﻿Vol. 66.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 1-XXXV 



While nothing is known, nothing is impossible, but it seems 

 on the whole more likely that human evolution was accomplished 

 under the pressure of severe competition. If we abandon the view 

 that Man commenced his existence as a puny creature retaining the 

 primitive characters of the lemurs, and ascribe his origin to a point 

 on the ancestral tree not far below that from which the chimpanzee 

 and gorilla branched off, we may then attribute to him at the 

 beginning a strong bodily frame and a dentition well fitted for the 

 purposes of offence and defence. The orang, as Selenka informs us, 

 is more than a match for the dangerous carnivora with which he 

 has to contend, and the gorilla is the monarch of the woods. Given 

 a strong ape-like animal with social instincts wresting his sustenance 

 from the wild beasts of the plains, and the evolutional path to Man 

 lies open. The erect attitude, the dexterous hand, and the enhanced 

 intelligence are not inconsistent with the possession of brute force and 

 brutal characters; but, once acquired, they render possible another 

 acquisition and this of tremendous import. A pointed stick and the 

 notion of using it to thrust, and we have the primitive spear. Once 

 armed with this the necessity for natural weapons vanishes. The 

 massive jaws and fighting teeth can now be dispensed with, and may 

 safely undergo a regressive development with adaptation to purely 

 alimentary functions. The same fate attends the mighty brow- 

 ridges, for it is extremely unlikely that these are intended, as Darwin 

 supposed, to protect the eyes : Keith has pointed out that the tem- 

 poral ridges in the male gorilla meet to form the sagittal crest at 

 the time when the canines are cut, and thus stand in connexion with 

 the powerful musculature of the jaw; the frontal ridge follows 

 as a mechanical device to strengthen the skull transversely, thus 

 enabling it to resist the stresses set up by the action of the 

 muscles. 



Thus, as Man ceases to be dependent on natural weapons and 

 learns to subject the outside forces of the universe to his will, the 

 marks of the brute gradually disappear, the ape fades away, and Man 

 is increasingly revealed. 



Such scanty information as we possess relating to the bodily 

 structure of primitive Man is in complete harmony with this sug- 

 gestion. As already pointed out, the dentition of the Heidelberg 

 jaw — the oldest known — is completely human, while the jaw itself 

 is semi-simian. Thus, even at this comparatively late stage, the 

 brutal characters inherited from the ape, though waning, have not 

 wholly disappeared. That this interpretation is correct, and that 

 the case is not one of adaptation to the circumstances of the time, is 



