316 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



progenitor of the whole simian stock, including man, was 

 identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape 

 or monkey." 



It appears to me, though it may seem somewhat bold to 

 express this opinion of the views of a naturalist so deservedly 

 eminent as Mr. Mivart, that in his interesting little treatise, 

 " Man and Apes," a treatise which may be described as 

 opposed to Darwin's special views but not generally 

 opposed to the theory of evolution, he misapprehends 

 Darwin's position in this respect. For he arrives at the 

 conclusion that if the Darwinian theory is sound, then " low 

 down" (/>., far remote) "in the scale of Primates" (tri- 

 syllabic) " was an ancestral form so like man that it might 

 well be called an homunculus ; and we have the virtual pre- 

 existence of man's body supposed, in order to account for 

 the actual first appearance of that body as we know it a 

 supposition manifestly absurd if put forward as an explana- 

 tion."* 



How, then, according to the Darwinian theory, is man 

 related to the monkey? The answer to this question is 

 simply that the relationship is the same in kind, though not 

 the same in degree, as that by which the most perfect 

 Caucasian race is related to the lowest race of Australian, 

 or Papuan, or Bosjesman savages. No one supposes that 

 one of these races of savages could by any process of evolu- 

 tion, however long-continued, be developed into a race 

 resembling the Caucasian in bodily and mental attributes. 



* I find it somewhat difficult to understand clearly Mr. Mivart's 

 jwn position with reference to the general theory of evolution. He 

 certainly is an evolutionist, and as certainly he considers natural selec- 

 tion combined with the tendency to variation (as ordinarily understood) 

 insufficient to account for the existence of the various forms of animal 

 and vegetable existence. He supplies the missing factor in "an innate 

 law imposed on nature, by which new and definite species, under 

 definite conditions, emerged from a latent and potential being into 

 actual and manifest existence ; " and, so far as can be judged, he con- 

 siders that the origin of man himself is an instance uf the operation of 

 this law. 



