XVII MEN AND APES 585 
Ape, and quite as great as or even a trifle greater than the cranial 
capacity of some female Australians and Veddahs. But as these 
latter are not 5 feet in height, the Ape-lke man had really a 
less capacious cerebral cavity. The skull in its profile outline 
stands roughly midway between that of a young Chimpanzee 
(young in order to do away with the secondary modifications 
caused by the crest) and the lowest humen skull, that of 
Neanderthal Man. This creature is truly, as Professor Haeckel 
put it, “the long searched for ‘missing link,” in other words 
represents “the commencement of humanity.” 
The remains of Apes, more distinctly Apes than Pithecanthropus, 
are known from Miocene strata of France. Two genera, P/io- 
pithecus and Dryopithecus, are known. The former appears to be 
close to Hylobates. Dryopithecus 1s more Man-like than any 
other, and seems to have been as large as a Chimpanzee. The 
incisors are human in their relatively small size. But it has 
been pointed out that the long and narrow symphysis of the 
lower jaw is a point of likeness to the Cercopithecidae. 
Fam. 3. Hominidae.—A part from Pithecanthropus, which per- 
haps is a member of this family, but whose remains permit us to 
leave it among the Simiidae, at least for the present, the family 
Hominidae contains but one genus, Homo, and probably but one 
species, H. sapiens. The characters of the family may therefore 
be merged in those of the genus.' 
Though it is easy enough to distinguish a Man from an Ape, it 
is by no means easy to find absolutely distinctive characters which 
are other than “relative.” As Professor Haeckel has pointed out, 
there are really only four characters which differentiate Man: 
these are the erect walk, and the consequent modification of the 
fore- and hind-limbs to that position; the existence of articulate 
speech ; the faculty of reason. Whether one body of psycholo- 
gists are right who argue that reason is a distinctive human 
attribute, not to be confused with the apparent reasoning powers 
of lower animals, or whether others are justified in separating 
Man only in degree from the lower animals, it is clear that this 
very diversity of opinion prevents us for the present from utilising 
such characters as absolute differences. In any case the dis- 
cussion of these matters is beyond the scope of the present book. 
1 See especially Wiedersheim, The Structure of Man, transl. by Howes, London, 
1895. ; 
