142 



FACTS AND FANCIES 



chimpanzees are degraded races of men. On 

 the other hand^ even Haeckel admits that, there 

 is a wide gap, unfilled by any recent or any fos- 

 sil creature, between man and the highest apes. 

 Again, no generic relationship can be claimed 

 as between man and the lower animals. He 

 presents such structural differences as entitle 

 him to rank by himself in the genus Homo, 

 Still further, the ablest naturalists, before the 

 rise of Darwinism, held that man was entitled 

 to be placed in a separate family or order from 

 the apes. Modern evolutionists prefer to fall 

 back on the old arrangement of Linnaeus, and 

 to place man and apes together in the group 

 of Primates, which, however, Linnaeus would 

 not have regarded as precisely of the same 

 value with an order as now held. In this those 

 of them who have sufficient ability to compre- 

 hend the facts of the case are undoubtedly 

 warped in judgment by the tendency of their 

 philosophy to magnify resemblances and to 

 minimize differences ; while the herd of feebler 

 men have their ideas of classification thorough- 

 ly confused by the doctrine which they have 

 received as a creed dictated by authority, and 

 to which they adhere under the influence of 

 fear. In point of fact, the differences between 



