10 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



embryo establishes itself in the womb it throws out structures of a most 



complex nature to effect a connection with the maternal body. We 



now know that exactly the same elaborate processes occur in the 



anthropoid womb and in no other. We find the same vestigial structures 



■ — the same ' evolutionary post-marks ' — in the bodies of Man and 



anthropoid. The anthropoid mother fondles, nurses and suckles her 



young in the human manner. This is but a tithe of the striking and 



intimate points in which Man resembles the anthropoid ape. In what 



other way can such a myriad of coincidences be explained except by 



presuming a common ancestry for both ? 



The crucial chapters in Darwin's Descent of Man are those in which he 



seeks to give a historical account of the rise of Man's brain and of the 



„ varied functions which that organ subserves. How do these 



The & 



Evolution of chapters stand to-day ? Darwin was not a professional 

 anatomist and therefore accepted Huxley's statement that 

 there was no structure in the human brain that was not already present 

 in that of the anthropoid. In Huxley's opinion the human brain was 

 but a richly annotated edition of the simpler and older anthropoid book, 

 and that this edition, in turn, was but the expanded issue of the still older 

 original primate publication. Since this statement was made thousands 

 of anatomists and physiologists have studied and compared the brain of 

 Man and ape ; only a few months ago Prof. G. Elliot Smith summarised 

 the result of this intensive enquiry as follows : ' No structure found in the 

 brain of an ape is lacking in the human brain, and, on the other hand, the 

 human brain reveals no formation of any sort that is not present in the 

 brain of the gorilla or chimpanzee. . . . The only distinctive feature of 

 the human brain is a quantitative one.' The difference is only quanti- 

 tative but its importance cannot be exaggerated. In the anthropoid 

 brain are to be recognised all those parts which have become so 

 enormous in the human brain. It is the expansion of just those parts 

 which have given Man his powers of feeling, understanding, acting, 

 speaking and learning. 



Darwin himself approached this problem not as an anatomist but as 

 a psychologist, and after many years of painstaking and exact observation, 

 The Evidence succeeded in convincing himself that, immeasurable as are 

 of Psychology, the differences between the mentality of Man and ape, they 

 are of degree, not of kind. Prolonged researches made by modern psycho- 

 logists have but verified and extended Darwin's conclusions. No matter 



