object:2.03 - DEMETER
book class:The Phenomenon of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Integral Theory
class:chapter
CHAPTER THREE
DEMETER
Throughout the foregoing chapter we spoke of growth to
express life's way of proceeding. We were even able to go
some way towards recognising the principle behind this impetus
which seemed to us Linked up with the phenomenon of controlled
additivity. By a continuous accumulation of properties (whatever
the exact hereditary mechanism involved) life acts like a snow-
ball. It piles characters upon characters in its protoplasm. It
becomes more and more complex. But, taken as a whole, what
is the meaning of this movement of expansion ? Is it like the
confined and functional explosion of the internal combustion
engine ? Or is it a disorderly release of energy in all directions
like the blast of a high explosive ?
That there is an evolution of one sort or another is now, as
I have said, common ground among scientists. Whether or not
that evolution is directed is another question. Asked whether
life is going anywhere at the end of its transformations, nine
biologists out of ten will today say no, even passionately. They
will say : ' It is abundantly clear to every eye that organic matter
is in a state of continual metamorphosis, and even that this
metamorphosis brings it with time towards more and more
improbable forms. But what scale can we find to assess the
absolute or even relative value of these fragile constructions ?
By what right, for instance, can we say that a mammal, or even
man, is more advanced, more perfect, than a bee or a rose ? To
some extent we can arrange beings in increasingly wide circles
according to the distance in time which separates them from the
141
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
initial ceil. But, once a certain degree of differentiation has been
reached, we can no longer find any scientific grounds for pre-
ferring one of these laborious products of nature to another.
They are different solutions — but each equivalent to the next.
One spoke of the wheel is as good as any other ; no one of the
lines appears to lead anywhere in particular.'
Science in its development — and even, as I shall show, man-
kind in its march — is marking time at this moment, because
men's minds are reluctant to recognise that evolution has a
precise orientation and a privileged axis. Weakened by this
fundamental doubt, the forces of research are scattered, and there
is no determination to build the earth.
Leaving aside all anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism,
I believe I can see a direction and a line of progress for life, a
line and a direction which are in fact so well marked that I am
convinced their reality will be universally admitted by the
science of tomorrow. And I want here to make the reader
understand why.
i. ARIADNE'S THREAD
To begin with, as we are dealing here with degrees of organic
complication, let us try to find an order in the complexity.
Contemplated without any guiding thread, it must be
recognised that the host of living creatures forms qualitatively
an inextricable labyrinth. What is happening, where are we
going through this monotonous succession of ramifications ?
In the course of ages, doubdess, creatures acquire more organs
of increased sensibility. But they also reduce them by specialisa-
tion. Besides, what is the real meaning of the term ' complica-
tion ' ? There are so many different ways in which an animal
can become less simple — differentiation of limbs, of tissues, of
sensory organs, of integument. According to the point of view
adopted, all sorts of distributions are possible. In these multiple
combinations, is there really one which can be said to be truer
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DEMETER
than the others ? Is there one, that is to say, which gives to the
whole of living things a more satisfying coherence, either in
relation to itself, or in relation to the world to which life finds
itself committed ?
To answer this question, I think wc had better go back to
what I said above about the mutual relations between the
without and the within of things. The essence of the real, I said,
could well be represented by the ' inferiority ' contained by the
universe at a given moment. In that case evolution would
fundamentally be nothing else than the continual growth of
this ' psychic ' or ' radial ' energy, in the course of duration,
beneath and within the mechanical energy I called ' tangential ',
which is practically constant on the scale of our observations
(Book 1, Chapter 2, 3 Spiritual Energy, Section B). And what,
I asked, is the particular co-efficient which empirically expresses
the relationship between the radial and tangential energies of
the world in the course of their respective developments ? Obvi-
ously arrangement, the arrangement whose successive advances
are inwardly reinforced, as we can see, by a continual expansion
and deepening of consciousness.
Let us turn this proposition round (not in a vicious circle,
but by a simple adjustment of perspective). Among the in-
numerable complications undergone by organic matter in
ebullience, we find it hard to distinguish those which are merely
superficial diversifications and those (if any) which would repre-
sent a renewal and re-grouping of the stuff of the universe.
Well then, let us just try to see whether, amongst all the com-
binations tried out by life, some are not organically associated
with a positive variation in the psychism of those beings which
possess it. If so, let us seize on them and follow them ; for, if
my hypothesis be correct, they are undoubtedly the ones which,
among the equivocal mass of insignificant transformations, repre-
sent the very essence of complexity, of essential metamorphosis.
There is every chance that they will lead us somewhere.
Framed in these terms, the problem is immediately solved.
Of course there exists in living organisms a selective mechanism
H3
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
for the play of consciousness. We have merely to look into
ourselves to perceive it— the nervous system. We are in a
positive way aware of one single ' inferiority ' in the world :
our own directly, and at the same time that of other men by
immediate equivalence, thanks to language. But we have every
reason to think that in animals too a certain inwardness exists,
approximately proportional to the development of their brains.
So let us attempt to classify living beings by their degree of
' cerebralisation '. What happens ? An order appears— the very
order we wanted — and automatically.
To begin with, let us turn to that part of the tree of life wc
know best, partly because it is still full of vitality and partly
because we belong to it ourselves— the Chordate branch. In
this group an outstanding characteristic is apparent, one which
has for long been emphasised in palaeontology. It is that we find
from layer to layer, by massive leaps, the nervous system con-
tinually developing and concentrating. We all know the example
of the enormous Dinosaurs whose absurdly small brain was no
more than a narrow string of lobes considerably smaller in
diameter than the spinal chord in the lumbar region, reminding
us of the state of affairs still lower, in the amphibians and the
fishes. But when we pass to the stage above — the mammals
we see a remarkable change.
Among the mammals, that is to say, this time, within a single
layer, the average brain is much more voluminous and convoluted
than in any other group of vertebrates. Yet, when we look
closer, we see not only many inequalities, but a remarkable order
in their distribution. The gradation in the first place follows the
position of the biota. In nature at the present day the placentals
take precedence in the matter of brain over the marsupials. Next,
within the same biotas, we find a gradation according to age.
We see placental brains (except for a few primates) always
relatively smaller and simpler in the lower Tertiary age than in
the Miocene and Pliocene. This is strongly emphasised by extinct
phyla such as the Condylarthra or Dinocerata, those horned
monsters whose brain-case (in size and the spacing of the lobes)
144
DEMBTER
had hardly advanced beyond that of the Secondary reptiles.
This can also be observed within a single line of descent. In the
Eocene carnivores, for instance, the cerebrum, still in the marsupial
stage, is smooth and well separated from the cerebellum. It
would be easy to add to the list. In general it may be said that,
taking any offshoot from any verticil, it is only rarely that we
find that (provided it is long enough) it does not lead in time to
more and more ' cerebralised ' forms.
Taking another branch, the arthropods and the insects, we
find the same phenomenon. Dealing as we are now with another
sort of consciousness, we are less sure of our values, but the
thread which guides still seems to hold. From group to group
and age to age, these forms, psychologically so far removed,
display, like ourselves, the influence of cerebralisation. The
nerve ganglions concentrate ; they become localised and grow
forward in the head. At the same time instincts become more
complex ; and simultaneously the extraordinary phenomena of
socialisation appear, to which we shall have to return.
We could continue this analysis indefinitely. I have said
enough, however, to show how easily the skein is disentangled
once we have found the end. For obvious reasons of con-
venience, naturalists setting out to classify organic forms have
been led to make use of certain variations of ornament, for
instance, or functional modifications of the skeleton. Guided by
orthogenesis affecting the coloration and nervation of wings,
the disposition of limbs, or the shape of teeth, their classification
sorts out the fragments or even the skeleton of a structure in the
living world. But because the lines thus traced correspond only
to the secondary harmonics of evolution, the system as a whole
has neither shape nor movement. On the other hand, from the
moment that the measure (or parameter) of the evolving pheno-
menon is sought in the elaboration of the nervous systems, not
only do the countless genera and species fall naturally into place,
but the entire network of their verticils, their layers, dieir
branches, rises up like a quivering spray of foliage. Not only
does the arrangement of animal forms according to their degree
145 K
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
of cerebralisation correspond exactly to the classification of
systematic biology, but it also confers on the tree of life a sharp-
ness of feature, an impetus, which is incontcstably the hall-mark
of truth. Such coherence — and, let me add, such case, inexhaust-
ible fidelity and evocative power in this coherence — could not
be the result of chance.
Among the infinite modalities in which the complication of
life is dispersed, the differentiation of nervous tissue stands out,
as theory would lead us to expect, as a significant transformation.
It provides a direction ; and therefore it proves that evolution has a
direction.
That is my first conclusion. But it has its corollary. We
began by saying that, among living creatures, the brain was
the sign and measure of consciousness. We have now added
that, among living creatures, the brain is continually perfecting
itself with time, so much so that a given quality of brain appears
essentially linked with a given phase of duration.
The final conclusion proclaims itself, a conclusion which at
one and the same time confirms the bases and controls what
follows in our disquisition. Since, in its totality and throughout
the length of each stem, the natural history of living creatures
amounts on the exterior to the gradual establishment of a vast
nervous system, it therefore corresponds on the interior to the
installation of a psychic state coextensive with the earth. On
the surface, we find the nerve fibres and ganglions ; deep down,
consciousness. We were only looking for a simple rule to sort
out the tangle of appearances. And now (entirely in keeping
with our initial anticipations on the ultimately psychic nature of
evolution) we possess a fundamental variable capable of following
in the past, and perhaps defining in the future, the true curve
of the phenomenon.
Will that solve the problem ? Yes, almost. But on one con-
dition, obviously ; a condition which will seem irksome to
certain scientific prejudice. It is that by a change of front, a
reversal of plane, we abandon the without to delve into the
within of things.
146
DEMETER
2. THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Let us return to the ' expansionist ' movement of life as it appears
in its broad outline. But this time, instead of losing ourselves
in the labyrinth of arrangements affecting the ' tangential '
energies of the world, let us try to follow the ' radial ' progress
of its internal energies. Now everything becomes definitively
clear — in value, in operation and in hope.
a. To begin with, what is brought to light by this simple change
of variable is the place occupied by the development of life in the
general history of our planet.
When we discussed the origin of the first cells, we considered
that, if their spontaneous generation took place only once in the
whole of time, it was apparently because the initial formation
of the protoplasm was bound up with a state which the general
chemistry of the earth passed through only once. The earth, we
said, should be regarded as the seat of a certain global and irre-
versible evolution, much more important for scientists to con-
sider than any superficial oscillations. We said, moreover, that
the primordial emergence of organised matter marked a critical
point on the curve of this evolution.
After that the phenomenon seemed to become lost in the
multitude of ramifications, to the point that we almost forgot it.
But now we sec it emerging again, on the tide, with the ride
(duly recorded by the nervous systems), whose flood carries the
ving mass ever onward towards more consciousness. This is the
great primaeval movement reappearing, whose sequel we now
grasp.
Like the geologist occupied in recording the movements of
the earth, the faultings and foldings, the palaeontologist who
fixes the position of the animal forms in time is apt to sec in the
past nothing but a monotonous series of homogeneous pulsations.
In these records, the mammals succeeded the reptiles which
succeeded the amphibians, just as the Alps replaced the Cimmerian
Mountains which had in their turn replaced the Hercynian range.
U7
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
Henceforward we can and must break away from this view which
lacks depth. We have no longer the crawling ' sine ' curve, but
the spiral which springs upward as it turns. From one zoological
layer to another, something is carried over: it grows, jerkily, but
ceaselessly and in a constant direction. And this ' something ' is
what is most physically essential in the planet we live on. The
evolution of the simple bodies following the radio-active way,
the granitic segregation of continents, the possible isolation of the
interior layers of the globe many other transformations besides
the vital movement form no doubt a continuous bass underlying
the rhythms of the earth ; but since life separated out within the
heart of matter, these various processes have no longer the quality
or being the supreme event. With the birth of the first albumin-
oids, the essence of the terrestrial phenomenon shifted in a decisive
way to become concentrated in that seemingly negligible thick-
ness, the biosphere. The axis of geogenesis is now extended in
biogenesis, which in the end will express itself in psychogenesis.
From an inward point of view, constantly confirmed by
ever-increasing harmonies, the different objects of science become
visible in proper perspective and in their true proportions. We
see life at the head, with all physics subordinate to it. And at
the heart of life, explaining its progression, the impetus of a rise
of consciousness.
b. The Impetus of Life. This is a question hotly debated by
naturalists ever since die understanding of nature has been hinged
on the understanding of evolution. Faithful to their analytical
and determinist methods, biolgists persist in looking for the
principle of vita, developments in external stimuli or in statistics:
the struggle for survival, natural selection and so on. From this
point of view, the animate world could never advance — if it
advanced at all — otherwise than by the automatically regulated
sum of all the efforts it makes to remain itself.
Far be it from mc, let me say once again, to deny the im-
portant, indeed essential, role, played by this historic working
of the material forms. As living beings, we feel it in ourselves.
To jolt the individual out of his natural laziness and the rut of
148
DEMETER
habit, and also from time to time to break up the collective
frameworks in which he is imprisoned, it is indispensable that he
should be shaken and prodded from outside. What would we do
without our enemies ? While capable of supply regulating within
organic bodies the blind movement of molecules, life seems still
to exploit for its creative arrangements the vast reactions which
are born fortuitously throughout the world between material
currents and animate masses. Life seems to play as cleverly with
collectivities and events as with atoms. But what could this
ingeniousness and these stimulants do if applied to a funda-
mental inertia ? And what, moreover, as we have pointed out,
would the mechanical energies themselves be without some
within to feed them ? Beneath the ' tangential ' we find the
' radial '. The impetus of the world, glimpsed in the great
drive of consciousness, can only have its ultimate source in some
inner principle, which alone could explain its irreversible advance
towards higher psychisms.
How can life respect determinism on the without and yet
act in freedom within ? Perhaps we shall understand that better
some day.
Meanwhile the vital phenomenon seems on the whole both
natural and possible when once the reality of a fundamental
impetus has been accepted. Furthermore, its micro-structure
itself becomes clearer. For we now perceive a new way of
explaining, over and above the main stream of biological evolu-
tion, the progress and particular disposition of its various phyla. 1
1 In various quarters I shall be accused of showing too Lamarckian a bent in
the explanations which follow, of giving an exaggerated influence to the
Within in the organic arrangement of bodies. But be pleased to remember that,
in the ' morphogenctic ' action of instinct as here understood, an essential part
is left to the Darwinian play of external forces and to chance. It is only really
through strokes of chance that life proceeds, but strokes of chance which are
recognised and grasped — that is to say, psychically selected. Properly under-
stood the ' anti-chance ' of the Neo-Lamarckian is not the mere negation of
Darwinian chance. On the contrary it appears as its utilisation. There is a
functional complementariness between the two factors ; we could call it
' symbiosis '.
149
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
It is one tiling to notice that in a given line in the animal kingdom
limbs become solipedal or teeth carnivorous, and quite another
to guess how this tendency was produced. It is all very well to
say that a mutation occurs at the point where the stem leaves the
verticil. But what then ? The later modifications of the phylum
are as a rule so gradual, and so stable are sometimes the organs
affected, even from the embryo (the teeth, for example), that
we are definitely forced to abandon the idea of explaining every
case simply as the survival of the fittest, or as a mechanical
adaptation to environment and us. So what follows ?
The more often I come across this problem and the longer
I pore over it, the more firmly is it impressed upon me that in
fact we are confronted with an effect not of external forces but
of psychology. According to current thought, an animal develops
its carnivorous instincts because its molars become cutting and
its claws sharp. Should we not turn the proposition around ?
In other words if the tiger elongates its fangs and sharpens its
claws is it not rather because, following its line of descent, it
receives, develops and hands on the ' soul of a carnivore ' ? It
is the same with the timid cursorial types, the same with those
that burrow, swim or fly. There is an evolution of characters
certainly ; but on condition that this word is taken in the
sense of ' temperament '. At first sight the explanation reminds
one of the ' virtues ' of the Schoolmen. As wc go deeper, it
becomes increasingly likely. In the individual, qualities and
defects develop with age. Why (or rather, how) should they
It may be added that if wc give its proper place to the essential distinction
(still too often ignored) between a biology of small units and a biology of big
complexes— in the same way as there is a physics of the infinitesimal and another
of the immense— wc appreciate the advisability of distinguishing two major
zones of the organic world, and treating them differently. On the one hand is
the Lamarckian zone of very big complexes (above all, man) in which anti-
chance can be seen to dominate ; on the other hand the Darwinian zone of
small complexes, lower forms of life, m which anti-chance is so swamped by
chance that it can onjy be appreciated by reasoning and conjecture, that is to
say indirectly. (Sec p. 302.)
150
DEMETER
not be accentuated phylctically ? And why, on that scale, should
they not react upon the organism to stamp it with their image ?
After all the ants and termites succeed in fitting out their warriors
and their workers with an exterior suited to their instincts.
And we also surely know men of prey ?
c. Once we have admitted this, unexpected horizons rise up in
front of biology. For obvious practical reasons we are led to
make use of the variations in their fossihsablc parts to follow the
links between living creatures. But this practical necessity must
not be allowed to blind us to what is limited and superficial
in this arrangement. The number of bones, shape of teeth,
ornamentation of the integument — all these ' visible characters '
form merely the outward garment round something deeper
which supports it. We arc dealing with only one event, the
grand orthogenesis of everything living towards a higher degree
of immanent spontaneity. Secondarily, we find by periodical
dispersal of this impetus, the verticil of the little orthogeneses,
where the fundamental current splits up to form the true, inner
axis of each ' radiation '. Finally, thrown over all that like a
simple sheath, we iind the veil of tissues and the architecture of
the limbs. That is the situation.
To write the true natural history of the world, we should
need to be able to follow it from within. It would thus appear
no longer as an interlocking succession of structural types re-
placing one another, but as an ascension of inner sap spreading
out in a forest of consolidated instincts. Right at its base, the
living world is constituted by consciousness clothed in flesh
and bone. From the biosphere to the species is nothing but an im-
mense ramification of psychism seeking for itself through
different forms. That is where Ariadne's thread leads us if we
follow it to the end.
In the present state of our knowledge, of course, we cannot
dream of expressing the mechanism of evolution in this ' interior-
ised ', ' radial ' form. On the other hand, one thing becomes
clear. It is that, if this is the real significance of transformisni,
life, in so far as it represents a controlled process, could only proceed
151
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
ever farther along its original line on condition that it underwent
some profound readjustment at a given moment.
The law is formal. We referred to it before, when we spoke
of the birth of life. No reality in the world can go on increasing
without sooner or later reaching a critical point involving some
change of state. There is a ceiling limit to speeds and tempera-
tures. If we increase the acceleration of a body until we get
near the speed of light, it acquires by excess of mass an infinitely
inert nature. If we heat it, it would first melt, then vaporise.
And the same applies to all known physical properties. So long
as we could regard evolution as a simple advance towards com-
plexity, we could imagine it developing indefinitely in its own
likeness ; there is no ceiling limit to pure diversification. Now
that, beneath the historically increasing intricacy of forms and
organs, we have discovered the irreversible increase, not only
in quantity but also in quality, of brains (and therefore conscious-
ness) we are forced to realise that an event of another order —
a metamorphosis — was inevitably awaited to wind up this long
period of synthesis in the course of geological time.
We must now turn our attention to the first symptoms of
this great terrestrial phenomenon which ends up in man.
3. THE APPROACH OF TIME
Let us return to the wave of life in movement where we left it,
i.e. at the expansion of the mammals or, to situate ourselves
concretely in duration, let us go back to the world as we can
imagine it towards the end of the Tertiary period.
A great calm seems to be reigning on the surface of the earth
at this time. From South Africa to South America, across
Europe and Asia, are fertile steppes and dense forests. Then
other steppes and other forests. And amongst this endless verdure
are myriads of antelopes and zebras, a variety of proboscidians
in herds, deer with every kind of antler, tigers, wolves, foxes
and badgers, all similar to those we have today. In short, the
152
DEMETER
landscape is not too dissimilar from that which we are today
seeking to preserve in National Parks — on the Zambesi, in the
Congo, or in Arizona. Except for a few lingering archaic forms,
so familiar is this scene that we have to make an effort to realise
that nowhere is there so much as a wisp of smoke rising from
camp or village.
It is a period of calm profusion. The mammalian layer has
spread out. Yet evolution cannot be stopped. Something, some-
where, is unquestionably accumulating and ready to rise up for
another forward leap. But what ? and where ?
To detect what at this moment is maturing in the womb of
the universal mother, let us make use of the index which we
have henceforward at our disposal. Life is the rise of conscious-
ness, we have agreed. If it is to progress still further it can only
be because, here and there, the internal energy is secretly rising
up under the mantle of the flowering earth. Here and there,
within nervous systems, psychic tension is doubtless increasing.
Physicists and doctors use delicate instruments on bodies :
let us do likewise, applying our ' thermometer ' of consciousness
to this somnolent nature. In what region of the biosphere in the
Pliocene period is there a sign of rising temperature ?
Of course we must look at heads.
Outside the vegetable kingdom, which does not count, 1 there
are two summits of branches, and only two, which emerge
before us in air, light and spontaneity : on the arthropod side,
the insects ; on the vertebrate side, the mammals. To which
side belongs the future — and truth ?
a. The Insects. In trie higher insects a cephalic concentration of
nerve ganglions goes hand in hand with an extraordinary wealth
1 In the sense that in the vegetable kingdom we are unable to follow along a
nervous system the evolution of a psychism obviously remaining diffuse.
That is not to say that the latter does not exist, growing in its own manner.
I would not think of denying it. Indeed, to take one example out of a thousand,
is it not enough to see how certain plants trap insects to be convinced that the
vegetable branch, albeit from afar, is like the other two, subservient to the rise
of consciousness.
IS3
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
and precision of behaviour. Wc cannot but wonder when wc
see living around us this world so marvellously adjusted and yet
so terribly far away. Our rivals ? Our successors, perhaps ?
Must we not rather say a multitude pathetically involved and
struggling in a blind alley ?
What seems to eliminate the hypothesis that the insects
represent the issue — or even that they simply are an issue — for
evolution is the fact that although very much the elders of the
higher vertebrates by the date of their florescence, and now they
seem irremediably ' stationary \ Throughout what may well be
geological ages, they have become endlessly complicated like
Chinese characters, yet give the impression of being unable to
change their plan — as if their impetus or fundamental meta-
morphosis were stopped. And if we reflect a moment, wc can
see certain reasons for this marking-time.
First of all insects are too small. For quantitative develop-
ment of the organs, an external, chitinous skeleton is a bad solu-
tion. In spite of repeated moultings it imprisons the organs :
and it quickly yields under increasing interior volumes. The
insect cannot grow beyond an inch or two without becoming
dangerously fragile. In spite of the disdain with which we some-
times regard ' a mere question of size ', it is undeniable that
certain qualities, by the very fact that they are linked to a material
synthesis, are only capable of being manifested above certain
quantities. The superior psychic levels demand physically big
brains.
And then, precisely perhaps for this very reason of size,
insects show a strange psychic inferiority in the very domain
where we should have been tempted to put their superiority.
Our own cleverness is dumbfounded by the precision of their
movements and their constructions. But we must be careful.
Looked at more closely, this perfection is conditioned by the
extreme rapidity with which their psychology becomes mechan-
ised and hardened. It has been amply demonstrated that the
insect disposes of an appreciable margin of indetermination and
choice for its operations. Only, hardly are these performed,
154
DEMBTER
than its acts seem to become charged with habit and soon trans-
formed into organic reflexes. Automatically and continually,
one could say, its consciousness is extravcrted to become frozen
at once : (i) in its behaviour, which successive corrections
promptly registered render ever more precise and (ii) in the long
run, in a somatic morphology in which individual particularities
disappear, absorbed by function. Hence those adjustments of
organs and behaviour at which Fabre rightly marvelled, and
hence also the simply prodigious arrangements which group
together in a single living machine the swarming hive or ant-hill.
This could be called a paroxysm of consciousness, which
spreads outwards from within, to become materialised in rigid
arrangements. The exact opposite of a concentration.
b. The Mammals. Let us therefore leave the insects and return
to the mammals.
At once we feel at ease ; so much at ease that our relief could
be accounted for by an impression of ' anthropoccntrism '.
If we breathe more freely now that we have come away from
the hive and ant-hill, is it not quite simply because, amongst
the higher vertebrates, we feel ' at home ' ? There is always the
menace of relativity hanging over our minds.
No, we are not making a mistake. In this case at least we
are not misled by an impression — our judgment is really being
guided by our intelligence, with the power it has to appreciate
certain absolute values. If a furry quadruped seems so ' animated '
compared with an ant, so genuinely alive, it is not only because
of a zoological kinship we have with it. In the behaviour of a
cat, a dog, a dolphin, there is such suppleness, such unexpected-
ness, such exuberance of life and curiosity ! Instinct is no longer
narrowly canalised, as in the spider or the bee, paralysed in a
single function. Individually and socially it remains flexible. It
takes interest, it flutters, it plays. We are dealing with an entirely
different form of instinct in fact, and one not subject to the limita-
tions imposed upon the tool by the precision it has attained. Unlike
the insect, the mammal is no longer completely the slave of the
phylum it belongs to. Around it an ' aura ' of freedom begins
155
PLIOCENE
MIOCENE
OLIGOCENE
Anthropoids
EOCENE
.J. S Z A\ - ~
diagram 3. The development of the Primates.
DEMETER
to float, a glimmer of personality. And it is in that direction that
the possibilities presently crop up, intcrminate and interminable,
straight ahead.
But from what species was it that the leap forward towards
promised horizons was to take place ?
Let us take a closer look at the great horde of Pliocene animals
— those limbs developed to the last degree of simplicity and
perfection, those forests of antlers on the heads of stags, of lyre-
shaped horns on the starred or striped foreheads of antelopes,
those heavy tusks on the snouts of the proboscidians, those
canines and incisors of the great carnivores . . . Surely such
luxuriance, such achievement, must precisely serve to condemn
the future of these magnificent creatures, marking them for an
early death, writing them off — despite their psychic vitality —
as forms that have got into a morphological dead end. All this
may seem rather more like an end than a beginning.
This is doubtless so. But besides the Polycladida, the Strep-
sicerata, the elephants, the sabre-toothed tigers, and so many
others, there are the primates.
c. The Primates. So far I have only mentioned the primates
once or twice in passing. I have not yet allotted a place to these
near neighbours of ours on the tree of life. The omission was
deliberavC. At the point I had then reached, their importance
had not yet come to light ; they could not have been understood.
Now that we have perceived the secret spring that moves
zoological evo.ution, it is different. Their hour has come, and
we see how they can and should make their entrance at that
fateful moment towards the end of the Tertiary era.
On the whole, like all other animal groups, the primates
appear morphologically as a series of overlapping verticils or
ramifications, and, as usual, the terminals are sharply defined,
the stems blurred (Diag. 3). At the top we have on either side
the two great branches of the monkeys proper : the Catarrhines,
true monkeys of the old world with 32 teeth ; and the Platyrr-
hines of South America, with flattened nose and 36 teeth. Below,
the lemurs, generally with an elongated snout and often pro-
157
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
clivous incisors. Right at the bottom these two-tiered verticils
seem to break off at the beginning of the Tertiary era from an
' insectivorous ' ramification, the Tupaioids, of which they seem
to represent a single radiation in a state of florescence. Nor is that
all. At the heart of each of these two verticils we can distinguish
a central sub-verticil of particularly ' cephalised ' forms. On
the lemurian side, the Tarsioids, tiny jumping animals with a
round, bulging cranium and huge eyes, whose sole living repre-
sentative, the tarsier of Malaya, reminds us bizarrely of a little
man. On the side of the Catarrhines we are all familiar with
anthropoids (the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-outang and
the gibbon), tailless monkeys, the biggest and most alert of all
monkeys.
The lemurs and the tarsiers were the first to reach their
prime — towards the end of the Eocene age. As for the anthro-
poids, we find them in Africa from the Oligocene onwards.
But they certainly did not reach their maximum diversity and
size until the end of the Pliocene. Then we find them in both
Africa and India, i.e. always in tropical or sub-tropical zones.
We should keep in mind this date and this mode of distribution
for they contain a lesson.
With that, we have placed the primates outwardly — both in
duration and in their external form. We should now penetrate
to the within of things and try to understand in what respect
these animals differ from the others, seen from inside.
What at once catches the anatomist's attention when he
looks at monkeys (particularly the higher ones) is the aston-
ishingly slight degree of differentiation in their bones. The
cranial capacity is relatively much bigger than in any other
mammal, but what are we to say of the rest ? An isolated molar
belonging to a Dryopithecus or a chimpanzee could readily be
confused with the tooth of an Eocene omnivore such as the
Condylarths. Then the limbs — with their radiations still intact
these exhibit the same plan and proportions that they had in the
first tetrapods of the Palaeozoic era. In the course of the Tertiary
era, the ungulates radically transformed the adjustment of their
158
DBMETER
feet ; the carnivores reduced and sharpened their teeth ; the
Cetacea streamlined themselves like fish ; the Proboscidea
gready complicated their incisors and their molars. Meanwhile
the primates on their side had kept their ulna intact and also their
fibula ; they jealously hung on to their five fingers ; they
remained typically tritubercular. Are we to consider them
therefore the conservatives among mammals, the most con-
servative of all ?
No ; but they have shown themselves to be the most wary.
In itself, at its best, the differentiation of an organ is an
immediate factor of superiority. But, because it is irreversible,
it also imprisons the animal that undergoes it in a restricted
path at the end of which, under the pressure of orthogenesis,
it runs the risk of ending up either in monstrosity or in fragility.
Specialisation paralyses, ultra-specialisation kills. Palaeontology
is littered with such catastrophes. Because, right up to the
Pliocene period, the primates remained the most ' primitive '
of the mammals as regards their limbs, they remained also the
most free. And what did they do with that freedom ? They
used it to lift themselves dirough successive upthrusts to the
very frontiers of intelligence.
So we have now before us, simultaneously with the true
definition of the primate, the answer to the problem which led
us to study the primates. ' After the mammals, at the end of
the Tertiary era, where will life be able to carry on ? '
What makes the primates so interesting and important to
biology is, in the first place, that they represent a phylum of
pure and direct cerebralisation. In the other mammals too, no
doubt, the nervous system and instinct gradually develop. But
in them the internal travail was distracted, limited and finally
arrested by accessory differentiations. Pari Passu with their
psychical development, horse, stag and tiger became, like the
insect, to some extent prisoners of the instruments of their swift-
moving or predatory ways. For that is what their limbs and teeth
had become. In the case of the primates, on the other hand,
evolution went straight to work on the brain, neglecting evcry-
159
THE PHENOMENON OP MAN
thing eke, which accordingly remained malleable. That is why
they are at the head of the upward and onward march towards
greater consciousness. In this singular and privileged case, the
particular orthogenesis of the phylum happened to coincide exactly with
the principal orthogenesis of life itselj : following Osborn's term
which I shall borrow while changing its sense, it is ' aristogenesis ' book three
— and thus unlimited.
Hence this fust conclusion that if the mammals form a THOUGHT
dominant branch, the dominant branch of the tree of life, the
primates (i.e. the cerebro-manuals) are its leading shoot, and the
anthropoids are the bud in which this shoot ends up.
Thenceforward, it may be added, it is easy to decide where
to look in all the biosphere to see signs of what is to be expected.
We already knew that everywhere the active phyletic lines
grow warm with consciousness towards the summit. But in
one well-marked region at the heart of the mammals, where
the most powerful brains ever made by nature are to be found,
they become red hot. And right at the heart of that glow burns
a point of incandescence.
We must not lose sight of that line crimsoned by the dawn.
After thousands of years rising below the horizon, a flame bursts
forth at a stricdy localised point.
Thought is born.
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