On the Relations of Man to the Lower AnimalsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Science
On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Apes; Ethnology; Human beings
When the assertions, which I have italicised in the above extract,
first came under my notice, I was not a little astonished at so flat a
contradiction of the doctrines current among well-informed anatomists;
but, not unnaturally imagining that the deliberate statements of a
responsible person must have some foundation in fact, I deemed it my
duty to investigate the subject anew before the time at which it
would be my business to lecture thereupon came round. The result of my
inquiries was to prove that Mr. Owen's three assertions, that "the third
lobe, the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle, and the hippocampus
minor," are "pecular to the genus 'Homo'," are contrary to the plainest
facts. I communicated this conclusion to the students of my class;
and then, having no desire to embark in a controversy which could not
redound to the honour of British science, whatever its issue, I turned
to more congenial occupations.
The time speedily arrived, however, when a persistence in this reticence
would have involved me in an unworthy paltering with truth.
At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, in 1860, Professor
Owen repeated these assertions in my presence, and, of course, I
immediately gave them a direct and unqualified contradiction, pledging
myself to justify that unusual procedure elsewhere. I redeemed that
pledge by publishing, in the January number of the 'Natural History
Review' for 1861, an article wherein the truth of the three following
propositions was fully demonstrated (l. c. p. 71):--
"1. That the third lobe is neither peculiar to, nor characteristic of,
man, seeing that it exists in all the higher quadrumana."
"2. That the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle is neither
peculiar to, nor characteristic of, man, inasmuch as it also exists in
the higher quadrumana."
"3. That the 'hippocampus minor' is neither pecular to, nor
characteristic of, man, as it is found in certain of the higher
quadrumana."
Furthermore, this paper contains the following paragraph (p. 76): "And
lastly, Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik (op. cit. p. 271), though they
particularly note that 'the lateral ventricle is distinguished from that
of Man by the very defective proportions of the posterior cornu, wherein
only a stripe is visible as an indication of the hippocampus minor;' yet
the Figure 4, in their second Plate, shows that this posterior cornu is
a perfectly distinct and unmistakeable structure, quite as large as it
often is in Man. It is the more remarkable that Professor Owen should
have overlooked the explicit statement and figure of these authors, as
it is quite obvious, on comparison of the figures, that his woodcut of
the brain of a Chimpanzee (l. c. p. 19) is a reduced copy of the second
figure of Messrs. Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik's first Plate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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