374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



istence of man. We have likewise reached the same result in our 

 search for human skulls and bones. "We have to recognize that 

 students can not assume that man existed in the Tertiary, or that 

 there is any probability that the human race had its beginning 

 in that epoch ; on the contrary, we find a great void which we 

 try to fill with fantastic imaginings, but which furnishes us with 

 no real specimen. 



After the Congress of Lisbon, students were more moderate and 

 confined themselves to the search for known objects. Among 

 these objects, archaeological finds predominated, and it is easy to 

 understand why archseology has more and more taken the place 

 of anthropology. Palseanthropological objects are so rare, and for 

 the most part so liable to suspicion, that even till the present time 

 the attempt to describe the most ancient race of Quaternary men 

 is beyond the power of science. We have had two examples in 

 Europe that afforded little encouragement : the attempts based on 

 the Canstadt and on the Neanderthal skulls, which, as two emi- 

 nent students once supposed, belonged to the extinct aborigines of 

 the primitive European race. We discussed the question raised 

 over these two skulls fifteen years ago, at the Congress of German 

 Anthropologists in Ulm, and found that the Canstadt skull did 

 not belong to the Quaternary, while the Neanderthal skull was at 

 least very far from having a typical form. 



I shall not examine the whole series of similar discoveries, most 

 of which have only furnished us single exceptional skulls. But I 

 must declare that even if these skulls had been what they were 

 described as being and their geological position had been exactly 

 defined, they could not have constituted proof of the existence of 

 an inferior primitive race that could be regarded as a step between 

 animals and existing man. Many of these skulls appear to be 

 very ancient ; but they resemble in all respects the skulls of mod- 

 ern races, and some of them even those of civilized races. We 

 seek in vain for the "missing link" connecting man with the mon- 

 key or any other animal species. 



We must, however, understand ourselves on a preliminary ques- 

 tion. There exists a tradition common to all peoples, or we might 

 say a dogma common to all religions, recognized by all students, 

 ancient and modern, that the human body has an animal organi- 

 zation; that the same physiological and pathological laws rule 

 human and animal life alike. Notwithstanding this uniformity, 

 there exists a definite barrier separating man from the animal, 

 which has not yet been effaced — heredity, which transmits to 

 children the faculties of their parents. We have never seen a 

 monkey bring a man into the world, nor a man produce a mon- 

 key. All men having a simian appearance are simply pathologi- 

 cal variants. The opinion of Carl Vogt that microcephalous men, 



