290 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
is a double flexure of this axis ; moreover, in the apes - 
the angles increase with age, which in man decrease, and 
vice versd. Likewise in man the occipital foramen 
becomes more horizontal with age, more vertical inthe ape. 
But all this shows only, what the doctrine of Descent 
asserts, that the two series, ape and man, diverge from 
one another, and that the youthful individuals are more 
alike than the older ones,—that the ape as he grows be- 
comes more bestial; man, as the riddle of the sphinx 
already intimated, more human. The flexure of the 
basal bone and the horizontal position of the occipital 
foramen occasions the upright gait, wherewith the 
differentiation between hands and feet is completed. 
This flexure of the cranial axis may therefore still be 
emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction 
to the apes; the peculiar characteristic of an order can 
scarcely be elicited from it; and especially as to the 
question of Descent, this circumstance seems in no way 
decisive. 
Not only as regards hand and foot, but also in denti- 
tion and brain, the anthropomorphous apes approach 
man much more nearly than they do the inferior wide- 
nosed monkeys of the New World. These, have six 
molar teeth, and their brain displays the imperfec- 
tions of the brain of the lemurs and rodents. Like 
the monkeys of the Old World, on the contrary, the 
anthropomorphous apes possess five molar teeth, and 
every portion of the human brain, even to the hippo- 
campus minor, is likewise present. The dispute as 
to this insignificant portion of the brain, which 
R. Owen claimed as an exclusively human charac- 
teristic, possesses a merely historic interest, since, 
