i82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



— the skull, tlie face, tlie whole body — and leaving its mark every- 

 where. Fishes swim, ruminants browse, carnivorous animals 

 hunt their prey, the monkey lives in trees, man thinks. All in 

 him gravitates around this characteristic. The philosopher has 

 rightly said, " Man is an intelligence served by organs." 



We are, then, descended from monkeys, or at least everything 

 looks as if we were descended from them. But from what monkey, 

 known or unknown ? I do not know ; assuredly none of the re- 

 cent anthropoids has been our ancestor. From many monkeys 

 or only one ? I am ignorant of that also, and do not know whether 

 I am a monogenist or a polygenist. In the study of the human 

 races, I perceive arguments for and against both systems. I hope 

 to reach their examination in a future course. Till then I ask for 

 a reservation of opinion. 



The subject we have been discussing is not done with ; in fact, 

 what I have said of my own opinion is premature. My earlier 

 lectures next winter will bear on the comparative morphology of 

 the skull, from the fish to man, especially among the mammals. 

 Now that our descent from monkeys is contested by persons who 

 are themselves partisans of our natural descent from the animals, 

 it is of importance that we do not concentrate our exclusive atten- 

 tion on the primates. We shall see what arguments comparative 

 craniology brings in favor of this or that genealogy or against it. 

 We shall thus come upon atavistic traits which we shall then be 

 in a situation to comprehend, upon rudimentary organs, upon 

 analogies, and finally upon characteristics of the evolutionary 

 order, or zoological ones, which I have divided in my programme 

 into two categories — the retrogressive and the progressive charac- 

 teristics. We shall thus complete the study of the cranial charac- 

 teristics dependent on the brain, with which I began, and shall be 

 able to pass to the characteristics derived from the skeleton, 

 among which we shall again find the application of all the pre- 

 ceding evolutionary data. Then only shall we be permitted to 

 conclude upon the place which anthropology makes for man in 

 nature. Whatever may be the result we reach, this place, you 

 may believe, will be as enviable as you could desire it to be. 



I have said, in anticipation, that man is descended from the 

 monkey ; yes, but by a multitude of intermediaries more or less 

 anthropopithecoid, of which paleontology possesses no remains as 

 yet, but which the mind foresees, the first one having a brain like 

 that of Vogt's microcephalus, its followers larger brains, with 

 more circumvolutions, larger frontal lobes, down to the existing 

 type. Originally, at about the beginning of the Miocene, perhaps, 

 man and monkey made but one. A separation was produced, the 

 gap enlarged, became a crevasse, then a gulf with steeper and 

 steeper walls like the Colorado canons — a gulf which our friend 



