Copyright © 1977 by Theosophical University Press. All rights reserved.
The theosophist, although he places the body of man squarely in the animal world, does not mean by this that man's physical encasement is evolved from the beasts. He means, on the contrary, that actually the beast world, and in fact the worlds below it, were originally derived from man himself in far past ages of the life history of our globe.
This means that man is the most primitive of all the stocks, and that he is thus the most highly evolved. He has been able to evolve the inner vehicles, the inner organs, which give him power to express his inner faculties and spiritual parts. In the beast, indeed, lie the potencies of everything in the universe, latent or active, in germ or in manifestation as the case may be. It has all the possibilities of evolutionary growth that man has, but the beasts have not yet evolved the inner organs suitable for the expression of these inner powers.
It is because of man's superior status, as an inner entity, that we elevate the human stock into a kingdom of its own, a fourth kingdom -- that of man; for man possesses unique intellectual and psychological faculties, which no other creatures known to us possess in anything like so great a degree.
Now what proof have we that the human stock is the most primitive on earth? To answer this question, we shall have to go into a number of technical biological details. I have made notes from various biologic works of a number of exceedingly interesting skeletal and muscular features which man has, in order to show the extreme primitiveness of the human stock, more particularly with relation to his mammalian peculiarities. (1)
1. Let us speak of the human skull. The bones of the human skull articulate at the base of the skull and on the sides of the braincase in a manner which is characteristic of primitive mammalian forms, but they show a contrast, a very marked contrast, with the arrangement of those same bones in the anthropoid apes and the monkeys.
However, the human skull in these respects exactly resembles the same handiwork of nature as is found in the case of the lemurs, a curious group of primitive mammals preceding the monkeys in evolutionary development and time, according to the Darwinists.
Hence the only conclusion that we can draw from this anatomical fact is, that since in the case of monkeys and apes these bones are differently arranged, and that the arrangement in the human skull is very primitive, therefore the anthroproids and other simians show an evolutionary development away from the primitive mammalian base, which man in common with the lemurs far more closely represents.
2. The nasal bones in man are exceedingly primitive in their simplicity. In the case of the monkeys and anthropoid apes, these animals cannot approach man in this respect of primitive simplicity, and we must therefore conclude that in the cases of these particular beasts, the evolutionary development has resulted for them in a wider departure from the original or primitive strain.
3. The primitive architecture of the human skull is likewise shown in a number of features in the face. Professor Wood Jones in The Problem of Man's Ancestry (p. 31) says:
The structure of the back wall of the orbit, the "metopic" suture, the form of the jugal bone, the condition of the internal pterygoid plate, the teeth, etc., all tell the same story -- that the human skull is built upon remarkably primitive mammalian lines, which have been departed from in some degree by all monkeys and apes.
4. The same anatomist likewise points out:
The human skeleton, especially in its variations, shows exactly the same condition [of primitive mammalian simplicity.]
5. Another quote from the same source:
As for muscles, man is wonderfully distinguished by the retention of primitive features lost in the rest of the Primates.
Primates, you will understand, is a scientific term comprising the higher animals of the supposed evolutionary series, and including man, the anthropoid apes, monkeys, lemurs, and perhaps one or two other minor families.
As regards man's primitive muscular features, let me first point out that in skull, in skeleton, and in the arrangement of his muscles, man in a host of respects is an entity of very primitive type, and has not, so far as these particular instances are concerned, the same large and wide specific variations that the monkeys and apes have followed in their respective line.
Let us take the pectoralis minor muscle, as an instance. This is a muscle which runs from the ribs towards the arm. It is attached to the coracoid process of the shoulder girdle. In the anthropoids it is attached to the coracoid in part, and in part to a ligament passing downward to the humerus, that is to the bone of the upper arm. In the monkeys it is attached still farther down the same ligament, but also to the humerus; while in many quadrupeds it is attached to the humerus altogether.
Now, as you may know, the usual way of attempting to prove the evolutionary development of man from lower animals by the transformists of modern times is to make anatomical and physiological research into the bodies of beings below man. For instance, a favorite course of procedure followed is the attempt to trace skeletal or muscular identities, variations, or analogies, first in the apes, then in the monkeys, then in the lemurs, then in the quadrupeds; and if the researcher find similarities or identities or analogies in this examination, the conclusion is immediately drawn that these beasts form a part of the evolutionary road up which the human stock has climbed in its development. In other words, that man is the latest in the series of living forms, and that these and other creatures were his predecessors and formed the links of the evolutionary chain, the lowest being the original or primitive form.
But it is an entirely misleading method to follow, because, as we have just shown, the stocks are different; there are no still existing connecting links between the great phyla. Last but not least, these lower stocks are far more widely evolved along their own particular lines in respect to certain important skeletal and muscular variations than man is, who is the most primitive of all the stocks.
In our present instance, that of the pectoralis minor muscle, we find that the coracoid process is the primitive attachment of this muscle, and man and some other exceedingly primitive animals retain today this very ancient type of insertion. The transformists would say that in its evolutionary development this muscle has climbed up from the humerus, which according to them is its primitive attachment, and having risen along the ligament has finally reached the coracoid process in its highest form of development in man. But this is an exact reversal of the truth as shown by an anatomical examination.
6. The human tongue is also very primitive in type. The chimpanzee's tongue resembles man's in some degree; yet man's tongue is far more primitive than that of any monkey or anthropoid ape, the nearest to man of the animal entities beneath him in the supposed ascending but yet discontinuous scale of evolution, through which, according to the Darwinists, the human stock evolved.
7. The human vermiform appendix is curiously like that of some of the marsupials or pouched animals of Australia. It is very different in monkeys and in apes.
8. The great arteries arising from the arch of the aorta in man have the same number, are of the same kind, and are arranged in the same order, as is the case in a most curious and exceedingly primitive little animal, some eighteen or twenty inches long, found in Australia and Tasmania, the Ornithorhynchus anatinus -- which little beast is commonly called the duckbilled platypus, so called because it has a bill closely resembling that of a duck. It is the lowest of all known mammals, because it actually has mammalian glands, which are without nipples; yet it lays eggs. In Australia it is popularly called the watermole. It is not, however, a mole, but it is a mammal of its own peculiar type. As said, the number and kind and order of the great arteries named are the same in man and in these extremely low mammalia, which are primitive in the highest degree. On the other hand, the arrangement of these arteries in the anthropoid apes and the monkeys is quite different.
9. The human premaxilla, or the bone which carries the incisors or chisel-teeth, that is to say the front teeth, no longer exists as a separate element in man, if it ever did so exist; but in all the apes and monkeys and in all other mammals, this premaxillary element is shown on the face by suture lines, marking the junction with the maxillary bones. Because in man it is not a separate element, but is a separate element in all other mammals, it is, therefore, what would be called in science a specific human character.
With regard to this bone, please mark that it is already established as a distinguishable character in one of the earliest stages of the development of the human embryo, when that embryo is no more than three-fourths or seven-eighths of an inch long; as Professor Wood Jones says, when the embryo is "no longer than ten times the diameter of an ordinary pin's head" (op. cit., p. 37).
Hence, in view of the biogenetic law controlling embryological growth, called the law of embryonic recapitulation, this human character being shown so early in the development of the human embryo, forces us to conclude that it was a specific human character at a very early stage of human evolution, thus again demonstrating that man is an exceedingly primitive being.
According to this process of embryonic recapitulation, the embryo in its growth passes through the various stages which the stock to which it belongs had passed through in preceding biological time periods. It is a sort of rehearsal in brief of former evolutionary stock-history. And the human embryo shows this as a human specific character when the embryo itself is no longer than three-fourths of an inch; indeed, it is already outlined when the future bones of the face are still merely nuclei of cartilage.
Moreover, the earlier a specific character appears in the embryo, the farther back in time must it be searched for in the evolutionary history of the stock to which the embryo belongs; and conversely, those characteristics latest to appear in the embryo are those which appeared latest in the evolution of the biologic stock to which the embryo belongs.
Further, it is said that the embryo repeats in its growth first the grand features of the class to which it belongs; then come the features, as the embryo grows, of the order to which it belongs; then those of the family; then those of the genus; then those of the species -- and these specific characters come last of all.
That is the alleged law; hence, if we find any character, any specific feature, which appears in the early stage of embryonic growth, this law says that we must search far back in the evolutionary history of the stock to which the embryo belongs, in order to find its first appearance there.
10. The human foot is another very primitive characteristic or rather character of the human race -- of man. Have you ever looked at the foot of an anthropoid ape, or of a monkey? Do you realize that an ape's foot is actually, in some respects, more like the human hand than its own hand is? Instead of being a foot in its function, it is really a hand in function, because it operates like one on account of the great opposability of the big toe, which can be made to diverge or stick out almost at right angles to the digits of the ape's foot.
But turn to the beast's hand, to that of the gorilla, for instance, and you will see that the thumb is but a stump, so to say, as compared with the human thumb; and if you have ever watched an ape or a monkey attempting to pick up a pin or a needle, you could not have done otherwise than have seen the difficulty it has in doing what a man can do instantly, on account of man's opposable thumb.
If you will look at your hand, you will find that the third finger, the third digit, is the longest of the five digits; it is likewise so in the hand of the ape, and in the hand of the monkey. It is likewise so in the foot of the ape, and in the foot of the monkey.
It is for this reason that I prefer the old descriptive term given to the anthropoid apes and the monkeys in 1791 by Blumenbach, who called them quadrumana, or four-handed creatures, because the feet of these beasts can be used as hands as readily, or perhaps more so in some respects, than the hands themselves. The hand of the ape or the monkey often functions rather like a hook than in the manner of a grasping prehensile hand. "Quadrumana," therefore, is an extremely graphic descriptive term; and the placing of the monkeys and apes under the more modern term of primates unfortunately tends to hide this extremely specific character of both ape and monkey.
T. H. Huxley in his enthusiastic championing of the Darwinian theory did a great deal to belittle the unique and specific character of the human foot, and this work must be thoroughly undone. Man's foot is, as just said, unique in nature; no other animate entity has a foot that can compare with the typically specific features of the foot of a man.
The typical human foot is arranged so that the big toe is the longest of the five digits; and the other toes usually range in a progressively shorter sequence to the fifth and shortest. It has been said that this specific shape of the human foot is the result of wearing shoes -- and I cannot but feel that this rather extravagant guess is a desperate effort to attempt to account for the wide divergence of the human foot from that of the apes and monkeys and of the supposed monkey-ancestors of man. But the attempted explanation is obviously untrue.
A baby's foot shows exactly the same character that I have spoken of; the unshod savage's foot also shows exactly the same character; and while it is true that on some old Greek statues of the gods or of human beings, the second (but not the third) digit is occasionally slightly longer than the big toe, that happens also today in some living individuals. In any case, it is not the third digit of the human foot which is ever the longest of the five, which it invariably is with the apes and with the monkeys.
Let us now turn to the human embryo in search of further proof of our point. An examination of the growing infant in utero shows that from the very first period when its foot is outlined in embryonic growth, exactly the same unique character is seen as in the foot of the human adult; and please note further that this fact is seen early in the embryo's development. Hence it must have appeared early in the evolution of the human stock.
Further, the foot of the embryo is never, at any time in its growth, an ape's foot or a monkey's foot; it is typically human from the time of its first appearance, which is an extremely significant fact, for it shows that the human foot is a specific human character, and must have been acquired early, and perhaps very early, in the evolution of the human stock.
Therefore, again according to the biologic law of recapitulation, which is made so much of by the Darwinists themselves -- and we feel that they have truth and fact with them in this instance -- we must conclude that the human foot in all details of its architecture is an exceedingly primitive character or feature, and that the human stock, early man, must have acquired it in the very beginnings of his evolutionary history.
11. Let us now turn to another example, to the peroneus tertius muscle or third peroneal muscle of the leg, leading down into the fifth metatarsal of the foot, into which its tendon is inserted. This is one of the important muscles which aid a man to stand upright and to walk; but it is found in no other animal whatsoever, not merely not in the apes and in the monkeys, but in no mammal whatsoever. It is purely human. Further, it is found in the human embryo early in its development. Therefore, it, like the foot to which it belongs, must be a specific character evolved early in the growth of the human stock. From this we are again obliged to draw the significant conclusion that man's upright posture must have been his posture from the very origin of the human stock, or nearly so.
The old theory was that man only a relatively short time ago was but an improvement upon his alleged ape-ancestor, which, in its halcyon days of freedom from any moral responsibility whatsoever, ate fruit and insects between intervals of swinging from branch to branch of some primeval forest tree; and which, on the rare occasions when it came down to the ground, ran around on its knuckles as the ape does today.
This picture of the Saturnian Age of man, in late Miocene or in the Pliocene epochs, may be humorous, and interesting as an exercise of human ingenuity; but we search in vain in the geological record, or in the skeleton and muscular system of man himself, for any real proof of it. (2) There is no foundation in the facts of nature for it, nor in embryonic development, nor has any such entity -- between man and ape -- ever been discovered in the geological strata which have been explored. It was a theory, a speculation, doubtless enunciated in good faith by the extremely vocal proponents of Darwinism in their efforts to trace man's ancestry through the anthropoids. A man may be very enthusiastic and very sincere, and yet not be a truthful exponent of the facts of nature, if he allow his imagination to run before his scientific caution. Enthusiasm and truth do not necessarily clasp hands together.
But when we consider the human foot and this particular muscle of man's leg, both very ancient in his evolutionary development, and both solely human, what conclusions must we draw? That man almost from his beginning, perhaps indeed from his beginning, was an entity with upright posture.
12. The human hand and forearm are likewise exceedingly primitive in many features. Professor Wood Jones further says, concerning the human hand and forearm, that in their muscles, in their bones, and in the joints, they are astonishingly primitive, and therefore could not have been evolved at a late date in man's evolutionary history; and, as a matter of fact, if you have ever examined the pictures as given in scientific books, of some of the extinct reptiles, fossils which are occasionally dug out from the rocks of the Mesozoic or Secondary Age, you will see that the hand or the paw, and the forelimb, or whatever you like to call it, of those exceedingly primitive creatures, bear an amazing resemblance in general appearance to the human hand and also forearm.
The transformists of the modern school have often told us that the line of evolutionary development of the human stock ran back through the apes and the monkeys into the quadrupedal mammalians, which means that if this theory were true man should even today show, in his forearm and hand, distinct traces of his passage through that alleged line of ancestry. In other words, man's arm and hand should still bear some remnants or traces of his having formerly used his forearm and hand as a support for his body in the times when he is supposed to have been a pronograde mammal like the horse and the dog and the ox, etc.
The fact is, however, that that idea has now been given up entirely by transformists, as far as I know, thus creating another wide hiatus in the supposed ladder of life given in the Darwinian or neo-Darwinian theories setting forth the ascending evolution of man. No anatomist today would do or could do otherwise than reject the idea, for it is impossible of credence, because man's forearm and hand, from the anatomical standpoint, were obviously never built or used as the supporting forelimb of a mammalian quadruped.
Professor Wood Jones, who is a courageous and honest scientist, an anatomist by profession, nevertheless believes that while man never was a quadruped in his past evolutionary history, he was at some very early period of his developmental line an arboreal animal of small size -- an insectivorous little beast, I take it for granted, eating insects and fruits, living in the treetops because it was safer to live there than on the ground. Wood Jones further points out that in the forests of Malaysia there is a curious little monkey, which he calls the lowest of the monkeys, the tarsier. This is still a very primitive creature showing small development from the type of its remote ancestors geologically speaking; and is represented in the early Eocene epoch of the Tertiary period by Anaptomorphus, a genus of creatures closely resembling the present-day tarsier in all essentials.
Professor Wood Jones, if I understand him aright, seems to think that man originated from some creature, arboreal in habit, closely resembling the tarsier of today, or the Anaptomorphus of the Eocene of North America. I fail to see, in view of the facts that he himself has brought forth as regards the primitive features in man, how this can be so. However, such is his argument. He points out (and it is advantageous to our theme) that the tarsier-monkey and man -- that is to say the lowest monkey known, and the highest of the Primates, man -- are astonishingly alike in a number of primitive features such as the architecture of the skull, the peculiarities of the arteries which arise out of the aortic arch; and also with regard to the kidney of the tarsier which is formed on the same type that the human kidney follows.
When we remember that, as just said, the tarsier type goes back to the very base or beginnings of the Eocene epoch, and that the true anthropoid apes appeared in the next following period or the Miocene, we have a most persuasive suggestion that man himself must have existed in Eocene times -- which, indeed, is the teaching of theosophy, which says that even in that remote age man was man in all respects, and had developed one of the most advanced civilizations that the earth has seen, on a continent now sunken beneath the waters of the stormy Atlantic.
We have adduced a significant number of important anatomical instances (3) in proof of the fact that man is the most primitive mammal on the globe today, and always has so been -- and we might as readily have brought forward a host of others -- as is also proved by the facts in the geological record setting forth the fascinating story of the so-called ladder of life, and by the so-called laws of biology as they are enunciated by our greatest biological, that is, zoological and botanical, researchers and thinkers.
Further, we have pointed out that each of the stocks below man -- we now take specifically the anthropoid and simian stocks -- has wandered far more widely from that original primitive basal simplicity than man has; that man retains more of the basal mammalian features or characters in his body, that is, in his muscles, and in his skeleton, than any other animal now living on earth does; and that the apes and monkeys have wandered far afield in that respect, far more so than man has wandered from the primitive mammalian stock, which was early man himself.
With all this evidence before us to prove man's primitive origin, what becomes of the Darwinian "ascending ladder of beings," each stage of which is more complex than the one preceding it, and which is supposed to have eventuated in man as he is today? The two theories cannot exist side by side. One or the other must go by the board; and modern research and deduction is moving, albeit slowly, away from the Darwinian theory, towards the more enlightened conception that man leads in the evolutionary history of the various stocks that this earth has produced.
FOOTNOTES:
1. There is a tendency in some modern textbooks on zoology to abandon, albeit with some hesitancy, the placing of man and the other primates at the end of the mammalian series. See, for instance, College Zoology by Robert W. Hegner, Ph.D. (Macmillan, 4th edition, pp. 588, 596). The author of this textbook places the primates as the 6th order in a series of 19, i.e., very near the beginning of the mammalian classification, but finds it necessary to defend his unusual arrangement by saying that however strange it may seem to students to depart from the accepted classification, he does so because man and the apes "retain a larger number of primitive characters than do the orders that are placed above them in this classification."
Another significant statement made by Hegner is that whereas the primates excel principally in the development of the nervous system and in the large size of the brain, their bones, muscles, teeth, etc., are comparatively primitive.
Note that it is only those features (brain, nervous system, etc.), which are useful to man for the expression and complete functioning of his inner psychological and intellectual nature, which show specialized development. The significance of this is made clearer in a later chapter, "Specialization and Mendelism"; but in connection with the subject of specialization in general, attention is also called here to important statements by Luther C. Snider in his Earth History (The Century Co., 1932), especially chapter xxiv, "The Change in Living Things," where the writer gives abundant evidence to show that "the simple, generalized types are thus centers from which others radiate," and that the "generalized types are the most persistent" (p. 476). (return to text)
2. In speaking of these different geologic ages, I am here following the example first set in the theosophical world by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine (II, 688, 693, 709 16), where she adopted the nomenclature of the system used by Lyell. Modern geologists have increased the length of the geologic periods enormously since H. P. Blavatsky wrote, and it should be clearly understood that throughout this book her time-periods are used. [See Appendix I.] (return to text)
3. Drawn chiefly from The Problem of Man's Ancestry (1918), by Frederic Wood Jones. This subject is more fully handled by the same author in two other works: Arboreal Man (1916), and Man's Place among the Mammals (1929). (return to text)