290 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



is a double flexure of this axis ; moreover, in the apes 

 the angles increase with age, which in man decrease, and 

 vice versa. Likewise in man the. occipital foramen 

 becomes more horizontal with age, more vertical in the ape. 

 But all this show^s only, what the doctrine of Descent 

 asserts, that the two series, ape and man, diverge from 

 one another, and that the youthful individuals are more 

 alike than the older ones, — that the ape as he grows be- 

 comes more bestial ; man, as the riddle of the sphinx 

 already intimated, more human. The flexure of the 

 basal bone and the horizontal position of the occipital 

 foramen occasions the upright gait, wherewith the 

 diff'erentiation between hands and feet is completed. 

 This flexure of the cranial axis may therefore still be 

 emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction 

 to the apes ; the peculiar characteristic of an order can 

 scarcely be elicited from it ; and especially as to the 

 question of Descent, this circumstance seems in no way 

 decisive. 



Not only as regards hand and foot, but also in denti- 

 tion and brain, the anthropomorphous apes approach 

 man much more nearly than they do the inferior wide- 

 nosed monkeys of the New World. These, have six 

 molar teeth, and their brain displays the imperfec- 

 tions of the brain of the lemurs and rodents. Like 

 the monkeys of the Old World, on the contrary, the 

 anthropomorphous apes possess five molar teeth, and 

 every portion of the human brain, even to the hippo- 

 campus minor, is likewise present. The dispute as 

 to this insignificant portion of the brain, which 

 R. Owen claimed as an exclusively human charac- 

 teristic, possesses a merely historic interest, since, 



