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I 



Miscellaneous Papers. 263 



to allow time enough, geologically, for the slow evolution of man 

 from this stock. We have reason to believe that the psychic 

 emergence of man from lower forms was a sudden mutation, and 

 from the start his mental evolution took place by leaps and bounds. 

 All of his physical alterations and his special brain and mental 

 development indicate such a process of sudden mutations. To be 

 sure, the gap between man and the highest anthropoids has been 

 materially lessened by the discovery of Piiheconthropus and the 

 studies of the pygmies, but there are still many missing links which 

 were necessary according to the theory of natural selection. With 

 the principle of mutations, however, we can dispense with these 

 links in the formerly supposed necessary chain, and observe how 

 perfectly the wonderful theory of mutations can account for per- 

 haps all of the marvelous changes that have taken place in the 

 evolution of man. 



The theory of mutations will alone account for the psychic emer- 

 gence in relation to its necessary suddenness and the successive 

 rapid changes that took place in the growth of the brain in response 

 to higher mental activity and the correlative changes in physical 

 structure. The theory of selective influences and the slow accre- 

 tion of alterations has never been satisfactory, and has bitter op- 

 ponents. The early geological horizons in which stone implements 

 of supposedly human manufacture have been found, the authen- 

 ticity of which has never been satisfactory, need not trouble the 

 anthropologist now, for it is possible that man could have emerged 

 as suddenly as many other animals which the geological history of 

 the earth has demonstrated. The problem of man's origin is now 

 in a fair way of being solved and fills us with excited expectation. 

 We can accept with confidence now the evidence of his existence 

 in early geological formations, which we have felt heretofore that 

 we must reject as impossible. The geological evidences of the 

 earliest occurrence of man, are now trustworthy, and we can accept 

 them without the reluctance with which we have heretofore re- 

 garded them. We can now believe in the possibility of Pliocene 

 man, and the disputed questions of the probability of early Pleisto- 

 cene man are at once settled. All the implements of early man can 

 now be accepted as genuine, and perhaps a flint chip from the 

 Miocene even, which we have held as being impossible of human 

 workmanship, we may now regard as possible. 



Not only does early geological man thus become a certainty 

 through the theory of mutations, but it will also throw much light 

 upon later and other anthropological problems; for instance, the 



