THE DESCENT OF MAN 79 



on a few facts, have been regarded as definitely 

 obtained scientific results by those who have not 

 studied the matter closely, because these views 

 have been enunciated with a peculiar assurance.' 



I fancy that Professor Schwalbe, if he were 

 present, would not be offended if I said : ' The 

 fate of Professor Schwalbe' s homo primigenius has 

 given fresh confirmation to this statement.' 



I recognise the value of scientific research, and 

 do not reject it in any hostile spirit, but I cannot 

 say as much for the attempt to represent the descent 

 of man from beasts as a conclusively proved fact, 

 as Haeckel has often done, on the last occasion 

 in the course of his Berlin lectures in 1905. 1 



I regret to have to say this, yet I am not opposing 

 Haeckel personally, but his assertions regarding 

 the descent of man, and my conscience compels me 

 to continue this opposition. 



I do not intend to discuss the matter further, 

 and will content myself with reading to you one 

 passage from his work entitled : The Struggle regard- 

 ing Evolution, which contains his Berlin lectures. 

 On p. 99 will be found the genealogy of the primates, 

 in which is a perpendicular central line containing 

 the direct ancestors of man. Their order is as 

 follows : As man's most remote ancestor Haeckel 



1 See his work entitled Ueber unsere gegemvartige Kenntnis vom Ur- 

 sprung des Menschen (Our present Knowledge of the Origin of Man), 1899, 

 p. 22, and his Weltrdtsel (Kiddles of the Universe), p. 97. Nevertheless, 

 during the evening discussion, HaeckePs assistant, Schmidt- Jena, attempted 

 to maintain that HaeckePs genealogies were merely stated as hypotheses, 

 See Part n. of the present work. 



