But this conclusively accounts for only one of the many anatomical
differences between man and his caudal progenitor. For why should the
loss of his tail have resulted in the changed chemistry of the monkey's
brain? or in the increased involutions of his brain even? The specific
differences between the present and ancestral types are very numerous
and demand separate classification. Their variability runs through every
bone, muscle, tissue, fibre, nerve. Their blood corpuscles are not the
same. The chemistry of their bones essentially differs. The nerves are
differently bundled and differently strung. In intonations of
voice--symmetry of arms, legs, chest--hairlessness of body, and aquatic
and land habits, the frog is a much nearer approach to man than the
monkey, as all caricaturists, delineating aldermanic proportions, will
agree. And Mr. Darwin might have immortalized himself by deriving the
builders of the ancient pile-habitations and other primitive water-rats
and croakers of the Swiss lakes, from this tailless batrachian. For
everybody knows, or thinks he knows, how the frog lost his tail. If he
didn't wag it off, he certainly absorbed its waggishness as a
distinguishing characteristic of the "coming man"--the future Artemas
Wards and Mark Twains of the race. This ancestral origin will also
account for the otherwise unaccountable proclivity of all human
juveniles to play at the game of leap-frog! Besides, it would have
relieved Mr. Darwin from one of the greatest perplexities he has had to
encounter. As he derives man from a hairy quadruped, the absence of hair
on the human body, is a phenomenal fact that gives him great trouble. He
agrees that it does not result from "natural selection," as he says "the
loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man." Nor
does he suppose it to result from what he calls "correlated
development." He is more puzzled over this problem of divestiture than
any other, and finds the solution of it only in "sexual selection." That
is, he assumes that among our semi-human progenitors, far back in the
Tertiary or some other period, some female monkeys were less hirsute
than others, and that they naturally preferred males possessing similar
characteristics. These divergencies were thus commenced, and, by
continuous "sexual selection," the infirmity (for such he regards the
loss of hair) was propagated until the race was almost entirely denuded
or bereft of this covering. In the same way he accounts for nearly all
the differentiations of the race, among the various tribes now or
formerly inhabiting the earth. All have sprung from the same semi-human
progenitors--_apes that lost their capacity to subsist as apes, and
hence found it necessary to subsist as men_!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account