MAX. THE INSTINCT OF LIFE AND DEATH 355 



has "arrived," they have remained undeveloped. 

 Probably he had a common ancestor with them, 

 some dryopithecan of an extinct species. From that 

 type sprang a new type already on the way to 

 progress, the Pithecanthropus erectus. Finally, the 

 anthropoid ancestor became one fine day the father 

 of a scion, clearly superior to himself, a miraculously 

 gifted being, man. Here, then, is no sign of the slow 

 evolution and gradual progress, which is the doc- 

 trine held at present by Transformists. The Dutch 

 botanist De Vries has shown us, in fact, that nature 

 does leap: naturafacit saltus. There would thus be 

 crises, as it were, in the life of species. At certain 

 critical epochs considerable differences of a specific 

 value appear in their offspring. It is at one of these 

 critical periods in the simian life that man has 

 appeared as the phenomenal child of an anthropoid. 

 He was born with a brain and an intellect superior 

 to those of his humble parents; and on the other 

 hand, he has inherited from them an organization 

 which is only inadequately adapted to the new con- 

 ditions of existence created by the development of 

 his sensitiveness and his brain power. This intellect 

 is not proportioned to his organization, which has 

 not developed at the same rate: it protests against 

 the discordances which adaptation has not yet had 

 time to efface. But it will efface them in the future. 



^THE INSTINCT OF LIFE AND THE INSTINCT 

 OF DEATH. 



The greatest discrepancy of this kind is the 

 knowledge of inevitable death without the instinct 

 which makes it longed for. 



