492 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



thousands of years. The work of Dr. Grosse, Dr. 

 H. Balfour, Prof. A. C. Haddon, and Hirn may be 

 particularly referred to. 



FACTORS IN THE EVOLUTIOI^ OF MAN. 



Enquiry into the factors of evolution is still so 

 young that we find little sure foothold before such 

 a difficult problem as the origin and descent of man. 

 The same may be said in regard to the origin and 

 descent of Vertebrates, or of Birds, or of Mammals, 

 in fact all round. But the difficulty seems great in 

 regard to man, because man's mental characteristics 

 raise him so high above the animals. Indeed, the 

 difficulty of accounting for mathematical, musical, 

 artistic, and moral faculties in terms of the evolu- 

 tion-formula led Alfred Kussel Wallace^ — the !^^estor 

 of ISTineteenth Century biology — to give up the 

 problem, and to conclude that these faculties must 

 have had another mode of origin, for which " we can 

 only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe 

 of Spirit.'' 



It seems premature, however, to make man — or 

 rather one aspect of man — the great exception, and 

 to abandon the scientific problem as insoluble, after 

 a trial of less than half a century. 



The difficulty is doubtless exaggerated by ignoring 

 the facts of anthropology, by thinking too much of 

 Plato and Aristotle, IN'ewton and Goethe, and too 

 little of the savage. 



The difficulty is also exaggerated unnecessarily 

 by the relative youth of comparative psychology ; we 

 are only beginning to be precisely informed in re- 

 gard to the intellectual development of the higher 

 animals. We readily refer to them our heritage of 



