186 RAYMOND C. OSBURN Vol. XXII, No. 7 



than he has the modern man. Both are the evolutionary 

 products of a common stock and have taken different directions, 

 different Hnes of development. Their relationship lies through 

 a common type of remote ancestor. To approach that relation- 

 ship, one must go back to more primitive Primates, just as to 

 find connecting links between the Primates and Carnivora 

 one must go still farther back to more primitive mammals. 



The nature of the "missing link" has exercised the mind 

 of the non-biological world very greatly, because of an erroneous 

 idea of what constitutes a missing link. As far as I am aware 

 this is always popularly applied to the evolution of man and 

 the usual opinion is that there should be found some inter- 

 mediate form between man and the nearest anthropoid ape, or, 

 because the general public is not informed or discerning in 

 these matters, between man and a monkey. But no biologist 

 would ever expect to find such a connecting link, for none could 

 exist. Man and the apes are contemporaries and so it is 

 impossible that one should descend or ascend from the other. 

 As well might one expect to find the missing link between 

 contemporary horses and tapirs, though both are descended 

 from the same group of primitive ungulate mammals. What 

 we do expect to find and what, in fact, we do find as we go 

 back in time is that we unearth simpler and more primitive 

 types of man until we come to a brain only two-thirds of its 

 present size, a prognathous jaw, less erect posture, etc., and 

 if we carry this far enough we will come to the generalized 

 Primate stock. If we trace out the ancestry of the apes we 

 will run back in a converging series to the same place. The 

 only sort of a connection existing between man and the apes 

 is that of origin from a similar source. 



There is also a mistaken notion that evolution fails to 

 account for the origin of the mind of man. But the modern 

 psychologist and the student of animal behavior are agreed 

 that there is no necessity for assuming any break in the con- 

 tinuity of the series of phenomena in the evolution of mind. 

 The origin of mind is indissolubly linked up with the nature of 

 protoplasm, in its automatic movements, tropisms and reactions. 

 If we begin back as far as the protozoa, we may quote the 

 statement of Jennings that even the Amoeba "behaves as if it 

 had a mind of its own." From the indefinite condition of 

 automatism, irritability and conductivity, exhibited by the 



