WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 47 



third of the gaps above mentioned, as in a previous 

 work he had dealt with the second. He does not 

 affirm that he has fully succeeded, but that, by con 

 sidering the case of savages and of prehistoric man, 

 we are brought far on the way towards bridging the 

 psychological distance which separates the gorilla|j 

 from the gentleman. It is one thing, however, to be 

 on the way to a chasm, and another to be assured that 

 there is a good bridge over it. If we succeed in cross 

 ing with him from instinct to animal intelligence, from 

 this to rational thought, from this to ethical judg 

 ments and to the belief in God and immortality, and 

 along with all this to speech, we have the following 

 to reward us in regard to one step of our progress : 

 I believe that this most interesting creature (speech 

 less man) lived for an inconceivably long time before 

 his faculty of articulate sign-making had developed 

 sufficiently far to begin to starve out the more primi 

 tive and more natural systems ; and I believe that 

 even after this starving-out process did begin, another 

 inconceivable lapse of time must have been required 

 to have eventually transformed Homo alalus into 

 Homo sapiens A process which thus requires two 

 eternities in which to pass through two of its stages 

 may well stagger the credulity of ordinary specimens 

 of Homo sapiens, and may surely be dismissed as I 

 itself inconceivable. 



While, however, the conclusions of Romanes are 

 thus somewhat unsatisfactory, his book contains much 



