TEE LAST STAGES IN THE GENEALOGY OF MAN. 181 



flatter our pride. But is it true, and would not our choice of it 

 be a subjective one ? 



All that I have told you this year and last shows that I incline 

 toward the other solution, and the conclusion that we are de- 

 scended from the monkey. One consideration to me takes the 

 lead of all the others. The type of the cerebral convolutions in 

 all the primates where it is well characterized in its ascendant 

 evolution is that of man ; it varies from the cebian to the pithe- 

 coid, from that to the anthropoid, and from the last to man only 

 in degree.* The develojDment to the extreme of the simian type 

 of the circumvolutions, and the abrupt increase in the volume of 

 the brain in passing from the anthropoid to man, on which I have 

 insisted, are, apart from the histological examination, the two 

 fundamental anatomical characteristics of man.f 



That the foot of the monkey has a more or less opposable 

 thumb; that it is more or less adapted to their arboreal life; 

 that it should appear strange to us that the human line, after hav- 

 ing experienced a partial transformation of its foot, should have 

 resumed the original foot of its ancestors — these are details. The 

 cranial and facial characteristics, which are the result in man of 

 the considerable volume of his brain, the atrophy of the nasal 

 fosses, and of their numerous posterior cavities, which has brought 

 about the disappearance of the muzzle, the compensatory perfec- 

 tion of the touch and the vision, which, with the modifications 

 necessitated by the equilibrium of the skull, have contributed to 

 a bipedal attitude and an entire new series of differential charac- 

 teristics — are details also. That which dominates all is the cere- 

 bral type, already human, but in a rudimentary condition, in the 

 apes, as it is the same type amplified and perfected in man. 



All the organs — foot, hand, teeth, thorax, pelvis, and digest- 

 ive tube — have been evolved in the mammals, have been trans- 

 formed capriciously, have taken different courses, and have been 

 specialized in different directions, sometimes to the same result. 

 One only has remained stationary, or has varied but little — the 

 brain — except in man. With him, or one of his ancestors among 

 the primates, it took a start, it grew, developed, making every- 

 thing bend to its needs, subordinating everything to its own life 



* See P. Broca, " Anatomic comparec des circonvolutions cerebralcs," " Revue d'An- 

 thi-opologie," 187S, p. 385. 



f According to M. Chudzinski, a competent authority on the subject, not only the type 

 of the circumvolutions, but the muscular and visceral anomalies found in man, plead in an 

 equal degree in favoi* of a simian descent. Some of the muscular anomalies even indicate 

 reversion toward climbing or tree-living dispositions. See the memoirs of this anatomist 

 in the " Revue d' Anthropologic," on "Muscular and Visceral Variations in Races," and in 

 the bulletins of the Societe iV AntJiropoJogie on "An Anomaly observed in the Orang." 

 See also his great work on the " Comparative Anatomy of the Circumvolutions," which was 

 published in ISTS, and reviewed in the "Revue d'Anthropologie," 1879, p. 707. 



