But, it by no
means follows, that the rule which may hold good for the
Platyrrhini extends to the Catarrhini. We have no information
whatever respecting the development of the brain in the
Cynomorpha; and, as regards the Anthropomorpha, nothing but the
account of the brain of the Gibbon, near birth, already referred
to. At the present moment there is not a shadow of evidence to
shew that the sulci of a chimpanzee's, or orang's, brain do not
appear in the same order as a man's.
Gratiolet opens his preface with the aphorism: "Il est dangereux
dans les sciences de conclure trop vite." I fear he must have
forgotten this sound maxim by the time he had reached the
discussion of the differences between men and apes, in the body
of his work. No doubt, the excellent author of one of the most
remarkable contributions to the just understanding of the
mammalian brain which has ever been made, would have been the
first to admit the insufficiency of his data had he lived to
profit by the advance of inquiry. The misfortune is that his
conclusions have been employed by persons incompetent to
appreciate their foundation, as arguments in favour of
obscurantism. (80. For example, M. l'Abbe Lecomte in his
terrible pamphlet, 'Le Darwinisme et l'origine de l'Homme,'
1873.)
But it is important to remark that, whether Gratiolet was right
or wrong in his hypothesis respecting the relative order of
appearance of the temporal and frontal sulci, the fact remains;
that before either temporal or frontal sulci, appear, the foetal
brain of man presents characters which are found only in the
lowest group of the Primates (leaving out the Lemurs); and that
this is exactly what we should expect to be the case, if man has
resulted from the gradual modification of the same form as that
from which the other Primates have sprung.
Pages:
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25