Variation and Anatomy 165 



This wonderful series of lectures ranks very high 

 among the important works of Huxley. It is true that 

 a considerable proportion of the work was not abso- 

 lutely original, but it had all been special!}' verified by 

 him. It was a task undertaken with the greatest cour- 

 age, and with a care equal to the courage ; and it settled 

 conclusively for all time the impossibility of making 

 between man and the anthropoids any anatomical bar- 

 riers greater than those which exist between the differ- 

 ent although closely related members of any of the other 

 family groups in the animal kingdom. The advance of 

 knowledge has only added to the details of Huxley's 

 argument ; it has not made any reconstruction of it 

 necessary. A writer on the same subject to-day would 

 to all certainty make use of the same general methods. 

 The chief differences, perhaps, that would be made are 

 two : First, greater stress would be laid on the distinc- 

 tion, first made by Huxlej' himself, between intermedi- 

 ate and linear types. (See p. 87). To use the popular 

 phrase, a great deal of water has passed under the 

 bridges since the separation of man from the ape-like 

 progenitors common to him and to the existing anthro- 

 poids. It has already been pointed out that the gradual 

 extinction of lower races of man is widening the appar- 

 ent gap between existing man and existing apes ; and 

 evidence accumulates that many still more primitive and 

 more ape-like races of man than the lowest existing 

 savages have disappeared from the surface of the earth. 

 Moreover, we know that existing anthropoids are the 

 degenerate and scattered remnants of what was once a 

 much more widely spread and more important group. 

 We have some reason for believing the contrary, and 

 no reason for believing that the surviving anthropoids 

 represent the most man -like apes that have lived. 



