HAECKEL AND THE NEW ZOOLOGY 



became fully accepted; it showed itself now with re- 

 newed force against poor pithecanthropus. A half- 

 score of objections were launched against him. It is 

 needless to rehearse them now, since they were all met 

 valiantly, and the final verdict saw the new-comer tri- 

 umphantly ensconced in man's ancestral halls as the 

 oldest sojourner there who has any title to be spoken 

 of as " human." He is only half human, to be sure 

 a veritable ape-man, as his name implies but exactly 

 therein lies his altogether unique distinction. He is 

 the embodiment of that "missing link" whose non- 

 appearance had hitherto given so much comfort to the 

 sceptical. 



Perhaps some crumbs of comfort may be found by 

 the reactionists in the fact that it is not held by Pro- 

 fessor Haeckel, or by any other competent authority, 

 that the link which pithecanthropus supplies welds 

 man directly with any existing man-ape with gorilla, 

 chimpanzee, or orang. It is held that these highest 

 existing apes are side branches, so to say, of the an- 

 cestral tree, who developed, in their several ways, 

 contemporaneously with our direct ancestors, but are 

 not themselves directly of the royal line. The existing 

 ape that has clung closest to the direct ancestral type 

 of our own race, it appears, is the gibbon a creature 

 far less objectionable in that role because of the very 

 paucity of his human characteristics, as revealed to the 

 casual observer. Gibbon-like fossil apes are known, in 

 strata representing a time some millions of years ante- 

 cedent to the epoch of pithecanthropus even, which are 

 held to be directly of the royal line through which 

 pithecanthropus, and the hypothetical Homo stupidus, 



175 



