Evolution, Old & New Part 10

"Differences in exterior are nothing in comparison with those in interior parts. These last must be regarded as the causes, while the others are but the effects. The interior parts of living beings are the foundation of the plan of their design; this is their essential form, their real shape, their exterior is only the surface, or rather the drapery in which their true figure is enveloped. How often does not the study of comparative anatomy show us that two exteriors which differ widely conceal interiors absolutely like each other, and, on the contrary, that the smallest internal difference is accompanied by the most marked differences of outward appearance, changing as it does even the natural habits, faculties and attributes of the animal?"[113]

_Apes and Monkeys._

The fourteenth volume is devoted to apes and monkeys, and to the chapter with which the volumes on quadrupeds are brought to a conclusion--a chapter for which perhaps the most important position in the whole work is thus a.s.signed. It is very long, and is headed "On Descent with Modification" ("De la Degeneration des Animaux"). This is the chapter in which Buffon enters more fully into the "causes or means" of the transformation of species.

At the opening of the chapter on the nomenclature of monkeys, the theory is broached that there is a certain fixed amount of life-substance as of matter in nature; and that neither can be either augmented or diminished. Buffon maintains this organic and living substance to be as real and durable as inanimate matter; as permanent in its state of life as the other in that of death; it is spread over the whole of nature, and pa.s.ses from vegetables to animals by way of nutrition, and from animals back to vegetables through putrefaction, thus circulating incessantly to the animation of all that lives.

As might be expected, Buffon is loud in his protest against any real similarity between man and the apes--man has had the spirit of the Deity breathed into his nostrils, and the lowest creature with this is higher than the highest without it. Having settled this point, he makes it his business to show how little difference in other respects there is between the apes and man.

"One who could view," he writes, "Nature in her entirety, from first to last, and then reflect upon the manner in which these two substances--the living and the inanimate--act and react upon one another, would see that every living being is a mould which casts into its own shape those substances upon which it feeds; that it is this a.s.similation which const.i.tutes the growth of the body, whose development is not simply an augmentation of volume, but an extension in all its dimensions, a penetration of new matter into all parts of its ma.s.s: he would see that these parts augment proportionately with the whole, and the whole proportionately with these parts, while general configuration remains the same until the full development is accomplished.... He would see that man, the quadruped, the cetacean, the bird, reptile, insect, tree, plant, herb, all are nourished, grow, and reproduce themselves on this same system, and that though their manner of feeding and of reproducing themselves may appear so different, this is only because the general and common cause upon which these operations depend can only operate in the individual agreeably with the form of each species.

Travelling onward (for it has taken the human mind ages to arrive at these great truths, from which all others are derived), he would compare living forms, give them names to distinguish them, and other names to connect them with each other. Taking his own body as the model with which all living forms should be compared, and having measured them, explained them thoroughly, and compared them in all their parts, he would see that there is but small difference between the forms of living beings; that by dissecting the ape he could arrive at the anatomy of man, and that taking some other animal we find always the same ultimate plan of organization, the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones, the same flesh, the same movements of the fluids, the same play and action of the solids; he would find all of them with a heart, veins, arteries, in all the same organs of circulation, respiration, digestion, nutrition, secretion; in all of them a solid frame, composed of pieces put together in nearly the same manner; and he would find this system always the same, from man to the ape, from the ape to the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the cetacea, birds, fishes, reptiles; this system or plan then, I say, if firmly laid hold of and comprehended by the human mind, is a true copy of nature; it is the simplest and most general point of view from which we can consider her, and if we extend our view, and go on from what lives to what vegetates, we may see this plan--which originally did but vary almost imperceptibly--change its scope and descend gradually from reptiles to insects, from insects to worms, from worms to zoophytes, from zoophytes to plants, and yet keeping ever the same fundamental unity in spite of differences of detail, insomuch that nutrition, development, and reproduction remain the common traits of all organic bodies; traits eternally essential and divinely implanted; which time, far from effacing or destroying, does but make plainer and plainer continually."

This is the writer who can see nothing in common between the horse and the zebra except that each has a solid hoof.[114] He continues:--

"If from this grand tableau of resemblances, in which the living universe presents itself to our eyes as though it were a single family, we pa.s.s to a tableau rather of the differences between living forms, we shall see that, with the exception of some of the greater species, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tiger, lion, which must each have their separate place, the other races seem all to blend with neighbouring forms, and to fall into groups of likenesses, greater or lesser, and of genera which our nomenclators represent to us by a network of shapes, of which some are held together by the feet, others by the teeth, horns, and skin, and others by points of still minor importance. And even those whose form strikes us as most perfect, as approaching most nearly to our own--even the apes--require some attention before they can be distinguished from one another, for the privilege of being an isolated species has been a.s.signed less to form than to size; and man himself, though of a separate species and differing infinitely from all or any others, has but a medium size, and is less isolated and has nearer neighbours than have the greater animals. If we study the Orang-outang with regard only to his configuration, we might regard him, with equal justice, as either the highest of the apes or as the lowest of mankind, because, with the exception of the soul, he wants nothing of what we have ourselves, and because, as regards his body, he differs less from man than he does from other animals which are still called apes."[115]

The want of a soul Buffon maintains to be the only essential difference between the Orang-outang and man--"his body, limbs, senses, brain and tongue are the same as ours. He can execute whatever movements man can execute; yet he can neither think nor speak, nor do any action of a distinctly human character. Is this merely through want of training? or may it not be through wrong comparison on our own parts? We compare the wild ape in the woods to the civilized citizen of our great towns. No wonder the ape shows to disadvantage. He should be compared with the hideous Hottentot rather, who is himself almost as much above the lowest man, as the lowest man is above the Orang-outang."[116]

The pa.s.sage is a much stronger one than I have thought it fit to quote.

The reader can refer to it for himself. After reading it I entertain no further doubt that Buffon intended to convey the impression that men and apes are descended from common ancestors. He was not, however, going to avow this conclusion openly.

"I admit," he continues, "that if we go by mere structure the ape might be taken for a variety of the human race; the Creator did not choose to model mankind upon an entirely distinct system from the other animals: He comprised their form and man's under a plan which is in the main uniform."[117] Buffon then dwells upon the possession of a soul by man; "even the lowest creature," he avers, "which had this, would have become man's rival."

"The ape then is purely an animal, far from being a variety of our own species, he does not even come first in the order of animals, since he is not the most intelligent: the high opinion which men have of the intelligence of apes is a prejudice based only upon the resemblance between their outward appearance and our own."[118] But the undiscerning were not only to be kept quiet, they were to be made happy. With this end, if I am not much mistaken, Buffon brings his chapter on the nomenclature of apes to the following conclusion:--

"The ape, which the philosopher and the uneducated have alike regarded as difficult to define, and as being at best equivocal, and midway between man and the lower animals, proves in fact to be an animal and nothing more; he is masked externally in the shape of man, but internally he is found incapable of thought, and of all that const.i.tutes man; apes are below several of the other animals in respect of qualities corresponding to their own, and differ essentially from man, in nature, temperament, the time which must be spent upon their gestation and education, in their period of growth, duration of life, and in fact in all those profounder habits which const.i.tute what is called the 'nature'

of any individual existence."[119] This is handsome, and leaves the more timorous reader in full possession of the field.

Buffon is accordingly at liberty in the following chapter to bring together every fact he can lay his hands on which may point the resemblance between man and the Orang-outang most strongly; but he is careful to use inverted commas here much more freely than is his wont.

Having thus made out a strong case for the near affinity between man and the Orang-outang, and having thrown the responsibility on the original authors of the pa.s.sages he quotes, he excuses himself for having quoted them on the ground that "everything may seem important in the history of a brute which resembles man so nearly," and then insists upon the points of difference between the Orang-outang and ourselves. They do not, however, in Buffon's hands come to much, until the end of the chapter, when, after a _resume_ dwelling on the points of resemblance, the differences are again emphatically declared to have the best of it.

I need not follow Buffon through his description of the remaining monkeys. It comprises 250 pp., and is confined to details with which we have no concern; but the last chapter--"De la Degeneration des Animaux"--deserves much fuller quotation than my s.p.a.ce will allow me to make from it. The chapter is very long, comprising, as I have said, over sixty quarto pages. It is impossible, therefore, for me to give more than an outline of its contents.

_Causes or Means of the Transformation of Species._

The human race is declared to be the one most capable of modification, all its different varieties being descended from a common stock, and owing their more superficial differences to changes of climate, while their profounder ones, such as woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips, are due to differences of diet, which again will vary with the nature of the country inhabited by any race. Changes will be exceedingly gradual; it will take centuries of unbroken habit to bring about modifications which can be transmitted with certainty so as to eventuate in national characteristics.[120] It is a pleasure to find that here, too, habit is a.s.signed as the main cause which underlies heredity.

Modification will be much prompter with animals. When compelled to abandon their native land, they undergo such rapid and profound modification, that at first sight they can hardly be recognized as the same race, and cannot be detected in their disguise till after the most careful inspection, and on grounds of a.n.a.logy only. Domestication will produce still more surprising results; the stigmata of their captivity, the marks of their chains, can be seen upon all those animals which man has enslaved; the older and more confirmed the servitude, the deeper will be its scars, until at length it will be found impossible to rehabilitate the creature and restore to it its lost attributes.

"Temperature of climate, quality of food, and the ills of slavery--here are the three main causes of the alteration and degeneration of animals.

The consequences of each of these should be particularly considered, so that by examining Nature as she is to-day we may thus perceive what she was in her original condition."[121]

I have more than once admitted that there is a wide difference between this opinion, which a.s.signs modification to the direct influence of climate, food, and other changed conditions of life, and that of Dr.

Erasmus Darwin, which a.s.signs only an indirect effect to these, while the direct effect is given to changed actions in consequence of changed desires; but it is surprising how nearly Buffon has approached the later and truer theory, which may perhaps have been suggested to Dr. Darwin by the following pregnant pa.s.sage--as pregnant, probably, to Buffon himself as to another:--

"The camel is the animal which seems to me to have felt the weight of slavery most profoundly. He is born with wens upon his back and callosities upon his knees and chest; these callosities are the unmistakable results of rubbing, for they are full of pus and of corrupted blood. The camel never walks without carrying a heavy burden, and the pressure of this has hindered, for generations, the free extension and uniform growth of the muscular parts of the back; whenever he reposes or sleeps his driver compels him to do so upon his folded legs, so that little by little this position becomes habitual with him.

All the weight of his body bears, during several hours of the day continuously, upon his chest and knees, so that the skin of these parts, pressed and rubbed against the earth, loses its hair, becomes bruised, hardened, and disorganized.

"The llama, which like the camel pa.s.ses its life beneath burdens, and also reposes only by resting its weight upon its chest, has similar callosities, which again are perpetuated in successive generations.

Baboons, and pouched monkeys, whose ordinary position is a sitting one, whether waking or sleeping, have callosities under the region of the haunches, and this hard skin has even become inseparable from the bone against which it is being continually pressed by the weight of the body; in the case, however, of these animals the callosities are dry and healthy, for they do not come from the constraint of trammels, nor from the burden of a foreign weight, but are the effects only of the natural habits of the animal, which cause it to continue longer seated than in any other position. There are callosities of these pouched monkeys which resemble the double sole of skin which we have ourselves under our feet; this sole is a natural hardness which our continued habit of walking or standing upright will make thicker or thinner according to the greater or less degree of friction to which we subject our feet."[122]

This involves the whole theory of Dr. Darwin.

Wild animals would not change either their food or climate if left to themselves, and in this case they would not vary, but either man or some other enemies have hara.s.sed most of them into migrations; "those whose nature was sufficiently flexible to lend itself to the new situation spread far and wide, while others have had no resource but the deserts in the neighbourhood of their own countries."[123]

Since food and climate, and still less man's empire over them, can have but little effect upon wild animals, Buffon refers their princ.i.p.al varieties in great measure to their s.e.xual habits, variations being much less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on which a state of domestication has produced no effect, inasmuch as "it refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the badges of its servitude to its descendants."[124]

Here is an example of Buffon's covert manner, in the way he maintains that descent with modification may account not only for specific but for generic differences.

"But after having taken a rapid survey of the varieties which indicate to us the alterations that each species has undergone, there arises a broader and more important question, how far, namely, species themselves can change--how far there has been an older degeneration, immemorial from all antiquity, which has taken place in every family, or, if the term is preferred, _in all the genera_ under which those species are comprehended which neighbour one another without presenting points of any very profound dissimilarity? We have only a few isolated species, such as man, which form at once the species and the whole genus; the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the giraffe form genera, or simple species, which go down in a single line, with no collateral branches. All other races appear to form families, in which we may perceive a common source or stock from which the different branches seem to have sprung in greater or less numbers according as the individuals of each species are smaller and more fecund."[125]

I can see no explanation of the introduction of this pa.s.sage unless that it is intended to raise the question whether modification may be not only specific but generic, the point of the paragraph lying in the words "dans chaque famille, _ou si l'on veut, dans chacun des genres_."

We are told in the next paragraph, that if we choose to look at the matter in this light, well--in that case--we ought to see not only the a.s.s and the horse, but _the zebra too_, as members of the same family; "the number of their points of resemblance being infinitely greater than those in respect of which they differ."[126] Thus, at the close of his work on the quadrupeds, he thinks it well, as at the commencement seventeen years earlier, to emphasize--in his own quiet way--his perception that the principles on which he has been insisting should be carried much farther than he has chosen to carry them.

His conclusion is, that "after comparing all the animals and bringing them each under their proper genus, we shall find the two hundred species we have already described to be reducible into a sufficiently small number of families or main stocks from which it is not impossible that all the others may be derived."[127]

The chapter closes thus:--

"To account for the origin of these animals" (certain of those peculiar to America), "we must go back to the time when the two continents were not yet separated, and call to mind the earliest geological changes. At the same time, we must consider the two hundred existing species of quadrupeds as reduced to thirty-eight families. And though this is not at all the state of Nature as she is in our time, and as she has been represented in this volume, and though, in fact, it is a condition which we can only arrive at by induction, and by a.n.a.logies almost as difficult to lay hold of as is the time which has effaced the greater number of their traces, I shall, nevertheless, endeavour to ascend to these first ages of Nature by the aid of facts and monuments which yet remain to us, and to represent the epochs which these facts seem to indicate."[128]

The fifteenth volume contains a description of a few more monkeys, as also of some animals which Buffon had never actually seen, a great part being devoted to indices.

_Supplement._

The first four volumes of the Supplement to Buffon's 'Natural History,'

1774-1789, contain little which throws additional light upon his opinions concerning the mutability of species. At the beginning, however, of the fifth volume I find the following:--

"On comparing these ancient records of the first ages of life [fossils]

with the productions of to-day, we see with sufficient clearness that the essential form has been preserved without alteration in its princ.i.p.al parts: there has been no change whatever in the general type of each species; the plan of the inner parts has been preserved without variation. However long a time we may imagine for the succession of ages, whatever number of generations we may suppose, the individuals of to-day present to us in each genus the same forms as they did in the earliest ages; and this is more especially true of the greater species, whose characters are more invariable and nature more fixed; for the inferior species have, as we have said, experienced in a perceptible manner all the effects of different causes of degeneration. Only it should be remarked in regard to these greater species, such as the elephant and hippopotamus, that in comparing their fossil remains with the existing forms we find the earlier ones to have been larger. Nature was then in the full vigour of her youth, and the interior heat of the earth gave to her productions all the force and all the extent of which they were capable ... if there have been lost species, that is to say animals which existed once, but no longer do so, these can only have been animals which required a heat greater than that of our present torrid zone."[129]

The context proves Buffon to have been thinking of such huge creatures as the megatherium and mastodon, but his words seem to limit the extinction of species to the denizens of a hot climate which had turned colder. It is not at all likely that Buffon meant this, as the pa.s.sage quoted at p. 146 of this work will suffice to show. The whole paragraph is ironical.

I can see nothing to justify the conclusion drawn from this pa.s.sage by Isidore Geoffroy, that Buffon had modified his opinions, and was inclined to believe in a more limited mutability than he had done a few years earlier. His exoteric position is still identical with what it was in the outset, and his esoteric may be seen from the spirit which is hardly concealed under the following:--

"I shall be told that a.n.a.logy points towards the belief that our own race has followed the same path, and dates from the same period as other species; that it has spread itself even more widely than they; and that if man's creation has a later date than that of the other animals, nothing shows that he has not been subjected to the same laws of nature, the same alterations, and the same changes as they. We will grant that the human species does not differ essentially from others in the matter of bodily organs, and that, in respect of these, our lot has been much the same as that of other animals."[130]

_Plants under Domestication._

"If more modern and even recent examples are required in order to prove man's power over the vegetable kingdom, it is only necessary to compare our vegetables, flowers, and fruits with the same species such as they were a hundred and fifty years ago; this can be done with much ease and certainty by running the eye over the great collection of coloured drawings begun in the time of Gaston of Orleans, and continued to the present day at the Jardin du Roi. We find with surprise that the finest flowers of that date, as the ranunculuses, pinks, tulips, bear's ears, &c., would be rejected now, I do not say by our florists, but by our village gardeners. These flowers, though then already cultivated, were still not far above their wild condition. They had a single row of petals only, long pistils, colours hard and false; they had little velvety texture, variety, or gradation of tints, and, in fact, presented all the characteristics of untamed nature. Of herbs there was a single kind of endive, and two of lettuce--both bad--while we can now reckon more than fifty lettuces and endives, all excellent. We can even name the very recent dates of our best pippins and kernel fruits--all of them differing from those of our forefathers, which they resemble in name only. In most cases things remain while names change; here, on the contrary, it is the names that have been constant while the things have varied.[131]

"It is not that every one of these good varieties did not arise from the same wild stock; but how many attempts has not man made on Nature before he succeeded in getting them. How many millions of germs has he not committed to the earth, before she has rewarded him by producing them?

It was only by sowing, tending, and bringing to maturity an almost infinite number of plants of the same kind that he was able to recognize some individuals with fruits sweeter and better than others; and this first discovery, which itself involves so much care, would have remained for ever fruitless if he had not made a second, which required as much genius as the first required patience--I mean the art of grafting those precious individuals, which, unfortunately, cannot continue a line as n.o.ble as their own, nor themselves propagate their rare and admirable qualities? And this alone proves that these qualities are purely individual, and not specific, for the pips or stones of these excellent fruits bring forth the original wild stock, so that they do not form species essentially different from this. Man, however, by means of grafting, produces what may be called secondary species, which he can propagate at will; for the bud or small branch which he engrafts upon the stock contains within itself the individual quality which cannot be transmitted by seed, but which needs only to be developed in order to bring forth the same fruits as the individual from which it was taken in order to be grafted on to the wild stock. The wild stock imparts none of its bad qualities to the bud, for it did not contribute to the forming thereof, being, as it were, a wet nurse, and no true mother.