THE INTERPRETER I3I 



and order of our sensations; just as our knowledge 

 of matter is restricted to those feelings of which we 

 assume it to be the cause. 1 



Were it not, as Huxley says, that w the ignorance 

 of the so-called educated classes is colossal," there 

 might be need for apology in restatement of the fact 

 that man is not descended from the ape. The rela- 

 tionship between them is lateral, not lineal, both being 

 offshoots of the same stock, but each remaining, of 

 course in very different degrees of development, iso- 

 lated groups of mammals. The blood-relationship 

 of the two has naturally prompted the question as to 

 the missing link. A pertinent question, which has 

 partial answer in the fact that all intermediate forms 

 are, in virtue of their transitional character, the least 

 likely to survive, and in the further fact that the 

 chances against the preservation of any remains of 

 the progenitor of man and ape are as manifold as 

 those against the preservation of any fossils of ani- 

 mals of correspondingly small size. Even in the 

 period when rudely-fashioned stone tools and weapons 

 of undoubted human origin abound, the occurrence 

 of fragments of human skeletons is rare. In the 

 section on " Fossil Remains of Man " in Man's 

 Place in Nature Huxley discusses the value of the 

 evidence supplied by skulls found in various bone- 



1 Coll. Essays, vi. pp. 94, 95. 



