Two bits of "Monkeyana"

As Charles Darwin was readying to release his treatise on evolution by natural selection (which was turned into an abstract rushed into press in 1859), Richard Owen was trying to separate humans from other primates. In 1857 he proposed that we belonged to our own distinct subclass, and it was peculiar structures in our brains that made all the difference.

That our species were more cognitively developed than apes was clear, but did our supposed superiority stem from something anatomical, unique to us alone? Owen thought so, the hippocampus minor being one of several structures found in our brains an not in those of other primates. T.H. Huxley, however, was not convinced, and publicly debated Owen on the issue in 1860.

Several dissections and demonstrations were carried out over the next two years (Huxley's argument presented as the second chapter in Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature), and Huxley was shown to be right. There was no structure that was present in the human brain that was absent in the brains of apes that could be used to sever our relationship to them.

Coincidentally, during this time gorillas were a popular sensation, and the scientific debate about whether they were "monkey or man" dovetailed with concerns about slavery and the onset of the American Civil War. Such political commentary was not as blatant in this satirical poem, which focused on some unappreciated ways in which humans had tried to imitate acts in which apes were superior. It was published in 1862 in The Living Age after originally appearing in Punch;

The Gorilla's Dilemma
(To Professors Owen and Huxley)

Say am I a man and a brother,
Or only an anthropoid ape?
Your judgment, be't one way or t'other,
Do put into positive shape.
Must I humbly take rank as quaduman
As Owen maintains that I ought:
Or rise into brotherhood human,
As Huxley has flatt'ringly taught?

For though you may deem a Gorilla
Don't think much of his rank in creation,
If of feeling one have a scintilla,
It flows to know "who's one's relation" -
Apes and monkeys (now crowding by dozens
Their kinship with us to have proved),
Or an Owen and Huxley for cousins,
Though, it may be, a little removed.

If you ask me my private opinion
(Which humbly through Punch is submitted),
For which sphere of nature's dominion
I seem to myself to be fitted:
To speak with decision I'm funky,
Nature's field when I selfishly scan,
For in some points if man's above monkey,
In some monkey's far above man.

My ignorance needs no apologies-
With anatomy naught I've to do -
This with all the appurtenant "ologies"
I leave, my professors, to you.
But the points wherein I say that man
Must perforce monkey own his superior,
Are where man apes the apes all he can,
And yet to the apes is inferior.

Thus, in power of jaw apes beat fellows
Of your own scientific societies;
The P.R. they outrival in "bellow,"
In gymnastics your first notorieties.
What's Blondin to every chimpanzee,
Or Leotard great in trapeze?
If their feats rouse the public to frenzy,
What rapture a gibbon should raise!

You've low comedy actors consummate
In gagging, grimacing, and chaff;
But in many who'd Buckstone look glum at
The monkey-cage wakens a laugh.
What are "Cures," Nigger-dances, and jibes
To the black spider-monkey's contortions?
Before preacher-monkeys by tribes
How small seem on Spurgeon's proportions!

One distinction alleged, I must say
Betwixt man and monkey is hollow -
Where monkey or man shows the way,
Other men, other monkeys will follow.
But from all points of difference on turns
To this crowning divergence to come,
Not one man in a thousand e'er learns
To keep silent - all monkeys are dumb!

For distinctions of brain - cerebellum -
Posterior lobe - hippocampus -
I leave you to cut down or swell 'em,
They are scarce the distinctions to stamp us.
Now this way, now that, without end,
I'm swayed by the pros and the cons,
As I feel man and monkey contend
Which in nature's domain are the dons.

Then help me, professors, I pray;
For English opinion I value;
(You can't think how I suffered when Gray
So pitched into me through Du Chaillu.)
Anatomy out of the question,
Had I better be monkey or man,
By enlightened self-interest's suggestion?
Say you - for hang me, if I can.