Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and EssaysTyndall, John
Philosophy
Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and Essays
Tyndall, John
Science
α. Development of Intelligence.
If the brain is the organ of mind, we may be surprised to find that
the brain of the intelligent man scarcely differs in structure from
that of the ape. Whence, then, the difference of power? Though no
one will now deny that many of the Mammalia are capable of reasoning
upon observed facts, yet how greatly the results of this capacity
differ in number and importance from those achieved by human
intelligence! Like water at the temperatures of 50° and 53°, where
we perceive no difference in essential character, so between the
brains of the lower and higher monkeys no difference of function or
of intelligence is perceptible. But what a difference do the two
degrees of temperature from 33° to 31° produce in water! In like
manner the difference between the brain of the higher ape and that
of man is accompanied by a difference in function and power, on
which, man’s earthly destiny depends. In development, as with the
water so with the higher ape: some Rubicon has been crossed, some
floodgate has been opened, which marks one of Nature’s great
transitions, such as have been called “Expression points” of
progress.
What point of progress in such a history would account for this
accession of the powers of the human intelligence? It has been
answered, with considerable confidence, The power of speech. Let us
picture man without speech. Each generation would learn nothing from
its predecessors. Whatever originality or observation might yield to
a man would die with him. Each intellectual life would begin where
every other life began, and would end at a point only differing with
its original capacity. Concert of action, by which man’s power over
the material world is maintained, would not exceed, if it equaled,
that which is seen among the bees; and the material results of his
labors would not extend beyond securing the means of life and the
employment of the simplest modes of defence and attack.
The first men, therefore, are looked upon by the developmentalists
as extremely embryonic in all that characterizes humanity, and they
appeal to the facts of history in support of this view. If they do
not derive much assistance from written history, evidence is found
in the more enduring relics of human handiwork.
The opposing view is, that the races which present or have presented
this condition of inferiority or savagery have reached it by a
process of degradation from a higher state—as some believe, through
moral delinquency. This position may be true in certain cases, which
represent perhaps a condition of senility, but in general we believe
that savagery was the condition of the first man, which has in some
races continued to the present day.
_β. Evidence from Archæology._
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