THE INTERPRETER I33 



absent in the human thigh-bone. Siarn and Java 

 may, in the upper Tertiary period, have been joined 

 to the mainland ; and these remains of the " upright 

 ape-man " occur in a region where it is highly prob- 

 able that man and ape became differentiated. 



When Huxley published his book he had to meet 

 the objection that the belief in the common origin of 

 man and brute involved the brutalisation and degrada- 

 tion of the former. But, he asks — 



Is this really so ? Could not a sensible child confute, 

 by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who 

 would force this conclusion upon us ? Is it, indeed, 

 true that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist, 

 whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from 

 his high estate bv the undoubted historical probability, 

 not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant 

 of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence 

 was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning 

 than the Fox, and by so much more dangerous than 

 the Tiger ? Or is he bound to howl and grovel on 

 all-fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact 

 that he was once an Egg, which no ordinary power 

 of discrimination could distinguish from that of a 

 Dog ? Or is the philanthropist or the saint to give 

 up his endeavour to lead a noble life because the 

 simplest study of man's nature reveals at its founda- 

 tions all the selfish passions and fierce appetites of 

 the merest quadruped ? Is mother-love vile because 

 a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess 

 it? 



The common-sense of the mass of mankind will 

 answer these questions without a moment's hesitation. 

 Healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to es- 



