146 Darwin as an Anthropologist 



the modern State." He spoke of the theory of evolution as an 

 unproved hypothesis, and declared that it ought not to be taught 

 in the schools, because it was dangerous to the State. "We must 

 not," he said, " teach that man has descended from the ape or any 

 other animal." When Darwin, usually so lenient in his judgment, 

 read the English translation of Virchow's speech, he expressed 

 his disapproval in strong terms. But the great authority that 

 Virchow had— an authority well founded in pathology and 

 sociology— and his prestige as President of the German Anthro- 

 pological Society, had the effect of preventing any member of 

 the Society from raising serious opposition to him for thirty 

 years. Numbers of journals and treatises repeated his dogmatic 

 statement: "It is quite certain that man has descended neither 

 from the ape nor from any other animal." In this he persisted till 

 his death in 1902. Since that time the whole position of German 

 anthropology has changed. The question is no longer whether man 

 was created by a distinct supernatural act or evolved from other 

 mammals, but to which line of the animal hierarchy we must look 

 for the actual series of ancestors. The interested reader will 

 find an account of this "battle of Munich" (1877) in my three 

 Berlin lectures (April, 1905), Der Kampf urn die Entwickelungs- 

 Gedanken 1 . 



The main points in our genealogical tree were clearly recognised 

 by Darwin in the sixth chapter of the Descent of Man. Lowly 

 organised fishes, like the lancelet (Amphioxus), are descended from 

 lower invertebrates resembling the larvae of an existing Tunicate 

 (Appendicularia). From these primitive fishes were evolved higher 

 fishes of the ganoid type and others of the type of Lepidosiren 

 (Dipneusta). It is a very small step from these to the Amphibia: 

 "In the class of mammals the steps are not difficult to conceive 

 which led from the ancient Monotremata to the ancient Marsupials ; 

 and from these to the early progenitors of the placental mammals. 

 We may thus ascend to the Lemuridae ; and the interval is not very 

 wide from these to the Simiadae. The Simiadae then branched off 

 into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys ; and 

 from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the 

 Universe, proceeded 2 ." 



In these few lines Darwin clearly indicated the way in which we 

 were to conceive our ancestral series within the vertebrates. It is 

 fully confirmed by all the arguments of comparative anatomy and 

 embryology, of palaeontology and physiology ; and all the research of 

 the subsequent forty years has gone to establish it. The deep interest 



1 Eng. transl. ; Last Words on Evolution, London, 1906. 



2 Descent of Man (Popular Edit.), p. 255. 



