Anthropology : an introduction to the study of man and civilization / [by] Edward B. Tylor.

  • Tylor, Edward B. (Edward Burnett), 1832-1917.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anthropology : an introduction to the study of man and civilization / [by] Edward B. Tylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    62/472 (page 42)
    In comparing man with the lower animals, it is wrong to set down his pre-eminence entirely to his mind, without noticing the superiority of his limbs as instruments for practical arts. If one looks at the illustrations to Reynard the Fox, where the artist does his best to represent the lion holding a sceptre, the she-wolf flirting a fan, or the fox writing a letter; what he really shows is, how ill adapted the limbs of quadrupeds are to such actions. Man's being the tool-using animal is due to his having hands to use the tool as well as mind to invent it; and only the apes, as Fig. 6,-11, hand, l>, foot, of chimpanzee (after Vogt) ; c, hand, d, foot, of man. most nearly approaching man in their limbs, can fairly imitate the use of such instruments as a spoon or a knife. In Fig. 6 the hand and foot of the chimpanzee may be compared with those of man. Here the ape's foot ^, looks so hke a hand, that many naturalists have classed the higher apes under the name of four-handed animals, or quadruniaiw. In anatomical structure it is a foot, but it is a prehensile or grasping foot, able to dip or pinch an object by setting the great toe thumb-wise against the others, which the human foot d, cannot do. It is true that among people who go barefoot the great toe is not quite so helpless as that of a