190 The Bible of Nature 



except that of a large and heavy brain, are very 

 momentous. There are about eighty vestigial 

 structures in his muscular, skeletal, and other sys- 

 tems — a large museum of relics which he carries 

 about with him, enigmatical except in the light of 

 the past. 



(3) Historical. — Certainties in regard to re- 

 mains of primitive man are few, but some of the 

 early skulls are nearer the Simian type than those 

 normal to-day. Connecting links are missing, 

 but fragments like those of Pithecanthropus are 

 suggestive if not convincing. Sometimes, more- 

 over, an abnormal type is born which seems to 

 hark back in some of its features to a pre-human 

 stage. And again we find in Man's individual de- 

 velopment stages which may be interpreted as in 

 a general way recapitulative of presumed ancestral 

 history. 



It goes almost without saying that we cannot re- 

 gard these evidences of Man's pedigree as demon- 

 strative. The evidences of evolution never are. 

 We accept the doctrine of descent because it is 

 our only scientific modal interpretation of the past, 

 because it makes both past and present luminous 

 and coherent, because all the facts point to it as a 

 rational formula, and because we know of nothing 

 that can be said to contradict it. If the doctrine 

 of descent is true for other organisms, it is likely 

 to be true for Man as well. 



