80 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



gives the Archiprimas, a purely imaginary form. 

 From him are descended the Pachylemures, re 

 presented by the universally accepted Lemuravida. 

 Next come the Necrolemures, of whom nothing 

 very definite is said. From them, according to 

 Haeckel, are descended the apes, one of whom in 

 particular, the Archipithecus, is the ancestor of 

 man. (This is again a product of the imagination.) 

 The Prothylobates is a direct descendant of the 

 Archipithecus, but he too never had any existence, 

 and has been invented ; from him is descended the 

 Pithecanthropus alalus, the speechless primitive man. 

 He could not be called Pithecanthropus erectus, 

 because scientists had already excluded this from 

 the list of man s direct ancestors, so Haeckel calls 

 him the speechless primitive man ; but he too is an 

 imaginary being. Next to him we have the Homo 

 stupidus 9 the stupid man, who is a very real creature 

 (laughter), and from him at last we arrive at the 

 Homo sapiens. Only the last two out of the whole 

 list are really known to exist, but I think we ought 

 not to regard the Homo stupidus as the ancestor 

 of the Homo sapiens. Comment is needless ! 



I have just shown how great a difference there is 

 between scientists who seek scientific proofs and those 

 who publicly proclaim the descent of man from 

 brutes as an absolute fact, basing such a descent upon 

 an imaginary genealogy. The difference is indeed 

 great ! * 



1 Reinke, the well-known biologist at Kiel, remarks on this subject ; 



