128 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



evolution to similar conditions for a similar 

 length of time. What Nageli says here with 

 reference to his theory of spontaneous genera 

 tion is no less applicable to the theory of 

 creation. If the human race has a history, 

 it need not be identical with that of the higher 

 animals, but it may have been due to primitive 

 cells, resembling one another indeed, but never 

 theless essentially different. On these lines all the 

 similarities between man and beast might be satis 

 factorily explained, without our being forced to 

 have recourse to the theory of man s descent from 

 beasts. 



Professor Dahl continued : Father Wasmann 

 laid great stress upon man s intellectual faculties. 

 He said that in beasts we could observe only the 

 lower powers, whereas man possesses the higher 

 faculties in addition. I should like to ask him how 

 matters stand with young children. They have 

 only the lower psychical powers, and we can trace 

 in them the gradual development of the higher 

 faculties out of the lower. I do not see why we 

 may not assume that the higher psychical powers 

 have been evolved in just the same way in the case 

 of animals. 5 



I answered Professor Dahl s question in my 

 closing speech. We see every day that the 

 capacity of thought develops gradually in a child. 



