THE

ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW.

AUGUST, 1864.

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND ANIMALS.

"Les animaux ne diffèrent de l'homme que du plus au moins."

CONDILLAC, Traité des Animaux, ii, 4.

EVEN upon the free admission of the most eminent and candid supporters of Mr. Darwin, we are not yet compelled to accept as proved the Darwinian hypothesis of gradual development. But all calm and earnest inquirers ought to express their complete dissent from the methods usually adopted in order to overthrow it. When it was first propounded, the clergy in general, and even philosophers raised a cry, as though an attempt had been made to attack humanity in its inmost shrine of sacredness; and though they had never seen an ape in their lives, except perhaps in the cage of a menagerie, they mounted their highest horses and declaimed indefinitely about Intellect, Soul, Understanding, and Self-consciousness, and all other immanent qualities of mankind, according to the names they receive after being reflected in this or the other philosophical prism.* All this is beside the question, which affects the organism alone; and certainly, as may easily be shewn, neither the past pedigree nor the future destinies of the human body until the resurrection, are such as to make any man consider it a degradation that the particles which form his mortal body should have been vivified during past ages in the material

* See Vogt, Vorlesungen über den Menschen, § 9. In his second part, which only appeared after this was written, he has examined the question at length. It will be observed that I have not paused to notice such definitions as that "man is a tool-using animal", "a cooking animal", etc. If they were true, they would furnish us with no real line of demarcation. But are they true? Can the Tartar, who uses his beefsteak as a saddle before he eats it, be said to cook? And if so, may not the racoon be said to cook, when it dips its food in water? And do not monkeys use cocoa-nuts, boughs of trees, etc., as tools? "The use of fire," says Bernardin de St. Pierre, "places an infinite distance between men and animals" (Harm. de la Nature). But the Dokos, and probably other savages, do not know the use of fire: and similarly, on one side or other, all such defini. tions break down.

VOL. II.-NO. VI.

M

"It

structure of inferior animals. The supposition is not proved, and we believe it to be untrue; but it has been opposed on false grounds. It is not degrading to man, it is not against the majesty of God. is just as noble a conception of the Deity," says Mr. Darwin, "to believe that he created a few organic forms capable of self-development into other needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the void caused by the action of His laws."

That man is to be classed as a member of the animal kingdom, and not as zoologically distinct from it, is now admitted, although there was a great outcry against Linnæus, when he first gave to the fact a scientific recognition. "Not being able," says Professor Owen, "to appreciate or conceive the distinction between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman, or of an Aztec with arrested brain growth, as being of a nature to exclude comparison between them, or as being other than a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading similitude of structure-every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous-which makes the determination of the difference between homo and pithecus the anatomist's difficulty. And, therefore, with every respect for the author of the Records of Creation, I follow Linnæus and Cuvier in regarding mankind as a legitimate subject of zoological comparison* and classification."

M. Flourens has most emphatically observed↑ "Un intervalle profond, sans liaison, sans passage, sépare l'espèce humaine de toutes les autres espèces. Aucune autre n'est voisine de l'espèce humaine, aucun genre même, aucune famille." That there is between man and animals an enormous difference in degree, no one dreams of denying. As Buffon says, "Le plus stupide des hommes suffit pour conduire le plus spirituel des animaux, il le commande et le fait servir, et c'est moins par force et par adresse que par supériorité de nature, et parcequ'il a un projet raisonné, un ordre d'actions et une suite de moyens par lesquels il constraint l'animal à lui obeir."‡ But when we pass from differences of degree to differences of kind, § it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to point out any satisfactory, definite, and pre

*On the Character of the Class Mammalia, p. 20, n., Mem. of British Association, 1857.

+ Eloge de Blumenbach, Mém. de l'Institut, t. xxi. Linnæus, on the other hand, whose Homo Lar is the grand gibbon of Buffon, calls man "homo sapiens", and the chimpanzee (for clearly his description must refer to the chimpanzee) "homo troglodytes". Both Rouseau and Burnet considered orangs to be men. See Godron, ii, 117.

Hist. Nat., ii, 438. See Aug. Carlier, De l'esclavage, p. 11, seq.

§ Even Porphyry thought that animals differ from man in degree only, not in essence. De Abstinentia. See Pouchet, De la Plur. de Races Hum., ch. ii.

cise line of demarcation between the human race and inferior animals. The difference, in other words, is quantitative, and not, so far as we can yet see, essentially qualitative.

Let us very briefly examine some of the suggested differences between them, passing over all those more trifling ones which, even if they were established, would not amount to an essential and generic diffeThe examination is all the more necessary, because few subjects have been more disguised than this by ignorance and prejudice and their invariable concomitants, arrogant assertion and obstinate refusal to observe the facts.

rence.

1. Buffon says, "Whatever be the resemblance between the Hottentot and the ape, the interval which separates them is immense, since it is filled up interiorly by Thought*, and exteriorly by Language." "The plant," says Is. Geoff. St. Hilaire, "lives; the animal lives and feels; the man lives, feels, and thinks."

Yet it is impossible, as even Buffon admits, to refuse to allow to animals at least an analogon of thought, or, as M. de Quatrefages expresses it, a rudimentary intelligence. To prove this would be to copy out whole volumes of authentic narratives respecting various animals. Dr. Yvan, in his account of a tame orang of Borneo, mentions that one day he took a little girl, examined her in the most attentive physiological manner with the greatest gentleness, and then retiring into a corner, with a most puzzled expression, meditated for a considerable time. A dog, which is searching for its master, will come to a place where three roads meet, and after smelling at two of them will take the third without stopping to trace the scent, because an exhaustive and perfect syllogism has proved to him that it is unnecessary to do so. Borlaset narrates to us that he once saw a lobster trying to get an oyster. Everytime, however, the lobster tried to insert its claw the oyster closed its shell and frustrated the attempt; at last the lobster picked up a little pebble and when next the oyster opened its shell dropped it in, and so attained his object. The necrophorus in order to get at a dead animal at the top of a stick, will undermine the stick and so bring the animal down. Streud's cat, when it began to feel the exhaustion of air in his air-pump, would put its paw over the valve and so stop its action. An elephant was seen to pick up a sixpence which was beyond his reach by blowing it violently against the wall until it had recoiled within the length of his trunk. Cuvier tells us that, when a rope was shortened with knots in order to prevent the orang-outang at Paris from letting itself down to unlock a door, the

Hence the very root of the word man, Sanskr. manudscha, Goth. manniska, Germ. mensch, etc., is "man", to think. Grimm, Uber d. Urspr. d. Sprache., § 121, + See Thompson's Passions of Animals.

creature observing that his weight only drew the knots tighter, climbed up above them, and so untied them.

After these cases, which might be indefinitely multiplied, who shall deny Thought even to a crustacean? who will venture to say with Descartes,* "la bête n'est qu'un automate, une pure machine?" or, who will refuse to admit with Milton respecting animals that"They also know,

And reason, not contemptibly";

and with Dr. Brown that they exhibit the evident marks "of reasoning of reasoning which I cannot but think as unquestionable as the instincts that mingle with it." The instincts of animals adapt themselves to varying circumstances, and therefore Coleridgef rightly concludes that their instinctive intelligence "is not different in kind from understanding, or the faculty which judges according to sense in man."

In

The definition of man, then, as a "reasonable animal," and the attempt to establish a generic difference between that which in animals is called "instinct," and in man "reason," falls to the ground. stinct, as Comte‡ pointed out, is "a spontaneous impulse in a determinate direction, independent of any foreign influence; and, therefore, there is instinct in man as much or more than in brutes." If, on the other hand, intelligence be defined as the aptitude to modify conduct in conformity to the circumstances of the case-which is the main practical attitude of reason proper-it is more evident than before that the difference between men and animals is only in degree of development. Comte considers that this perversion of the word instinct is a remnant of the automatic hypothesis of Descartes; and in a few pregnant remarks he shows the truth of that which has also becn stated by Professor Huxley§, that "the essential processes of reasoning are exerted by the higher order of brutes as completely and effectively as by ourselves." The ideal || fixity of instinct, which is *Des Cartes, Disc. de la Méthode, ed. Cousin, i, 184-190.

+ Aids to Reflection, i, 193, sixth edition. Sidney Smith a little understates matters when he says "I feel myself so much at ease about the superiority of mankind; I have such a marked and decided contempt for the understanding of every baboon I have ever seen, I feel so sure that the blue ape without a tail will never rival us in painting, poetry, or music, that I see no reason whatever why justice may not be done to the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they may really possess." This passage is exquisitely bumorous, but it rather tends to conceal the real nature of the serious question, What is the distinguishing mark between men and animals?

Comte, Phil. Pos., v, 6; Martineau's trans., i, 465. Dr. Darwin long ago saw the same truth. Zoonomia, i, 256.

§ Huxley, Lectures, p. 57. See, too, Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 495.

Even F. Cuvier (Dict. des Sciences Nat., xxiii, 532), Flourens (De l'Instinct et de l'Intelligence des Animaux), and Godron (De l'Espèce, ii, 131), appear to endorse this positive error as to the unalterableness of instinct. Instinet is no

supposed to characterise animals, is, as Leroy has proved, the mere error of inattentive observers; and instead of patiently exploring the moral and intellectual nature of animals, men have jumped at once to a contemptuous and erroneous opinion which has blinded their eyes to innumerable facts. Man has looked at the animals only through the deceitful prism of his own pride, and his own unreasoning individuality.

2. Nor, again, can we deny to animals a species of language, or didλEKTOS, as Plato calls it, although Max Müller considers language a Rubicon which animals can never cross. It is true that the language may be rudimentary, and mainly composed of interjections; it is true it may be the expression of mere feeling,† rather than of free intelligence, yet it differs from human speech neither in its mechanical production nor in its object and results. To prove this was the object of several of those books§ which were written to refute the wonderful automaton-theory of Descartes. To all intents and purposes animals do possess language, and some of them even a power of articulation, which may be proved by many anecdotes. When bees have lost their queen the first that discovers the fact informs the whole hive by crossing and tapping the antennæ of all which it meets. Dr. Franklin found some ants eating treacle. He shook them out, and hung the pot by a string from the ceiling. Only one ant had been left in the pot. This crawled up the string, across the ceiling, and down the wall, and then informed the rest who immediately thronged to the treacle till it was all devoured. A surgeon at Leeds bandaged and cured the leg of a dog which had been lamed. The dog attended every day till it was cured, and after three months brought with it another lame dog to request the same assistance. "Parrots," says Archbishop Whately, "can be taught not only to pronounce words, but to pronounce them with some general meaning of what they utter." "All ears," says Professor Wilson, "can correspond to the cultivated utterances of domestic animals, and especially to the varying tones of the dog. Its whine, its bay, its whimper, its bark, its yelp, its growl, its snarl, its snap, its howl, are more unalterable in animals than it is in man. That animals have intelligence, as well as instinct, has been admitted by Locke, Essay on Underst., ii, 11, Leibnitz, Nouv. Essais, ii, 16, Condillac, Traité des Animaux, p. 36, Leroy, Lettres Philosophiques, p. 5, etc. Réaumur, etc. (quoted by Godron, l.c.), as well as by the authorities already adduced. For some good remarks on instinct, see Dr. Whewell, Hist. of the Ind. Sciences, i, 615, seq.

* Cornay, Anthrop., p. 16.

+ Heyse, Syst. der Sprachwissenschaft, 25-33.

De Quatrefages, loc. cit.

§ Such as those of Fabr. de Aquapendente, and of Drechseler, and of Rechtenbach, De Sermone Brutorum; Crocius (1676), and Klemmius (1704), De Animâ Brutorum; J. Stahl, Logice Brutorum, Hamb., 1697; Le Père Bonjeant, Amusements Phil. sur le Laugage des Bêtes, La Haye, 1739, etc.