no THE ORIGIN OF MAN 



human development? Most people think that this 

 is a very difficult question, because they have a very 

 exaggerated idea of the increase of intelligence that 

 was necessary. They never ask us how or why the 

 man-like apes got their increase of intelligence over 

 the ordinary monkeys. Yet it is probable that the 

 earliest man did not surpass the chimpanzee in 

 brain-power more than the chimpanzee surpassed 

 the monkey. The earliest human skull that we have 

 may be 400,000 or 500,000 years old. But man had 

 then been developing for hundreds of thousands of 

 years. Unless you suppose that he was strangely 

 unprogressive during all that time, you are forced to 

 recognize earlier stages in which his brain was not 

 superior to that of a man-like ape; for the earliest 

 man we know, the product of ages of evolution, is 

 below the level of the lowest existing savage. 



We will not, however, waste time on considerations 

 of this kind. The scientific authorities of the world, 

 belonging to the various branches of science which 

 touch this question, have long been quite unanimous 

 that man, body and mind, was evolved in this way. 

 If there are any persons who like to call into question 

 a statement on which all the scientific authorities in 

 the world are agreed, I can only say that England is 

 a free country; but I do not care to argue with such 

 people. Man, with an ape-like body, got some slight 

 increase of brain which natural selection began to 

 foster. How did he get it? 



