88 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



justified in regarding our inability to produce the 

 bony or other remains of any form intermediate 

 between man and the chimpanzee, as a serious gap 

 in our chain of evidence. " How is it," they might 

 very properly, and do very improperly, say, " that, 

 if man is descended from the chimpanzee, you can 

 produce any number of chimpanzees, any number 

 of men, but cannot adduce a single specimen of the 

 chimpanzee-man ? There is plainly a ' missing-link,' 

 and if you cannot find it, your theory must be 

 regarded as unproven." 



Now the true and final answer to this argument 

 is that it proceeds on a wholly false assumption 

 for which our opponents, did they take the trouble 

 to master the views they oppose, can find no warrant 

 in our writings. 1 In a moment I shall state the 

 teaching which is actually to be attributed to 

 evolutionists ; and we shall see that the inquiries 

 into the exact relationship of man and the anthro- 

 poid have justified themselves in that they dispose 

 of the objection that we cannot produce the missing- 

 link. But it is well here to note that, indeed, there 

 are elsewhere many points in the whole scheme of 

 animal and vegetable life where apparent gaps are 

 evident. But this fact can be explained in accord- 

 ance with the oldest and most assured evolutionary 

 principles — and the explanation is of importance 



1 It is recorded of that most un-Roman-Catholic of Roman 

 Catholics, the late distinguished historian, Lord Acton, that he 

 taught the duty of understanding and mastering the opinions one 

 rejects as thoroughly as those one accepts. When at last this 

 ideal is everywhere realised, there will be no need, I fancy, ever 

 again to quote the sublime cry of philosophic faith, " Magna 

 est Veritas et prevalebit." Truth wiU hare prevailed. 



