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M A M M A L I A. 



follow these, are fond of their sight, impatient of 

 loneliness, and, so. far as their organisation permits, 

 they follow them in action as well as in locality. 



The food and feeding of the chirnpansee and the 

 other more typical apes, both in the teeth and the 

 digestive organs, resemble those of man much more 

 closely than those of any other animals do ; and 

 therefore it is perfectly natural to suppose that, as in 

 a state of nature they seize their food and bring it to 

 their mouths by means of their grasping paws, they 

 should follow man in the use of a fork, a spoon, or 

 any other intermediate instrument. Nor is it the 

 slightest evidence of intellect of any kind on their 

 part that they should occasionally be found, even in 

 a state of nature, making use of a stick to help them 

 in their c'umsy march, or to strike down a fruit which 

 they cannot reach with the paw ; for when they are 

 on the ground they help themselves along by grasp- 

 ing the bushes ; and, on the trees, branches and stems 

 are the means of all their progressive motions. 



In the search of their food, however, except merely 

 reaching it by climbing, very little resource is required. 

 It is true that they have to climb, and to look, and 

 sometimes search with the fore paw among the 

 branches, for those fruits which form their chief sub- 

 sistence, but they require no stratagem, and no 

 powers of pursuit, inasmuch as their food is fixed to 

 the tree or lying still on the ground, so that if they 

 can see it, and it is accessible, they have nothing 

 more to do than to seize it with the paw, against 

 which operation it cannot from its nature make the 

 smallest resistance. Hence the reason why the ape 

 tribe can never be trained to do any thing useful, 

 however they may appear to imitate man in those 

 actions which accord with their structure and with 

 their habits in a state of nature. 



There is therefore no gradation from man through 

 the apes to the other animals, except in the bodily 

 structure, and there it is very slight. Every species 

 of ape, under what subdivision soever it may be placed 

 by naturalists, is peculiarly fitted by its organisation 

 for a certain locality, and out of that locality it is out 

 of its element, and cannot exist without artificial 

 means, nor prosper as it does in its own locality by 

 all the artificial attention that can be bestowed on it. 

 Not onlv this, but every species which differs struc- 

 turally from another, has a different locality ; and 

 though the latitudes and the climates of those locali- 

 ties may be very nearly or altogether similar, it is 

 probable that the animals could not bear a mutual 

 exchange of place. Viewing the matter therefore in 

 the most candid and careful manner, it is impossible 

 even to imagine that there is any approximation to 

 man, regarding hirn in his whole nature as possessing 

 an intellectual principle, on the part of the apes, any 

 more than there is on the part of any of the other 

 mammalia, let their structures be as different from 

 the structure of man as they may ; all that we can 

 say is, that each animal is adapted to a certain loca- 

 lity and for a certain purpose in creation, and that, 

 though these localities and these functions vary ex- 

 ceedingly, the adaptation in the case of each of them 

 is as perfect as that of any of the others. 



If the apes resemble man more in their organisa- 

 tion than some other animals do, it only proves that 

 their modes of life resemble, more than any other 

 animals do, the mode of life in man when in that 

 state in which he has the least mental resource. Nor 

 is it unworthy of remark, as illustrative of this, that 



the blacks of the central parts of the eastern Archi- 

 pelago, the grand home of the long-armed apes, live 

 somewhat in the ape fashion. They dwell in (he 

 fastness of the central forests, usually in little hordes, 

 and inhabit the trees the hollows generally speaking, 

 as places of shelter, but still their dwelling is the 

 forest. They cannot climb by the grasp of the feet, 

 as apes climb by the grasp of their hind feet ; but 

 they contrive to make a very efficient instrument for 

 climbing of the great toe, with which they can hold 

 on, until they get a, reach upward with the hands, 

 with much more force than we who lose the use of 

 our toes in the luxury of shoes and frequently gain 

 corns as our reward would be apt to suppose. 



It appears, therefore, that though the ape can do 

 nothing to elevate itself to the rank of man in a state 

 of civilisation, man may remain in a state, higher 

 than the ape certainly, but not very much higher. In 

 this state, which of course is that of the minimum of 

 mental development, man is more helpless than any 

 of the animals, and in what locality of the world 

 soever he is situated, he is more out. of his element. 

 The reason is obvious, the strength and energy of 

 the human body must be limited as well as those of 

 the bodies of other animals ; and as all the organs 

 of motion and action in man are fitted for many more 

 purposes than the same structures of animals, it must 

 follow that their adaptation to any one purpose must 

 be inferior, and that when man attempts to play the 

 ape in the wild forest, or any other part played by 

 another animal, he must do it in a very inferior man- 

 ner. This inferiority in any single exertion of the 

 mere animal is, however, a very great advantage to 

 man, for it constitutes that " necessity," which is pro- 

 verbially said to be " the mother of invention ;" and 

 if we are to suppose that at any time human beings 

 were cast on a lonely island, utterly uneducated, and 

 without the experience of others to guide them, this 

 necessity would be to them the beginning of mental 

 development, though the futnre'growth would depend 

 upon circumstance*, and would be more rapid in pro- 

 portion to the necessity, unless that necessity were 

 so great as to break down with despair, instead of sti- 

 mulating with hope. 



We must therefore regard the hand, or grasping 

 fore paw of the ape, as especially an instrument fitted 

 for enabling its possessor to reach, pull and eat the 

 fruit on a tree, and we may naturally expect that all 

 its organisation should be in accordance with this, 

 for the feeding of an animal considered merely as an 

 animal, is the main purpose to which all its external 

 organisation is directed, and therefore the structure 

 and the feeding are reciprocally keys to each other. 

 If we know the nature of the organs of motion and 

 the teeth, we can easily say when and upon what the 

 animal feeds ; and conversely, if we can say when 

 and upon what it feeds, we can form a tolerably 

 correct notion of what its structure must be, at least 

 in what we may call the working parts of its body. 



We have already seen that the fore paws of the 

 ape are incapable of performing the proper function^ 

 of hands, and their chief adaptation being for climb- 

 ing, they are equally ill-adapted for performing the 

 office of walking feet. Perfect clavicles are necessary 

 for the cross motion of the anterior extremities, and 

 because the ape requires a greater stretch of those 

 extremities than man does of his arms, the clavicle 5s 

 rather firmer, and the articulation of the shoulder 

 more loose. The oblique motion of the elbow joint 



