THE GORILLA AND OTHER APES. 317 



Nor does any one suppose that the savage progenitor of the 

 Caucasian races was identical with, or even closely 

 resembled, any existing race of savages. Yet we recognize 

 in the lowest forms of savage man our blood relations. In 

 other words, it is generally believed that if our genealogy, 

 and that of any existing race of savages, could be traced 

 back through all its reticulations, we should at length reach 

 a race whose blood we share with that race. It is also 

 generally believed (though for my own part I think the 

 logical consequences of the principle underlying all theories 

 of evolution is in reality opposed to the belief) that, by 

 tracing the genealogical reticulations still further back, we 

 should at length arrive at a single race from which all the 

 present races of man and no other animals have descended. 

 The Darwinian faith with respect to men and monkeys is 

 precisely analogous. It is believed that the genealogy of 

 every existent race of monkeys, if traced back, would lead 

 us to a race whose blood we share with that race of monkeys; 

 and which is at once a wider and a more precise proposi- 

 tion that, as Darwin puts it, " the two main divisions of 

 the Simiadae, namely, the catarhine and platyrhine monkeys, 

 with their sub-groups, have all proceeded from some one 

 extremely ancient progenitor." This proposition is mani- 

 festly wider. I call it also more precise, because it implies, 

 and is evidently intended by Darwin to signify, that from 

 that extremely ancient progenitor no race outside the two 

 great orders of Simiadae have even partially descended, though 

 other races share with the Simiadae descent from some still 

 more remote race of progenitors. 



This latter point, however, is not related specially to the 

 common errors respecting the Darwinian theory which I 

 have indicated above, except in so far as it is a detail of the 

 actual Darwinian theory. I would, in passing, point out 

 that, like the detail referred to in connection with the rela- 

 tionship of the various races of man, this one is not logically 

 deducible from the theory of evolution. In fact, I have 

 sometimes thought that the principal difficulties of that 



