446 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



" sound understanding of man." We ridicule the childish 

 follies occasioned by the pride of ancestry among the 

 nobility, from the splendid Middle Ages down to our own 

 time, and yet no small portion of this groundless pride 

 of nobility lurks in a great majority of men. Just as most 

 people prefer to trace their pedigree from a decayed baron 

 or, if possible, fi?om a celebrated prince, rather than from 

 an unknown, humble peasant, so they prefer seeing the pro- 

 genitor of the human race in an Adam degraded by the Fall, 

 rather than in an Ape capable of higher development and 

 progress. It is a matter of taste, and such genealogical 

 preferences do not, therefore, admit of discussion. Still I 

 must confess that, personally, I am as proud of my paternal 

 grandfather, who was simply a Silesian peasant, as of my 

 maternal grandfather, who raised himself from the position 

 of a Khenish lawyer to the highest posts in the council 

 of state. And it is also much more to my individual taste 

 to be the more highly developed descendant of a primaeval 

 Ape ancestor, who, in the struggle for existence, had de- 

 veloped progressively from lower Mammals, as they from 

 still lower Vertebrates, than the degraded descendant of 

 an Adam, god-like, but debased by the Fall, who was formed 

 from a clod of earth, and of an Eve, created from a rib of 

 Adam. As regards this celebrated " rib," I must here ex- 

 pressly add as a supplement to the histor}^ of the develop- 

 ment of the skeleton, that the number of ribs is the same in 

 man and in woman. In the latter as well as in the former, 

 the ribs originate from the skin-fibrous layer, and are to be re- 

 garded phylogenetically as lower or ventral vertebrae (p. 285). 

 Now I certainly hear some one say : " That may all be 

 right and correct as far as the human body is concerned, and, 



