CHAPTER IV 



The Human Form 



TX7HILE the Mammals we have just described were 

 * * specializing in various ways of life, to which they 

 closely restricted themselves, certain among them, whose 

 exalted destiny nothing as yet suggested, continued to adapt 

 themselves to a most varied diet, to life on the ground, or up 

 in the trees that offered them such safe refuge, employing their 

 limbs in running, leaping, climbing, and grasping, according 

 to their will and the needs of the moment, thus providing the 

 maximum stimulus for their cerebral system, and provoking 

 its development by the activity imposed on it. In striking con- 

 trast to this continuous elaboration of the brain, the limbs and 

 the various organs retained their initial indeterminate character 

 and their almost primitive forms. These mammals have been 

 grouped together in the order of Primates. Their common 

 characteristic was the opposability of the inner digit on 

 each of the four limbs, which allowed them to take hold of 

 and feel objects in a variety of ways, and thus to gather new 

 and precise information, which, in its turn, contributed to the 

 evolution of the brain. There these impressions were combined 

 with those received by the other senses, and provoked more 

 and more frequently the exercise of deliberate volition. 



This order to-day comprises Lemurs and Monkeys. The 

 Lemurs live in India, Equatorial Africa, and more especially 

 in Madagascar, where they are numerous and varied. The 

 Monkeys form two large groups, the Platyrrhina, with 

 separated nostrils and thirty-six teeth, except in the case of 

 Marmosets, and the Catarrhina with a narrow nasal septum 

 and only thirty-two teeth distributed according to the 

 same formula as the human teeth. The first belong to the New 

 World, the second to Africa and Asia ; in Europe they are 

 represented only by the Magot or Barbary Ape, localized 

 in a district near Gibraltar. Among the largest members of the 

 Monkey tribe of the Old World, the Gibbons of India, the 



