CHAPTER XII 



'MAN'S REPORTED ANCESTRY 



IT was August 14, 1901. The Fifth Interna- 

 tional Congress of Zoologists had just closed 

 at Berlin, and the members were on their way 

 to visit the Zoological Garden. An attendant was 

 there awaiting them, with two young chimpanzees 

 resting on his arm. They were to welcome the 

 learned guests and greet them as their near blood- 

 relatives and comrades. "The two little apes 

 grinned at us with cheerful confidence," writes 

 Father Wasmann who had attended the conven- 

 tion, "as if they were fully convinced that we 

 believed in the theory of evolution, and would 

 like to invite us to shake hands in recognition of 

 the bond existing between us. But I thought to 

 myself: 'No, my dear little creatures, thank God, 

 we have not yet come to that!' " 1 



Yet it is precisely to this that the world did 

 come in its philosophy of Socialism, its popular 

 literature of science and sociology and its rational- 

 istic higher education. Without a single de- 

 monstrable proof that can stand the test of scien- 



1 "Modern Biology," pp. 479, 480. 

 142 



