THE ORIGIN OF MAN 107 



Haeckel, but there is no doubt that he regarded an " end on " 

 evolution as being the sequence of progress in the culmination 

 of the scale of life. He it was who looked for a " missing 

 link" between Man and the existing anthropoid apes. 



The influence of these two men has gone far, and it is neces- 

 sary to see how much our ideas to-day are dependent upon 

 their published works. Haeckel may be said to have shouted, 

 with brutal directness and with raucous voice, the message 

 that Man's origin from lower forms had been definitely proved 

 to pass in its later stages through the lemurs, monkeys and 

 anthropoids. There were no half-tones, no doubts for this 

 man : he attacked with an unfailing discourtesy all who stood 

 in his path. His reputation was European and for Europe he 

 did this disservice, that he shouted down opposition, and that, 

 armed with these assumptions, he deluded the masses, as he 

 deluded himself, into believing that his flimsy and hastily 

 drawn speculations were the bed-rock certainty of carefully 

 sifted, specialised knowledge. 



Huxley was by instinct a fighter and an educationalist, and 

 for England he very largely helped to mould the trend of 

 research into this, the culminating end of the scale of life. 

 With his century-old dictum he impressed a very wide circle, 

 and he laid the foundation of research in seeking for likenesses 

 between the members of the Primates. He sought to demon- 

 strate the likeness of Man to the anthropoids and to make 

 apparent the steadily decreasing likeness as the sequence was 

 followed back through the monkeys to the lemurs. It was 

 perhaps Huxley's demerit that he either did not look for, or 

 easily smoothed over, differences. He did not analyse ; he did 

 not critically weigh likeness against difference ; he brushed 

 aside difference and magnified likeness. Working along these 

 lines he showed that Man was very like the anthropoid apes, 

 and they in their turn were like the monkeys, which resembled 

 the lemurs. He and Haeckel were the most influential 

 apostles of the school which saw no difficulties in the origin 

 of Man from the anthropoid apes via the monkeys. The 

 influence that Huxley exercised in England has lived after 

 him, for it is to-day the accepted method of investigation that 



