HISTORICAL NOTES 15 



his dingo dogs with him, showing a high degree 

 of intelligence in the man and the fact that even 

 then he had domesticated the wild dog to be his 

 hunting companion. The vast antiquity of this 

 skull, coupled with the fact that for no less than 

 three times the apes have perished off the earth 

 and been re-developed, argues that man himself 

 is older than the apes of to-day which Darwin 

 thought were our progenitors. Present-day geolo- 

 gists (even Darwin himself would so argue, if he 

 were possessed of our latter-day discoveries), 

 argue that, if anything, the ape is a degenerate 

 man or an evolution from the dog, while man is 

 sui generis, traceable as yet to no lower animal. 

 This has long been my own theory — I have always 

 rejected the whole of Darwin's descent of man as 

 illogical when we consider what we know of man 

 from his earliest records — ^whereas the degenera- 

 tion of man is very patent, even to-day, when we 

 can see on the earth many types that are far in- 

 ferior in intelligence, devotion and conscientious- 

 ness to a good setter dog, with his highly trained 

 reason, his sense of honour, obedience, courage, 

 his fidelity to his duty in his sphere in life, all of 

 such an order as to proclaim him possessed of a 

 soul, certainly more so than are the lowest types 

 of humans. 



