Scientific Sophisms. 239 



as indicating the wholly hypothetical character 

 of the ape ancestry thus assigned to man, that 

 neither on the earth nor under the earth is any 

 trace of such an ancestry discoverable. The 

 number is not small of those who prefer to 

 search the record of the rocks for " Vestiges " 

 of Creation rather than for Footprints of the 

 Creator ; but no vestige of man's ascent from 

 the ape is yet producible. In default therefore 

 of evidence adducible from that which is, we 

 are liberally supplied with asseverations as to 

 that which might, or " must have been." 



There must, for example, have been " a series 

 of forms graduating insensibly from some ape- 

 like creature to man as he now exists." l Now 

 of the series thus alleged, every single member 

 was ex hypotJiesi superior to the lower forms 

 from which he sprang. And Mr. Darwin's 

 doctrine affirms "the survival of the fittest." 

 But while the half-apes are with us to this day 

 the half-men are nowhere. The ape-mothers 

 that found themselves, in the last term of the 

 series, strangely producing men, have perished ; 

 while the monkeys, unequal to the production 

 even of apes, have survived. According to the 

 hypothesis the fittest should survive ; according 

 to the facts the fittest have perished. 



1 " Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 235. 



