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
As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of
erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has
provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of
gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains
little lower than that of Man. And it is a remarkable circumstance that
though, so far as our present knowledge extends, there _is_ one true
structural break in the series of forms of Simian brains, this hiatus
does not lie between Man and the man-like Apes, but between the lower
and the lowest Simians; or, in other words, between the old and new
world apes and monkeys, and the Lemurs. Every Lemur which has yet been
examined, in fact, has its cerebellum partially visible from above, and
its posterior lobe, with the contained posterior cornu and hippocampus
minor, more or less rudimentary. Every Marmoset, American monkey, old
world monkey, Baboon, or Man-like ape, on the contrary, has its
cerebellum entirely hidden, posteriorly, by the cerebral lobes, and
possesses a large posterior cornu, with a well-developed hippocampus
minor.
* * * * *
In many of these creatures, such as the Saimiri (_Chrysothrix_), the
cerebral lobes overlap and extend much further behind the cerebellum, in
proportion, than they do in man (Fig. 16)--and it is quite certain that,
in all, the cerebellum is completely covered behind, by well-developed
posterior lobes. The fact can be verified by every one who possesses the
skull of any old or new world monkey. For, inasmuch as the brain in all
mammals completely fills the cranial cavity, it is obvious that a cast
of the interior of the skull will reproduce the general form of the
brain, at any rate with such minute and, for the present purpose,
utterly unimportant differences as may result from the absence of the
enveloping membranes of the brain in the dry skull. But if such a cast
be made in plaster, and compared with a similar cast of the interior of
a human skull, it will be obvious that the cast of the cerebral chamber,
representing the cerebrum of the ape, as completely covers over and
overlaps the cast of the cerebellar chamber, representing the
cerebellum, as it does in the man (Fig. 20). A careless observer,
forgetting that a soft structure like the brain loses its proper shape
the moment it is taken out of the skull, may indeed mistake the
uncovered condition of the cerebellum of an extracted and distorted
brain for the natural relations of the parts; but his error must become
patent even to himself if he try to replace the brain within the
cranial chamber. To suppose that the cerebellum of an ape is naturally
uncovered behind is a miscomprehension comparable only to that of one
who should imagine that a man's lungs always occupy but a small portion
of the thoracic cavity--because they do so when the chest is opened, and
their elasticity is no longer neutralized by the pressure of the air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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