GREAT STEPS IN EVOLUTION 99 



bodily life is closely similar; the human body 

 is a rich collection of vestigial structures; 

 some of the fossil remains are nearer the 

 anthropoid type; man's individual develop- 

 ment is in some ways like a recapitulation of 

 his presumed ancestral history. 



There is a fine ring in the closing words of 

 *'The Descent of Man":— 



"We must, however, acknowledge, as it 

 seems to me, that man, with all his noble 

 qualities, with sympathy which feels for the 

 most debased, with benevolence which ex- 

 tends not only to other men, but to the 

 humblest living creature, with his God-like 

 intellect which has penetrated into the move- 

 ments and constitution of the solar system — 

 with all these exalted powers — man still 

 bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp 

 of his lowly origin." 



Man's antiquity is to be measured not In 

 centuries but in millennia. It is perhaps 

 150,000 years since he used stone weapons in 

 Europe against mammoth and rhinoceros, 

 hyaena and lion, and these weapons were not 

 the work of novices. No fossil remains of 

 man have been found except in Post-Tertiary 

 (Diluvial) deposits, but there are several 

 reasons for believing that his origin was very 

 much earlier. Thus, for instance, it is cer- 

 tain that he did not arise from any of the 



