ANTHROPOLOGY
465
.Systerna Naturae (1735) grouped them together as the conspicuously absent, brings zoological similarity into vieAV highest order of Mammalia, to which he gave the name of Avithout suggesting kinship to account for it. There are feAv Primates. The Amoenitates Academicce (vol. vi., Leyden, ideas more ingrained in ancient and low civilization than 1764), published under the auspices of Linnaeus, contains that of relationship by descent between the lower animals a remarkable picture which illustrates a discourse by his and man. Savage and barbaric religions recognize it, and disciple Hoppius, and is here reproduced in the Plate, the mythology of the world has hardly a more universal Fig. 1. In this picture, which shows the crudeness of the theme. But in educated Europe such ideas had long been zoological notions current in the 18th century both as to superseded by the influence of theology and philosophy, men and apes, there are set in a row four figures: (a) a with which they seemed too incompatible. In the 19th recognizable orang-utan, sitting and holding a staff; (6) century, however, Lamarck’s theory of the development . a chimpanzee, absurdly humanized as to head, hands, and of new species by habit and circumstance led through feet; (c) a hairy woman, with a tail a foot long; (d) Wallace and Darwin to the doctrines of the hereditary another woman, more completely coated with hair. The transmission of acquired characters, the survival of the great Swedish naturalist was possibly justified in treating fittest, and natural selection. Thenceforward it was the two latter creatures as quasi-human, for they seem to impossible to exclude a theory of descent of man be grotesque exaggerations of such tailed and hairy human from ancestral beings whom zoological similarity conbeings as really, though rarely, occur, and are apt to be nects also, though by lines of descent not at all clearly exhibited as monstrosities (see Bastian and Hartmann, Zeit- defined, with ancestors of the anthropomorphic apes. schrift fur Ethnologic, Index, “ Geschwanzte Menschen”; In one form or another such a theory of human descent Gould and Pile, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, has in our time become part of an accepted frame1897). To Linnaeus, however, they represented normal work of zoology, if not as a demonstrable truth, at any anthropomorpha or man-like creatures, vouched for by rate as a working hypothesis which has no effective visitors to remote parts of the world. This opinion of the rival. The new development from Linnaeus’s zoological scheme Swedish naturalist seems to have been little noticed in Great Britain till it was taken up by the learned but which has thus ensued appears in Huxley’s diagram of simian credulous Scots judge, Lord Monboddo (see his Origin and and human skeletons (Fig. 2, (a) gibbon; (6) orang; (c) Progress of Language, 1774, &c.; Antient Metaphysics, chimpanzee ; {d) gorilla ; (e) man). Evidently suggested 1778). He had not heard of the tailed men till he met by the Linnean picture, this is brought up to the modern with them in the work of Linnaeus, with whom he entered level of zoology, and continued on to man, forming an introinto correspondence, Avith the result that he enlarged his duction to his zoological history hardly to be surpassed. range of mankind with races of sub-human type. One Some of the main points it illustrates may be briefly stated was founded on the description by the Swedish sailor here, the reader being referred for further information to Niklas Hoping of the ferocious men with long tails Huxley’s Essays. In tracing the osteological characters of inhabiting the Nicobar Islands. Another comprised the apes and man through this series, the general system of orang-utans of Sumatra, who were said to take men captive the skeletons, and the close correspondence in number and . and set them to work as slaves. One of these apes, it arrangement of vertebrae and ribs, as well as in the teeth, Avas related, served as a sailor on board a Jamaica ship, go far towards justifying the opinion of hereditary conand used to wait on the captain. These are stories which nexion. At the same time, the comparison brings into seem to carry their own explanation. When the Nicobar view differences in human structure adapted to man’s Islands Avere taken over by the British Government two pre-eminent mode of life, though hardly to be accounted centuries later, the native warriors were still wearing their its chief causes. It may be seen how the arrangement of peculiar loin-cloth hanging behind in a most tail-like limbs suited for going on all-fours belongs rather to the apes manner (E. H. Man, Journal Anthropological Institute, than to man, and walking on the soles of the feet rather vol. xv. p. 442). As for the story of the orang-utan to man than the apes. The two modes of progression cabin boy, this may even be verbally true, it being borne overlap in human life, but the child’s tendency when in mind that in the Malay languages the term orang-utan, learning is to rest on the soles of the feet and the palms “ man of the forest,” was originally used for inland forest of the hands, unlike the apes, which support themselves natives and other rude men, rather than for the miyas on the sides of the feet and the bent knuckles of the apes to which it has come to be generally applied by hands. With regard to climbing, the long stretch of Europeans. The speculations as to primitive man con- arm and the grasp with both hands and feet contribute to nected with these stories diverted the British public, the arboreal life of the apes, contrasting with what seem headed by Dr Johnson, who said that Monboddo was “ as the mere remains of the climbing habit to be found even jealous of his tail as a squirrel.” Linnaeus’s primarily among forest savages. On the whole, man’s locomotive zoological classification of man did not, however, suit the limbs are not so much specialized to particular purposes, philosophical opinion of the time, which responded more as generalized into adaptation to many ends. As to the readily to the systems represented by Buffon, and later mechanical conditions of the human body, the upright by Cuvier, in which the human mind and soul formed an posture has always been recognized as the chief. To it impassable Avail of partition between him and other mam- contributes the balance of the skull on the cervical vertemalia, so that the definition of man’s position in the animal brae, while the human form of the pelvis provides the world was treated as not belonging to zoology, but to necessary support to the intestines in the standing attitude. metaphysics and theology. It has to be borne in mind that The marked curvature of the vertebral column, by breaking Linnaeus, plainly as he recognized the likeness of the higher the shock to the neck and head in running and leaping, simian and the human types, does not seem to have enter- likewise favours the erect position. The lowest coccygeal tained the thought of accounting for this similarity by vertebrae of man remain as a rudimentary tail. While it common descent. It satisfied his mind to consider it as is evident that high importance must be attached to the belonging to the system of nature, as indeed remained the adaptation of the human body to the life of diversified case with a greater anatomist of the fallowing century, intelligence and occupation he has to lead, this must not Richard Owen. The present drawing, which under the be treated as though it were the principal element of the authority of Linnaeus shows an anthropomorphic series superiority of man, whose comparison with all lower from Avhich the normal type of man, the homo sapiens, is genera of mammals must be mainly directed to the intelS. L —59
