248 From Matter to Man, 



morphosis converted them probably into the ape-form, 

 in which state trees would be their home, and fruits 

 and roots their diet. Lastly, on a final moult they 

 would discard their coat of hair, drop their tail, emerge 

 as fully-developed men and women with perfect 

 sexual organs, and capable for the first time during 

 their long series of metamorphoses of sexual union 

 and reproduction of their kind.* That is, hitherto 

 they would only eat and grow, now they would also 

 reproduce. 



Henceforth during pre-historic and historic ages, 

 the fiat of increasing, multiplying, and replenishing 

 the earth would be in force, changes innumerable 

 would occur, improved varieties of the race would 

 develop, and favourable conditions of food and climate 

 so enable man to cultivate and polish his faculties, 

 that the highly differentiated European eventually 

 strutted upon the scene, the perfected product up-to- 

 date of all this blind bye-play of the great god- 

 substance — Matter. 



Material and chance as man's origin and being have 

 thus inevitably been, and insignificant as he necessarily 

 is in the universe to a degree, the most civilised peoples 

 had no sooner discovered their superiority and 



* Haeckel divides man's ancestral chain into twenty-two stages, eight 

 of which are invertebrate and fourteen vertebrate. The invertebrates 

 are : — Monera, Amcebre, Synamcelxe or Colonies of Amcebne, Ciliata, 

 Gastrceada, Turbellaria, Scolecida, Himatega or Sack Worms. The 

 vertebrates are : — Acrania, Monorrhini, Selachii, Dypnoi, Sozobranchii, 

 Urodela, Protamnia, Promammalia, Marsupialia, Prosimke, Tailed-apes, 

 Man-apes (gorilla) Ape-men (Papuans, Hottentots, and Australians), 

 and lastly, Men. — The Pedigree of Man , p. 75. 



