THE DESCENT OF MAN 71 



youth the higher apes pass through a stage of marked 

 resemblance to man, hence apes are descended 

 from man, not man from apes. The absurdity of 

 this argument is manifest. 1 



I now proceed to the second theory, viz. that 

 there is some more remote connection between men 

 and apes. This is the theory put forward by 

 Klaatsch, Stratz, Alsberg, and other anthropologists, 

 who assume that a common ancestor lived in the 

 old tertiary or pre-tertiary age, and was the pro- 

 genitor of one line of descendants, who evolved 

 into men, and also of another line, who evolved 

 into the apes of the present day. This theory 

 agrees with the facts of comparative morphology, 

 with the different development of the extremities 

 in man and in apes, and it is more probable from 

 the zoological point of view than the theory of 

 relationship by direct descent. 



Are we therefore to accept the theory of indirect 

 relationship without further question ? 



I think we ought to exercise great caution, for 

 this theory is not as yet by any means proved. 

 The hypothetical primitive form, upon which it is 

 based, is very obscure. Klaatsch speaks of a 

 ' general pithecoid type,' which gives rise to con- 

 siderable difficulty, as it does not agree with the 

 human type which is supposed to have originated 



1 Or have we here perhaps one of those famous ' counterfeit evolutions,' 

 which, according to Haeckel, have been permitted by nature in order to 

 falsify palingenesis by caenogenesis 1 



