ST. niLAIEE OX THE SYSTEMATIC POSITION OF MA^T. 3 



Commencing with the well-known aphoristic summation of the 

 characters of man — situs erectus, manus duce, pedes hini, M. St. Hilaire 

 proceeds to inquire whether these characters ai-e truly distinctive 

 of Man — being found in him only among animals. 



With regard to the erect position, the rej)ly is, that though some 

 other animals, like the Penguins, have a true and habitual situs erectus, 

 they differ widely in their organisation from man, while the creatures 

 which approach him most nearly, never constantly and habitually 

 maintain themselves in the erect posture : the natural attitude of 

 the autln-opoid ape being neither the vertical position of man, nor 

 the horizontal posture of the lower quadrupeds, but an intermediate or 

 oblique, attitude. Tlie situs erectus then, and its correlative character, 

 the natural ' heavenward,' or rather ' horizon-ward,' glance, stand 

 good as distinctive pecuHarities of man; the oblique pose of the anthro- 

 poid ape furnishing the half-way step from man to the quadruped. 



The other- two characters manus duce, pedes hini, do not stand 

 criticism so well. Before we can accept the diagnosis, that man has 

 two hands and two feet, while apes have four hands, we must ask to 

 have the difference between hands and feet clearly defined, and, as 

 M. St. Hilaire remarks, this is by no means so easy a matter as it 

 seems. 



Cuvier defines the essence of a hand to be " la faculte d'opposer 

 le ponce aux autres doigts pour saisir les plus petites choses ;" but 

 if we accept this defuiitiou, then, as M. St. Hilaire and Mr. Ogilby 

 long ago showed, one-half of the so-called Quadi-umana are Bimana — 

 for none of the American apes have anterior members with opposable 

 thumbs, and the Marmosets hare the digit which represents the 

 thumb in the fore limbs, as like the others, as it is in a cat ; while 

 Galeopithecus has no opposable digit either on the anterior, or on the 

 posterior, limbs. 



M. St. Hilaire perceivmg the difficulty in the way of the Cuverian 

 definition, and giving up the opposable thumb, proposes the fol- 

 lowing new one (p. 199), "La main est une extremite pourvue de 

 doigts allonges, profondement di^dses, tres mobiles, tres flexibles, et 

 par suite susceptibles de saisir, an moins par I'opposition des doigts 

 a la pamne," and premising this conception of a hand, maintains, that 

 all the apes are quadriunanous. But it appears to us that this 

 definition is as little capable of ^^'ithstanding criticism as that which 

 it is meant to supplant. 



When uncramped by the use of shoes, the toes of a man's foot 

 are separated from one another for a distance, equal to fully one- 

 fifth of the total length of the foot, and they are, as M. St, Hilaire 

 admits, and as everybody who has lived on board ship, or has seen 

 savages, is aware, very moveable, very fiexible, and capable of pre- 

 hension by opposition, not only of the toes to the sole, but of the great 

 toe to the second. In proof of the latter qualities of the human foot, 

 our author cites the boatmen of Ka-ching in China ; the weavers of 

 Senegal ; the Brazilian horsemen, who put their feet to the same 



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