180 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



learned scientific opponents display.' Dr. 

 Salinger has certainly not been fair to Dr. 

 Plotz, for the latter brought forward exactly 

 the same argument against assuming the ex- 

 istence of a creator as Dr. Salinger's * intelligent 

 little girl.' His philosophy therefore is just 

 as superior to that of Father Wasmann and his 

 other opponents, as is the philosophy of a six- 

 year old child, who forms too limited a con- 

 ception of the Creator, and so asks who created 

 Him. 



The speaker said that he believed the necessity 

 of assuming an act of creation had prevented 

 Father Wasmann from appreciating, at their just 

 value, the facts which tend to show that man is 

 descended from beasts. 



He had absolutely denied the existence of a 

 missing link between man and beast, and yet it 

 was really the ape-man, which he thought to set 

 aside with a mere wave of the hand and even with a 

 joke. 



Dr. Plotz was referring to the picture of the 

 Pithecanthropus erectus as waiter, which I 

 borrowed from the bill of fare at the Inter- 

 national Zoological Congress at Leiden, and 

 displayed for the amusement of my audience 

 during my third lecture. If I had said that 

 scientific men assumed the missing link to have 

 presented this appearance, there would have 



