Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley Part 9

Ancient traditions, when tested by the severe processes of modern investigations, commonly enough fade away into mere dreams: but it is singular how often the dream turns out to have been a half-waking one?

presaging a reality. Ovid foreshadowed the discoveries of the geologist: the Atlantis was an imagination, but Columbus found a western world: and though the quaint forms of Centaurs and Satyrs have an existence only in the realms of art, creatures approaching man more nearly than they in essential structure, and yet as thoroughly brutal as the goat's or horse's half of the mythical compound, are now not only known, but notorious.

CLXXII

It is a truth of very wide, if not of universal, application, that every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

The oak is a more complex thing than the little rudimentary plant contained in the acorn; the caterpillar is more complex than the egg; the b.u.t.terfly than the caterpillar; and each of these beings, in pa.s.sing from its rudimentary to its perfect condition, runs through a series of changes, the sum of which is called its development In the higher animals these changes are extremely complicated; but, within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischoff, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the schoolboy. It will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in the higher animals generally.

CLXXIII

Exactly in those respects in which the developing Man differs from the Dog, he resembles the ape, which, like man, has a spheroidal yolk-sac and a discoidal, sometimes partially lobed, placenta. So that it is only quite in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its development, as the man does.

Startling as the last a.s.sertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true, and it alone appears to me sufficient to place beyond all doubt the structural unity of man with the rest of the animal world, and more particularly and closely with the apes.

Thus, identical in the physical processes by which he originates--identical in the early stages of his formation--identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale--Man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organisation. He resembles them as they resemble one another--he differs from them as they differ from one another.

CLXXIV

If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

CLXXV

Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this*--leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonis.h.i.+ng the conqueror that he is but dust.

CLXXVI

If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another--then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.

* This alludes to a foregoing enumeration of the seven families of Primates headed by the Anthropini containing man alone.

CLXXVII

The whole a.n.a.logy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crus.h.i.+ng an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed secondary causes, in the production of all the phenomena of the universe; that, in view of the intimate relations between Man and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression, from the formless to the formed--from tne inorganic to the organic--from blind force to conscious intellect and will.

CLXXVIII

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

CLXXIX

Thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence Man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the Past a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a n.o.bler Future...

And after pa.s.sion and prejudice have died away, the same result will attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting that great Alps and Andes of the living world--Man. Our reverence for the n.o.bility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that Man is, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly acc.u.mulated and organised the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that, now, he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of nis humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

CLx.x.x

Ethnology, as thus defined, is a branch of Anthropology, the great science which unravels the complexities of human structure; traces out the relations of man to other animals; studies all that is especially human in the mode in which man's complex functions are performed; and searches after the conditions whicn have determined his presence IN the world. And Anthropology is a section of Zoology, which again is the animal half of Biology--the science of life and living things.

Such is the position of ethnology, such are the objects of the ethnologist. The paths or methods, by following which he may hope to reach his goal, are diverse. He may work at man from the point of view of the pure zoologist, and investigate the anatomical and physiological peculiarities of Negroes, Australians, or Mongolians, just as he would inquire into those of pointers, terriers, and turnspits,--"persistent modifications" of man's almost universal companion. Or he may seek aid from researches into the most human manifestation of humanity-Language; and a.s.suming that what is true of speech is true of the speaker--a hypothesis as questionable in science as it is in ordinary life--he may apply to mankind themselves the conclusions drawn from a searching a.n.a.lysis of their words and grammatical forms.

Or, the ethnologist may turn to the study of the practical life of men; and relying upon the inherent conservatism and small inventiveness of untutored mankind, he may hope to discover in manners and customs, or in weapons, dwellings, and other handiwork, a clue to the origin of the resemblances and differences of nations. Or, he may resort to that kind of evidence which is yielded by History proper, and consists of the beliefs of men concerning past events, embodied in traditional, or in written, testimony. Or, when that thread breaks, Archaeology, which is the interpretation of the unrecorded remains of man's works, belonging to the epoch since the world has reached its present condition, may still guide him. And, when even the dim light of archaeology fades, there yet remains Palaeontology which, in these latter years, has brought to daylight once more the exuvia of ancient populations, whose world was not our world, who have been buried in river beds immemorially dry, or carried by the rush of waters into caves, inaccessible to inundation since the dawn of tradition.

CLx.x.xI

The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops provided with a weapon--always efficient, if not always an arm of precision--the scientific imagination. It is the business of these _enfants perdus_ of science to make raids into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihilation, as the reward of error. Unfortunately the public, which watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a das.h.i.+ng incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main body; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science. And it must be confessed that the error is too often justified by the effects of the irrepressible tendency which men of science share with all other sorts of men known to me, to be impatient of that most wholesome state of mind--suspended judgment; to a.s.sume the objective truth of speculations which, from the nature of the evidence in their favour, can have no claim to be more than working hypotheses.

The history of the "Aryan question" affords a striking ill.u.s.tration of these general remarks.

CLx.x.xII

Language is rooted half in the bodily and half in the mental nature of man. The vocal sounds which form the raw materials of language could not be produced without a peculiar conformation of the organs of speech; the enunciation of duly accented syllables would be impossible without the nicest coordination of the action of the muscles which move these organs; and such co-ordination depends on the mechanism of certain portions of the nervous system. It is therefore conceivable that the structure of this highly complex speaking apparatus should determine a man's linguistic potentiality; that is to say, should enable him to use a language of one cla.s.s and not of another. It is further conceivable that a particular linguistic potentiality should be inherited and become as good a race mark as any other. As a matter of fact, it is not proven that the linguistic potentialities of all men are the same.

CLx.x.xIII

Community of language is no proof of unity of race, is not even presumptive evidence of racial ident.i.ty. All that it does prove is that, at some time or other, free and prolonged intercourse has taken place between the speakers of the same language.

CLx.x.xIV

The capacity of the population of Europe for independent progress while in the copper and early bronze stage--the "palaeo-metallic" stage, as it might be called--appears to me to be demonstrated in a remarkable manner by the remains of their architecture. From the crannog to the elaborate pile-dwelling, and from the rudest enclosure to the complex fortification of the terramare, there is an advance which is obviously a native product. So with the sepulchral constructions; the stone cist, with or without a preservative or memorial cairn, grows into the chambered graves lodged in tumuli; into such megalithic edifices as the dromic vaults of Maes How and New Grange; to culminate in the finished masonry of the tombs of Mycenae, constructed on exactly the same plan.

Can anyone look at the varied series of forms which lie between the primitive five or six flat stones fitted together into a mere box, and such a building as Maes How, and yet imagine that the latter is the result of foreign tuition? But the men who built Maes How, without metal tools, could certainly have built the so-called "treasure-house" of Mycenae, with them.

CLx.x.xV

Reckoned by centuries, the remoteness of the quaternary, or pleistocene, age from our own is immense, and it is difficult to form an adequate notion of its duration. Undoubtedly there is an abysmal difference between the Neanderthaloid race and the comely living specimens of the blond long-heads with whom we are familiar. But the abyss of time between the period at which North Europe was first covered with ice, when savages pursued mammoths and scratched their portraits with sharp stones in central France, and the present day, ever widens as we learn more about the events which bridge it. And, if the differences between the Neanderthaloid men and ourselves could be divided into as many parts as that time contains centuries, the progress from part to part would probably be almost imperceptible.

CLx.x.xVI

I have not been one of those fortunate persons who are able to regard a popular lecture as a mere _hors d'oeuvre_, unworthy of being ranked among the serious efforts of a philosopher; and who keep their fame as scientific hierophants unsullied by attempts--at least of the successful sort--to be understanded of the people.

On the contrary, I found that the task of putting the truths learned in the field, the laboratory and the museum, into language which, without bating a jot of scientific accuracy shall be generally intelligible, taxed such scientific and literary faculty as I possessed to the uttermost; indeed my experience has furnished me with no better corrective of the tendency to scholastic pedantry which besets all those who are absorbed in pursuits remote from the common ways of men, and become habituated to think and speak in the technical dialect of their own little world, as if there were no other.

If the popular lecture thus, as I believe, finds one moiety of its justification in the self-discipline of the lecturer, it surely finds the other half in its effect on the auditory. For though various sadly comical experiences of the results of my own efforts have led me to entertain a very moderate estimate of the purely intellectual value of lectures; though I venture to doubt if more than one in ten of an average audience carries away an accurate notion of what the speaker has been driving at; yet is that not equally true of the oratory of the hustings, of the House of Commons, and even of the pulpit?