466 



EVOLUTION AND ANIMAL LIFE 



FIG. 297. Skull of ancient man from Spy 

 in Belgium. (From Weltall u. Menschheit; 

 after Professor Fraipont's photograph of 

 the original in the musem at Liege.) 



stantially as he is now, and when it grows dim it permits us to 

 see no sign that he was other than he is now/' 



The gradual development of man from nomadic apes; 

 the gradual effect of the prolonged infancy of his young in the 



holding of the family to- 

 gether; the altruistic trans- 

 formation of the family into 

 the patriarchal and tribal 

 systems; the gradual in- 

 crease of the power of -choice 

 among instincts, a develop- 

 ment which at last places 

 intellect above instinct, the 

 use of fire and the use of 

 tools, the growth of speech 

 and its reaction upon intel- 

 ligence, the invention of 

 writing, effects of the su- 

 premacy of the strong all 

 these matters afford large 



range for speculation and some opportunity for direct investi- 

 gation. But the essential fact, the kinship of man with the 

 lower forms, and his divergence from them through the opera- 

 tion of natural laws, forces and conditions more or less per- 

 fectly understood, all this must now be taken as settled by the 

 investigations and dis- 

 coveries of Darwin and his 

 coworkers and successors. 



Assuming that the gene- 

 alogy of man can be traced 

 through the anthropoids 

 and the Old- World mon- 

 keys to the lemurs, how 

 much further can we go? 

 Apparently the lemurs rep- 

 resent an early offshoot 

 from the mammalian stock, 



the nearest point of juncture being the order of marsupials, now 

 so largely represented in Australia. Certain extinct lemurian 

 genera are more distinctly primitive than any of the living 

 forms. The marsupials are connected with the primitive group 



FIG. 298. Diagrammatic representation of 

 profiles of crania of primitive types of man. 

 (After Lenormant.) 



