The Evolution of Man, V.2 by Ernst Haeckel (comprehension books .TXT) 📕

We have inherited not only these rudimentary parts, but all the organs of our body, from the mammals--proximately from the apes. The human body does not contain a single organ that has not been inherited from the apes. In fact, with the aid of our biogenetic law we can trace the origin of our various systems of organs much further, down to the lowest stages of our ancestry. We can say, for instance, that we have inherited the oldest organs of the body, the external skin and the internal coat of the alimentary system, from the Gastraeads; the nervous and muscular systems from the Platodes; the vascular system, the body-cavity, and the blood from the Vermalia; the chorda and the branchial gut from the Prochordonia; the articulation of the body from the Acrania; the primitive skull and the higher sense-organs from the Cyclostomes; the limbs and jaws from the Selachii; the five-toed foot from the Amphibia; the palate from the Reptiles; the hairy coat, the mammary glands, and the external sexual organs from the Pro-mammals. When we formulated "the law of the ontogenetic connection of systematically related forms," and determined the relative age of organs, we saw how it was possible to draw phylogenetic conclusions from the ontogenetic succession of systems of organs.

With the aid of this important law and of comparative anatomy we were also enabled to determine "man's place in nature," or, as we put it, assign to man his position in the classification of the animal kingdom. In recent zoological classification the animal world is divided into twelve stems or phyla, and these are broadly sub-divided into about sixty classes, and these classes into at least 300 orders. In his whole organisation man is most certainly, in the first place, a member of one of these stems, the vertebrate stem; secondly, a member of one particular class in this stem, the Mammals; and thirdly, of one particular order, the order of Primates. He has all the characteristics that distinguish the Vertebrates from the other eleven animal stems, the Mammals from the other sixty classes, and the Primates from the 300 other orders of the animal kingdom. We may turn and twist as we like, but we cannot get over this fact of anatomy and classification. Of late years this fact has given rise to a good deal of discussion, and especially of controversy as to the particular anatomic relationship of man to the apes. The most curious opinions have been advanced on this "ape-question," or "pithecoid-theory." It is as well, therefore, to go into it once more and distinguish the essential from the unessential. (Cf.

Chapter 2.

23.)

We start from the undisputed fact that man is in any case--whether we accept or reject his special blood-relationship to the apes--a true mammal; in fact, a placental mammal. This fundamental fact can be proved so easily at any moment from comparative anatomy that it has been universally admitted since the separation of the Placentals from the lower mammals (Marsupials and Monotremes). But for every consistent subscriber to the theory of evolution it must follow at once that man descends from a common stem-form with all the other Placentals, the stem-ancestor of the Placentals, just as we must admit a common mesozoic ancestor of all the mammals. This is, however, to settle decisively the great and burning question of man's place in nature, whether or no we go on to admit a nearer or more distant relationship to the apes. Whether man is or is not a member of the ape-order (or, if you prefer, the primate-order.) in the phylogenetic sense, in any case his direct blood-relationship to the rest of the mammals, and especially the Placentals, is established. It is possible that the affinities of the various orders of mammals to each other are different from what we hypothetically assume to-day. But, in any case, the common descent of man and all the other mammals from one stem-form is beyond question. This long-extinct Promammal was probably evolved from Proreptiles during the Triassic period, and must certainly be regarded as the monotreme and oviparous ancestor of ALL the mammals.

If we hold firmly to this fundamental and most important thesis, we shall see the "ape-question" in a very different light from that in which it is usually regarded. Little reflection is then needed to see that it is not nearly so important as it is said to be. The origin of the human race from a series of mammal ancestors, and the historic evolution of these from an earlier series of lower vertebrate ancestors, together with all the weighty conclusions that every thoughtful man deduces therefrom, remain untouched; so far as these are concerned, it is immaterial whether we regard true "apes" as our nearest ancestors or not. But as it has become the fashion to lay the chief stress in the whole question of man's origin on the "descent from the apes," I am compelled to return to it once more, and recall the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny that give a decisive answer to this "ape-question."

The shortest way to attain our purpose is that followed by Huxley in 1863 in his able work, which I have already often quoted, Man's Place in Nature--the way of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. We have to compare impartially all man's organs with the same organs in the higher apes, and then to examine if the differences between the two are greater than the corresponding differences between the higher and the lower apes. The indubitable and incontestable result of this comparative-anatomical study, conducted with the greatest care and impartiality, was the pithecometra-principle, which we have called the Huxleian law in honour of its formulator--namely, that the differences in organisation between man and the most advanced apes we know are much slighter than the corresponding differences in organisation between the higher and lower apes. We may even give a more precise formula to this law, by excluding the Platyrrhines or American apes as distant relatives, and restricting the comparison to the narrower family-circle of the Catarrhines, the apes of the Old World. Within the limits of this small group of mammals we found the structural differences between the lower and higher catarrhine apes--for instance, the baboon and the gorilla--to be much greater than the differences between the anthropoid apes and man. If we now turn to ontogeny, and find, according to our "law of the ontogenetic connection of systematically related forms," that the embryos of the anthropoid apes and man retain their resemblance for a longer time than the embryos of the highest and the lowest apes, we are forced, whether we like it or no, to recognise our descent from the order of apes. We can assuredly construct an approximate picture in the imagination of the form of our early Tertiary ancestors from the foregoing facts of comparative anatomy; however we may frame this in detail, it will be the picture of a true ape, and a distinct catarrhine ape. This has been shown so well by Huxley (1863) that the recent attacks of Klaatsch, Virchow, and other anthropologists, have completely failed (cf.

Chapter 2.

23). All the structural characters that distinguish the Catarrhines from the Platyrrhines are found in man. Hence in the genealogy of the mammals we must derive man immediately from the catarrhine group, and locate the origin of the human race in the Old World. Only the early root-form from which both descended was common to them.

It is, therefore, established beyond question for all impartial scientific inquiry that the human race comes directly from the apes of the Old World; but, at the same time, I repeat that this is not so important in connection with the main question of the origin of man as is commonly supposed. Even if we entirely ignore it, all that we have learned from the zoological facts of comparative anatomy and ontogeny as to the placental character of man remains untouched. These prove beyond all doubt the common descent of man and all the rest of the mammals. Further, the main question is not in the least affected if it is said: "It is true that man is a mammal; but he has diverged at the very root of the class from all the other mammals, and has no closer relationship to any living group of mammals." The affinity is more or less close in any case, if we examine the relation of the mammal class to the sixty other classes of the animal world. Quite certainly the whole of the mammals, including man, have had a common origin; and it is equally certain that their common stem-forms were gradually evolved from a long series of lower Vertebrates.

The resistance to the theory of a descent from the apes is clearly due in most men to feeling rather than to reason. They shrink from the notion of such an origin just because they see in the ape organism a caricature of man, a distorted and unattractive image of themselves, because it hurts man's aesthetic complacency and self-ennoblement. It is more flattering to think we have descended from some lofty and god-like being; and so, from the earliest times, human vanity has been pleased to believe in our origin from gods or demi-gods. The Church, with that sophistic reversal of ideas of which it is a master, has succeeded in representing this ridiculous piece of vanity as "Christian humility"; and the very men who reject with horror the notion of an animal origin, and count themselves "children of God," love to prate of their "humble sense of servitude." In most of the sermons that have poured out from pulpit and altar against the doctrine of evolution human vanity and conceit have been a conspicuous element; and, although we have inherited this very characteristic weakness from the apes, we must admit that we have developed it to a higher degree, which is entirely repudiated by sound and normal intelligence. We are greatly amused at all the childish follies that the ridiculous pride of ancestry has maintained from the Middle Ages to our own time; yet there is a large amount of this empty feeling in most men. Just as most people much prefer to trace their family back to some degenerate baron or some famous prince rather than to an unknown peasant, so most men would rather have as parent of the race a sinful and fallen Adam than an advancing, and vigorous ape. It is a matter of taste, and to that extent we cannot quarrel over these genealogical tendencies. Personally, the notion of ascent is more congenial to me than that of descent. It seems to me a finer thing to be the advanced offspring of a simian ancestor, that has developed progressively from the lower mammals in the struggle for life, than the degenerate descendant of a god-like being, made from a clod, and fallen for his sins, and an Eve created from one of his ribs. Speaking of the rib, I may add to what I have said about the development of the skeleton, that the number of ribs is just the same in man and woman. In both of them the ribs are formed from the middle germinal layer, and are, from the phylogenetic point of view, lower or ventral vertebral arches.

But it is said: "That is all very well, as far as the human body is concerned; on the facts quoted it is impossible to doubt that it has really and gradually been evolved from the long ancestral series of the Vertebrates. But it is quite another thing as regards man's mind, or soul; this cannot possibly have been developed from the vertebrate-soul."* (* The English reader will recognise here the curious position of Dr. Wallace and of the late Dr. Mivart.--Translator.) Let us