210 The Sifting-out Process 



There is great interest in what might be called the 

 sifting-out process in man's pedigree. In early Eocene 

 times, the Primate stock of big-brained arboreal 

 Mammals was differentiated from other Mammalian 

 orders, such as Carnivores and Insectivores. From 

 this generalized monkeyish stock there diverged first 

 the New World Monkeys, and later on the Old World 

 Monkeys. But the main stem, we believe, grew on. In 

 the Oligocene Ages there diverged the branch of 

 small apes, the gibbons; and later on, probably in 

 the Miocene, the large apes, the gorilla and the chim- 

 panzee, while the orang was apparently on a line of 

 its own. The main stem, vaguely known, we must con- 

 fess, grew on as a humanoid stem. From this, as ages 

 passed, there diverged the tentative men, the Ho- 

 minidae, but not yet Homo. 



So it is not merely that Man is a scion of an ances- 

 tral stock common to him and to the higher apes — 

 the humanoids and the anthropoids parting company 

 between a million and two million years ago — but 

 there is what we might call a trend towards finer and 

 bigger brains. Scientifically, we can only say that 

 Man was the outcome of a natural evolutionary 

 process ; in a larger light, may we not see something 

 like the working out of a divine idea? It looks as if 

 certain steps were made and qualities gained, and that 

 while many settled down at this or that level, the 

 remnant pushed on and repeated the process on a 

 higher turn of the spiral. As it is written in Emerson's 

 Song of Nature: 



