senites, Berbers, Bedja; and by some of the Indians, Polynesians, American Indians, and negroes: but such attractions are rare among other peoples of the world, such as the Mongols, the majority of negroes, Papuans, Guaranis, and Malays. We have already shown that among some of the lower races it is impossible not to recognize a purely external and physical approximation to the simian type.

Some men, again, altogether on psychical grounds, shrink from admitting any relationship between men and apes, since the mental organization of the former seems to them to be allied by no connecting-link with the anthropoids of which they think so meanly. Yet it should not be forgotten that the modes of living in degraded races differ little from those of anthropoids. I may here refer to what I have said of the Australian aborigines, whose brutal instincts demand our whole attention when we undertake such comparisons. A horde of Botocudos, mentioned by the intelligent observer Prince Maximilian of Neuwied,131 and a village on the upper Yupurá, inhabited by the Mirenhas, and described by Martius,132 left upon the travellers a grisly impression of their brutal degradation. This impression might be further strengthened if we could inspect a hutted encampment of the Obongo or the Doko.

It has been observed that the rudest savage is in a condition to show pity and loyalty to his own fellows. Thus, for example, in the winter of 1881–82, when some Fuegians were exhibited in Europe, one of them fell sick, and was cared for by his savage companions with affection, and even with a certain appearance of tenderness. But, as we have seen, anthropoids take care of and defend the members of their family in the same way, and display mutual dependence and loyalty; this has been especially noticed in the case of several orang-utans which have tended each other. Love for their young, and not rarely love for their mates expressed in the strongest manner, is, speaking comparatively, deeply rooted in the animal world. It is well known that both rude and civilized peoples are capable of showing unspeakable, and as it is erroneously termed, inhuman cruelty towards each other. These acts of cruelty, murder, and rapine are often the result of the inexorable logic of national characteristics, and are unhappily truly human, since nothing like them can be traced in the animal world. It would, for instance, be a grave mistake to compare a tiger with a bloodthirsty executioner of the Reign of Terror, since the former only satisfies his natural appetite in preying on other mammals. The atrocities of the trials for witchcraft, the indiscriminate slaughter committed by the negroes on the coast of Guinea, the sacrifice of human victims made by the Khonds, the dismemberment of living men by the Battas, find no parallel in the habits of animals in their savage state. And such a comparison is, above all, impossible in the case of anthropoids, which display no hostility towards men or other animals unless they are first attacked. In this respect the anthropoid ape stands on a higher plane than many men.

A great chasm between man and anthropoids is constituted, as I believe, by the fact that the human race is capable of education, and is able to acquire the highest mental culture, while the most intelligent anthropoid can only receive a certain mechanical training. And even to this training a limit is set by the surly temper displayed by anthropoids as they get older. They are interesting subjects of study in the menagerie, but they never become, like our ordinary domestic animals, useful members of the household economy. I myself hold that all human races are capable of culture, while differing in the degree to which it is possible for them to attain. I do not, for example, suppose that a tribe of Queensland Australians can be so educated as to be placed on a level with the highest intellects of our own nation. But how many ages it has taken to raise us so far above the Papuans! It is indeed manifest that even very rude savages may be constituted serviceable members of human society, as we may see from the changes which have taken place among the Sandwich Islanders, the Tahitians, and the Maoris in the course of the last eighty years. In our days the envoys of the Queen of Madagascar have understood how to move in the highest Berlin circles with high-bred demeanour, and we must recognize this fact as significant, without, however, deluding ourselves by too wide deductions from it.

The remark has often been made that the African blacks, Indians, etc., display great docility when young, and are very receptive of wisdom and culture, but stop short at a certain point, as if unable to advance beyond it, and sometimes, indeed, like apes in advancing age, relapse into their originally savage state. It may, however, be inferred that these attempts to educate young savages are generally wrecked by mistaken methods of instruction. The young sons of nature are often too much indulged, their childish performances are over-estimated, their minds are over-taxed, the due development of mind and body is checked; they become arrogant, and then people are surprised that, as self-consciousness increases in their immature brains, a greater or less amount of conceit is developed. There are cases in which a savage, who has been with much labour educated and civilized, relapses into barbarism, and comes to a violent end as the enemy of his former protector, as a robber or a rebel; yet, even to the end of his life, he has developed qualities and conditions which recall to him better times. We see an example of this in some of the civilized Maoris who afterwards joined the revolted tribes, and who introduced among their countrymen the strength of a firmer organization against the English supremacy. The bearing of these relapsed savages always has in it something higher than we can trace in the savage obstinacy of a morose old chimpanzee or orang.

Nor have the attempts to educate savages been uniformly unsuccessful. The great Indian chief Tekumseh; the presidents Benito Juarez, and Ramon Castilla; the negro Toussaint l’Ouverture; the Hova king, Radama I.; the Polynesian rulers, Kamehameha I., Pomare II., Georges, and Kokabau, show what may be made of such materials under favourable circumstances. The poor Indian from Oaxaca; the steadfast leader Perus, who belonged to a needy Arriero family; the Haytian who was formerly driver on a plantation, are as far removed from aboriginal savages as the Malagasy and Polynesians educated by European missionaries.

It is well known that nations, in the earliest periods of their existence, have to pass through certain rude conditions of their development, and the most highly civilized nations are not exempt from this law. The transition period of the Stone Age is necessary for all, and with the use of metals a higher and more cultivated life has been gradually developed. Even for those who do not recognize any sharp line of demarcation between the stone and metal periods, yet, speaking generally, they will admit that the times in which stone instruments, and those in which bronze and iron instruments were chiefly used, present tokens of actual epochs in historical culture. As we know, there are also certain phases of development in the Stone Age. In its earliest stages the rudely shaped and unworked tool could not procure for its owner any regular shelter: he lived in caves, clefts, or under a scanty covering of leaves, and made use of his tool in killing wild animals; in cutting wood; in preparing skins, tendons, and gourd-vessels; in dismembering the prey obtained in hunting; and in extracting marrow from bones. With the art of shaping and sharpening these stone tools, a progressive improvement in the conditions of human life went hand in hand.

We can picture to ourselves the physical and psychical conditions of the first and earliest men of the Stone Age as those of extremely rude savages, but who were endowed with the gift of working out for themselves higher conditions of life.

In the year 1868 Colonel Laussedat, of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, exhibited the lower jaw of a rhinoceros, found in the Miocene at Billy, Allier, in which there was a notch which must, in the opinion of many naturalists, have been made by the hand of man. The Abbé Delaunay found in the Miocene of Pouancé, Maine-et-Loire, the rib of a Halitherium, which was notched, and which likewise appeared to have been subjected to human manipulation. Garrigou is of opinion that certain bones found at Sansan were broken by the hand of man, and Dücker expressed a similar belief about the fossils of Pikermi. These ideas have been strongly opposed. Many of the marks on these bones have been represented to bear traces of the teeth of carnivora, rodents, etc. The Abbé Bourgeois found flints in the Miocene of Thenay, near Pont-Levoy, Loir-et-Cher, of which he ascribes the working to beings of a higher intelligence than the animals of that period. This opinion is shared by eminent anthropologists, such as Vibraye, Worsaae, Mortillet, de Quatrefages, and Hamy. Gaudry does not doubt the accuracy of the account given of their position at Thenay, by so experienced a geologist as Bourgeois. The illustrious observer of the quaternary epoch is only concerned with the question whether these flints at Thenay were artificially worked or not. The stones were found in a layer of the same kind of rubble. When a number of such flints are placed together, only a few people can discover an incontestable distinction between the artificially shaped and the unshaped stones. The alleged presence of shaped flints in the Miocene Age still demands careful examination. The epoch of the Middle Miocene is very ancient, and Léberon distinguishes between fauna found in the limestone of Beauce and Faluns and those of the Upper Miocene, of Eppelsheim and Pikermi. According to this author, the next in succession was the Lower Pliocene of Montpellier; then the Pliocene of Perrier, Solilhac, and Coupet. Next came the fauna of the forest bed at Cromer, and then those of the boulder clay. To judge from the Norfolk strata, these latter were of very long duration. Above the fauna of the boulder clay are those of the diluvium, followed by the fauna of the reindeer period and of our own time.

Whatever may be thought of the many changes which have taken place, whether they are regarded as the result of distinct and independent creations or as the result of transformations, no geologist can doubt that an immense tract of time was required for the production of these forms. In the Middle Miocene there is not a single species of mammal which corresponds to any of our extant species. If we start from the standpoint of simple palæontology, it would be difficult to assume that the being which shaped the flints at Thenay can have remained unaltered in the midst of all these changes. If, as Gaudry remarks, it can be shown that the flints collected by Bourgeois in the Beauce limestone were really artificially shaped, he as a geologist would not hesitate to recognize in the Dryopithecus the author of this handiwork.133

But, speaking provisionally, the Dryopithecus which is assumed to have used these flints, and of which we, unfortunately, know only the little which can be gleaned from a few fragments of bone, must remain the object of an interesting hypothesis, so far as his advanced anthropomorphism is concerned. No anthropoid now in existence has shown itself capable of adapting stones, etc., to his personal use. Moreover, the most fanatical advocates of the doctrine of descent are becoming ever more convinced that man cannot be the issue of any extant form of anthropoids. It is true that a close, and in many respects a very close, physical connection may be traced between men and anthropoids, but not the possibility of a direct descent from the one to the other. This is especially shown from the physical development of the larger apes, which only strongly resemble men in their youthful stages, and lose this character more and more as they grow older. The absolute deficiency of any capacity for the further development of the intellectual qualities of our modern species of anthropoids is another proof of this fact; their intelligence is, indeed, higher than that of other mammals, and also of other apes, but they are still far behind the intelligence of man, which is capable of still further development.

In the process of physical growth, as I feel myself compelled often to repeat, anthropoids constantly diverge further from the human organization. C. Vogt justly observes: “When we consider the principles of the modern theory of evolution, as it is applied to the history of development, we are met by the important fact that in every respect the young ape stands nearer to the human child than the adult ape does to the adult man. The original differences between the young creatures of both types are much slighter than in their adult condition: this assertion, made long since in my lectures on the human race, has received a striking confirmation from recent autopsies of young anthropoids which have died in the Zoological Gardens of Europe. In proportion to the age of the specimen, the characteristic differences in the form of the jaw, the cranial ridges, etc., become more evident. Both man and apes are developed from an embryonic condition, and from the period of childhood in a diverging or almost opposite direction into the final type of their species, yet even adult apes still retain in their whole organization features which correspond to those of the human child.”134 Quenstedt also says: “However much Homo sapiens is raised by his intelligence above all other animals, however important the physical differences are which divide him from apes, yet the scene of their existence in the world is by no means so wide that, as time goes on, the narrow limits between them may not approximate more closely.”135

In these words the opinion I have already expressed is set forth, an opinion which continues to gain ground; namely, that man cannot have descended from any of the fossil species which have hitherto come to our notice, nor yet from any of the species of apes now extant. It is more probable “that both types have been produced from a common ground-form, which is still more strongly expressed in the structure of young specimens, because the age of childhood is less advanced” (Vogt).

This supposed progenitor of our race is necessarily completely hypothetical, and all the attempts hitherto made to construct even a doubtful representation of its characteristics are based upon the trifling play of fancy.

Darwin came to the conclusion that man has, at any rate, descended from a highly organized form. He goes on to say:

“The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development, as well as in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling importance, the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he is occasionally liable—are facts which cannot be disputed. They have long been known, but until recently they told us nothing with respect to the origin of man. Now, when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic world, their meaning is unmistakable. The great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are considered in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of the same group, their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a savage, on the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to admit that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog; the construction of his skull, limbs, and whole frame, independently of the uses to which the parts may be put, on the same plan with that of other mammals; the occasional reappearance of various structures—for instance, of several distinct muscles, which man does not normally possess, but which are common to the Quadrumana; and a crowd of analogous facts;—all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with the other mammals of a common progenitor.”136

“The most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the vertebrata,” observes the same great English naturalist in another place, “at which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine animals, resembling the larvæ of existing Ascidians. These animals probably gave rise to a group of fishes as lowly organized as the lancelet; and from these the Ganoids, and other fishes like the Lepidosiren, must have been developed. From such fish a very small advance would carry us on to the amphibians. We have seen that birds and reptiles were once intimately connected together; and the Monotremata now, in a slight degree, connect mammals with reptiles. But no one can at present say by what line of descent the three higher and related classes, namely, mammals, birds, and reptiles, were derived from either of the two lower vertebrate classes, namely, amphibians and fishes. In the class of mammals, the steps are not difficult to conceive which led from the ancient Monotremata to the ancient Marsupials; and from these to the early progenitors of the placental mammals. We may thus ascend to the Lemuridæ, and the interval is not wide from these to the Simiadæ. The Simiadæ then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the universe, proceeded.”137

Setting aside for the present this long pedigree of man, let us consider some of the isolated phases which have been established in the still incomplete condition of modern science. As far as semi-apes are concerned, whose near relation to men and apes has of late been strongly urged, I agree with those who, like Vogt, consider that their order, with its variety of forms, points to a complex origin, probably from marsupial animals, with which their organization presents many common features; hence it appears that some of their forms belong to the earliest Tertiary mammals with which we are well acquainted. “In conclusion,” he writes, “it appears, from these facts, that any very close connection between the semi-apes and apes, and hence with man, cannot be proved. With the exception of the opposing thumb, which is and was a widely diffused characteristic common to many species, the semi-apes have not a single anatomical feature in common with apes. Their jaw, the most permanent characteristic, places them in the insectivorous class; to enroll them among the ancestors of man is to set at nought all the principles of scientific research.”138

That purely hypothetical being, the common ancestor of man and apes, is still to be found, and this is the task assigned to palæontology. Whether this science, to which a great future belongs, will ever accomplish the task, is a question which concerns itself. Meanwhile, considering the great palæontological achievements of our day, the discovery of the Odontornithes, Ætosauri, Rhamphorynchi, Holoptychia, etc., we need not despair of the possibility of discovering the true link between the world of man and mammals. This purely speculative side of research, this purely scientific mode of treating the descent of man, is no longer satisfied with unproved assertions, but will rather trust to the strenuous labour of future times, and this need not disturb any religious or political convictions. Even if the assumed ancestral type should really be discovered in some geological stratum, yet research will have to overcome immense difficulties, if it is to explain the development of the understanding and of speech, and the growth of independent human intelligence. Yet we must not, on this account, refuse to recognize the possibility of achieving some new discoveries in this direction. To do so would be to stifle the impulse to scientific research, and this would be unworthy of our former intellectual achievements. Let us therefore labour on with courage.

In matters which concern ethnology we are constantly shown that even those races of men which are very remote from each other, and of whom it cannot be supposed that they were in earlier times united in one nation, have made the same technical discoveries, and have adopted similar manners and customs and similar religious observances. This allows us to infer that there is a physical and psychical unity of human nature which indeed separates into races and varieties, but not into distinct species. Certain tokens of what is hypothetically the primeval type will predominate even in the progeny which has been modified by a distinct and separate development, and we need not be surprised by reversions to the animal structure, even in man, the ultimate scope of organic development. Nor will the developed culture of man offer any hindrance to such reversions. The theromorphic conditions which we have pointed out in the third chapter of this work, such as the frontal process of the squamous temporal portion, the transverse enlargement of the occipital bone, the pointed ear, etc., occur both in the higher and lower races of man; just as, for example, both in primitive and high-bred races of horses there are reversions to fossil forms in hind toes, cloven hoofs, etc.

Not only the physical, but the mental development of man advances uniformly, and not per saltum. Physical qualities and defects may occur in a given number of negroes and Papuans, and may be absent in an equal number of Europeans, and conversely may occur in the one and be absent in the other; yet, in their mental condition, negroes and Papuans must always be regarded as in a lower order than Europeans. And if physical superiority is more widely diffused in European peoples than elsewhere, owing to higher culture, less exposure, and better nourishment, a more regular mode of life, and often also to the sexual selection prompted by æsthetic considerations, yet the reversion to such animal characteristics as do not exercise any modifying influence on the bodily development of the individual, occurs both in these and other races. I conclude these remarks with the reproduction of the fine passage with which Darwin ends his work on the descent of man.

“Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth, as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability: and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities; with sympathy which feels for the most debased; with benevolence which extends not only to other men, but to the humblest living creature; with his god-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system;—with all these exalted powers, man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”