68 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



No apes nor monkeys now extant could apparently have 

 been ancestors of primitive man. None can ever " de- 

 velop " into man. As man changes and diverges, race 

 from race, so do they. The influence of effort, the in- 

 fluence of surroundings, the influence of the sifting 

 process of natural selection, each acts upon them as it 

 acts upon man. 



The process of evolution is not progress, but better 

 adaptation to conditions of life. As man becomes fitted 



for social and civic life, so does the ape 

 Not progress, become fitted for Hfe in the tree tops 



but adaptation. 



The movement of monkeys is toward 



" simianity," not humanity. The movement of cat life 

 is toward felinity, that of the dog races toward caninity. 

 Each step in evolution upward or downward, whatever 

 it may be, carries each species or type farther from the 

 primitive stock. These steps are never retraced. For 

 an ape to become a man he must go back to the simple 

 characters of the simple common type from which both 

 have sprung. These characters are shown in the ape 

 baby and in the human embryo in its corresponding 

 stages, for ancestral traits lost in the adult are evident 

 in the young. This persistence comes through the op- 

 eration of the great force of cell memory which we call 

 heredity. 



The evidence of biology points to the descent of all 

 mammals, of all vertebrates, of all animals, of all or- 

 ganic beings, from a common stock. Of all the races of 

 animals the anthropoid apes are nearest man. Their 

 divergence from the same stock must be comparatively 

 recent. Man is the nomadic, the apes are the arboreal, 

 branch of the same great family. 



Evolution does not teach that all or any living forms 

 are tending toward humanity. It does not teach, as in 

 Bishop Wilberforce's burlesque, " that every favourable 



