58 The Ottawa Naturalist. [May 



properties manifested by the special organs were latent. Biologists 

 now considered the evolutionary doctrine proved and were occupy- 

 ing themselves with the question as to the origin of the individual 

 peculiarities which were the bricks with which evolution worked. 

 This difficult problem was as yet far from being solved, but the 

 trend of the evidence was to show that they were due to chemical 

 influences acting on the germ in the first period of its existence. 

 The evidence that man' was descended from a monkey-like ancester 

 had since Darwin's day become overwhelming. The unborn baby 

 was provided with a short tail and with a thick covering ot hair, 

 and the skulls of the oldest known fossil men were intermediate in 

 capacity between those ot the highest age and the lowest negro. 

 Evolution had not, however, ceased when man had become man ; 

 by its continued operation the human race had been split into a 

 black, a yellow, and a white division. The Anglo-Saxon race 

 belonged to the last, which was essentially an arctic type and had 

 originated where the struggle against nature was fiercest. In con- 

 sequence of this the white race was possessed of superior virility 

 and human history largely consisted of a series of raids carried out 

 by the white race on the less vigorous race lying to the south of 

 them. 



In conclusion the lecturer pointed out that the nature of the 

 human spirit, that most fundamental of all problems, could not be 

 determined by zoological methods ; for to attempt to resolve the 

 soul into the results of the congeries of atoms, when atoms them- 

 selves were its own conceptions was a manifest absurdity. It 

 was better to frankly admit that a consistent scheme could not 

 be constructed out of our knowledge of eternal nature and our 

 knowledge of our inner lite and with Harnack to live in the faith 

 that this apparently irreconcilable contradiction would one day 

 receive its solution. 





