426 



NATURE 



[September 2, 1897 



matter of his opening address several prominent questions in 

 Anthropology, with special reference to their American aspects. 

 For example, the question of the presence of a stone age in 

 America ; whether the aborigines are descendants and repre- 

 sentatives of man of the post-glacial period ; the question of the 

 Asiatic origin of the American Indians, and the arguments 

 derived from anatomical structure, language, and social frame- 

 work, bearing upon this theory. The traces of Asiatic influence 

 in the picture writings of the Aztecs, correspondences in the 

 calendar cycles of Mexico and Central America with those of 

 Eastern Asia, and the common use of certain games of chance 

 were also referred to. 



It is not my intention, even had I possessed the requisite 

 knowledge, to enlarge on the topics so ably discussed by my 

 eminent predecessor. As my own studies have been more 

 especially directed to the physical side of Anthropology, rather 

 than to its archaeological, historical, philological, moral and social 

 departments, I naturally prefer to call your attention to those 

 aspects of the subject which have from time to time come 

 within the range of my personal cognisance. I have selected 

 as the subject of my address " Some Distinctive Characters of 

 Human Structure." 



When we look at man and contrast his form and appearance 

 with other vertebrate creatures, the first thing probably to 

 strike us is his capability of assuming an attitude, which we 

 distinguish by the distinctive term, the erect attitude. In this 

 position the head is balanced on the summit of the spine, the 

 lower limbs are elongated into two columns of support for stand- 

 ing on two feet, or for walking, so that man's body is perpen- 

 dicular to the surface on which he stands or moves, and his 

 mode of progression is bipedal. As a consequence of this, two 

 of his limbs, the arms, are liberated from locomotor functions ; 

 they acquire great freedom and range of movement at the 

 shoulder-joint, as well as considerable movement at the elbow 

 and between the two bones of the forearm ; the hands also 

 are modified to serve as organs of prehension, which minister 

 to the purposes of his higher intelligence. The erect position 

 constitutes a striking contrast to the attitude assumed by fish, 

 amphibia, and reptiles when at rest or moving, in which verte- 

 brates the body is horizontal and more or less parallel to the 

 surface on which they move. Birds, although far removed from 

 the erect attitude, yet show a closer approximation to it than the 

 lower vertebrates or even the quadrupedal mammals. But of all 

 vertebrates, those which most nearly approximate to man in the 

 position assumed by the body when standing and walking are the 

 higher apes. 



The various adaptations of structure in the trunk, limbs, 

 head, and brain which conduce to give man this characteristic 

 attitude are essential parts of his bodily organisation, and 

 -constitute the structural test which one employs in answering 

 the question whether a particular organism is or is not human. 



These adaptations of parts are not mere random arrangements, 

 made at haphazard and without a common purpose ; but are 

 correlated and harmonised so as to produce a being capable of 

 taking a distinctive position in the universe, superior to that 

 which any other organism can possibly assume. If we could 

 imagine a fish, a reptile, or a quadruped to be provided with 

 as highly developed a brain as man possesses, the horizontal 

 attitude of these animals would effectually impede its full and 

 proper use, so that it would be of but little advantage to them. 

 It is essential, therefore, for the discharge of the higher faculties 

 -of man, that the human brain should be conjoined with the 

 erect attitude of the body. The passage of a vertebrate 

 ■organism from the horizontal position, say of a fish, in which the 

 back, with its contained spinal column, is uppermost, and the 

 head is in front, to the vertical or erect position of a man, in 

 which the back, with its contained spinal column, is behind, 

 and the head is uppermost, may be taken as expressing the full 

 range and limit of evolution, so far as the attitude is concerned, 

 ■of which such an organism is capable. Any further revolution 

 of the body, as in the backward direction, would throw the 

 back downwards, the head backwards, and would constitute a 

 ■degradation. It would not be an advance in the adaptation of 

 structure to the duties to be discharged, but rather an approach 

 to the relation of parts existing so generally in invertebrate 

 organisms. 



At an early period in the evolution of the human mind and 

 intelligence an anthropomorphic conception of the Deity arose, 

 to whom were ascribed the possession of the bodily form and 

 attitude of man, and even human affections and passions. This 



NO. 1453, VOL. 56] 



idea took so firm possession of the imagination that, in the 

 course of time, it obtained objective expression in the statues of 

 ancient Greece and Rome and in the masterpieces of Christian 

 art. In one of the most ancient of all books, in which is 

 embodied the conception entertained by the Jewish writers of 

 the Genesis of the world, and of all creatures that have life, 

 we read that " God created man in His own image, in the image 

 of God created He him, male and female created He them." By 

 the association, therefore, of the human form with the idea of 

 Deity, there was naturally present in the minds of these writers; 

 although not expressed in precise anatomical language, a full 

 recognition of the dignity of the human body, of its superiority 

 to that of all other creatures, and that the human form was the 

 crown and glory of all organic nature. 



This conception of the dignity of man in nature is not confined 

 to those writings which we are accustomed to call sacred. The im- 

 mortal Greek philosopher and naturalist, Aristotle, in his treatise 

 "On the Parts of Animals," composed at least three hundred 

 years B.C. , refers more than once to the erect attitude of man, and 

 associates it with his " God-like nature and God-like essence." 

 In the second century of our present era lived another Greek 

 author, Claudius Galen, whose writings exercised for many cen- 

 turies a dominating influence in medicine and anatomy, com- 

 parable to that wielded by Aristotle in philosophy. Although 

 Galen, as has been shown by Vesalius and other subsequent 

 anatomists, was often incorrect in his descriptions of the internal 

 parts of the human body, doubtless because his opportunities 

 of dissection were so scanty, he had attained a correct concep- 

 tion of the perfection of its external form, and he thoroughly 

 understood that in its construction it was admirably fitted for 

 the sentient and intelligent principle which animated it, and of 

 which it was merely the organ. In his treatise on the use of the 

 various parts of the body he associates the hand with the exercise 

 of the gift of reason in man, and he speaks of it as an instrument 

 applicable to every art and occasion, as well of peace as of war. 

 It is, he says, the best constructed of all prehensile organs, and 

 he gives a careful description of how both the hand as a whole 

 and the individual digits, more especially the thumb, are brought 

 into use in the act of grasping. ^ Galen does not indeed enter 

 into the minute anatomical details which have been emphasised 

 by more recent writers on the subject, but by none of these has 

 the use of the hand and its associations with man's higher intelli- 

 gence been more clearly and more eloquently expressed than by 

 the Greek physician and philo.sopher seventeen centuries ago. 



By the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's ever-memorable 

 treatise " On the Origin of Species," an enormous impulse was 

 given to the study of the anatomy of man in comparison with the 

 lower animals, more especially with the apes. By many anato- 

 mists the study was pursued with the view of pointing out the 

 resemblances in structure between men and apes; by a more 

 limited number to show wherein they did not correspond. I 

 well remember a course of lectures on the comparative characters 

 of man delivered thirty-five years ago by my old master. Prof. 

 John Goodsir, in which, when speaking of the hand of man and 

 apes, he dwelt upon sundry features of difference between them. 

 The human hand, he said, is the only one which possesses a 

 thumb capable of a free and complete movement of opposition. 

 It may be hollowed into a cup and it can grasp a sphere. It is 

 an instrument of manipulation co-extensive with human activity. 

 The ape's hand again is an imperfect hand, with a short and 

 feeble thumb, and with other clearly defined points of difference 

 and inferiority to that of man. It can embrace a cyUnder, as 

 the branch of a tree, and is principally subservient to the arboreal 

 habits of the animal. Its fingers grasp the cylinder in a series of 

 spirals. . . 



Here then is an important diff"erence in the manipulative 

 arrangements of the two hands, the advantage being with the 

 hand of man, in regard to the greater variety of movenient and 

 adaptability, to co-ordinate it with his reasoning faculties. As 

 showing the acuteness of perception of Galen and his complete 

 recognition of a fundamental feature of the human hand, he also 

 dwells on the hand being able to form a circle around a sphere, 

 so as to grasp it on every side, and to touch it with every part of 

 itself, whilst it can also securely hold objects that possess plane 

 or concave surfaces. So impressed was the old Greek writer 

 with the fitness of the hand to discharge the duties imposed on 



1 See passages translated in Dr. Kidd's " Bridge water Treatise," 1833, and 

 Dr. J. Finlayson's " Essay on Galen." Glasgow, 1895. . , 



2 '' On the Dignity of the Human Body,'' in "Anatomical Memoirs, by 

 John Goodsir, vol. i. p. 238, Edinburgh, 1868. 



