Part 16 (2/2)
yet the great breadth of the face, the enormous development of the ascending ramus of the lower jaw, the extent and roughness of the surfaces for the attachment of the muscles, especially of the masticators, and the extraordinary development of the ridge of the femur, indicate enormous muscular power, and the habits of a savage and brutal race.
These facts might almost make us doubt whether the size of the brain is in any direct way an index of mental power, had we not the most conclusive evidence that it is so, in the fact that, whenever an adult male European has a skull less than nineteen inches in circ.u.mference, or has less than sixty-five cubic inches of brain, he is invariably idiotic. When we join with this the equally undisputed fact, that great men--those who combine acute perception with great reflective power, strong pa.s.sions, and general energy of character, such as Napoleon, Cuvier, and O'Connell, have always heads far above the average size, we must feel satisfied that volume of brain is one, and perhaps the most important, measure of intellect; and this being the case, we cannot fail to be struck with the apparent anomaly, that many of the lowest savages should have as much brains as average Europeans. The idea is suggested of a surplusage of power; of an instrument beyond the needs of its possessor.
_Comparison of the Brains of Man and of Anthropoid Apes._--In order to discover if there is any foundation for this notion, let us compare the brain of man with that of animals. The adult male Orang-utan is quite as bulky as a small sized man, while the Gorilla is considerably above the average size of man, as estimated by bulk and weight; yet the former has a brain of only 28 cubic inches, the latter, one of 30, or, in the largest specimen yet known, of 34 cubic inches. We have seen that the average cranial capacity of the lowest savages is probably not less than _five-sixths_ of that of the highest civilized races, while the brain of the anthropoid apes scarcely amounts to _one-third_ of that of man, in both cases taking the average; or the proportions may be more clearly represented by the following figures--anthropoid apes, 10; savages, 26; civilized man, 32. But do these figures at all approximately represent the relative intellect of the three groups? Is the savage really no farther removed from the philosopher, and so much removed from the ape, as these figures would indicate? In considering this question, we must not forget that the heads of savages vary in size, almost as much as those of civilized Europeans. Thus, while the largest Teutonic skull in Dr. Davis' collection is 1124 cubic inches, there is an Araucanian of 1155, an Esquimaux of 1131, a Marquesan of 11O6, a Negro of 1058, and even an Australian of 1045 cubic inches. We may, therefore, fairly compare the savage with the highest European on the one side, and with the Orang, Chimpanzee, or Gorilla, on the other, and see whether there is any relative proportion between brain and intellect.
_Range of intellectual power in Man._--First, let us consider what this wonderful instrument, the brain, is capable of in its higher developments. In Mr. Galton's interesting work on ”Hereditary Genius,”
he remarks on the enormous difference between the intellectual power and grasp of the well-trained mathematician or man of science, and the average Englishman. The number of marks obtained by high wranglers, is often more than thirty times as great as that of the men at the bottom of the honour list, who are still of fair mathematical ability; and it is the opinion of skilled examiners, that even this does not represent the full difference of intellectual power. If, now, we descend to those savage tribes who only count to three or five, and who find it impossible to comprehend the addition of two and three without having the objects actually before them, we feel that the chasm between them and the good mathematician is so vast, that a thousand to one will probably not fully express it. Yet we know that the ma.s.s of brain might be nearly the same in both, or might not differ in a greater proportion than as 5 to 6; whence we may fairly infer that the savage possesses a brain capable, if cultivated and developed, of performing work of a kind and degree far beyond what he ever requires it to do.
Again, let us consider the power of the higher or even the average civilized man, of forming abstract ideas, and carrying on more or less complex trains of reasoning. Our languages are full of terms to express abstract conceptions. Our business and our pleasures involve the continual foresight of many contingencies. Our law, our government, and our science, continually require us to reason through a variety of complicated phenomena to the expected result. Even our games, such as chess, compel us to exercise all these faculties in a remarkable degree.
Compare this with the savage languages, which contain no words for abstract conceptions; the utter want of foresight of the savage man beyond his simplest necessities; his inability to combine, or to compare, or to reason on any general subject that does not immediately appeal to his senses. So, in his moral and aesthetic faculties, the savage has none of those wide sympathies with all nature, those conceptions of the infinite, of the good, of the sublime and beautiful, which are so largely developed in civilized man. Any considerable development of these would, in fact, be useless or even hurtful to him, since they would to some extent interfere with the supremacy of those perceptive and animal faculties on which his very existence often depends, in the severe struggle he has to carry on against nature and his fellow-man. Yet the rudiments of all these powers and feelings undoubtedly exist in him, since one or other of them frequently manifest themselves in exceptional cases, or when some special circ.u.mstances call them forth. Some tribes, such as the Santals, are remarkable for as pure a love of truth as the most moral among civilized men. The Hindoo and the Polynesian have a high artistic feeling, the first traces of which are clearly visible in the rude drawings of the palaeolithic men who were the contemporaries in France of the Reindeer and the Mammoth. Instances of unselfish love, of true grat.i.tude, and of deep religious feeling, sometimes occur among most savage races.
On the whole, then, we may conclude, that the general moral and intellectual development of the savage, is not less removed from that of civilized man than has been shown to be the case in the one department of mathematics; and from the fact that all the moral and intellectual faculties do occasionally manifest themselves, we may fairly conclude that they are always latent, and that the large brain of the savage man is much beyond his actual requirements in the savage state.
_Intellect of Savages and of Animals compared._--Let us now compare the intellectual wants of the savage, and the actual amount of intellect he exhibits, with those of the higher animals. Such races as the Andaman Islanders, the Australians, and the Tasmanians, the Digger Indians of North America, or the natives of Fuegia, pa.s.s their lives so as to require the exercise of few faculties not possessed in an equal degree by many animals. In the mode of capture of game or fish, they by no means surpa.s.s the ingenuity or forethought of the jaguar, who drops saliva into the water, and seizes the fish as they come to eat it; or of wolves and jackals, who hunt in packs; or of the fox, who buries his surplus food till he requires it. The sentinels placed by antelopes and by monkeys, and the various modes of building adopted by field mice and beavers, as well as the sleeping place of the orang-utan, and the tree-shelter of some of the African anthropoid apes, may well be compared with the amount of care and forethought bestowed by many savages in similar circ.u.mstances. His possession of free and perfect hands, not required for locomotion, enable man to form and use weapons and implements which are beyond the physical powers of brutes; but having done this, he certainly does not exhibit more mind in using them than do many lower animals. What is there in the life of the savage, but the satisfying of the cravings of appet.i.te in the simplest and easiest way? What thoughts, ideas, or actions are there, that raise him many grades above the elephant or the ape? Yet he possesses, as we have seen, a brain vastly superior to theirs in size and complexity; and this brain gives him, in an undeveloped state, faculties which he never requires to use. And if this is true of existing savages, how much more true must it have been of the men whose sole weapons were rudely chipped flints, and some of whom, we may fairly conclude, were lower than any existing race; while the only evidence yet in our possession shows them to have had brains fully as capacious as those of the average of the lower savage races.
We see, then, that whether we compare the savage with the higher developments of man, or with the brutes around him, we are alike driven to the conclusion that in his large and well-developed brain he possesses an organ quite disproportionate to his actual requirements--an organ that seems prepared in advance, only to be fully utilized as he progresses in civilization. A brain slightly larger than that of the gorilla would, according to the evidence before us, fully have sufficed for the limited mental development of the savage; and we must therefore admit, that the large brain he actually possesses could never have been solely developed by any of those laws of evolution, whose essence is, that they lead to a degree of organization exactly proportionate to the wants of each species, never beyond those wants--that no preparation can be made for the future development of the race--that one part of the body can never increase in size or complexity, except in strict co-ordination to the pressing wants of the whole. The brain of pre-historic and of savage man seems to me to prove the existence of some power, distinct from that which has guided the development of the lower animals through their ever-varying forms of being.
_The Use of the Hairy Covering of Mammalia._
Let us now consider another point in man's organization, the bearing of which has been almost entirely overlooked by writers on both sides of this question. One of the most general external characters of the terrestrial mammalia is the hairy covering of the body, which, whenever the skin is flexible, soft, and sensitive, forms a natural protection against the severities of climate, and particularly against rain. That this is its most important function, is well shown by the manner in which the hairs are disposed so as to carry off the water, by being invariably directed downwards from the most elevated parts of the body.
Thus, on the under surface the hair is always less plentiful, and, in many cases, the belly is almost bare. The hair lies downwards, on the limbs of all walking mammals, from the shoulder to the toes, but in the orang-utan it is directed from the shoulder to the elbow, and again from the wrist to the elbow, in a reverse direction. This corresponds to the habits of the animal, which, when resting, holds its long arms upwards over its head, or clasping a branch above it, so that the rain would flow down both the arm and fore-arm to the long hair which meets at the elbow. In accordance with this principle, the hair is always longer or more dense along the spine or middle of the back from the nape to the tail, often rising into a crest of hair or bristles on the ridge of the back. This character prevails through the entire series of the mammalia, from the marsupials to the quadrumana, and by this long persistence it must have acquired such a powerful hereditary tendency, that we should expect it to reappear continually even after it had been abolished by ages of the most rigid selection; and we may feel sure that it never could have been completely abolished under the law of natural selection, unless it had become so positively injurious as to lead to the almost invariable extinction of individuals possessing it.
_The constant absence of Hair from certain parts of Man's Body a remarkable Phenomenon._
In man the hairy covering of the body has almost totally disappeared, and, what is very remarkable, it has disappeared more completely from the back than from any other part of the body. Bearded and beardless races alike have the back smooth, and even when a considerable quant.i.ty of hair appears on the limbs and breast, the back, and especially the spinal region, is absolutely free, thus completely reversing the characteristics of all other mammalia. The Ainos of the Kurile Islands and j.a.pan are said to be a hairy race; but Mr. Bickmore, who saw some of them, and described them in a paper read before the Ethnological Society, gives no details as to where the hair was most abundant, merely stating generally, that ”their chief peculiarity is their great abundance of hair, not only on the head and face, but over the whole body.” This might very well be said of any man who had hairy limbs and breast, unless it was specially stated that his back was hairy, which is not done in this case. The hairy family in Birmah have, indeed, hair on the back rather longer than on the breast, thus reproducing the true mammalian character, but they have still longer hair on the face, forehead, and inside the ears, which is quite abnormal; and the fact that their teeth are all very imperfect, shows that this is a case of monstrosity rather than one of true reversion to the ancestral type of man before he lost his hairy covering.
_Savage Man feels the Want of this Hairy Covering._
We must now enquire if we have any evidence to show, or any reason to believe, that a hairy covering to the back would be in any degree hurtful to savage man, or to man in any stage of his progress from his lower animal form; and if it were merely useless, could it have been so entirely and completely removed as not to be continually reappearing in mixed races? Let us look to savage man for some light on these points.
One of the most common habits of savages is to use some covering for the back and shoulders, even when they have none on any other part of the body. The early voyagers observed with surprise, that the Tasmanians, both men and women, wore the kangaroo-skin, which was their only covering, not from any feeling of modesty, but over the shoulders to keep the back dry and warm. A cloth over the shoulders was also the national dress of the Maories. The Patagonians wear a cloak or mantle over the shoulders, and the Fuegians often wear a small piece of skin on the back, laced on, and s.h.i.+fted from side to side as the wind blows.
The Hottentots also wore a somewhat similar skin over the back, which they never removed, and in which they were buried. Even in the tropics most savages take precautions to keep their backs dry. The natives of Timor use the leaf of a fan palm, carefully st.i.tched up and folded, which they always carry with them, and which, held over the back, forms an admirable protection from the rain. Almost all the Malay races, as well as the Indians of South America, make great palm-leaf hats, four feet or more across, which they use during their canoe voyages to protect their bodies from heavy showers of rain; and they use smaller hats of the same kind when travelling by land.
We find, then, that so far from there being any reason to believe that a hairy covering to the back could have been hurtful or even useless to pre-historic man, the habits of modern savages indicate exactly the opposite view, as they evidently feel the want of it, and are obliged to provide subst.i.tutes of various kinds. The perfectly erect posture of man, may be supposed to have something to do with the disappearance of the hair from his body, while it remains on his head; but when walking, exposed to rain and wind, a man naturally stoops forwards, and thus exposes his back; and the undoubted fact, that most savages feel the effects of cold and wet most severely in that part of the body, sufficiently demonstrates that the hair could not have ceased to grow there merely because it was useless, even if it were likely that a character so long persistent in the entire order of mammalia, could have so completely disappeared, under the influence of so weak a selective power as a diminished usefulness.
_Man's Naked Skin could not have been produced by Natural Selection._
It seems to me, then, to be absolutely certain, that ”Natural Selection”
could not have produced man's hairless body by the acc.u.mulation of variations from a hairy ancestor. The evidence all goes to show that such variations could not have been useful, but must, on the contrary, have been to some extent hurtful. If even, owing to an unknown correlation with other hurtful qualities, it had been abolished in the ancestral tropical man, we cannot conceive that, as man spread into colder climates, it should not have returned under the powerful influence of reversion to such a long persistent ancestral type. But the very foundation of such a supposition as this is untenable; for we cannot suppose that a character which, like hairiness, exists throughout the whole of the mammalia, can have become, in one form only, so constantly correlated with an injurious character, as to lead to its permanent suppression--a suppression so complete and effectual that it never, or scarcely ever, reappears in mongrels of the most widely different races of man.
<script>