8 



to them, spoke of spintnal matters only. Mr. UUyett had 

 also touched upon a fact generally lost sight of by the advocates 

 of Darwinism, that Darwin never said man had descended 

 from the monkey or the onrang-outang. He said that in the past 

 there must have been some type not exactly what they might call 

 human, and certainly not an ape, but a common ancestor from 

 which diverged both tbe ape tribe and the human family. Any one 

 who had seen savages w^ould not deny that they approached much 

 nearer to the animal kingdom than the civilised world did. There 

 were men who had so little intelligence that they could not count 

 above four, they had no ideas about religion or God, they had 

 hardly any articulate language, they lived on roots, were entirely 

 destitute of clothing, had no notion of washing, or of refinement or 

 civilisation. I'^urely there was as much difference between a savage 

 and men like Shakespeare and Milton, as tliere was between a 

 savage and the higher form of ape. There was always the same 

 difficulty about new doctrines They had experienced it in 

 astronomy. When that was first mooted, it was called irreligious, 

 and said to be in contradiction to the teaching of the Bible. He 

 looked upon the theory of evolution as being so grand and complete 

 that he believed in it ; and he thought future generations would 

 be surprised to find that they had any difficulty in accepting the 

 truth. Another obstacle was that the theory had somewhat 

 offended their vanity. All of them were more or less a&hamed of 

 their poorer relations, and in this case they were particularly so. 

 He did not believe that their immediate ancestors had tails, but 

 they must not conceal from themselves that they all had tails, that 

 is, rudimentary tails. Of course it was these rudimentary organs 

 which were so convincing to the Evolutionist. The speaker pointed 

 out that undeveloped people and idiots were remarkably like some 

 animals of the monkey tribe. The;^ went on all fours ; they had 

 not the gift of language ; they were fond of imitation ; were mis- 

 chievous, tricky, and cunning ; and were fond of climbing. All 

 these were characteristics of the ape tribe. No doubt the whole of 

 the monkey tribe would develop into something human and manly 

 if they could only use the vocal organs which they possessed. 

 There was no reason anatomically why a monkey should not speak. 

 How at first the human voice became developed was a myste-y. 

 The explanation had been lost with other records of the past 

 These lost records were a very great difficulty. They all spoke in 

 a joking way about the missing link, and. they could easily under- 

 stand why there were these missing links. In the first place, only 

 a small portion of the earth had been searched for geological 

 records. They must remember, too, that bones and other human 

 remains were very perishable, and when they expected to find 



