

558 NATURE CROWNED IN MAN 



but we venture to regard Huxley's version of the probabilities 

 as one-sided. " In the case of mankind," he wrote, " the 

 self-assertion, the unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be 

 grasped, the tenacious holding of all that can be kept, which 

 constitute the essence of the struggle for existence, have 

 answered. For his successful progress, as far as the savage 

 state, man has been largely indebted to those qualities which 

 he shares with the ape and the tiger ; his exceptional physical 

 organisation, his cunning, his sociability, his curiosity, and 

 his imitativeness, his ruthless and ferocious destructiveness 

 when his anger is roused by opposition." This requires to be 

 corrected by the facts Kropotkin has gathered to show the 

 importance of mutual aid, and by what we know of the 

 indispensableness of the prolonged maternal care and a meas- 

 ure of self-subordination. A clear note was struck by the 

 late Professor Weismann : " It is a perversion of the theory 

 of evolution to maintain, as many have done, that what is 

 merely animal and brutal must gain the ascendancy. The 

 contrary seems to me to be the case, for in man it is the 

 spirit, and not the body, that is the deciding factor." This 

 we regard as good science. 



Not very much is known in regard to the factors in the 

 Ascent of Man ; but more is known than some agnostics or 

 anti-evolutionists will admit. In illustration of this we ven- 

 ture to refer for a little to the arboreal apprenticeship of 

 the Primates as studied by Dr. R. Anthony and Prof. F. 

 Wood Jones. A new door was opened when the foot became 

 the supporting and branch-gripping member, and the hand 

 was set free to reach upward, to hang on by, to seize the fruit, 

 to hug the young one close to the breast. The evolution of 

 a free hand made it possible to dispense with protrusive lips 

 and gripping teeth, and thus there began the correlated en- 



