The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Religion
The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895
Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Evolution
The pelvis is broad and comparatively shallow. The legs, especially
the thighs, are long. The foot is long and strong, and rests its
lower surface, not merely the outer margin as in apes, on the
ground. The elastic arch of the instep must be excepted in the above
description, and adds lightness and swiftness to his otherwise slow
gait. The great toe is short and generally not opposable. The
muscles of the leg are heavy and the knee-joint has a very broad
articulating surface. But the great result of man's erect posture is
that the hand is set free from the work of locomotion, and has
become a delicate tactile and tool-using organ. The importance of
this change we cannot over-estimate. The hand was the servant of the
brain for trying all experiments. Had not our arboreal ancestors
developed the hand for us we could never have invented tools nor
used them if invented. And its reflex influence in developing the
brain has been enormous. The arm is shorter and the hand smaller.
The brain is absolutely and relatively large, and its surface
greatly convoluted. This gives place for a large amount of "gray
matter," whose functions are perception, thought, and will. For this
gray matter forms a layer on the outside of the brain.
Thus, even anatomically, man differs from the anthropoid apes. His
whole structure is moulded to and by the higher mental powers, so
that he is the "Anthropos" of the old Greek philosophers, the being
who "turns his face upward." Yet in all these anatomical respects
some of the apes differ less from him than from the lower apes or
"half apes." And every one of these can easily be explained as the
result of progressive development and modification. Whoever will
deny the possibility or probability of man's development from some
lower form must argue on psychological, not on anatomical, grounds;
and it grows clearer every day that even the former but poorly
justify such a denial.
But it is interesting to note that no one ape most closely
approaches man in all anatomical respects. Thus among the
anthropoids the orang is perhaps most similar to man in cerebral
structure, the chimpanzee in form of skull, the gorilla in feet and
hands. No evolutionist would claim that any existing ape represents
the ancestor of man. The anthropoids represent very probably the
culmination of at least three distinct lines of development. But we
must remember that in early tertiary times apes occurred all over
Europe, and probably Asia, many degrees farther north than now. In
those days, as later, the fauna and flora of northern climates were
superior in vigor and height of development to that of Africa or
Australia. It is thus, to say the least, not at all improbable that
there existed in those times apes considerably, if not far, superior
to any surviving forms. Whether the palæontologist will find for us
remains of such anthropoids is still to be seen.
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