SPONTANEOUS GENERATION AND EVOLUTION : CONCLUSION 393 



generation it can hardly be otherwise, but saying this does not mean 

 that we have understood Spirit, but at most secures us the advantage 

 and the right of looking at this world, as far as we know it, as a unity. 

 This is the standpoint of Monism. 



The psychical phenomena, which we know from ourselves, and 

 can assume among animals with greater certainty the nearer they 

 stand to us, occupy a domain by themselves, and such a vast and 

 complex one that there can be no question of bringing it within the 

 scope of our present studies, and the same is true of the phyletic 

 development of Man. But we must at least take up a position in 

 regard to these problems, and there can be no question that Man 

 has evolved from animal ancestors, whose nearest relatives were the 

 Anthropoid Apes. Not many years ago bony remains of a human 

 skeleton, or at least of some form very near to modern Man, were 

 found in the Diluvial deposits of Java, and this has been designated 

 Pithecanth^'opus erectus, and perhaps rightly regarded as a transition 

 form between Apes and Man. It is possible that more may yet be 

 discovered ; but even if that is not so, the conclusion that Man had 

 his origin from animal forefathers must be regarded as inevitable 

 and fully established. We do not draw conclusions with our eyes, 

 but with our reasoning powers, and if the whole of the rest of living 

 nature proclaims with one accord from all sides the evolution of the 

 world of organisms, we cannot assume that the process stopped short 

 of Man. But it follows also that the factors which brought about 

 the development of Man from his Simian ancestry must be the same 

 as those which have brought about the whole of evolution : change 

 of external influences in its direct and indirect effects, and, besides this, 

 germinal variational tendencies and their selection. And in this con- 

 nexion I should like to draw attention to a point which has, perhaps, 

 as yet received too little attention. 



Selection only gives rise to what is suited to its end ; beyond that 

 it can call forth nothing, as we have already emphasized on several 

 occasions. I need only recall the protective leaf -marking of butterflies, 

 which is never a botanically exact copy of a leaf, with all its lateral 

 veins, but is comparable rather to an impressionist painting, in which 

 it is not the reproduction of every detail that is of importance, but 

 the total impression which it makes at a certain distance. If we 

 apply this to the organs and capacities of Man, we shall only expect 

 to find these developed as far as their development is of value for the 

 preservation of his existence and no further. But this may perhaps 

 seem a contradiction of what observation teaches us, that, for instance, 

 our eyes can see to the infinite distance of the fixed stars, although 



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