NATURE CROWNED IN MAN 661 



were made, and the terminations of these we know at Trinil 

 and Heidelberg and Piltdown, for none of them lasted (^r 

 was made perfect. Still the main line goes on evolving— 

 and who will be bold enough to limit its insurgence ? Is 

 there a race of super-men implicit amongst us w^ho will, when 

 another half million years have sped, look back on us as 

 we on the early Troglodytes? In any case it seems, to say 

 the least, extremely difficult to look back on the sublime 

 spectacle of long-drawn-out trial and error, patience and 

 endeavour, and on the general progressiveness of the issue, 

 without the hypothesis (which other than scientific considera- 

 tions may make more than a hypothesis) of an inhcTcnt 

 purpose as the core of the world-process. But to suppose 

 that the purpose is fulfilled in us in particular, who arc but 

 stages in an evolving race, seems premature. 



§ 3. Mans Solidarity with the Primate StocJc. 



Zoology speaks with no uncertain voice in regard to Man's 

 affiliation to the Mammals. There is " an all-pervading 

 similitude of structure '', as Sir Richard Owen said, between 

 man and the anthropoid apes; his blood mingles harmoni- 

 ously with theirs ; he and they share certain diseases. More- 

 over, man is a walking museum of vestigial structures, which 

 prove his pedigree; and he is shot through with atavistic 

 proclivities. In his development he climbs, to some extent 

 at least, up his own genealogical tree. There is no doubt 

 at all that Man is solidary wnth the rest of creation. To 

 quote the closing words of The Descent of Man : '^ We 

 must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, 

 with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for 

 the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only 

 to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his 



