MAN'S REPORTED ANCESTRY 143 



tific investigation, the descent of man from the 

 ape was set down as an unquestioned fact in a 

 thousand manuals that were made the text for 

 atheistic propaganda to the ruin of modern civi- 

 lization. Created to the image and likeness of 

 God, man was taught to consider himself, body 

 and mind, as one in origin and nature with the 

 brute. No longer of God, godly, he was now of 

 the earth, earthy; of the beast, beastly, unless his 

 better nature, with the help of Divine grace, lifted 

 him above the lessons taught in school and in the 

 press. There could no longer be any valid rule 

 of conduct, we have shown, except instinct, inclina- 

 tion and expediency. All higher forms of 

 morality, no matter in what roseate language of 

 humanitarianism they might be clothed, would of 

 necessity remain without sanction or foundation. 

 Men could be true and noble only in spite of their 

 instructors, or just so long as the old influences 

 and traditions should still remain effective. 



It will be well here to begin by taking a glance 

 at a few of the dogmatic utterances so common 

 among sociologists and scientists in the past, no 

 less than among literateurs and journalists. Not 

 the slightest indication is given by many of these 

 writers to the unwary pupil or to the curious 

 reader, of the perilously unstable equilibrium of 

 their unprovable theories. It is true that in the 

 second edition of his "Natiirliche Schdpfungsge- 

 schichte," Haeckel wrote in allusion to his fabu- 



