EVOLUTION OF MAN SMITH. 565 



the long run, were to make them the progenitors of the dominant 

 mammal — -the mammal which was to obtain the supremacy over all 

 others, while still retaining much of the primitive structure of limb 

 that his competitors had sacrificed. It is important, then, to keep 

 in mind that the retention of primitive characters is often to bo looked 

 upon as a token that their possessor has not been compelled to turn 

 aside from the straight path and adopt protective specializations, 

 but has been able to preserve some of his primitiveness and the 

 plasticity associated with it, precisely because he has not succumbed 

 or fallen away in the struggle for supremacy. It is the wider triumph 

 of the individual who specializes late, after benefiting by the many- 

 sided experience of early life, over him who in youth becomes tied 

 to one narrow calling. 



In many respects man retains more of the primitive characteristics, 

 for example, in his hands, than liis nearest simian relatives; and in the 

 supreme race of m-ankind many traits, such as abundance of hair, 

 persist to suggest pithecoid afFmities, which have been lost by the 

 more specialized negro and other races. Those anthropologists who 

 use the retention of primitive features in the Nordic European as an 

 argument to exalt the negro to equahty with him are neglecting the 

 clear teachmg of comparative anatomy, that the persistence of 

 primitive traits is often a sign of strength rather than of weakness. 

 This factor runs through the history of the whole animal kingdom.* 

 Man is the ultimate product of that hne of ancestry which was never 

 compelled to turn aside and adopt protective speciahzation either of 

 structure or mode of life, which would be fatal to its plasticity and 

 power of further development. 



Having now examined the nature of the factors that have made a 

 primate from an insectivore and have transformed a tarsioid pro- 

 simian into an ape, let us turn next to consider how man himself was 



fashioned. 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 



It is the last stage in the evolution of man that has always excited 

 chief interest and has been the subject of much speculation, as the 

 addresses of my predecessors in this presidency bear ample witness. 



These discussions usually resolve themselves into the consideration 

 of such questions as whether it was the growth of the brain, the acqui- 

 sition of the power of speech, or the assumption of the erect attitude 

 that came first and made the ape into a human being. The case for 

 the erect attitude was ably put before the association in the address 

 delivered to this section by Di-. IMunro in 1893. He argued that the 

 hberation of the hands and the cultivation of their skill lay at the 

 root of man's mental supremacy. 



1 "The Brain in the Edentata," Trans. Linn. Soc., 1899. 

 85360°— SM 1912 37 



