Pleasant Ways in ScienceProctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Pleasant Ways in Science
Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony)
Science
Perhaps the soundest opinion respecting the relative position of
the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang with reference to man, is
that which places the gorilla nearest to the lower tribes of man now
inhabiting Africa, the chimpanzee approximating, but not so closely,
to higher African tribes, and the orang-outang approximating, but
still less closely, to Asiatic tribes. It appears to me that, whatever
weight naturalists may attach to those details in which the gorilla
and the chimpanzee are more removed from man than the orang, no one
who takes a _general_ view of these three races of anthropoid apes can
hesitate to regard the gorilla as that which, on the whole, approaches
nearest to man; but it is to a much lower race of man that the gorilla
approximates, so that the chimpanzee and the orang-outang may fairly be
regarded as higher in the scale of animal life.
If we consider young specimens of the three animals, which is, on
the whole, the safest way of forming an opinion, we are unmistakably
led, in my judgment, to such a conclusion. I have seen three or four
young chimpanzees, two young orangs, and the young gorilla lately
exhibited at the Aquarium (where he could be directly compared with
the chimpanzee), and I cannot hesitate to pronounce Pongo altogether
the most human of the three. A young chimpanzee reminds one rather of
an old man than of a child, and the same may be said of young orangs;
but the young gorilla unmistakably reminds one of the young negro.
Repeatedly, while watching Pongo, I was reminded of the looks and
behaviour of young negroes whom I had seen in America, though not able
in every case to fix definitely on the feature of resemblance which
recalled the negro to my mind. (The reader is, doubtless, familiar with
half-remembered traits such as those I refer to—traits, for instance,
such as assure you that a person belongs to some county or district,
though you may be unable to say what feature, expression, or gesture
suggests the idea.) One circumstance may be specially noted, not only
as frequently recurring, but as illustrating the traits on which the
resemblance of the gorilla (when young, at any rate) to the negro
depends. A negro turns his eyes where a Caucasian would turn his head.
The peculiarity is probably a relic of savage life; for the savage,
whether engaged in war or in the chase, avoids, as far as possible,
every movement of body or limb. Pongo looked in this way. When he thus
cast his black eyes sideways at an object I found myself reminded
irresistibly of the ways of the watchful negro waiters at an American
hotel. Certainly there is little in the movements of the chimpanzee to
remind one of any kind of human child. He is impish; but not the most
impish child of any race or tribe ever had ways, I should suppose,
resembling his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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