278 THE WOKLD-EtfERGY 



On the other hand, none could protest more vigorously 

 than would the evolutionist himself against the supposi- 

 tion that the vertebrate type as such is an off shoot of the 

 molluscan type as such. That would be substantially to 

 deny the existence of that " established order " of the 

 world upon which Mr. Spencer insists, and which I 

 should prefer to call the rational Method of Creation, 

 without which science itself must be wholly impossible. 



And now, not to extend this statement beyond what 

 is necessary to indicate clearly the contrast between the 

 real significance of organic evolution and the mythical 

 significance popularly attached to it, I will only add a 

 word in reference to the tender point of man's own 

 origin. So far as I am aware, no evolutionist really 

 supposes that the initial primate was any more an ape 

 than it was a man.* In fact, it was not sufficiently 

 advanced (differentiated) to be either ape or man. What 

 the theory of evolution really claims is: that apes and 

 men have alike descended from an animal with general 

 characteristics at once manlike and apelike; but not so 

 far developed as to be specifically and in fact either the 

 one or the other. It was potentially both; actually, 

 neither. Developed in the one direction, it gave rise 

 to apes; developed in the other direction, it gave rise 

 to men. And it is not to be forgotten that the primitive 

 apes were far from being the same as the apes of to-day, 

 and that primitive men were still farther from being 

 the same as the men of to-day. Let us note further that 

 these two "directions" of development are radii from 



* Some color is given to the popular illusion that " Darwinism " means 

 mainly " the descent of man from apes" by an occasional unguarded state- 

 ment in works by pronounced evolutionists as, for example, in Romanes' 

 important contribution to the subject under the title: " Mental Evolution in 

 Man." ' 



