82 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND MIND 



the natural function of the brain disappears, and all its 

 wonderfully intricate structure is only a means of letting in 

 some visitant from another world? 



But man does not descend from the anthropoid ape, and, 

 if he did, we should still have to recognise a great mental 

 distance between the two. Anthropologists are almost 

 unanimous to-day in saying that man descends from an 

 extinct lemur or ape-like form of the Tertiary period. We 

 find skulls of such in France and elsewhere. The next chief 

 stage is believed to have been similar to that of the gibbon. 

 But the lowest savage brains to-day are immensely superior 

 to the anthropoid ape. Have we a chance of interpolating 

 our visitant from another world somewhere between the ape- 

 stage and the human ? We have not the least chance of it. 

 We have discovered an intermediate form between the 

 ape and man (the pithecanthropus of Java, now generally 

 admitted), with a low simian skull (just half way in cranial 

 capacity between the orang and the lowest human skull), 

 simian teeth, and curved thigh-bones. We have half-a-dozen 

 accredited skulls or jaws of the first race of prehistoric men 

 (Neanderthal, Spy, Krapina, Schipka, La Naulette, and 

 Arcy, with other probable ones), and they tell absolutely of 

 gradual development. The Neanderthal-Spy man had a low 

 forehead, prominent eye-ridges, powerful receding jaws, no 

 faculty of articulate speech, curved thighs, and a short, hairy, 

 muscular frame. The implements he has left tell exactly 

 the same story of gradual mental development. The whole 

 science of prehistoric man, starting at what Sir J. Evans (a 

 conservative expert) calls an " immensely remote epoch," is 



