70 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



of this kind. In spite of my deep respect for the 

 very ingenious research work that has been done 

 on the subject of blood-reactions, I believe that 

 in time scientists will cease to lay too much stress 

 upon their phylogenetic importance. 



Comparative morphology furnishes other reasons 

 for regarding it as improbable that man is immedi- 

 ately related to the higher apes. Virchow, Ranke, 

 Kollmann, and others pointed out some time ago 

 that man and the higher apes seem to be the two 

 extremes of widely divergent series of evolution. 

 Man shows an inferior development of the hind limbs, 

 whereas the ape has attained to a higher develop- 

 ment in this respect, so that man cannot be closely 

 related with the ape ; both are representatives 

 of divergent lines of development, and their common 

 starting-point must be sought further back. If 

 we try to trace the descent of man from apes, not 

 necessarily from apes of any existing species, but 

 from those of some extinct kind, we arrive at a 

 real contradiction. Let us assume that the bio- 

 genetic principle is true, in the sense that the growth 

 of the individual represents a faithful reproduction 

 of the evolution of the race. Among the higher 

 apes the young resemble man in the formation of 

 the cranium, and in the shape of the face, far more 

 closely than the old apes do, for in them the pithe- 

 coid characteristics are far more prominent. This 

 fact, interpreted in accordance with the biogenetic 

 principle, would lead to this conclusion : In their 



