IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



8i 



links. Of course, it is easy to suppose that 

 these intermediate forms have been lost through 

 time and accident, but why this has happened 

 to some rather than to others cannot be ex- 

 plained. In the phylogeny of man, for exam- 

 ple, what a vast hiatus yawns between the as- 

 cidian and the lancelet, and another between 

 the lancelet and the lamprey ! It is true that 

 the missing links may have consisted of animals 

 little likely to be preserved as fossils ; but why, 

 if they ever existed, do not some of them re- 

 main in the modern seas ? Again, when we 

 have so many species of apes and so many 

 races of men, why can we find no trace, recent 

 or fossil, of that " missing link " which we are 

 told must have existed, the "ape-like men," 

 known to Haeckel as the "Alali," or speech- 

 less men ? 



A further question which should receive con- 

 sideration from the monist school is that very 

 serious one, Why, if all is " mechanical " in the 

 development and actions of living beings, should 

 there be any progress whatever ? Ordinary peo- 

 ple fail to understand why a world of mere dead 

 matter should not go on to all eternity obeying 

 physical and chemical laws without developing 

 life ; or why, if some low form of life were intro- 



