loo THE ASCENT OF MAN 



rhetorical purposes is, to say the least, unscientific. 

 It is certainly the fact that Man is not descended 

 from any existing ape. The anthropoid apes 

 branched off laterally at a vastly remote period 

 from the nearest human progenitors. The chal- 

 lenge even to produce links between Man and the 

 living man-like apes is difficult to take seriously. 

 Should anyone so violate the first principles of 

 Evolution as to make it, it is only to be said that 

 it cannot be met. For an anthropoid ape could as 

 little develop into a Man as could a Man pass 

 backwards into an anthropoid ape. References to 

 a Simian stem play no necessary part in the 

 story of the Ascent of Man. In those pages the 

 compromising name will scarcely occur. If his- 

 torical sequence compels us to make an apparent 

 exception here at the very outset, it will be seen 

 that the allusion is harmless. For the analogy 

 we are about to make might with equal relevancy 

 have been drawn from a squirrel or a sloth. 



On the theory that human beings were once 

 allied in habit as well as in body with some of 

 the apes, that they probably lived in trees, and 

 that baby-men clung to their climbing mothers as 

 baby-monkeys do to-day. Dr. Louis Robinson 

 prophesied that a baby's power of grip might 

 be found to be comparable in strength to that 



