G4 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



disquisitions. I took the trouble to count the little 

 boys and girls at each lecture, expecting to find 

 indications that their parents saw the " drift " of 

 these pleasant chats on " Extinct Animals." But 

 the numbers did not diminish. I will do Professor 

 Lankester the justice to say that, as far as the 

 substance of the lectures was concerned, their title 

 might have been " Palaeontology versus the Creation 

 Myth," instead of this simple-seeming " Extinct 

 Animals." Plainly we have travelled since 1859. 

 E pur si muove. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE PAST EVOLUTION OF MAN 



It is one thing to accept the assertion that some 

 one or other of the tens of thousands of species 

 of beetles was originally derived from some other 

 species which closely resembles it ; and another 

 thing to accept the assertion that man is a highly- 

 developed " kind of monkey." Hopes and fears 

 which cause many to deny the truth of the latter 

 assertion are not concerned with the acceptance 

 of the former. But, from the impartial point of 

 view of the biologist, the lord of creation is one 

 species, " homo sapiens," and the malaria-bearing 

 mosquito is another, " anopheles claviger." The 

 biologist is not primarily concerned with the import 

 or the significance of this or any other biological 

 proposition, but only with its truth. And from 

 this standpoint the two propositions I have instanced 

 are seen to be strictly parallel ; nor is their asso- 



