176 FROM FISH TO PHILOSOPHER 



of Evolution, a recent Terry Foundation Lecture on *Re- 

 ligion in the Light of Science and Philosophy/ 



If this definition of man is acceptable to the reader, we 

 may inquire in greater detail how man came into his 

 superior endowments. 



Man is first of all a placental mammal; secondly, a 

 primate among mammals; then a primate uniquely char- 

 acterized by the fact that he walks entirely on two legs, 

 leaving the forelimbs free for use as hands; and lastly, by 

 virtue of the great development of his brain, he is an 

 acutely conscious, and very self-conscious, creature- 

 capable, to a degree immeasurably greater than any 

 other animal, of profiting by individual and social ex- 

 perience. 



Back in the Cretaceous his ancestor was a small in- 

 sectivorous animal related to the tree shrews which sur- 

 vive today only in Borneo. This animal had five digits 

 on each foot with which it scratched, dug, grasped and 

 climbed; it sought its food in the trees as well as on the 

 ground, and in addition to eating insects it probably 

 rehshed berries, birds' eggs, and nesthngs, and when 

 feeding it sat up on its haunches in the manner of a 

 squirrel, clutching its food in its front paws. It probably 

 did most of its hunting by the sense of smell, and de- 

 pended on smell and hearing to escape from its enemies, 

 as did all other animals of the Mesozoic era. 



In the Lower Eocene this insectivore had produced 

 the lemuroids, the lowest animals in the order Primates, 

 the order which includes, among living forms, the 

 lemurs, marmosets, monkeys, apes, and man. Highly 

 modified representatives of the lemuroids survive in the 

 lemurs, galagos, and lorises of Madagascar, Africa, and 

 southeastern Asia, respectively. By the end of the Eocene 

 the lemuroid stem had given rise to the tarsioids, of 

 which the spectral tarsier, Tarsius, of Borneo, is the sole 

 surviving remnant. The noteworthy difference between 

 the lemurs and tarsioids is that in the former the eyes 



