Man's Place in Nature, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Man's Place in Nature, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Ethnology; Human beings -- Origin; Indo-Europeans
No one doubts, for example, that the Sloth and the Ant-eater, the
Kangaroo and the Opossum, the Tiger and the Badger, the Tapir and the
Rhinoceros, are respectively members of the same orders. These
successive pairs of animals may, and some do, differ from one another
immensely, in such matters as the proportions and structure of their
limbs; the number of their dorsal and lumbar vertebræ; the adaptation of
their frames to climbing, leaping, or running; the number and form of
their teeth; and the characters of their skulls and of the contained
brain. But, with all these differences, they are so closely connected in
all the more important and fundamental characters of their organization,
and so distinctly separated by these same characters from other animals,
that zoologists find it necessary to group them together as members of
one order. And if any new animal were discovered, and were found to
present no greater difference from the Kangaroo and the Opossum, for
example, than these animals do from one another, the zoologist would not
only be logically compelled to rank it in the same order with these, but
he would not think of doing otherwise.
Bearing this obvious course of zoological reasoning in mind, let us
endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask
of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you
will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and
employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular
"erect and featherless biped," which some enterprising traveller,
overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from
that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a
cask of rum. We should all, at once, agree upon placing him among the
mammalian vertebrates; and his lower jaw, his molars, and his brain,
would leave no room for doubting the systematic position of the new
genus among those mammals, whose young are nourished during gestation by
means of a placenta, or what are called the "placental mammals."
Further, the most superficial study would at once convince us that,
among the orders of placental mammals, neither the Whales nor the hoofed
creatures, nor the Sloths and Ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous Cats,
Dogs, and Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the
Insectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim our "_Homo_"
as one of themselves.
There would remain then, but one order for comparison, that of the Apes
(using that word in its broadest sense), and the question for discussion
would narrow itself to this--is Man so different from any of these Apes
that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them
than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the
same order with them?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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