A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



Perhaps it is not worth our while here to go too far 

 down towards the root of the genealogical tree to begin 

 our inquiry. So long as it is admitted that the remote 

 ancestry is grounded in the lowest forms of organisms, 

 it perhaps does not greatly matter to the average reader 

 that there are dark places in the lineage during the 

 period when our ancestor had not yet developed a spinal 

 column when, in other words, he had not attained 

 the dignity of the lowest fish. Neither, perhaps, need 

 we mourn greatly that the exact branch by which our 

 reptilian or amphibian non-mammalian ancestor be- 

 came the first and most primitive of mammals is still 

 hidden in unexplored recesses of early strata. The 

 most patrician monarch of to-day would not be great- 

 ly disturbed as to just who were his ancestors of the 

 days of the cave-dweller. It is when we come a little 

 nearer home that the question begins to take on its 

 seemingly personal significance. Questions of grand- 

 parents and great-grandparents concern the patrician 

 very closely. And so all along, the question that has 

 interested the average casual investigator of the Dar- 

 winian theory has been the question as to man's im- 

 mediate ancestor the parents and grandparents of 

 our race, so to speak. Hence the linking of the word 

 "monkey" with the phrase "Darwinian theory" in 

 the popular mind; and hence, also, the interpretation 

 of the phrase "missing link" in relation to man's 

 ancestry, as applying only to our ancestor and not 

 to any other of the gaps in the genealogical chain. 



What, then, is the present status of Haeckel's genea- 

 logical tree regarding man's most direct ancestor? 

 From what non- human parent did the human race 



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