MO MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



true that the missing links may have consisted of 

 animals little likely to be preserved as fossils ; but 

 why, if they ever existed, do not some of them 

 remain in the modern seas ? Again, when we have 

 so many species of apes and so many races of men, 

 why can we find no trace, recent or fossil, of that 

 missing link which we are told must have existed, 

 the * ape-like men, known to Haeckel as the Alali, 

 or speechless men ? 



A further question which should receive considera 

 tion from the monist school is that very serious one : 

 Why, if all is mechanical in the development and 

 actions of living beings, should there be any progress 

 whatever ? Ordinary people fail to understand why 

 a world of mere dead matter should not go on to all 

 eternity obeying physical and chemical laws without 

 developing life ; or why, if some low form of life were 

 introduced capable of reproducing simple one-celled 

 organisms, it should not go on doing so. 



Further, even if some chance deviations should 

 occur, we fail to perceive why these should go on in a 

 definite manner, producing not only the most com 

 plex machines, but many kinds of such machines on 

 different plans, each perfect in its way. Haeckel 

 is never weary of telling us that to monists organisms 

 are mere machines. Even his own mental work is 

 merely the grinding of a cerebral machine. But he 

 seems not to perceive that to such a philosophy the 

 homely argument which Paley derived from the 



