DOES LIKENESS PROVE DESCENT? 169 



truth and fiction which admirably illustrates the 

 materialistic dogmatism of the schools : 



There is no longer any doubt among scientists that man 

 is descended from the animals, that he is a vertebrate, a mam- 

 mal, a primate. 



Even non-scientific persons generally recognize this animal 

 relationship. . . . There is no longer any doubt among leading 

 anthropologists and biologists that not only the body but also 

 the mind and society of man are the products of evolution, and 

 there is no reason to doubt that the great principles of evo- 

 lution which have operated in the past will continue to act in 

 the future. 1 



Now no one means to question man's similarity 

 to the animal world, that he is a mammal and a 

 vertebrate, but nothing could better show the 

 need of a course of logic than the deduction that 

 therefore man must have descended from the ape. 

 There is no longer any doubt, he implies, nor any 

 reason to doubt that such an evolution has actually 

 taken place. In the light of all that has hitherto 

 been said it is plain that there is no reason whatso- 

 ever to assert it, since there is not one vestige of 

 a proof. This is not bad enough but the pro- 

 fessor must continue by setting a date for the ap- 

 pearance of the first hairy progenitors of man, 

 and asserts with infallible certainty the ape-man 

 nature of the Pithecanthropus erectus. This, of 

 course, is not science. It is, we repeat it, unmiti- 

 gated dogmatism. Sufficient attention has al- 

 ready been given by us to this specimen of a sup- 



'"Has Human Evolution Come to an End?" 



