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Show 110 THE DESCENT OF 1\I.AN. PART I. differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said. So it is with the lower animals, as has been illustrated by a few examples in the last chapter. All who have had charge of menageries admit this fact, and we see it plainly in our dogs and other domestic animals. Brehm especially insists that each individual monkey of those which he kept under confinement in Africa bad its own peculiar disposition and temper : he mentions one baboon remarkable for its high intelligence; and the keepers in the Zoological Gardens pointed out to me a monkey, belonging to the New World division, equally remarkable for intelligence. Rengger, also, insists on the diversity in the various mental characters of the monkeys of the same species which he kept in Paraguay; and this diversity, as he adds, is partly innate, and partly the result of the manner in which they have been treated or educated.8 I have elsewhere 9 so fully discussed the subject of Inheritance that I need here add hardly anything. A greater number of facts have been collected with respect to the transmission of the most trifling, as well as of the most important characters in man than in any of the lo.wer animals ; though the facts are copious enough w1th respect to the latter. So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses, and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good temper, &c., are certainly transmitted. With man we see similar facts in almost every family ; and we 8 Brch~, 'Thicrleben,' ll. i. s. 58, 87. Rengger, ' Saugcthiere von Paraguay, s. 57. 9 ' V ~.riation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. chap. xu. C HAP. IV. l\1ANNER OF DEVELOPMENT. 111 now know through the admirable labours of Mr. Galton 10 that genius, which implies a wonderfully complex combination of high faculties, tends to be inherited ; and, on the other hand, it is too certain that insanity and deteriorated mental powers likewise run in the same families. ~Tith respect to the causes of variability we are in all cases very ignorant; but we can see that in man as in the lower animals, they stand in some relation with the conditions to which each species has been exposed during several generations. Domesticated animals vary more than those in a state of nature; and this is apparently due to the diversified and changing nature of their conditions. The different races of man resemble in this respect domesticated animals, and so do the individuals of the same race when inhabiting a very wide area, like that of America. We see the influence of diversified conditions in the more civilised nations, the members of which belong to different grades of rank and follow different occupations, presenting a greater range of character than the members of barbarous nations. But the uniformity of savages has often been exaggerated, and in some cases can hardly be said to exist. 11 It is nevertheless an error to speak of man, even if we look only to the conditions to which he has been subjected, as "far more domesticated" 12 than 10 'Hereditary Genius: an Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences,' 1869. 11 Mr. Bates remarks (' The Naturalist on the Amazons,' 1863, vol. ii. p. 159), with respect to the Indians of the same S. American tribe, " no two of them were at all similar in the shape of the head ; one " man had an oval visage with fine features, and another was quite " Mongolian in breadth and prominence of cheek, spread of nostrils, " and obliquity of eyes.'' 12 Blumcnbach, ' Treatises on Anthropolog.' Eng. translat., 1865, p. 205. |
