438 ZOOLOGY 



vented ; Nature could not anticipate a possible 



later function. 



These characters are numerous, and others could be 

 added, but it will readily be seen that from the stand- 

 point of morphology they are quite unimportant in 

 comparison with the resemblances. Many of them are 

 not absolute or invariable. The great characters of man 

 are mental ; his brain, while similar in structure to that 

 of his animal relatives, is capable of lifting him to a new 

 plane of thought and action, whereby he stands apart 

 from all other living things. A sufficient difference in 

 degree becomes a difference in kind. Is man, then, 

 isolated in his splendid powers ? Is his a voice crying 

 in the wilderness, with no possibility of an answer ? It 

 is the function of religion, rather than of science, to 

 answer this insistent question. 



Extinct 3. Although the family Hominidae at present includes 



v< only the genus Homo, there are indications of one or 

 more other genera existing in former times. In 1894 

 the Dutch naturalist Dubois described the remains of an 



From Keane's "Ethnology" 



FIG. 202. Profiles of the crania of various manlike skulls : a, ordinary Irish skull ; 

 b, the Spy skull; c, the Neanderthal skull; d, Pithecanthropus erectus; e, skull of a 

 gorilla. 



